As featured on p. 218 of "Bloggers on the Bus," under the name "a MyDD blogger."
Friday, July 24, 2009
Honduras Update
The deposed President was sitting on the border between Honduras and Nicaragua, and briefly stepped inside Honduran territory for reasons that are inscrutable. He then walked back over the line, reporters in tow.
Meanwhile, the current Honduran government has a curfew set in the border areas.
As the talks to settle this dispute have collapsed, I don't see a possible endgame, though I assume more sideshow activity like "I'm in Honduras, now I'm not" will probably be in order.
And I think we can all agree that, while it's hard to find winners in this situation, we can definitely pinpoint one loser - Lanny Davis.
"My clients represent the CEAL, the [Honduras Chapter of] Business Council of Latin America," Davis said when reached at his office last Thursday. "I do not represent the government and do not talk to President [Roberto] Micheletti. My main contacts are Camilo Atala and Jorge Canahuati. I'm proud to represent businessmen who are committed to the rule of law." Atala, Canahuati, and other families that own the corporate interests represented by Davis and the CEAL are at the top of an economic pyramid in which 62 percent of the population lives in poverty, according to the World Bank.
For many Hondurans and Honduras watchers, the confirmation that Davis is working with powerful, old Honduran families like the Atalas and Canahuatis is telling: To them, it proves that Davis serves the powerful business interests that ran, repressed, and ruined Honduras during the decades prior to the leftward turn of the Zelaya presidency.
"No coup just happens because some politicians and military men decide one day to simply take over," White says upon hearing for whom Davis is working. "Coups happen because very wealthy people want them and help to make them happen, people who are used to seeing the country as a money machine and suddenly see social legislation on behalf of the poor as a threat to their interests. The average wage of a worker in free trade zones is 77 cents per hour."
"The tragedy," adds White, "is that the Canahuatis and the Atalas and the other big businesspeople don't understand that it's in their best interest to help to do things like help people make a decent living, reduce unemployment, and raise the minimum wage."
What do you get when you cross a wealthy businessman, the might of a military, and a Latin American coup? Lanny Davis for ten grand or so a month.
I remember seeing "Our Brand Is Crisis," with all the Clintonite campaign types using American-style techniques to get the dull neoliberal technocrat Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada (nicknamed "Goni") elected in Bolivia through an image makeover and sophisticated polling. Eventually this led to riots in the streets after Goni tries to open their markets and after the corporations extracting the country's natural resources simply fleece the poor. Eventually, the populist Evo Morales rose to power.
It's fun to see the same kind of Clintonite defend a military coup to keep at bay the same kind of populist leader in Honduras:
Honduran business leaders are turning to Washington lobbyists to convince Congress that it should support rather than oppose the military removal of President Manuel Zelaya from office.
The Honduran branch of CEAL, the Latin American equivalent of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, has hired Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe to make the case to U.S. lawmakers and foreign diplomats.
And leading the lobbying effort for the firm is partner Lanny Davis, the former special counsel to President Bill Clinton and well-known supporter of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton when she ran for president in 2008. (Davis is also a contributor to The Hill’s Pundits Blog.) [...]
Davis said he has not called Clinton to set up a meeting between her and Honduran government officials and does not plan to do so.
Davis said the business group wants to restore order to Honduras, which has been in upheaval since the country’s military ousted Zelaya on June 28 after he tried to alter the constitution.
“This is about the rule of law. That is the only message we have,” Davis said, adding that Zelaya “was acting unconstitutionally and illegally” when he pushed for a voter referendum to change presidential term limits. The Central American nation’s other branches of government opposed his move, and his decision to ignore them led to his ouster.
I certainly believe Lanny Davis would probably have been inside the government in some capacity in a Hillary Clinton Administration, and I'm glad he's instead on the outside agitating for military coups. Also of note - that the "rule of law" includes rousting an elected President out of bed in his pajamas and putting him on a plane. The overall story is more complex than that, but there's hardly a world where that happened that can be accurately termed as acting under the rule of law. Not even Bush-era right-wing judicial nominee Miguel Estrada can escape from that fact.
