Here are my picks:
Elite Eight: Louisville, Boston College, Connecticut, Memphis, Pitt, Duke, North Carolina, Syracuse
Final Four: Louisville, Connecticut, Pittsburg and North Carolina – the Number One Seeds.
The Finals: Louisville and Carolina
The Champ: North Carolina
The Republicans can scream that President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid want to move the country toward a European type socialism all they want while the gap between the rich and poor keeps getting larger. As many have said (including me), the current AIG bonus debacle seems be symbolize the rich getting richer at the expense of the rest of us.
Dalton Conley, Acting Dean of Social Sciences at New York University has written in the Nation of March 23 about the Human Development Index (HDI) which shows the United States as Number 15 in the world. The index “The score consists of three dimensions: health, as measured by life expectancy at birth; access to knowledge, captured by educational enrollment and attainment; and income, as reflected by median earnings for the working-age population. ”
Conley writes
The president’s proposed budget will do much to bring progressivity back to the tax code. Upper-income households–which have gained the most over the past three decades–will contribute around 80 percent of federal revenues, and more modest incomes will finally catch some real tax relief. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Americans have applauded the administration’s move to impose limits on executive compensation by attaching strings to bailout money. The reason is one of basic fairness, of course. But it turns out that limiting the windfalls of the few may actually be good for us all. That’s because there appears to be a relationship in the United States between inequality–which is largely driven by an explosive rise in incomes at the top–and overall levels of human development.
…
This decline proceeded apace through the Reagan and first Bush administrations, during the go-go Clinton ’90s, and through the regime of George W. Bush. We have slipped in periods of budget deficits and during the largest surplus in US history. So something deeper about the structure of American society is probably responsible.
Of course, there are some pretty good suspects. There is, for example, the issue of nearly 50 million people who don’t have health insurance. There is the fact that college completion rates have been flat since the ’70s despite an increasingly technological economy. And there is the wage stagnation for the bottom half, a problem that has dogged us since the oil shock of 1973. But there is one larger force underlying these trends that has been gaining steam over the past three decades, and that’s income inequality.
So it seems that what the Republicans call “redistribution of wealth” might actually be good for our country.
I’m pretty sure that those traders at AIG who are due for massive taxpayer paid bonuses would be insulted being compared to members of the UAW, but I’d like to understand exactly how they are different. Both work for industries/companies in financial difficulty. Both companies got help from the taxpayers. Both the traders and the auto workers had valid contracts. So those are some ways they are the same. How are they different? Only the UAW is being asked to renegotiate their valid contract, to make sacrifices for the good of the country.
In this morning’s New York Times there is a defense of paying the AIG bonuses by Andrew Ross Sorkin. Sorkin writes
That may strike many people as a bit of convenient legalese, but maybe there is something to it. If you think this economy is a mess now, imagine what it would look like if the business community started to worry that the government would start abrogating contracts left and right.
As much as we might want to void those A.I.G. pay contracts, Pearl Meyer, a compensation consultant at Steven Hall & Partners, says it would put American business on a worse slippery slope than it already is. Business agreements of other companies that have taken taxpayer money might fall into question. Even companies that have not turned to Washington might seize the opportunity to break inconvenient contracts.
If government officials were to break the contracts, they would be “breaking a bond,” Ms. Meyer says. “They are raising a whole new question about the trust and commitment organizations have to their employees.” (The auto industry unions are facing a similar issue — but the big difference is that there is a negotiation; no one is unilaterally tearing up contracts.)
And there we have it in the last sentence. The UAW is negotiating. So what’s keeping AIG from negotiating with Congress. With Senator Feingold, Senator Bond, Congressman Frank, and Secretary Geithner. Senator Russ Feingold wrote to Geithner
I am deeply troubled by reports that the American International Group intends to pay about $165 million in bonuses to its executives. As you know, the federal government has provided AIG with $170 billion in taxpayer money and currently owns 80 percent of the company. I share your outrage that a company which has been bailed out by the taxpayers for its mistakes would turn around and pay its executives such a staggering sum of money.
Reports suggest that AIG’s chairman claims AIG is legally obligated to pay some or all of these bonuses. I write to ask why any bonuses would be legally required, given the company’s abysmal performance. In addition, I would like to know what legal options have been explored for canceling the bonuses or recouping the money from the recipients, and in particular whether the administration has considered holding AIG executives accountable in court for any breaches of their fiduciary duties to the shareholders
To me the most troubling part of all this is calling what these AIG employees are “legally obligated” to receive a bonus. I think most people would agree with me and Senator Feingold that a bonus is something one gets for outstanding performance. As a taxpayer/shareholder in AIG I want to know what the performance level – as judged from some outside auditor- of each person to receive a bonus is before I hand over the money.
