Informed Comment

This year’s Republican campaign may be the most dishonest in history. A couple of weeks ago I listed 10 major falsehoods and gaffes of Republican VP candidate Paul Ryan. He repeated several of them in his Tampa speech, and added a few more. In honest political debate, when a candidate says something that is not true, he is confronted by journalists and the public, and either gives evidence that it is true, or backs off. Ryan continues to insist on repeating known falsehoods, to the extent that even Fox Cable News lamented his dishonesty.

Voters need to ask who Ryan represents. It is people who make a million dollars a year or more. Everything he says is intended to produce policy that benefits them, and which hurts working people. Millionaires don’t like having to pay for government-provided infrastructure, or health care for workers, and don’t like having to put up with unions. The rest of us like driving on roads without potholes, over bridges that don’t fall down, and not being bankrupted when we need an operation. Since most Americans would be crazy to vote for policies that only benefit our three million wealthiest, out of 310 million, Ryan tries to appeal to workers with religion (banning abortion). He needs to put together a coalition of millionaires and some religious workers in order to win. But even that wouldn’t be enough. He has to get people on his side who would be hurt by his policies. And that requires that he simply lie to them.

So here are some new lies he just retailed, along with a reiteration of my earlier refutation of points drawn from his stock speeches, which he put right back in his Convention speech.

1. Ryan blamed the US credit rating downgrade on President Obama. But it was caused by the Republican Congress’s threat not to raise the debt ceiling. That is, the fault for the credit rating downgrade from AAA to AA belongs with… Paul Ryan.

2. Ryan continues to claim that President Obama said business owners did not build their own businesses. Obama said that business owners benefit from government infrastructure and programs, which they did not build. No small business owner has built an inter-state highway or bridge, but those are the means whereby their goods get to market. Ryan’s (and the GOP’s) talking point in this regard is a typical Karl Rove Big Lie, and among an informed electorate it ought to discredit them.

3. Ryan depicted Obamacare as virtually a turn to Soviet-style totalitarianism, as incompatible with liberal freedoms for the individual. But the logical conclusion is that Ryan’s running mate, Mitt Romney, turned Massachusetts into a Gulag.

4. Ryan slammed President Obama for not implementing the deficit-cutting measures recommended by the Simpson-Bowles commission. But he himself voted against Simpson-Bowles.

5. Ryan keeps attacking Prsident Obama’s stimulus program now. But in 2002 when then President George W. Bush proposed stimulus spending, Ryan supported it. “What we’re trying to accomplish today with the passage of this third stimulus package is to create jobs and help the unemployed,” Ryan told MSNBC in 2002. Ryan says that the stimulus had not positive effects, while economists say it saved or created millions of jobs and pulled the US out of a near-Depression.

6. Even more embarrassing, in 2010, Ryan asked for $20 million in stimulus money from Obama for companies in his district, then repeatedly denied requesting stimulus funds. He finally admitted he had done so, but continues to slam the stimulus program as a failure (even though the economy pulled out of a Depression as a result of it).

7. Ryan slammed President Obama for the closure of an auto plant that closed in late 2008 under George W. Bush. Ryan’s running mate, Mitt Romney, opposed Obama’s actual auto bailout, which was a great success and returned Detroit to profitability.

8. Paul Ryan charges that Barack Obama has ‘stolen’ $700 billion from medicare for his Obamacare. In fact, these expense reductions do not cut Medicare benefits, and, moreover, Romney and Ryan supported these reductions! The difference is that they would give the savings to the affluent, whereas Obama uses them to cover the presently uninsured.

9. Ryan continues to push his longstanding plans for a steal-from-the-elderly-and-give-to-the-rich medicare plan, which President Obama warned would cost ordinary recipients over $6000 a year extra. Politifact checked and rated Obama’s charge as correct, though they noted that the figures referred to CBO analyses of Ryan’s last plan, not his ‘new’ one, which hasn’t been subjected to similar analysis. Ryan certainly recently put forward a plan that would cost ordinary people that much extra.

10. Ryan neglected to note that under the tax plan he favors, Gov. Mitt Romney would pay less than 1% in annual federal taxes, highlighting Romney’s already low rate compared to ordinary Americans (slightly lower than Ryan’s own!) and putting the spotlight back where Ryan’s appointment was supposed to misdirect it.

