On Election Night, people noted spontaneous street parties when the election was called for Obama, and the phrase “It’s like we overthrew a dictator” struck me.
Well, Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzales have been indicted by a south Texas grand jury for a 2006 conflict of interest which constituted a criminal conspiracy as well as responsibility for individual acts of assault, in quashing an investigation of a private prison system owned in part by the Vanguard Group which Cheney owns, in a 2006 disclosure, between $6M and $30M in.  I believe that the judge still has the option to throw out the verdict.

While people have posted things like “It was the IRS that finally took down Al Capone”…  I don’t think this will stick, and I don’t think it will even require pardon power.  A mutual fund like Vanguard is not an adequate connection – the money is managed at a great distance, they’re a giant company with many different traders and index funds and financial products.  I would attribute his interference in the investigation to anything else – basic ideology, bribes, friendships, campaign contributions, before I would attribute it to a financial interest made at such a distance.  He’s probably more likely to be doing a personal favor for someone at Vanguard than looking out for his own investments.  But who knows…

If it were valid, it still wouldn’t stick because of the institutional respect for the Vice President’s office and the controversy surrounding the outgoing prosecutor who moved the jury forward.   Even if we assume that there was an actual scandal that’s been uncovered here and the legal system were in favor of taking Cheney down, there’s still the black helicopter brigade to get past – and there are limitless coercive methods that they can use within Cheney’s constitution.

Cheney is a fascinating character responsible for a great deal of the sheer creepiness of the last eight years.  Working behind the scenes he’s been as much if not more influential than Karl Rove’s campaign to politicize everything, and he’s done it with utter disregard for his own reputation or common sense precedents.  Setting ‘neoconservative hawk’ as the persistent stance of his entire party, forming his own intelligence agency, helping to politicize the Justice Department, relentlessly pursuing the establishment of absolute, unquestionable power for the executive branch… This has been a man driven not by public opinion or personal ambition, but by committment to some dark path chosen long ago.  Noone has really satisfactorily explained his motivations, and while ‘Pure Evil’ is a mythically rare orientation, he seems satisfied to be branded that as long as it doesn’t interfere with The Important Work He’s Doing.
LithiumCola has a few words on the topic in an extremely intriguing diary on DailyKos, while covering David Bromwich’s New York Times review of several books about Cheney:

…we want to acknowledge that there is/was something unique at work in the Bush years.  Putting this unique thing, this singularity, into words, without fudging our acknowledgment of the past, is a worthwhile project.  It’s worthwhile because we want to understand just what happened in the first years of the 21st century and why it felt and feels so singularly dangerous — a feeling as of standing on a precipice and feeling the chill breeze of oblivion greet us from below.

…

Cheney does not seem to care about America.  Not in any sense – not in the right-wing “love it or leave it” America-Firster’s sense and not in the libertarian land-of-opportunity lover’s sense.  That Cheney was born into this country seems entirely incidental to his desire to rule it.  There is nothing even a little bit familial about his particular style of powermongering.  We might as well have been French, or Chilean, for all that Cheney cares.  The only thing the American system did was slow him down.

…

On this telling, Cheney used his years in Congress only to weaken Congress (see his minority report on Iran-Contra) and to gather up information that could be used against others later.  That’s it.  The suggestion of such premeditation and single-bloody-mindedness invites rejection.  No one is really like that.  But, then again . . .

Perhaps it is just this refusal to acknowledge the alien sensibility that allowed Cheney to get so far.  He is not out for personal glory – he shuns it.  He is not out for money – he has money.  He is not out to make America better place to live in any sense.  So what is it?  He seems to have only one, nonsensical goal: to make the Presidency into a dictatorship.  But to what end?

• Two subway lines cut entirely (Z & W).
• Two subway lines shutter half their active stations (G & M).
• One subway line cuts express service (J).
• 1500 employees fired, including 600 station agents.
• Longer off-peak headways.
• Dozens of low-ridership bus lines cut, or reduced hours.
• Increased maximum capacity in order to allow for more crowded trains & platforms, when ridership has already increased by 11% in the last fiscal year, breaking records and making rush-hour a struggle.

That’s what the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority has in the 2009 budget plan, whose operating deficit has blossomed from $900M to $1.2B.  Gothamist has a finger-pointing contest.  Continued severe cost inflation and unexpected decreased revenues from several special tax arrangements, including things like real estate transaction taxes and corporate tax surcharges that are expected to drop like a rock, have tanked a July budget plan to keep MTA solvent. The mid-year plan forecasted quite a few required cuts due to the real estate bubble, but the recession piled onto that effect. The budget report officially comes out on Thursday, and is expected to beg for a state bailout, threaten these cutbacks and possibly more, as well as threaten to raise fares 25-50%.

