Amen! 2,009-page $1.8 trillion spending bill

NYTimes has it:

WASHINGTON — After years of dysfunction and abysmal public approval ratings, a chastened, even beaten-down Congress on Friday passed a $1.8 trillion package of spending and tax cuts with remarkably little rancor.

The sweeping deal was the product of a convergence of forces: Speaker Paul D. Ryan's deftness in pacifying rebellious conservatives, the recognition by Republicans that a government shutdown could cripple them in the races for the White House and Senate and a recovering economy that helped end an era of austerity.

The relatively swift passage of the prodigious year-end package — by wide margins in the House and in the Senate — in many respects showed lawmakers bowing to the hard realities of a divided government.

President Obama quickly signed the measure, praised Mr. Ryan for his work and acknowledged the sacrifice of his predecessor as speaker, John A. Boehner, for also making the accord possible.

The agreement also showed just how easily a fractious legislature can seem functional again when there is agreement to spend more money, adding at least $2 trillion in debt over the next 20 years, according to the Committee for a Responsible Budget, a nonpartisan group.

NYTimes readers:


Socrates is a trusted commenter Downtown Verona, NJ
“This bill is even referred to as a Christmas tree bill because special interests get special presents, all in ornaments on this tree,” Representative Lloyd Doggett, Democrat of Texas, said in a speech on the House floor on Thursday.

“Like many shoppers out there, they put it all on the credit card, except that it’s your credit card,” Mr. Doggett said, adding, “If you add this much debt unpaid for in a fiscally irresponsible way you begin to jeopardize retirement security, Medicare and Social Security, because those so-called entitlements are next up on the chopping block.”

Deficit spending has never felt so good as it did while using the Congressional American Express Card.

Why pay cash....when you can use a stolen credit card from the American taxpayers ?

"A $1.4 billion increase for military construction projects"....and no sign of paying for them anywhere in sight.

Brilliant.

Merry Christmas, America !!!

The Congressional practical joke is on you.


Julian Fernandez
A 2000+ page, passed-in-the week-before-Christmas Omnibus Spending Bill. Glory!

Another huge tax break for corporations and the wealthy, $573,000,000,000 for the military. Our 40-year ban on the export of oil, gone. Pennies for renewables. Pennies for infrastructure repair. The meat you buy will no longer need to be labeled with country of origin. Looking forward to Chinese chicken in my supermarket by spring.

This is a list of very generous gifts from our senators and representatives to their major contributors. Paid for by you and me. Happy Holidays!


ProSkeptic New York City
I would just love to see the breakdown on the over $600 billion in tax cuts. I'm willing to bet a year's salary that the bill greatly favors wealthy individuals and corporations. Call me cynical. Where are the deficit hawks when you need them? And where's the tally of the votes in the House? Was it only the Freedom Caucus who voted against, or were there perhaps some principled liberals as well?


Nick Metrowsky is a trusted commenter Longmont, Colorado
All the GOP candidates are crying that the government has a huge deficit and they need to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. meanwhile, these same politicians just gave out $620 billion in tax breaks. Governor Kasich, of Ohio, just proposed increasing the Social Security retirement age, lower the benefits paid and cut benefits for wealthy recipients.

There is something very wrong when you have the same political party proposing making lives miserable for million of Americans, while giving their 1% buddies a huge tax cut. What is even worse, the Democrats went along with this and are equally complicit.

People are still hurting from the Congress gutting Glass-Steagall, in 19i99 (thank you Bill Clinton), with stagnant wages and rising costs. meanwhile billions more are going to teh pockets of people who do not need tax cuts.

As a single taxpayer, I am paying more, percent wise, in taxes than a fair number of people in this country. Those who get all the breaks because they have kids, and those who get the breaks because they are the 1%. Where is the relief for us, who are subsidizing everyone else?

Another example why the so called "greatest country in the history of the world" is a giant sham.


K. John Atlanta
Did I miss something? I didn't read one line about putting money in the budget for infrastructure repair to our nations highways and bridges. This would have truly been a win/win for the American economy as well as the American workers.
Something is amiss in the long term thinking of those who make decisions for the American people. Hopefully, we will awaken the first Tuesday in November of 2016. Perhaps this will get both houses of congress' attention.


Matt C Boston, MA
"The package also incorporates legislation that expands the sharing of information between private firms and federal security agencies to prevent cyberattacks."

When you put it that way, it sounds like a sensible measure designed to prevent terrorist plots from coming to fruition. In reality, CISA is another incarnation of policies designed to give the military-intelligence complex even further power to identify, target and destroy ANY citizen, for reasons as vague as unusual internet browsing habits. Except this time it was passed with almost no recognition from the media, and thus no time for interest groups to rally against it once more. The powers that be seized the opportunity to deprive Americans of their right to internet privacy, without so much as a brief snarl of discontent from the masses.

So thank you Congress for having the guts to finally pass a spending bill to fund the government we see on the evening news, and the government that operates in secrecy. I'm sure this well-thought out plan to fight cyberattacks will have no unintended consequences.


craig geary redlands fl
If there is one thing the five Walton heirs, the eco terrorist brothers of Koch Pollution and the hedge fund billionaires need, it's another gift from Congress.
Paid for by the declining middle and underpaid working class.
No War on Christmas here.


Jana Hesser Providence, RI
While there is a lot of garbage in this bill such as military spending, deep inside there is a little time bomb that will accelerate the demise of dirty fossil fuels. For the first time ever tax credits for wind power installations do not expire annually.

The five year horizon for tax credits will allow for smooth wind turbine installation planning unleashing a torrent of installations on land and offshore.

This wind power tax credit will progressively be reduced by 20% every year so it will be retired in 5 years (unlike tax credits for dirty and dangerous sources of energy that have been in place for decades). However this provides a sufficient window of opportunity to deliver a strong enough blow to shrink fossil fuel and nuclear energy market share to unsustainable levels.

Brace for the elimination of dirty disease causing air and water in the US and across the planet.


Zeitgeist
I quote ,"“A small handful of leaders from the two parties got together behind closed doors to decide what the nation’s taxing and spending policies would be for the next year,” Mr. Lee said in a speech on the Senate floor on Thursday. “And then, after several weeks, the negotiators emerged – grand bargain in hand – confident that the people they deliberately excluded from the policy making process would now support all 2,242 pages of the legislative leviathan that they cooked up. This is not how a self-governing – or self-respecting – institution operates, and everyone here knows it.”unquote.

is this democracy ? why a few should get cloistered from the rest ? what guarantee we have that the bill has not been written in favor of big commercial business , bankers and Wall Street against the long-term interests of the middle class and lower classes ? For all we know within the closed room they must have bargained for the amount of money each of them need to get to give their assent. who knows ? This kind of bill without open discussion and putting it up for months of comments from the public making use of media is not the democratic way but expedient corporatocratic way . The government is no more of the people or by the people nor for the people. We want another Lincoln


C.L.S. MA
It's called compromise. That's what makes democracy work. Thank goodness, the Republicans under Paul Ryan's new leadership seem to be regaining their senses. Let's keep observing.

one, two, three...

NYTimes has it:

The richest man in Illinois does not often give speeches. But on a warm spring day two years ago, Kenneth C. Griffin, the billionaire founder of one of the world’s largest hedge funds, rose before a black-tie dinner of the Economic Club of Chicago to deliver an urgent plea to the city’s elite.

They had stood silently, Mr. Griffin told them, as politicians spent too much and drove businesses and jobs from the state. They had refused to help those who would take on the reigning powers in the Illinois Capitol. “It is time for us to do something,” he implored.

Their response came quickly. In the months since, Mr. Griffin and a small group of rich supporters — not just from Chicago, but also from New York City and Los Angeles, southern Florida and Texas — have poured tens of millions of dollars into the state, a concentration of political money without precedent in Illinois history.

