NYTimes:

[Bernie Madoff] asserted that unidentified banks and hedge funds were somehow “complicit” in his elaborate fraud, an about-face from earlier claims that he was the only person involved.

[. . .] He spoke with great intensity and fluency about his dealings with various banks and hedge funds, pointing to their “willful blindness” and their failure to examine discrepancies between his regulatory filings and other information available to them. “They had to know,” Mr. Madoff said. “But the attitude was sort of, ‘If you’re doing something wrong, we don’t want to know.’”

"They had to know" seems the operative phrase of the past decade. "They had to know" that the Bush tax cuts would blow up the budget. "They had to know" the Iraq Debacle was a fraud. "They had to know" that Wall Street was a crooked casino. "They had to know" that banks were abusing HAMP. And so on.

Speaking for me only

Open Thread.

Yesterday, Gibbons v. Ogden, today, a dramatization of McCulloch v. Maryland:

[T]he Constitution of the United States has not left the right of Congress to employ the necessary means for the execution of the powers conferred on the Government to general reasoning. To its enumeration of powers is added that of making 'laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States or in any department thereof.' [. . .]

[T]he Constitution must allow to the national legislature that discretion with respect to the means by which the powers it confers are to be carried into execution which will enable that body to perform the high duties assigned to it in the manner most beneficial to the people. Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the Constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consistent with the letter and spirit of the Constitution, are Constitutional.

The NYTimes Caucus blog asks "Why would the left be so accepting of the president’s budget?" Were they?I didn't pay much attention. I was critical, but in a fairly clinical way.

Meanwhile, CNN says "Left is livid over budget safety net cuts." I doubt anyone is livid. The reason is no one really expects that much from this Administration anymore.

Speaking for me only

Open Thread.

Making the point that bloggers are NOT in fact the base of the Democratic Party (duh), Matt Yglesias writes:

I often thought during the health care debate that poor people would be saying “hell no I’m not going to give up this Medicaid expansion so you can hold out indefinitely for a public option.”

Funny, I often thought during the health care debate that less well off people should be saying "hell no I'm not going to give up a public option for those sh*tty exchanges Beltway Bloggers love." Different strokes I guess.

Speaking for me only

With catcalls from the people he was overseeing. Via Glenn Greenwald, the Washington Post reports that Tim Geithner and his minions at Treasury are happy to see TARP Inspector General Neil Barofsky go. Barofsky must have done a good job then:

In his sometimes scathing reports to Congress, Barofsky showed little reluctance in criticizing administration officials on everything from how their lack of transparency was fueling "anger, cynicism and distrust" to how their foreclosure prevention efforts had fallen well below expectations. [. . .]

Such criticisms did not sit well with Treasury officials [. . .] "We're fine with critics," said one Treasury official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to speak more candidly. "[But] he's been consistently wrong about a lot of big things." [. . .] in certain corners of the Treasury, where news of Barofsky's departure brought a touch of delight Monday. "It was," said one official, "like a nice valentine to us."

Here's my question - do Tim Geithner and his minions, including those at The New Republic, think HAMP was a success?

Speaking for me only

Here's the White House statement outlining funds in the budget for the War on Drugs. Is there more prevention, alternative incarceration and re-entry funding? Yes. And we appreciate it.

But, it's still top-heavy on enforcement. While it says the DEA gets $24.8 million less this year, it points out that last year's amount included supplemental funding for the Southwest Border. So it probably isn't a decrease at all. And those African vacations keep on coming. Today the feds indicted 7 in Liberia and Romania as part of a reverse sting by DEA agents. (DEA agents posed as drug sellers.)

The men allegedly "agreed to receive and store multi-ton shipments of Taliban-owned heroin" and "sell multi-kilogram quantities of cocaine to the Taliban," while the two Americans -- identified as Alwar Pouryan and Oded Orbach -- allegedly agreed to sell the missiles, the statement said.

The U.S. Attorney's press release is here. Once again, it sounds like the drugs weren't intended for the U.S., but needing jurisdiction, the DEA talked the men into sending some here, with the promise of huge profits. Why are we flying these men from Liberia and Romania to New York to prosecute them? The cost of the prosecution, defense and their incarceration if convicted will be huge. [More...]

The House of Representatives didn't feel any love for our privacy rights today. It passed the bill extending three intrusive privacy provisions of the Patriot Act. The ACLU says:

“It has been nearly a decade since the Patriot Act was passed and our lawmakers still refuse to make any meaningful changes to this reactionary law. The right to privacy from government is a cornerstone of our country’s foundation and Americans must be free from the kind of unwarranted government surveillance that the Patriot Act allows. If Congress cannot take the time to insert the much needed privacy safeguards the Patriot Act needs, it should allow these provisions to expire.”

Anyone else not feeling the love for Congress these days?

Happy Valentine's Day to all our readers. I hope you and your special someone have a very special evening planned. If you do, I hope you'll tell us about it.

If you don't, you can watch Bachelor Brad and the remaining six contestants vie for roses on the beautiful island of Anguilla. It will likely be crazy Michelle's final night. I've always wanted to go to Anguilla so I'm mostly looking forward to the island shots.

If romance isn't your thing, there's always Harry's Law.

Or, you can discuss the budget, or any other topic, your choice.

By the way, what song do you think (and by who) best captures the spirit of Valentine's Day?

Scott Lemeiux finds this "dramatization" of Gibbons v. Ogden:

What is this [Commerce] power? It is the power to regulate, that is, to prescribe the rule by which commerce is to be governed. This power, like all others vested in Congress, is complete in itself, may be exercised to its utmost extent, and acknowledges no limitations other than are prescribed in the Constitution.

Later, a dramatization of McCulloch v. Maryland.

Krugman:

[President Obama] has effectively given up on the idea that the government can do anything to create jobs in a depressed economy. In effect, although without saying so explicitly, the Obama administration has accepted the Republican claim that stimulus failed, and should never be tried again.

What’s extraordinary about all this is that stimulus can’t have failed, because it never happened. Once you take state and local cutbacks into account, there was no surge of government spending. [. . .] Fiscal policy didn’t fail; it wasn’t tried.

Meanwhile, The New Republic tells us how great Tim Geithner is because "Wall Street looks like a patient that staggered off its death bed and promptly took up ultra-marathoning[.]" Yes, that should warm the hearts of Dems and progressives everywhere. Mortgage crisis? Unemployment? Not Geithner's problem. Banks making obscene amounts of money? Job well done Timmeh. Sheesh.

Speaking for me only