The Democrat Flat Tax

For many years, Americans assumed that the great majority of money available to be taxed, was earned income. After all, everybody works, everybody generates income, and it seems fair to tax this money as it comes in. It was the bulk of money earned in the United States. After all, the USA was the place to be, to earn a good income. Since the Reagan administration, we have created a different kind of America.

 

Now, most people work. Families with two income earners who are both a little above average get to pay the Alternative Minimum Tax that was designed for millionaires, back in the 1960’s. The AMT taxes these families – ordinary middle class people – so they pay more than 50% of their income in taxes of one kind or another.

 

Hedge Fund managers, who are more clever than the rest of us, pay 15% on their incomes, which are sometimes in the hundreds of millions per year. Many investors (the very wealthy) pay nothing at all, as is the case for more than 20% of large US Corporations.

 

The Supreme Court ruled in Buckley v Valeo that money is free speech, and it must be protected as a person. Diogenes has always thought that money is not exactly the same as a person, but maybe that reasoning was just wrong.

 

There is no reason to limit taxes to individuals and corporations. The Commonwealth of Virginia has an idea that everything owned by a person is taxable. If you live in Richmond, the piano in your living room is taxable. So are the big-screen TV’s. The courts have never ruled that personal property of every kind is not taxable.

 

Diogenes proposes a new Democrat Flat Tax.: a tax of one half of one per cent of the value of everything of value in the United States. In the early days of the Republic, it would not have been possible to make a list of every asset in the whole country. But we now have Government computers that have recorded every telephone conversation and every e-mail message in the United States, for the last six years. Evidently, it is perfectly lawful for the Government to make a note of every communication to every citizen and every resident in the whole country, and quite a few who are not in the country. By comparison, a list of every asset should be a piece of cake.

 

Diogenes suggests that the Democrat Flat Tax be applied on strictly free-market principles, including total transparency.

 

Each year, every piece of property in the United States would be taxed at one half of one per cent, that would be paid by the person or corporation that claims ownership of that property. To encourage people to file a tax return, Diogenes suggests that any piece of property that is not reported, be considered unclaimed, subject to being claimed by the Government and auctioned off to bidders for the benefit of the national treasury.
Likewise, to encourage people to correctly value their property, every item of property listed with a value, and taxed according to that value, would be listed on a Government authorized website. Anybody who had an interest in such a property, and who thought the property was valued incorrectly, could buy it by offering two or more times the value listed. This system works for race-horses, in claiming races. Diogenes suggests that President Bush’s friend Michael Brown might be consulted about setting up this kind of tax, as he has the background in equine bloodstock.

 

The genius of the free market can be unleashed to help to get us out of the financial hole the Bush administration has dug us into. Greed is good, after all, and if a lot of smart and well educated people who cannot get a job because nothing is actually made in the United States any more, happen to notice that some people have things that they are not paying taxes on, they ought to be able to do a patriotic act, and benefit from it. The way Halliburton has been doing, but on a smaller scale.

 

Like the Bush tax cuts to the wealthy that were enacted in 2001, nobody has any idea how much this wealth tax – uh – Democrat Flat Tax would bring in. So we don’t have to budget for it. Whatever comes in will go directly to reducing the deficit, and when that is paid off, the excess can go to the Social Security Trust Fund so the people who were born when Ronald Reagan was President, might actually be able to retire some day.

 

 

 

Bush is right, about Gonzales

As much as I hate to say so, Bush is right.  Gonzales was totally adamantine about not letting the White House become the focus of the hearing.

If the committees of the House and Senate do not get to the actual truth about the way the Republicans have destroyed the Justice Department, that show of GOP Senators anger and sadness will all be so much ca-ca. 

Mr. Gonzales did exactly what the White House sent him out to do… Gonzales says now that the decision to fire the US Attorneys was entirely his to make, and that he made it.  It is a lie, of course, but the Republicans are pushing it very, very hard.  Arlen Specter, whose comments at the Gonzales hearing were very harsh indeed, said last Friday on PBS Newshour that he thinks there is nothing going on hee except incompetence.  There is no evidence that the Bush White House has made any serious politcal mistakes. On the contrary, they have been able to sacrifice some individuals to keep the conspiracy mostly under wraps and in operation. 

Everything they do that blows up, blows up at someone else’s expense.  Iraq war:  Big win for the White House team, it allowed them to run the nation with a GOP majority in each House of Congress. 

Iraq:  The White House fired Donald Rumsfeld, as if he had the total responsibility for the failure there. And without changing any policy regarding the war and the occupation. 

Hurricane Katrina:  Embarassing for the FEMA direcor, who had to step down, but his boss the Secretary, who said on TV that there was no flooding in New Orleans when it was evident that there was flooding.  And Mr. Bush got to make a speech in Jackson Square. 

The Valerie Plame mater:  US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald made Scooter Libby the focus of the matter.  Libby was the number one assistant to the Vice President, but the investigation went no further because Mr. Fizgerald was in complete charge of the investigation.  Fitzgerald did a very workmanlike job of changing the subject. When he started the question was responsibility for poisoning the work of the CIA and in the process killing the career of Plame and probably some of her network as well.  When Fitzgerald was done, Libby was found guilty by a jury, but he will never have to serve a jail term… he will get a pardon exactly like Caspar Weinberger got a pardon from Mr Bush 41. 

The firings of the eight US Attorneys is not really about the firings, no matter what the Republicans say.  It is really about keeping the other 85 US Attorneys who did everything they could to prosecute Democrats, and who did everything they could to not prosecute Republicans.  Gonzales is in the conspiract up to his bellybutton, but firing him will not expose the conspiracy, and will not end it. 

