Politics

Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars has a report on how individuals blowing the whistle on corruption in Iraq rebuilding efforts are being treated–they’re being fired, demoted, and even imprisoned. Donald Vance reported that the company he was working for, Shield Group Security Co., was selling guns, land mines, and rocket launchers to insurgents, U.S. soldiers, State Department workers, and Iraqi embassy employees for cash. He didn’t know who to trust in Iraq, so he reported it to an FBI agent in Chicago. The result–he was thrown in to an American military prison outside of Baghdad for 97 days and subjected to harsh interrogations. Brayton also reports on how two whistleblowers brought a civil suit regarding corruption by their former employer, Custer Battles, winning a $10 million jury award, only to have it overturned by the federal district judge on the grounds that the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq was not part of the U.S. government.

I’m in the process of reading Akhil Reed Amar’s America’s Constitution: A Biography, and just came to the portion about the 16th Amendment, which instituted a federal income tax. I had already known that the tax was a very low percentage, but I hadn’t realized that only the top 1% of income earners paid any income tax. It would be a nice model to go back to, but not possible without dramatically reducing federal spending–the wealthiest Americans wouldn’t tolerate an extortionate percentage of taxation that would be required on the current level of spending, and given the huge amounts of money that are now a part of political campaigning, nobody gets elected without the support of at least some of the wealthiest Americans. (And those levels of spending are tied together–there’s huge money riding on political campaigns because there’s huge money and power in the hands of the federal government. The only way to reduce the former is to reduce the latter.) Here are the two paragraphs where Amar describes pre-Civil War and post-16th Amendment income taxes in the United States: Prior to the Civil War, at least seven states had adopted income taxes. High exemptions and graduated rates–the basic features of a progressive tax structure–were commonplace in these states. Congress followed this pattern when introducing a federal income tax in the 1860s. For instance, the 1865 federal tax code exempted all persons who made less than $600, taxed income between $600 and $5,000 at 5 percent, and subjected all income above $5,000 to a steeper 10 percent rate. Later federal laws tweaked the specifics but preserved the basic structure, under which more than three-quarters of federal revenue came from the seven wealthiest states: New York (which itself generated more than 30 percent of the total national intake), Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Under the law struck down in Pollock, incomes over $4,000 were taxed at 2 percent, all others were exempt. According to Treasury Department estimates, less than 1 percent of the population had been subject to this levy. … In the first income-tax statute enacted after the new amendment was in place, Congress once again opted for a progressive tax structure that exempted a large swath of low- and middle-income persons and taxed the rest at a sloping rate, beginning at 1 percent for an individual making $3,000 and topping out at 7 percent for income over $500,000. The $3,000 minimum threshold effectively limited the tax to the top 1 percent of the economic order. In 1916 the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the new tax law, expressly rejecting the notion that the “progressive feature” of the tax somehow rendered it unconstitutional. The American People had spoken and–this time, at least–the Court listened.

Steve Tucker ended a ten-year federal prison sentence last year. He served his time for selling light bulbs–specifically grow lights–that, while themselves legal, were sold to some customers that were using them to grow marijuana. Even though he and his brother asked any customers who so much as mentioned marijuana to leave and refused to sell any products which had any visible references to marijuana, they were successfully prosecuted on conspiracy charges because they had knowledge that some of their customers were using their products to grow marijuana. His brother Gary, who was given a fifteen-year sentence that was reduced to ten after a successful petition to apply a change in policy from the U.S. Sentencing Commission, died of cancer at about the time his sentence was served. ...

