Religious right leaders say it is anti-Christian to oppose hate... SAY WHAT?

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Ron Moore
June 17, 2009 - Examiner.com

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In the war of ideas those who believe only they have Truth on their side often find they provide the best ammunition for their opponents. This is certainly true in the hysterical reaction on the extreme religious right's opposition to hate crime legislation. They worry that prohibiting the encouragement of violence against certain groups will have a "chilling effect" on religious free speech.

Majority Leader Harry Reid has reaffirmed his plans to have the Senate take up a so-called hate-crimes bill before Congress' August recess.

In a Monday news conference, Reid, D-Nev., called hate crimes "a unique brand of evil."

"A violent act may physically hurt just a single victim and cause grief for loved ones," he said. "But hate crimes do more. They distress entire communities."

In response, Ashley Horne, federal policy analyst for Focus on the Family Action, said Reid has it backwards. A hate-crimes law, she said, could distress entire communities – particularly Christian churches.

"As we've seen in other nations where such laws are passed, they can have a chilling effect on the free speech of those who would simply share from the Bible God's views on issues such as homosexuality," she explained. "Hate-crimes laws are unnecessary in a civil society like ours based on the rule of law.

"All crimes are hate crimes," she added, "To give special status to certain groups of people allows courts to reach beyond punishing people for the illegal acts they commit and judge them for what they may or may not be thinking as they commit those acts."

As for Reid's pledge to push for a vote on a hate-crimes bill before the end of summer, Horne said its old news.

"That's nothing new," she said. "What we do see here is that Democrats in Congress who are pushing this legislation forward really just have a solution looking for a problem."

The religious right seems to believe that opposing hatred of gays may remove the stigma they wish society to brand on certain individuals. In a bizarre video found below, Gary Bauer explains that hate crime laws are fronts for advancing the "homosexual agenda". He even trots out a black minister who explains that in the race to be oppressed gays have nothing on African-Americans. It would appear that American fundamentalist right wing Christians have added an 11th Commandment: Thou shalt hate gay people above all others.

http://www.citizenlink.org/hatecrimes/

Time for Obama to Start Spending Political Capital

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Lincoln Mitchell
June 18, 2009 - The Huffington Post

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Throughout his presidential campaign, but more notably, during his presidency, President Obama has shown himself to have an impressive ability to accumulate political capital. During his tenure in the White House, Obama has done this by reaching out to a range of constituencies, moderating some of his programs, pursuing middle of the road approaches on key foreign policy questions and, not insignificantly, working to ensure that his approval rating remains quite high.

Political capital is not, however, like money, it cannot be saved up interminably while its owner waits for the right moment to spend it. Political capital has a shelf life, and often not a very long one. If it is not used relatively quickly, it dissipates and becomes useless to its owner. This is the moment in which Obama, who has spent the first few months of his presidency diligently accumulating political capital, now finds himself. The next few months will be a key time for Obama. If Obama does not spend this political capital during the next months, it will likely be gone by the New Year anyway.

Much of what President Obama has done in his first six months or so in office has been designed to build political capital, interestingly he has sought to build this capital from both domestic and foreign sources. He has done this by traveling extensively, reintroducing to America to foreign audiences and by a governance style that has very cleverly succeeded in pushing his political opponents to the fringes. This tactic was displayed during the effort to pass the stimulus package as Republican opposition was relegated to a loud and annoying, but largely irrelevant, distraction. Building political capital was, or should have been, a major goal of Obama's recent speech in Cairo as well.

Significantly, Obama has yet to spend any of his political capital by meaningfully taking on any powerful interests. He declined to take Wall Street on regarding the financial crisis, has prepared to, but not yet fully, challenged the power of the AMA or the insurance companies, nor has he really confronted any important Democratic Party groups such as organized labor.

This strategy, however, will not be fruitful for much longer. There are now some very clear issues where Obama should be spending political capital. The most obvious of these is health care. The battle for health care reform will be a major defining issue, not just for the Obama presidency, but for American society over the next decades. It is imperative that Obama push for the best and most comprehensive health care reform possible. This will likely mean not just a bruising legislative battle, but one that will pit powerful interests, not just angry Republican ideologues, against the President.

