Certain Doubt

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Joe Stiglitz Hits the Mark.

Thursday, April 7th, 2011

I have been trying to come up with a commentary on the current inequalities of wealth in this country. I can relax now. In his recent Vanity Fair article, Joseph Stiglitz has said everything I wanted to say and more.

Vanity Fair
Inequality
Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%
Americans have been watching protests against oppressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income—an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret.
By Joseph E. Stiglitz•
May 2011

THE FAT AND THE FURIOUS The top 1 percent may have the best houses, educations, and lifestyles, says the author, but “their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live.”

It’s no use pretending that what has obviously happened has not in fact happened. The upper 1 percent of Americans are now taking in nearly a quarter of the nation’s income every year. In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1 percent control 40 percent. Their lot in life has improved considerably. Twenty-five years ago, the corresponding figures were 12 percent and 33 percent. One response might be to celebrate the ingenuity and drive that brought good fortune to these people, and to contend that a rising tide lifts all boats. That response would be misguided. While the top 1 percent have seen their incomes rise 18 percent over the past decade, those in the middle have actually seen their incomes fall. For men with only high-school degrees, the decline has been precipitous—12 percent in the last quarter-century alone. All the growth in recent decades—and more—has gone to those at the top. In terms of income equality, America lags behind any country in the old, ossified Europe that President George W. Bush used to deride. Among our closest counterparts are Russia with its oligarchs and Iran. While many of the old centers of inequality in Latin America, such as Brazil, have been striving in recent years, rather successfully, to improve the plight of the poor and reduce gaps in income, America has allowed inequality to grow.

Economists long ago tried to justify the vast inequalities that seemed so troubling in the mid-19th century—inequalities that are but a pale shadow of what we are seeing in America today. The justification they came up with was called “marginal-productivity theory.” In a nutshell, this theory associated higher incomes with higher productivity and a greater contribution to society. It is a theory that has always been cherished by the rich. Evidence for its validity, however, remains thin. The corporate executives who helped bring on the recession of the past three years—whose contribution to our society, and to their own companies, has been massively negative—went on to receive large bonuses. In some cases, companies were so embarrassed about calling such rewards “performance bonuses” that they felt compelled to change the name to “retention bonuses” (even if the only thing being retained was bad performance). Those who have contributed great positive innovations to our society, from the pioneers of genetic understanding to the pioneers of the Information Age, have received a pittance compared with those responsible for the financial innovations that brought our global economy to the brink of ruin.

Some people look at income inequality and shrug their shoulders. So what if this person gains and that person loses? What matters, they argue, is not how the pie is divided but the size of the pie. That argument is fundamentally wrong. An economy in which most citizens are doing worse year after year—an economy like America’s—is not likely to do well over the long haul. There are several reasons for this.

First, growing inequality is the flip side of something else: shrinking opportunity. Whenever we diminish equality of opportunity, it means that we are not using some of our most valuable assets—our people—in the most productive way possible. Second, many of the distortions that lead to inequality—such as those associated with monopoly power and preferential tax treatment for special interests—undermine the efficiency of the economy. This new inequality goes on to create new distortions, undermining efficiency even further. To give just one example, far too many of our most talented young people, seeing the astronomical rewards, have gone into finance rather than into fields that would lead to a more productive and healthy economy.

Third, and perhaps most important, a modern economy requires “collective action”—it needs government to invest in infrastructure, education, and technology. The United States and the world have benefited greatly from government-sponsored research that led to the Internet, to advances in public health, and so on. But America has long suffered from an under-investment in infrastructure (look at the condition of our highways and bridges, our railroads and airports), in basic research, and in education at all levels. Further cutbacks in these areas lie ahead.

None of this should come as a surprise—it is simply what happens when a society’s wealth distribution becomes lopsided. The more divided a society becomes in terms of wealth, the more reluctant the wealthy become to spend money on common needs. The rich don’t need to rely on government for parks or education or medical care or personal security—they can buy all these things for themselves. In the process, they become more distant from ordinary people, losing whatever empathy they may once have had. They also worry about strong government—one that could use its powers to adjust the balance, take some of their wealth, and invest it for the common good. The top 1 percent may complain about the kind of government we have in America, but in truth they like it just fine: too gridlocked to re-distribute, too divided to do anything but lower taxes.

