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We're paying the legal fees of those CEOs?

NPR's Linda Wertheimer talked with New York Times columnist, Gretchen Morgenson, about Fannie and Freddie yesterday.  It's not a pretty story.

... WERTHEIMER: The Securities and Exchange Commission last week accused six former officials - including former CEOs of Fannie and Freddie - of fraud, of ensuring investors that their portfolio of bad loans was substantially smaller than it really was. What's the likely outcome, do you think, of those cases?

MORGENSON: Well, as you know, the SEC rarely brings these cases to court. They generally settle. Usually, it's a monetary settlement, a penalty of some kind. So I'm anticipating that will be what happens here. It would be unfortunate, because I think that it would be very interesting to see what comes out in a courtroom, in a trial, because then the American people will really have a far greater grasp of what these entities were doing.

WERTHEIMER: Now, if you just go back to six former executives in these two large institutions, you're still not reaching back far enough to identify the people who set this thing in motion.

MORGENSON: That's correct. A catastrophe this large cannot happen overnight. This really began in 1991 and '92, when Congress was considering legislation to protect the taxpayer for just these kinds of losses. At the moment, they were worried about the S and L crisis, which, as you remember, had arisen out of a lot of failed banks. They were worried that these kinds of losses might be in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's portfolio, and they wanted to craft legislation that would increase the strength of the regulator and that would increase the capital requirements of the companies - i.e., money that they would have to set aside for a rainy day. But what happened was the company did everything it could and successfully defanged that legislation.

WERTHEIMER: Why were they able to do that? How did that work?

MORGENSON: It was a traditional lobbying effort in which they threw money at legislators. Both sides of the aisle received donations from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It was a political machine par excellence.

WERTHEIMER: Now, is there any possibility of criminal prosecution for the losses at Fannie and Freddie? A lot of people did make a lot of money. Is there any chance that any of them will, you know, will have to take something more than a fine for what they've done?

MORGENSON: A very little likelihood. Certainly, the SEC is not allowed to bring criminal cases. They are not criminal enforcement entity. You know, we have seen absolutely no indication that the Justice Department is investigating Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And, you know, if you want real perverse paradoxes, let's face the fact that the American taxpayer, because we own these entities, are actually paying the legal bills of the executives who are being sued now by the SEC. ...NPR

What if Romney...?

EJ Dionne, political analyst and Washington Post columnist, is up in New Hampshire.  He asks, "What could possibly upend Romney?"

There are two debates scheduled for the weekend before the voting here. They present Romney with an opportunity to wrap things up — and a minefield of potential troubles. Or Iowa could anoint a new conservative alternative to Romney: A Rick Santorum surge or a Rick Perry comeback could create a new one-on-one dynamic here. Or Romney could simply fall far short of what are now soaring expectations in Iowa.

Still, what’s most astounding is that a Republican contest characterized all year by melodrama and comedy now seems headed toward the most conventional and predictable conclusion possible. It’s hard to believe that things will really end this way. The biggest upset would be no upset at all. ...WaPo

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Ed Schultz, speaking just now on his radio show, is in Iowa.  What he finds on the ground there is a serious resurgence for Rick Santorum.  Schultz, a confirmed pro-Obama progressive, admits he is pretty surprised at how convincing and well-spoken Santorum has become.  He sounded as though he wouldn't be surprised if Santorum pulled some nice numbers out of the Iowa caucus results.

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Ed Kilgore, writing over there in Steve Benen territory, reminds us about who is backing Romney.

So many conservatives have spent so much time bashing Mitt Romney as a “moderate,” a “RINO,” as (to use Rick Perry’s term) “Obama Lite,” and so forth, that you might miss the fact that there are card-carrying wingnuts who actually favor his candidacy. One of those is Ann Coulter. Much as I hate to link to her site, she’s done a piece rationalizing her Mitt-o-mania that’s worth noticing, under the title, “Only One Candidate Is Right On the Two Most Important Issues.”

One, of course, is “repealing ObamaCare” before much more of it can be implemented, and on this one Coulter uses the conventional argument that Mitt’s more electable than anyone else.

But the bulk of her argument is devoted to the proposition that Romney really, really hates undocumented workers...

