Thought Docket

John Murtha (D-Bag, Pennsylvania) made more news this past weekend. The Pittsburgh Post Gazette’s Critics claim John Murtha is capitalizing on a corrupt system, but he’s not apologizing tells

JOHNSTOWN, Pa. — This city once had a steel-based economy and critics now say it has a John Murtha-based economy but, in what used to be the 11-inch rolling mill of Bethlehem Steel, nobody’s apologizing.

And later

Johnstown made Mr. Murtha the king of earmarks. Prone to floods and wracked by unemployment when steel collapsed, the city turned to its congressman to save its economy and Mr. Murtha, for his part, turned to the federal budget.

And

On a suburban hillside, in a development called the John P. Murtha Technology Center, just a stone’s throw from the John P. Murtha Airport, a group of locals set up Concurrent Technologies Corp., a nonprofit research and technology combine that found its footing with Murtha-directed earmarks.

Today CTC employs 1,400 people with 21 offices around the country and has a payroll of $66 million — $40 million of it for the 800 employees stationed in Johnstown. A few miles from CTC’s headquarters sits Kuchera Industries, another garage startup that struggled through the 1980s and then found itself flush with defense contracts under Mr. Murtha’s tutelage.

Multinational firms, from Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman to DRS Technologies and the Norwegian firm Kongsberg Gruppen, have set up outposts here, capturing defense contracts and partnering with local companies such as CTC and JWF.

No one has tallied the amount Mr. Murtha has steered into his district, which sprawls well beyond the Conemaugh Valley and reaches the West Virginia border. Conservative estimates are in the billions of dollars, most of it lobbied from federal agencies or won through open bidding or, more controversially, steered home directly during his 35-year career.

And, unbelievably, Murtha had this to say

“If I’m corrupt, it’s because I take care of my district.”

Well there you have it. Murtha has just committed a cardinal sin: blurting out the truth.

In all of the outrage over AIG bonuses and executive pay, we have lost site of the bothersome patronage and ethical scandals that abound in Congress.

Besides Murtha, we have Countrywide Financial and the ”friends of Angelo” program that provided sweetheart loans to Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D., N.D.) and Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd (D., Conn.).

And then there is Barney Frank. This article from the New York Times in September of 2003 tells of the Bush administration’s proposal to establish a new oversight office for Fannie and Freddie.

The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.

Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.

The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios.

The plan is an acknowledgment by the administration that oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — which together have issued more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt — is broken.

This is at odds with the conventional assumptions, namely that somehow the Bush administration stripped away all manner of protection. Sorry. Fantasy. But the article does indicate Barney Frank’s feelings about additional oversight

“These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ”The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”

So, you see, it really is about affordable housing.

The likes of Murtha, Frank, and Dodd pose much greater threats to our long-term economic viability than $160 million in bonus payments.

I wonder why Rahn Emanuel wasn’t out in front, leading the charge, rallying the troops for an all-out assualt on AIG executives and their bonuses. Could it have anything to do Rahm’s time on the board of Freddie Mac, as described in the Chicago Tribune’s Rahm Emanuel’s profitable stint at mortgage giant?

Before its portfolio of bad loans helped trigger the current housing crisis, mortgage giant Freddie Mac was the focus of a major accounting scandal that led to a management shake-up, huge fines and scalding condemnation of passive directors by a top federal regulator.

One of those allegedly asleep-at-the-switch board members was Chicago’s Rahm Emanuel—now chief of staff to President Barack Obama—who made at least $320,000 for a 14-month stint at Freddie Mac that required little effort.

As gatekeeper to Obama, Emanuel now plays a critical role in addressing the nation’s mortgage woes and fulfilling the administration’s pledge to impose responsibility on the financial world.

Emanuel’s Freddie Mac involvement has been a prominent point on his political résumé, and his healthy payday from the firm has been no secret either. What is less known, however, is how little he apparently did for his money and how he benefited from the kind of cozy ties between Washington and Wall Street that have fueled the nation’s current economic mess.

And

In business as in politics, Emanuel has cultivated an aggressive, take-charge reputation that made him rich and propelled his rise to the front of the national stage. But buried deep in corporate and government documents on the Freddie Mac scandal is a little-known and very different story involving Emanuel.

