Politics

by

The complicated deficit deal

I know I’ll be writing more about the imact of the “compromise” in the days to come, but for now here a summary.  The Atlantic Wire has the best written summary I’ve been able to find.

The basic plan, as explained by The New York Times‘ Carl Hulse and Helene Cooper, Politico’s David Rogers, and The Hill‘s Alexander Bolton, goes something like this:

1. Raise the debt limit by $900 billion and cut spending by the same amount over 10 years. Members of Congress can vote to show they don’t like the increase but Obama can veto their disapproval. 
2. Create a bipartisan committee with three members of each party from each chamber of Congress to find spending cuts the size of a second debt limit increase of $1.5 trillion. As a special holiday treat, the plan must be presented to colleagues by Thanksgiving and voted on by Christmas.
3. If the plan passes, Obama can raise the limit by $1.5 trillion.
4. If the cuts committee can’t come up with a plan, Obama can get only a $1.2 trillion debt limit increase, and Congress must either:
a. Pass a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution, or
b. Allow spending cuts the size of the debt limit increase over the next 10 years, with at least half coming from cuts to defense spending. These cuts would be automatic by the end of 2012.
 
 
There is still a chance to get revenue increases through the committee’s recommendations.  That is what the Democrats have to run around the country selling:  increased revenues and more chanced to create jobs.  I heard Nancy Pelosi say at one point that the country did not want this debt crisis business, but were interested in “jobs, jobs, jobs.”  This has to be the new Democratic message:  OK, we have pretty much caved on the debt business, now create some jobs.
 
 
We Have a Debt Limit Deal: Now What?
 
So smile now, because if there aren’t more jobs soon – and the deficit deal has the potential to make a lot more of them go away – you might not be smiling in November 2012.
by

Watching the circus

Watching the circus in Washington used to be a fun activity, but right now it is just depressing.  I got home from work last night expecting to watch the Republican vote on the Speaker’s plan only to learn that it had been postponed.  When I went to bed at 10 it was still pending.  At 5 this morning, I learned it didn’t happen because the Republican leadership didn’t have the votes.  All this for a bill that is DOA in the Senate.

We are all being held hostage by a handful of tea partiers and other Republicans who are convinced that their election gave them some kind of mandate to kill the country.  As they are learning in Wisconsin, people are beginning to have buyer’s remorse.  On the other hand, the tea partiers are threatening to run against the very people they elected if the new Congressmembers don’t come through.  Among those making the threats are Sarah Palin and the founder of the Texas Tea Party on Al Sharpton’s MSNBC show last night.  So I don’t think the 20 or so votes that Boehner is looking for will materialize, but then again, this whole spectacle is full of surprises so one never knows.

Everyone, including President Obama, has let this small faction define the fight.  I think Eugene Robinson is right:  The Republicans have one easily stated idea:  Reduce the deficit (and deny Obama a second term) while the Democrats and particularly Progressives don’t have an easily stated idea.

Those who would chronicle events in Washington can find no richer source of analogy and metaphor than the Three Stooges. These days, I’m thinking of the times when an exasperated Moe, having suffered the indignity of an accidental spritzing or clobbering, turns to Larry or Curly and demands, “What’s the big idea?”

The premise of the debt-ceiling fight is too far-fetched for a Stooges film, since no audience could imagine leaders of a great nation stumbling into such a mess. Moe’s trademark line is still relevant, however, even if it’s not followed by the two-fingered poke in the eyes that our elected officials richly deserve.

It is clear that unless President Obama ends up taking unilateral action to break a hopeless deadlock, Republicans will win. The House, the Senate and the White House are all working within GOP-defined parameters: New tax revenue is off the table, painful budget cuts are a given, everyone seems to accept the principle that a debt-ceiling increase — which allows the Treasury to pay bills Congress has already incurred — must be tied to reductions in future spending.

Besides not having an easily stated idea that everyone repeats, the Democrats have done all the compromising.  And it hasn’t worked out so well.  Look back at the retention of the Bush tax cuts:  Do you see any jobs?  Robinson concludes

Obama talks about “winning the future,” but that’s too nebulous. I’d suggest something pithier: jobs, jobs, jobs.

People may dislike paying taxes, but they dislike unemployment more. Progressives should talk about bringing the nation back to full employment and healthy growth — and how this requires an adequately funded government to play a major role.