...Having established that Bachmann and Romney are the only two acceptable candidates for true conservatives, Coulter sadly concludes that the “wonderful” Bachmann has never won a statewide race (part of her argument against Paul and Gingrich), and thus, Mitt’s the One.

I fully expect “movement conservative” types, with the possible exception of scattered evangelical Mormon-haters, to support Romney if he’s the nominee. He’s tugged his forelock to them just enough this year, and although they doubt he’d be another Goldwater, they’d definitely settle for another Reagan or W. When the time comes, remember Coulter’s assurances that he’s mean and nasty enough to become a pleasant surprise for the Right. ...Political Animal

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Are you ready for another possibility?  Ezra Klein throws a curve ball with the outline of Jon Huntsman.

A new USA Today/Gallup survey asked Americans to rate themselves and the 2012 presidential candidates in terms of ideology, with 1 being very liberal and 5 very conservative. The public’s average score is 3.3 — the same slightly right of center rating that Jon Huntsman received. ...WaPo

Slightly right of center is -- didja notice? -- where Obama has positioned himself.  Or so I thought until I see Gallup (of whom I'm chronically wary) gives Obama a 2.3=liberal score.  That leaves the president at a point that's farthest away of any candidate from Average American Voter.  By Gallup's estimate... Uh huh.

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TPM has an interesting video from an Obama campaign strategist showing, electoral vote by electoral vote, how Obama can get the 270 votes he wants.

Will we be allowed to vote in '12?

There are plenty of sensible folk out there who are worried about the gradual loss of the right to vote.  The Republican party and its corporate funders are working on it -- on eroding the right of minorities, the poor, and the elderly to vote.  And they find themselves increasingly successful.  Tennessee stands out lately as a place where getting that required "voter ID" is often difficult.  Not many Americans who believe in the right to vote are feeling sanguine these days about the 2012 elections.  The right is working overtime on efforts to make sure as many legitimate, eligible voters as possible are kept away from the polls.

Jeffrey Toobin sees hope where others see gloom.  He looks at the Supreme Court's track record on voting issues.  A couple of years ago, he points out, it "decided a case that may, it now appears, save Barack Obama’s chances at reëlection—and, more importantly, preserve a precious corner of American democracy."

In the 2009 case of Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder, the Court had a chance to invalidate the law—and ducked. Instead, by a vote of 8-1, the Justices disposed of the case on procedural grounds and left the larger fight for another day. (Clarence Thomas dissented, arguing that the Voting Rights Act is indeed obsolete and unconstitutional.) The Voting Rights Act, and its pre-clearance provisions, remained intact.

The importance of the Northwest Austin case was apparent last week when the Justice Department rejected South Carolina’s new law to impose a photo-identification requirement for voters in 2012. ...New Yorker

The Voting Rights Act applies, of course, only to southern states where minorities were routinely turned away from the polls.  But the same rule applies to all states even when they plead that they're just acting to prevent "voter fraud."

There is no significant voter-fraud problem in the United States. Rather, these laws are transparent attempts by Republican majorities to stifle and suppress the number of minorities and poor people (mostly Democrats) who go to the polls. Thanks to the Voting Rights Act, the Justice Department has the tools to stop this travesty—at least in states like South Carolina, which are still subject to “pre-clearance.” ...New Yorker

The question is whether Attorney General Eric  Holder will do his job -- whether he will persist in preventing Republican operatives in all 50 states from preventing certain groups from voting.

This is a chance for Holder to define his legacy as Attorney General—as something more than the guy who tried, and failed, to have Guantánamo Bay detainees tried in federal court in New York. There is a purity, a simplicity, about the voting-rights fight that is sadly absent from many modern civil-rights battles. This is not about special privileges, or quotas, or even complex mathematical formulae. It’s about a basic right of American citizenship, which is being taken from large numbers of people for the most cynical of reasons. The laws are, quite literally, indefensible—so Holder ought to make the states that have them try to defend them. That would be a legacy that would make any Attorney General, and any American, proud. ...New Yorker

By way of a reminder:  it was the powerful, corporate-funded ALEC, that initiated and continues to work on state laws that put barriers in the way of minority voters.  Think Progress links ALEC directly to the effort, in the state of Maine, to change the voter registration process the state has used for years.  Fortunately, Mainers turned out in much the same way the people of Wisconsin and Ohio turned out and managed to turn back their right-wing governor's effort to block voting -- with funding from ALEC.