In Politico, Roger Simon writes what I think many of us wish we had written first
The only real difference between Bernie Madoff and the management of AIG is that when Bernie Madoff got caught, he pleaded guilty. When AIG got caught, it asked the government for $170 billion.
And it got it. Now the American International Group is going to pay $165 million to its executives as a reward for the fine job they did in duping everybody.
The last word goes to Republican Senator Kit Bond
It is outrageous and unacceptable for failed Wall Street executives to receive a bonus after the American taxpayer was forced to bail them out. Policymakers should quit debating how to lower pay for some of these executives who got us into this mess.
Capping pay or taking away corporate jets isn’t enough. Before these companies get any more tax dollars, the failed senior executives and board of directors need to be fired
The President is angry. Democrats in Congress are angry. Even some Republicans are angry. The UAW is making concessions. Time for the Wall Street moguls to do the same.
I’m looking at the March 9 Sports Illustrated cover showing the Elite Eight picks – as they say themselves “for now” and thinking it is a measure of just how unpredictable the tournament is going to be. Of the eight, only Memphis, Duke, and Louisville have survived in conference tournament play. The cover curse striking?
Louisville overcame a worn out Syracuse team which has played 7 overtimes in the past two days and just ran out of gas. I think it is remarkable that the Orange still only lost by 10. I have to say right off that I don’t like either Louisville or Syracuse – not because of their player but because I don’t particularly like either coach. I’ve never forgiven Pitino for his awful years trying to be Mr. Celtic and trying to make Antoine Walker into something he was not.
The Big East is bragging that they will get 3 number one seeds. I think Memphis and North Carolina (despite their loss to Florida State) will be number one seeds. That gives the Big East two possible slots.
Some things I wish for: That Ty Lawson’s big toe heals and Carolina makes into the final Four. That Memphis loses in an early round (I wish they would play in a more competitive conference and get beaten up like ACC and Big East teams do). That Virginia Commonwealth makes at the least Sweet Sixteen. Ditto for Syracuse. That there are no injuries and every game is close.
Sleeper team? Haven’t decided yet. Robert Morris or American University? Maybe Morehead State.
There is the shining example of Michelle Obama. Then there are the many women who still haven’t gotten over the fact that Hillary did not get to be President. There is the idea of a Presidential Commision on Women (like the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights). Then there is the President’s Council on Women and Girls. Politico reports
After Barack Obama’s election, some in the women’s movement thought big – pushing for a Cabinet-level office, or even a blue-ribbon Presidential Commission on Women.
But when Obama announced his plans Wednesday, he brushed aside those requests.
Instead, he started the White House Council on Women and Girls — a sort of inter-agency task force with no full-time staff, no Cabinet-level leader and no set meeting schedule.
Women’s advocates who filed out of his East Room announcement Wednesday said they were delighted that their issues would get White House-level attention, whatever the forum.
But Obama’s move left others in the women’s movement questioning why he simply wouldn’t give the panel the prestige and heft they feel it deserves. Some activists already are strategizing about new ways to elevate women’s issues, beyond what Obama did.
I know one of the things that President Obama can do to help women. He can finally ask Congress to radify CEDAW, the Conventionon on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Somewhere on a disk that I can no longer read is the text of a speech I gave on an International Women’s Day in the 1990’s on why the United States needed to radify CEDAW but couldn’t mostly because of objections from the late Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina. And after reading the many reservations conservatives in the Senate wanted to place on the it, many women, including me, could no longer support its radification. CEDAW was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1979. We are one of a handful of countries like North Korea and Sudan not to adopt it.
I understand that the Obama Administration has already taken steps to start the process, but the trick will be to get Congress to adopt CEDAW with the fewest possible attached conditions or reservations. (Think signing statements.) In her posting on the Nation’s Blog, Betsy Reed calls for the adoption of a “Clean CEDAW“.
What does CEDAW promise? Guaranteed maternity benefits. The right to equal pay. (And no, Lily Ledbetter didn’t give us that. The right to sue after you’ve been discriminated against for years is not the same as the right to be free from discrimination.) A commitment, at the broadest level, to eliminate acts of discrimination against women–i.e., to prohibit them, and to punish them when they do occur.
It’s good stuff. One of the best things about the treaty is that it requires governments periodically to review and evaluate their policies and programs relating to women’s equality, provoking what Human Rights Watch’s Marianne Mollmann calls “a democratic dialogue” about women’s rights, which has already occurred in some of the 184 signatory nations, including Peru.
