Day: November 3, 2008

Palin’s Pipeline

The Associated Press just published a long investigative piece on Sarah Palin’s vaunted pipeline success—and the parts she’s not talking about. It starts:

Gov. Sarah Palin’s signature accomplishment – a contract to build a 1,715-mile pipeline to bring natural gas from Alaska to the Lower 48—emerged from a flawed bidding process that narrowed the field to a company with ties to her administration, an Associated Press investigation shows.

Beginning at the Republican National Convention in August, the McCain-Palin ticket has touted the pipeline as an example of how it would help America achieve energy independence.

“We’re building a nearly $40 billion natural gas pipeline, which is North America’s largest and most expensive infrastructure project ever, to flow those sources of energy into hungry markets,” Palin said during the Oct. 2 vice presidential debate.

Despite Palin’s boast of a smart and fair bidding process, the AP found that her team crafted terms that favored only a few independent pipeline companies and ultimately benefited the winner, TransCanada Corp. (TRP)

And contrary to the ballyhoo, there’s no guarantee the pipeline will ever be built; at a minimum, any project is years away, as TransCanada must first overcome major financial and regulatory hurdles.
In interviews and a review of records, the AP found:

— Instead of creating a process that would attract many potential builders, Palin slanted the terms away from an important group – the global energy giants that own the rights to the gas.

— Despite promises and legal guidance not to talk directly with potential bidders, Palin had meetings or phone calls with nearly every major candidate, including TransCanada.

— The leader of Palin’s pipeline team had been a partner at a lobbying firm where she worked on behalf of a TransCanada subsidiary. Also, that woman’s former business partner at the lobbying firm was TransCanada’s lead private lobbyist on the pipeline deal, interacting with legislators in the weeks before the vote to grant TransCanada the contract. Plus, a former TransCanada executive served as an outside consultant to Palin’s pipeline team.

— Under a different set of rules four years earlier, TransCanada had offered to build the pipeline without a state subsidy; under Palin, the company could receive a maximum $500 million.

OOPS!

10 Things To Consider In The Voting Booth

This is an opinion piece written in Poltical Affairs magazine by Norman Markowitz.

1. The world is quite likely on the brink of a global depression. “Free market” economic policies are the key to understanding this crisis. Barack Obama has rejected these policies. John McCain now blames individuals, greedy Wall Street executives, even Bush, to hide his complicity and support for these policies, while offering the same economic policies Bush pushed for the eight years. We are early in the crisis. Electing Obama can be like electing Franklin Roosevelt in 1930, not 1932. Electing McCain will be like electing Herbert Hoover in 1930, not 1928, something that no rational electorate would do.

2. Barack Obama has shown modern leadership ability. He works collectively, makes decisions carefully, establishes broad policy outlines and then seeks specific policy solutions that fit the outline and changing conditions. John McCain is impulsive and reckless, prone to make and then reverse snap judgments, lacking either a broad policy outline or specific policies that are consistent with that outline.

3. Barack Obama has experience working with trade unions, urban community organizations, and metropolitan business elites to get things done. John McCain is a Senator and former Congressman from Arizona, an anti-union shop “right to work” state. McCain was chosen by and has represented the Arizona elites, the “right to work” business executives, real estate developers, and bankers from the beginning of his political career. He has no record of working with and supporting the interests of the trade union movement, the large Latino population, or the Native American population of his state

4. Barack Obama has already shown his leadership ability by choosing Joe Biden, a Senator with extensive experience, especially on foreign policy matters, who complements Obama’s abilities, a serious heir apparent to the presidency should that become necessary. McCain has chosen Gov. Sarah Palin not to complement his candidacy or be a realistic heir apparent for the presidency but on the hunch that she would get him female votes and solidify the support of religious right Republicans. Given insurance company actuarial statistics, the chances of Palin succeeding to the presidency through the death of the 72-year old McCain are much greater than the chances of Biden succeeding to the presidency by the death of the 47-year old Obama. What a Palin presidency would mean to the US and the world deserves to be a consideration for voters, even if it obviously hasn’t been a consideration for McCain.
5. Barack Obama opposed the Iraq War and occupation as an Illinois State Senator even before Bush launched it and has continued as a US Senator to seek non-military, multi-lateral approaches to foreign policy questions. John McCain strongly supported the Iraq War and military occupation and has always sought military solutions first to foreign policy questions.