The legislative struggle will also pull many Democrats between the President and powerful interest groups. Obama must make it clear that there will be an enormous political cost which Democrats who vote against the bill will have to pay. Before any bill is voted upon, however, is perhaps an even more critical time as pressure from insurance groups, business groups and doctors organizations will be brought to bear both on congress, but also on the administration as it works with congress to craft the legislation. This is not the time when the administration must focus on making friends and being liked, but on standing their ground and getting a strong and inclusive health care reform bill.

Obama will have to take a similar approach to any other major domestic legislation as well. This is, of course, the way the presidency has worked for decades. Obama is in an unusual situation because a similar dynamic is at work at the international level. A major part of Obama's first six months in office have involved pursuing a foreign policy that implicitly has sought to rebuild both the image of the US abroad, but also American political capital. It is less clear how Obama can use this capital, but now is the time to use it.

A cynical interpretation of the choice facing Obama is that he can remain popular or he can have legislative and other policy accomplishments, but this interpretation would be wrong. By early 2010, Obama, and his party will, fairly or not, be increasingly judged by what they have accomplished in office, not by how deftly they have handled political challenges. Therefore, the only way he can remain popular and get new political capital is through converting his current political capital into concrete legislative accomplishments. Health care will be the first and very likely most important, test.

The Good, the Bad, the Ugly: Financial Sector Regulation

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Robert Weissman
June 18, 2009 - CommonDreams.org

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There are major gaps and shortcomings in the Obama administration's financial regulatory proposals, formally released today, and the proposals alone leave the financial sector vulnerable to future crisis. Still, it's nice to be able to say that the proposal does contain meaningful reforms.

Whether those meaningful reform proposals become law is no sure thing, and will depend on the administration's willingness to stare down Wall Street -- which still retains immense political power, despite its partial self-immolation -- and on whether a mobilized public demands Congress act for consumers, not contributors.

The 85-page draft released today is qualitatively different than the bullet-point plans previously issued by the Treasury Department. It contains detailed proposals, spanning across the financial regulatory spectrum, not easily summarized. Here are only some key elements -- first, the good, then the bad.

The Good

1. The administration supports creation of a strong Consumer Financial Regulatory Agency.

It proposes to give this new agency very strong powers, and jurisdiction over consumer protection rules -- taking away authority from existing regulators (like the Federal Reserve) that have failed utterly to protect consumers. It favors simplicity and gives the new agency the authority to mandate financial firms offer "plain vanilla" loans along with the more complicated packages they prefer. It gives the agency authority to ban mandatory arbitration provisions that strip consumers' right to go to court for redress of scams and rip-offs. And it establishes that the new agency's rules will be a regulatory floor, with states permitted to adopt stronger protections.

2. The administration proposes to reduce speculative betting, through new standards on leverage.

One reason the financial crisis spun out of control was financial firms' excessive use of "leverage" -- borrowed money. Heavily leveraged, the top commercial banks and investment banks overreached with very risky loans and investments. The administration proposes that all systemically important financial firms be subjected to higher capital reserve standards (meaning they can rely less on borrowed money). The administration properly says these rules should apply to any systemically important firm, whether or not it is a bank. It defines systemically important as a firm "whose combination of size, leverage and interconnectedness could pose a threat to financial stability if it failed." There are still important details to be worked out here, including how much capital such firms must maintain. And there is the very worrisome element that it is the Federal Reserve that is given primary responsibility for overseeing these systemically important firms.

3. Through "skin-in-the-game" rules, the administration aims to prevent predatory and reckless lending.

One reason lenders were willing to make so many predatory and bad-quality mortgages -- including but not limited to the class of "subprime" loans -- was that mortgage originators did not hold on to the loans. Mortgage brokers cut deals on behalf of banks and non-bank originators, which in turn sold the resulting mortgages to other banks. These banks, in turn, sliced and diced the mortgages, combined them into packages of pieces of thousands of other mortgages, and sold them to all kinds of investors. Because the initial lender did not maintain an ongoing interest in the mortgage, they did not have any incentive to ensure they were making a quality loan.

The administration proposes that loan originators be required to keep, at minimum, a 5 percent exposure in loans.

4. The administration seeks power to take over failing, systemically important financial firms.

The government already has such "resolution" power for commercial banks. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation regularly takes control over failing banks and "resolves" them outside of the bankruptcy process. This typically means selling off the failing bank to another bank, often after separating its good assets from bad. FDIC is expert at this process, moves very quickly, and averts the harmful consequences from extended bankruptcy processes.

The government does not have the legal authority to undertake comparable measures for important non-bank firms. This includes investment banks (think Lehman Brothers) and insurance companies (think AIG). Giving the government resolution power for non-banks should help control financial panic.