Economists are not sure how to fully explain the growing inequality in America. The ordinary dynamics of supply and demand have certainly played a role: laborsaving technologies have reduced the demand for many “good” middle-class, blue-collar jobs. Globalization has created a worldwide marketplace, pitting expensive unskilled workers in America against cheap unskilled workers overseas. Social changes have also played a role—for instance, the decline of unions, which once represented a third of American workers and now represent about 12 percent.

But one big part of the reason we have so much inequality is that the top 1 percent want it that way. The most obvious example involves tax policy. Lowering tax rates on capital gains, which is how the rich receive a large portion of their income, has given the wealthiest Americans close to a free ride. Monopolies and near monopolies have always been a source of economic power—from John D. Rockefeller at the beginning of the last century to Bill Gates at the end. Lax enforcement of anti-trust laws, especially during Republican administrations, has been a godsend to the top 1 percent. Much of today’s inequality is due to manipulation of the financial system, enabled by changes in the rules that have been bought and paid for by the financial industry itself—one of its best investments ever. The government lent money to financial institutions at close to 0 percent interest and provided generous bailouts on favorable terms when all else failed. Regulators turned a blind eye to a lack of transparency and to conflicts of interest.

When you look at the sheer volume of wealth controlled by the top 1 percent in this country, it’s tempting to see our growing inequality as a quintessentially American achievement—we started way behind the pack, but now we’re doing inequality on a world-class level. And it looks as if we’ll be building on this achievement for years to come, because what made it possible is self-reinforcing. Wealth begets power, which begets more wealth. During the savings-and-loan scandal of the 1980s—a scandal whose dimensions, by today’s standards, seem almost quaint—the banker Charles Keating was asked by a congressional committee whether the $1.5 million he had spread among a few key elected officials could actually buy influence. “I certainly hope so,” he replied. The Supreme Court, in its recent Citizens United case, has enshrined the right of corporations to buy government, by removing limitations on campaign spending. The personal and the political are today in perfect alignment. Virtually all U.S. senators, and most of the representatives in the House, are members of the top 1 percent when they arrive, are kept in office by money from the top 1 percent, and know that if they serve the top 1 percent well they will be rewarded by the top 1 percent when they leave office. By and large, the key executive-branch policymakers on trade and economic policy also come from the top 1 percent. When pharmaceutical companies receive a trillion-dollar gift—through legislation prohibiting the government, the largest buyer of drugs, from bargaining over price—it should not come as cause for wonder. It should not make jaws drop that a tax bill cannot emerge from Congress unless big tax cuts are put in place for the wealthy. Given the power of the top 1 percent, this is the way you would expect the system to work.

America’s inequality distorts our society in every conceivable way. There is, for one thing, a well-documented lifestyle effect—people outside the top 1 percent increasingly live beyond their means. Trickle-down economics may be a chimera, but trickle-down behaviorism is very real. Inequality massively distorts our foreign policy. The top 1 percent rarely serve in the military—the reality is that the “all-volunteer” army does not pay enough to attract their sons and daughters, and patriotism goes only so far. Plus, the wealthiest class feels no pinch from higher taxes when the nation goes to war: borrowed money will pay for all that. Foreign policy, by definition, is about the balancing of national interests and national resources. With the top 1 percent in charge, and paying no price, the notion of balance and restraint goes out the window. There is no limit to the adventures we can undertake; corporations and contractors stand only to gain. The rules of economic globalization are likewise designed to benefit the rich: they encourage competition among countries for business, which drives down taxes on corporations, weakens health and environmental protections, and undermines what used to be viewed as the “core” labor rights, which include the right to collective bargaining. Imagine what the world might look like if the rules were designed instead to encourage competition among countries for workers. Governments would compete in providing economic security, low taxes on ordinary wage earners, good education, and a clean environment—things workers care about. But the top 1 percent don’t need to care.

Or, more accurately, they think they don’t. Of all the costs imposed on our society by the top 1 percent, perhaps the greatest is this: the erosion of our sense of identity, in which fair play, equality of opportunity, and a sense of community are so important. America has long prided itself on being a fair society, where everyone has an equal chance of getting ahead, but the statistics suggest otherwise: the chances of a poor citizen, or even a middle-class citizen, making it to the top in America are smaller than in many countries of Europe. The cards are stacked against them. It is this sense of an unjust system without opportunity that has given rise to the conflagrations in the Middle East: rising food prices and growing and persistent youth unemployment simply served as kindling. With youth unemployment in America at around 20 percent (and in some locations, and among some socio-demographic groups, at twice that); with one out of six Americans desiring a full-time job not able to get one; with one out of seven Americans on food stamps (and about the same number suffering from “food insecurity”)—given all this, there is ample evidence that something has blocked the vaunted “trickling down” from the top 1 percent to everyone else. All of this is having the predictable effect of creating alienation—voter turnout among those in their 20s in the last election stood at 21 percent, comparable to the unemployment rate.

