When he says "Nobody is listening to your telephone calls." I don't believe him.

He's lied and manipulated his entire time in office. Why in the fuck would you suddenly trust that this has congressional oversight?

Presidents have become more powerful over the years and they don't have to answer to congress. They do what they want, they declare wars. They launch attacks outside of warzones. They are judge, jury, and executioner of American citizens who don't get a trial.

You seem to think that after all that evil it's fine that this program exists, we can trust him. We can't, he's a bastard just like all of them.

"Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: A leaked top-secret order has revealed the Obama administration is conducting a massive domestic surveillance program by collecting telephone records of millions of Verizon Business customers. Last night The Guardian newspaper published a classified order issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court directing Verizon’s Business Network Services to give the National Security Agency electronic data, including all calling records on a, quote, "ongoing, daily basis." The order covers each phone number dialed by all customers along with location and routing data, and with the duration and frequency of the calls, but not the content of the communications. The order expressly compels Verizon to turn over records for both international and domestic records. It also forbids Verizon from disclosing the existence of the court order. It is unclear if other phone companies were ordered to hand over similar information.

AMY GOODMAN: According to legal analysts, the Obama administration relied on a controversial provision in the USA PATRIOT Act, Section 215, that authorizes the government to seek secret court orders for the production of, quote, "any tangible thing relevant to a foreign intelligence or terrorism investigation." The disclosure comes just weeks after news broke that the Obama administration had been spying on journalists from the Associated Press and James Rosen, a reporter from Fox News.

We’re now joined by two former employees of the National Security Agency, Thomas Drake and William Binney. In 2010, the Obama administration charged Drake with violating the Espionage Act after he was accused of leaking classified information to the press about waste and mismanagement at the agency. The charges were later dropped. William Binney worked for almost 40 years at the NSA. He resigned shortly after the September 11th attacks over his concern over the increasing surveillance of Americans. We’re also joined in studio here by Shayana Kadidal, senior managing attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights.

First, for your legal opinion, Shayana, can you talk about the significance of what has just been revealed?

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Sure. So I think, you know, we have had stories, including one in USA Today in May 2006, that have said that the government is collecting basically all the phone records from a number of large telephone companies. What’s significant about yesterday’s disclosure is that it’s the first time that we’ve seen the order, to really appreciate the sort of staggeringly broad scope of what one of the judges on this Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved of, and the first time that we can now confirm that this was under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, which, you know, has been dubbed the libraries provision, because people were mostly worried about the idea that the government would use it to get library records. Now we know that they’re using it to get phone records. And just to see the immense scope of this warrant order, you know, when most warrants are very narrow, is really shocking as a lawyer.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, some might argue that the Obama administration at least went to the FISA court to get approval for this, unlike the Bush administration in the past.

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Right. Well, we don’t know if the Bush administration was, you know, getting these same orders and if this is just a continuation, a renewal order. It lasted for only—it’s supposed to last for only three months, but they may have been getting one every three months since 2006 or even earlier. You know, when Congress reapproved this authority in 2011, you know, one of the things Congress thought was, well, at least they’ll have to present these things to a judge and get some judicial review, and Congress will get some reporting of the total number of orders. But when one order covers every single phone record for a massive phone company like Verizon, the reporting that gets to Congress is going to be very hollow. And then, similarly, you know, when the judges on the FISA court are handpicked by the chief justice, and the government can go to a judge, as they did here, in North Florida, who was appointed by Ronald Reagan, who’s 73 years old and is known as a draconian kind of hanging judge in his sentencing, and get some order that’s this broad, I think both the judicial review and the congressional oversight checks are very weak.

AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, this is just Verizon, because that’s what Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian got a hold of. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t other orders for the other telephone companies, right?

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Absolutely.

AMY GOODMAN: Like BellSouth, like AT&T, etc.

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: As there have been in the past.

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Yeah, those were—those were companies mentioned in that USA Today story in 2006. Nothing about the breadth of this order indicates that it’s tied to any particular national security investigation, as the statute says it has to be. So, some commentators yesterday said, "Well, this order came out on—you know, it’s dated 10 days after the Boston attacks." But it’s forward-looking. It goes forward for three months. Why would anyone need to get every record from Verizon Business in order to investigate the Boston bombings after they happened?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, William Binney, a decades-long veteran of the NSA, your reaction when you heard about this news?

WILLIAM BINNEY: Well, this was just the FBI going after data. That was their request. And they’re doing that because they—if they want to try to get it—they have to have it approved by a court in order to get it as evidence into a courtroom. But NSA has been doing all this stuff all along, and it’s been all the companies, not just one. And I basically looked at that and said, well, if Verizon got one, so did everybody else, which means that, you know, they’re just continuing the collection of this kind of information on all U.S. citizens. That’s one of the main reasons they couldn’t tell Senator Wyden, with his request of how many U.S. citizens are in the NSA databases. There’s just—in my estimate, it was—if you collapse it down to all uniques, it’s a little over 280 million U.S. citizens are in there, each in there several hundred to several thousand times.