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Will Fitzgibbon writes at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism

. . . . the last four weeks have largely been a positive time for whistleblowers and their supporters.

In late July, America’s newest whistleblower protection programme celebrated its first anniversary. The Obama administration promised the post-financial crisis legislation, introduced under the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, would ‘promote the financial stability of the United States by improving accountability and transparency in the financial system.’

Then on Tuesday, the provision offering financial rewards to whistleblowers was invoked for the first time. Almost $50,000 was awarded to an undisclosed whistleblower. The Dodd-Frank Act offers financial incentives to whistleblowers who make approved disclosures to designated government authorities where the government recovers costs of wrongdoing exceeding $1 m.

Elsewhere, however, the news has been less sanguine.

A Texas court decision highlighted an ironic twist in the law and cast doubt over the the protection afforded to American whistleblowers working abroad.

The case involves Mr Asadi, a dual national of Iraq and the USA who worked for GE Energy in Jordan on contracts with the Iraq Ministry of Energy. Mr Asadi alleged that GE hired a woman ‘closely associated’ with the Iraq Senior Deputy Minister of Electricity in order to ‘curry favour’ on GE’s behalf. Mr Asadi, believing the appointment could threaten GE’s negotiations with the oil-rich state and could violate the American Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, reported his concerns to the GE ombudsman and his supervisor. After that, Asadi alleges, it went downhill. He received a ‘surprisingly negative’ performance review and claims to have been harassed before finally being sacked less than one month after first airing his views.

If Asadi was hoping for relief under the Dodd-Frank Act, he was disappointed. Rejecting Asadi’s complaint, Judge Atlas in the Southern District of Texas held that Dodd-Frank whistleblower protections do not apply outside the United States of America.

‘If Asadi had reported first to the SEC, things could have been different,’ Kelton said from Washington.

Kelton sees an irony in the fact that Asadi was dismissed after raising complaints with his employer – the very course of action that the powerful American business lobby has sought to promote. When first legislated, the US Chamber of Commerce, of which GE is a member, issued a press release bemoaning the SEC’s encouragement of whistleblowers reporting directly to government authorities.

‘Not informing the company of a potential fraud and waiting for the SEC to act is the equivalent of not calling the firefighters down the street to put out a raging fire and instead calling the lawyers from the next town to sue over the fire instead,’ reads the statement.

‘It’s a catch-22,’ Kelton told the Bureau. ‘Asadi went to GE internal compliance, he got whacked, and they said ‘gotcha.”

But Kelton is convinced that the SEC will come down hard on any illegal retaliation on employees working in America or overseas. In public conversations, Kelton told the Bureau, ‘the SEC Office of the Whistleblower has made it abundantly clear they are looking very closely as cases like Asadi’s.’

Extra-territorial application of national laws will always be a sensitive issue given the concept’s close relation to sovereignty, argues anti-corruption academic Professor Indira Carr, Head of the School of Law at the University of Surrey.

Consequently, Carr sees that the overall trend of whistleblower protection moving towards ‘trying to convince companies to have voluntary procedures’ internally.

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Mirrored from The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

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The American Republican Party Convention in Tampa ironically coincides with the Non-Aligned Movement meeting in Tehran, Iran. Were nominee Mitt Romney to win, he has signaled a willingness to take military action against Iran’s civilian nuclear enrichment facilities, which the Iranians say are for the production of electricity via nuclear reactors, but which Romney claims are intended to produce a nuclear warhead. Romney is also open to sending US troops into Iran-backed Syria. The two conventions, one of white American millionaires and their hangers-on, and the other of global South countries unwilling to subordinate themselves to the American corporate establishment, are harbingers of a new global conflict that could have a dire impact on oil prices and the American and world economy.

Iran will use the conference to press for a Palestinian state and to challenge Israeli annexation of all of Jerusalem, as well as to assert its right to nuclear-generated electricity.