It was reported in a New Mexico newspaper that Gonzales actually protected David Iglesias for several years.  Perhaps, this situation is like Al Smith, who was told by his Tammy Hall boss that he was to do a very good job as Governor, regardless of what was good for The Party, because Boss McManus wanted everybody in the country to see an Irish politician doing a very good job as Governor.  It will be a wonderful historical irony if Gonzales is tripped up by the firing of Iglesias, because Gonzales did not allow that name on the list until he got a personal call from President Bush.  We need fo find a way to get Gonzales to talk about that phone call, in public. 

This has always been about changing the subject, getting someone to take responsibility as if he had actually done the dirty work himself, and getting rid of the designated party.

If the trail gets cold after Alberto Gonzales leaves office, shame on all of us.

Rove’s 18 minute gap

Karl Rove ‘s lawyer said today that Rove did not deliberately delete the five million missing e-mail messages from servers at the White House and at the Republican National Committee.  Rove thought the messages were being preserved.  Rove’s Lawyer, Robert Ruskin, said it was his own idea that the messages were being preserved in salt and vinegar, like the red peppers in Louisiana hot sauce.

The Bush White House do not want House and Senate investigators to read those e-mails, which will prove that Rove and former White House Counsel Harriet Miers participated in firing the eight US Attorneys.  It is the contention of the Republicans that all of the political machinations about the perversion of justice during the Bush years, all took place in secret meetings at the Department of Justice, but without the knowledge of the Attorney General.  They contend that the selection of which US Attorneys to keep, and which to fire, did not depend on whether those individuals followed orders from the political people.  It is only a coincidence, they are saying, that the US Attorneys who prosecuted weak cases against Democrats in election years, would keep their jobs, and that US Attorneys who followed up real cases of corruption among the friends of George W Bush.

Preserving the evidence is very important to President Bush 43.  He preserved the papers relating to his term of office as Governor of Texas, for example.  He has them locked up with the papers of his father, President Bush 41, in such a way that no one can look at those papers for 25 years.  President Bush has been very careful not to preserve evidence in the manner of President Nixon, whose papers are open for inspection, and whose foolish maintenance of recordings led to impeachment proceedings and resignation. 

Robert Ruskin’s announcement today that Karl Rove did not intend to destroy the e-mail messages is reminiscent of the famous 18 minute gap of the Nixon years.  In that case, there was a Dictaphone belt – an ancient recording technology that was already obsolete in 1973, when Nixon used it – that had a long conversation about criminal acts.  If it had been common knowledge that Nixon had that conversation, it would have been the end of his Presidency, so Nixon personally destroyed the evidence, himself. 

In covering this up, Nixon had his secretary, Rose Mary Woods, pose for a photograph showing how she could have made the erasure.  The photo is available on many websites, it is one of the best-known photos of the 1970’s.  In order to have made the erasure, Woods would have needed to have one foot on the pedal that controlled the Dictaphone belt’s movement, and at the same time, she would have needed to have one hand on the “record” button on the actual machine, about eight feet away.  And Woods would have needed to stay in that stretched-out position for eighteen and a half minutes. 

We are eagerly awaiting the White House photo of Karl Rove stretched out with his finger on the “delete” key.

The Gonzales 93

According to Frank Rich, the pet name Mr. Bush has given to the Attorney General is Fredo. Alberto Gonzales, who likes to be called The Judge, and who unfriendly writers call Gonzo, was named by Mr. Bush for the high-living and treacherous brother from The Godfather. It seems pretty appropriate that the least positive name for this Republican paragon of law, would be one given by The Decider. And, that Mr. Gonzales statements under oath could lead to unraveling the Bush administration, over the issue of firing people who he normally would have the authority to fire at will.

Of course, 2007 is not a normal year. There is a limitation in the President’s ability to fire a US Attorney: The firing can be done at any time and for any reason, except it cannot be done to stop or impede a criminal investigation. In brief, if a President is sufficiently careful, he might be able to pick 93 people to be US Attorneys, who are entirely loyal, entirely without morals, people with no professional self respect and no patriotic loyalty to the United States. But if he screws up and hires one US Attorney who is doing a good job, and causes some unhappiness among Republicans for doing a competent job, that individual cannot be fired while working on that case.

The fact is that when Bill Clinton took office, he fired 92 US Attorneys, which is normal. He kept on one Bush 41 appointee, in New Jersey, who was working on an important case.

For the last six years, Mr. Bush and his people have consistently made mistakes that were to the detriment of the United States. But they have been very successful in all of the things they attempted, that were good personally for the President and his cronies. This time, however, Mr. Bush seems to have screwed up on a matter that will be important to him. Because if he makes a mistake with US Attorneys, and ten per cent of the appointees have some kind of integrity, he cannot just fire them, he must keep them until they finish their work. And that work might include putting some of Mr. Bush’s friends in serious trouble.

The Gonzales 93 issue is going to be more troublesome to Mr. Bush than the Valerie Plame matter, in the next two years. There are eight people who were let go. None of those people seems to be pleased about it, and now that all the names are in the public domain, they each are going to be asked questions. Unlike Valerie Plame and her husband, they cannot be attacked as Democrats.

David Iglesias, the dissed and dismissed US Attorney in New Mexico, wrote a piece in the NY Times. Iglesias was very angry that the Department of Justice described him as less than fully competent. There is no question that Iglesias was up to the job. The question was about his loyalty to the Republican cause. The question was, “Does David Iglesias give more attention to his loyalty to the Republicans than he gives to his oath of office?” That is exactly where David Iglesias failed the President, who clearly has not interest in oath of office.

