The Occupation of Iraq

The United States should begin withdrawing troops from Iraq now.

The Bush administration led this country into this war based on a series of lies and slanted intelligence. It has violated treaties, American law and the international law in approving torture, kidnapping and other tactics that have cost this nation its moral standing in the world and, in so doing, diminished our capacity to lead. It has brought the Army to near ruin and hampered our ability to respond to other emerging challenges, including those within our own country.

The administration’s refusal to plan for the aftermath of the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s regime and its emphasis on awarding lucrative no-bid contracts to companies of its cronies have resulted an occupation that has allowed conditions in Iraq to deteriorate to the point of civil war.

This war of choice has cost the lives of more than 2,600 American service men and women and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians; it has wounded nearly 20,000 of our soldiers and made hundreds of thousands of Iraqis homeless.

It has inflamed passions in the Middle East.

It has made Iraq the leading terrorist training ground in the world.

It has made Iran the leading power in the region.

It has driven up the price of oil.

It has undermined the security and stability of Israel.

It has sucked our treasury dry.

There is nothing in the record of the Bush administration or the rubber stamp Republican majorities in the House and Senate that provide any reason to believe that they are capable of rescuing our interests from Iraq by prolonging our involvement there.

Republicans say “stay the course.” I ask, “What course?” Where is there any sign of a coherent strategy in Iraq? Our soldiers are on extended duty in Iraq. There have been too few of them there from the start for us to have a chance to stabilize the country. And they are now caught in the middle of a civil war. The Army is at the point of breaking.

The Bush administration and the Congress have been in denial for too long. There are no good choices left to us in Iraq now.

We must extricate our army from Iraq while there is still time to do so and while there is still the possibility that a full-fledged civil war can be averted.

Answers are Not What's Needed

Today's Advertiser editorial portrays Boustany as outraged at FEMA's refusal to answer his questions about why Cameron didn't get the cleanup support that was accorded to parishes in other districts.

The sense is that he's doing his best.

It's not good enough.

Cameron parish doesn't need him to ask the question: "Why, why, oh why?" to an unresponsive FEMA.

Cameron parish needs the same support parishes in other districts are getting.

It needs effective action. By the time FEMA decides on what excuse it wants to use there'll be nothing left to help Cameron with.

Boustany should be doing more than waiting impotently for excuses. He should be demanding equity and action--and making it clear that the administration can't count on his support if it doesn't support his district.

But that's not what we see happening is it?

Risking a chummy relationship with the Republican leadership -- and its "leadership" PACs would mean putting his district ahead of his party.

"He talks to us, but he listens to them — and his record proves it."

We need a change.

(.....Sorry Charlie.)

A tank of gas, a world of trouble

Whether it's $3 a gallon gasoline, spiraling violence and political instability in the oil-producing regions, or evidence of global warming and climate change, there are signs around us that the petroleum-based economy upon which the world has operated for more than a century has entered a transition period.

This Chicago Tribune story (the linked is to a version in the Austin American Statesman) points out just how fragile this economic infrastructure has become.

Here are a few key paragraphs:

By now, most Americans realize that something is profoundly awry in the global oil patch.

For most drivers, the evidence is obvious: record-high fuel prices that have surpassed last year's spikes after Hurricane Katrina.

Yet to fully grasp the scope of the crisis looming before them, Americans must retrace their tankful of gasoline back to its shadowy sources. What that journey exposes is a globe-spanning energy network that is so fragile, so beholden to hostile powers and so unsustainable that our car-centered lifestyle seems more at risk than ever.

"I truly think we're at one of those turning points where the future's looking so ugly nobody wants to face it," said Matthew Simmons, an energy investment banker in Houston who has advised the Bush administration on oil policy. "We're not talking some temporary Arab embargo anymore. We're not talking your father's energy crisis."

What Simmons and many other experts are talking about is a collision between geology and geopolitics.