The United States and Israel were unhappy about the Non-Aligned Movement meeting in Iran, since they are attempting to isolate that country economically. Indeed, US sanctions and boycotts on Iran have reached the level of a financial blockade on Iranian petroleum exports. Tel Aviv and Washington, with some buy-in from London and Paris, are attempting to do to Iran what was done to Iraq in the 1990s, destroy its economy and reduce it to a fourth world country, in hopes of fostering regime change or at least changes in regime behavior.

There is no go evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program, and Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has admitted as much publicly. The goal appears to be to attempt to prevent Iran from becoming sophisticated enough to have a breakout capability (i.e. to have the ability quickly to construct a warhead were they to decide to do so). The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which Iran is a signatory but Israel is not, guarantees countries the right to close the fuel cycle so as to construct nuclear electricity generation plants. Israel is believed to have some 400 nuclear warheads, among the world’s largest stockpile, and PM Binyamin Netanyahu may be implicated in illegally smuggling nuclear components from the United States decades ago.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s “arrogant” pressure on UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon not to go to the Non-Aligned meeting in Tehran is said to have backfired, causing Ban to insist on attending.

Other defiance came from New Delhi. India is committed to remain among Iran’s largest oil markets, and is resisting US pressure and sanctions. It is even talking about allowing Iranian banks to operate in India, despite heavy-handed US threats.

Romney, who thinks Obama is not doing enough against Iran despite the latter’s current unprecedented financial blockade of that country, will likely come into fairly severe conflict with India over Iran.

Egypt’s new Muslim fundamentalist president Muhammad Morsi insisted, likewise, on going to Tehran, signaling his independence from Washington and a desire for Egypt to play a more wideranging role in the region. There is talk of Egypt restoring diplomatic relations with Iran.

Romney has slammed Obama for acquiescing in the overthrow of former Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, who had imprisoned Morsi and many members of his party. Romney will likely have tense relations with Morsi and the new Egypt.

The US is already perceived in the global South as acting irrationally and vindictively against their companies for perfectly innocent trade with Iran, and for making petroleum prices higher with its attempted financial blockade of that country. If Romney is, as he has suggested, to ramp up tensions with Iran further, and perhaps even intends military action, these global divisions will grow, perhaps to crisis proportions. Military action in the Gulf would certainly send gasoline/ petrol prices sky high and possibly further derail world recovery from the deep global recession.

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A white terrorist cell on a military base in Georgia plotted to assassinate President Barack Obama and stage a military coup. It murdered two former members of the cell. It bought $87,000 of military grade weaponry and land in Washington state. It planned to bomb a dam in Washington and poison its apple crop. It planned to take over Fort Stewart in Georgia.

The National Security Agency is massively and illegally spying on ordinary Americans. Peace activists are bothered by police and put on watch lists. Journalists like Amy Goodman have been beaten up for covering peaceful protests. The NYPD conducted extensive espionage on American citizens of Muslim heritage not only in NYC but far beyond their jurisdiction. Rep. Peter King of New York keeps holding hearings on the alleged radicalization of American Muslims (who are mostly pillars of the American establishment; King himself supports IRA terrorism).

But extremist white Christian soldiers want to kill the president and privately stockhold thousands of dollars worth of military grade weapons? Apparently if they hadn’t started murdering people they could have flown under the radar on all that.

All those right wing politicians and commentators who kept hammering Obama as a foreigner, a Muslim, illegitimate, a budding dictator– they created the hothouse atmosphere that fostered this kind of evil.

Indeed, apparently one of the four plotters was a page at the 2008 Republican Convention.

Republicans aren’t responsible for having crazed assassins among them– that would be guilt by association. But they are responsible for promoting irrationality by using fear, demonization, taboos, innuendo and coded race discourse. It is reasoned argument that makes for democracy. Karl Rove and Rupert Murdoch and Koch brothers’ rhetorical tactics release chickens that eventually will come to roost.

And don’t get me started about what the Bush White House would have done if minority members in uniform had gotten up such a plot against W. They’d have used it to put progressives in concentration camps. Because Democrats are not on the whole demagogic, this plot will likely not even get that much air play.

Nor will the National Rifle Association come under any pressure to stop insisting that extremists and the mentally ill have free and constant access to military grade weaponry.

What I’m afraid of is that demagoguery and semi-automatic weapons will keep dominating our society until something very bad happens, something which may cost us even more of our liberties.