Their wealth has forcefully shifted the state’s balance of power. Last year, the families helped elect as governor Bruce Rauner, a Griffin friend and former private equity executive from the Chicago suburbs, who estimates his own fortune at more than $500 million. Now they are rallying behind Mr. Rauner’s agenda: to cut spending and overhaul the state’s pension system, impose term limits and weaken public employee unions.

Now NYTimes readers:

Matt Kampf Albany
It's about time to grab the pitchforks and torches if you're not part if the über wealthy class in this country. How many more times do we have to read stories in this vein before we, as a body politic, wake up to the fact that we are silently witnessing the dawn of a new Guilded Era?
The problem this time around though, is that business and government are colluding in the steps, with precious few politicians willing to stand up to the monied interests blatantly rugging the process.

BJK Fargo
I was an Illinois state worker - not a member of a union - who retired 2 years ago. I played by the rules, contributing 7% of my income for many years to the state government so that I could get a pension. I played by all the rules. I trusted the government to invest my money, knowing that by working for the State of Illinois **I would not be entitled to any social security.** The pension is what tens of thousands like me have to live on in retirement. The state reneged on their billions of dollars in matching contributions for years and years. THAT is what put the pension system in debt. Not those of us who were not allowed to renege. We did our part. It's now the top of the 9th inning, and now the state wants to change the rules of the game. This one's on the politicians, not the workers.


Matthew Carnicelli is a trusted commenter Brooklyn, New York
First off, we need 100% public financing all elections - and we need it now.
Secondly, the people of Illinois need to understand that some "change" is not welcome change. The Rauners of the world want to make every worker, blue or white collar, a de facto serf, just like they are in many emerging markets. That's their idea of restoring "competitiveness".
What we instead need to do is lose the middlemen in the system, who are merely siphoning-off American wealth, while providing little-to-no value - like the health insurance industry - and then, in collaboration with our natural allies in Europe and Japan, construct a new trading system that would harshly penalize any company seeking to exploit low wage emerging market workers.
Make no mistake: this race to the bottom that the Rauners and Griffins support is a race toward oligarchy and tyranny, not to mention second- or third-world status. It is not a race towards either authentic liberty or democracy.


Socrates Downtown Verona, NJ
"Governor Bruce Rauner....a former private equity executive from the Chicago suburbs...estimates his own fortune at more than $500 million"

"Mr. Rauner had told a candidate forum he was “adamantly, adamantly against raising” the minimum wage."

That is just plain sociopathy.

But wait...there's more sociopathy !

"Where merely affluent Americans are more likely to identify as Democrats than as Republicans, the ultrawealthy overwhelmingly leaned right"

"Where the general public overwhelmingly supports a high minimum wage, the one percent are broadly opposed."

"Those canvassed in the 'Survey of Economically Successful Americans and the Common Good' were granted anonymity to discuss their views candidly".....presumably to hide their sociopathy and shame.

This is pure Greed Over People.

These are the same sociopaths who brought you 350:1 CEO:worker pay ratios and eliminated pensions, raises, employee benefits, outsourced the nation's jobs and who refuse to provide America with single-payer healthcare.

If the rich can't buy the federal government, then gosh darnit, they'll just have to buy it one municipality and state at a time.

This is modern feudalism and it is the Republican Party platform, with minimal and token resistance from the left.

Time for another American Revolution.


Nick Metrowsky is a trusted commenter Longmont, Colorado
This is a telling story of how the United State of America rapid slide into oligarchy. Politicians effectively being appointed by the wealthy for their bidding. And, appointing wealthy politicians to consolidate the wealth.

Many say politics are local, and now we see that politicians from the White House down to one's councilman are all being elected and controller by an ever more entrenched oligarchy.

Their goals? No taxes, no regulation, no safety net, no wage hours laws, no worker safety, no environmental safety, low wages, no unions; a complete return to the early days of the industrial revolution.

For an idea, just read Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" to get an idea of pre worker rights America. Or, even Charles Dickens would be useful here; like "Oliver Twist", "David Copperfield" or "A Christmas Carol".

In the end, if this trend continues, America will be a nation of two classes, one of vast wealth and one of constant struggle.

The US Supreme Court with its 2010 Citizen United Decision hastened this decline by allowance of a flood of wealth into political campaigns. By the middle part of this century, this nation, if this trend continues, will be that of hopelessness. And the "American Dream" will be unachievable for most.

Finally, what is described in this article, though unethical, immoral, disgraceful, detestable, demeaning, disreputable, etc.; it is perfectly legal.


David Henry Walden
They want only to cut their own taxes at everyone else's expense. The mystery is why people vote against their interests.


jim chicago
The article describes appalling governance in Illinois, but comments here are also quite emotional and flaccid. During the federal tenure
of the Cheney Bush administration, about ten trillion in debt was added to
fund the US military activities in Iraq and elsewhere. In Illinois, hundreds of
factories relocated production to China and 3rd-world destinations to minimize costs and maximize profit- without regard to destruction of local economies and thus State revenues. Most State retirement plans were of
sound fiscal design and were properly funded by the employees, but Illinos'
State legislature chose not to supplement those funds as committed by
contractual agreement with the Social Security Administration to provide
"equal or better" retirement benefits than offered by federal law. Illinois'
state university system was defunded massively as pressure mounted with
dwindling tax income streams to cover expenditures of all kinds. (See the
U of I town hall meeting Monday 4pm e.s.t. about this fiscal crisis: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/uic-meetings-and-conferences ) Without
a growing economy, not only Illinois but most of the industrial
states suffered during that dark decade of Republican-lead, Democratic-supported insanity- and now we citizens must pay the price.
Illinois is proof that the world has gone global- international banks and
businesses are agnostic to individual well-being. Just ask Pope Francis, or
Piketty, or Sanders. It's a rich man's game.


WR Midtown
One take-away from this article is that, the super wealthy are what we always believed - just plain greedy miserable bad people, whose only pleasure in life seems to come from repressing freedom with their ill-gotten gains. Fortunately, very very few Americans actually trust the rich.

C. Morris Idaho
Never thought I would say this, but American voters seem not to care.
Apathy, indifference, and ignorance are the winners on election day.
The fruits of 35 years of dumbing down are coming in.


David Keller Petaluma CA
The perversion of democracy continues.

Power to the Money!

Stealing our government, buying politicians, creating a steep uphill battle for workers who actually produce the wealth of corporations, creating a permanent ruling class, keeping millions of people from voting. Enough!

It's no wonder that Bernie, Paul Krugman, Robert Reich and millions of other people recognize the imbalance, the immorality, the un-American trends in US politics, and enjoy strong support for that.

When our government is so far out of balance and out of touch with the people, it will fall. No, that's not some Commie theory - it's embedded in the ancient writings of the I Ching.


Not So Simple Chicago
Public employees across the board in Illinois are prospering in a way that is not happening in the private sector. In 2012, teachers went on strike at Lake Forest High School with salaries at that time averaging $112,000 per year, according to the Illinois Review. And just this month, the Chicago Sun Times revealed that $86,000 was the median pay for all Chicago city workers in 2014.
At the same time, private employment in manufacturing in Illinois has been devastated. Take the town of Galesburg. According to the September 16, 2014 Atlantic Monthly article, in the early 1970's the Maytag factories employed nearly 5,000 workers. Today, that site of "over 40 football fields .... is now mostly rubble and weeds". Trade globalization has contributed to this, and the federal government has allowed company mergers which have reduced competition and employment.
And, there are other costs. The Illinois Policy Institute reports that "Illinois’ workers’ compensation system crushes blue-collar industries, forcing them to leave the state to stay in business".
The democrats have been in charge of the state budget for many years, and that budget is today in shambles. As a middle class worker residing in Chicago and struggling to pay bills each month, I strongly support efforts made by Governor Rauner to reduce costs, and to improve the state's competitive advantage for private business.


Marla Geneva, IL
Governor Rauner won the 2014 election with 1,781,052 votes (50.8%) to then Governor Quinn with 1,6091,512 votes (45.9%). It is not a landslide and not really a mandate.