The Bad

1. The administration does not propose to do anything serious about executive pay and top-level compensation for financial firms.

The administration does support "say-on-pay" proposals, which give shareholders the right to a non-binding vote on executive compensation. But a non-binding vote isn't worth too much; and, more importantly, shareholders are often willing to support excessive compensation while risky bets are paying off.

In terms of financial stability, the imperative is to do away with the Wall Street bonus culture, where executives and traders are given extraordinary bonuses -- often four or more times base salary -- based on annual performance. This bonus culture gives traders and executives alike an incentive to take big bets -- because they get massive payoff if things go well, and don't suffer if they go bad, or go bad sometime in the future.

This is a structural problem, not a symbolic one. Anyone who thinks pay isn't of overriding importance in financial regulation should have been set straight by the desperation of the bailed out Wall Street firms to pay back their loans from the government. That desperation is overwhelmingly tied to a desire to escape the extremely modest pay standards issued by the Obama administration.

Besides financial stability, there are important questions of economic justice and taxpayer rights related to executive compensation. The Wall Street hotshots -- including the major hedge fund players -- have paid themselves unfathomable amounts of money over the last decade. They have set an aspirational standard for other executives and professionals, and helped drive wealth and income inequality to outrageous and unhealthy levels. Ultra compensation should be taxed at very high rates; and, at a bare minimum, the loopholes that let hedge fund managers pay taxes at about half the rate of regular folks must be closed. The case for aggressive tax reform on ultra rich financiers was overwhelming last year; now, with the financial system completely dependent on taxpayer largesse, there shouldn't be anything left to debate. No one in finance can say they made their money just by working hard or being clever -- their system was saved by the government.

2. The administration does not propose structural reform of the financial sector.

Although it proposes some meaningful regulatory reform, and modest alteration of the structure of regulatory agencies, the administration does not propose to alter the structure of the financial sector itself.

There is no discussion of returning to Glass-Steagall principles, to separate commercial banking from other financial activities including the speculative world of investment banking. Glass-Steagall was adopted during the Great Depression, as a response to financial abuses that closely parallel those of the previous decade. Repeal of Glass Steagall -- following a decades-long erosion -- came in 1999, and helped pave the way for the present crisis.

Nor is there any discussion of shrinking the size of goliath financial firms. Everyone now recognizes the problem of too-big-to-fail and too-interconnected-to-fail financial firms. The administration proposes to deal with the problem through regulation alone; a more fundamental approach would break up giant firms (or at least commit to prevent further consolidation going forward).

Addressing structure and size is important not only because of the economic power accreted by the goliaths, but because of their political strength -- about which, see below.

3. The administration's approach to regulating financial derivatives is too timid.

To its credit, the administration proposes to repeal recent deregulatory statutes and establish regulation of financial derivatives. But its plan does not go far enough. It creates a regulatory exemption for customized derivatives -- a loophole that will create lots of business for corporate lawyers ready to change terms in derivative contracts so that they differ somewhat from standardized terms.

Nor does the administration propose to ban classes of dangerous financial instruments that cannot be justified. A clear example of a product that should be banned is a credit default swap -- a kind of insurance against a certain outcome, like the inability of a bondholder to make required payments -- in which neither party has a stake in the underlying transaction. Such credit default swaps have no insurance component, and are nothing more than bets -- but they are bets that can vastly exceed the value of the transaction being bet on, and can spread financial contagion, as AIG demonstrated. George Soros argues that all credit default swaps basically share this feature, and should be banned altogether.

The administration proposal also fails to require that exotic financial instruments be subjected to pre-approval requirements. Under such an approach, financial firms would be required to show that new instruments offer some social benefit, and do not pose excessive risk.

4. The administration does not propose to empower consumers.

There is enormous merit to the proposal for a Consumer Financial Products Agency. But it is not a substitute for giving consumers the power to organize themselves to advance their own interests. Simply mandating that financial firms include in bills and statements (whether mailed or e-mailed) an invitation to join an independent consumer organization would facilitate tens of thousands of consumers -- and likely many more -- banding together to make sure the regulators do their job, and to prevent Wall Street from "innovating" the next trick to scam borrowers and investors.

The Ugly

Identifying the merits and gaps in the administration's proposal is important. But the proposal does not exist in a vacuum, and it doesn't become law just because the administration has proposed it.