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In recent months, the uprising in Syria has become bloodier and bloodier. In the beginning, in spring and summer of 2011, the crowds were largely peaceful. The Baath regime of Bashar al-Assad responded by placing snipers on rooftops of tall buildings and having them fire randomly into the protesting crowds. They would kill 5-10 people in each city, to raise the cost of the protests. If they were hoping that this official sniping tactic would tamp down the demonstrations, the Baath security officials were wrong. Sometimes they would pull up tanks and use them as pill-boxes, peppering the crowds with live ammunition. These techniques would kill 50-80 people a day fairly regularly, if you added up deaths in all the small towns and cities.

In response to the regime’s militarization of its repression of civilian protest, Syrians (including defectors from the army to the opposition) began using firearms themselves, against the regime. In order to root out the elements of the Free Syrian Army, which began basing themselves in some city quarters, the regime began last winter heavily bombarding those districts, risking large losses of civilian life in hopes of clearing the area of opposition fighters.

Then in spring, the regime began sending Ghost Brigades into small Sunni towns and villages aligned with the revolt, and committing massacres of men, women and children. The massacre at Houle, which a UN investigation determined had in fact been carried out by pro-regime militias, was a turning point. It encouraged more Sunnis to defect from the Alawite=dominated regime.

The rebellion in Syria has often been fiercest in Sunni working-class suburbs. One of these in Damascus, Daraya, had become a center of opposition. Last week the Baath army launched an attack on Daraya and over-ran it. But over the weekend, it appears that either the victorious troops or the Ghost Brigade irregulars accompanying them committed reprisal atrocities against the people there for daring defy them. Over three hundred bodies were discovered in the aftermath, according to opposition sources.

A British official condemned the Daraya killings as an atrocity on a new scale, which captures the reality pretty well. The UN secretary-general expressed shock and called for an investigation.

On Monday, regime forces pounded dissident neighborhoods around Damascus with artillery killing dozens, including innocent civilians. They also continued shelling in Homs and in the north.

The escalation in the loss of life has impelled some outside countries to a new sense of urgency. French President Francois Hollande announced that he would recognize a government in exile if one were formed by the Syrian revolutionaries. The US declared that approach premature.

As killing escalates to hundreds a day, that datum will put pressure on the governments of the world to act.

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1. Ron Paul declined the opportunity to speak at the Republican Convention because he does not “fully support” Mr. Romney. Paul as the leader of the Libertarian wing of the party and as someone who appeals to youth may just have done some damage, fomenting division at Tampa in Republican ranks.

2. Romney staffers were hoping for a bounce in Florida because the GOP convention is being held in Tampa. But former Republican governor of Florida Charlie Crist has come out for President Obama.

3. Some 60% of likely voters say Obama is in tune with the problems of women. Only 30% say that about Romney.

4. Romney is so tone deaf that he keeps talking about his Swiss and Cayman Islands secret bank accounts. His complaint that he is not going to manipulate his life by closing them reminds me of the BP chairman’s complaint that the Gulf oil spill was making his life miserable.

5. A new poll of likely voters gives Obama a 9-point lead in Pennsylvania. Romney is way behind in electoral college delegates and would need to shift a major state like Pennsylvania into the red column if he is going to win. But that strategy may not be feasible for him.

6. Romney’s relationship to Bain Capital and the continued tax benefits he received from it at a time he says he had already left, may reemerge as campaign issues.

7. The specter of Todd Akin of “legitimate rape” notoriety haunts Tampa. Mike Huckabee, who will address the convention, may be planning to defend the Missouri senate candidate who said women can’t get pregnant from being raped. Romney has been running hard away from Akin even as the GOP platform has adopted the “no exceptions” Akin plank in opposition to abortion. See number 3 above.

8. 53% of voters say that Obama “cares about the needs of people;” Romney? Only 39% say that about him.

9. The American public likes Federal services and does not want to give them up for the sake of tax cuts for billionaires. Romney’s plan? Cut Federal services so as to give his rich cronies tax breaks.

10. Romney had hoped for the undivided attention of the press and the public at Tampa, so as to launch himself into the last phase of the campaign. But he may well have to compete with Hurricane Isaac, especially if it gathers strength in the Gulf and slams into the coast.

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