Illinois is in bad shape, in large part because the level of income tax (at one point as low as 2%) was never enough to pay for the goods and services people wanted. It was Gov. Richard Olgivie who introduced a state income tax during his term from 1969-1973. He was not re-elected. State officials saw the unpopularity of the income tax and avoided increasing it. The money that should have gone to pay the pensions was deferred.

It does seem that nearly 35 years after St. Ronald of Reagan took office and introduced trickle down economics, that all levels of government are starved of the revenue needed to provide services to their citizens.

I would dearly love to see the New York Times do a story of how Sam Zell bought the Chicago Tribune in the deal that bankrupted the paper from day one of his ownership.


Mo Chicago
So interesting that very few of the commenters on this article live in Illinois. We do need change here, but not the change that Mr. Rauner wants to bring, which is designed to drive down wages and guarantee more money to the very few at the top. Both republicans and democrats have brought Illinois to this point of fiscal disaster (we have had republican governors for 17 of the last 30 years); to blame all of the state's problems on unions is just plain wrong.


Joe Bob the III MN
Is it too crass to suggest we need better voters? Candidates like Rauner are not ciphers. In the course of the campaign it's easy to figure out what people stand for.

If in the course of eight weeks a politician goes from winning a majority of the vote to a 36% approval rating, I see two possibilities: 1) People didn't know what they were voting for in the first place. 2) People who oppose Rauner's policies didn't bother to vote in the election.


David San Francisco, Calif.
Ken Griffin has bribed enough politicians to ensure he pays a lower tax rate than anyone in the middle class pays through carried interest treatment on his $100 million a month compensation.

Griffin thinks providing a minimum pension to senior citizens who have paid taxes for Social Security over decades is excessive, while Griffin spent over $200 million for an apartment in New York and $80 million on a single painting.

The 158 families that have provided half the money to fund presidential campaigns have Republican appointees to the Supreme Court to thank for legalizing bribery.

As with any bribe, these families will ensure their economic interests are met.

The richest 80 people in the world own as much as the bottom 3.5 billion people.

It is just astounding to me that Republicans could find 5 Supreme Court jurists so unethical and corrupt to equate free speech with unlimited money in politics.

Jesus Christ said it is easier for a camel to fit through the head of a needle than for a rich man to gain entry to the Kingdom of Heaven.

People like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates have undoubtedly done enough good in the world to ride a camel through the head of a pin.

But for those rich people who spend their money living in excess and buying politicians to steal money from seniors, they will find their accommodations very different when they pass from this world.

Kudos to the NYT editors

NYT Editorial Slams CIA Exploitation of Paris Attacks, But Submissive Media Role Is Key

Glenn Greenwald✉glenn.greenwald@​theintercept.comt@ggreenwald

A truly superb New York Times editorial this morning mercilessly shames the despicable effort by U.S. government officials to shamelessly exploit the Paris attacks to advance long-standing agendas. Focused on the public campaign of the CIA to manipulate post-Paris public emotions to demonize transparency and privacy and to demand still-greater surveillance powers for themselves, the NYT editors begin:

It’s a wretched yet predictable ritual after each new terrorist attack: Certain politicians and government officials waste no time exploiting the tragedy for their own ends. The remarks on Monday by John Brennan, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, took that to a new and disgraceful low.

The editorial, which you should really read in its entirety, destroys most of the false, exploitative, blame-shifting claims uttered by U.S. officials about these issues. Because intelligence agencies knew of the attackers and received warnings, the NYT editors explain that “the problem in [stopping the Paris attacks] was not a lack of data, but a failure to act on information authorities already had.” They point out that the NSA’s mass surveillance powers to be mildly curbed by post-Snowden reforms are ineffective and, in any event, have not yet stopped. And most importantly, they document that the leader of this lowly campaign, CIA chief John Brennan, has been proven to be an inveterate liar:

It is hard to believe anything Mr. Brennan says. Last year, he bluntly denied that the CIA had illegally hacked into the computers of Senate staff members conducting an investigation into the agency’s detention and torture programs when, in fact, it did. In 2011, when he was President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, he claimed that American drone strikes had not killed any civilians, despite clear evidence that they had. And his boss, James Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, has admitted lying to the Senate on the NSA’s bulk collection of data. Even putting this lack of credibility aside, it’s not clear what extra powers Mr. Brennan is seeking.

Indeed, what more powers could agencies like the CIA, NSA, MI6 and GCHQ get? They’ve been given everything they’ve demanded for years, no questions asked. They have virtually no limits. Of course it’s “not clear what extra powers Mr. Brennan is seeking.” It’s like trying to buy a Christmas gift for Paris Hilton: what do you give to an omnipotent, terrorism-exploiting agency that already has everything it could ever dream of having?
Space constraints likely required the NYT editors to leave several specific CIA lines of deceit unmentioned. To begin with, there’s literally zero evidence that the Paris attackers used encryption. There are reasons to believe they may not have (siblings and people who live near each other have things called “face-to-face communications”).
Even if they had used encryption (which, just by the way, the U.S. government funds and the GOP protected in the 1990s), that would not mean we should abolish it or give the U.S. government full backdoor access to it — any more than face-to-face plotting means we should allow the government to put monitors in everyone’s homes to prevent this type of “going dark.” Silicon Valley has repeatedly said there’s no way to build the U.S. government a “backdoor” that couldn’t also be used by any other state or stateless organization to invade. And that’s to say nothing of all the lies and false claims that I documented several days ago embedded in the Snowden-is-to-blame-for-Paris trash — a low-life propaganda campaign that is not principally about Snowden but really about scaring Silicon Valley out of offering encryption lest they be viewed as ISIS-helpers.
But there’s one vital question the NYT editors do not address: Why do the CIA and other U.S. government factions believe — accurately — that they can get away with such blatant misleading and lying? The answer is clear: because, particularly after a terror attack, large parts of the U.S. media treat U.S. intelligence and military officials with the reverence usually reserved for cult leaders, whereby their every utterance is treated as Gospel, no dissent or contradiction is aired, zero evidence is required to mindlessly swallow their decrees, anonymity is often provided to shield them from accountability, and every official assertion is equated with Truth, no matter how dubious, speculative, evidence-free, or self-serving.
Like many people, I’ve spent years writing about the damage done by how subservient and reverent many U.S. media outlets are toward the government officials they pretend to scrutinize. But not since 2003 have I witnessed anything as supine and uncritical as the CIA-worshipping stenography that has been puked forward this week. Even before the Paris attacks were concluded, a huge portion of the press corps knelt in front of the nearest official with medals on their chest or who flashes covert status, and they’ve stayed in that pitiful position ever since.
The leading cable news networks, when they haven’t been spewing outright bigotry and fearmongering, have hosted one general and CIA official after the next to say whatever they want without the slightest challenge. Print journalists, without the excuse of the pressures of live TV, have been even worse: Article after article after article does literally nothing other than uncritically print the extremely dubious claims of military and intelligence officials without including any questioning, contradiction, dissenters, or evidence that negates those claims.

None of the facts the NYT pointed to this morning to show Brennan is lying and misleading are esoteric or obscure. They’re all right out in the public domain. Countless other people have raised them. But so many journalists steadfastly exclude all of that from their “reporting.” Especially after a terror attack, the already sky-high journalistic worship of security officials skyrockets. Many journalists are in pure servant-stenography mode, not reporting and definitely not questioning claims that emanate from the sacred mouths of these Pentagon and CIA priests. Just look at the reports I cited to see how extreme this obsequious behavior is. What can excuse “reporting” like this?
This, of course, is how propaganda is cemented: not by government officials making dubious, self-serving claims (they’ll always be motivated to do that), but by people who play the role of “journalist” on TV and in print acting as their spokespeople, literally suppressing all the reasons why the officials’ claims are so questionable if not outright false.
Kudos to the NYT editors for pulling no punches this morning in making all this deceit manifest. But the real culprits aren’t the government officials spewing this manipulative tripe but the journalists who not only let them get away with it but, so much worse, eagerly help.