The Bush presidency is thankfully over...but the damage he and Dick Cheney did continues to press on the nerve of the American people like an impacted wisdom tooth. And until the questions surrounding arguably the most arrogant and perhaps most corrupt administration in our history are addressed, the pain won't go away.
From Nancy ("Impeachment is off the table") Pelosi to President Barack ("I want to look forward, not backward") Obama, the country is being poorly served by their Democratic government. And on this subject President Obama is dead wrong [...]
If the Republicans were serious about restoring their reputation, they would join the call for a special prosecutor to be appointed so that at long last justice can be done.
It's too late for George W. Bush to resign the presidency. But it's not too late to put the people responsible for this national disgrace in prison.
There is much more to learn about mistreatment of detainees, so it's unfortunate that the president on Wednesday reversed his promise to make public photos depicting detainee abuse by U.S. personnel overseas. For example, a full accounting is still needed on the detainees like Libi who vanished into secret prisons under rendition policies.
More sunlight on this dark chapter in the nation's history is the best way to understand what happened and not repeat its mistakes.
I have agreed with President Obama on the need to look forward, not backward.
But … I have changed my mind about the need to indict former Vice President Dick Cheney for complicity in illegal torture.
His insistence on putting himself on multiple TV programs and conservative radio talk shows, not only defending torture but offering the defense that it worked, has changed my mind. Not only that — he went on to attack Mr. Obama as weakening the United States in the war on terrorism because Mr. Obama immediately announced that torture would no longer be allowed [...]
It reminds me of Gary Hart's reaction in the early days of his 1988 presidential campaign to the rumors of his womanizing. Mr. Hart denied the charge — and then dared the media to catch him. Well, they took him up on his dare (specifically, the Miami Herald did). And they caught him — at least in a compromising situation that led to his withdrawal from the campaign.
So as to Mr. Cheney: I think it is time to take him up on his implicit dare and indict him for violating the 1994 federal law against torture.
Welcome to the hippie dome, guys. Don't bogart the joints.
Since I've been offering one side of the Jane Harman story as the bits of intrigue trickle out in the media, I thought I'd explore the second option - that Bush-era officials at the CIA are using the Harman story as a warning shot against further investigation of their practices with torture and wiretapping, as well as pushing back against a thorn in the CIA's side:
But the former intelligence official familiar with the matter noted that (ex-CIA Director Porter) Goss has given only one on-the-record interview on these CIA controversies since leaving the CIA director job. In the December 2007 interview, he said that Congressional leaders, including Representatives Pelosi and Goss himself, Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL) and Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), and later Rep. Harman, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS), had been briefed on CIA waterboarding back in 2002 and 2003. "Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing," Goss told the Washington Post. "And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement."
Who was the lone lawmaker the article identified as objecting to the program?
Jane Harman.
"Harman, who replaced Pelosi as the [House intelligence] committee's top Democrat in January 2003, disclosed Friday that she filed a classified letter to the CIA in February of that year as an official protest about the interrogation program," the Post reported. "Harman said she had been prevented from publicly discussing the letter or the CIA's program because of strict rules of secrecy. ‘When you serve on intelligence committee you sign a second oath -- one of secrecy,' she said. ‘I was briefed, but the information was closely held to just the Gang of Four. I was not free to disclose anything.'"
There is compelling evidence that Goss approved continuing the wiretap on the Israeli agent after seeing Harman's involvement, and in fact tried to get a wiretap up on Harman herself. The internecine battles between Goss and Harman go back a ways, so it's not impossible. We learned yesterday that the wiretap in question did not come from the NSA, and so CIA may have had some direct control over it, although the proper chain of command would have been the FBI. Why was Goss so involved in this?
Of course, none of this changes the fact that Harman did, as has been confirmed by multiple sources, approach the Washington editor of the New York Times in 2004, before the Bush-Kerry election, to try and get them to spike the warrantless wiretapping story. Nor does it change the fact that Harman, a full-throated supporter of wiretapping, now has become a civil liberties champion when denouncing the surveillance of her. This must be why she's hired Lanny Davis to do spin control (and surely he can do a better job than her disastrous efforts so far).
Ambinder had rumblings last night, and now there's a clear split among employers, with Starbucks, Costco and Whole Foods proposing an alternative organizing bill to supplant the Employee Free Choice Act.