The story traces the contents of one tanker truck full of gasoline and diesel delivered to a Marathon Oil station in South Elgin, Illinois. The paper claims it's the first time anyone has ever been able to do this kind of analysis and credits Marathon with providing them access to the data.

Read where the roots of this 7,000-gallon-plus lead:

On the hydrocarbon menu that night, in rounded figures:

• Gulf of Mexico crudes: 31 percent

•• Texas crudes: 28 percent

•• Nigerian crudes: 17 percent

•• Arab Light from Saudi Arabia: 10 percent

• Louisiana Sweet: 8 percent

• Illinois Basin Light: 4 percent

•• Cabinda crude from Angola: 3 percent

•• N'Kossa crude from the Republic of Congo: 0.01 percent

For five months, from September through February, other fuel shipments to the station were analyzed for their crude composition. Molecules swirled through the South Elgin Marathon's gas pumps from Nigeria, Iraq and Venezuela, as well as from declining oil fields in the United States.

Taken together, they revealed the immense human costs, the technical investments, the hardball politics, the hidden exploitation and, ultimately, the alarming fragility of America's epic oil addiction — as seen through the prism of a local gas station.

Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Angola, and Republic of Congo. Reads like an itinerary from an axis of chaos tour.

The article goes on to say that the U.S. generates eight percent of the world's oil, but consumes a quarter of it. And the cost of getting that oil (measured in terms of dollars, political military risks) is steadily increasing.

The United States gulps a quarter of the crude pumped on the planet, industry critics point out, yet it sits atop just 3 percent of the reserves.

"You can drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, on every continental shelf and atop every hill in America for that matter, and you still won't reverse the fact that our oil production is in permanent decline," said Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., a senior member of the House Science Committee. "We're just sopping up what's left, digging ourselves into a deeper hole."

What I find particularly troubling about the current so-called Energy Policy of the Bush administration is its denial of this reality. The administration is committed to oil, the companies that extract it, and the countries that sit atop it, regardless of the economic, political and military costs that policy inflicts on the country.

It has refused to impose tougher efficiency standards on the auto industry. It's been three decades since those standards were set and administrationistration and the Republican Congress refuse to even prod the auto industry to build more fuel efficient vehicles.

As the article hints at, energy efficiency is an issue that has economic, political and environmental implications. Energy diversification holds tremendous potential for Louisiana and the Seventh District. Our strong agricultural base (jeopardized by trade agreements) would benefit greatly from the creation of new markets for sugar cane and other crops that could be used in the formulation of bio-fuels. Louisiana is also rich in other bio-mass products (such as wood chips) which also lend themselves to use in bio-fuel products.

Our dependence on foreign oil also binds our fate to countries and governments which don't necessarily share our interests or values (most of the terrorists on the planes involved in the 9/11/01 attacks were from Saudi Arabia). With domestic production declining as a natural course of events, our depenforeignn foreigh oil is fore-ordained unless we move to break that dependence on oil and the entanglements that accompany it.

We are an inventive people, a nation of entrepreneurs and inventors. The energy challenges we face are the kinds of challenges that have historically drawn the talents of our best, brightest and most inventive to the task at hand. But national policies based on denial of the challenge puts off that creative response and increases the likelihood that shocks to the system will be more severe and more disruptive than they need be.

My commitment is to work to in Congress to create a new national energy policy that frees the entrepreneurial creativity of our people to respond to this challenge while at the same time limiting the social and economic disruption that shocks to the current system might produce.

Innovation is a core American trait. Current national energy policy is denying us the opportunity to have that talent brought to bear on a matter of pressing national need.

You can help change that with new 7th District representation in Congress.

Bush's FEMA Stiffs Boustany, Seventh District

It was only two years ago that then-candidate Charles Boustany was telling the people of the Seventh District that one of the chief reasons they should elect him was his close ties to the Bush Administration. There was the now mysteriously absent picture of Boustany with the President in the White House in what amounted to a drive-by photo-op.