Mass Surveillance Isn’t the Answer to Fighting Terrorism

The NYTimes Editorial Board



It’s a wretched yet predictable ritual after each new terrorist attack: Certain politicians and government officials waste no time exploiting the tragedy for their own ends. The remarks on Monday by John Brennan, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, took that to a new and disgraceful low.

Speaking less than three days after coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris killed 129 and injured hundreds more, Mr. Brennan complained about “a lot of hand-wringing over the government’s role in the effort to try to uncover these terrorists.”

What he calls “hand-wringing” was the sustained national outrage following the 2013 revelations by Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor, that the agency was using provisions of the Patriot Act to secretly collect information on millions of Americans’ phone records. In June, President Obama signed the USA Freedom Act, which ends bulk collection of domestic phone data by the government (but not the collection of other data, like emails and the content of Americans’ international phone calls) and requires the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to make its most significant rulings available to the public.

John Brennan, the director of the C.I.A. Win Mcnamee/Getty Images

These reforms are only a modest improvement on the Patriot Act, but the intelligence community saw them as a grave impediment to antiterror efforts. In his comments Monday, Mr. Brennan called the attacks in Paris a “wake-up call,” and claimed that recent “policy and legal” actions “make our ability collectively, internationally, to find these terrorists much more challenging.”

It is hard to believe anything Mr. Brennan says. Last year, he bluntly denied that the C.I.A. had illegally hacked into the computers of Senate staff members conducting an investigation into the agency’s detention and torture programs when, in fact, it did. In 2011, when he was President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, he claimed that American drone strikes had not killed any civilians, despite clear evidence that they had. And his boss, James Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, has admitted lying to the Senate on the N.S.A.’s bulk collection of data. Even putting this lack of credibility aside, it’s not clear what extra powers Mr. Brennan is seeking.

Most of the men who carried out the Paris attacks were already on the radar of intelligence officials in France and Belgium, where several of the attackers lived only hundreds of yards from the main police station, in a neighborhood known as a haven for extremists. As one French counterterrorism expert and former defense official said, this shows that “our intelligence is actually pretty good, but our ability to act on it is limited by the sheer numbers.” In other words, the problem in this case was not a lack of data, but a failure to act on information authorities already had.

In fact, indiscriminate bulk data sweeps have not been useful. In the more than two years since the N.S.A.’s data collection programs became known to the public, the intelligence community has failed to show that the phone program has thwarted a terrorist attack. Yet for years intelligence officials and members of Congress repeatedly misled the public by claiming that it was effective.

The intelligence agencies’ inability to tell the truth about surveillance practices is just one part of the problem. The bigger issue is their willingness to circumvent the laws, however they are written. The Snowden revelations laid bare how easy it is to abuse national-security powers, which are vaguely defined and generally exercised in secret.

Listening to Mr. Brennan and other officials, like James Comey, the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, one might believe that the government has been rendered helpless to defend Americans against the threat of future terror attacks.

Mr. Comey, for example, has said technology companies like Apple and Google should make it possible for law enforcement to decode encrypted messages the companies’ customers send and receive. But requiring that companies build such back doors into their devices and software could make those systems much more vulnerable to hacking by criminals and spies. Technology experts say that government could just as easily establish links between suspects, without the use of back doors, by examining who they call or message, how often and for how long.

In truth, intelligence authorities are still able to do most of what they did before — only now with a little more oversight by the courts and the public. There is no dispute that they and law enforcement agencies should have the necessary powers to detect and stop attacks before they happen. But that does not mean unquestioning acceptance of ineffective and very likely unconstitutional tactics that reduce civil liberties without making the public safer.

Ripped From Hillary’s Emails

French intelligence plotted to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi to horn in on Libya’s oil and to provide access for French businesses.

By Conn Hallinan

“Philosopher“ Bernard Henri-Levy (aka, BHL) worked undercover as a journalist to engineer the deal with Libya, thus paving the way for yet more journalists to be accused of being spies. (Photo: Itzik Edri / Wikimedia Commons)

For more of Conn Hallinan’s essays visit Dispatches From the Edge. Meanwhile, his novels about the ancient Romans can be found at The Middle Empire Series.

The Congressional harrying of former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over emails concerning the 2012 death of an American Ambassador and three staff members in Benghazi, Libya, has become a sort of running joke, with Republicans claiming “cover-up” and Democrats dismissing the whole matter as nothing more than election year politics. But there is indeed a story embedded in the emails, one that is deeply damning of American and French actions in the Libyan civil war, from secretly funding the revolt against Muammar Gaddafi, to the willingness to use journalism as a cover for covert action.

The latest round of emails came to light June 22 in a fit of Republican pique over Clinton’s prevarications concerning whether she solicited intelligence from her advisor, journalist and former aide to President Bill Clinton, Sidney Blumenthal. If most newspaper readers rolled their eyes at this point and decided to check out the ball scores, one can hardly blame them.

But that would be a big mistake.

While the emails do raise questions about Hillary Clinton’s veracity, the real story is how French intelligence plotted to overthrow the Libyan leader in order to claim a hefty slice of Libya’s oil production and “favorable consideration” for French businesses.

The courier in this cynical undertaking was journalist and right-wing philosopher Bernard Henri-Levy, a man who has yet to see a civil war that he doesn’t advocate intervening in, from Yugoslavia to Syria. According to Julian Pecquet, the U.S. congressional correspondent for the Turkish publication Al-Monitor, Henri-Levy claims he got French President Nicolas Sarkozy to back the Benghazi-based Libyan Transitional National Council that was quietly being funded by the General Directorate for External Security (DGSE), the French CIA.

According to the memos, in return for money and support, “the DGSE officers indicated that they expected the new government of Libya to favor French firms and national interests, particularly regarding the oil industry in Libya.” The memo says that the two leaders of the Council, Mustafa Abdul Jalil and General Abdul Fatah Younis, “accepted this offer.”

Another May 5 email indicates that French humanitarian flights to Benghazi included officials of the French oil company TOTAL, and representatives of construction firms and defense contractors, who secretly met with Council members and then “discreetly” traveled by road to Egypt, protected by DGSE agents.

Henri-Levy, an inveterate publicity hound, claims to have come up with this quid pro quo, business/regime change scheme, using “his status as a journalist to provide cover for his activities.” Given that journalists are routinely accused of being “foreign agents” in places like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria and Afghanistan, Henri-Levy’s subterfuge endangers other members of the media trying to do their jobs.

All this clandestine maneuvering paid off.

On Feb. 26, 2011, the UN Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1970 aimed at establishing “peace and security” and protecting the civilian population in the Libyan civil war. Or at least that was how UNR 1970 was sold to countries on the Security Council, like South Africa, Brazil, India, China and Russia, that had initial doubts. However, the French, Americans and British—along with several NATO allies—saw the resolution as an opportunity to overthrow Qaddafi and in France’s case, to get back in the game as a force in the region.

Almost before the ink was dry on the resolution, France, Britain and the U.S. began systematically bombing Qaddafi’s armed forces, ignoring pleas by the African Union to look for a peaceful way to resolve the civil war. According to one memo, President Sarkozy “plans to have France lead the attacks on [Qaddafi] over an extended period of time” and “sees this situation as an opportunity for France to reassert itself as a military power.”

While for France flexing its muscles was an important goal, Al- Monitor says that a September memo also shows that “Sarkozy urged the Libyans to reserve 35 percent of their oil industry for French firms—TOTAL in particular—when he traveled to Tripoli that month.”

In the end, Libya imploded and Paris has actually realized little in the way of oil, but France’s military industrial complex has done extraordinarily well in the aftermath of Qaddafi’s fall.

According to Defense Minister Jean-Yves Lodrian, French arms sales increased 42 percent from 2012, bringing in $7 billion, and are expected to top almost $8 billion in 2014.