He was named to the Freddie Mac board in February 2000 by Clinton, whom Emanuel had served as White House political director …

The board met no more than six times a year. Unlike most fellow directors, Emanuel was not assigned to any of the board’s working committees, according to company proxy statements. Immediately upon joining the board, Emanuel and other new directors qualified for $380,000 in stock and options plus a $20,000 annual fee, records indicate.

I wonder why Rahm isn’t taking charge now.

On Emanuel’s watch, the board was told by executives of a plan to use accounting tricks to mislead shareholders about outsize profits the government-chartered firm was then reaping from risky investments. The goal was to push earnings onto the books in future years, ensuring that Freddie Mac would appear profitable on paper for years to come and helping maximize annual bonuses for company brass.

The accounting scandal wasn’t the only one that brewed during Emanuel’s tenure.

During his brief time on the board, the company hatched a plan to enhance its political muscle. That scheme, also reviewed by the board, led to a record $3.8 million fine from the Federal Election Commission for illegally using corporate resources to host fundraisers for politicians. Emanuel was the beneficiary of one of those parties after he left the board and ran in 2002 for a seat in Congress from the North Side of Chicago.

The next time a democrat talks about tricks, schemes, and hatching plans, only the context will tell whether they are speaking about Dick Cheney or Rahm Emanuel.

By the way, the article states that George Bush ceased  making appointments following an assessment by then head of a federal oversight agency for Freddie Mac, Armando Falcon, that the patronage system was useless. Thank you President Bush.

Will Congress consider legislation to retroactively tax Emanuel’s lucre so generously provided by Freddie Mac at, oh, say 90%?

I was reminded of one of my favorite “laws”, the law of unintended consequences, by Security Worries in the Suburbs in today’s Washington Post. The article concerns Alexandria, Virginia, a city that borders the Potomac River and which is about 6 miles south of the District of Columbia.

An outcry is growing in Alexandria over a prospect no one seems to like: terrorist suspects in the suburbs.

The historic, vibrant community less than 10 miles from the White House markets itself as a “federal friendly zone.” But it has turned decidedly unfriendly to news that the Obama administration might move some detainees from their highly controlled military fortress at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Alexandria to stand trial at the federal courthouse.

“We would be absolutely opposed to relocating Guantanamo prisoners to Alexandria,” Mayor William D. Euille (D) said. “We would do everything in our power to lobby the president, the governor, the Congress and everyone else to stop it. We’ve had this experience, and it was unpleasant. Let someone else have it.”

The 2006 death penalty trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, who was convicted of conspiring in the terrorist attacks of Sept, 11, 2001, turned the neighborhood into a virtual encampment, with heavily armed agents, rooftop snipers, bomb-sniffing dogs, blocked streets, identification checks and a fleet of television satellite trucks.

According to USA Today results, Alexandria’s 70,000 voters tilted by a 5 to 2 ratio for Obama. I wonder if any of those 50,000 Obamaniacs will give any thought to the possibility that citizen concerns such as theirs were anticipated by the Bush administration and were included in the decision making that led to the opening of Guantanamo Bay in the first place.

I find Alexandria’s NIMBY attitude to be, to put it politely, hypocritical. Elections do matter.

This evening, President Obama is conducting a press conference. The focus of his prepared remarks is on his economic recovery plan. It was all pretty ho-hum.

But on February 9th, President Obama also gave a press conference. Also to explain the stimulus package. After that press conference, on MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olberman, Chris Matthews showed, again, just how much in the tank he is for Obama.

I thought the president showed his analytical mind.  I think there is a challenge to the presidency right now.  These are complicated issues.  We want to hear the president‘s mind working.  We don‘t just want to hear his final decision, his bottom line—that‘s useless to us.

The bottom line is useless? There’s no need to hear the final decision? It’s really the process? I thought Obama was elected because on Iraq, his bottom line was that he was against the war at a time when he had no vote, and that he was going to bring the troops home ASAP?

We want to know how he gets there.  How does this decision to push the stimulus package get us down the road to a turned-around economy?  How does it work?  He tried to explain that.