6. Barack Obama has addressed the people’s economic crisis and has called for public investment in the economy, aid to states and localities, and tax reform that will erase the Bush tax giveaways to corporations and the wealthy. McCain and Palin, have called these policies “redistribution of wealth” and “socialism,” name calling of the kind that right-wing radio talk show hosts who run interference for Republican candidates usually specialize in, not the candidates themselves.

7. As president, Barack Obama would almost instantly reverse the extreme decline in US international prestige. He would be seen as a major break with the inter-related history of militarism, racism, and support for the rich and privileged through the world which has long undermined respect for the US. As president, John McCain would be seen globally as another Bush, another cowboy politician irrelevant to either the present global crisis or the aspirations of the people.

8. As president, Barack Obama would through regulatory revitalization send a signal to transnational corporations, banking institutions, and brokerage houses that the US will act to reverse the “casino capitalism” that has produced trillions in global losses over the last month. This is something capitalists will not publicly praise, but it is something that they know, as they did in the Great Depression that they need and cannot do for themselves. As president, John McCain would make gestures and look for scapegoats and try to swim with the Bush policies until the economy finds itself under water.

9. As president Barack Obama, who has already brought millions of new and mostly young people into the political process, would raise the standard of understanding and debate in US politics. Through increased popular participation, an Obama administration would make the country a “better democracy” to the benefit of all, including intelligent conservatives, who will be, as they are in other countries, compelled to seriously articulate their views rather than watching passively as others reduce their views to calculated flag-waving and name-calling.

10. If Barack Obama wins the presidency, it will be an enormous victory for all Americans against what has been the single greatest roadblock to progress and unity in US history: the effects of a racism born in slavery, continued through legal segregation, and maintained today overtly in some areas of life, covertly in others. If John McCain wins, given the disastrous Bush policies, the enormous economic crisis the nation and the world faces, it can only be understood at home and abroad as a victory for that racist history, institutions, and ideology, sending a message globally that the US electorate prefers to live in and with the prejudices of the past rather than look rationally at the present and face the future.

Turkey Promises To Stop US Attacks

Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff Parvez Kayani is being rushed to Turkey this evening for a meeting with Turkish government officials hot on the heels of Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani’s talks with Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan. The meeting appears to be the first step toward Turkish involvement in pressing the United States to halt its air strikes against targets inside Pakistan.

Gilani’s Press Secretary Zahid Bashir confirmed that Turkey has said it will use its “influence” as an important NATO member to stop the US strikes. This is the second high profile NATO member to express concern over the US strikes in recent days. On Friday, Britain’s Lord High Chancellor Jack Straw said that his government opposes any strikes inside Pakistan that don’t come with the government’s consent, and urged the US to respect the sovereignty of its vital allies.

The US has been launching an increasing number of strikes onto Pakistani soil in recent days, with two strikes on Friday killing a total of 32. Prime Minister Gilani once again reiterated his opposition to the strikes last night, saying that the attacks were counterproductive and expressing hope that the next US President will improve ties with his country. Gilani also said he would summon the US ambassador about the strikes, but previous moves to that end have had no apparent effect on the US policy.

Why Attack Syria?

The timing and motivation for last Sunday’s raid on a Syrian border town were already something of a mystery, but they have become even more so in the wake of an interview with a US military intelligence official published in Abu Dhabi newspaper ‘The National.’

In the interview, Major Adam Boyd, the head intelligence officer for the third armored cavalry regiment, describes the cooperation between the Syrian government and US forces in the border area. Though he says they didn’t “deal directly with the Syrians,” he says “they have been relatively good in the near recent past, arresting people on their side of the border.”

This seems to confirm comments by Marine Corps Major General John Kelly, who just days before the US attack said that violence in the province bordering the targeted Syrian town had fallen so low as to be “almost meaningless now.”

In the wake of the attack the US has complained that the Syrian government was not doing a good enough job policing the border, but these comments suggest that commanders on the ground along the Syrian border did not believe the situation was getting worse, and rather saw signs of improvement, leaving open the question: why launch the attack now?

To answer the question:  Was it a try for an October Surprise before the election?  Would the attack not have occurred if McCain had been leading in the polls?  If this was copmmon knowledge, why wait to just before the US election for the attack?

