Obama’s Lack Of Accomplishments October 4, 2009
Posted by seeineye in : Politics , add a commentPresident Obama takes on those who have attacked him for taking over health care, supporting gay rights, and leaving Iraq. In his defense the President states that he has in fact done nothing in his Presidency to warrant such accusations, and he really does mean nothing.
Billions in U.S. Aid Never Reached Pakistan Army October 4, 2009
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SLAMABAD, Pakistan — The United States has long suspected that much of the billions of dollars it has sent Pakistan to battle militants has been diverted to the domestic economy and other causes, such as fighting India.
Now the scope and longevity of the misuse is becoming clear: Between 2002 and 2008, while Al Qaeda regrouped, only $500 million of the $6.6 billion in American aid actually made it to the Pakistani military, two army generals tell The Associated Press.
The account of the generals, who asked to remain anonymous because military rules forbid them from speaking publicly, was backed up by other retired and active generals, former bureaucrats and government ministers.
At the time of the siphoning, Pervez Musharraf, a Washington ally, served as both chief of staff and president, making it easier to divert money intended for the military to bolster his sagging image at home through economic subsidies.
“The army itself got very little,” said retired Gen. Mahmud Durrani, who was Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S. under Musharraf. “It went to things like subsidies, which is why everything looked hunky-dory. The military was financing the war on terror out of its own budget.”
Generals and ministers say the diversion of the money hurt the military in very real ways:
—Helicopters critical to the battle in rugged border regions were not available. At one point in 2007, more than 200 soldiers were trapped by insurgents in the tribal regions without a helicopter lift to rescue them.
—The limited night vision equipment given to the army was taken away every three months for inventory and returned three weeks later.
—Equipment was broken, and training was lacking. It was not until 2007 that money was given to the Frontier Corps, the front-line force, for training.
The details on misuse of American aid come as Washington again promises Pakistan money. Legislation to triple general aid to Pakistan cleared Congress last week. The legislation also authorizes “such sums as are necessary” for military assistance to Pakistan, upon several conditions. The conditions include certification that Pakistan is cooperating in stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons, that Pakistan is making a sustained commitment to combating terrorist groups and that Pakistan security forces are not subverting the country’s political or judicial processes.
The U.S. is also insisting on more accountability for reimbursing money spent. For example, Pakistan is still waiting for $1.7 billion for which it has billed the United States under a Coalition Support Fund to reimburse allies for money spent on the war on terror.
But the U.S. still can’t follow what happens to the money it doles out.
“We don’t have a mechanism for tracking the money after we have given it to them,” Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Mark Wright said in a telephone interview.
Musharraf’s spokesman, retired Gen. Rashid Quereshi, flatly denied that his former boss had shortchanged the army. He did not address the specific charges. “He has answered these questions. He has answered all the questions,” the spokesman said. Musharraf took power in a bloodless coup in 1999 and resigned in August 2008.
The misuse of funding helps to explain how al-Qaida, dismantled in Afghanistan in 2001, was able to regroup, grow and take on the weak Pakistani army. Even today, the army complains of inadequate equipment to battle Taliban entrenched in tribal regions.
For its part, Washington did not ask many questions of a leader, Musharraf, whom it considered an ally, according to a U.S. Government Accountability Office report released last year.
Pakistan has received more money from the fund than any other nation. It is also the least expensive war front. The amount the U.S. spends per soldier per month is just $928, compared with $76,870 in Afghanistan and $85,640 in Iraq.
Yet by 2008, the United States had provided Pakistan with $8.6 billion in military money, and more than $12 billion in all.
“The army was sending in the bills,” said one general who asked not to be identified because it is against military rules to speak publicly. “The army was taking from its coffers to pay for the war effort — the access roads construction, the fuel, everything. … This is the reality — the army got peanuts.”
Some of the money from the U.S. even went to buying weapons from the United States better suited to fighting India than in the border regions of Afghanistan — armor-piercing tow missiles, sophisticated surveillance equipment, air-to-air missiles, maritime patrol aircraft, anti-ship missiles and F-16 fighter aircraft.
“Pakistan insisted and America agreed. Pakistan said we also have a threat from other sources,” Durrani said, referring to India, “and we have to strengthen our overall capacity. “The money was used to buy and support capability against India.”
The army also suffered from mismanagement, Durrani said. As an example, he cited Pakistani attempts to buy badly needed attack helicopters.