In recent weeks we have watched people taking to the streets by the millions to protest political, economic, and social conditions in the oppressive societies they inhabit. Governments have been toppled in Egypt and Tunisia. Protests have erupted in Libya, Yemen, and Bahrain. The ruling families elsewhere in the region look on nervously from their air-conditioned penthouses—will they be next? They are right to worry. These are societies where a minuscule fraction of the population—less than 1 percent—controls the lion’s share of the wealth; where wealth is a main determinant of power; where entrenched corruption of one sort or another is a way of life; and where the wealthiest often stand actively in the way of policies that would improve life for people in general.

As we gaze out at the popular fervor in the streets, one question to ask ourselves is this: When will it come to America? In important ways, our own country has become like one of these distant, troubled places.

Alexis de Tocqueville once described what he saw as a chief part of the peculiar genius of American society—something he called “self-interest properly understood.” The last two words were the key. Everyone possesses self-interest in a narrow sense: I want what’s good for me right now! Self-interest “properly understood” is different. It means appreciating that paying attention to everyone else’s self-interest—in other words, the common welfare—is in fact a precondition for one’s own ultimate well-being. Tocqueville was not suggesting that there was anything noble or idealistic about this outlook—in fact, he was suggesting the opposite. It was a mark of American pragmatism. Those canny Americans understood a basic fact: looking out for the other guy isn’t just good for the soul—it’s good for business.

The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late.

Keywords
Society,
Wealth,
Inequality,
Joseph E. Stiglitz

Read More http://www.vanityfair.com/society/features/2011/05/top-one-percent-201105?printable=true&currentPage=all#ixzz1IryuyBa6

Tags: Certain Doubt, certaindoubt, democracy, fairness, income, inequality, Stiglitz, Thomas Vincent, Vanity Fair, Vincent, wealth
Posted in Daily Doubt, Ethics, Politics, economics, government, law, media | No Comments »

The Scent of Revolution

Saturday, February 5th, 2011

I find the popular uprisings in North Africa fascinating. Fascinating and exhilarating. Watching the video feed from Al Jazeera English is high drama. But as the drama unfolds, the most surprising thing about what is happening in Egypt and Tunisia is that the principal reaction in Washington D.C. seems to be one of… surprise.

At first blush it might seem odd that elected officials in America should be taken aback by the uprisings. Not only do we supposedly have the best intelligence apparatus that money can buy, but as our own country was founded on a popular revolution, it shouldn’t be too surprising when oppressed people in other countries rise up to throw off their shackles.

But on second look Washington’s bewilderment is not really all that strange. For one thing, the revolution that initiated the founding of our country happened more than two hundred years ago. And though we’ve had plenty of popular movements since then – union riots, race riots, even antiwar protests – and one horrible civil war, our country hasn’t seen the kind of mass uprising Egypt is experience since… well, one could argue we’ve never experienced anything like what is happening in Egypt. Few countries have.

Our own revolutionary war, as bloody and confrontational as it was, did not mobilize anywhere near the numbers of people that have taken to the streets in Egypt and Tunisia. Moreover, our revolution was one for independence from a repressive autocracy. In Egypt and Tunisia the mass movements there are not striving for independence; they are trying to overthrow and replace a repressive regime. We’ve never done that in this country.

Thus it is not wholly surprising that the leadership in this country should have a deer in the headlights look when it comes to deciding what to do about the revolutions in North Africa. America has simply never faced the kind of massive popular movement that Egypt and Tunisia are experiencing where people hit the streets for days at a time, marching, chanting, and demanding regime change.

At least, it hasn’t happened yet.

The fact that the Obama administration was caught short by the unrest in North Africa is troubling. But I feel the cause for alarm lies not in the failure of our intelligence apparatus. I think the problem is deeper and more systemic than a few missed signals and inadequate briefings. Americans will always be caught unawares by popular uprisings because we have no conception of what they are like. We have no clue what causes a countrywide regime changing popular revolution because we’ve never experienced one. There is no playbook, no script with cliff notes that outline a “drama in three acts.”

That is the nature of revolution. That is what makes it so interesting.

The Obama administration has been doing a lot of backpedaling over Egypt. There have been lots of mixed messages.