Over the past decade, France, the former colonial masters of Lebanon, Syria, and Algeria, has been sidelined by U.S. and British arms sales to the Middle East. But the Libya war has turned that around. Since then, Paris has carefully courted Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates by taking a hard line on the Iran nuclear talks.

The global security analyst group Stratfor noted in 2013, “France could gain financially from the GCC’s [Gulf Cooperation Council, the organization representing the oil monarchies of the Persian Gulf] frustrations over recent U.S. policy in the Middle East. Significant defense contracts worth tens of billions of dollars are up for grabs in the Gulf region, ranging from aircraft to warships to missile systems. France is predominantly competing with Britain and the United States for the contracts and is seeking to position itself as a key ally of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as it looks to strengthen its defense and industrial ties in the region.”

Sure enough, the French company Thales landed a $3.34 billion Saudi contract to upgrade the kingdom’s missile system and France just sold 24 Rafale fighters to Qatar for $7 billion. Discussions are underway with the UAE concerning the Rafale, and France sold 24 of the fighters to Egypt for $5.8 billion. France has also built a military base in the UAE.

French President Francois Hollande, along with his Foreign and Defense ministers, attended the recent GCC meeting, and, according to Hollande, there are 20 projects worth billions of dollars being discussed with Saudi Arabia. While he was in Qatar, Hollande gave a hard-line talk on Iran and guaranteed “that France is there for its allies when it is called upon.”

True to his word, France has thrown up one obstacle after another during the talks between Iran and the P5 + 1—the permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany.

Paris also supports Saudi Arabia and it allies in their bombing war on Yemen, and strongly backs the Saudi-Turkish led overthrow of the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, even though it means that the French are aligning themselves with al-Qaeda linked extremist groups.

France seems to have its finger in every Middle East disaster, although, to be fair, it is hardly alone. Britain and the U.S. also played major roles in the Libya war, and the Obama administration is deep into the ongoing wars in Syria and Yemen. In the latter case, Washington supplies the Saudis with weapons, targeting intelligence, and in-air refueling of its fighter-bombers.

But the collapse of Libya was a particularly catastrophic event, which—as the African Union accurately predicted—sent a flood of arms and unrest into two continents.

The wars in Mali and Niger are a direct repercussion of Qaddafi’s fall, and the extremist Boko Haram in Nigeria appears to have benefited from the plundering of Libyan arms depots. Fighters and weapons from Libya have turned up in the ranks of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. And the gunmen who killed 22 museum visitors in Tunisia last March, and 38 tourists on a beach July 3, trained with extremists in Libya before carrying out their deadly attacks.

Clinton was aware of everything the French were up to and apparently had little objection to the cold-blooded cynicism behind Paris’s policies in the region.

The “news” in the Benghazi emails, according to the New York Times, is that, after denying it, Clinton may indeed have solicited advice from Blumenthal. The story ends with a piece of petty gossip: Clinton wanted to take credit for Qaddafi’s fall, but the White House stole the limelight by announcing the Libyan leader’s death first.

That’s all the news that’s fit to print?

"Humans see what they want to see.” ~ RICK RIORDAN (b. 1964) American author

WASHINGTON — Russian submarines and spy ships are aggressively operating near the vital undersea cables that carry almost all global Internet communications, raising concerns among some American military and intelligence officials that the Russians might be planning to attack those lines in times of tension or conflict.

The issue goes beyond old worries during the Cold War that the Russians would tap into the cables — a task American intelligence agencies also mastered decades ago. The alarm today is deeper: The ultimate Russian hack on the United States could involve severing the fiber-optic cables at some of their hardest-to-access locations to halt the instant communications on which the West’s governments, economies and citizens have grown dependent.

Igor V. Lavrenchuk, general manager of the Museum of the Cold War, in a conference room designed for the Soviet air force command.Moscow Journal: Amid a Revived East-West Chill, Cold War Relics Draw New InterestAPRIL 29, 2014
While there is no evidence yet of any cable cutting, the concern is part of a growing wariness among senior American and allied military and intelligence officials over the accelerated activity by Russian armed forces around the globe. At the same time, the internal debate in Washington illustrates how the United States is increasingly viewing every Russian move through a lens of deep distrust, reminiscent of relations during the Cold War.

Inside the Pentagon and the nation’s spy agencies, the assessments of Russia’s growing naval activities are highly classified and not publicly discussed in detail. American officials are secretive about what they are doing both to monitor the activity and to find ways to recover quickly if cables are cut. But more than a dozen officials confirmed in broad terms that it had become the source of significant attention in the Pentagon.

“I’m worried every day about what the Russians may be doing,” said Rear Adm. Frederick J. Roegge, commander of the Navy’s submarine fleet in the Pacific, who would not answer questions about possible Russian plans for cutting the undersea cables.

Cmdr. William Marks, a Navy spokesman in Washington, said: “It would be a concern to hear any country was tampering with communication cables; however, due to the classified nature of submarine operations, we do not discuss specifics.”

In private, however, commanders and intelligence officials are far more direct. They report that from the North Sea to Northeast Asia and even in waters closer to American shores, they are monitoring significantly increased Russian activity along the known routes of the cables, which carry the lifeblood of global electronic communications and commerce.

Just last month, the Russian spy ship Yantar, equipped with two self-propelled deep-sea submersible craft, cruised slowly off the East Coast of the United States on its way to Cuba — where one major cable lands near the American naval station at Guantánamo Bay. It was monitored constantly by American spy satellites, ships and planes. Navy officials said the Yantar and the submersible vehicles it can drop off its decks have the capability to cut cables miles down in the sea.

“The level of activity,” a senior European diplomat said, “is comparable to what we saw in the Cold War.”

One NATO ally, Norway, is so concerned that it has asked its neighbors for aid in tracking Russian submarines.

Adm. James Stavridis, formerly NATO’s top military commander and now dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, said in an email last week that “this is yet another example of a highly assertive and aggressive regime seemingly reaching backwards for the tools of the Cold War, albeit with a high degree of technical improvement.”

The operations are consistent with Russia’s expanding military operations into places like Crimea, eastern Ukraine and Syria, where President Vladimir V. Putin has sought to demonstrate a much longer reach for Russian ground, air and naval forces.

“The risk here is that any country could cause damage to the system and do it in a way that is completely covert, without having a warship with a cable-cutting equipment right in the area,” said Michael Sechrist, a former project manager for a Harvard-M.I.T. research project funded in part by the Defense Department.

“Cables get cut all the time — by anchors that are dragged, by natural disasters,” said Mr. Sechrist, who published a study in 2012 of the vulnerabilities of the undersea cable network. But most of those cuts take place within a few miles from shore, and can be repaired in a matter of days.

What worries Pentagon planners most is that the Russians appear to be looking for vulnerabilities at much greater depths, where the cables are hard to monitor and breaks are hard to find and repair.

Mr. Sechrist noted that the locations of the cables are hardly secret. “Undersea cables tend to follow the similar path since they were laid in the 1860s,” he said, because the operators of the cables want to put them in familiar environments under longstanding agreements.

The exceptions are special cables, with secret locations, that have been commissioned by the United States for military operations; they do not show up on widely available maps, and it is possible the Russians are hunting for those, officials said.

The role of the cables is more important than ever before. They carry global business worth more than $10 trillion a day, including from financial institutions that settle transactions on them every second. Any significant disruption would cut the flow of capital. The cables also carry more than 95 percent of daily communications.

So important are undersea cables that the Department of Homeland Security lists their landing areas — mostly around New York, Miami and Los Angeles — at the top of its list of “critical infrastructure.”

Attention to underwater cables is not new. In October 1971, the American submarine Halibut entered the Sea of Okhotsk north of Japan, found a telecommunications cable used by Soviet nuclear forces, and succeeded in tapping its secrets. The mission, code-named Ivy Bells, was so secret that a vast majority of the submarine’s sailors had no idea what they had accomplished. The success led to a concealed world of cable tapping.