This is no way to run a transit infrastructure. Some types of tax revenue aren’t stable enough to run much of anything – they’re good for durable capital expenditures, not operating revenue. I don’t understand quite how you can base your municipality’s budget on something like capital gains without having a huge statutorily mandated cash reserve (impossible… to… resist… spending…). We’ve come to expect growth-based taxes tracking nonreal paper wealth to beat inflation year after year, and it appears that our realization that this is unrealistic is, when you get down to it, the root cause of most of our economy’s ills.

If this is the type of “dedicated funding source” that WMATA is looking for, I’m not sure I’m in favor. The end goal, whether it’s achieved with city/state/federal matching fund committments, more stable types of local tax districts, or simply higher fares & parking fees, should be to achieve more than breakeven operating costs, enough that the transit authority itself can contribute some small amount of capital costs from a multiyear warchest.

Any less than breakeven, and increased service requires increased subsidy – which is rarely guaranteed. If you manage to get a system that balances the budget with a slight surplus though, they can adapt that surplus to address shortcomings which increases ridership, establishing a virtuous cycle of expansion and fluid optimization rather than a vicious cycle of cutbacks and rigid bailout pleas. Getting the marginal profit per additional rider into the positive column provides incentives to increase service which are a whole lot healthier for the system than the subsidized alternatives.  When a budget gets to the point that the authority has to let already-paid-for tracks and rolling stock sit vacant for significantly more time than they did last year, its leadership is at a precipice – it can change the system to be productive or it can live on on handouts and the detritus of a more productive age.

In terms of operating revenue at least, the toolkit useful to fund transit-as-innercity-social-program or transit-as-vital-industry appears to me to be pretty dissimilar from the one that needs to be used for transit-as-viable-urban-transportation-system. Increasing transit capital subsidies to something in the same vein as highway capital subsidies is something that many of us concerned with sustainability are optimistic about in the next administration. Whether there will be a chance of realistically pricing the infrastructural externalities involved in suburban/exurban living, or of gasoline/fossil fuel dependency, is more a matter of hope. If the latter could be done effectively, it’s my contention that things like subways wouldn’t require an operating subsidy. Metrorail is already pretty high on the cost-recovery totem pole, even while it pleas for a continuation of enhanced capital expenditure as many systems reach their designed end-of-life.

Put on your policy hat – If the world is your oyster card, what’s the best long-term resiliant system to fund a transit agency?

Senate Democrats will vote on Tuesday by secret ballot on What To Do About Joe.

An image comes to mind of his stance…

A DKos diary by gjohnsit points out that shipping cost indexes have dropped off a very vertical cliff, and the cost to rent a given model of freighter is down 98% – while the price of oil has dropped significantly, the demand for shipping has dropped precipitously.  It also shows off some similarly L-shaped graphs dealing with the modern-day federal reserve, which has approximately nothing to do with the federal reserve of six months ago.

The Baltic Dry Index of oceanic shipping costs:

The least popular president in history with a 20% approval rating, Bush isn’t wasting any time being a ‘lame duck’, preferring to get past the breed’s legendary inability to get Congress to comply with their wishes by enacting his corrupt policy by unilateral fiat, even where it explicitly breaks the law.  I can’t say that there’s any change there.  I wonder if impeachment will still be off the table after the election?

Update: Looks like it.
However, Bush may have less leverage than expected:

It could take Obama years to undo climate rules finalized more than 60 days before he takes office — the advantage the White House sought by getting them done by Nov. 1. But that strategy doesn’t account for the Congressional Review Act of 1996.

The law contains a clause determining that any regulation finalized within 60 legislative days of congressional adjournment is considered to have been legally finalized on the 15th legislative day of the new Congress, likely sometime in February. Congress then has 60 days to review it and reverse it with a joint resolution that can’t be filibustered in the Senate.

In other words, any regulation finalized in the last half-year of the Bush administration could be wiped out with a simple party-line vote in the Democrat-controlled Congress.

The Agitator evaluates the desperately-trying-to-sound-relevant Office of National Drug Control Policy’s contention that the only potential job that someone who indulges in marijuana is qualified for is “burrito taster,” and begins to compile a list of the successful, famous, self-admitted pot smokers in public life:

• Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger
• astronomer Carl Sagan
• mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg
• billionaire rock star/songwriter Paul McCartney
• Barack Obama, president-elect
• Bill Clinton, 42nd president of the U.S
• John Kerry, U.S. Senator and 2004 Democratic nominee for president
• John Edwards, multi-millionaire, former U.S. Senator, and 2004 Democratic nominee for vice president
• Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska, 2008 Republican nominee for vice president
• British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly, and and Chancellor Alistair Darling
• Josh Howard, NBA all-star
• New York Governor David Paterson
• Former Vice President, Nobel Peace Prize winner, and Oscar winner Al Gore
• Former Sen. Bill Bradley, who smoked while playing professional basketball
• Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, and former New York Governor George Pataki

We knew that Mark Begich would likely have an advantage over Ted Stevens in the remaining 90,000 votes to be counted. It was gonna be close – but we didn’t know how close. Today, after counting a 40,000 of those, the totals stand at:
Stevens (R) 125,016
Begich (D) 125,019

12,000 more are coming in tonight, and the rest will be counted in the coming days. Given the composition of the existing absentee/early/provisional ballots though, and the location of the uncounted lots, Begich’s lead is only expected to increase, by as much as another half a percentage point.