As the saying goes, the proof is in the pudding. And, today there was yet another piece of evidence that Charles Boustany is little more than a warm seat and a reliable vote for the administration (and the House GOP leaders who help fund his campaign).

Boustany told reporters that FEMA has ignored his appeal of their decision not to include the storm-damaged parishes in his district in the extension of federal support for cleanup work.

Charles Boustany says he wants another term in Congress. And, why not? The pay is good. He's not doing much of any work and his PAC masters are keeping his campaign coffers flush.

The fact that FEMA and the Bush administration have repeatedly failed his constituents in the wake of Hurricane Rita is, apparently, just one of those unfortunate things. But, Boustany is anxiously looking forward to his next opportunity to cuts taxes for the wealthy and impose further burdens on the middle class.

Yep, Charlie's done a heck of a job!

Network Neutrality: AT&T, Verizon have failed this test before

Much like a decade ago, telecommunications reform legislation will await the new Congress that will be elected in the fall elections.

I've been involved in telecommunications issues for just about the entire decade since the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. That act is a near-classic example of the law of unintended consequences, as well, as the ability of powerful corporations to bend the law to their will over time when they are committed to a strategy.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 had as its intent the unleashing of competitive forces in the telecommunications industry. When it became law, the Internet was not widely used although it had crossed its tipping point and was well on its way to widespread adoption and use. Reed Hundt, who was FCC Chairman during the period when the bill was in its formative stages and finally became law, wrote a book about that era that is at once enlightening and familiar.

The fact that telecommunications reform is on the table again is at least partially the result of the phone and cable companies so successfully turning that attempt to promote competition into a law that instead secured their place as dual controllers of network access, that is, duopolists. As a result, network innovation has been stifled, prices for network access and services remain artificially high, and America has fallen from the global lead in broadband access to somewhere in the teens back in the pack.

With Republicans in control of both houses of Congress, it should come as no surprise that the bills that promise 'reform' actually constitute a spanking new round of corporate giveaways, this time to the phone giants AT&T and Verizon. One sticking point that appears to have prevented these bad pieces of legislation from becoming law has been the issue of network neutrality.

The fire storm was set off by AT&T Chairman Ed Whitacre when he said his company was going to charge companies who used AT&T's network a premium if they wanted their content to get preferential treatment. Whitacre's proposal would put control of consumer's Internet experience under the control of the network operator from which they bought their network services.

This issue had actually be bubbling in the background for a number of years as companies toyed with the idea of creating branded Internet appliances that only happened to work with their networks. I recall that at a community networking conference in Austin in 2000 that Gary Chapman of UT-Austin said that was one of his concerns about the course the Internet was taking as the broadband era emerged. Not surprisingly, SBC was the main phone company in Austin, Ed Whitacre was the CEO and the company was advertising a kitchen-top device as a dream appliance that would find utility on its new broadband network. SBC became AT&T in 2005 when it bought the former Ma Bell.

And while there have been all kinds of arguments laid our for and against the need for network neutrality legislation, one point that seems to have been missed is that the phone companies have had this test before and failed it miserably.

The test that they failed but that they claim they will pass this time is whether they can fairly run networks that are open to other providers that they intend to compete against. That is, can AT&T, Verizon and other network owners act as both wholesale network access sellers and network retail service providers. Their histories say that they cannot.

The philosophy that undergirds opposition to network neutrality legislation is that network owners (AT&T, Verizon and others) can abide by and meet the terms and conditions of the business arrangements they would make with content providers against which they would compete in the market place. That is, AT&T would enter into a contractual relationship with, say, Google to provide priority treatment for network packets carrying Google traffic.

As long as those packets contain, say, search results, the contract should be uncontroversial. Ah, but what if Google steps more boldly into video? What if Google created a movie and/or program download service that became hugely popular to the point that it was reducing viewing of cable offerings that were being carried over AT&T's Project Lightspeed fiber network? Would AT&T agree to those contractual terms at the expense of cannibalizing the revenues from its own IPTV service?

