Secrecy, Wealth, Patriotism & Prophecy

Altercation

I've got a new Nation column here called "All governments (And Some Journalists)) Lie, and my debate with Mort Zuckerman about Lebanon on Larry King is here.

From the National Coalition for History: 1)" According to a report released last week by the National Security Archive (NSA), as part of a congressionally-mandated review of previously released historical documents relating to nuclear energy and
weaponry, the Pentagon and the Energy Department have reclassified as national security secrets historical data relating to the size of the American nuclear arsenal during the Cold War.  The report documents that so far the cost of the Kyle-Lott reclassification review to the
American taxpayer is over $3,313 per page, a figure that has raised the eyebrows of government watchdog groups that question the relative cost/benefit of the program.

The NSA report details for the public the number of Minuteman missiles (1,000), Titan II missiles (54), and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (656) in the historic U.S. Cold War arsenal ­  information that had previously been public through the administrations of four
Secretaries of Defense in the 1960s and 70s but is now blacked out. Security classifiers also have also redacted from documents deployment information relating to the number of American nuclear weapons in Great Britain and Germany -- information that was first declassified in 1999.  Also blacked out -- details regarding the nuclear deployment arrangements with Canada, even though the Canadian government has declassified its side of the arrangement.

The congressionally-ordered review was sanctioned under the 1998 Kyle-Lott amendments.  They were crafted in the pre-9/11 era and were designed to re-screen documents for inadvertent releases of  information relating to the American nuclear arsenal. More
recently, the costly program has been justified in terms of its potential to thwart terrorism.

Thus far the Energy Department has spent some $22 million in implementing the Kyle-Lott amendments. To that end the department has surveyed more than 200 million pages of previously released public documents. The program has certainly kept young historians and
contract researchers employed, but there are serious questions relating to the relative cost/benefit of the program and whether America is actually any safer as a result of the re-review.

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To date, Energy Department screeners have withdrawn a total of 6,640 pages (.3% of the total pages reviewed) from public access as a result of the re-review. This comes to a total per-page cost of $3,313, but even this figure is deceptively low: Over two-thirds of the documents being withheld are marked with lesser classification rankings than that of "Restricted Data (RD)" ­ documents of prime concern that could potentially reveal weapon systems design/fuel information that could possibly be of use to a potential terrorist, should such persons actually use archival sources to obtain such information. (There has never been a documented or even alleged case in which information gleaned from any American archival source has been used by a terrorists  to plan an attack on a Western target.)  "It would be difficult to find better candidates for unjustifiable secrecy than decisions to classify the numbers of U.S. strategic weapons," remarked Archive senior analyst Dr. William Burr, who compiled the NSA report."

Is this a great country or what? (See below))

Particularly if you're obscenely rich. (If you don't have Times Select, try this.)

But the above is actually a pretty good argument for Times Select, as was that long Philip Boffey piece on global warming, and this one on infrastructure). 

Some lowlights: "According to the latest installation of a survey that the Federal Reserve has conducted every three years since 1989, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans accounted for 33.4 percent of total net worth in 2004, compared to 30.1 percent in 1989. Over the same period, the other Americans in the top 10 percent saw their share of the nation's net worth basically stagnate, at about 36 percent, while the bottom 50 percent accounted for just 2.5 percent of the wealth in 2004, compared to 3.0 percent in 1989.

In 2006, the average tax cut for households with incomes of more than $1 million -- the top two-tenths of 1 percent -- is $112,000 which works out to a boost of 5.7 percent in after tax income. That's considerably higher than the 5 percent boost garnered by the top 1 percent. It's far greater than the 2.5 percent increase of the middle fifth of households, and fully 19 times greater than the 0.3 percent gain of the poorest fifth of households.

A recent study done for the Business Roundtable, a lobbying group for chief executives, shows that median executive pay at 350 large public companies was $6.8 million in 2005. According to the Wall Street Journal, that's 179 times the pay of the average American worker.

The fast-growing gap between the rich and poor and middle-class Americans is not something that has just happened. The Bush policies are an attempt to dismantle the institutions and norms that have long worked to ameliorate inequities -- progressive taxation, the minimum wage, Social Security, Medicaid and so on. The aims that can't be accomplished outright -- like cuts in Social Security -- are being teed up by running deficits that could force the shrinkage of government programs, even though the public would not likely condone many such cuts unless compelled to by a fiscal crisis.

Underscoring the point, the Bush administration's own Economic Report of the President in 2006 shows that average annual earnings of college graduates fell by 5 percent from 2000 to 2004. In those four years, the difference between the average yearly pay of a college graduate and a high school graduate shrank from 93 percent to 80 percent."

"Civility, Neocon style."  David Brooks, three weeks ago: "The McCain-Lieberman Party counters with constant reminders that country comes before party, that in politics a little passion energizes but unmarshaled passion corrupts, and that more people want to vote for civility than for venom." Here.

David Brooks, this morning: "Perhaps you remember the left-wing bloggers foaming so uncontrollably at the thought of Rove's coming imprisonment that they looked like little Chia Pets of glee." Here.

The author realizes that by employing the term "neocon" he is practicing a combination of anti-Semitism and Jewish self-hatred. Being a liberal, he simply cannot help himself.

Speaking of which, here's one more reason this war is the stupidest, most counterproductive and most dishonest thing  any American president has done since, well, actually, I can't think of anything Maybe you can. (Thanks, liberal hawks and Ralph)

All hail President Joe McCarthy.

Let's impeach the punditocracy, as well. Particularly if you're obscenely rich. (If you don't have Times Select, try this.

The official "Retire already, David Broder" calendar begins today...

How do you spell S-C-H-A-D-E-N-F-R-E-U-D-E? 

In defense of war photographers.

Pretty good definition: "the mainstream style on reporting the news that most papers employ is not really concerned with depicting the truth, but concerned primarily with balancing lots of competing agendas and offending the least amount of interests as possible," Here.

Catholic Right, The: Here.
A-N-W-I-L-S-O-N-I-S-A-S-H-I-T.
Whataguy!