I guess the explanation was so lucid, so accessible back in February, that he wanted to try again today. Said Matthews then

He said, “We are trying to stop the downward cycle, the downward spiral.  We are trying to put money in people‘s pockets.  We‘re trying to loosen up the credit markets.  We‘re trying to get public works going out there to get jobs created.”

Matthews is pleased that the President is not trying to accelerate the downward cycle? He is elated that Obama is not trying to take money out of people’s pockets, that he is not trying to tighten the credit markets or reduce or eliminate public works projects?

He said, the benchmark, the metric he should be judged by, in the fist instance is 3 million to 4 million new jobs.  After that, certainly, the credit market is loosening up, and after that, the housing situation stabilized.

Matthews sounds like a mouthpiece for the administration.

He was precise and I was very impressed with his amazing ability standing in front of the American people on a roadblock—by the way, you couldn‘t find a channel, hardly, that he wasn‘t on tonight—a roadblock of American attention and he was at his best intellectually.  I think it was great example of how his mind works.  And I think we‘re going to have to know that in the next four years—how is he thinking on this thing.

Huh? You could probably hear Matthews saying the above while drooling a little bit.

I think he showed his ability to go around the room with a flashlight to the question you put.  You ask a question which is a holistic question, so let me look at this part, that part.  He does—what a mind he has.  And I love his ability to do it on television.  I love to think with him.

“I love to think with him.”? One almost gets the impression that Matthews would like to do more than “think”. So…

When Obama turns the corner too fast…Chris Matthews gets a broken nose.

It is becoming clear that Barack Obama, off the teleprompter, is a genuine danger to himself and to others, notably Democrats. During the campaign, Senator Obama was mostly spot-on with his stump speeches and was adequate in the debates. Now President Obama is still in a campaign mode. But his choice of communication channels - for example Jay Leno, town hall meetings - has led to recent embarrassing gaffes.

The Los Angeles Times Not bowled over by Obama’s Special Olympics joke tells of one Obama supporter that takes umbrage with his Leno appearance

When she met Barack Obama two years ago, Caitlin Cox proudly wore the two bronze medals she had won at the Special Olympics. The then-Illinois senator grinned as she showed him pictures of her signature bubble-gum-pink bowling ball and posed for photographs with her.

Cox, who has Down syndrome, excitedly recalls that meeting each time she sees Obama’s photo on a magazine cover or hears him mentioned on TV. Her ears perked up again Friday morning as her parents discussed the president at breakfast.

Her mother, Suzanne Thompson, told her that Obama had made a joke about the Special Olympics on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” on Thursday and that it might have hurt a lot of people. Cox, 21, dropped her head on the table and, after a brief silence, said the news made her sad.

Makes me sad, too. I had hoped for more. And later

Obama’s comment also hit close to home for David Axelrod, the president’s top political guru and a senior White House advisor.

Axelrod’s daughter, Lauren, is a longtime Special Olympian who has competed in swimming and track and field events.

Oh snap! Good one there, Barack.

Then, recently at a town hall meeting in California, speaking of AIG

“We had to step in, it was the right thing to do, even though it is infuriating,” Obama said, explaining why the government needed to bail out the troubled banks.

“The same is true with AIG,” he said. “It was the right thing to do to step in. Here’s the problem. It’s almost like they’ve got — they’ve got a bomb strapped to them and they’ve got their hand on the trigger. You don’t want them to blow up. But you’ve got to kind of talk them, ease that finger off the trigger.”

This comes on the heels of Charles Grassley’s (R-Iowa) ill-advised suggestion that AIG executives commit suicide. Let’s not forget that people in the same tax bracket as AIG executives pay, by far, the lion’s share of all individual income taxes. So I’d hate for all these executives to commit suicide. It would almost certainly increase the taxes I would have to pay.

Let’s leave the “rhetorical flourishes” to Joe Biden. He has had a lifetime to perfect his standup routine. Sure Joe sticks his foot in his mouth on a routine basis; but he remains an affable figure. One or two more comments such as the Special Olympics “joke” and Obama will have to spend considerable time and energy to shake the notion that he is a complete asshat.