As business and labor gird for battle over legislation that would make it easier for workers to organize, the debate could be transformed by a "third way" proposed by three companies that like to project a progressive image -- Costco, Starbucks and Whole Foods.
Like other businesses, the three companies are opposed to two of the Employee Free Choice Act's components -- a provision that would allow workers to form a union if a majority sign pro-union cards, without having to hold a secret ballot election, and one that would impose binding arbitration when employers and unions fail to reach a contract after 120 days.
But the companies' CEOs say that they also recognize that just opposing the legislation, dubbed "card-check," is not enough, because of the widespread perception in Democrat-dominated Washington that there is not a level playing field between labor and business. So the CEOs have come up with ideas they hope will form the basis of new legislation.
Their proposal would maintain management's right to demand a secret ballot election, and would leave out binding arbitration. The proposal would keep the third main element of the "card-check" bill -- toughening the penalties for companies that retaliate against workers before union elections or refuse to engage in collective bargaining. But it would also toughen penalties for union violations, and it would make it easier for businesses to call elections to try to decertify a union.
To address labor's concern that businesses intimidate workers before elections, it would set a fixed period in which an election must be held, limiting the delays that give employers time to exert pressure. The proposal does not specify what the time period should be.
The proposal would also provide unions equal access to workers before elections -- for instance, by allowing organizers to address workers on a lunch break in the company cafeteria just as management can.
Um. Would this improve upon current law? Probably, although the decertification provision is probably ripe for abuse. Does it come anywhere near what is needed to fix the broken bargaining process? No, in a word. Without binding arbitration on contracts, and without the option for majority sign-up, you keep labor in a box, and keep the playing field tilted toward management. This statement from AFL-CIO Government Affairs Director Bill Samuel reflects labor's concern:
The Employee Free Choice Act is about protecting the fundamental freedom of workers to bargain with their employers for a better life and to join a union without corporate interference and harassment.
The proposal being circulated by these companies falls short of meeting these standards.
We are open to discussing the legislation with parties who are legitimately concerned with protecting workers. However, a proposal coming from corporations, some of whom have their own history of violating workers' rights, is simply not an alternative that lives up to giving workers back the freedom to form unions.
Of particular concern is the removal of majority sign up – which exists under current law - and the removal of the arbitration provisions. Removing the arbitration provisions will allow companies to continue to stall and delay and refuse to negotiate a contract in good faith.
That said, there are positive and negative elements to this from the perspective of politics.
The positive is the perceived split among business. Anti-union forces oppose this deal, and the cracks among businesses can be exploited.
However, these companies, particularly Starbucks and Whole Foods, are no friends of labor. The NLRB cited Starbucks for illegally firing three union organizer baristas in New York City and prohibiting employees to discuss union issues at work. Whole Foods' CEO compared unions to herpes: "It doesn't kill you, but it's unpleasant and inconvenient and it stops a lot of people from becoming your lover." These are not good-faith negotiating partners.
And the bigger negative is that this now becomes the "sensible centrist" alternative, the Solomonic way, that the bipartisan fetishists can push forward and consider themselves beloved by all rational people. Just look who brokered this deal:
The effort is being led in Washington by Lanny Davis, a former special counsel to President Clinton. Davis said he has approached about 20 Senate offices and gotten an overwhelmingly encouraging response. The Employee Free Choice Act has majority support in both chambers, but there are signs it may have trouble getting a filibuster-proof 60 votes in the Senate, where several centrist Democrats who previously supporting it are expressing reservations.
Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), a centrist ambivalent about card-check, praised the companies' proposal. "I appreciate good faith effort that could result in a reasonable compromise on what has become a highly polarizing matter," he said.
You can just see where this can go, ending in a half-measure that will fail to solve the problem. It's the old "Washington compromise" all over again. And only workers get screwed, so who cares, right?
Lanny Davis, who continues to claim that he's not a part of the Clinton campaign but just an interested citizen and supporter, lost his shit on the DNC member who made the presentation on behalf of seating delegates in Florida, which you'd think Davis would like, but apparently he didn't propose that Clinton get 5,000 delegates and a pony so it wasn't good enough for ol' Lanny:
A brief but spittle-filled shouting match broke out in the halls of the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee hearing on Saturday between a committee member and a surrogate for Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign.