AMY GOODMAN: In fact, let’s go to Senator Wyden. A secret court order to obtain the Verizon phone records was sought by the FBI under a section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that was expanded by the PATRIOT Act. In 2011, Democratic Senator Ron Wyden warned about how the government was interpreting its surveillance powers under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act.

SEN. RON WYDEN: When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the PATRIOT Act, they are going to be stunned, and they are going to be angry. And they’re going asked senators, "Did you know what this law actually permits? Why didn’t you know before you voted on it?" The fact is, anyone can read the plain text of the PATRIOT Act, and yet many members of Congress have no idea how the law is being secretly interpreted by the executive branch, because that interpretation is classified. It’s almost as if there were two PATRIOT Acts, and many members of Congress have not read the one that matters. Our constituents, of course, are totally in the dark. Members of the public have no access to the secret legal interpretations, so they have no idea what their government believes the law actually means.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Senator Ron Wyden. He and Senator Udall have been raising concerns because they sit on the Senate Intelligence Committee but cannot speak out openly exactly about what they know. William Binney, you left the agency after September 2001, deeply concerned—this is after you’d been there for 40 years—about the amount of surveillance of U.S. citizens. In the end, your house was raided. You were in the shower. You’re a diabetic amputee. The authorities had a gun at your head. Which agency had the gun at your head, by the way?

WILLIAM BINNEY: That was the FBI.

AMY GOODMAN: You were not charged, though you were terrorized. Can you link that to what we’re seeing today?

WILLIAM BINNEY: Well, it’s directly linked, because it has to do with all of the surveillance of the U.S. citizens that’s been going on since 9/11. I mean, that’s—they were getting—from just one company alone, that I knew of, they were getting over 300 million call records a day on U.S. citizens. So, I mean, and when you add the rest of the companies in, my estimate was that there were probably three billion phone records collected every day on U.S. citizens. So, over time, that’s a little over 12 trillion in their databases since 9/11. And that’s just phones; that doesn’t count the emails. And they’re avoiding talking about emails there, because that’s also collecting content of what people are saying. And that’s in the databases that NSA has and that the FBI taps into. It also tells you how closely they’re related. When the FBI asks for data and the court approves it, the data is sent to NSA, because they’ve got all the algorithms to do the diagnostics and community reconstructions and things like that, so that the FBI can—makes it easier for the FBI to interpret what’s in there.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We’re also joined by Thomas Drake, who was prosecuted by the Obama administration after he blew the whistle on mismanagement and waste and constitutional violations at the NSA. Thomas Drake, your reaction to this latest revelation?

THOMAS DRAKE: My reaction? Where has the mainstream media been? This is routine. These are routine orders. This is nothing new. What’s new is we’re actually seeing an actual order. And people are somehow surprised by it. The fact remains that this program has been in place for quite some time. It was actually started shortly after 9/11. The PATRIOT Act was the enabling mechanism that allowed the United States government in secret to acquire subscriber records of—from any company that exists in the United States.

I think what people are now realizing is that this isn’t just a terrorist issue. This is simply the ability of the government in secret, on a vast scale, to collect any and all phone call records, including domestic to domestic, local, as well as location information. We might—there’s no need now to call this the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Let’s just call it the surveillance court. It’s no longer about foreign intelligence. It’s simply about harvesting millions and millions and millions of phone call records and beyond. And this is only just Verizon. As large as Verizon is, with upwards of 100 million subscribers, what about all the other telecoms? What about all the other Internet service providers? It’s become institutionalized in this country, in the greatest of secrecy, for the government to classify, conceal not only the facts of the surveillance, but also the secret laws that are supporting surveillance.

AMY GOODMAN: Thomas Drake, what can they do with this information, what’s called metadata? I mean, they don’t have the content of the conversation, supposedly—or maybe we just don’t see that, that’s under another request, because, remember, we are just seeing this one, for people who are listening and watching right now, this one request that is specifically to—and I also want to ask you: It’s Verizon Business Services; does that have any significance? But what does it mean to have the length of time and not the names of, but where the call originates and where it is going, the phone numbers back and forth?

THOMAS DRAKE: You get incredible amounts of information about subscribers. It’s basically the ability to forward-profile, as well as look backwards, all activities associated with those phone numbers, and not only just the phone numbers and who you called and who called you, but also the community of interests beyond that, who they were calling. I mean, we’re talking about a phenomenal set of records that is continually being added to, aggregated, year after year and year, on what have now become routine orders. Now, you add the location information, that’s a tracking mechanism, monitoring tracking of all phone calls that are being made by individuals. I mean, this is an extraordinary breach. I’ve said this for years. Our representing attorney, Jesselyn Radack from the Government Accountability Project, we’ve been saying this for years and no—from the wilderness. We’ve had—you’ve been on—you know, you’ve had us on your show in the past, but it’s like, hey, everybody kind of went to sleep, you know, while the government is harvesting all these records on a routine basis.