The next time Moe asks about the big idea, Democrats, say “jobs.” You might avoid a slap on the noggin and a poke in the eyes.

I think it maybe time for the President to stop trying to compromise, to get together with Reid and Pelosi and make a real proposal.  To quote Paul Krugman

Some of us have long complained about the cult of “balance,” the insistence on portraying both parties as equally wrong and equally at fault on any issue, never mind the facts. I joked long ago that if one party declared that the earth was flat, the headlines would read “Views Differ on Shape of Planet.” But would that cult still rule in a situation as stark as the one we now face, in which one party is clearly engaged in blackmail and the other is dickering over the size of the ransom?

The answer, it turns out, is yes. And this is no laughing matter: The cult of balance has played an important role in bringing us to the edge of disaster. For when reporting on political disputes always implies that both sides are to blame, there is no penalty for extremism. Voters won’t punish you for outrageous behavior if all they ever hear is that both sides are at fault.

,,,

So what’s with the buzz about a centrist uprising? As I see it, it’s coming from people who recognize the dysfunctional nature of modern American politics, but refuse, for whatever reason, to acknowledge the one-sided role of Republican extremists in making our system dysfunctional. And it’s not hard to guess at their motivation. After all, pointing out the obvious truth gets you labeled as a shrill partisan, not just from the right, but from the ranks of self-proclaimed centrists.

But making nebulous calls for centrism, like writing news reports that always place equal blame on both parties, is a big cop-out — a cop-out that only encourages more bad behavior. The problem with American politics right now is Republican extremism, and if you’re not willing to say that, you’re helping make that problem worse.

Time for the President to not only talk the talk as he did last week, but also walk the walk.  Compromise by only one side has lead to this circus that is not even very entertaining.  At the very least, round up enough votes in the Senate to pass the Reid plan so the Democrats can at least say they did something.  You can compare plans here.  And please, let there be only one vote.  I don’t think anyone can take this again in 6 months.

 

 

 

 

by

If you don’t laugh, you have to cry

After John Boehner decided to walk out on the debt talks on Friday (and John, we know that it was not because of the President, but because Eric Cantor said no taxes even if you call them tax reform), we moved even closer to default.  So a little humor (from the left) on the situation for Sunday morning.

First up, Ruben Bolling and my favorite, Tom the Dancing Bug

td110722.gif

Then ( I have to say I love it that Daily Kos collects the Comics), we have Matt Weurker’s Tea Party Tango

Matt Wuerker

To tango or to compromise, it takes two, Mr. Cantor. 

Speaking of Mr. Cantor, you can hear him yourself at this animation by Scott Bateman.

And to end, two editoral cartoons.

Tony Auth on Congress

ta110722.gif

And Dan Wasserman

07.13DEFICITTALK-copy-1.gif

The President has taken himself out of the talks, telling Congress to come up with a solution.  We shall see.

Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid are pictured. | AP Photo

by

The “gang of six” plan and the debt ceiling

In case you are wondering what it is, the New York Times has published a summary.  It is really a budget and deficit reduction plan and not something to raise the debt ceiling which still has to be done.  And time is running out.

A couple of interesting comments about the plan on Politico’s Arena.

First from Jeff Smith, professor at the New School and former Missouri State Senator:

The one real piece missing from this entire conversation? The piece that would make the numbers work and dramatically reduce the pain?

Comprehensive immigration reform. That’s right. There’s only one pool of 15 million people begging to be able to pay more into the system, and this country has spent the last several years fighting to make sure they can’t.

We need to get over our xenophobia, give them a path to citizenship, and let them start paying in to the system at regular rates in regular intervals. The nation’s immigrant population tilts much younger than the native-born population and is predominantly in the workforce, and would reverse the trend of a rising retiree-to-worker ratio, thereby shoring up both major entitlement programs

The immigrants would pay taxes, pay into social security, and Medicare.

Bernie Sanders (D-VT) points out

While the spending cuts for programs that working people desperately depend upon are enforced by specific spending caps, there is no such enforcement or clarity regarding the $1.1 trillion to be raised in revenue over 10 years.