As everyone knows, Senator Chris Dodd (D-Bag, Connecticut) has one purpose in life, namely to be Ted Kennedy’s drinking buddy. But now we know that he has another duty, and that is to look out for the AIG executives that are his constituents in Connecticut. According to CNN

Senate Banking committee Chairman Christopher Dodd told CNN Wednesday that he was responsible for language added to the federal stimulus bill to make sure that already-existing contracts for bonuses at companies receiving federal bailout money were honored.

Dodd acknowledged his role in the change after a Treasury Department official told CNN the administration pushed for the language.

Both Dodd and the official, who asked not to be named, said it was because administration officials were afraid the government would face numerous lawsuits without the new language.

Dodd, a Democrat, told CNN’s Dana Bash and Wolf Blitzer that Obama administration officials pushed for the language to an amendment designed to limit bonuses and “golden parachutes” at those companies.

“The administration had expressed reservations,” Dodd said. “They asked for modifications. The alternative was losing the amendment entirely.”

On Tuesday, Dodd denied to CNN that he had anything to do with adding the language, which has been used by officials at bailed-out insurance giant AIG to justify paying millions of dollars in bonuses to executives after receiving federal money.

He said Wednesday that the “grandfather clause” language “seemed like innocent modifications” at the time.

“I agreed reluctantly,” Dodd said. “I was changing the amendment because others were insistent.”

That sounds a little bit like the Obama administration being thrown under the bus. One question is, who put in the “grandfather clause”? Yesterday, Dodd said that changes were made “in conference”. Today, he states that the administration (staff of the Treasury Department) pushed for the provisions to permit AIG to give out the bonuses, and that he changed the amendment.

Right now, Treasury Secretary Geithner seems to be taking a lot of heat. You could say that he was given a tax mulligan. He won’t likely get a “grandfather clause” mulligan if he has responsibility. His days may be numbered. Dodd’s should be too.

My enmity toward Jack Murtha (D-Bag, Pennsylvania) is no secret to anyone reading Thought Docket. So I especially enjoyed Research Center’s Role Faces Scrutiny in today’s Washington Post.

A Pennsylvania defense research center regularly consulted with two “handlers” close to Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) as it collected nearly $250 million in federal funding through the lawmaker, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post and sources familiar with the funding requests. The center then channeled a significant portion of the funding to companies that were among Murtha’s campaign supporters.

The two advisers included a lobbyist for PMA Group, a firm with close ties to Murtha that is the subject of a federal investigation into whether it made illegal contributions by reimbursing donors to the Pennsylvania lawmaker and other members of Congress. The Electro-Optics Center also relied on advice from a longtime Murtha friend who now works on the congressman’s appropriations staff.

Federal agents are also exploring how the center obtained its funds after they received dozens of internal documents last year. It is unclear whether the records have become a central focus of the Justice Department’s probe, but they open a window into a largely hidden process in which powerful lawmakers can direct funds to pet projects.

The PMA Group appears throughout the news these days. In the Hawai’i Free Press of February 26, Business as Usual: Neil Abercrombie Votes to Kill Motion to Investigate Pay-to-Play Earmark Schemes tells of the effort of democrats to kill investigations into pay-to-play schemes involving PMA.

Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-HI) today continued to back-track on his empty promises to clean up corruption in Congress when he voted to kill a resolution introduced by Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) that would “investigate the relationship between earmark requests already made by Members and the source and timing of past contributions.”

The resolution came after a series of reports in the media indicated there was a vast network of corrupt Democratic lawmakers engaging in pay-to-play schemes on behalf of the PMA Group. As indicated in the resolution, the Washington Post reported on February 14, 2009 that they “examined contributions that were reported as being made by [the firm’s] employees and consultants, and found several people who were not registered lobbyists and did not work at the lobbying firm.” (Washington Post, 02/14/2009)

Yet Neil Abercrombie voted to block the ethics investigation despite Speaker Pelosi’s pledge that Democrats would “drain the swamp” from Washington’s culture of corruption:

“That’s why we need a new direction here. That’s why we must sever the link between lobbyists and legislation so that we’re here for the people’s interest, not the special interests.” (Press Conference, September 29, 2006)

I never really understood the doom and gloom that hung over the Republican party after their defeat in November. The Democrats are so high on power right now, there’s now way they could pass a drug test. But there’s no reason to believe that Reagan democrats and independents - and maybe even more - won’t tire of Reid, Pelosi, Murtha, Abercrombie, Frank, and Dodd, and fast. In fact, it is already starting to happen. Today on Rassmussen Reports, Generic Congressional Ballot says

Support for the Democratic Congressional candidates fell to a new low over the past week, allowing the GOP to move slightly head for the first time in recent years in the Generic Congressional Ballot.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 41% said they would vote for their district’s Republican candidate while 39% would choose the Democrat.