Mubarak should go.

Mubarak should stay.

The United States “can’t dictate who the leader of Egypt should be.”

But of course we support an orderly transition with Omar Sulieman as interim president

An interesting thought experiment – one that I have yet to hear anyone mention – is what would Obama be doing were the shoe on the other foot? If there were millions of people camped out on the Mall in Washington D.C. burning Obama in effigy and calling for his ouster, would he step down? Or would he cling to power claiming that to step down would be “giving into chaos.” Would he allow muscle bound goons to roam freely among the protesters bashing heads and bloodying anyone with press credentials? Would he shut down the internet? Would he name Leon Panetta as his vice president with the stipulation that Obama would stay in power until there was “an orderly transition?”

Moreover, what would our allies be doing? Would they be sitting by while we, the world’s sole remaining super power and the possessor of the world’s biggest arsenal of nukes underwent a tense standoff between a dictatorial leader and a people fed up with his repression?

When looked at in this light the Obama administration’s failure to come out squarely on the side of the Egyptian people is truly grotesque. To not acknowledge and embrace a revolution when it is clear that it is truly the will of the masses (“They the people?”) is one more indication that the United States government has lost whatever moral compass it once possessed.

Obama is correct when he says that America can’t decide who the next leader of Egypt should be. But his reasoning is all screwed up. The reason we have no right to dictate what type of government replaces the existing one has nothing to do with self-determination and our not wanting to engage in nation building. The reason we don’t have a right to any say in Egypt’s future is because when it comes to democracy, America no longer occupies the moral high ground. One of the only reasons that Hosni Mubarak stayed in power as long as he did was because the United States bankrolled the Egyptian military leader to the tune of billions of dollars. The Egyptian people know this. Because of our past involvement in Egypt’s affairs they also know anything that Obama says with regard to Egypt’s future is largely bogus and self serving.

Thus when Washington comes out and supports Sulieman’s bid to take over in order to have a “smooth transition to democracy” the Egyptian people know this is code for “maintain the status quo.” The United States will always support the status quo in Egypt, even if it means repression and poverty continue.

It takes a lot to get millions of people into the streets. It took 24 years for the Tunisians to kick out Ben Ali. It took thirty years of repression, massive unemployment, and poverty for the people in Egypt to finally say, “enough is enough” to Hosni Mubarak. It’s true that we’ve never had the kind of large scale repression and crushing poverty that has plagued Tunisia and Egypt for decades. But that’s not to say we couldn’t.

Given the trouble we are having dealing with our own unemployment rate and the growing disparity in wealth one wonders what it would take for people in this country to get as fed up with our government as the people of Tunisia and Egypt?

When it comes to the unrest in Egypt, Mr. Obama would be well advised to stop waffling and more time taking notes. Maybe then he won’t be so surprised when his own people get pissed enough to start their own revolution.

Tags: America, Certain Doubt, Egypt, government, Obama, Politics, repression, revolution, Scent of Revolution, Thomas Vincent, Tunisia, uprising, Vincent
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Good News/ Bad News

Friday, January 28th, 2011

Over time, the annual ritual of the State of the Union speech has come to resemble a combination of minstrel show and kabuki theater. For progressives, this year’s speech, and the ridiculous “rebuttals” by representatives of the republican party present a kind of “good news/bad news” scenario.

On the one hand, any fears the Obama administration may have had of a serious electoral challenge from the right in 2012 had to have been aleviated on Tuesday night by the performances of republican representatives Michelle Bachmann and Paul Ryan. From Bachmann’s charts and graphs to her laughable massacre of history she came across as worse than a bimbo. She looked like a total idiot. Even worse, her inability to look at the right camera – a media faux pas that ranks right up there with “dead air” – made her appear as a total TV amateur. Despite America’s addiction to reality talent shows, if there’s one thing the electorate will not excuse it’s a candidate who doesn’t know how to look good on camera. (Remember Richard Nixon?)

For his part, Paul Ryan came off as a bland, tepid, hack whose tired republican boilerplate had all the passion of day old fish wrapped in soggy newsprint.

We believe government’s role is both vital and limited – to defend the nation from attack and provide for the common defense … to secure our borders… to protect innocent life… to uphold our laws and Constitutional rights…

When Ronald Reagan spouted tripe like this he at least knew how to make people believe it. Paul Ryan was not just a feeble evangelist for the conservative credo, he was a lousy salesman. Once again, if there’s one thing Americans – and corporate executives – can’t stand, it’s a salesman who doesn’t know how to make a pitch.