What happens if that revenue target is not reached? There is no language that deals with that. Where does the revenue come from? That very important issue is kicked to the tax writing committees with no guarantee that hundreds of billions of dollars in new revenue will not come from the pockets of low- and moderate-income Americans. While nobody knows for certain what provisions might be adopted, there is reason to expect that some of the areas that the House and Senate will be looking at include the home mortgage deduction for middle-class families, taxes on health care benefits, and increased taxes on retirement programs such as 401(k)s and IRAs. In other words, while there is a reasonable degree of specificity in terms of cuts there is only vagueness in terms of revenue.

But Dean Baker from the Center for Economic and Policy Research asks the questions I’ve been wondering about:  What is wrong with the deficit at a time when we have no jobs and isn’t there a solution besides massive budget cutting?

The arithmetic is clear as day. The United States does not now, nor will it in the near future, face a serious problem meeting its debt obligations. It had a debt to GDP ratio of 116 percent after World War II. The baseline projections have it getting to 90 percent by 2021. 116 percent is much larger than 90 percent. (The difference will be more than $5 trillion in 2021.) This should be understandable even to a 6-figure Washington policy wonk or budget reporter.

Other countries had and have much higher ratios of debt to GDP and still face no problem paying their bills. In Japan, the ratio of debt to GDP is more than 220 percent, yet private investors are willing to lend the country money long-term at interest rates of less than 1.5 percent. Of course investors are also willing to put their money on the line in the U.S., lending us money long-term at interest rates close to 3.0 percent. So the people who actually have money on the line are saying as clearly as they can that the debt is not a serious problem.

Furthermore, there are many ways to deal with the debt that do not require attacking ordinary workers, who have been the victims of Wall Street greed and economic mismanagement by the deficit hawks. (People like Kent Conrad held positions of responsibility in the years of the build-up of the housing bubble, but were so utterly incompetent they either did not see it or recognize its danger.)

We could just have the Fed hold $3 trillion in government debt indefinitely. It would then refund more than $1 trillion in interest payments to the Treasury over the next decade. The inflationary impact of the additional reserves could be offset by raising bank reserve requirements. What could be more simple and costless than this mechanism? But the Gang of Six would rather cut Social Security and Medicare.

We could follow the example of England and impose a financial speculation on trades of stock, futures, options, credit default swaps and other financial instruments. This could raise more than $1. 5 trillion over the next decade. But the Gang of Six would rather cut Social Security and Medicare.

It is my understanding that we didn’t have a debt ceiling until World War I and that no many countries have one so why not do away with our?  Politico had this piece about that from Moody’s a few weeks ago.

The United States should do away with the debt ceiling altogether to bring greater certainty to investors in U.S. Treasury bonds, Moody’s suggested Monday.

With the August 2 deadline for raising the debt ceiling barely more than two weeks away, the bond-rating agency issued a report Monday noting that the U.S. is one of just a few countries that has a statutory borrowing limit and saying that the limit creates “periodic uncertainty” for investors, Reuters reported.

Rather than continuing to use the debt ceiling in an effort to keep U.S. borrowing down, the government should look toward Chile, Moody’s suggested. There, “the level of deficits is constrained by a ‘fiscal rule,’ which means the rise in debt is constrained though not technically limited.” Chile is considered to be Latin America’s most fiscally sound country.

And, the report noted, it’s not like the debt ceiling has been effective in keeping U.S. debt down: Congress has in the past raised it often and has not linked it to spending levels.

So the bottom line is that the Gang of Six plan may be a place to start talking budget and deficit reduction, but we should do something about the debt ceiling first – like abolish it.

 

by

Tax breaks and the debt/budget crisis

Feeling hot and kinda pessimistic this evening.  I feel as if the progressive forces are fighting windmills and I worry that President Obama will cave in with dire consequences. 

Here is a very interesting chart posted by Chris Bowers on the Daily Kos this afternoon.

Class Warfare

If these numbers are accurate, and I believe they are,  it is interesting how they match up.  We don’t really have to do much to keep programs running. 

In the meanwhile Politico reports

Turning right with a vengeance, Republicans will bring to the House floor Tuesday a newly revised debt-ceiling bill that is remarkable for its total absence of compromise at this late date, two weeks before the threat of default.

Final revisions made Friday submerge conservative demands to reduce all federal spending to 18 percent of gross domestic product — a target that threatened to split the GOP by requiring far deeper cuts than even the party’s April budget. But Republican congressional leaders still want a 10-year, $1.8 trillion cut from nondefense appropriations and have added a balanced-budget constitutional amendment that so restricts future tax legislation that even President Ronald Reagan might have opposed it in the 1980s.