The Wall Street types don't know shame. Having benefited from literally trillions of dollars of taxpayer largesse, one might expect that they would be embarrassed to lobby on Capitol Hill. Or, that Members of Congress would be unsympathetic to their pleas.

But that's not how Washington works. Having spent $5 billion on political investments over the last decade, Wall Street continues to pour cash into the political process -- and those investments continue to pay handsomely.

To understand how things work, consider the fate of the proposal to give bankruptcy judges the power to adjust mortgages, so that they could reduce the principal owed on loans on homes now worth less than value of the loan. Then-candidate Barack Obama campaigned in favor of such "cram-down" provisions. In a rational world, banks would agree to these adjustments to principal on their own, because they do better if people stay in their homes and continue paying on the loan, rather than by forcing foreclosure. Not long ago, it was widely expected that cram-down would quickly become law. But the banks deployed their lobbyists, and this vital though totally inadequate measure was defeated in May. The Obama administration sat quietly by.

Now, Wall Street is already trashing the good parts of the administration's proposals.

"Congress is not going to impose a 'skin-in-the-game' requirement on all loans," Jaret Seiberg, an analyst with Washington Research Group, a division of Concept Capital, flatly tells American Banker.

The Chamber of Commerce and other industry groupings are attacking the idea of a Consumer Financial Product Agency, including with the extraordinary claim that it will improperly relieve consumers of their duty to do "due diligence" on financial products.

Hedge funds are hiring ever more lobbyists and floating the claim that the administration's requirements for some modest disclosure requirements for secretive hedge funds could do more damage than good. One purported reason: the disclosures may be too complicated for regular people to understand.

There's no question that Wall Street is going to mobilize -- is already mobilized -- to defeat the administration's positive proposals.

What remains very much in question is the administration's willingness to engage in bare-knuckled political fighting to defend these proposals, as well as whether the public will be mobilized to support these and other moves to control Wall Street.

A new public interest coalition -- Americans for Financial Reform -- aims to do just that, but they are fighting on occupied territory. As Senator Majority Whip Richard Durbin says, "the banks are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place."

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Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor,  and director of Essential Action.

Where Are They Now?

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Ex-Bush Loyalists Cash In

Nick Turse
June 18, 2009 - TomDispatch.com

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In May, the U.S. economy lost 345,000 nonfarm jobs, pushing the unemployment rate from 8.9% to 9.4%. According to official statistics, 14.5 million Americans are now looking for work and, as a recent headline at Time.com put it, "The jobs aren't coming back anytime soon." In fact, a team of economists at the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank recently reported that "the level of labor market slack could be higher by the end of 2009 than at any other time in the post-World War Two period."

The news, however, is not altogether grim. While times are especially tough for teenagers (22.7% jobless rate) and blacks (14.9% jobless rate), one group is doing remarkably well. I'm talking about former members of the Bush administration who are taking up prestigious academic posts, inking lucrative book deals, signing up with speakers bureaus, joining big-time law firms and top public relations agencies, and grabbing spots on corporate boards of directors. While their high-priced wars, ruinous economic policies, and shredding of economic safety nets have proved disastrous for so many, for them the economic outlook remains bright and jobs are seemingly plentiful. In fact, many of them have performed the eye-opening feat of securing two or more potentially lucrative revenue streams at once during these tough financial times.

While it would likely take a small book to catalogue the fates of all former "loyal Bushies," a look at just a few of these fortunate folks indicates that not everybody was harmed by the Bush era.

The Memoirists

Many of the top figures of the Bush years are joining the ranks of (or reaffirming their credentials as) men and women of letters. Following in the footsteps of 2003-2006 White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, who wrote the tell-some exposé, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception, is former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (2001-2006). Now penning his life story for Sentinel, a conservative imprint of the Penguin Group, he has announced that he is forgoing an advance and donating all proceeds to charity. Similarly, 2006-2009 Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is reportedly donating the "author's profits" from his forthcoming "insider's account of [his] experiences as Treasury Secretary." Many other former colleagues are, however, apparently intent on cashing in on their public service.

Last month, the New York Times reported that Rumsfeld's long-time pal, former Vice President Dick Cheney, "is actively shopping a memoir about his life in politics and service in four presidential administrations" and seeking multi-millions. In the same way, back in 2007, Bush's right-hand man Karl Rove, aka his "brain," agreed, for a reported seven figures, to write a memoir for Simon & Schuster's conservative imprint Threshold. Earlier this year, Bush's first term National Security Advisor and second term Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, signed a gaudy three-book deal, reportedly worth at least $2.5 million, with Random House's Crown imprint.