The most glaringly bad part of Ryan’s speech was its negative tone.

“The next generation will inherit a stagnant economy and a diminished country.”

“Our debt is out of control. What was a fiscal challenge is now a fiscal crisis.”

Once again, Ryan would do well to look at some of Ronald Reagan’s speeches. Or Obama’s speeches for that matter – the ones from the 2008 campaign. You don’t sell soap by telling people how dirty they have become. You sell soap by telling folks how clean and sweet smelling they will be if they use your product.

If Paul Ryan and Michelle Bachmann are the best that the republicans can produce for the next election, 2012 should be a cakewalk for Obama.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that the re-election of Barack Obama is not likely to produce any better result for the American people than if any of the current crop of republican hopefuls were somehow able to unseat him. If this year’s State of the Union Speech is any example, Obama’s next term is not likely to differ significantly from his first. By that I mean that if re-elected, the current trend of deference to big business indicated by the president’s speech will, in all likelihood, not change a whit.

Consider the following from the 2010 SOTU speech:

With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections. (Applause.) I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities.

Not only did this year’s speech contain no criticisms of big business, but the tone of this year’s speech was positively glowing in its praise.

We are poised for progress. Two years after the worst recession most of us have ever known, the stock market has come roaring back. Corporate profits are up. The economy is growing again.

While Obama can’t be faulted for couching the economy in positive terms, emphasizing growth and investment, what this year’s speech really boiled down to was a coded message that when it comes to big business, not only will the president not criticize corporate America, for the next year he’s going to do everything in his power to make sure that the rich are happy so that the tsunami of corporate cash from the “floodgates for special interests” will flow to his re-election campaign and not to his republican challengers.

But to help our companies compete, we also have to knock down barriers that stand in the way of their success… To reduce barriers to growth and investment, I’ve ordered a review of government regulations. When we find rules that put an unnecessary burden on businesses, we will fix them.

What does all this mean? It means that for the next year, when it comes to corporate relations, Obama will not just be deferential, he’ll be dropping his trousers and reaching for the Vaseline.

The most damning indictment of Obama’s current attitude towards standing up for the American people was the fact that nowhere in the entire 7,000 word speech does he mention the words “employment” or “unemployment.”

He uses the terms “business” 20 times and “jobs” 23. But nowhere does he mention any initiative or incentive to get corporations to hire American workers instead of Chinese and Mexicans.

Thus the good news/ bad news scenario implied by this year’s SOTU is this: Obama will probably get a second term, but in order to get it, he’s likely to be just as deferential to large multinational corporations as a republican president would be.

Either way, the American people lose.

Tags: Bachmann, Certain Doubt, conservative, elections, Obama, Politics, progressive, republicans, Ryan, SOTU, sppech, state of the union, text, Thomas Vincent, Vincent
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Much Ado About Nothing

Thursday, November 11th, 2010

The recent court case surrounding the Government’s targeted Assassination program is likely to wind up being “Much Ado About Nothing.”

In my last post: “Down The Rabbit Hole,”
I commented on the recent suit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) against the government and their efforts to maintain a secret “kill lists” of terrorists, a list that can include American citizens.

In the piece I put forth my opinion that I thought the ACLU and the CCR had a good case. I still think their arguments are valid. I am not so sanguine today, however, on their chances of winning their case.

The case revolves around the Obama Administration’s attempts to target and kill Anwar Al-Aulaqi, the American born cleric the government accuses of being involved in recent attempted terrorist actions against the United States. On Aug. 30, the ACLU and the CCR filed suit in Federal court on behalf of Anwar al-Aulaqi’s father, Nasser al-Aulaqi. According to the conservative site the Investigative Project:

Awlaki’s father has claimed that his son has been added to CIA and Pentagon targeting lists using secret criteria and evidence for determining whether a U.S. citizen can be targeted for lethal action. Based on this, the lawsuit is asking a federal judge to prevent the government from intentionally killing Anwar Awlaki without showing that he presents a concrete, specific, and imminent threat to life or physical safety. It also asks that the government show that there are no means other than lethal force that could reasonably be employed to neutralize the threat.

Interestingly, the government’s response doesn’t address the issues the ACLU and CCR want addressed – namely whether the Obama Administration should be allowed to maintain secret lists of enemies slated for assassination without any oversight. Instead, the government is focusing first and foremost on the narrow procedural question of whether Nasser Al-Aulaqi has legal “standing” in the case. As he is only a relative and not the party who is actually being targeted, the government’s contention is that he cannot challenge the government’s action in the name of his son.