Mr. Bush fired Carol Lam from her post as US Attorney in San Diego, while Lam was actually pursuing a criminal case against Dusty Foggo, a Bush political appointee to the CIA, who was put there to establish Republican control of that agency. Firing Iglesias for failure to go after Democrats is the worst kind of political hatchet-job, but firing Lam for going after evil-doers high up in the government is a serious crime. It is an impeachable offense.

Firing the eight US Attorneys is very bad. Replacing them with Republican hacks, that might be even worse. Senator Arlen Spector, who was the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, says that he did not slip in the provision of the Patriot Act that permits the President to appoint any US Attorney without Senate confirmation. At the time the deed was done, Arlen Spector was, in fact, undergoing chemotherapy, and certainly looked like he was not up to the job. Spector says he does not know who slipped that provision into the Patriot Act. Diogenes thinks that there are not very many people who could have done this. Diogenes thinks that if it is not a crime to make a serious alteration to a piece of legislation that already had some serious defects, it ought to be a crime. Whether it is or not, we need to have a serious investigation, complete with television lights, about how such a stupidly conceived piece of legislation got passed. By the way, Diogenes always enjoyed watching District Attorney Arthur Branch discuss his conservative political philosophy on Law and Order. DA Branch was always very careful with the letter of the law. Interestingly, Fred Thompson, the actor and real-life lawyer who was a member of the US Senate majority that passed the Patriot Act in a fever, apparently never saw any problems with it at the time, either.

Bad, Bad, Worse!

Diogenes thinks that the most pernicious aspects of the Gonzales 93 affair have not yet been made public. One of the US Attorneys on the original pink-slip list was Patrick Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald is now the hero of many Americans who believe in truth and justice. Diogenes wonders, as the Plame Jury wondered, why was Lewis Libby the only person charged in this matter? The story we understand is that a reporter called Karl Rove one night, and told Rove that Fitzgerald knew that he was lying about some of his Grand Jury testimony. As if by magic, Rove awakened from a trance, and he was able to tell the Grand Jury some things that he did not remember in four previous long days of testimony. Perhaps it was a coincidence that some random reporter wanted to undermine the safety of the nation and give that little weasel a chance to avoid indictment. Diogenes thinks not. Diogenes thinks that someone who knew, had a call made to Rove to tell him.

Diogenes notices that Fizgerald’s name did not stay on the list, and that he is still a US Attorney – and presumably is on the list to become a Federal Judge soon. This is a more serious crime than merely replacing some political appointees. We know that there was a criminal conspiracy in the office of Vice President Dick Cheney. We know that conspiracy included Karl Rove. We know that when Libby tried to recruit Ari Fleischer into the conspiracy, Fleischer went to the prosecutor. We do not know who else was a member of the conspiracy, in addition to Cheney.

For that matter, if the list of US Attorneys was drawn up to include Fitzgerald, and if Fitzgerald wanted to stay on the GOP good list, how hard would the fearless investigator have pushed to achieve justice? Fitzgerald would not be the first US attorney to bow to Bush administration pressure. He would not even be the first to show up in the news. Debra Wong Yang, a former US Attorney in California, was investigating a corrupt Republican member of Congress, Jerry Lewis, who was connected by money trail to former House member and current felon Randy Cunningham. Yang was not on the list of eight. When the investigation heated up, Yang was recruited out of her US Attorney job, and into a partnership with Gibson Dunn, a very large, very powerful Los Angeles law firm, whose very rich and very powerful client list includes Congressman Jerry Lewis.

Diogenes thinks that there is plenty for a House or Senate committee to look into in the matter of the eight fired US Attorneys, the 85 who were not fired, and the one with a magical Republican headhunter.

Tom DeLay and his vicious vandals

This morning on NPR’s morning news show, Tom DeLay promoted his new book.  Of all the people in the world, The Hammer might be the last one to listen to while awakening, but he gives some insights that are very valuable, though he might not be aware of it.  Delay talked about keeping order in his majority.  He said that he never had to threaten anybody; although he did have to punish people from time to time.  One of them, he said, was Congressman Chris Smith, of New Jersey, who wanted more money for the VA Hospitals and military hospitals, specifically for Walter Reed Army Medical Center.  DeLay said that he removed Smith, because, “Well, he just wanted too much money.” 

This demonstrates what the Republicans have been doing for the last years. 

Tom DeLay is pleased to tell about what has made him very successful.  His father was a drunk, his mother was an enabler, DeLay says.  He says this has made him a better person.  Formerly a drunk himself, Delay says he was able to quit drinking, cold turkey in a few days, after being born again.  DeLay says he has not had a drop of the hard stuff since that time, but he does drink wine, “because it is good for you.” 

Diogenes is not making this up.  Tom DeLay is happy to talk bout how he got his way, and turned the country right around, as a high-functioning drunk.  There are a good many people in this great nation, who have no concept of other people’s feelings.  Some of these people have Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, characterized by a complete lack of “conscience” and failure to see the consequences of their actions.  In the interview this morning, Tom DeLay was pleased to say that he had punished Chris Smith, but did not talk about the consequences.  He did not talk about the damage he did, personally, to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of injured veterans of the Iraq war.  He was very proud that he was able to save the money, so that he could give it to the riches Americans in the form of a high-bracket tax break. 

Tom DeLay might have FAS, who knows?   Diogenes is not competent to render a medical opinion.  DeLay’s view of the world, and DeLay’s background of being a very hig-functioning drunk, is familiar.  George W Bush has a similar story.  Mr. Bush did not come from a family of dysfunctional drunks, of course. His father was George H W Bush, the 41^st President.  His mother, Barbara Pierce Bush has always been active in politics, and the story goes that some people in the family consider that she is more astute than her husband.  But like Tom DeLay, George W Bush was a drunk, and he quit his drinking after being born-again.  There have been a number of stories about when these events occurred,. There have been changes in the details (Laura Bush used to take some of the credit), but Mr. Bush hits the main points every time.  Born again, quit drinking, cold turkey.  No need for fancy twelve-step programs. Grace of God, Thank you, Jesus. 