And a decade ago, the United States Navy launched the submarine Jimmy Carter, which intelligence analysts say is able to tap undersea cables and eavesdrop on communications flowing through them.

Submarines are not the only vessels that are snooping on the undersea cables. American officials closely monitor the Yantar, which Russian officials insist is an oceanographic ship with no ties to espionage.

“The Yantar is equipped with a unique onboard scientific research complex which enables it to collect data on the ocean environment, both in motion and on hold. There are no similar complexes anywhere,” said Alexei Burilichev, the head of the deepwater research department at the Russian Defense Ministry, according to sputniknews.com in May 2015.

American concern over cable cutting is just one aspect of Russia’s modernizing Navy that has drawn new scrutiny.

Adm. Mark Ferguson, commander of American naval forces in Europe, speaking in Washington this month said that the proficiency and operational tempo of the Russian submarine force was increasing.

Citing public remarks by the Russian Navy chief, Adm. Viktor Chirkov, Admiral Ferguson said the intensity of Russian submarine patrols had risen by almost 50 percent over the last year. Russia has increased its operating tempo to levels not seen in over a decade. Russian Arctic bases and their $2.4 billion investment in the Black Sea Fleet expansion by 2020 demonstrate their commitment to develop their military infrastructure on the flanks, he said.

Russia is also building an undersea unmanned drone capable of carrying a small, tactical nuclear weapon to use against harbors or coastal areas, American military and intelligence analysts said.

Admiral Ferguson said that as part of Russia’s emerging doctrine of so-called hybrid warfare, it is increasingly using a mix of conventional force, Special Operations mission and new weapons in the 21st-century battlefield.

“This involves the use of space, cyber, information warfare and hybrid warfare designed to cripple the decision-making cycle of the alliance,” Admiral Ferguson said, referring to NATO. “At sea, their focus is disrupting decision cycles.”

________________________

Greg Austin, Texas
Here goes the NYT again. Dealing in Russian Derangement Syndrome (RDS) once again as a proxy for the national security military industrial complex. This article appears just as the Congress is considering legislation to increase military spending. Coincidence?
Since we can hack into Russian communications anywhere anytime in the world, we should assume that the Russians can do the same to us, shouldn't we? Lord knows what our submarines are doing as we surround Russia daily.
This is all part of the NYT doing the bidding of the national security military industrial complex to reignite the Cold War, just in case the war in Foreverstan should diminish. That is an unlikely possibility, of course, but the NYT wants to make sure that there are plenty of reasons for Americans to live in fear.
Wouldn't it be nice if the NYT could return to being independent again as it once was?

DMS San Diego
I smell a request for more military spending.


mdnewell
What a coincidence! Just when we were thinking about reducing spending on battleships and destroyers that so many experts have told us are no longer necessary and not how we fight wars anymore, the pentagon starts sounding warning sirens and telling us about a new threat. Looks like our roads, infrastructure, veterans benefits, schools, healthcare, and investment in alternative energy sources will have to wait. Defense spending wins again.


bob garcia miami
Let me see if I understand the imperial mind set of official Washington. If we mess with Russian submarine cables, that is smart and something to be proud of. But if they go near our cables, or anyone else's that is very bad -- even if we have no reason to believe they are going to cut them.


Jon NM
As long as the cables are in international waters, there is little the U.S. can do. We can't patrol the entire sea floor.

Nor can we declare war on countries like Russia or China every time they hack our computers or mess with our cables.

WE Americans as a society have stupidly put ourselves in this position, just as WE have chosen to put our economy under the control of "President Xi", the chairman of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and people like Steve Jobs. WE chose to invade Iraq in 2003, which crippled and almost destroyed OUR army and which definitely destroyed Iraq.


Mel Farrell New York
Wow, setting up the next latest and greatest conflict, so soon.

1,400 American military bases all over the planet, fully operational, with Russia completely encircled, and our navy the largest in the world, shadowing every Russian vessel; what imbecile in the eternal war department came up with financial armegedan as a terror tactic against it's own people ?

Puttin is the only one really worried about the survival of his nation; we have him so effectively cornered, (a deliberate strategy), he will have no option but to do something stupid, and give our corporate owned government, and the military industrial complex the opportunity they have long sought to further their dream of control of the planet.

Does anyone remember a decade when we were not fomenting war and division somewhere on the planet.

And the mainstream media is entirely complicit, engaged in managing the people's perception.


R Stein Connecticut
Commenter opinion here runs toward disregarding this as beating of war drums, rather than any new threats to cables. I agree; we've been seeing more of this propaganda prep lately. So the admiral in charge of sub operations is "concerned" about what the Russians are doing. Well, that's his job -- nothing new there. So we have a major cable landing "near" our base in Cuba, which means on the shore of a recently antagonistic country. So cable disruption, as well as normal cable failures, isn't the subject of serious strategic workarounds?
Sorry, titans of war, I'm not buying this.


Santos-Dumont PA
Author James Bamford states in his books about NSA that Washington has been using special classified submarines to place taps on Russian undersea cables for decades.



K Henderson is a trusted commenter NYC
IT guy here: Severing those fiber cables (really just cutting the sheathing would be enough) would be very interruptive of normal global internet.

On the other hand: All the larger govts of the world already know this and this isnt at all new info -- so I have to wonder why our USA govt is announcing this to world media? At first glance, it seems intentionally alarmist. We are smart enough to see thru it.


Earl B. St. Louis
Matter of concern? Of course - but the idea of overtly cutting cables seems crude when compared to the value of simply intercepting communications, which apparently needs no actual physical interruption. If we can realize high quality pictures from a minimally-powered source somewhat further away than Pluto, surely it's possible to achieve inductional monitoring of communications no further away than our terrestrial seabed.

Since the first (Assyrian?) communications used incised clay tablets to share orders or information, there have been security concerns with the process. No level of sophistication has changed that; to this day no system is absolute. What is notable is that we have such naivete about our security in using electronic devices, telephones, internet; anything put into these systems might as well be on a billboard in our front yard, and expectations of privacy are nothing less than comic.

So the Russians are sniffing the cables? Nothing more than already "been there, done that," in our own history and indeed others. Our naval folk are concerned? Of course - it's in their job description, 24/7 and never-ending.


Knut Oslo / various
The Editor, NYT: This is silly, and pestered with Hollywood style of storytelling that does not belong in a newspaper. Please get a journalist to study the ITU-T standards for optical fibre technology, forget the US/FCC "technology", and skip "Popular Mechanics". The US does not have the technology to tap into these cable, James Bond does not nor the Russians. These cables us DWDM technology, where STM segments are placed beside one another and the signalling is done on the inference patterns generated between the two endpoints. Cut it and splice it, and the inference will be changed and signalling will not work. If nobody can listen to light, how special technology is available - why stop here, it would be easier to read people´s mind. They at least emit signals to the outside. Let them hit an international cable - there are numerous others that will replace it, but the owner of the cable will be deprived of the lease. I have seen an American fund well known to you: Carlyle investing in cables and communication technology infrastructure - so Frankie boy will get hurt, and send an invoice to the one that cut the fibre. Most fibres are dug into the ground by robots and covered by stones held in place by cement. National US cables may be laid as the FCC allows, and use technology that the FCC has approved - but these have no termination outside the US but these can be tapped and use a much simpler technology. Your journalism compares with Walt Disney.

On the Kennebunkport Clan

George and Barbara Bush, in Houston on Oct. 11, were introduced ahead of Game 3 of the American League Division Series between the Houston Astros and the Kansas City Royals. CreditBob Levey/Getty Images

Former President George Bush, 91 and frail, is straining to understand an election season that has, for his son and the Republican Party, lurched sharply and stunningly off script. And he is often bewildered by what he sees.

“I’m getting old,” he tells friends, appraising today’s politics, “at just the right time.”