Pakistan asked for Cobra helicopters because it knows how to maintain them, he said. But the helicopters were old, and to make them battle-ready, the Pentagon sent them to a company that had no experience with Cobras and took two years, he said.
As a result, in 2007, Pakistan had only one working helicopter — a debilitating handicap in the battle against insurgents who hide, train and attack from the hulking mountains that run like a seam along the Afghan-Pakistani border.
The army was also frustrated about not getting more money. Military spokesman Gen. Athar Abbas said the U.S. gave nothing to offset the cost of Pakistan’s dead and wounded in the war on terror. He estimated 1,800 Pakistani soldiers had been killed since 2003 and 4,800 more wounded, most of them seriously.
The hospital and rehabilitation costs for the wounded have come to more than $25 million, Abbas said. Pakistan’s military also gives land to the widows of the dead, educates their children and provides health care.
“These costs do not appear anywhere,” he said. “There is no U.S. compensation for the casualties, assistance with aid to the grieving families.”
Even while money was being siphoned off for other purposes on Pakistan’s end, the U.S. imposed little control over or even had specific knowledge of what went where, according to reports by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. The reports covered 2002 through 2008.
The reports found that the Pentagon often ignored its own oversight rules, didn’t get adequate documents and doled out money without asking for an explanation.
For more than a year, the Pentagon paid Pakistan’s navy $19,000 a month per vehicle just for repair costs on a fleet of fewer than 20 vehicles. Monthly food bills doubled for no apparent reason, and for a year the Pentagon paid the bills without checking, according to the report.
Daniyal Aziz, a minister in Musharraf’s government, said he warned U.S. officials that the money they were giving his government was being misused, but to no avail.
“They both deserved each other, Musharraf and the Americans,” he said
Roberts and Alito Views on First Amendment Cases May Be Key October 4, 2009
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With three new members in the past four years and the prospect of more change ahead, the Supreme Court led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. commences this week what could be a transformative term.
New Justice Sonia Sotomayor will receive the most attention, as President Obama’s historic choice begins to reveal the judicial philosophy that remained largely cloaked during her confirmation hearings. And speculation will build about whether a retirement by one of the aging liberal justices will give Obama another opportunity to make his mark.
But experts who watch the court will focus more on President George W. Bush’s appointments: Roberts, who became chief justice four years ago, and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., whose conservative viewpoint contrasts with that of Sandra Day O’Connor, the more moderate justice he replaced in early 2006.
Both men are emerging from the cautious first years that every new justice experiences — Roberts as a results-oriented strategist and Alito as a jurist likely to strengthen his voice in a term whose docket already features cases that will highlight the difference he makes on the court.
“The replacement of [William H.] Rehnquist and O’Connor by Roberts and Alito is likely to have a significantly greater impact on the court than the replacement of [Justice David H.] Souter by Sotomayor,” said Walter E. Dellinger III, a frequent Supreme Court practitioner who represented the government during the Clinton administration.
“I think we may look back in about 2020 and see that the replacement of Justice O’Connor by Judge Alito had the greatest impact on the court of any appointment in more than a quarter of a century,” dating back to conservative Clarence Thomas’s replacement of stalwart liberal Thurgood Marshall, he said.
Two Key Cases
Evidence of the impact could come early in this term in a couple of First Amendment cases.
One is Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which the court reconsidered in a special hearing last month to decide whether to overrule precedent that restricted the role of corporations in election campaigns. O’Connor supported the kind of campaign finance reform found in the challenged McCain-Feingold act. Alito has been much more skeptical that it can be squared with free-speech rights.
Alito is also likely to be more open than O’Connor to arguments that religious displays on government property do not necessarily constitute government endorsement of religion. That will be at issue when the court next week considers the case of a war memorial cross on government land in the Mojave Desert.
Roberts will also be key in both cases, especially the one regarding campaign finance. He has emerged as a canny tactician, patiently moving the court’s decisions to the right, but without bold steps.
“When the court has gotten to the brink of overruling a major precedent, the court has stepped back from the cliff,” said Steven R. Shapiro of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Whether that is because of Roberts’s preference for narrow and incremental change, or because Justice Anthony M. Kennedy remains the decider between the court’s equally divided conservative and liberal blocs, is the great debate about the court.
Medical Premiums May Still Burden Middle Class October 4, 2009
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The legislation advancing in Congress would require all Americans to get insurance — through an employer, a government program or by buying it themselves – but new tax credits to help with premiums won’t go far enough for everyone.