It is frightening that the United States is being led by someone who is so damaged.  The President gave a forgettable speech in New Orleans, then was photographed walking across Jackson Square:  There has been no effort to help the people who were hurt by Hurricane Katrina, only efforts to use the problem as a way to pay off political friends.  By way of example, the huge new pumps intended to pull water out of the low-lying parts of New Orleans, were purchased by the Army Corps of Engineers, using a no-bid contract.  The pumps, we now find, do not work, and cannot be repaired.  The Corps bought the pumps from Jeb Bush.  Diogenes is not making this up. 

Likewise, the war in Iraq.  Everybody knows about Halliburton, that the Defense Department Inspector General says that they took profits in the billions of dollars more than they were entitled under their no-bid contract, which already called for the most enormous profits.  Vice President Cheney, who was formerly Chairman of Halliburton, is still being paid deferred compensation from that company.  Much more than he is paid as Vice President.  Diogenes thinks this is very nice for Mr. Cheney, but less nice for the United States. 

Some years ago, Diogenes and Mrs. Diogenes used to drive their car to a parking lot near a subway station in Brooklyn.  The parking meters requires quarters, of course, so we kept some in the car.  One day, unwisely, Diogenes left three quarters in the car, visible from the outside.  Not a total surprise, some vandal broke into the car for the loose money.  The vandal caused $140 damage to the car in order to get the 75 cents. 

In politics, as in life, there seem to be two kinds of people who steal money.  There are the ones who think they are entitled to get something, that everybody does it; and if you look at it from the right point of view, it isn’t really such a bad thing.  Congressman Randy Cunningham comes to mind at the top of that list, Congressman Jack Murtha maybe toward the bottom.  The kind of stealing that is being carried out by the Bush Brothers, by Mr. Cheney, by Tom DeLay and his henchmen – most of whom are still in the Congress and doing business on K Street, is much worse. 

These people – these vicious vandals – are perfectly willing to hurt many people.  They are willing to destroy a whole American City.  They are willing to consign our wounded war veterans to lives of pain and misery.  They are willing to destroy the security of the United States and the environment of the world, for their seventy-five cents. 

We were fortunate that they over-reached on Social Security.  Make no mistake, they were trying to destroy that as well, and Diogenes thinks they are not finished trying to get that big pot of money.  It is very important for those of us who recognize the harm these vandals are doing.  We need to show even the slowest and most stubbornly resistant among us – our Republican neighbors–exactly what they were voting for. 

Diogenes thinks it would be a very nice thing for Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney to leave office in disgrace.  Cheney would not fight an impeachment trial, he is a very sick and very vain man, and he would not want everybody to see him on TV, looking ill, and looking like the criminal he is, with witnesses he cannot control and a process he cannot control.  Let us all take up the cry: Cheney First!

The Pale Man

The pale, soft man pounded his tiny fists on the table. Not just any table, the big desk in the Oval Office. He thought to himself, the President should not have used that word. Just because he thought it was funny when Ann Coulter used it, that doesn’t mean it is really funny. When I use names to describe the President, those are funny. Chief of Important Military Process, that’s a good one. Especially if you use the acronym, not that CHIMP knows the work acronym. The pale man was feeling very stressed. No only did he have to think about every political aspect of every move, he was going to have to actually talk about himself, in public. Life was a lot easier when our people controlled both houses of The Congress; now it’s a giant pain in the ass with those requests – and if we say no to a request now, it’s subpoena time and a lot of media exposure we can’t control. The pale man thought, It’s a good thing I used Harriet’s office when I wrote the memo about the 93 US Attorneys.

The pale man reflected about a lot of good times, with the CHIMP. He remembered the time they visited Moscow. Putin was a very thoughtful host. He asked he CHIMP if he still liked to drink Stolichnya straight from the freezer. CHIMP said, “Hell, I used to drink it straight from the bottle. Still do, when the wife’s away. Wasn’t too long before he was under the table, and the two of us had a real nice conversation.

Putin was pretty pleased that I knew some of the things the KGB was famous for. We talked about some old cases. I read about them in old newspaper clippings, he studied them in his classes at spy school. My favorite was the Rosenbergs. We haven’t had a good execution for treason since then, over fifty years ago. There always was a lot of discussion about whether they were guilty. Good, God-fearing Americans knew they were guilty, and what the hell difference does it make if the trial actually was fair to the defendants. Guilty! Fortunately, a few years ago, the secret files of the KGB were opened to academic researchers from the USA. It’s only a coincidence that President Reagan picked historians at Hoover Institution. Totally trustworthy. And of course, they did not get to actually look into the stacks of KGB files, there were helpful people who brought out the files as they were requested, and made copies for the academicians to take home. Putin chuckled then, the pale man remembered. Kind of a creepy chuckle.

Putin said he actually was responsible for being helpful to the Americans, it was well worth the effort. After all, what difference does it make, now, if those people were guilty. We actually got the atomic bomb secrets from Klaus Fuchs. Dr. Fuchs was a member of the Manhattan Project team. Not only that, the Project had to apply for a US Patent on the devices, and Fuchs was responsible for assembling all the paperwork, and making sure the blueprints all got printed properly. The Rosenbergs never got near any really important information until the KGB got tipped that the FBI were close, and Fuchs was out of the country. They had the stuff when the FBI came to the house, however. Funny stuff.