Robert Greenwald’s “Fox Attacks: Iran” compares Fox News coverage leading up to the war in Iraq with what they’re airing today about Iran. Anonymous (2007-08-23): Here we are once again considering the terrorist nation of Iran. A nation that controls Palestine through Hamas, Lebanon and Syria though Hezbollah, and Iraq through the Mahdi army, untold numbers of insurgency and militant organizations and even Al Qaeda. Iran is closing in quickly on the ability to mass produce nuclear weapons while our politicians are arguing over whether or not they are even a threat to the region, and our own nation. Israel, as I have said before, does not have the luxury of debating this issue until the day it is confirmed that the Iranian nuclear program has in fact produced it's first reliable weapon. Israel has nuclear weapons but will they use them? It is a strongly held belief that only the United States can deliver a conventional strike devastating enough to impact the Iranian nuclear program, however, if the United States does not do that and soon, Israel will be forced to consider the nuclear option as it's only reliable means of ensuring it's continued existence.When considering the possible destruction of your entire population by nuclear assault, the nuclear option does not seem so terrible in light of the consequence of waiting too long, or conducting an inadequate conventional strike. European nations, Russia and China have prevented measures that could have reigned in Iran many times before. Creating a situation whereby the one entity that could have made a difference (United Nations), is instead provoking the inevitable destruction of either Israel or Iran or possibly even the destruction of both nations.Iran has created a reality on the ground throughout the Middle East that provides the ultimate fallback. Iran's arming, training and positioning of Hezbollah, Hamas, the Mahdi Army, and literally hundreds of other militant assets means that at a moments notice Iran could create complete chaos throughout the entire region. Imagine all of these groups being coordinated by Iran's military machine causing the cessation of trade throughout the region, the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians in countries throughout the Middle East, and the successful overthrow of governments unable to respond quickly enough to such an unconventional enemy.If the United States is unable or unwilling to confront Iran militarily within the next 12 months, world war three is almost a certainty. Because if Iran is able to get all their pieces in place before they are directly attacked, this chess game is over and no country in the world will be safe from the terrorist army they have been building up arming and training for over 30 years. China, Russia, Venezuela and many other countries have already chosen their allies in this struggle by supporting, supplying and defending Iran in it's quest for nuclear weapons and undying support of terrorism in all it's horrific forms and manifestations. ...

Payne Junior High School in Chandler, Arizona has suspended the 13-year-old son of Ben and Paula Mosteller for three days (reduced from five) for drawing a picture of a gun, an action which they characterized as a threat which they compared to the Columbine High School massacre in a discussion with his parents. The Arizona Republic reports that “The school did not contact police and did not provide counseling or an evaluate the boy to determine if he intended the drawing as a threat,” which suggests to me that they did not really consider it to be a threat. The boy’s parents described the picture as a harmless doodle of a fake laser, which did not show blood, bullets, injuries, or target any human. If the school really considered it a threat of an impending massacre, they should have treated it as one. Since they didn’t, why is it even worth a suspension? Is there more to the context that we aren’t being told, or are school administrators so irrational that they fear drawings of guns? Are there any adult males who didn’t draw guns along with cars, motorcycles, spaceships, monsters, aliens, and floor plans of secret hideouts when they were around 13? ...

Apparently Karl Rove’s adoptive father, Louis Rove, an oil geologist, was a gay man who was an avid fan of genital piercing, whose piercings were frequently pictured in Piercing Fans International Quarterly. (Via Stan Schwarz on the SKEPTIC list, who also reports that he personally met Louie Rove.)

The Bush administration, commenting on Congress’ expansion of the Executive branch’s warrantless wiretapping powers without needing approval of the FISA Court, says that the legislation is “just advisory. The president can still do whatever he wants to do." Constitution? What Constitution? (Via Talking Points Memo.)

Crooks and Liars has a video clip of Melanie Morgan and Naomi Wolf appearing on Chris Matthews’ Hardball to discuss Cheney’s position of 1994 about why invading and occupying Iraq was a bad idea. Morgan immediately descends into dissembling, claiming that 9/11 changed everything, when in fact it changed nothing about Iraq. Naomi Wolf calls her on it, and correctly describes how the Bush administration has engaged in deception and lies to get us into the war and to seize unconstitutional powers for the Executive branch. Morgan’s response to Wolf: “You’re going to look super in a burqa." Morgan seems to think that radical Islamic fundamentalists are about to take control of the United States, and that invading Iraq (one of the few countries in the Middle East which actually had a secular government) and turning it into a breeding ground for radical Islamic insurgents is an essential step to prevent it from happening. That’s wildly insane. The Cheney of 1994 was exactly right in his predictions of what would happen if we invaded Iraq, and no one has yet explained what changed his mind. September 11 is not an answer to that question. I think part of the answer can be found in James Mann’s Rise of the Vulcans–groupthink from the Project for a New American Century crowd infected him, and he thought he could be at the center of power of a new American empire controlling the Middle East. But they were completely wrong about what would happen. (Via Talking Points Memo.) ...

Julian Sanchez points out the staggering misrepresentation by those arguing that the recent increase in wiretapping power amounts to nothing more than an update of FISA procedures to reflect current technology. (Hat tip to Tim Lee at the Technology Liberation Front.)

At Talking Points Memo.