Investors now favor Republicans by a 46% to 36% margin, while non-investors would vote Democratic by a 45% to 33% margin.

Democrats began the year holding a six or seven point lead over the GOP for the first several weeks of 2009. Over the past month, the gap has been smaller, with Democrats holding a two-to-four point lead. It remains to be seen whether the current results reflect lasting change or statistical noise.

Stay tuned.

By the way. If you would like to help redeploy Jack Murtha, please pay a visit here.

Last Thursday’s Washington Post carried Intelligence Pick Blames ‘Israel Lobby’ For Withdrawal. The article tells of Charles W. Freeman, Jr.’s withdrawal for the post of chair of the National Intelligence Council. The chair is responsible for preparing reports that consolidate the views of the nation’s 16 intelligence agencies. According to the article

[Freeman] decried in an e-mail ”the barrage of libelous distortions of my record [that] would not cease upon my entry into office,” and he was blunt about whom he considers responsible.

“The libels on me and their easily traceable email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired, still less to factor in American understanding of trends and events in the Middle East,” Freeman wrote.

Referring to what he called “the Israel Lobby,” he added: “The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views.” One result of this, he said, is “the inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for US policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics.”

Ahh, the conspiracies are running deep. If in doubt, blame the Israel lobby. There has been a lot of on-line chatter over the choice of Freeman by Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair. Most cannot see how Blair could have possibly chosen Freeman. The main reason for this incredulity is that Freeman is on the Saudi payroll and has commercial connections to China.

But most of the online attention focused on Freeman’s work for the Middle East Policy Council, a Washington-based nonprofit organization that is funded in part by Saudi money, and his past critical statements about Israel. The latter included a 2005 speech he gave to the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations, where he referred to Israel’s “high-handed and self-defeating policies” stemming from the “occupation and settlement of Arab lands,” which he called “inherently violent.”

Is it too much to ask that the person we entrust to consolidate national intelligence is not a shill for the Middle East, which is a source for many of our threats and, presumably, the source of much of the intelligence developed by those 16 agencies?

On the same day, in the same Washington Post, there was the editorial Blame the ‘Lobby’. The Washington Post, not exactly a bastion of conservative thought, felt compelled to weigh in.

FORMER ambassador Charles W. Freeman Jr. looked like a poor choice to chair the Obama administration’s National Intelligence Council. A former envoy to Saudi Arabia and China, he suffered from an extreme case of clientitis on both accounts. In addition to chiding Beijing for not crushing the Tiananmen Square democracy protests sooner and offering sycophantic paeans to Saudi King “Abdullah the Great,” Mr. Freeman headed a Saudi-funded Middle East advocacy group in Washington and served on the advisory board of a state-owned Chinese oil company. It was only reasonable to ask — as numerous members of Congress had begun to do — whether such an actor was the right person to oversee the preparation of National Intelligence Estimates.

It wasn’t until Mr. Freeman withdrew from consideration for the job, however, that it became clear just how bad a selection Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair had made. Mr. Freeman issued a two-page screed on Tuesday in which he described himself as the victim of a shadowy and sinister “Lobby” whose “tactics plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency” and which is “intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government.” Yes, Mr. Freeman was referring to Americans who support Israel — and his statement was a grotesque libel.

For the record, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee says that it took no formal position on Mr. Freeman’s appointment and undertook no lobbying against him. If there was a campaign, its leaders didn’t bother to contact the Post editorial board. According to a report by Newsweek, Mr. Freeman’s most formidable critic — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — was incensed by his position on dissent in China.