Putin and the pale man had discussed a lot of cases. A lot of them had that same trick. When there’s something clever to be done, have somebody else standing there when the FBI come around. Putin said it’s a lot easier here in Russia – I get to pick all the public prosecutors, and if one of them does something I don’t like, well, we don’t actually have any former public prosecutors. Something must happen to them, I don’t know.

Putin said another thing. No member of the state security service would ever say something contrary to policy. That would not even need to be reinforced. We are very careful about hiring people. He said, we know a lot about your CIA. They have this fetish about competence. Stupid. That makes it easy for us to infiltrate. We find people who are very good performers, and offer them whatever they want. We can make it easy for them to get a promotion by getting information that looks like it’s true. We can make sure that the people who compete with them for promotions, have some kind of career mishap. Or they might get sick at a time when they were needed for an assignment. IT doesn’t have to involve a bullet… but that could be an option, too.

The pale man asked Putin, what would you do about this Yellow Cake thing. It was silly to make a big thing of it, but that big schmuck Cheney wanted to push his weight around, and the CHIMP let him put it into the State of the Union address. Putin chuckled again, really, really creepy. Putin said that is by far the easiest thing. You know, he said, that Ambassador is married to one of your CIA people– the wife is a covert agent. I wouldn’t bring it up if she worked on something important, but she is in nuclear proliferation, so you won’t even miss her. The pale man asked, “ I have to bring back G Gordon Liddy, and have her killed?” No, Putin said, it is much easier. Just find somebody who owes you a favor, and have him publish the name in the newspapers. Then you can put the blame on anyone you like. The wife has to find a new job, away from the CIA, and you can replace her with someone who is politically reliable. And if you lose a few networks giving you nuclear proliferation information, what do you care?

The pale man heard a band outside playing Hail to the CHIMP. Shit, he thought, I better get back to my own desk.

The Worst American President

The squinty eyed man surveyed the room.  The war in Iraq is going to hell, along with everything else in Iraq.  Rummy is gone, Miers is gone, Hughes is gone.  It looks like Gonzalez and Rove will be out soon.  With the Senate investigating the Attorney General Scandal, and the House investigating the CIA scandal, this it the time for Truth, he thought.  We have to address reality, and put this partisan flaming and lying behind us.  Put that idea right out of his head, and spoke.

“We’ve got a strong record to run on,” he said, confident as the day he declared victory on the deck of an aircraft carrier, as Members of Congress dined on beef tenderloin and jumbo shrimp. “The key is to learn from every election and to come back stronger. And with your help, that’s exactly what we’re going to do in 2008!” 

Every few years, historians survey American History, and decide which Presidents were the best and which ones were the worst. 

For a long time, Presidents Millard Fillmore (who created the Know-Nothing party); Franklin Pierce (the first homosexual US President); and James Buchanan were thought to be the worst US Presidents.  Buchanan alone could be the worst.  His Secretary of War, John Buchanan Floyd moved all of the modern weapons owned by the United States Army to armories in The South, and made sure the armories could not be defended.  Floyd made sure that a new fort was built to defend the port of Charleston SC, that was impervious to naval assault, but could not be defended against a land-based attack.  And he took a commission as a General in the Confederate Army as soon as it was formed.  President Buchanan was in a position to see what Floyd was doing, but did nothing.  I fairness to Buchanan, it probably was not possible for him to have prevented the Southern Rebellion that took place the day he left office. 

President Grant had quite a lot to say about Floyd in his memoirs, which show that as General Grant, he was quite astute about politics.  For whatever reason, after he was elected to the Presidency, Grant did not pay any attention to detail, and trusted people who should not have been trusted.  Grant continued to trust people after he left office.  He was a partner in a Wall Street firm, and when the fellow who actually rand the firm got out of the country will all the investors’ money, including most of Grant’s. This administration was the most dishonest one in American History. 

At least, until Warren G Harding was elected.  Harding’s people sold off the Naval Oil Reserve – Teapot Dome – and whatever they could get their hands on.  Harding also kept a mistress, Nan Britton, living right in the White House. 

Then, of course, there was Richard M Nixon.  Diogenes was a journalist once, and had a chance to talk with Mr. Nixon – in less than one minute, Nixon had a chance to invent a lie and get the whole thing presented, before ending the phone call.  Nixon had the bad luck to have a few people in his administration who had integrity, and a few who were afraid of going to prison, and one (Deep Throat) who was so angry about not getting the promotion he wanted, that he let the secrets out.  And, of course, a Congress held by Democrats. 

Comparing George W Bush to the absolutely worst Presidents, it is hard to say that he is the worst of the worst.  After all, we are not going to have a Civil War.  South Carolina is certainly not going to secede.  On the other hand, Mr. Bush might edge out Mr. Harding for giving away the Treasury.  When he took office, the budget was well in the black, and the National Debt was much smaller than it had been in a long time.  The Debt was down from the previous record, left by twelve years of Ronald Reagan and George Bush 41.  Immediately on taking office, Mr. Bush 43 launched a tax reduction effort.  Diogenes remembers that the program was sold as a tax refund for every American, and Diogenes remembers that he got about $600.  The richest Americans got so much money, that the budget went immediately into deficit, and the National Debt soon got much more than it had been under Bush 41. 

We do not actually know about the size of the National Debt any more.  The Bush 43 people fixed the process with the majority they had in the House and the Senate, so that the costs of the war in Iraq do not actually show up in the budget.  The costs of taking care of injured US service people is not in the budget, so that if we are going to actually take care of those people who served us in a corruptly conceived and stupidly managed war, the debt will climb again. 