Indeed, much of the deficit-reduction legislation signed by Reagan would not qualify under the new tea-party-driven standards. And even the famed Reagan-Tip O’Neill Social Security compromise — which raised payroll taxes — passed the House in 1983 well short of the 290 votes that would be required under the constitutional amendments being promoted by the GOP.

One of the more interesting aspects of this fight centers around the battle between Eric Cantor and John Boehner for control of the Republican House.  If Cantor wins, it may drive the more moderate Republicans toward the Democrats.  But it doesn’t appear at this point that the Tea Party Republicans really care about reelection – and perhaps they don’t even care if Obama wins reelection.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia, right, stands with House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio on Capitol Hill in Washington. | AP Photo

Paul Krugman has an interesting take of the Republicans.

Let’s talk for a minute about what Republican leaders are rejecting.

President Obama has made it clear that he’s willing to sign on to a deficit-reduction deal that consists overwhelmingly of spending cuts, and includes draconian cuts in key social programs, up to and including a rise in the age of Medicare eligibility. These are extraordinary concessions. As The Times’s Nate Silver points out, the president has offered deals that are far to the right of what the average American voter prefers — in fact, if anything, they’re a bit to the right of what the average Republican voter prefers!

Yet Republicans are saying no. Indeed, they’re threatening to force a U.S. default, and create an economic crisis, unless they get a completely one-sided deal. And this was entirely predictable.

First of all, the modern G.O.P. fundamentally does not accept the legitimacy of a Democratic presidency — any Democratic presidency. We saw that under Bill Clinton, and we saw it again as soon as Mr. Obama took office.

As a result, Republicans are automatically against anything the president wants, even if they have supported similar proposals in the past. Mitt Romney’s health care plan became a tyrannical assault on American freedom when put in place by that man in the White House. And the same logic applies to the proposed debt deals.

Put it this way: If a Republican president had managed to extract the kind of concessions on Medicare and Social Security that Mr. Obama is offering, it would have been considered a conservative triumph. But when those concessions come attached to minor increases in revenue, and more important, when they come from a Democratic president, the proposals become unacceptable plans to tax the life out of the U.S. economy.

…

Which brings me to the culpability of those who are only now facing up to the G.O.P.’s craziness.

Here’s the point: those within the G.O.P. who had misgivings about the embrace of tax-cut fanaticism might have made a stronger stand if there had been any indication that such fanaticism came with a price, if outsiders had been willing to condemn those who took irresponsible positions.

But there has been no such price. Mr. Bush squandered the surplus of the late Clinton years, yet prominent pundits pretend that the two parties share equal blame for our debt problems. Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, proposed a supposed deficit-reduction plan that included huge tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, then received an award for fiscal responsibility.

So there has been no pressure on the G.O.P. to show any kind of responsibility, or even rationality — and sure enough, it has gone off the deep end. If you’re surprised, that means that you were part of the problem.

It was fun for a while to watch Boehner herding the Republican cats and watching the infighting, but now it is time for moderate Republicans to join the Democrats and show some common sense.

 

by

And Scalia, too

A few days ago, I posted about Justice Thomas and his conflicts of interest.  Now it seems that Justice Scalia has his own ethical problems.

td110701.gif

Looking around, it appears that ethics are not a huge consideration for a lot of judges and politicians these days.  Massachusetts has two political leaders currently serving time and a third one is likely on the way.  Plus, a former Senate President, William Bulger, has got to be concerned about his reputation as his brother, James, faces trial on 19 counts of murder here as well as others in Florida and Oklahoma.  There have always been hints that William tried to shield James while James was on the run.  William’s son has been implicated in conflict of interest in hiring at the Massachusetts Department of Probation. 

There is a new translation of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics reviewed in this week’s New York Times Book Review.  While I’m not sure I agree with the reviewer, Harry V. Jaffa, that Leo Strauss was the “greatest political philosopher of the 20th century”, a couple of sentences caught my attention.

The existence of politics before political philosophy is what makes political philosophy possible. Politics is inherently controversial because human beings are passionately attached to their opinions by interests that have nothing to do with the truth. But because philosophers — properly so called — have no interest other than the truth, they alone can bring to bear the canon of reason that will transform the conflict of opinion that otherwise dominates the political world.