Bankers Rule! Main Street Dies!

Accounts of the October 13 meeting between US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and top bank CEOs on the government’s bailout of Wall Street—now estimated at $2.5 trillion—paint an extraordinary portrait of class relations in America. Though they were to receive hundreds of billions of dollars from the Treasury to stave off a credit collapse of their own making, the bankers arrogantly refused to accept the slightest limits on their prerogatives.

Instead, the Treasury approached the bankers as a supplicant, agreeing that if they accepted the bailout, it would place no real caps on exorbitant CEO pay and exercise no effective oversight of bank operations.

On the evening of the 12th and morning of the 13th, Paulson telephoned the CEOs of major banks who had gathered in Washington for the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund. At the time, the US media was predicting a deal along the lines of the European bailout arranged over the weekend: the Treasury would pump money directly into the banks by buying shares and guarantee inter-bank loans.

Such conditions, one need hardly point out, are never granted to ordinary mortals. Working class mortgage holders typically face foreclosure after missing three monthly payments. A small business receiving a loan from a bank must make all interest payments and can typically operate at a loss for at most two quarters before the bank places it in workout, effectively taking over its operations.

The bailout deal underscores a powerful social reality: There is a ruling class in America, whose interests the government is dedicated to defend, by blatantly unequal treatment if necessary. Despite ritual invocations of democracy, the American ruling class will not allow any popular interference in matters affecting its fundamental interests.

The deference paid to this financial aristocracy, amid predictions of a global economic depression, recalls nothing more than the dying days of the Ancien Régime monarchy before the French Revolution. One can imagine similar meetings as Louis XVI’s last finance minister, Viscount Charles Alexandre de Calonne—whose role is now played by Paulson, the multimillionaire ex-CEO of Goldman Sachs—drew up doomed plans attempting to stave off state bankruptcy, while preserving the nobility’s privileges.

Will China Profit From Crisis?

A comment in Forbes magazine on October 14 asked who would foot the bill for the American and European bailouts, and provided the answer “Foreigners First”. It noted that the French government had announced that it would raise the money in the international credit markets, promising taxpayers that they would not have to pay a cent, at least for now. “That is certainly possible,” Forbes wrote, pointing to the central banks and sovereign wealth funds in Asia, the Middle East and Russia. Although returns on US Treasuries and German bonds are presently “unattractive”, Forbes continued: “Yet Western governments can be rest assured that the likes of China will still want to buy up their newly-issued debt.”

China certainly has a huge stake in ensuring the viability of the US economy—the largest market for Chinese goods—as well as the Europeans. Moreover, as the world’s largest holder of foreign currency reserves—some $1.9 trillion—it would appear superficially to be in a good position to help out. Although denied by Chinese officials, some reports have indicated that the Chinese People’s Bank may consider buying another $200 billion in US debt in order to help finance the Bush administration’s $700 billion bailout package.

A closer examination of China’s currency reserves, however, reveals that Beijing’s financial clout is much more limited. Analysts estimate that between 60 and 70 percent of China’s $1.9 trillion in reserves is already invested in the dollar-denominated assets such as US Treasury bonds and the government-backed corporations, mainly the mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. As a result, China only has between $600 to $760 billion in reserves—some of which are in euro-denominated assets—to make new purchases of US debt. This is only a tiny fraction of total US public debt, which hit the $10 trillion mark at the end of September, double the figure in 2000.

Even if China were to help fund the US and European bailouts, its assistance would not necessarily be welcome. The Wall Street Journal admitted on September 29 that the US dependency on foreign creditors “has been hard to swallow politically”. It recalled that the main weapon used by Washington in 1956 to force Britain to relinquish control of the Suez Canal was “its threat to slash financial support for Britain, whose economy had been battered by World War II.” After reassuring readers that the US was in a better position than post-war UK, the Wall Street Journal continued: “Even so, foreign lenders have a great deal of sway. If they were to dump US government debt—or be unwilling to buy more—the interest rates needed to attract buyers of Treasury would soar. The already fragile US economy would absorb yet another hit.”

The recent economic crisis is getting deeper, markets look good, at times, but Jpohn McCain’s Main Street is not benefitting from the bailout yet.  But was not the reason for the baiolout to be sure the American people would be safe?  If you believe that then you are more naive than I would ever believe possible.