Diogenes remembers that after the Vietnam War, Republicans said again and again that America would have won the war if it were not for those hippie Democrats who made us lose the will to win.  It was a lie in 1977, and it was a lie in 1987, and it was a lie in 1997, and it is still a lie now.  It was never true that we could have won that war, even with Nuclear weapons, and using those would have made us a pariah state, alone in the world. 

Interestingly, there are people now, who still are repeating that lie, including Senator John McCain, whose studies in Military History at the US Naval Academy should have taught him better.  Mr. McCain, who certainly knows better, is cozying up to Mr. Bush 41’s supporters in order to get their support for the 2008 election.  McCain knows that the number of people who support the war is quite small, but in addition to counting votes, the Senator obviously can count money in the millions.  And he has been at the wrong end of the Republican attack machine, and does not want that to happen again. 

It is getting very late for the Bush Administration.  He won his office by exactly one vote – that of Sandra Day O’Connor.  He got Congressional support in the 2002 election by creating a war with Iraq.  Patriotism will not hold support forever, but it is good for a few years, and in those few years, Mr. Bush did a lot of damage. 

Yesterday, President Bush, standing in front of a banner that read “Rebuilding Our Republican Majority” and flanked by two giant puzzle pieces, last night pledged to House Republicans that the GOP will retake both congressional chambers and “hold the White House in 2008.”

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed AND China Flores

Today’s news is taken over by a story of such a sexy character that it knocks every other story for a loop.  Khalid Shaikh Mohammed the self-confessed Al Quaeda mastermind, is on the front pages of newspapers, he is the lead story on national newscasts.  KSH, as the intelligence people call him, told a tribunal at Guantanamo Bay that he is responsible for the World Trade Center attacks of 2001 and 1993, and also for other attacks covering a very long period of time.  According to news reports today, KSM said that he was tortured during the time he was held at secret US prisons starting in March 2003.  At the hearing that generated the confession we hear about today, a member of the. military tribunal asked KSH whether he was tortured at Guantanamo Bay since he was moved there six months ago, but the answer to that question was heavily edited. 

China Flores is not so well known:…He is a New York criminal who might have seen New York City police shoot 51 bullets into a car in Queens last November.  We’ll get back to him later…

Maybe is is from watching too many TV shows in which a criminal confesses to a crime that he did not commit.  Maybe it is from reading about DNA exonerations of real death-row inmates whose trials were made certain by confessions.  Perhaps it is the details that have come out about the kinds of physical torture and psychological manipulation that US forces have used at Abu Graib and Guantanamo. 

Diogenes thinks that KSM was held and subjected to the full range of everything that the worst people at CIA and Mr. Rumsfeld’s domain could do to him.  Indeed, it would be totally amazing if they did not use everything they could against KSH.  The question that torture advocates always ask is “If you knew a terrorist had planted a bomb, and it was set to go off in 15 minutes, would you use torture to get the location, or would you let thousands of innocent people be killed?” 

The timing of the appearance of this story is problematic, however.  One presumes that the majority of the story was wrung out of KSH, abut four years ago, when the new information might have been able to save the innocent lives of civilians. 

The Defense Department has not wanted to talk about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.  They have been saying for four years that anything we say about KSH and the way he has been questioned, and the answers he might have given us, all of those things would be immediately useful to our enemies.  As the President says, those who want to take away our Freedom.  What ever could have persuaded the people who are holding KSH, that today is the day the story must break?  What is there about this day that makes it OK to spill the information that would enable Al-Quaeda to harm us? 

Yesterday was the day the Attorney General showed himself to be a liar, a knave, a corrupter of public morals.  Also, he is a bad man and an unconvincing liar.  The US Senate is now investigating Mr. Gonzalez and his lies.  Senator Arlen Spector, formerly the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, denies having altered the Patriot Act to allow Mr.Gonzalez to appoint new US Attorneys without Senate confirmation, and is now anxious to get to the bottom of that mess.  Senator John Sununu, another Republican, is actually calling for the removal of Mr. Gonzalez as Attorney General.

The Republicans lost control of the committees of the House and the Senate.  Extremely inconvenient truths that Speaker Dennis Hastert and Majority Leader Bill Frist would have thrown into a locked dumpster, are now exposed for everyone to see.  There will be hearings of the Judiciary Committee about the subversion of the entire Justice Department as a campaign tool of the Republicans. 

Friday, Congressman Henry Waxman will open hearings about the way the Republicans in the White House manipulated information about creating the need for the war in Iraq.  Nothing the Republicans can do, will prevent the truth from coming out at these hearings, and other hearings that will expose the criminal activities of the Bush Administration. 

However, they can make it more difficult for the Mainstream Media to cover the truths that come out of these hearings.  One truth after another, drop by drop, can corrode the edifice of lies built up by the Bush people and his congressional enablers.  But we can count on the Republicans to come up with a show at any time, to try to grab the headlines.  They are very good at it, and have been doing it for a long time.  In 2002, when Mr. Bush was suffering from to much truthful reporting about his Presidency, we were treated to a run-up to war, complete with fake evidence that Saddam Hussein was getting Yellow Cake from Niger.  It is bad enough that the President took us into a war that has destroyed the military strength of the United States.  It is extremely bad that the President has used the war to generate headlines and to control the media.  It is a crime for the President to have done this to win a majority in the Senate in 2002, and to win re-election in 2004.

It is time for every committee of the House and every committee of the Senate, to investigate every crime the Bush people and their Republican henchmen have committed over the last six years.  The announcement of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed at this exact moment, presents the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence with a perfect time to go into the whole subject of secret CIA prisons, and secret proceedings at Guantanamo Bay, and use of intelligence for political purposes exactly the way the firing of the US Attorneys was used for political purposes.  Senator Jay Rockefeller, it is time for your close-up.