Unfortunately, what has been called philosophy for more than a century has virtually destroyed any belief in the possibility of objective truth, and with it the possibility of philosophy. Our chaotic politics reflects this chaos of the mind. No enterprise to replace this chaos with the cosmos of reason could be more welcome

Maybe Aristotle should be required summer reading for the Supreme Court, the Massachusetts General Court (Legislature) as well as for the rest of us.  My husband pulled our copy of Aristotle down from the shelf last night.  Neither of us have read it since our freshman year at St. John’s College:  Maybe it is time to read it again.  Maybe Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas need to think about whether the opinions they are writing as influenced by interests “that have nothing to do with the truth.”

by

Why not raise taxes?

It is 7 am here and I am about to turn on Wimbledon, but I had to write about this first.  Surfing the headlines in the New York Times this jumped out at me:  ” We Knew They Got Raises.  But This?”

The final figures show that the median pay for top executives at 200 big companies last year was $10.8 million. That works out to a 23 percent gain from 2009. The earlier study had put the median pay at a none-too-shabby $9.6 million, up 12 percent.

Total C.E.O. pay hasn’t quite returned to its heady, prerecession levels — but it certainly seems headed there. Despite the soft economy, weak home prices and persistently high unemployment, some top executives are already making more than they were before the economy soured.

Pay skyrocketed last year because many companies brought back cash bonuses, says Aaron Boyd, head of research at Equilar. Cash bonuses, as opposed to those awarded in stock options, jumped by an astounding 38 percent, the final numbers show.

Granted, many American corporations did well last year. Profits were up substantially. As a result, many companies are sharing the wealth, at least with their executives. “We’re seeing a lot of that reflected in the pay,” Mr. Boyd says.

So if companies are making money again, why aren’t they using some of that profit to hire people. you might wonder.  But I also want to know is what kind of taxes are these guys, and I’m sure they are 99% men, paying?  (I noticed that one person mentioned is Warren Buffet who thinks he ought to be paying more in taxes.)  I think that any of of these executives can afford higher taxes more than I, as a public employee, can afford an increase in health insurance premiums while getting no incease in pay.  Or than the man or woman retired on just a public pension or just social security can afford to pay for health insurance on the private market – even with a Paul Ryan voucher.

Philippe Dauman of Viacom led the executive pay list in 2010. The median was $10.8 million

 Meanwhile there are the rest of us.

Of course, these sorts of pay figures invariably push the buttons of many ordinary Americans. Yes, workers’ 401(k)’s are looking better than they did in some recent years, but many investors still have not recovered from the hit they took during the financial crisis. And, of course, millions are out of work or trying to hold on to their homes — or both.

And it’s not as if most workers are getting fat raises. The average American worker was taking home $752 a week in late 2010, up a mere 0.5 percent from a year earlier. After inflation, workers were actually making less.

Yes, as the story points out, stockholders can vote on the executive pay plan and yes, some corporate heads don’t get salaries just stock like Buffet, but the question remains:  What is wrong with raising the tax rates on people that make this type of salary?  If the argument that the Republican’s are making, that companies need their profits in order to create jobs, then where are the jobs?  I think the Democrats have a powerful argument.  They just need to get the story out.

by

The War Powers Act

 

So, who needs permisson for what?  What should a woman have to do to have an abortion?  Should the President live in South Dakota or Kansas and have to follow those rules to declare war.  I think the President should notify Congress (which he hasn’t).  As Congressman Mike Capuano explained

Article I, section 8 of the Constitution, and the War Powers Act of 1973, states that unless a crisis threatening our security requires immediate action, only Congress may authorize the use of force. I firmly believe that the Constitution entrusts Congress – not the President acting alone – to decide when to put U.S. troops in harm’s way. The President has not yet fulfilled his obligation to seek Congress’ approval to continue military operations in Libya.This decision was not easy, but I feel very strongly about this matter and I don’t expect that the Administration will decide to seek Congressional approval at this point. I also want to make it very clear that my concerns go beyond one President and one war. In fact, I am more concerned about future Presidents who may wish to bring this country to war based on insufficient facts. There is no more important matter than war and peace, and the Constitution is very clear on this matter. I appeared on CNN earlier week to talk about the lawsuit; you may watch the interview here: http://inthearena.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/15/capuano-u-s-action-in-libya-illegal/.