But let’s consider the ambassador’s broader charge: He describes “an inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for U.S. policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics.” That will certainly be news to Israel’s “ruling faction,” which in the past few years alone has seen the U.S. government promote a Palestinian election that it opposed; refuse it weapons it might have used for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities; and adopt a policy of direct negotiations with a regime that denies the Holocaust and that promises to wipe Israel off the map. Two Israeli governments have been forced from office since the early 1990s after open clashes with Washington over matters such as settlement construction in the occupied territories.

What’s striking about the charges by Mr. Freeman and like-minded conspiracy theorists is their blatant disregard for such established facts. Mr. Freeman darkly claims that “it is not permitted for anyone in the United States” to describe Israel’s nefarious influence. But several of his allies have made themselves famous (and advanced their careers) by making such charges — and no doubt Mr. Freeman himself will now win plenty of admiring attention. Crackpot tirades such as his have always had an eager audience here and around the world. The real question is why an administration that says it aims to depoliticize U.S. intelligence estimates would have chosen such a man to oversee them. [emphasis added]

Again, this the Post editorial board speaking here. Not some right-wing or pro-Israel blog. But there are some milling around the Washington Post that see it a little differently from the editorial board.  In The Country’s Loss, op-ed columnist David S. Broder is downright depressed at the thought of a great American such as Freeman being denied the post.

The Obama administration has just suffered an embarrassing defeat at the hands of the lobbyists the president vowed to keep in their place, and their friends on Capitol Hill. The country has lost an able public servant in an area where President Obama has few personal credentials of his own — the handling of national intelligence.

And later

I know it was a sudden decision because I had breakfast with him that morning. He said then that he thought he could ride out the storm caused by his outspoken comments on policy toward China and the Middle East — and the enmity that he had incurred from lobbies supporting Israel and human rights in Tibet.

And later still

As retired Adm. Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence who appointed Freeman, told me the night before Freeman’s withdrawal, “We are so fortunate, with the challenges we face in Asia and the Middle East, that he could be persuaded to come back to government.”

None of that mattered much to the lawmakers — mostly Republicans but also some key Democrats — who joined the lobbyists in running him off. They flooded blogs and fed reporters Freeman quotes — many of them pretty startling. He once referred to a clash between Tibetan demonstrators and Chinese guards as a “race riot” and talked about Israeli efforts “to smother Palestinian democracy in its cradle.”

Startling? Why, yes. And words should matter, even if we are only talking about national security. But why no mention of being on the Saudi payroll? I think that David Broder might just have a little case of man love for Freeman.

Charles Freeman

I was amused by Bush May Have Set Back ‘Clean Coal’ Efforts by 10 Years, Report Says in today’s Washington Post.

The Bush administration’s decision to halt production of an experimental power plant that would capture and store carbon dioxide emissions underground may have set back “clean coal” technology in the United States by as much as a decade, according to a congressional report released at a hearing yesterday.

Also, cost estimates used as justification for killing the commercial-scale project known as FutureGen were grossly exaggerated because Energy Department officials did not account for inflation, according to a Government Accountability Office report, also released yesterday.

The two reports, commissioned by the House Committee on Science and Technology, represent the latest efforts by the Illinois congressional delegation to revive the plant, which would be built in the small Illinois town of Mattoon. President Obama took part in the delegation’s efforts when he was in the Senate.

Now I know that may liberals feel as though the country has emerged from interminable darkness, but, folks, it was 8 years. So I am having difficulty in understanding how Bush’s decisions could possibly set back “clean coal” by 10. The article explains that Bush killed the project just a year and a half ago

The Bush administration killed plans to build the plant in December 2007, just hours after Mattoon was chosen over two sites in Texas, triggering allegations that the move was political.

So, if the plans were on track in December 2007, how can we be 10 years behind today, when the project was killed less than a year and a half ago? Oh, this was a Congressional report. That explains it.

And how gauche was it of Bush to be, gulp, political? I mean, politics couldn’t possibly have come into play with, say, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s decades long effort to scuttle funding for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository (in Nevada)?

The article accuses the Bush administration of failing to properly factor inflation when comparing initial cost estimates with more recent cost estimates

The GAO report disputed the Bush administration’s contention that the costs had nearly doubled, from $1 billion to $1.8 billion, saying the figure would be $1.3 billion if adjusted for inflation.