…
By fortunate coincidence, and this probably really is a coincidence, the confession of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was announced at the same time that a witness has appeared out of the darkness, who will testify that the police killing of Sean Bell and severe injuries to three other men, the 51 bullets fired at that Nissan in Queens, was all OK.

The mystery witness is China Flores, whose name appeared in articles about the Sean Bell case in the NY Daily News in November 2006.  According to reports today on the radio, Mr. Flores is coming forward now because his conscience as a Christian requires that he come forward right now (Diogenes is not making this up). 

Mr. Flores is a career criminal, and has been linked to this case for several months.  According to lawyers who are fending the police officers involved in the Sean Bell case, it is only an accident that Flores came into a police station, ready to testify, on the day the Queens Grand Jury started their deliberations.  He came forward, according to these lawyer, and talked to detectives exactly at the time that is most inconvenient for the Queens District Attorney Richard Brown.  Of course, if Flores had come forward in December, there would be a good deal of time for the Queens DA to investigate whether Flores is telling the truth, of it some Queens cop had put him up to it.  It is a wonderful show of timing by whoever is responsible, and Diogenes tips his fedora to the individual, who of course cannot accept the kudos. 

It is a shame that the person who is responsible for the timing of the Flores testimony cannot be acknowledged.  There is going to be an opening soon at Department of Justice, and this person would have to be on the President’s short list to sit at the desk of Anthony Gonzales and John Ashcroft.

Dick Cheney at AIPAC

Yesterday Dick Cheney spoke at some length at AIPAC, the American Israeli Political Action Committee.  Clearly unhappy about the level of support his war in Iraq is getting, Mr. Cheney said  (quote from Jewish Telegraph Agency   www.JTA.org):

My friends, it is simply not consistent for anyone to demand aggressive action against the menace that is posed by the Iranian regime while at the same time acquiescing in a retreat from Iraq that would leave Israel’s best friend, the United States, dangerously weakened,” 

One would guess from this that AIPAC supports the war in Iraq, and that AIPAC is actively supporting Mr. Cheney’s effort to start a war with Iran as well.  Mr. Cheney has been attempting to show that in order to stand firm against the religious dictatorship in Iran, and in order to show support for Israel, it will be necessary to stand with the Bush Administration’s failure in Iraq. 

Diogenes was considerably irked by Mr. Cheney using a speech to AIPAC for a blast at the Democratic majority in the House.  Many people consider that AIPAC is the strongest lobbying group in the US, and it would be a strong-willed member of the House or the Senate who would deliberately go against the interests of Israel. 

But Mr. Cheney does not have the support of all the members of AIPAC (again from JTA): 

His message was not received enthusiastically: Only about one-third to one-half of the audience in the cavernous Washington Convention Center hall applauded politely.

Behind Cheney, some AIPAC board members sat stone-faced, including Amy Friedkin, a past AIPAC president who is close to Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and a fierce critic of the administration’s handling of the war. 

Josh Block, AIPAC spokesman, says that the organization has always advocated economic measures to persuade the leaders in Teheran to give up their nuclear bomb program, and their bloodthirsty denunciations of Israel in general.  Block says also: 

AIPAC did NOT mobilize to lobby in favor of Iraq in the beginning and it is not our focus today.  

 Since the Ted Haggard coming out party (and to be fair, some before that), many Evangelical Christian organizations have been taking another look at their support for the Bush program.  Some in the Evangelical movement have been criticizing of creating enemies, keeping us at war, and by using the war to increase the President’s personal control of America.  Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney are using the same techniques as always.

They are giving support to some groups, and then depending on the unqualified support of those groups.  It is not working for the Christian Right any more, and it is not working so well on the Jews, either. 

Mr. Bush gave his blessing to Israel’s war with Hizbollah last year.  The government of Prime Minster Ehud Ohlmert is in serious trouble for its own internal reasons, and is in deep need of support from the US Government.  Last night’s meeting of AIPAC featured remarks by Mr. Ohlmert delivered by satellite and to faint applause (from JTA):

 “When America succeeds in Iraq, Israel is safer,” Olmert said in a live address from his Jerusalem home. “The friends of Israel know it, the friends who care about Israel know it. They will keep the Americans strong, powerful and convincing.”

 Diogenes noticed the peculiar sentence structure.  It is not merely that English is not the first language of the Prime Minister.  It would be very nice for Israel, for the US to succeed in Iraq.  Friends of Israel will want to keep America strong.”

 By the same token it would be very good for the USA if we did well in Iraq.  Even Diogenes would have agreed that Mr. Bush was right, if Mr. Bush had shown that he was right.  The Bush Administration has shown that it was not the case.  They have shown lack of competence in every area of the war, except for wrestling control of the levers of power.  Diogenes thinks we all agree that the destruction of the Armed Services is regrettable.  There is nothing we can do for the 3200 Americans who were killed in the Iraq war.  The Bush Administration tried to scrape all the money out of the care of those wounded in Iraq, and continue to lie about the actual number of casualties of the Iraq war.  It will be up to the Democrats to see that those people are treated properly.

 The Bush people, not content to destroy the military and to prevent the people from trusting the Government, are now planning the last step in the Iraq War.  They are plotting the same end to this war as there was to the Chinese Civil War after WWII.

After Chiang Kai Shek was run out of China, but taking the national treasury with him, he paid the Republicans to keep repeating the lines “Who lost China?“ and “20 years of Treason!” referring to the Truman administration.  Mr. Bush is now trying to assume the mantle of Harry  Truman, but really, he is the spiritual heir of Joseph McCarthy.