We have direct evidence that it would not abide by the terms of the contract and that evidence comes from the record of the Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs) actions to drive the Competitive Local Exchange Companies (CLECs) off their networks and out of business.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 set up a mechanism which was intended to create a means for service providers to compensate each other for allowing their respective customers to access those on other networks. It was called Reciprocal Compensation. The RBOCs (including the companies that will soon comprise AT&T: SBC, BellSouth, Pacific Telesys and Ameritech) agreed to this language, expecting full well that since they had all the customers, the CLECs would pay them money to connect their small based of customers to the RBOC customers.

The CLECs, who were sold access to RBOC networks on a wholesale basis, happened to become home to a lot of dial-up Internet Service Providers just as Internet usage was exploding. As a result, Reciprocal Compensation dollars were reversed; that is, the RBOCs owed the CLECs money because so many of their customers were making calls to local ISP numbers in order to gain access to the Internet.

Confronted with this reversal of revenues and the potential loss of still more, RBOCs began withholding Reciprocal Compensation payments from CLECs, thereby depriving the CLECs of critical revenue and then citing the CLEC's resulting inability to pay for network access as the basis to shut them out of the network.

This was a case where the RBOCs were network wholesale access providers. The CLECs were competing with the retail service provider side of the RBOCs. When the competition began to erode the networks on the retail side, the RBOCs moved to undermine access on the wholesale side.

With their network ownership secured through predatory practices sanctioned by Republican control of the Congress and the FCC, AT&T and Verizon would now have consumers and content providers believe that they will now reform their behavior and honor business deals with content providers even when the results of those deals endanger the business models that they've bet their respective fortunes on.

They couldn't do it less than a decade ago when the stakes were lower and their network investments were smaller.

These companies, their predecessors and their allies have poured millions of dollars into lobbying and political action committees (PACs) to convince regulators, the Congress and the public that all they are interested in is the ability to operate like the free-marketeers they claim to be.

The history of these companies tells another story. That story is that they cannot respond in an ethical way to the contradictory forces that work upon them when they assume the role of network owner and service content provider. Their history is that when the revenues from their retail operations are threatened (in the new era it will be video services), they turn to eliminate the threat (in the new era it will be in the form of Internet-based video providers like Google, or Apple, or YouTube, or DemocracyTV, etc.

The surest way to do that is to do what they did to the CLECs: remove those threats by denying them access to their networks.

So, network neutrality is not a philosophical discussion about some free enterprise fantasy land conjured up by the phone companies; it is a real world response to the anti-competitive instincts of companies that believe they can get their way if only they throw enough money at enough members of Congress. When Republicans control Congress this plan has succeeded more than it has failed, at the expense of American consumers and small businesses.

To bring the national down to the local level, Charles Boustany and the entire Louisiana delegation voted against network neutrality legislation in the current Congressional term.

Lake Charles Union on Front Line of War Against the Middle Class

Last Saturday, I attended a rally at the Lake Charles Civic Center for members of International Machinists Union Local 470 who had been on strike against PPG for 64 days and made a small personal contribution to their strike fund. The rally represented an opportunity for me to tell those workers how their fight is bigger than they are.

Workers across the country in all sectors of the economy are losing ground to inflation despite the fact that we have an allegedly booming economy. The facts are that job growth during the Bush/Cheney years has been slower than during the Clinton years and wages have failed to keep up with even the so-called core inflation which, by the way, doesn't include food or fuel. I don't know about you, but everyone I know eats and uses fuel either to drive, cook or cool.

The constantly rising cost of healthcare is putting pressure on employers and employees, with those companies that do provide health coverage requiring employees to pay increasingly larger shares of their healthcare coverage costs. Then there is the matter of pensions. Employers have been cutting back on benefits to pensioners as the cost pressure of healthcare and the demands of investors to constantly increase profits combine to force employers to squeeze employees.