Lanny Davis, the colorful, committed, and sometimes unrestrained Clinton supporter deliberately interrupted a small gathering of press who had come to hear Jon Ausman, a DNC member, explain the basis of his proposed Florida delegation compromise.
"I'll tell you what," Davis chimed in, "the Clinton campaign's position has been misrepresented by this wonderful love-fest, and the lady who testified for us was saying that the Obama campaign and your proposal is not generous. But it is in fact unfair. If you want to hear, now that the love-fest is over, why don't you come over and hear the counterpoint to this completely disingenuous argument." [...]
Ausman: [My proposal] is very generous, because Obama was initially fighting for a situation where Clinton would net 6 delegates, now it's 19.
Davis: Don't say you're being generous.
Ausman: I can say we're being generous.
Davis: But you're allowed to and I'm allowed to disagree...
Ausman: But I'm the one who's on the petition...
Reporter: Ok ok, why don't we --
Ausman: Are you a representative of Clinton?
Davis: No, I'm actually just a person...
Ausman: Are you a designated representative of Clinton?
Davis: I am not a designated representative.
Ausman: Then why don't we have a designated representative speak for Clinton and you be silent?
He also heckled a press conference of Florida leaders who were stressing unity and seeking to come to agreement and put this entire mess behind them.
As Jane Hamsher notes, this is the guy who claimed that bloggers were the uncouth shrieking harpies back in 2006:
Lanny, Lanny. Please. To quote -- well, you -- can't we all just get along?
"My brief and unhappy experience with the hate and vitriol of bloggers on the liberal side of the aisle comes from the last several months I spent campaigning for a longtime friend, Joe Lieberman.
This kind of scary hatred, my dad used to tell me, comes only from the right wing--in his day from people such as the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy, with his tirades against "communists and their fellow travelers." The word "McCarthyism" became a red flag for liberals, signifying the far right's fascistic tactics of labeling anyone a "communist" or "socialist" who favored an active federal government to help the middle class and the poor, and to level the playing field."
Anger just isn't the way, Lanny. Politics is a gentleman's game, part of the fine tradition of Cicero and the great orators. We lower ourselves and our American ideals when we lose our temper and engage in this kind of coarse, angry, spittle-flecked vitriol.
I don't expect the type of Clinton supporters who rallied outside the Marriott and feted the guy who claims he had gay sex with Obama and passes out fliers reading "Obama's DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS: Murder, Drugs, Gay Sex" to agree with me, but it is an unadulterated joy of this primary to see someone like Lanny Davis so thoroughly discredited that he'll never get another job in a Democratic Administration ever again. Unfortunately, and this is something to think about in the future, he may still get on television as a "Democratic strategist," and will undermine a President Obama at any opportunity. Because it's personal to him. What a role model. No, actually, what a sad shell of a man.
UPDATE: This is over, Clinton netted 24 delegates on the day and we finally have "the math", with MI and FL being seated fully with 1/2 votes (which is what the Republicans did as punishment for states moving up). Harold Ickes apparently also lost his shit, cursing on live television and claiming that Clinton reserves her right to take this to the credentials committee, which basically means that she's keeping the option wide open of taking this to Denver. The only way that doesn't happen is if superdelegates don't overwhelmingly go to Obama's side in the next week. And even then, this move my Clinton and Ickes signals to their supporters that today's decision is, in their eyes, illegitimate.
Sigh.
UPDATE II: The General takes us down memory lane on Lanny Davis:
UPDATE III: Daily Kos has done me the good favor of interpreting the math. Based on the compromises reached today, Barack Obama is at 2,053 delegates with 2,117 required for nomination. So he's 64 delegates away, and still up by plenty. (I think they should have seated Michigan as 1/2 votes at 73-55, he'd get nominated anyway and there was no reason to chip 4 delegates away, but Michigan's leaders essentially hijacked the process and the whole thing was flawed anyway, so what are ya gonna do?). Given that Obama is probably going to win 40-45 delegates in Puerto Rico, Montana and South Dakota, this means that another 20 superdelegates or so and it's all over.
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