 It is time now for Democrats to ask the question now and every day for several years, “Who Lost Iraq?”    The opportunity to actually do some good is gone, it was lost in the first 100 days of the war, when Secretary Rumsfeld said the reports of violence were overstated, that all the news videos showed the same vase being stolen, run time after time.  Mr. Rumsfeld is not making public statements just now.  If her were, he might say, “You don’t go to war with the President you want, you go to war with the President you have.”

It is time to start the process of ridding ourselves of our religious dictators.

It’s time to start to clear the air

The Bush Administration has been very skillful at keeping things out of the public eye.
It is no coincidence that at a time when there is  rising tide of items showing that the Bush people are competent only in the areas that are to their advantage, and are totally inept in areas of protecting America, protecting American service people, and protecting Constitutionally guaranteed civil rights and civil liberties.

It is not likely that the same people can be both the most competent and the least competent.  The adage to follow the money presents the Bush people – and their allies, the former GOP majority in the Congress, shows how it is that they can sometimes know exactly what they are doing, and at other times, they claim to not have a clue.

Now that the Democrats have a majority in each house of Congress, many people who really hate the Bush crowd are calling loudly for impeachment.  This is not a high probability item, at this time, regardless of the intentions of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid..  There are a lot of Blue Dog Democrats who might not vote for impeachment in The House.  And, as the Republicans demonstrated when they tried to run Bill Clinton out of town, a Bill of Impeachment does not guarantee a removal from office.  They also demonstrated something else: raising the subject helped them to rouse their troops, and to get the undecided voters to vote for The Elephant at the next election.

On Friday, Mr. Waxman will initiate hearings about the Valerie Plame matter.  Mr. Waxman has not shared anything with Diogenes. We anticipate that the committee will talk with Ambassador Joseph Wilson, the eponymous Miss Plame, and others  They can talk about the harm done to them, personally by the Bush Administration.  There should be people who now work at the CIA, or who worked there until it got even more politicized in the last few years, and these people should be able to talk about the harm that was done to the United States.  If Diogenes were present, he might want to talk to Scooter Libby, to ask why Libby did not testify on his own behalf, and to ask Libby to talk about how involved Dick Cheney was in exposing the identity of Plame.  The Special Prosecutor decided that he could not prosecute, Karl Rove.  Rove had quite a lot to tell the grand jury, and it would be very useful to have him answer questions in public.  If Rove has to invoke the Fifth Amendment repeatedly, it would give an accurate impression that he still ahs something to protect, personally.  And if he does answer, he will have to give the correct impression that the Bush White House is run along the same lines as an organized crime family.

Rep. Henry Waxman has the right idea.  Hearings about subjects that are important to America.  Perhaps after they find out all about the Plame matter, they can address the way the Bush people manipulated the information that led our elected leaders to give authority to Mr. Bush.  Not only the way they manipulated the media into supporting their drumbeat for war, but also the way they created CIA reports out of whole cloth.
An appropriate committee should be able to get Secretary of State Powell’s chief of staff, who has not been shy about the lying.  Then, the Secretary should be brought in, to repeat and elucidate on the apology he made for lying, about ten seconds worth, several years ago.

Not screaming matches, but relevant questions and answers that are interesting, whether they are DC Kabuki or not.  The mainstream media, formerly called the Liberal Media, have been able to ignore most of the dirty aspects of the Bush Administration, preferring to say that the problems area due to stupidity rather than incompetence.  The Bush people like to have the media portray hem as stupid, because that kind of action is forgivable.
There are a lot of things that various committees can investigate, certainly enough to take up a god deal of the time from now until the 2008 elections.

Diogenes remembers that the Bush people blamed Mike Brown for the problems in New Orleans?  No doubt, Mike Brown was an inappropriate choice to be FEMA Director.  But Mike Brown was not the Bush appointee who said on national television that New Orleans was not flooded.  That honor went to Michael Chertoff, who is still Secretary of Homeland Security.  The things that went wrong in New Orleans were not only with FEMA.  Any committee investigating the New Orleans disaster should look into some things that are still not evident.  For example, the Bush people let contracts after the Hurricane, and of course they gave those contracts to their friends.  It happened that there were many contracting companies who wanted to do work in New Orleans, and who had work crews nearby.  The companies that did get the contracts did not subcontract to those local companies, who might have been best able to do the actual work, but they did subcontract to other companies, who hired other subcontractors.  In the end, the work was done by laborers brought in at the lowest cost, mostly illegal immigrants who were paid so little that they required public assistance from the local authorities.  Louisiana is a state where the Elephants thought they could pick up a Senate seat, and found a way to get some large number of Democrats out of the state, to tip the election into the red.  Someone ought to ask about that, with sufficient work ahead of time to actually get answers.

The Army is now trying to dig itself out of the cesspool of revelations about medical care of injured Iraq soldiers.  The Vice President was very clear over the weekend, that he will not allow any bureaucrat to stand in the way of the investigation of the mess in the Army and the VA hospitals.  There should be a good many bureaucrats – some of them Republicans – who should want to speak out about the wretched conditions caused by Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush.  For that matter, Mr. Rumsfeld ought to have something to say, and if he does not, he should be brought before the investigating committee by subpoena, and preferably in chains.

Last week the Department of Justice issued a report showing that the FBI improperly handled wiretap cases.  A team of serious investigators should be in there, asking Justice to identify the cases that were handled unlawfully.  The individual FBI agents responsible should be questioned, one at a time, and each one should be asked if the illegal operation was his own responsibility, or if the idea came from the office of the Director, or the office of the Attorney General, or maybe higher yet.

Diogenes is looking forward to seeing pictures on every nightly newscast for the next two years, of Bush appointees exposed as villains and charlatans.  It might make up for having to see the photo of Monica every night for two years, and will be more appropriate, as well.