Following her to Crown (also the publisher of Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope) was former President Bush himself. His book, tentatively titled Decision Points, will reportedly recount "a dozen of the most interesting and important decisions in the former President's personal and political life" for a cool $7 million. Former First Lady Laura Bush has already inked a book deal with Scribner reportedly worth $3.5-5 million.

Only one prominent Bush loyalist who cared to try appears to have been unable to cash-in. In late 2008, the Wall Street Journal's Evan Perez reported that Alberto Gonzales, former White House counsel (2001-2005) and attorney general (2005-2007), "said he is writing a book to set the record straight about his controversial tenure as a senior official in the Bush administration," but could interest no publisher in the manuscript. This followed an earlier report in the New York Times that Gonzales had been "unable to interest law firms in adding his name to their roster..."

Law and Orders

One Bush administration lawyer who did land a job with a law firm was Gonzales's successor, Attorney General Michael Mukasey (2007-2009), who became a partner at Debevoise & Plimpton, a firm "offering sophisticated legal services" which "places the highest value on collaboration and interdisciplinary cooperation in order to provide clients with seamless representation across practice areas and across continents."

Tommy Thompson, Bush's Secretary of Health and Human Services from 2001-2005, is now a partner with Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld where he "focuses on developing solutions for clients in the health care industry, as well as for companies doing business in the public sector." Michael Chertoff, Secretary of Homeland Security from 2005–2009, is serving as "senior of counsel," and a "member of the White Collar Defense and Investigations practice group" at the firm of Covington & Burling.

Meanwhile, Harriet Miers, who served Bush from 2001-2007 as Staff Secretary, Deputy Chief of Staff, and Counsel to the President -- and whose Supreme Court bid crashed and burned in 2005 -- returned to Locke, Lord, Bissell & Liddell in May 2007 to serve as a member of the law firm's "Litigation and Public Policy sections." That firm is also home to Karin Torgerson, a partner who served as Special Assistant to President George W. Bush, one of several White House positions she held from 2003-2005.

Speak Easy

In addition to his book-writing duties, former President Bush recently signed on with the Washington Speakers Bureau, which already represents his wife. The Bureau is to arrange lucrative speeches for him worldwide. In fact, just last month, the New York Times reported that the former president had "earned more than an estimated $150,000" to "discuss national and international policy" alongside fellow former President Bill Clinton at the Metro Toronto Convention Center.

Together the Bushes joined a speakers' roster of former administration heavyweights, including Richard Armitage (Deputy Secretary of State, 2001-2005), John Bolton (U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, 2005-2006), Andrew Card (White House Chief of Staff, 2001-2006), Ari Fleischer (White House Press Secretary, 2001-2003), Michael Mukasey, Colin Powell (Secretary of State, 2001-2005), Condoleezza Rice, Tom Ridge (Secretary of Homeland Security, 2003-2005), Donald Rumsfeld, and John Snow (Secretary of the Treasury, 2003-2006), as well as Bush family consigliere James Baker III.

Meanwhile, at Leading Authorities, another top-of-the-line speakers bureau, the list of ex-Bush loyalists includes Dan Bartlett (Counselor to the President, 2002-2007), Christopher Cox (Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, 2005-2009), Ed Gillespie (Counselor to the President, 2007-2009), Porter Goss (Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, 2005-2006), Stephen Hadley (National Security Advisor, 2005-2009), Michael Hayden (Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, 2006-2009), Keith Hennessey (Director of the National Economic Council, 2007-2009), Dana Perino (White House Press Secretary, 2007-2009), and Margaret Spellings (Secretary of Education, 2005-2009).

A third lecturers' stable, the Leigh Bureau, boasts John Negroponte who served Bush as Ambassador to the United Nations, Ambassador to Iraq, Director of National Intelligence, and Deputy Secretary of State.

Talking Heads and Lobbyists

Some Bush loyalists have nabbed other sorts of speaking gigs. Karl Rove, for one, took a job as an analyst for Fox News. (He also writes a weekly op-ed for the Wall Street Journal and, in 2007, signed a two-year deal to be a columnist for Newsweek magazine.)