Those who argued for globalization and free trade claimed that the benefits resulting from that trade offset the losses in, say, manufacturing jobs that occurred here as a result. But, the loss of manufacturing jobs was only the beginning. Today, increasing numbers of so-called white collar jobs are being shipped overseas.

One of the primary proponents of free trade during the Clinton Administration, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin has even come around to admitting that the cost of globalization to middle class Americans has been higher than he anticipated. Rubin wrote recently:

"Prosperity has neither trickled down nor rippled outward. Between 1973 and 2003, real GDP per capita in the United States increased 73 percent, while real median hourly compensation rose only 13 percent."

Income inequality in Louisiana ranks 16th in the nation, according to one study.

This widening inequality gap comes during a time of record corporate profits, in the wake of a series of massive tax cuts for the very wealthy (which will only widen the gap), and unrelenting pressure at the gas pump and in the bills arriving in the mail.

So, I went to Lake Charles to support those union members and to let them know that they are fighting for a lot more people than just their 900 or so fellow union members at their plant. If you want to see whose side Charles Boustany is standing on, check out the list of PAC contributors to his past and current campaigns. Who interests do you think he's looking out for?

No doubt the operators of other plants in the Lake Charles are watching the outcome of this strike at PPG to see if the company can break this union and take away the pay and benefits that workers there have used to build good lives for themselves and their families.

Investor Warren Buffett has been quoted as saying that there is class warfare in the United States "and our side is winning!"

A forthcoming book argues that the "demand side" programs of the New Deal which promoted equality, opportunity, economic security, and upward mobility helped strengthen the nation's bonds to democracy which had been tested during the Great Depression. This widening gap of inequality, then, threatens not just our economic well-being, but ultimately our political order. Look no further than Latin America for lessons about what happens to political stability when the middle class is not growing or stable.

Under the current Republican administration and the current Republican Congress, the economic policy emphasis has been to comfort the comfortable and (at best) ignore the afflicted. We continue to follow that path at great peril to our republic.

So, there is a bigger fight underway in Lake Charles than just that strike, the significance of which extends far beyond that community. I went to the Machinists' rally to stand with them and with the other members of the middle and working class who are running faster every day just trying to keep from falling behind.

The bargaining teams were supposed to return to the negotiating table on Wednesday. I have not yet been able to get any word on if any progress towards resolution has been made. More later when I do.

Angry at Allstate? You're not alone

If you've been following Allstate's threats to leave Louisiana if they're not allowed to drop hurricane coverage for most of south Louisiana you're probably puzzled. You might have thought, since the entire purpose of insurance companies is to, well, insure risk, that the spectacle of an insurance company that refuses to insure risks means that something is seriously wrong with the industry.

If you suspect that the insurance industry and Allstate took huges losses last year you'd be right. If you think that justifies the gigantic rate increases and outright cancellations we've seen in the wake of Katrina and Rita you'd be wrong. What neither the insurance corporations or the local media are saying is that, in fact, last year was a hugely profitable year for the insurance companies and Allstate in particular. It's not that they're not profitable it's that they don't consider our piddling little homeowner's policies profitable enough. The Los Angeles Times has the story: Industry profits rose 18.7% and their surplus rose 7% to nearly $427 billion. They are pleading a hardship to justify their exploitive behavior that simply does not exist. How'd it happen that our year of disaster brought record profits to insurers?

...the industry's remarkable performance also reflects a dozen-year effort by insurers to insulate themselves from the most extreme financial consequences of catastrophe by, among other things, shifting risks previously borne by companies to policyholders and the public...

While premiums for homeowners insurance have increased by more than half since the early 1990s, coverage, especially in disasters, has shrunk. Historically, insurers covered a little more than 60% of total losses in disasters, according to Hartwig, the industry economist. During the 2004 hurricanes in Florida, they covered less than 50%, according to Hartwig's numbers. During Katrina, he said, they covered about 30%, due in part to the high flood damage...