Even more bizarrely, the government insists that even if Nasser has standing, the case should be dismissed because the court lacks the authority to rule on the matter because the “…requested injunction would necessarily and improperly inject the courts into decisions of the President and his advisors about how to protect the American people from the threat of armed attacks.”
In its response to the government’s claim the ACLU and the CCR presented an impassioned argument raising the specter of unchecked Presidential power. Again from the investigative Project:

…this is “a case concerning the Executive’s authority to carry out the killing of an American whom it has named an enemy of the state,” Jaffer argued. He called the policy “extreme” and “terrifying.” If the court accepts the government’s argument “then the President will have unchecked authority to assassinate any US citizen, and it will be unreviewable by a court,” he said.

This argument, which commentator Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com sums up concisely as: “…if the president has th[is] inherent authority. . . . then what can’t he do?” is akin to the concept in debate known as “the slippery slope.” Instead of addressing the charges, however, the government’s lawyers responded in true high school debate tradition, calling the charges “ridiculous” and “absurd.”

The challengers also sought to display the government’s desire to have the case thrown out because the courts have no authority to rule on an executive’s decisions on how to protect the American people as an extreme position:

Speaking broadly about the government’s claims of supremacy in this area, Jaffer explained, “this is a bigger case than the government is suggesting. It’s not just arguing that the court has no role to play now. They are saying that the court has no role to play period.”

As I said, I think the ACLU and the CCR have a strong argument to make. Regardless of how one feels about Al-Aulaqi and what he may or may not have done, regardless of whether Nassar Al-Aulaqi has “standing,” granting the executive – any executive – unreviewable authority to target and kill American citizens using secret criteria and classified evidence is a terrible precedent to set.

Any decision that gives the president the power to unilaterally decide this or that American is a danger to the country and to then target and kill them extra-judicially is a power that is ripe for abuse.

The government’s argument that the courts have no place reviewing the president’s powers is specious. The very function of the judiciary as laid out in the constitution is to watch over both the executive and the legislative branches of government. Are the government’s lawyers contending that the executive should be allowed to do anything anytime, anywhere? It seems to me that is no longer the definition of a president, but rather that of an autocrat.

Unfortunately, however, I think the entire case is moot. Not only has the judge in the case, US District Judge John D. Bates, decided not to examine the merits or implications of the targeted killing program, he has limited the case to the procedural question of whether Anwar al-Awlaki is willing and able to bring the suit himself, and whether the judiciary should insert itself into the issue.

In my opinion, the argument that, “…Awlaki must show that his son is willing yet unable to bring the suit himself,” is laughable in the extreme. The man is under constant threat of assassination. Would you turn yourself in to a government who is actively trying to kill you? Would you throw yourself upon the mercy of a court that hasn’t even ruled on whether it has jurisdiction in the case?

However, Judge Bates has seemed skeptical of such arguments. “Why shouldn’t I look at the public statements of al-Awlaki and conclude that he does not desire to bring this case?” he asked. “He doesn’t respect the U.S. court system. He doesn’t believe it has any jurisdiction over a Muslim?”

Curiously, virtually all the “public statements” the government used to make their case that Aulaqi is a notorious terrorist come from MEMRI and SITE, two “independent” internet sites devoted to releasing video of terrorist organizations. Although the government and now Judge Bates seem convinced by these videos, MEMRI and SITE are notorious at producing their videos without ever sourcing where they came from. This is not to state I think Al-Aulaki is an innocent bystander. However, if a major source of the government’s “evidence” about a given terrorist are videos whose source is unknown, that does little to reassure me that the government’s decisions about who is to be assassinated should be unreviewable.

The case had the promise of being one that could frame a necessary debate about executive power. Sadly, however,it has devolved from a major policy debate to a rather boring procedural decision. And given Judge Bates history, – (he was the judge responsible for dismissing two suits brought by Valerie Plame and her husband as well as dismissing the GAO’s attempt to learn with whom Vice President Cheney met in his secret energy conference. ) – the question of whether the Judge is likely to rule in favor of anyone challenging the powers of the executive branch is….

Certainly Doubtful.

Tags: ACLU, Assassination, Aulaqi, Awlaki, Bates, CCR, Certain Doubt, Executive, government, judge, legal, Much Ado About Nothing, Obama, president, tergeted killing, Thomas Vincent, Vincent
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