David Matthews

Ah, out on the deck the geraniums are in glorious bloom, the peacocks are screeching with lust, and T-Bone is reloading to fire off a warning burst in the direction of the Fox 12 news chopper circling overhead. Time to crack open a case of Bud Lite Lime and check the pulse of the republic. Summer is upon us at last…maybe.

Those who come to this space regularly, from time to time, or by fair chance or foul may note that your oft humbled scribe has not been scribing much of late. The flame of inspiration flickers and wanes. The grim specter of oil saturating the gulf and and washing into Louisiana’s wetlands and marshes where Bobby Jindal screeches like the pencil-neck geek manager of a villainous professional wrestling tag team is enough to render even the peacocks mute, much less a man of poetic sensibility and artistic pretension, I mean, ambition.

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It seems the company formerly known as British Petroleum invoiced its Deepwater Horizon partners for their share in costs related to the debacle, hitting Texas-based Andarko for $272 million and Moex, a subsidiary of the Japanese company Mitsui, for $111 million. Andarko fired back:

BP Plc, the project’s operator, should pay the costs from the spill because it acted recklessly and unsafely at the drilling site…

BP didn’t monitor or react to warning signs as the Macondo well was drilled, Chief Executive Officer Jim Hackett said yesterday in a statement. BP is responsible for damages under such conditions.

“BP’s behavior and actions likely represent gross negligence or willful misconduct and thus affect the obligations of the parties under the operating agreement,” Hackett said in the statement.

Needless to say, BP “strongly disagrees” with Andarko’s position. [Edward Klump, Andarko Says BP Should Pay After Being Reckless (Update 1), Bloomberg Businessweek, 19 June 2010].

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Meantime, in Afghanistan, where the counter-insurgency roils on, the Wall Street Journal reporting on l’affaire McChrystal offered this intriguing tidbit:

Even before the Rolling Stone article surfaced, Pentagon officials had become concerned with what one senior military official Thursday called a “cult of personality” that had surrounded Gen. McChrystal.

“That atmosphere is not just about McChrystal; it’s about that team, it’s that culture,” said another U.S. military officer who has worked with Gen. McChrystal. “The environment alienated other conventional commanders.” (Peter Spiegel and Jonathan Weisman, Officials Promise Unity Amid Afghan Shuffle, 25 June 2010)

Aha, the cult of personality. Maybe we need some Red Guards to root out the running dogs and lackeys and exile them to the hinterlands where they will be reeducated harvesting rutabagas and reading David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest.

President Obama’s choice of General Petraeus to replace General McChrystal was a savvy political and tactical move. The policy, however, remains dubious, though I acknowledge that this is one of those “damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t” situations, where any course is liable to come to a bad end.

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Even The Economist, not exactly a publication of a liberal bent, suspects that the rush to Hooveresque policies prompted by the fad for deficit reduction and fiscal austerity is not a good thing. The magazine reflexively charges that Keynesian critics of of this approach, such as Paul Krugman, oversimplify in making their own case, and tries to put the best face of the budget hawks’ policy, saying “The result probably won’t be another Hooveresque Depression. But it could be a recovery that is weaker and slower that it should have been.” When we consider the source, the indictment is stronger that it appears at first blush. (“Austerity Alarm,” The Economist, July 3rd–9th 2010, pp. 16-17).

The Economist fails to note that not all deficit hawks act in good faith. Not a few see the deficit issue as a golden opportunity to roll back, if not dismantle entirely, social programs to which they object on philosophical grounds. This leads to some preposterous positions, such as the argument against extension of unemployment benefits beyond 26 weeks on that grounds that it would give the unemployed the perverse incentive not to look for work. Cutting off benefits at a date certain, say the established 26 weeks, provides a positive incentive for the unemployed to look harder for work, or so the argument goes. Precisely how pushing the unemployed to look harder for jobs that by all accounts do not exist will solve the problem is blithely ignored by these ideologues of extreme laissez-faire and a naive individualism. Quelle surprise.