The ratio of claims and expenses to premiums was among the lowest in three decades...

"If last year's hurricane season had occurred 10 years ago, it would have been devastating for the company," said Allstate Vice President Fred F. Cripe in an interview. "Last year, it was merely disappointing."

Hey, if Allstate thinks it is disappointed it ought to talk to folks down here in Louisiana's coastal 7th district who are sorely disappointed in a company they've invested their money in for years trying to abandon them a year of hardship for us and a year of record profit for Allstate! That's disappointment!

If all that makes you angry then you'll be happy to discover that you are not alone in thinking that the most appropriate response to that corporation's arrogance is exasperated satire.

Greg Peters, inking Snake Oil for the Independent, has a searing take this week on the ugly greed that is revealed by the "good hands people."

(click for a larger image.)


But that's not all--Jon Stewart's Daily Show recently covered Allstate's decision to stop providing hurricane coverage on the coast.

That satirical take on the issue is real gem. It opens with hurricane footage representing the storms which are "endangering what we hold most dear....Insurance profits." One great segment is an interview where an apologist for the insurance companies who encourages us to regard the insurance companies as victims is treated with the respect it deserves. That is to say: None. But the riff hilarious.

They also interview a man who has been denied coverage because his home is in the path of hurricanes. I defy you to guess where he lives. (Hint: it's neither Erath nor Cameron.)




Deregulation of the financial industry by the Republican Congress brought down barriers between retail banks, commercial lending and insurance companies turned businesses like Allstate from staid but safe companies serving to pool risk for its customers into corporations with dreams of sky-high profits. It encouraged insurers to regard the insurance side of their business as the steady cash cow from which to siphon resources for investment in the more "productive" segments of the economy. That, inevitably, leads to the kind of behavior that we saw in Louisiana where Allstate decided not to "reinsure"--buy insurance for itself--in Louisiana before the storms hit. That cost the company about $2 billion dollars in largely uncovered losses.

The irony of an insurance company failing to adequately insure itself would be delicious for consumers struggling to responsibly keep up their own payments if it weren't for the fact that the Louisiana ratepayer will be the one to pay the extra costs associated with Allstate's irresponsible decision to go without insurance. (If a consumer did the same there'd be no one to make good his or her loss.) In other parts of the Gulf Coast Allstate did purchase reinsurance and the citizens of those states won't have as much money to make up. The injustice of this wasn't lost on at least one regional legislator--Don Cravins. He noted:

"You didn't take care of your business, so the citizens of Louisiana have to pay for your mistake?" said Sen. Don Cravins Sr., D-Opelousas, who questioned whether the company followed sound guidelines and purchased reinsurance. "Now that you've had a loss, you put the burden on the backs of Louisiana citizens to pay for your shortcomings."

Allstate gambled that a hurricane would not hit Louisiana last year and did not not buy reinsurance, which cost the company $2 billion in claims, said Allstate attorney Edward Collins in testimony before a joint legislative insurance committee Tuesday.

Cravins is absolutely right about this as far as it goes. What he doesn't mention is that the way the Republican Congress' deregulation of the insurance industry encouraged corporations like Allstate to skimp on protecting its ratepayers' pooled resources in order to invest "more profitably" elsewhere. Is it legal? Yes. Is it right? No. And deregulation makes it easy.

The saying goes: "Follow the money." The insurance industry has spent $252,966,627 to lobby Congress since 1990. Much of it is PAC money and 2/3 of it has gone to Republican party.

Boustany, according to Open Secrets, has accepted nearly $100,000 dollars and counting in contributions from the financial sector effected by deregulation. About 2/3 of that figure was PAC money. It's easy to do the math.

We need to elect representatives that are not in thrall to huge, greedy corporations that do not have our interests at heart. We need a change in the 7th district.