You’ve got to remember, none of this is probable cause. This is simply the ability to collect. And as I was told shortly after 9/11, "You don’t understand, Mr. Drake. We just want the data." And so, the secret surveillance regime really has a hoarding complex, and they can’t get enough of it. And so, here we’re faced with the reality that a government in secret, in abject violation of the Fourth Amendment, under the cover of enabling act legislation for the past 12 years, is routinely analyzing what is supposed to be private information. But, hey, it doesn’t matter anymore, right? Because we can get to it. We have secret agreements with the telecoms and Internet service providers and beyond. And we can do with the data anything we want.

So, you know, I sit here—I sit here as an American, as I did shortly after 9/11, and it’s all déjà vu for me. And then I was targeted—it’s important to note, I—not just for massive fraud, waste and abuse; I was specifically targeted as the source for The New York Times article that came out in December of 2005. They actually thought that I was the secret source regarding the secret surveillance program. Ultimately, I was charged under the Espionage Act. So that should tell you something. Sends an extraordinarily chilling message. It is probably the deepest, darkest secret of both administrations, greatly expanded under the Obama administration. It’s now routine practice.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Shayana, I’d like to ask you, specifically that issue of the FISA court also authorizing domestic surveillance. I mean, is there—even with the little laws that we have left, is there any chance for that to be challenged, that the FISA court is now also authorizing domestic records being surveiled?

AMY GOODMAN: FISA being Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Right. I mean, you know, two things about that. First, the statute says that there have to be reasonable grounds to think that this information is relevant to an investigation of either foreign terrorist activity or something to do with a foreign power. So, you know, obviously, this perhaps very compliant judge approved this order, but it doesn’t seem like this is what Congress intended these orders would look like. Seems like, on the statute, that Congress intended they would be somewhat narrower than this, right?

But there’s a larger question, which is that, for years, the Supreme Court, since 1979, has said, "We don’t have the same level of protection over, you know, the calling records—the numbers that we dial and how long those calls are and when they happen—as we do over the contents of a phone call, where the government needs a warrant." So everyone assumes the government needs a warrant to get at your phone records and maybe at your emails, but it’s not true. They just basically need a subpoena under existing doctrine. And so, the government uses these kind of subpoenas to get your email records, your web surfing records, you know, cloud—documents in cloud storage, banking records, credit records. For all these things, they can get these extraordinarily broad subpoenas that don’t even need to go through a court.

AMY GOODMAN: Shayana, talk about the significance of President Obama nominating James Comey to be the head of the FBI—

SHAYANA KADIDAL: One of the—

AMY GOODMAN: —and who he was.

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Right. One of the grand ironies is that Obama has nominated a Republican who served in the Bush administration for a long time, a guy with a reputation as being kind of personally incorruptable. I think, in part, he nominated him to be the head of the FBI, the person who would, you know, be responsible for seeking and renewing these kind of orders in the future, for the next 10 years—he named Comey, a Republican, because he wanted to, I think, distract from the phone record scandal, the fact that Holder’s Justice Department has gone after the phone records of the Associated Press and of Fox News reporter James Rosen, right?

And you asked, what can you tell from these numbers? Well, if you see the reporter called, you know, five or six of his favorite sources and then wrote a particular report that divulged some embarrassing government secret, that’s—you know, that’s just as good as hearing what the reporter was saying over the phone line. And so, we had this huge, you know, scandal over the fact that the government went after the phone records of AP, when now we know they’re going after everyone’s phone records, you know. And I think one of the grand ironies is that, you know, he named Comey because he had this reputation as being kind of a stand-up guy, who stood up to Bush in John Ashcroft’s hospital room in 2004 and famously said, "We have to cut back on what the NSA is doing." But what the NSA was doing was probably much broader than what The New York Times finally divulged in that story in December ’05.

AMY GOODMAN: Very quickly, will Glenn Greenwald now be investigated, of The Guardian, who got the copy of this, so that they can find his leak, not to mention possibly prosecute him?

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Oh, I think absolutely there will be some sort of effort to go after him punitively. The government rarely tries to prosecute people who are recognized as journalists. And so, Julian Assange maybe is someone they try to portray as not a journalist. Glenn Greenwald, I think, would be harder to do. But there are ways of going after them punitively that don’t involve prosecution, like going after their phone records so their sources dry up.

AMY GOODMAN: I saw an astounding comment by Pete Williams, who used to be the Pentagon spokesperson, who’s now with NBC, this morning, talking—he had talked with Attorney General Eric Holder, who had said, when he goes after the reporters—you know, the AP reporters, the Fox reporter—they’re not so much going after them; not to worry, they’re going after the whistleblowers. They’re trying to get, through them, the people. What about that, that separation of these two?

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Right. I’ll give you an example from the AP. They had a reporter named, I believe, John Solomon. In 2000, he reported a story about the botched investigation into Robert Torricelli. The FBI didn’t like the fact that they had written this—he had written this story about how they dropped the ball on that, so they went after his phone records. And three years later, he talked to some of his sources who had not talked to him since then, and they said, "We’re not going to talk to you, because we know they’re getting your phone records."

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you all for being with us. Shayana Kadidal of the Center for Constitutional Rights. William Binney and Thomas Drake both worked for the National Security Agency for years, and both ultimately resigned. Thomas Drake was prosecuted. They were trying to get him under the Espionage Act. All of those charges were dropped. William Binney held at gunpoint by the FBI in his shower, never prosecuted. Both had expressed deep concern about the surveillance of American citizens by the U.S. government. You can go to our website at democracynow.org for our hours of interviews with them, as well." - Democracy Now!

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

I mean seriously, you literally snipped out the phrase "I'm sure there will be congressional oversight", and cut off the part where I said why I thought that
Sure. You said it, but have no proof it will happen so why belabor it?

Holy. Fucking. Shit. You responded to my complaint about unrepresentative quotation by using another unrepresentative quote?

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
As with all piles of money in Washington, that 20 billion will get misappropriated and spent on unrelated crap with only token pennies on the dollar going to BP oil damages. Every citizen must view government as the ENEMY, because history proves that eventually it will be.

But you have no proof it will happen, so why belabor it?

Let's look at history, how did management of the 9/11 Victim's Compensation Fund go? Similar thing, did the gubbimint steal everyone's money there?

Also, here's the text of Obama's comments announcing the fund. Apparently it won't be controlled by the government either, and both BP and Obama are saying "[t]his fund does not supersede either individuals' rights or states' rights to present claims in court."

There's nothing but downside in trying to engage in funny business on this fund. The money is meant to go to victims of a disaster who are the center of national attention, and the object of national (if not global) sympathy. It'd be suicidal to try to steal from it.

Much easier to just put your pork into a defense appropriations bill (e.g. alternate engine for the F-35, and the C-17).

I mean seriously, you literally snipped out the phrase "I'm sure there will be congressional oversight", and cut off the part where I said why I thought that

Sure. You said it, but have no proof it will happen so why belabor it? As with all piles of money in Washington, that 20 billion will get misappropriated and spent on unrelated crap with only token pennies on the dollar going to BP oil damages. Every citizen must view government as the ENEMY, because history proves that eventually it will be.

I know that leftists disagree with that stance... This poll proves only Democrat zombies are big gummint fanbois... Most other folks have a healthier point of view.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/june_2010/48_see_government_today_as_a_threat_to_individual_rights

There's part of your fever dream I agree with -- namely, the rich and the powerful never get held accountable for anything.

Agreed. Guys like Barney Frank should be penniless street bums in the stocks at town square instead of still being in charge of the committee he used to screw up the economy.

Free speech zones, dissent = sedition, opposition = traitors, with us or against us…

I am not a slave to a political ideology. I don’t apologize for people when they do the wrong things. So I I freely and openly condemn(ed) the tactics the GOP used during Bush to stifle dissent. Will you do the same? Do you condemn people like Pelosi, Reed, Obama, Olbermann, Madcow, and all the others on the left who routinely mock, belittle, and censor Tea Partiers, call people “Nazis”, and the “party of No” for no reason but to grease the skids of their agenda? Thankfully, I am not bound with such fetters. Boo - hiss to 'free speech zones' no matter what party is behind them.

We need the Fairness Doctrine, badly. The rightwing dominance of the media has had a disastrous effect on our country's welfare. Rupert Murdoch has done incalculable harm, just to make a buck.

No – we don’t need any government regulation of media. The marketplace of ideas is a grand collision – and viewpoints of all kinds are available everywhere without government interference. The Right may dominate talk radio, but the left dominates most other media with an iron fist. Hollywood, CNN, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, the NYT, AP, PBS, tv shows, pop music, and the vast majority of news channels, newspapers, and internet blogs either tilt left or are outright left wing extremists.

So does your opinion of the “Fairness Doctrine” include forcing all these left wing radicals to give conservative views ‘equal time’ in all media venues? Or do you only care about talk radio because it says things you don't like sometimes? See how your support of such a concept leads only to tyranny and abuse? The whole FD concept is an attempt by neolibs to break down one of the few areas where they don't dominate. Rather than cheer it on, it should totally creep you out and outrage you.

You righties always get your panties in a wad when you can't insult broad swaths of the population with derogatory racial and sexist remarks.

No – we get annoyed when sanctimonious lefties use political correctness to stifle dissent. I don’t insult minorities or make racist/sexist comments. And yet here you are, accusing me personally of being a racist and a sexist based on no evidence. Funny how you are using Political Correctness to stifle dissent, isn’t it? Gee – it’s almost like I was EXACTLY RIGHT! Thanks for proving my point. Sadly you aren't alone. This kind of crap is commonplace from the left on campuses, in public schools, on news, in the media, in entertainment, and in politics. Ried, Pelosi, and more commentators I can count have all used the same tactic. Shame on you all.

BP committed a crime, the kind of crime that they could (and probably will) try to weasel out of with legalities.

If they commit a crime, you take them to court. You don’t have the Executive Branch create a private slush fund. If they violated the law, then punish them with the law. Don’t make up crap from the Oval Office.

@Winstonfield_Pennypacker I'd go another round with you, but it's clear you just wanna flap your gums about fictitious versions of me and liberals and Obama, and are so utterly disconnected from reality that you aren't even responding to things I actually said.

I mean seriously, you literally snipped out the phrase "I'm sure there will be congressional oversight", and cut off the part where I said why I thought that, and acted as though there is a series of facts and history in which congressional oversight is never applied when a political food fight breaks out over something.

There's part of your fever dream I agree with -- namely, the rich and the powerful never get held accountable for anything. Tony Hayward is back to racing yachts, Lloyd Blankfein didn't even lose his job, and is already paying himself huge bonuses again, and Bush and Cheney are free men.

The scary part happens when Republican presidents get the media to systematically silence dissent...

The only ‘silencing of dissent’ is on the left side of the aisle. And how nice it all sounds… ‘Net Neutrality’, the ‘Fairness Doctrine’, ‘Political Correctness’, ‘Academic Fairness’… The left is the side that engages in the systematic suppression of dissent – not the right. I have a longer memory span than 5 minutes, and there is nothing BUT ‘dissent’ when the GOP is in the White House. Dissent was ‘patriotic’ during Bush, but now is ‘the party of NO’ during Obama, right? But of course good little left-wing zombies have no problem with that.

If I break something of yours, do you have to 100% go through the courts to get compensation? No. Why? Because civil court is totally optional.

If you break my stuff (and refuse to pay for it) then YES I 100% have to go through the courts to get compensation. You’ve proven my point. I don’t go to Obama’s pay czar. Court is where I go, and failing that, I call my congressman and let him know the courts aren't doing their job. I do NOT go to the Executive branch except to write a whiny letter.

I have not been programmed to have a knee-jerk Pavlovian response where I wet myself with fear whenever the word "government" comes into play.

This is patently untrue. You do have a knee-jerk Pavlovian response to wet yourself with fear whenever the word ‘government’ comes into play and ‘conservative’ is involved. The blind, unthinking, slavish trust only applies when a left wing radical is in charge. I believe it was Lenin (another leftist) who called these kinds of fanbois “useful idiots”. People who aren’t critical of government at all times and in all things are fools. The price of freedom is vigilance, and the only good government is LIMITED government.

I'm sure there will be Congressional oversight of this

Oh – well – that ignores history, facts, and precedent - but as long as you're SURE... You aren’t picking up what I’m putting down. I don’t care if Obama is distilled perfection made of unicorn hairs and angel feathers… It doesn’t matter if BP ‘volunteers’ (yeah right – then why the closed door meeting?). This is not something the Executive branch is allowed to do for ANY reason. Ever. Period. It has no authority to do this, and government isn’t allowed to just ‘assume’ authority over whatever they want no matter how munificent they may think they are.

Ahh, so now you're defining down what constitutes a legitimate claim from what even BP says is legitimate? Good to know you don't want to "let them off the hook"...

No – I’m defining ‘responsible’. BP isn’t responsible for lost business. Tourism down? Is that BP’s fault? Maybe partly. But you can also blame the media, the government, the economy, and a whole host of other parties for that. BP is responsible for damage and cleanup. That's it. I see no need for them to pay for ancillary issues that may or may not be related.

Everyone is answerable.

To who? When? You say ‘answerable’ but one of the main problems with federal government is that NO ONE is ever held responsible for anything. They never go to jail for breaking the law. They never pay damages for the consequences of their bad politics. So they ‘lose an election’? Awwwwwww – how terrible for them. They still keep getting money & payola. They still get political back-patting. They still get put on unaccountable ‘blue ribbon’ panels for exorbitant payoffs. They keep getting on TV shows and money for speeches, commentary and books. They still are put on cabinet positions, or other unelected unaccountable political jobs where they still effect policy and get away with murder.

See, when you really get down to the brass tacks the political class is in NO WAY ever ‘answerable’ for their bad behavior and terrible decisions. They just get a brief – all too toothless – wet noodling and then skate off clean while everyone else has to pay for them to keep on partying. Clinton. Impeached for lying under oath and obstructing justice. Did he lose his office? No. Did he go to jail? No. Did he have to pay millions in damages? No. He got a tiny slap on the wrist and then the left circled the wagons around him and set him up for life so he’d specifically NEVER have to be truly culpable for his high crime. He should be in jail, or living in a cardboard shack, penniless and shunned to the end of his days. Instead he’s living high on the hog courtesy of constant political payola. And you call that ‘answerable’?

So what happens WHEN (not IF) Obama’s pay czar starts mis-handling the BP funds? Exactly HOW is he going to be ‘answerable’? To whom will he pay millions in damages? What jail will he go to? How will he be banned from politics for life afterwards? And how is Obama ‘answerable’ for unconstitutionally claiming money in the first place? But I don’t hear anyone making him ‘answerable’ for his unconstitutional, illegal act. All I see are left-wing zombies defending the illegal, and GOP cowards who don't have to guts to stand up for the constitution anymore.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

Why are BP and the President handling something that is clearly the courts responsibility?
This. Whatever liability BP is on the hook for should be handled 100% through the courts, not by the Executive branch. There is a separation of powers for a reason.
Umm, false. If I break something of yours, do you have to 100% go through the courts to get compensation? No. Why? Because civil court is totally optional.

Can I prevent you from seeking damages in court? Only if you sign a legal agreement waiving that right, and then only as long as the court feels like you gave properly informed consent.

Can Obama force you to go through the ICF? No. Can Obama take away your ability to seek damages in court? No, because of separation of powers.
>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:


it just means there's a government-run escrow being set up to ensure that BP has set aside the funds to pay claims
You say the words GOVERNMENT RUN ESCROW and still no alarm bells go off in your head?

No! I have not been programmed to have a knee-jerk Pavlovian response where I wet myself with fear whenever the word "government" comes into play.
>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
Now Obama’s ‘pay czar’ is the one people bow & scrape before for redress – a guy who has no oversight, answers to no one, didn’t have a single vote by Congress, and doesn’t have to face an approval process. No chance for abuse there, eh?

All public servants are answerable to someone. Even Supreme Court Justices can be impeached. I'm sure there will be Congressional oversight of this -- as there is to most things the Executive does. Republicans will demand it, and Democrats have no reason to oppose it.

Then there's that whole thing where you can still just seek damages in court...

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

but no real sign that any of those people want to deprive Obama of the power to detain terror suspects indefinitely without trial
The president has no constitutional right to collect monies from private organizations of any kind for any reason - real or fancied, freely or begrudged. The president DOES have a constitutional right direct the military and defense of this country and that includes treatment of captured enemy soldiers. See the difference?

Wait, what happened to separation of powers? The President doesn't have to give people trials anymore under the Constitution? Read the 6th amendment again, please!

Plus, again, no legal authority is being exerted, BP is voluntarily agreeing to this, and is certainly within their rights to refuse, and most certainly within their rights to challenge the legality of the fund in court.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
Just as a final note – I’m not saying BP should be ‘off the hook’. I’m of the opinion that when anyone screws up, they should take responsibility for their actions. When a company screws up, they should pay for the damages. BP has been cutting corners & playing dangerously to save cash and the mess is their fault. They should do the right thing and step up & fix it. That includes paying for legitimate damages and cleanup.

Good to hear. I'm sure you won't contradict yourself in the next paragraph...

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
That’s not the same thing as saying they should just write a black check and hand it to the government and walk away. There is certainly no onus on BP to pay all the lunatic claims that will inevitably result as the greedy vultures start circling over this 20 billion. BP isn't responsible for lower tourism revenues, or dropping home prices. The only people that should be getting money are people who have actual PHYSICAL repairs or clean up costs due to oil. All the other stuff is 'act of god' stuff and sometimes that just happens and you have to deal with it.

Ahh, so now you're defining down what constitutes a legitimate claim from what even BP says is legitimate? Good to know you don't want to "let them off the hook"...

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
Obama’s ‘BP stash’ is designed by nature to be an irresponsible, unanswerable, politically motivated vote-machine. Why should we believe Obama is going to run this clean when he hasn’t run a single ‘clean’ political effort in his lifetime? At what point has government EVER been a responsible entity for the distribution of cash for damages? Never. This is the tobacco settlement fiasco just waiting to happen again.

Ahh, and you close with a fact-free animosity-driven rant. Everyone is answerable. Obama can lose re-election, and he can be impeached. More meaningfully, he can be subjected to public pressure, and evidence of impropriety would certainly be a big story, so every media maven will be looking for some. There's also that whole "no one is giving up their right to sue" part of this, as well as the plain observation that courts are part of the government too...

Plus the specific, named, person Obama's looking at having manage the fund also managed the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund, which by most accounts was handled well.

I don't expect to convince you to trust government agencies, but for God's sake, they aren't taking away people's right to sue. If they tried, you can count on someone suing over it!

>> ^gtjwkq:
The Fed is a secretive entity with govt given powers but no govt oversight, there is a bill in Congress to audit the Federal Reserve for exactly that reason: Even the govt doesn't know what the Fed does!

Here's an area where we have some common ground. I want the Fed audited and a bit more accountable to Congressional oversight. However, the reason why the fed is so independent is to attempt to isolate it from the winds of political machinations. Making it more controlled by government is a step closer to socialism, not further away (not that I think that matters, but I'm surprised you'd be for anything slightly like that).

Setting that aside, I do think public accountability for the Fed (and the rest of government) is important, so I hope the "Audit the Fed" campaign succeeds.

So your argument is that if markets are so smart, why don't they adapt to this huge entity that has a monopoly on the currency and prosper anyway? Why aren't you asking the opposite of that: If the Fed is so predictably and correctly setting interest rates, why isn't most of the market making the right long-term decisions?

I don't assume a perfect Fed, but I definitely ask why the market isn't making the right long-term decisions. My personal answer is a corporate culture driven by short-term gains. However, I think perhaps it's less politically volatile for me to say that behavioral research indicates that human beings have trouble understanding long-term schemes, especially when there's a delay of gratification required.

As the article I linked put it, there's no particular reason to think that artificially stimulated investments have a greater tendency to be malinvestments. If the market can deal with all market-related pressures as complex as they are, certainly they can discern the reaction of a single bureaucratic institution.

Booms and busts happen naturally in a market,

True.

but they have a much smaller scale and cause minimal destruction when central banks are not involved.

False.

Maybe if the market could create their own currencies, we'd have parallel competing currencies, and no one would be confined to the arbitrary rules of the unwarranted and unnecessary monopoly that is the Fed. The best money would naturally be chosen by the market itself. Ever thought of that?

Yes! The result of actually doing that in the US, and the resultant opacity of dozens of money-issuing banks, all with their own evil agendas financial motivations for manipulating their currency is what led to the implementation of a unified national currency and (later) a central bank. The argument at the time was that interest rates fluctuated too quickly and too wildly, and it had a chilling effect on the economy. Central banking has been a stabilizing influence since.

Central banks are not creations of the market, they are only possible because of govt.

True. But this is a non-sequitor, unless you're starting from the premise that because it's created by government it is therefore an inherently bad thing.

That's political ideology talking, not economics.

FYI, here is the transcript of that portion of Obama's speech:

I want to be honest: this is the toughest issue we will face. We are going to exhaust every avenue that we have to prosecute those at Guantanamo who pose a danger to our country. But even when this process is complete, there may be a number of people who cannot be prosecuted for past crimes, but who nonetheless pose a threat to the security of the United States. Examples of that threat include people who have received extensive explosives training at al Qaeda training camps, commanded Taliban troops in battle, expressed their allegiance to Osama bin Laden, or otherwise made it clear that they want to kill Americans. These are people who, in effect, remain at war with the United States.

As I said, I am not going to release individuals who endanger the American people. Al Qaeda terrorists and their affiliates are at war with the United States, and those that we capture - like other prisoners of war - must be prevented from attacking us again. However, we must recognize that these detention policies cannot be unbounded. That is why my Administration has begun to reshape these standards to ensure they are in line with the rule of law. We must have clear, defensible and lawful standards for those who fall in this category. We must have fair procedures so that we don't make mistakes. We must have a thorough process of periodic review, so that any prolonged detention is carefully evaluated and justified.

I know that creating such a system poses unique challenges. Other countries have grappled with this question, and so must we. But I want to be very clear that our goal is to construct a legitimate legal framework for Guantanamo detainees - not to avoid one. In our constitutional system, prolonged detention should not be the decision of any one man. If and when we determine that the United States must hold individuals to keep them from carrying out an act of war, we will do so within a system that involves judicial and congressional oversight. And so going forward, my Administration will work with Congress to develop an appropriate legal regime so that our efforts are consistent with our values and our Constitution.

Not quite what Rachel made it out to be.

I don't blame her for being attentive on this issue -- I sure as hell am. I also don't blame her for using her show to try to build political pressure for Obama to Do The Right Thing^TM, but I don't see any reason to think from this speech that he's decided to do something bad, or even left the door open to do something bad.

What I heard was what he's always said: we don't have to choose between our values and our safety.

He's just pointing out, in a very, very delicate way, that Guantanamo as is operates entirely outside of the law, but that it would be irresponsible to release the people we can't try because Bush ignored due process and the Geneva conventions and made it impossible to build a legitimate legal case for holding some of these people.

I think the idea is to come up with a way to charge them for "conspiracy to commit terror attacks" that passes muster, so that their detention ceases to be unlawful and indefinite. As Xaielao said, there is some precedent for this with Prisoners of War, though most of the law written about that assumes there's a state with a government to deal with in some clear way about the release, so we'd need a new legal framework for dealing with non-state actors...

The Shirley Temple version:

Drink everytime anyone mentions:
* Ending and abolishing torture
* Ending violence in Gaza / Iraq / Afghanistan
* Ending illegal spying on citizens
* Holdings banks and corporations accountable with bailout money
* Taxing all the corporation money being hidden in offshore accounts
* Canceling tax deductions and govt money for companies outsourcing jobs
* Penalize CEOs and corporations who move jobs overseas
* Investigating crimes of Bush Adminstration
* Warcrimes
* Prosecuting the financial crimes like 9/11 shorts, Madoff ponzi, Freddie & Fannie toxic derivatives
* Ever rebuilding NOLA and letting people move back home
* Restoring the pension funds stolen by Cheney's energy buddies in Enron scam
* Enforcing FISA, PRA, or any type of Congressional oversight
* undoing the damage done by lax or revoked EPA rules
* Returning the FCC control back to citizens and no the highest bidder
* Cracking down on monopolies (especially with media outlets)

I agree that the contributing factors, what is a cause and what's an effect, can get very complicated. I still don't think we should let the Execs off the hook! I got two words for you:
Accounting Scandal!