David :: Jul.04.2010 :: Politics & Current Affairs :: 2 Comments »

From today’s Wall Street Journal (Ben Casselman and Guy Chazan, Disaster Plans Lacking at Deep Rigs):

The Minerals Management Service, the government agency that oversees offshore drilling, in recent years moved away from requiring specific safety measures in offshore drilling and instead set broad performance goals that it was up to the industry to meet.

…

In joint MMS-Coast Guard hearings into the Deepwater Horizon accident, Michael Saucier, an MMS official, testified that the agency “highly encouraged,” but didn’t require, companies to have back-up systems to trigger blowout preventers in case of an emergency.

“Highly encourage? How does that translate to enforcement?” Coast Guard Capt. Hung Nguyen, who is co-chairing the investigation, asked at the hearings.

“There is no enforcement,” Mr. Saucier replied.

That seems to about cover it.

David :: May.18.2010 :: Politics & Current Affairs :: No Comments »

The fuss about reading Miranda rights to terror suspects strikes me as, well, suspect. Are we to suppose that captured terrorists routinely sing like Pavarotti until read their rights, whereupon they are rendered mute? As if it would not have occurred to them not to cooperate with their captors until informed of the right to remain silent.

Senator Lindsey Graham (R–SC) said at a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing this week that he believes Miranda warnings are counterproductive. Graham told POLITICO he is working on legislation to redefine the public safety exemption to Miranda warnings “so law enforcement can go to a judge somewhere and make the case that the detainee is a suspected member of Al Qaeda or the Taliban and have the judge approve continued interrogation without Miranda rights.” The law would apply to U.S. citizens as well as foreign nationals. (Sen. Lindsey Graham: Miranda rights ‘counterproductive’).

The law would be directed only at those who join terrorist organizations as designated by the State Department. “It would be members of Al Qaida — not Timothy McVeigh,” said Graham, without explaining why the exception for a McVeigh type.

Meantime, a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report states, “Membership in a terrorist organization does not prohibit a person from possessing firearms or explosives under current federal law. However, for homeland security and other purposes, the FBI is notified when a firearm or explosives background check involves an individual on the terrorist watch list.” Of background checks on 1,225 people on the watch list, 91 percent were approved for gun transactions.

Even Joe Lieberman thinks this “dangerous loophole” is “stunning and infuriating.” (Huma Khan and C. Byron Wolf, ABC News/Politics, Guns and Terror: Should People on U.S. Watch List Be Barred from Buying Firearms?). The Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, of which Lieberman is chairman, is considering legislation to bar people on many U.S. watch lists from purchasing guns.

Whoa, nelly, says Graham, concerned about the bill’s impact on constitutional rights of individuals whose names may be on the watch list in error. Graham said, “Before we subject innocent Americans who have done nothing wrong, I want us to slow down and think about this.”

Graham and his ilk like to carry on about the sanctity of the Constition, the founders’ original intent, and all that. Yet they tend to be almost blithe in their consideration of which parts should be held sacrosanct and which might be treated as more open to, I am tempted to say “liberal,” interpretation.

Graham rears up in righteous umbrage at the possibility that suspected terrorists might be accorded protection against self-incrimination guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment (no person “shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself”). We might speculate as whether this is the source or the consequence of his conviction that terror suspects should be regarded not as criminals but as enemy combatants, but the relevant point here is that the Fifth Amendment is not one the good Senator is willing to go to the wall for. Not so the Second, whose inviolability demands that no law or regulation may be enacted to make it difficult for a terrorist to obtain guns if that would so much as inconvenience an innocent American who wishes to purchase a firearm.

Not everyone sees these issues the way Graham does, but he is far from alone, and  I am unable to fathom that kind of thinking. Once more I feel myself a man out of tune and out of touch with his time.

David :: May.08.2010 :: Politics & Current Affairs :: 2 Comments »