Ari Fleischer was hired as a media consultant to the Green Bay Packers in 2008 and serves as the president of Ari Fleischer Communications, Inc., which bills itself as a "unique media training and consultancy company [that] brings to the world of sports the lessons of how to successfully handle the toughest situations with the most aggressive reporters." (Clients reportedly include Major League Baseball, the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association, and "several other leading sports figures.")

Many more Bush loyalists, however, are involved in another lucrative form of communication. For example, Michael Chertoff quickly launched the Chertoff Group, a consulting firm that "will advise clients on a range of security concerns, including cyber security, terrorism, fraud, border protection and supply-chain security." Tom Ridge, when not serving as a keynote-speaker-for-hire (as he did recently at the 2009 CoBank Energy Directors Conference in Colorado Springs, Colorado) is now a security and crisis-management consultant for his own firm, Ridge Global, whose self-professed "expertise encompasses risk management and global trade security, leadership guidance and strategic business generation, event security, crisis management and communications, campus security, technology innovation and integration and more."

In fact, a recent analysis by USA TODAY found that "more than one in four members of President George W. Bush's Cabinet have landed jobs with consulting or lobbying firms in which they can help clients navigate the departments they once oversaw." And it's not just heads of executive departments like Homeland Security who are cashing in.

John Ashcroft (Attorney General, 2001-2005) co-founded the Ashcroft Group, a strategic consulting firm that advises and invests "in companies in the security and law enforcement marketplaces." Not surprisingly, the firm has become a home for Bush loyalists like Juleanna Glover, who served on the senior staffs of then President-elect George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, and was then "the registered U.S. government affairs advisor for Iraq's first post-Saddam Hussein ambassador to the United States."

Recently, according to the Quad City Times, Jim Nussle, Bush's director of the White House Office of Management and Budget (2007-2009) "formed a company that will offer consulting, government relations and lobbying services." The Nussle Group, its website proclaims, "specializes in recruiting a talented team and developing creative solutions to assist clients in navigating the complicated and challenging intersections of public policy, government relations, public relations, international relations and politics."

According to his company bio, the senior policy director at lobbying powerhouse Dutko Worldwide, Gene Hickok, "joined the George W. Bush Administration as Under Secretary of Education. He became Deputy Secretary in 2003 [and] was an architect of the No Child Left Behind Act." And he isn't alone. Kent Sholars, a Senior Associate at Dutko, "was a political appointee during both terms of the administration of George W. Bush, serving as the Confidential Assistant to the Controller for the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in Washington, DC," while Karen Yeager, a Dutko vice president, "serve[d] in the White House for President Bush in 2001."

Spin-Mistresses

Karen Hughes helped George W. Bush get elected in 2000 and, for the first two years of his first term, served him as a "counselor." In 2002, she left the White House to spend more time with her family in Texas. In 2004, however, she was back at work on Bush's campaign and then, in 2005, signed on as an undersecretary of state. In 2007, she left again, the White House said, "to spend more time with her family." Nonetheless, in 2008, she was in an office yet again, this time as Global Vice Chair at public relations giant Burson-Marsteller. In 2009, she was joined there by former White House Press Secretary Dana Perino, who now serves as Chief Issues Counselor for the company in the U.S.

Here, too, Michael Chertoff has gotten into the act. The announcement of the formation of the Chertoff Group, wrote the Wall Street Journal, "was made by the communications firm Burson-Marsteller, which said it formed an alliance with Mr. Chertoff."

Board to Death

Bush Administration officials have also been popping up on various boards of directors. Richard Armitage is perhaps typical. He sits on the board at military-corporate complex member ManTech International. He also serves on the boards of oil giant ConocoPhillips, "pharmaceutical and cosmeceutical" company Transcu Ltd., and his own firm, Armitage International, which, according to its website, provides "multinational clients with critical support in the areas of international business development, strategic planning, and problem-solving."

In April, chemical giant DuPont announced that Samuel Bodman, Secretary of Energy from 2005-2009 (and before that, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, 2004-2005, and Deputy Secretary of the Department of Commerce, 2001-2004) had been elected to its board of directors.

That same month, former CIA chief Michael Hayden became a member of the Board of Directors of the National Interest Security Company, an "information technology, information management, and management technology consulting services" provider serving the U.S. Intelligence Community and the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, and Energy. There, Hayden joined fellow former administration cronies Henry A. Crumpton (Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the State Department, 2005-2007) and Donald Kerr (Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, 2007-2009).