Presumably, this was the excuse given in 2007 when the plans were killed. However, now the financial landscape has changed a little

The ultimate cost of the plant continues to be a matter of debate. Energy Secretary Steven Chu reasserted his desire yesterday to build the plant but cautioned that price estimates now range as high as $2.3 billion and that he would like to bring down the cost. He plans to meet soon with the FutureGen Industrial Alliance, private companies involved with the project, to determine how best to move forward. The alliance hopes to compete for $1 billion set aside in the economic stimulus package for “fossil energy research and development” projects.

The article ends with

Victor K. Der, acting assistant secretary for the Energy Department’s Office of Fossil Energy, said the technology needs to be tested at a commercial scale. He also said FutureGen is the only project of its kind close to the construction phase, calling it “near shovel-ready.”

So the project has been “killed” since December 2007 and is “near shovel-ready” today? I still don’t see where this technology could have been set back a “decade”. I’m going to chalk this one up to Bush Derangement Syndrome.

Clean Dream

An interesting exchange today between Jake Tapper of ABC News and Press Secretary Robert Gibbs during the daily briefing includes this

TAPPER:  . . . The president is going to sign a bill — the spending bill — which contains $8 billion in earmarks.  Democrats in the Senate are now calling for the president, if not make an effort to have it stripped in the Senate, to veto the bill. Evan Bayh has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today. I don’t fully understand this argument that this is — we’re moving forward.  This bill hasn’t even come to the president’s desk yet. If you guys are really serious, why not take the bull by the horns and get this stuff out of the omnibus spending bill?

GIBBS:  Let me try again.  What we’ve talked about before, this is the culmination of the legislative business from the previous fiscal year and the previous Congress. The president is greatly concerned, and I think that shows in the efforts that he’s taken to illuminate through transparency and accountability wasteful spending and earmarks in legislation.  That’s why he put this on the Internet.  That’s why he hasn’t asked for any in the past few years.  And the president believes that we can work with Congress to reduce wasteful spending in the future.

TAPPER: But why not now?

GIBBS:  Well, we are…

TAPPER:  I guess — you make it sound as if the legislation is written and it’s just waiting for him to sign, and it’s not.  It’s being worked on right now on Capitol Hill.  It’s in the progress of being assembled.  So it’s not that he comes to office and this is outstanding business.

GIBBS:  Well — well, it is outstanding business in the sense that typically appropriations bills are done before half the fiscal year is over.

TAPPER:  Right.  But it’s not too late to, like, tell Harry Reid:  If you send this to me…… with this $18 billion — this $8 billion…

GIBBS:  I think, as I said before, that the president will lay out some very clear objectives on how we move forward.  There will be, over the course of the next several years, dozens and dozens of appropriations bills that cross his desk.  And we’ll change the rules going forward, understanding that we have to deal with last year’s business.

Just to highlight a couple of choice quotes

• “the president believes that we can work with Congress to reduce wasteful spending in the future”
• “the president will lay out some very clear objectives on how we move forward”
• “over the course of the next several years, dozens and dozens of appropriations bills that cross his desk”
• “we’ll change the rules going forward”

So, everything about earmarks and wasteful spending is about the future, and going forward, and several years and dozens of bills, and laying out clear objectives. You see, Obama can’t strap on Congress because this is really about the business of Congress last year. Thank goodness that Obama was not constrained by the business of Congress last year when he “made a down payment” on his priorities in the colossal stimulus bill.

To make matters worse, this article on CBS news states

And when it comes to changing congressional rules on earmarks, Mr. Obama is being told to butt out – by none other than a top Democrat.

“I don’t think the White House has the ability to tell us what to do,” said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, telling reporters, “I hope you all got that down.”

“I saw those remarks,” said Gibbs, who then reiterated the president’s commitment to work with Congress to reduce wasteful spending.

Just none contained in the earmarks of the spending bill headed his way.

Oooh. Gibbs reiterates the president’s commitment to work with Congress to reduce wasteful spending. Funny, but I don’t recall that rhetoric, exactly, in any of Obama’s campaign speeches or in the debates. I remember something more forceful, more definitive.

Leading up to the inauguration, one question was whether Obama would be able to stand up the the House and Senate. When Steny Hoyer opens up a can on the White House, we now know the answer.