Many middle-class Americans would still struggle to pay for health insurance despite efforts by President Obama and Democrats to make coverage more affordable.
The legislation advancing in Congress would require all Americans to get insurance — through an employer, a government program or by buying it themselves. But new tax credits to help with premiums won’t go far enough for everyone. Some middle-class families purchasing their own coverage through new insurance exchanges could find it out of reach.
Lawmakers recognize the problem.
“For some people it’s going to be a heavy lift,” said Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del. “We’re doing our best to make sure it’s not an impossible lift.”
Added Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine: “We have no certainty as to whether or not these plans are going to be affordable.” Both are on the Senate Finance Committee, which finished writing a health care bill on Friday.
A new online tool from the Kaiser Family Foundation illustrates the predicament.
The Health Reform Subsidy Calculator provides ballpark estimates of what households of varying incomes and ages would pay under the different Democratic health care bills. The legislation is still a work in progress and the calculator only a rough guide. Nonetheless, the results are revealing.
A family of four headed by a 45-year-old making $63,000 a year is in the middle of the middle class. But that family would pay $7,110 to buy its own health insurance under the plan from the committee chairman, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont.
The family would get a tax credit of $3,970 to help pay for a policy worth $11,080. But the balance due — $7,110 — is real money. Maybe it’s less than the rent, but it’s probably more than a car loan payment.
Kaiser’s calculator doesn’t take into account co-payments and deductibles that could add hundreds of dollars, even several thousand, to a family’s total medical expenses. A Congressional Budget Office analysis estimates total expenses could average 20 percent of income for some families by 2016.
The issue of affordability “has been lurking in the background and is nowhere near resolved yet,” said Kaiser’s president, Drew Altman. “It’s tricky because it doesn’t take a lot of people to make affordability a political problem. It just takes some very visible and understandable cases.”
At the root of the concerns is the push to cut the overall cost of health care overhaul legislation. Congress is trimming the budget for subsidies to meet Obama’s target of $900 billion over 10 years — as the Baucus plan does. It means premiums will be higher than under earlier Democratic proposals.
The trade-off directly affects people who buy their own coverage. For those with job-based insurance, employers would continue to cover most of the costs.
Most of the uninsured are in households headed by someone who’s self-employed or works at a business that doesn’t provide coverage. It’s this group that Democrats are trying to help.
Because health insurance is so expensive, lawmakers recognize that if they’re going to pass a law requiring all Americans to get coverage, government has to defray the cost. The size of those subsidies makes an enormous difference.
Under the Baucus bill, a family of four making $63,000 would have to pay 11 percent of its income for health insurance, according to Kaiser. By comparison, an earlier bill from the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee with more generous subsidies required the same hypothetical family to pay about 7 percent of its income for premiums — a difference of about $2,500.
“This is not the loaves and the fishes — you can’t just throw some subsidies out there and expect that will take care of everybody’s needs,” said Karen Pollitz, a Georgetown University professor who studies the insurance market for people buying their own coverage.
The legislation provides the most generous subsidies to those at or near the poverty line, about $22,000 for a family of four. That’s where the problem is concentrated because about three-fourths of the uninsured are in households making less than twice the poverty level.
But as income rises, the subsidies taper off.
For a family of four making $45,000, federal subsidies would pick up 71 percent of the premium under the Baucus plan, according to the Kaiser calculator.
For a family with an income of $63,000, the subsidies would only cover 36 percent of the premium.
A family making $90,000 would get no help.
Pollitz said the subsidies disappear rapidly for households with solid middle-class incomes. That could be tricky for a self-employed individual who has a particularly good year financially.
Another problem is that people won’t be able to get the insurance tax credits immediately after the bill passes. To hold down costs, the assistance won’t come until 2013, after the next presidential election.
White House officials say that while Obama wants the cost of the final bill to stay manageable, it has to provide affordable coverage.
“The president is absolutely committed to making this affordable. That’s the whole point,” said Linda Douglass, spokeswoman for the White House health reform office.
Douglass said it’s premature to draw any conclusions while the bill is being shaped in Congress. But House leaders are also cutting back their legislation to meet Obama’s target.
Acknowledging the affordability problem, the Baucus’ committee voted Friday to exempt millions of people from the requirement to buy insurance and reduce penalties for those who fail to do so. But that would mean leaving at least 2 million more uninsured — not very satisfying to Democrats who started out with the goal of coverage for all.
“I think we’ve got to do something about it,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. “We’ve got to make sure health insurance is affordable for the middle class.”