These are confounding days for the Bush family and the network of advisers, donors and supporters who have helped sustain a political dynasty that began with the Senate victory by Prescott Bush, the older Mr. Bush’s father, in Connecticut 63 years ago. They have watched the rise of Donald J. Trump with alarm, and seen how Jeb Bush, the onetime Florida governor, has languished despite early advantages of political pedigree and campaign money.


_________________________________


AR is a trusted commenter Virginia
It is so nauseating, on so many levels, to read this kind of tripe about the Bush family. John Sununu, a truly nasty man who declared on TV that Barack Obama "should learn to be an American," is puzzled by the current GOP electorate? George H.W. Bush, the father of a hawkish non-participant in the Vietnam War (George W. Bush) who happily had his dirty operatives smear the war record of opponent John Kerry in 2004, can't understand how voters support Trump after he said negative things about John McCain? How about trying to understand how on earth anybody could vote for your own son over Kerry in 2004 after the Swift Boat attacks?

George H.W. Bush, I am sorry to say, is a pioneer among New England Yankee WASPs who decided to pander to the worst instincts of voters in ex-Confederate states like Texas and Florida. He hired junkyard dog of the first order Lee Atwater to run his despicable 1988 campaign for president. His two sons followed in his footsteps, with Jeb earlier this year declaring to a bunch of people in South Carolina that he wouldn't give "free stuff" to blacks. Never mind the sheer ludicrousness of a WASP child of privilege who was born with "free stuff" making a comment like this about the descendants of slaves.

The Bushes are like silk stockings filled with mud, some of the nastiest campaigners out there. Their demise in politics can't come soon enough, and that demise should be interpreted as a victory for all non-elite, non-wealthy Americans.


Hugh Centerville Wappingers Falls, NY
Poppy's memory must be failing. He fumed when Trump belittled McCain's service but when George II was running against John Kerry and the campaign needed George I to belittle Kerry's military service, Poppy was there for them.


Dave Monroe NY
I don't even know how to begin a response to this article! First, Neil Bush? Shouldn't he have done prison time for his role in the 1990s Savings & Loan scandals? Second, George H.W. Bush - he didn't lose because of Ross Perot; he lost because professional workers with advanced degrees (like me) couldn't get an interview or temporary job in 1992, and he seemed unaware and unconcerned about it. As for George W. Bush - well, books will be written for decades to come about his failures. Prescott Bush? The lawmaker who tried to remove FDR? I wish the Bushes would ride their motorized chairs into the sunset, never to be heard from again.


Steve CA
What Bush the Elder apparently fails to recognize is that he fathered not just a president and a presidential candidate, but in some ways the current Republican campaign as well. The Willie Horton issue that he exploited against Michael Dukakis in 1988 helped begat the scurrilous racial rumor-mongering that W employed about John McCain's child to win the South Carolina primary in 2000 and Karl Rove's swift-boating of Kerry that same year. Bush the Elder's campaign strategist, Lee Atwater, took dirty tactics to another level, and Karl Rove built on that for W.

Now, there is much more to the roots of the current Republican race than what George H.W. Bush did, not least in terms of the evolution of social media as a whole, right-wing blogging and the nastiness of Fox, Limbaugh, et al. And to his credit, the first President Bush (warts and all) really was a kinder, gentler and more policy-oriented soul than some current Republican contenders and many right-wing politicians. But if he wants to see who's partly responsible for his party's state of affairs, he need only look in the mirror.


V is a trusted commenter Los Angeles
"The elder Mr. Bush was fuming at the news of the day: Mr. Trump had belittled Sen. John McCain of Arizona for being taken prisoner in Vietnam.

“I can’t understand how somebody could say that and still be taken seriously,” said Mr. Bush."

Really, Mr. Bush?

Where was your outrage at the Swiftboating of war veteran Kerry in the 2004 election?

You Bushes with your Willie Horton ads and Swiftboating tactics have laid the groundwork for this disgusting political environment. And by the way, Jeb! is a lousy candidate with nothing to offer, except a Bush pedigree, which means nothing now. And the temerity of any Bush running after one of the worst presidencies in our history is breathtaking.

Thank you Donald Trump for this great public service you've accomplished in bringing down this political dynasty.


x WA
Better we should 'deeply wound' the Bush family pride than their family should do more damage to America.


California Teacher Healdsburg
Does his bewilderment also come from a place of entitlement? He can't understand what's happening because the populism fueling the GOP revolt is, in part, directed against the Bushes, who have for decades exercised the right to land their sons in coveted positions on the justification of nothing but birthright entitlement. Moreover, wasn't Bush's 1988 scorched earth campaign a harbinger of some of this nastiness in American politics? That slash-and-burn campaign prayed on emotions, focused on flag burning, the pledge, race cards, etc.


NM NY
If George H.W. Bush is confounded by his party's turn from the mainstream, he can look at his son, George W. Bush. In spite of having Ivy-league degrees (however unmerited), he wore his ignorance on his sleeve. He referred glowingly to his then-foreign-policy tutor, Condi Rice, as explaining things in a way he can understand. He ran a nasty primary against John McCain which included insinuations that the Senator had fathered an illegitimate black child. He ascribed listening to "a higher father" for his reckless war policy. The bottom dropped out with George W. Bush's Presidency.


RealDeal New York, NY
Papa Bush has always had a hard time seeing over the walls of the family compound. His one-termer status is evidence of that. I'm not at all surprised that Fox News is how he gauges the nation -- let alone the GOP.


jlalbrecht Vienna, Austria
"Bush...is straining to understand an election season that has...lurched sharply and stunningly off script."

Nothing could be better for this country than for us (US) to throw away "the script" and get back to electing leaders that have the support of the majority of citizens, and not just a majority of major donors or the press.

Henry Paulson: “It would be totally unrealistic to believe that if we backed out of this deal, the multilateral sanctions would remain in place.” Paul Volcker: “This agreement is as good as you are going to get. To think that we can unilaterally maintain sanctions doesn’t make any sense.”

Bill Randle The Big A
Just listened to John Kerry's speech. Wow! I had no idea the man had that great a speech in him! Fantastic! Can't imagine how the rightwingers, warmongers, and Military Industrial Complex will respond. Secretary Kerry nailed them to the wall. Wish he had that kind of steam when he opposed Bush for the White House!

Way to go, John Kerry!!

Ric Fouad New York, NY
Every rational American should be gratified and relieved by this tremendous victory for the President—one that represents a moment of collective national sanity, and that showcased Mr. Obama's finest leadership qualities in the face of tremendous obstacles and Republican cynical partisanship.

But the struggle to gain these 34 votes also exposed the lack of leadership by Democratic Senator Chuck Schemer, who elevated crass politics above a monumental world goal.

Leaving aside Mr. Schumer's history of slavish devotion to Wall Street, support of the Iraq War, and other questionable behavior, this latest betrayal of Democratic principles—and blatant alignment with Republican obstructionists—makes plain that he should have no leadership role in the Democratic Party.

While an ideal outcome would be a primary challenger emerging to replace Senator Schumer in 2016, at a bare minimum, the Democratic leadership should desist from any further consideration of Mr. Schumer as the Senate Minority Leader.

If progressive values mean anything at all, the Democratic Party must end the affront of rewarding those within the party who betray its core principles. To impose Senator Schumer on us as the party's choice to lead Senate Democrats is a gross affront and will not be taken lightly by the party's rank-and-file. This time, Mr. Schumer has gone too far and consequences must follow.


Max duPont New York
Excellent. Now we will finally be safe from the over-the-top dramatics of the AIPAC lobby, Netanyahu, and their paid employees in the US Congress like Schumer, Menendez, the GOP "candidates" and others. Time for them to move on to other antics.


Brian P Austin, TX
The other side (which, this time, cannot be simply characterized as the GOP), lost for the same reason they have been losing through most of the Obama years: they did not present a reasonable, well-thought-out alternative. They didn't even try. Saying "This agreement is not good enough. We need to scrap it and start over" has become a joke. Republicans have not merely proven they cannot execute on ANYTHING -- they have proven they do not agree, or even approve, of the very concept of governing. I did not hear anyone opposed to the Iran deal present a solution to the single most important fact about the deal: the sanctions regime was on the verge of collapse (and the Russians waited, what, about 20 minutes before signing an arms deal with the Iranians.) Wake up, Republicans.


Delving Eye lower New England
History will look back on this time in America's military-industrial complex -- one that includes Dick "The Penguin" Cheney's war rants, Wall Street excesses, middle-class serfdom, school-loan burdens, healthcare exorbitancies, Donald Trump's clown car, and childhood hunger in the richest country on Earth (to name a few features of our pitiful landscape) -- and wonder how this sensible act of diplomacy actually occurred.


Ethan Ohio
Of course, support for the deal is not enthusiastic. The point of negotiations is that you negotiate and compromise. The final deal is the product of intense compromise and reflects a technical and political practice of realpolitik--what is good enough. The US doesn't run the world anymore, and congress isn't about to grasp that fact any time soon. Their behavior over this deal demonstrates why international treaties have been pursued as executive action over the last 40 years. If the legislature demands congress act like children, that's all we'll get, and the sum of our diplomacy will be war and temper tantrums.


cew Satellite Beach, FL
Great news. Glad to know that Addleson and Israel don't have total control of our congress and we can run our own country as we see fit with the help of a determined president. Right or wrong money and foreign pressure aren't in charge on this one.


Jaque Champaign, Illinois
It is good and bad news. Good is that Iran deal will go forward. Bad news is that 63 Senators are under the thumb of Israeli and Defense Lobby!


Jeff Cohen New York
This is good news on so many levels.
But don't forget this: a president stood up to the Israel lobby on a matter the lobby and Israel's prime minister said was vital to Israeli security and the president won.
Next time he or she should outline the terms of an Israeli-Palestinian agreement: ending the occupation in exchange for guarantees of both peoples' security. He should insist on its implementation, linking it to the continuation of US support for one or both parties.
Like the Iran deal, ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a vital U.S. interest.
The lobby has been shown NOT to be a paper tiger (it is still powerful) but indeed one when a president says "US interests come before Israel's desires."
As the Iran debate showed, a president--and not only this one--will defeat the lobby when that is the choice.
Now it's time to end the occupation. Neither the lobby nor Israel's prime minister can defeat a resolute president.
And that is good news for the US, Israel and Palestine.


Adam Smith NY
IRAN Deal Is Too Big To Fail.

EVEN the opponents of the Deal know that and the rest of this spectacle has been to embarrass Mr. Obama and extract more Weapons free of Charge for Israel paid by the US Taxpayer.

AS for Netanyahu/Likud/AIPAC et al, they know that delaying the recognition of the Palestinian State is no longer possible and dread the upcoming French Resolution on Israel/Palestine Conflict at the UN.

THIS Deal has vastly reduced threats to Israel and America's own Security and it is incumbent on the remaining Ten Democratic Senators to all come on-side by the Weekend and avoid an Unnecessary Theatrical Vote in Congress.

ANY undecided Politician or Citizen just needs to consider that the P5+1 Deal with Iran has pushed Iran's "Breakout Capacity" to Arm a "DOZEN Bombs" from a matter of Weeks NOW to an ability to Arm ONLY "ONE Bomb" after 15 Years.

AND my message to the Naysayers is: "The Greatest Enemy Of A Good Deal, In This Case A Brilliant Deal, Is The Illusion Of Having A Perfect Deal".

Trade-Agreement Troubles

BY JAMES SUROWIECKI

In 2012, Australia implemented tough anti-tobacco regulations, requiring that all cigarettes be sold in plain, logo-free brown packages dominated by health warnings. Philip Morris Asia filed suit, claiming that this violated its intellectual-property rights and would damage its investments. The company sued Australia in domestic court and lost. But it had another card to play. In 1993, Australia had signed a free-trade agreement with Hong Kong, where Philip Morris Asia is based. That agreement included provisions protecting foreign investors from unfair treatment. So the company sued under that deal, claiming that the new law violated the investor-protection provisions. It asked for the regulations to be discontinued, and for billions in compensation.

The case has yet to be decided, but the concerns it raises help explain President Obama’s embarrassing setback last week, when the House failed to give him fast-track authority over one of two big trade agreements that had been envisaged as a key part of his legacy. Both agreements—the Trans-Pacific Partnership, with eleven Asian and Pacific countries, and an agreement with Europe called the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership—include provisions very like the ones at the heart of Australia’s fight with Big Tobacco. Known as Investor-State Dispute Settlement (or I.S.D.S.) provisions, they typically allow foreign investors to sue governments when they feel they have not received “fair or equitable treatment,” and to have their cases heard not by a domestic court but by an international arbitration tribunal made up of three lawyers.


These provisions have been opposed by an unusual coalition of progressives and conservatives, who contend that they will let multinationals override government policy, and, as Senator Elizabeth Warren put it, “undermine U.S. sovereignty.” On the other side, the Obama Administration and business groups insist that this is just fear-mongering. They point out that I.S.D.S. provisions have been around for fifty years, that lawsuits under them are rare, and that companies typically don’t win them. I.S.D.S., they argue, doesn’t limit the ability of governments to regulate but gives foreign investors some redress if they get treated unfairly. That makes them more likely to invest in countries that don’t have robust legal systems, which fuels economic growth. In the old days, aggrieved American investors would call on the Navy to protect their interests—thus the phrase “gunboat diplomacy.” How much better that now they just call their lawyers.

But these days signing such agreements is risky for countries. I.S.D.S. lawsuits used to be rare, but they’re becoming a growth industry. Nearly a hundred have been filed in the past two years, as against some five hundred in the quarter century before that. Investor protection, previously a sideshow in corporate law, is now a regular part of law-school curricula. “We’ve also seen an expansion in the types of claims that have been brought,” Lise Johnson, the head of investment law and policy at the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment, told me. I.S.D.S. was originally meant to protect investors against seizure of their assets by foreign governments. Now I.S.D.S. lawsuits go after things like cancelled licenses, unapproved permits, and unwelcome regulations.

This mission creep has been abetted by the fact that the language of I.S.D.S. provisions is often vague. Jason Yackee, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin who specializes in international-investment law, told me, “The rights given to investors are so open-ended and ambiguous that they allow for a lot of creative lawyering.” Canada lost a case where it had rejected, after an environmental study, a proposed mining and marine-terminal project. The country was also sued when Quebec imposed a moratorium on fracking. Germany is in the midst of a $4.7-billion lawsuit occasioned by its decision to phase out nuclear power. Uruguay is facing a lawsuit from Philip Morris International, much like the one brought against Australia.

There’s nothing wrong with domestic courts reviewing government regulations, but outsourcing the responsibility to international tribunals is troubling. “In effect, you’re giving these arbitrators the power of review over domestic law and regulation,” Yackee said. However you spin it, it’s an infringement on the democratic process. I.S.D.S. advocates insist that companies can sue only to receive compensation, not to roll back regulations, but Johnson said, “When you talk to government officials, it’s clear that there is a chilling effect.” After Philip Morris Asia sued Australia, New Zealand delayed similar regulations.

Furthermore, studies suggest that I.S.D.S. has little impact on investment flows, even for developing countries. And for the U.S. it’s totally superfluous, as we have no trouble convincing foreign investors that their money will be legally protected. Investors, too, can now buy political-risk insurance to protect themselves against the possibility of loss.


I.S.D.S.-style provisions may once have made sense. But they’re now outdated and unnecessary. And including them in trade agreements undermines the broader case for free trade, by making it look like exactly what people fear—a system designed to put corporate interests above public ones. If the Administration wants these deals to be seen as legitimate, it can start by excising the I.S.D.S. provisions. We no longer send out the gunboats. Let’s call back the lawyers, too. ♦