Actually, She Was Terrible

The more that you delve into Sarah Palin's Thursday night performance in the debate, the worse it appears, because lots of her statements were outright lies. She stated that John McCain favors bankruptcy judges restructuring the principles homeowners allow on their mortgages - not so. She stated that public schools need additional funding and teachers need to be paid more - that's not the McCain position. She said that she favored divestment from Sudan while Governor of Alaska - sadly, no (apologies to Sadly, No).

"The [Palin] administration killed our bill," said Alaska state representative Les Gara, D-Anchorage. Gara and state Rep. Bob Lynn, R-Anchorage, co-sponsored a resolution early this year to force the Alaska Permanent Fund  a $40 billion investment fund, a portion of whose dividends are distributed annually to state residents  to divest millions of dollars in holdings tied to the Sudanese government.

In Thursday's debate, Palin said she had advocated the state divest from Sudan. "When I and others in the legislature found out that we had some millions of dollars [of Permanent Fund investments] in Sudan, we called for divestment through legislation of those dollars," Palin said.

But a search of news clips and transcripts from the time do not turn up an instance in which Palin mentioned the Sudanese crisis or concerns about Alaska's investments tied to the ruling regime. Moreover, Palin's administration openly opposed the bill, and stated its opposition in a public hearing on the measure.

"The legislation is well-intended, and the desire to make a difference is noble, but mixing moral and political agendas at the expense of our citizens' financial security is not a good combination," testified Brian Andrews, Palin's deputy revenue commissioner, before a hearing on the Gara-Lynn Sudan divestment bill in February. Minutes from the meeting are posted online by the legislature.

Not to mention the answer about how as Vice President she will seek additional authority from the legislative and judicial branches, which is honestly frightening. We already know that Palin is perfectly willing and able to abuse her authority - the machinations to shut down the Troopergate investigation are a perfect example. This is a dangerous person to put into power. The fact that the emergency appeal to the Alaska Supreme Court warns that "the plaintiffs and Alaskans will suffer irreparable harm" if the Branchflower report is released as scheduled on October 10, which is the exact language used in Bush v. Gore, gives you a clue.

All the more reason to work harder and make sure she comes nowhere near Washington.

More Than Divestment

On the same day that John W. McCain gives a speech to the powerful pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, where he calls for a worldwide divestment effort to isolate Iran, it is revealed that such a divestment would significantly hurt the balance sheets of members of his own campaign:

In the summer of 2005, John McCain's chief strategist Charlie Black, working for his firm Black, Kelly, Scruggs & Healey, was paid $60,000 to lobby the U.S. government on behalf of the Chinese oil conglomerate CNOOC. At the time, CNOOC was mounting an aggressive bid to buy Unocal, a California-based oil giant, and Black was tasked with churning up congressional support. But the bid ultimately fell through, in part because of objections over the China oil industry's ties to Iran, a country in which it had already invested tens of millions of dollars.

"This transaction poses a clear threat to the energy and national security of the United States," wrote Rep. Joe Barton, a Texas Republican. "U.S. national energy security depends on sufficient energy supplies to support U.S. and global economic growth. But those supplies are threatened by China's aggressive tactics to lock up energy supplies around the world that are largely dedicated for their own use." [...]

as demonstrated by the CNOOC anecdote, if choking off Tehran's economic lifeblood is McCain's goal, he could have personally started down that road years ago -- with his own advisers.

This is the second member of McCain's inner circle with lobbying ties to Iran that has been discovered in just the past few days - campaign manager Rick Davis was the first.

Matthew Yglesias notes that this is part of a larger problem with using divestment to deal with most states.

In a highly globalized economy, it's difficult to try to hermetically seal off Iran economically. You start divesting from firms that do business with Iran, but then you still have firms that do business with firms that do business with Iran. Divest all you like, but Iran still has oil that people want to buy, which gives Iranians money they want to use to buy things with. Which isn't to say that economic pressure is totally ineffective, but how effective it is has a lot to do with how wide the network of pressuring entities is. A really global sanctions and divestment campaign can deliver enormous blows, while unilateral measures are difficult to really enforce in a serious way.

Sudan, who has a far more limited economic picture relative to Iran, is easier to isolate, but in the final analysis, nothing beats good old-fashioned multilateral negotiation. We may never sever the economic ties that bind Iran to the globalized world, but we can gain diplomatic strength with a unified position and a broad set of actors willing to make the concessions necessary to reach agreement. If changing the behavior of Iran is the goal, only an international effort in all possible arenas, not just financial sanctions, will be successful. In fact, as Ilan Goldenberg notes, the last time Iran was faced with international consensus against its nuclear program, they actually ran to the bargaining table.

McCain argues that the Clinton Administration already tried engaging in 1998 and that the entreaties were rebuffed. He’s right. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei vetoed any talks at that time. But McCain is selectively cherry picking history. The story of the last 15 years between Iran and the U.S. is one of missed opportunities on both sides. The best example is from 2003, where right after the start of the Iraq War senior officials in the Iranian Foreign Ministry sent the “Grand Bargain fax” to the Bush Administration outlining what a deal between the U.S. and Iran might look like. The Bush Administration decided not to respond because of its position of strength at the time and the belief that Iranian reformists couldn’t deliver on their promises. In the late 1980s and early 1990s Iran worked to have Hezbollah release all of the American hostages in Lebanon and in exchange expected greater engagement from the United States. But while the first Bush Administration had signaled that it would in fact engage after the 1992 U.S. Presidential elections, when they lost, the Clinton Administration decided instead opt for a dual containment policy. Elements in the Iranian government who had supported engagement with the U.S. ended up feeling spurned. The story is much more complicated than: “the U.S. has tried talking and Iran has refused.”

But that wouldn't look good on a bumper sticker. Certainly not as good as "Bomb bomb bomb Iran."

More Congressional Progress

The House passed bills supporting divestiture of the governments of Iran and Sudan, which is a unique way of using dollar diplomacy to pressure these regimes to stop their support of actions like genocide (in the case of Sudan) or support for terrorism (Iran).

The House also passed The Fair Pay Act to end wage discrimination in the workplace. This is in reference to a Supreme Court decision whereby a pay discrimination case had to be filed within 180 days to be actionable. This bill would reverse that. But it's likely to be vetoed.

Also the Democrats passed ethics reform legislation through the House despite GOP obstructionism. They refused a conference and so the Democratic leadership simply reconciled the bill on their own and stopped the amendment process. GOP whiners could have allowed a conference if they wanted a place at the table.

This has been a good few months for the Democratic Congress. Whether or not the public will recognize this remains to be seen.

UPDATE: Yes, it is kind of hilarious that Ted Stevens, the guy who had his house raided by the FBI and the IRS yesterday, might block passage of the LOBBYING REFORM bill. It sure makes sense, though. Why would he want lobbying reform?