 

td110624.gif

But I’m not sure that  Mike was  envisioning this!  Maybe it is time to rethink the War Powers Act to meet the current day defition of war.  Maybe it should include actions taken as part of a NATO or UN mandate.  Maybe it should include actions with no “boots on the ground.”  War has changed since the 1970’s.  Let’s think about this.

by

Leaving Afghanistan

Last night, President Obama announced that 10,000 American soldiers will leave Afghanistan by the end of the year with about 20,00 more gone by the end of next summer.  This leaves about 70,000.  These will in the President’s own words,  “…continue coming home at a steady pace as Afghan security forces move into the lead.  Our mission will change from combat to support.  By 2014, this process of transition will be complete, and the Afghan people will be responsible for their own security. ”  OK then.  But why wait until 2014?  Do we expect things to be any different by then?  Or are our troops in Afghanistan there to stabilize the border with Pakistan?  Can’t really tell.

Soldiers watch Obama's speech from Afghanistan.

           (AP Photo of Soldiers in Afghanistan watching the speech)

According to my rudimentary math, we are going to take a year to move out 30,000 soldiers and it appears that the President’s “steady pace” is 30,000 a year. (70,000 over 30 months.)  I think the Russians left faster but they were on the same continent and I think we can say they were in retreat while we are claiming, if not victory, than mission accomplished. 

Here is link to a graphic from the New York Times about troop levels.

Meanwhile it looks as if we will be working on a political solution.  An excellent idea, but why are we waiting until next May to “shape the next phase of this transition”?  Is NATO too busy?  Maybe bombing Libya.?

If Afghanistan is the “good” fight, we still have about 47,000 troops in Iraq, the “bad war”.  They are all coming home beginning this summer.  According to this story in the Huffington Post

The United States has been in Iraq since 2003, and there are currently about 47,000 U.S. troops still in the country. Withdrawal, set to seriously go into effect by late summer, involves not only removing U.S. forces, but also pulling 63,000 contractors, closing 100 bases and getting rid of one million pieces of equipment.

This is supposed to happen by the end of this year.  I point this out in part to show that withdrawing more that 30,000 troops a year is logistically possible and in part to provide some good news.

Almost everyone seems to want us to stop fighting in the entire region (the Middle East and Northern Africa).  Even the United States Conference of Mayors wants money spent on our own infrastructure and deficit reduction.  And my only quarrel with the President is timing.

I think no one will be happy with this speech.  Those that want us to stay and fight will be unhappy that we are actually starting to leave.  Those that want us to leave will be unhappy with the pace of withdrawal.  And those of us who want to use the money elsewhere will find that we are still going to be spending money in Afghanistan for a long time to come.

As Eugene Robinson said

I doubt the speech will please either hawks or doves. From his frankly uninspiring, let’s-all-eat-our-peas delivery, I have to doubt whether the president even pleased himself.

by

Justice Clarence Thomas should resign

I’ve been thinking about this for several days now.  I’ve asked myself if this is just the left/progressive/liberal media piling on someone they have never liked much?  Am I attracted to this story because I never wanted him confirmed in the first place?  (I have my “I believe Anita” button somewhere.)  Is it because he never asks questions?  Because 99% of the time he does what Justice Scalia does?

I don’t think the New York Times is the liberal media.  And, yes, I’d like him to fall as payback for what he did to Anita Hill.  (I can’t be as forgiving as she).  I do believe that having him on the Court is a waste of a seat.  I also know that when Justice Kagan does not recuse herself from voting on the health care reform Fox etc. will be jumping all over her.  Justice Kagan has, however, recused herself from several cases that were already filed and being considered by the Department of Justice as well as her former office, Solicitor General.

What is the Times story about?  It is about preservation of a site in Pin Point, GA where Justice Thomas’ mother once picked crabs and the creation of a museum there.  It is about the owner making connection with Harlen Crow through Justice Thomas.  Crow, you may remember, financed the Swift Boat campaign against Senator John Kerry.

Mr. Crow stepped in to finance the multimillion-dollar purchase and restoration of the cannery, featuring a museum about the culture and history of Pin Point that has become a pet project of Justice Thomas’s.

The project throws a spotlight on an unusual, and ethically sensitive, friendship that appears to be markedly different from those of other justices on the nation’s highest court.