Don't walk while drunk

For every mile walked drunk, turns out to be eight times more dangerous than the mile driven drunk. So just to put it simply, if you need to walk a mile from a party to your home, you're eight times more likely to die doing that than if you jump behind the wheel and drive your car that same mile. ...Marketplace

The Democratic party

One of the (several) reasons for exiting the Democratic party -- as this writer did almost ten years ago -- has been it's, well, uselessness at national and state levels.  Another reason is corruption.  Winners of the corruption stakes are a toss-up between the two major parties.  Republican corruption appears to be deeper and more pernicious. 

What retiring members of Congress do after they retire is as good a measure of what the American voter is up against as anything.  The opportunities for selling what they achieved with our votes are many.  Lobbying seems to be a fertile choice.  Accordingly, The Hill looks into the next vocation for retiring Senator Ben Nelson, a centrist Democrat.

Sen. Ben Nelson would draw salary offers of more than $1 million per year if he decided to move to K Street after his term ends in 2013, headhunters for the lobbying industry say.

Headhunters contacted by The Hill estimated that Nelson could command salaries from $400,000 to more than $1 million per year, depending on whether he wanted to work full- or part-time.

“[Lobbying firms are] going to look at him as a conservative Democrat, and I think that will stand well for him in the business community,” said Chris Jones of CapitolWorks.

Nelson has given no indication that he is interested in working for a lobbying firm after he leaves office. In a video announcing his retirement Tuesday, the Nebraska Democrat said he wants to spend more time with his family and will “look for new ways to serve our state and nation.” ...The Hill

In other words, we don't know yet about Nelson. But keeping an eye on him will be educational.  He can tell us a lot about the details of Washington corruption. 

If the Democratic party is feeling frustrated by the lack of enthusiasm for them shown by many liberals and progressives -- why so many appeals for funds are thrown unopened into the trash -- they might want to monitor Nelson's next years.  A key reason for the odium felt by so many of us, righties or lefties, will be painfully clear.

Sigh of relief

You could say the Pentagon is doing a good thing by getting rid of the fat -- the fatheads at the top of that horribly overweight bureaucracy.  Or you could just join the huge sigh of relief many are experiencing as a result.  Finally!

The word "peace" is even mentioned -- rudely! -- in the faces of Our Glorious Leaders of Our Glorious Defense Industry!

Pentagon officials said they have eliminated 27 jobs for generals and admirals since March, the first time the Defense Department has imposed such a reduction since the aftermath of the Cold War, when the collapse of the Soviet Union prompted the military to downsize.

The cuts are part of a broader plan to shrink the upper ranks by 10 percent over five years, restoring them to the their size when the country was last at peace, before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. ...WaPo

The money saved is minimal.  But the cuts are a start, and a recognition that too many bosses make for lousy decisions.

The changes are projected to save only a modest amount of money, but defense officials said they are symbolically important as the Pentagon adjusts to an era of austerity. The Obama administration proposes to squeeze $450 billion from defense budgets over a decade. An additional $500 billion in cuts will be triggered if Congress cannot agree on a deficit-reduction plan in the next year.

Thinning the ranks of generals and admirals is also necessary to make the military more nimble, said Vice Adm. William E. Gortney, director of the Joint Staff at the Pentagon. ...WaPo

The specific cuts at the top date back to Gates' pre-Panetta Pentagon.

In ordering the cuts, Gates said the military had succumbed over the years to “brass creep,” by adding a disproportionate number of jobs at the top. The number of four-star generals and admirals today, for instance, is roughly the same as in 1971, during the Vietnam War, even though the number of active-duty troops has shrunk by half.

The Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps are all expected to continue shrinking because of budget cuts, the end of the war in Iraq and the Obama administration’s planned withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Leon E. Panetta, the current defense secretary, backs Gates’s plan, according to Pentagon press secretary George Little. ...WaPo