Another admirable aspect of CEDAW is its stipulation that, when traditional cultural or religious practices collide with women’s rights, the state is obliged to intervene on the side of women.
But there will be problems like a woman’s right to choose to end a pregnancy which was the big hang-up in 2002. Reed writes
One of the most egregious [reservations presented] addressed abortion. It read: “Nothing in this convention shall be construed to reflect or create any right to abortion and in no case should abortion be promoted as a method of family planning.” As Janet Benshoof, president of the Global Justice Center, recently noted, this language was “…drafted to be used as an antiabortion tool. Under U.S. law nearly all abortions, including those needed by women due to serious health problems or fetal abnormalities incompatible with life, are defined as abortions as a ‘method of family planning.'”
Moreover, as Benshoof points out, the inclusion of this provision would undermine women’s access to reproductive health services around the world. Already, CEDAW has been cited in court rulings striking down laws criminalizing abortion in signatory nations, such as Colombia. An endorsement of this qualification by the US it would weaken the legal position of women’s advocates in these cases, giving aid and comfort to abortion rights opponents everywhere.
To pass Congress, we need 67 votes. But we need to pass a “clean” version. If Morocco can do it, the United States can do it also.
This past December, in honor of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, King Mohammed VI of Morocco lifted the “reservations” that his country had imposed on the implementation of CEDAW, and embraced an unqualified version. Wouldn’t it be a fitting tribute to the late Senator Helms if the United States did the same?
So if you are reading this and you agree, call or write you Senator. And tell Senator Boxer to keep pushing for a clean CEDAW.
A few days ago I wrote about Al Franken’s struggles to get elected Senator from Minnesota. The blog TPMDC has an update.
Today’s announcement by the Franken campaign — that they will provisionally rest their case tomorrow — has likely changed the timeline of the case dramatically, a top election expert in Minnesota tells TPM.
Professor David Schultz, a teacher of election law at Hamline University, was previously predicting that a ruling would take until mid-April at the earliest. But that assumed Team Franken would take 2-3 weeks to make its case, as opposed to the week and two days they’ll have actually used. “I would say we could anticipate — we should anticipate at this point — definitely before the end of the month,” said Schultz. “It very well might be in a couple of weeks.”
After that, the next step will be the appeals, which are likely to be fast-tracked straight to the state Supreme Court — and which Schultz expects will come from Coleman, with the court likely to have ruled that Franken is the winner: “It doesn’t look like at this point the Coleman campaign has either made the arguments or has the numbers to switch it over to his side for victory. So I presume at this point that the court will find for Franken.”
Franken himself was in Washington yesterday and told Senators and Politico that he doesn’t expect to be seated until after the Minnesota Supreme Court Ruling.
Correction: In the post, “Where is Al?” I said that the Minnesota Supreme Court was now counting ballots. It is not, the Supreme Court but a three judge panel.
A bit more on Bobby Jindal and Kenneth the Page from Calvin Trillin in this week’s Nation. The title is “Bobby Jindal Bombs”
Republicans had hoped they might rekindle
Their party’s prospects through one Bobby Jindal.
But Jindal proved an easy man to mock
(He’s like the dorky page on 30 Rock).
So Sarah Palin might just have her day–
With hopes that Tina Fey will stay away–
Though Romney nurtures still that White House yen.
His imitator’s Barbie’s boyfriend, Ken.
Let’s see. Barack Obama has been President for 50 days today. Only 50 days. During that time he has outlined a plan for economic recovery and gotten it passed, he has outlined plans to end the war in Iraq, and he has proposals to help some homeowners faced with foreclosures. He is studying what to do about Afganistan and Guantanamo. He has said we won’t torture, removed the ban on federal funds to groups who perform and/or counsel about abortion, removed prohibitions on stem cell reseach and etc., etc. At the one month point, I quoted Eugene Robinson who called this ” an administration on steroids”.
Politico writes of the first 50 days
It’s been a busy stretch. Obama revisited Bush-era policies on torture and the Guantanamo Bay prison, proposed to remake U.S. health care by year’s end, offered new rescue efforts for the housing and financial services sectors, expanded government stakes in Citigroup and American International Group, put forth a $3.7 trillion budget and announced his education policy Tuesday.
As president, Obama has signed a total of six bills. The most notable was the $787 billion stimulus legislation. He also signed a bill expanding children’s health insurance coverage and another making it easier to file suits alleging gender discrimination in the workplace. Another bill he signed was a so-called continuing resolution continuing temporary funding for federal agencies still awaiting a final appropriation for the current fiscal year. The two other measures were a bill to rename a post office in Illinois and legislation postponing the national conversion to digital television for about four months.
So why is everyone so negative? Paul Krugman is worried we haven’t done enough. Some Congressional Democrats are making noises about not wanting to spend any more. The Republicans are on a vote no kick and want to go back to Bush economics – tax cuts and more tax cuts. The left thinks he hasn’t done enough about about prosecuting W. and his pals and certainly isn’t withdrawing from Iraq fast enough. The right thinks he is overturning the entire universe.
I’m certainly not happy with everything that President Obama has done so far. I think the Tim Geithner appointment is a disaster and he also needs to lose Larry Summers. I do like Orszag and Christine Rohmer. I don’t think we are planning to withdraw fast enough from Iraq and I’m worried about Afganistan. I worry that some of the government programs are too complicated for local governments and non profits to administer. But I’m not negative yet.
Everyone seems to be whining about something without giving things a chance to work. If we want a large bank to fail – one, Leaman Brothers, already did and it didn’t help the economy much. We had lots of tax cuts under W. and it didn’t stop the economy from tanking. So let’s see what happens. In a few more weeks most of us will get a few bucks more in our paychecks. The Recovery funds will start hitting the street and projects will be underway in a month or so.
We can’t let pundit negativity make us lose sight of the fact that is has only been 50 days today. Give the guy a chance and don’t let negativity become a self-fulling prophecy. So take a deep breath, relax a bit and notice that the market went up today.
Have you forgotten aobut the Minnesota Senate election? I admit that I can go days without remembering that it is still not decided.
A guy named Al Franken, a Democrat, is still leading Norman Coleman, a Republican and the incumbant, and they are still counting ballots under the direction of the Minnesota Supreme Court. The Court has ruled that Franken cannot be seated until all the ballots have been counted. They have also refused to issue, or allow to be issued, a certificate of election saying that the U.S. Senate has the authority to seat a senator should they choose to do so. Of course, the Democrats have already screwed themselves because they insisted on a certificate from the Secretary of State of Illinois before they would seat Roland Burris. So Harry Reid can’t now decide to seat Al.
As I understand it, there are now about 1500 absentee ballots that are being examined to see if they can be counted. They are looking at things like is a registration form included (Minnesota has same day registratiion), are the forms completed correctly and are the ballots marked property. So far, there are 89 such ballots that will be examined further before being counted.
Eric Kleefeld is blogging about the Minnesota Election on TPM daily. His most recent entry
In order to win, Coleman needs to expand the universe of countable ballots. But this expansion was much smaller than some expected, out of the 1,500 ballots that were searched. At his post-court press conference, Coleman legal spokesman Ginsberg boasted that the search “found between 100 and 150 that were wrongly rejected and should be put in. so that gives you an increasing idea that the universe of ballots with which we’re dealing continues to fluctuate.”
What Ginsberg is relying on is the addition of 72 more envelopes that had incomplete registration cards, and are unlikely to be included under the court’s strict standards for letting in new ballots — a point that the Coleman camp seems sure to appeal.
Two-thirds of the 89 came from pro-Coleman counties, but the sample of votes is by itself too small to provide much of a swing for him — and that’s assuming they do break for Coleman. It’s also likely that some of these envelopes will have other flaws with them, thus shrinking the pool even further.
I should also point out that even if Coleman gets all 89 votes which is not likely as some will be found to be flawed and some votes for Franken, he still cannot overcome the Franken lead of around 225 votes.
So eventually, it seems, the Senate Democrats will get their 59th vote. And the drama of Minnesota will finally be over. This saga could only happen to someone who used to be on Saturday Night Live.
A lawsuit was filed last week here in Massachusetts alleging that the 1996 Federal Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional and discriminatory.
According to the story in the Boston Globe on March 3
The suit, which legal specialists described as the first serious challenge to the federal law signed by President Bill Clinton, contends that the statute has deprived the plaintiffs of benefits enjoyed by heterosexual married couples.
Those benefits include health insurance for spouses of federal employees, tax deductions for couples who jointly file federal income tax returns, and the ability to use a spouse’s last name on a passport.
I think it is about time someone litigated the issue. I have friends who end up going though lots of gyrations this time of year filing individual federal returns and joint state ones. I know people who can’t get health insurance throught their federally employed spouse. And I think it is criminal that people like Massachusetts Congressman Studds surviving spouse can’t get his death benefits.
Those who oppose same sex marriage worry that the end of the Defense of Marriage Act would mean that the individual states would have to approve of gay marriage. Mary Bonauto, the attorney from GLAD who brought the lawsuit responds
If the plaintiffs win, she said, it would not extend same-sex marriage beyond Massachusetts and Connecticut, the two states where it is legal.
But it would dismantle a federal statute that affects more than 1,000 marriage-related benefits, and it would be a huge victory on symbolic and practical levels for supporters of same-sex marriage, according to legal specialists.
The plaintiffs and GLAD have a long road ahead of them and I, for one, wish them well and I’m proud that Massachusetts citizens are, once again, leading the way to equality.
The George W. administration was fond of secrecy: secret renditions to foreign countries, secrect meetings to develop an energy plan, and secret legal opinions were among the secrets. We’ve known about the existance of the John Yoo memos to justify just about everything for a while now, but the content is now public and he is either a very bad lawyer or he wanted to please his masters at Justice and in the White House so much he would write anything thing.
John Dean has a long essay in FindLawanalyzing the Yoo memos and their effect of the Office of Legal Counsel.
In reading these newly-released memos, along with the previously-released documents relating to the use of torture as an interrogation technique, it is pretty clear who was the bad apple at OLC, it was the lead attorney in pursuing these extreme and baseless OLC positions law professor John Yoo. It is likely that Yoo did the drafting, and then either he or his boss, the Assistant Attorney General in charge of OLC, Jay Bybee, signed off on the memos. Bybee now sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Dean also discusses the quality of Yoo’s legal work
Because Yoo became the leading legal adviser to the Bush White House after 9/11, many have looked closely at his scholarship, and more will likely scrutinize Yoo’s work with this new release of his OLC work product. When writing Broken Government, I paused to look at Yoo’s work and frankly was shocked to find such an intelligent person engaging in blatant intellectual dishonesty. It was not merely occasional excesses. Rather, when I examined his book War By Other Means, I found page after page of his material to be filled with deliberate distortions. In my book, I set forth example after example of his technique, and in doing so, I did not even scratch the surface of his deceitful methods of advocacy.
Also, I found that I was not alone in questioning Yoo’s intellectual integrity. For example, Georgetown law professor David Luban, when reviewing Yoo’s book War By Other Means for the New York Review of Books(Mar. 15, 2007), reported that “Yoo argues forcefully and intelligently, but not always honestly. Half-truths, straw men, double standards, selective quotations, significant omissions, and caricatures of his opponents’ positions – all are characteristic of War By Others Means.” [Emphasis added.] Unfortunately, this is how Yoo wrote legal opinions for OLC as well, which was very much contrary to the prior standards of that office.
So, are we going to prosecute Yoo and Bybee? Maybe they really didn’t have any evil intent, but they were interested in justifying the actions of those they worked for and those actions lead to violations of little things like the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture.
Seven newly released memos from the Bush Justice Department reveal a concerted strategy to cloak the President with power to override the Constitution. The memos provide “legal” rationales for the President to suspend freedom of speech and press; order warrantless searches and seizures, including wiretaps of U.S. citizens; lock up U.S. citizens indefinitely in the United States without criminal charges; send suspected terrorists to other countries where they will likely be tortured; and unilaterally abrogate treaties. According to the reasoning in the memos, Congress has no role to check and balance the executive. That is the definition of a police state.
That is Marjorie Cohn’s take on Alternet. She concludes
There are more memos yet to be released. They will invariably implicate Bush officials and lawyers in the commission of torture, illegal surveillance, extraordinary rendition, and other violations of the law.
Meanwhile, John Yoo remains on the faculty of Berkeley Law School and Jay Bybee is a federal judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. These men, who advised Bush on how to create a police state, should be investigated, prosecuted, and disbarred. Yoo should be fired and Bybee impeached.
President Obama is probably smart to not lead the charge, but to let Congress and the natural course of events to dictate prosecution. He and Eric Holder should just continue to mine the archives and release information. I have to believe that prosecutions will happen in the natural course of events.
Meanwhile over at the blog RedState, the most recent post is Warner Todd Hudson’s Fist [sic] Kill the Lawyers in which he rants about a Boston Globe story about lawyers getting laid off. (Why anyone would rejoice at anyone being laid off, I’m not sure but that is for a different discussion.) Hudson concludes
So, I rejoice at the troubles seen by Boston’s legal eagles and I hope their discomfiture is felt in every city of the land. I further hope that many of them find useful work in some furniture store or perhaps a nice Taco Bell somewhere. At least they’d finally be serving the public instead of milking them dry.
Anyway, let’s not kill all the lawyers in literal fashion. But let’s encourage them to seek a new profession, shall we?
Can we start with Yoo and Bybee?
FortLeft 