The two men met in the mid-1990s, a few years after Justice Thomas joined the court. Since then, Mr. Crow has done many favors for the justice and his wife, Virginia, helping finance a Savannah library project dedicated to Justice Thomas, presenting him with a Bible that belonged to Frederick Douglass and reportedly providing $500,000 for Ms. Thomas to start a Tea Party-related group. They have also spent time together at gatherings of prominent Republicans and businesspeople at Mr. Crow’s Adirondacks estate and his camp in East Texas.

OK, Justices have to have a life outside of court and they have friends.  But as the Mike McIntire who wrote the story in the Times points out

In several instances, news reports of Mr. Crow’s largess provoked controversy and questions, adding fuel to a rising debate about Supreme Court ethics. But Mr. Crow’s financing of the museum, his largest such act of generosity, previously unreported, raises the sharpest questions yet — both about Justice Thomas’s extrajudicial activities and about the extent to which the justices should remain exempt from the code of conduct for federal judges.

Although the Supreme Court is not bound by the code, justices have said they adhere to it. Legal ethicists differed on whether Justice Thomas’s dealings with Mr. Crow pose a problem under the code. But they agreed that one facet of the relationship was both unusual and important in weighing any ethical implications: Justice Thomas’s role in Mr. Crow’s donation for the museum.

The code says judges “should not personally participate” in raising money for charitable endeavors, out of concern that donors might feel pressured to give or entitled to favorable treatment from the judge. In addition, judges are not even supposed to know who donates to projects honoring them.

What do other Justices, Justices on the other side of the Court’s ideological divide do?

It is not unusual for justices to accept gifts or take part in outside activities, some with political overtones.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer has attended Renaissance Weekend, a retreat for politicians, artists and media personalities that is a favorite of Democrats, including former President Bill Clinton. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg participated in a symposium sponsored by the National Organization for Women’s Legal Defense and Education Fund, and a philanthropic foundation once tried to give her a $100,000 achievement award. She instructed that the money be given to charity.

And as I pointed out earlier, Justice Kagan has recused herself from a number of cases.

Justice Thomas and Harlan Crow are friends.  They spend time together.  Crow is helping to finance the museum and Thomas has done more than simply introduce the property owners to him.  According to the Times story he has picked the people to put the exhibit together and has worked on the film that will be shown.  Opposition first came from a group that opposes Thomas politically, but does that make this suspect?

No one is saying that Crow and his money have directly influenced any of Thomas’ votes.  But we can have suspicions.

Mr. Crow has not personally been a party to Supreme Court litigation, but his companies have been involved in federal court cases, including four that went to the appellate level. And he has served on the boards of two conservative organizations involved in filing supporting briefs in cases before the Supreme Court. One of them, the American Enterprise Institute, with Mr. Crow as a trustee, gave Justice Thomas a bust of Lincoln valued at $15,000 and praised his jurisprudence at an awards gala in 2001.

The institute’s Project on Fair Representation later filed briefs in several cases, and in 2006 the project brought a lawsuit challenging federal voting rights laws, a case in which Justice Thomas filed a lone dissent, embracing the project’s arguments. The project director, an institute fellow named Edward Blum, said the institute supported his research but did not finance the brief filings or the Texas suit, which was litigated pro bono by a former clerk of Justice Thomas’s.

“When it came time to file a lawsuit,” he said, “A.E.I. had no role in doing that.”

Plus we all know that the Affordable Health Care Act will be coming to the Court.

Supreme Court ethics have been under increasing scrutiny, largely because of the activities of Justice Thomas and Ms. Thomas, whose group, Liberty Central, opposed President Obama’s health care overhaul — an issue likely to wind up before the court. Mr. Crow’s donation to Liberty Central was reported by Politico.

So what does this all mean?  What can anyone do about it?

The Code of Conduct for judges does not directly apply to the Supreme Court largely because there is not higher court to enforce it.  Justices do say that they follow the Code anyway.  But Thomas does not seem to have reported all the travel paid for by Crow.  Even as a group of law professors and Common Cause call for legislation to extend the Code directly to Supreme Court Justices one has to wonder who would be the enforcer.  If a Justice is already ethically aware there is no problem.   But there will always be a Clarence Thomas who appears not to have a clue.  His friends should tell him it is time for him to leave the Court.