Meanwhile, Andrew Card not only serves on the board of directors of railroad giant Union Pacific, but has also turned up on the board of directors of the George W. Bush Presidential Library Foundation.

In the Tank

If you can't get a gig at a law firm, a PR agency, or on a corporate board of directors, there are always the nation's think-tanks to fall back into -- and they've become a shelter for more than a few Bush administration refugees in the Obama era. For example, after serving as a Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Adviser in the Bush administration, Elliott Abrams has now joined the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) as senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies.

Alongside Abrams at CFR are a number of officials who served during the Bush years, including Evan Feigenbaum, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, and the Maldives; Paul Lettow, former senior adviser to the Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs and the Senior Director for Strategic Planning and Institutional Reform on the National Security Council staff; and Dan Senor, an administration foreign policy advisor and senior advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq.

Meanwhile, the conservative Heritage Foundation is not surprisingly housing a large contingent of Bush loyalists, including Becky Norton Dunlop, who served as the chairperson of the Federal Services Impasse Panel (which handles disputes between government agencies and labor unions); Kim R. Holmes, Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs; Terry Miller, ambassador to the United Nations Economic and Social Council; Peter Brookes, Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary for Asian and Pacific Affairs; and Mike Gonzalez who, in 2005, left the Wall Street Journal to join the Bush administration where, according to his Heritage Foundation bio, he "wrote speeches for Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox, then moved to the State Department in 2006 as communications adviser and speechwriter on European and Eurasian affairs" and even "helped craft an op-ed column… which appeared throughout Europe under the bylines of
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates."

Ivory Tower Power

While Gates stayed on to work for President Barack Obama, Rice is pursuing many different career paths. In addition to the lucrative book contracts and the speakers bureau gigs, she inked a deal for the William Morris Agency to represent her for "business initiatives in media, sports and communications." Rice also returned, as a professor of political science, to her old stomping grounds at Stanford University, where she had long taught and also, from 1993-1999, served as provost. Presumably in her spare time, she serves as the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy at Stanford's conservative Hoover Institution.

Rice is actually following in the footsteps of Rumsfeld who served a stint, beginning in 2007, as "a distinguished visiting fellow" at the Hoover Institution. But Stanford is hardly the only academic bastion of former Bush-ites. For example, this year, John Negroponte headed back to his old alma mater, Yale University, to become the "Brady-Johnson Distinguished Senior Research Fellow in Grand Strategy and Lecturer in International Affairs at the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies."

"Torture memo" author John Yoo, who served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice from 2001-2003, is, of course, a professor of law at the School of Law of that bastion of leftist radicalism, the University of California at Berkeley. (As Liliana Segura of AlterNet recently reported, he also just landed a gig as a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer.)

Hope on the Horizon

Last year, for many Americans, Barack Obama became synonymous with hope. (And last year, Obama's The Audacity of Hope as well as his Dreams from My Father earned him an eye-popping $2.4 million in royalties.) This year, for struggling job-hunters nationwide, it's former Bush administration officials who offer a glimmer of hope in tough economic times. Their ease in finding gainful employment suggests that, even if your prior work has been judged ruinous by many and been roundly repudiated, there's still hope for you on the job front.

Even former Vice President Cheney, a man about whom 55% of Americans hold an unfavorable opinion, has realistic prospects of receiving a multimillion dollar book deal. After all, his former boss is viewed unfavorably by 57% of Americans and look how he's done.

Since most jobless Americans don't have nearly the unfavorable polling numbers of Bush or Cheney, nor do they face the distant threat of possible war crimes prosecutions like John Yoo, they should perk up. Maybe the problem is that none of them have signed up with the right speakers bureau to discuss their disastrous life circumstances. Maybe they haven't had that extra little bit of help tweaking their book proposals for their proposed tell-littles and tell-nones. Maybe they hadn't thought to check with Burson-Marsteller, just in case a few top slots with grandiose titles are still open. Maybe the Hoover Institution will now extend distinguished visiting fellowships to a few of the residents of modern-day Hoovervilles.

With only former Attorney General Gonzales still out of work, grant the men and women of the Bush administration one thing: the best unemployment rate in the land. In but a few short months, they've managed to prove that, no matter how spectacularly you fail, those inside-the-Beltway never have to tighten a belt. In our world, they will always fail upwards -- generally in lucrative, prestigious, and glamorous ways.

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Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com and the recent winner of a Ridenhour Prize for Reportorial Distinction as well as a James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism.