Monday Mashup Part 2 (11/30/09)

(Part One is over here.)

The Hill reports the following (here)…

The Senate Banking Committee’s top Republican on Monday said the government should require large firms to have the financial equivalent of “living wills.”

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) said he wants those firms to have formal plans in place for dealing with future economic crises to avoid the need for future government bailouts. He also wants the federal government to beef up the bankruptcy process.
Shelby, who opposed the $700 billion Wall Street bailout last year, said at the Oxford Union that the government should create a “nimble resolution regime” akin to bankruptcy proceedings to deal with failing firms that threaten the financial industry as a whole.

However, on health care reform, Shelby said the following (here)…

I think a lot of the proponents of this health care plan want to get the government involved one way or the other, want to ration this care one way or the other, and a lot of people don't want to do that.

…

But I can tell you we better be careful in what we legislate and how we legislate. The American people have already, I believe, began to speak on this issue, and I hope the Congress is going to listen. I hope the president is, too.

…

I think a lot of the proposals that the president's talked about and some of the Democrats have talked about are in deep trouble. The American people are figuring it out. They're speaking now, and I believe Congress is beginning to listen.

All boilerplate stuff, I know. Including this…

I'm sure that there are conflicting views on everything, but let's be honest. When you start rationing health care and you start counseling people too far in their advanced ages, I think you're going to create problems, and you've created a lot of fear in this country.

So basically, Shelby supports “living wills” for banks, but not for people.

I just wanted to make sure we all understood that.

Also, the New York Times published an extended feature on the growing use of food stamps in this country yesterday, and the article tells us that the Bush gang “expanded” the program, which, as noted here, is technically true (under the acronym SNAP, signed into law in 2008 – so clever the Bushies were, for a time). However, the fact that an ever-growing number of people needed food stamps under Bushco to the point where the program had to be expanded speaks volumes to me about the economy under their watch).

Besides, as noted here, the only reason Former President Clueless didn’t veto the bill that included the SNAP provision was because he knew Congress would override it if he did (Former President Highest Disapproval Rating In Gallup Poll History objected to $10 billion in what he thought was unnecessary spending while people were starving, see). And as noted here, the Repugs sought to extend existing welfare work requirements to food stamps and housing assistance “so that those who are not old, young or disabled are either working in the private sector or serving in their community,” so their generosity came with a price, to be sure.

Also, the Repugs were big on privatization of government services, as we know, even though, as noted here from last month, that didn’t go so well in Texas (the “breeding ground for bad government,” as The Eternal Molly Ivins called it)…

Eliminating the paper food stamp coupons - and the waste, fraud, and abuse that went along with them - was first proposed by Sharp in his 1991 "Breaking the Mold" performance review report to Gov. Ann Richards. The Legislature passed the reforms, Sharp lobbied Washington to get the necessary waivers, and then made sure Al Gore included a national version in his National Performance Review (1993). The electronic card has now been adopted by all 50 states, and virtually eliminated all of the fraud, waste and abuse associated with the old paper coupons (which were used as a second currency in the criminal underground).

The whole point was to safeguard a successful program for feeding hungry kids by showing taxpayers that government was willing to be good stewards of their tax dollars. What a difference a decade makes.

In 2003, Arlene Wohlgemuth and the Craddick-led Texas Legislature began (in the same bill that famously stripped hundreds of thousands of eligible kids of their CHIP benefits) a consolidation of all the state's health and human services agencies. Pushed by the state's new leadership, the so-called reforms had at their heart a privatization scheme that was going to make things like the food stamp program even more efficient. With George W. Bush in the White House, Texas had a willing ally to approve this privatization scheme.

The goal, as always, was "to run government more like a business." Unfortunately, the business they had in mind was Enron. And now Texas is almost dead-last in the effectiveness of its food stamp system - just ahead of Guam.

And proving that the rotten Bushco apple doesn’t fall far from the proverbial tree, we learn that Dubya acolyte Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana tried to privatize that state’s welfare services also (including food stamps), but eventually realized that those functions must be performed by state agencies.

Why? Well, here is part of the answer…

According to an earlier (Indianapolis) Star article, in January 2007, before IBM took over the program, the percentage of food stamp cases that was mishandled was 4.38%. By January 2009, the percentage had grown to 18.2%. Way to go, IBM! A 450% change in performance!! Unfortunately, it was in the wrong direction. :-(

It’s good that food stamps are available to those in need in this country, whose stories we learn about in the Times report (actual reporting about actual people…color me shocked!).

However, given current economic conditions, it’s bad that they’re even needed at all.

Finally, Little Tommy Friedman told us the following yesterday (about “the narrative” on the Arab “street” about how this country supposedly embodies all that is evil)...

The Narrative is the cocktail of half-truths, propaganda and outright lies about America that have taken hold in the Arab-Muslim world since 9/11. Propagated by jihadist Web sites, mosque preachers, Arab intellectuals, satellite news stations and books — and tacitly endorsed by some Arab regimes — this narrative posits that America has declared war on Islam, as part of a grand “American-Crusader-Zionist conspiracy” to keep Muslims down.

Yes, after two decades in which U.S. foreign policy has been largely dedicated to rescuing Muslims or trying to help free them from tyranny — in Bosnia, Darfur, Kuwait, Somalia, Lebanon, Kurdistan, post-earthquake Pakistan, post-tsunami Indonesia, Iraq and Afghanistan — a narrative that says America is dedicated to keeping Muslims down is thriving.

Although most of the Muslims being killed today are being killed by jihadist suicide bombers in Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan and Indonesia, you’d never know it from listening to their world. The dominant narrative there is that 9/11 was a kind of fraud: America’s unprovoked onslaught on Islam is the real story, and the Muslims are the real victims — of U.S. perfidy.

Have no doubt: we punched a fist into the Arab/Muslim world after 9/11, partly to send a message of deterrence, but primarily to destroy two tyrannical regimes — the Taliban and the Baathists — and to work with Afghans and Iraqis to build a different kind of politics. In the process, we did some stupid and bad things.

Including here, of course.

And in response, M. Shahid Alam, professor of economics at Northeastern University, tells us the following (in response to a Friedman column about the 2005 London bombings)…

Mr. Friedman interprets every Muslim act of violence against the West (and that includes Israel) as the herald of a clash of civilizations. In his own words, when "Al-Qaeda-like bombings come to the London underground, that becomes a civilizational problem. Every Muslim living in a Western society suddenly becomes a suspect, a potential walking bomb."

First, consider the inflammatory assertion about every Muslim in the West suddenly becoming "a potential walking bomb." If this were true, imagine the horror of Westerners at the thought of some 60 million potential walking bombs threatening their neighborhoods. Thankfully, the overwhelming majority of Westerners did not start looking upon their Muslim neighbors as "walking bombs" after the terrorist attacks in New York, Madrid or London. Despite the high-pitched alarms raised in very high places, the overwhelming majority of Europeans and Americans knew better than Mr. Friedman.

It appears that Mr. Friedman is propounding a new thesis on civilizational wars. 'The Muslim extremists,' he charges, 'are starting a civilizational war. It all begins when they bomb our cities, forcing us to treat all Muslims here as potential terrorists. This is going to pit us against them. And that is a civilizational problem.'

The terrorist acts of a few Muslims are terrible tragedies: but do they have a history behind them? Is there a history of Western provocations in the Muslim world? Does the Western world at any point enter the historical chain of causation that now drives a few sane Muslims to acts of terrorism? The only history that Friedman will acknowledge is one of Western innocence. There is no blowback: hence, no Western responsibility, no Western guilt.

Also, concerning a column Friedman wrote about the Mumbai attacks, blogger Sama Adnan tells us the following (here)…

While admitting that Pakistani newspapers, intellectuals and feminists have spoken out against the attacks and have condemned their horrific nature, he still insists that more should have been done by everyday Pakistanis. He, finally, shrouds his hypocrisy in a mesh of thin veneer of concern for Pakistan and its civil society. What Thomas Friedman was doing, however, is raising the bar for Pakistanis, and in-a-not-so-veiled attempt, for Muslims in general in how loud they must condemn their own extremists until the western intelligentsia is satisfied. This is part of Thomas Friedman’s ongoing refrain of “Where are the Moderate Muslims?” and “Why don’t the Muslims of the World Speak Out?”

Of course, Friedman forgets to mention that Muslims and their leaders from around the world roundly condemned the Mumbai terrorist attacks. From President Mubarak of Egypt to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, from the Council of British Muslims to the Austrian Muslim Society (Islamishe Glaubensgameinschaft), even Ahmedinejad of Iran piled on his condemnation of the attacks. Not a single Arab or Pakistani newspaper that I looked up omitted to write a heated rebuke of the attacks on November 29th before anyone knew which group was behind the attacks and before the editorial boards of the Washington Post and the New York Times even mentioned the issue.

And…

Perhaps what is most interesting is that Friedman gave no examples of other people who marched in outrage of their fringes committing terrorism. Did the Irish or the Basques march out in protest every time a bomb blew up in Belfast or Madrid? Did Israelis and American Jews come out in protest every time a new settlement was built in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank? Did Americans go out in mass protest when it was published that as many as a million Iraqis and perhaps many more have died since the invasion of Iraq by the “coalition of the willing?”

Thomas Friedman, himself, never submitted an apology to his readers regarding how mistaken he was about the Iraq war. Of course, he subjected us to his racist analogies, although, there is no doubt that he didn’t realize the hubris and the arrogance underlying them.

Yes, I will acknowledge that Friedman has a point in that we face a war of ideas against militant Islam, and we have to replace their terrible idea with our good one. But our punditocracy is fixated on this notion that that automatically gives us a right to invade countries we don’t like (having learned nothing from Iraq, of course), totally ignoring the fact that our presence in these areas of the world is the one disrupting influence that unites those who formerly were enemies against us (and I will even give Friedman a bit of credit for writing in the past that we shouldn’t lift a finger to support Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan).

Still, the Times would truly do a service to its readership if it somehow found a way to confine Friedman’s sphere of pundit wankery to ecological matters (where, actually, he has been quite eloquent). If all else fails, then I would suggest some kind of a punitive measure to drive home the point (with his own newspaper hectoring him in a manner in which Friedman feels free to chastise those who don’t comport to his worldview).

Yep, sounds good to me. Friedman writes about the Middle East, he gets suspended from publication.

For six more months?

Update 12/2/09: Man, what Atrios sez here and then some; about 4,300 of our people dead, thousands injured, more of our military committing suicide now that at any other point in our history, to say nothing of other coalition force casualties and those traumatized, as well as innocent Iraqis and a refugee population that has reached 2 million, all so we could build a “context” in the Arab world?