That may not have been the overall cause, but it certainly didn't help matters. And it could have been avoided with better congressional oversight.

We need to remember one very important fact: Our financial markets and overall economy have been the most dominant and one of the most stable in the world for a LONG TIME. What has changed?


We could learn a lot from other stable (and free) economies in the world:

Finland is a world leader in four of 10 economic freedoms: financial freedom, monetary freedom, freedom from corruption, and business freedom. A business-friendly environment with minimal regulation is enabling the rapid growth of private enterprise. Property is protected by a transparent rule of law, and foreign investors enjoy excellent market access. There is virtually no corruption, and business operations are not hampered by government bureaucracy.


Japan enjoys very high levels of business freedom, monetary freedom, property rights, freedom from corruption, and labor freedom. Business regulation is efficient. Virtually all commercial operations are simple and transparent. Japan enjoys very high levels of business freedom, monetary freedom, property rights, freedom from corruption, and labor freedom. Business regulation is efficient. Virtually all commercial operations are simple and transparent.


America could do better in its scores for fiscal freedom and government size, which are 7 and 8 points below average, respectively. Total government spending equals more than a third of GDP. Corporate and personal taxes are moderately high and are getting relatively higher as other advanced economies reform with lower tax rates.

http://www.heritage.org


It's a fine line.

"why is it that the Fed is able to manipulate the money supply such that the dollars you and I work for are cleaved of their real value and inflated at their discretion, with no Congressional oversight?"

Congress must never have a hand in managing the money supply. The whole point of the Fed is its impartiality. If you had guys afraid to put the brakes on the economy just because it's an election year, that's quite the conflict of interest.

The Fed's job is to protect the value of money, above all. This may mean encouraging lending, this may mean engineering recession, but in the end it's just to keep money worth money.

Forget about your bank collapsing, the Fed is there to keep the money itself from collapsing. It's terribly scary to have that power anywhere, so a suggestion to automate the process against inflation, take some or all human error out, that I can understand. But managing the money supply can't be a democratic process, whereby we all get representation in what we want: we'll all say we like money, we want more, ignorant of the intricacies of how money is valued, and to what extent this disbursment is damaging the value of the money. Sometimes recession is the only way to maintain the value of money, to manage inflation; and we would never choose recession, we could never endure such a thing by choice, because it's more tangible than suffering inflation.

The ramifications of a failing currency, like clockwork, are unspeakable violence in the streets, sometimes marked by counter-revolutions into war-mongering barbarism. It's a pretty basic human instinct: if what we have is worth nothing, let's go take what they have.

It's for the latter reason that people are reluctant to start pulling blocks out of the Jenga tower that is the Fed. It's been a long time since worldwide economic hardship precipitated an Italian invasion of Ethiopia, a Japanese invasion of China, and a Weimar Germany in which beer cost 4 million marks per glass (France needed those reparations, because it too was hungry).

This video is crazy. "Do you want your money gaining value every year, or losing value every year?" Well, shucks! Didn't realize it was THAT simple! I WANT MORE MONEY, DOG!

Aside from being completely unconstitutional and unnecessary, why is it that the Fed is able to manipulate the money supply such that the dollars you and I work for are cleaved of their real value and inflated at their discretion, with no Congressional oversight? This arbitrarily created new money, helps only those who have the ability to use it before the effects of it are seen on the economy as a whole in the form of inflation and then boom/bust scenarios, namely those organizations and governmental departments most closest to the Fed. The rest of us are left with $/x amount after all the pulp has been sucked dry. Additionally, I hate that the government stands as a 'lender of last resort' when private banks fail when everyone decides to withdraw their money at the same time (in the case of fractional reserves), they can get bailed out by the government... whose money do you think is bailing them out? your tax money, of course... Don't the banks deserve to fail if they've made bad credit decisions? Isn't that what fuels progress, so that competition between banks can happen so that there is something called RISK?
more on this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji_G0MqAqq8

I don't know if the gold standard touted in this movie is the answer, but theres a definate problem here that needs to be fixed.

Hey Shays, you asshole, why don't you check your own voting record! Remember that time you voted to modify our obligations under Geneva Convention.

How about the amendments to your turd of a bill that you voted against.

9/28/06 Senate Rejected --Specter Amdt. No. 5087; To strike the provision regarding habeas review.
9/28/06 Senate Rejected --Rockefeller Amdt. No. 5095; To provide for congressional oversight of certain CIA programs.
9/28/06 Senate Rejected --Kennedy Amdt. No. 5088; To provide for the protection of United States persons in the implementation of treaty obligations.

That last amendment was submitted because your were saying that the US no longer follow Geneva Convention as applies to torture and rape. Well guess what asshole, now our soldiers no longer are afforded Geneva security, and you redefined torture and rape to ALLOW anything short of anal and vagina penetration.

So, yeah, NOW you are right, Abu Ghraib was NOT torture by your new asshole definition of it.