Update:

After counting the evening’s votes, Begich is up by 814.  The ballots not yet counted are apparently from heavily D-leaning areas, so it’s pretty safe to call this one for Begich.

That puts the Senate tally at 56-40-2 plus two races too close to call.

Brownsox over on DKos is doing a pretty good job of tracking races that havn’t yet been called… we watch with bated breath.

In the Senate, the tally is 55-40-2, with 3 seats undecided:
Alaska:
FiveThirtyEight has a simulation that suggests that there is still a decent chance of Mark Begich defeating convicted felon & Republican senator Ted Stevens, thereby preventing Sarah Palin from appointing herself temporary Senator (and then winning the special election) and making us listen to her verbal gymnastics for another six years.  If she wants to run for President this would be an ideal place to improve her image… but since the Senate has to actually vote on the record, strategically and tactically on many different issues, it’s traditionally been a very difficult place to springboard to the Presidency from.  Whether Sarah Palin’s appeal to her base is subject to tedious things like how she voted is up for discussion.  More on her (and the future of the Republican Party) in a later post.

Georgia:
While a few more votes have to be counted, Georgia’s Republican senator Saxby Chambliss is at 49.8% to Democratic challenger Jim Martin’s 46.8%. Under Georgia law, the winner coming in under 50% triggers a runoff that it would be entirely possible for Jim Martin, campaigning with President-elect Obama and enjoying much of the Democratic Party’s attention, could win.  3 points is considerable as a handicap, but I think this is entirely about how the economy does and how much effort the Democrats put into this race.

Minnesota:
Odds are close to even on who a month-long recount (to start in a week or two) will favor. Coleman has around 200 votes over Frankin, and lawsuits over things as small as a 32 ballot absentee batch that was slow in the coming in have been filed.

Update:
It looks like that lawsuit (which has been thrown out) may have attempted in the small print to stop the counting of most of the uncounted ballots:

Connecticut:
Lieberman was not up for reelection this year, but he may be impacted. Over the course of the last 8 years, he has gone:

• from the Vice-Presidential Nominee who torpedoed recount efforts & his chances of winning by being too conciliatory

• to an influential part of the DLC who “Votes with us on everything but the war”
• to an independant pro-war candidate who couldn’t muster enough Democratic votes to win a primary but could win an election by splitting both Republican and Democratic votes

• to a full-on neoconservative shill who campaigned with McCain and said he doesn’t know whether America would survive a government with the Democratic Party at its reins

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is pretty adamant that his committee chairmanship (Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs) be yanked, but even offered him a trade: a chair somewhere else where his pro-war positions won’t damage Democratic ability to govern effectively. Joe’s spokesman said simply that losing his chair was “unacceptable,” as Democrats stood in awe of his audacity and the blogosphere called for him to be thrown out of the caucus entirely. The sole position I’ve been warning about since the issue came up in 2006 where this could matter after 2008, the 60th censure vote that Democrats need to stop Republican obstructionism in the Senate, would be at stake if the above three races are decided in favor of Democrats. The question for the Senate might end up being – Is suffering Joe Lieberman as deciding vote worth having the deciding vote?

Via the nearly telepathic xkcd:

With the knowledge that this is a bit more optimistic than Intrade & 538’s polling projections, I’m going to predict that all the tossup states go Obama, and even several of the marginally McCain-leaning states join in.

The line will be drawn in the red Arizona sands, in John McCain’s back yard – a trophy that the Democrats won’t gain, but nevertheless an endpoint that represents the biggest margin a Democrat has been elected by since Johnson trounced Goldwater in 1964.  Say what you will about the Bradley or anti-Bradley effect, Obama has too many other things going for him.

• The cell-only correction in an age when young voters register Democratic over Republican bby a 2:1 ratio

• The unprecedented African-American voter turnout expected

• The ‘enthusiasm gap’ that McCain suffers (where he has to hold events at a school so that students are included and he can get more than 1000 people to attend, while Obama gets crowds of 100,000) will likely cause many of his voters that get polled to stay home.  This includes the GOTV efforts that Obama has set up – a ground campaign that McCain’s efforts were never able to touch.

• The deep hangover that the Republican party faithful tangentially connected to reality suffer from in the face of Sarah Palin, after the two-week-long euphoric highs of her cult of personality

And the clincher:

• The amazingly high numbers of people voting early, and the amazing margin by which they’re going for Obama. I understand that his canvassers urge early voting, but the numbers we’re seeing would need an election-day landslide for McCain to correct in some states where a significant portion of the electorate has already voted.

We’ll know in 24 hours how accurate I was.

Side bets:

• States without early voting, particularly ones with a diverse populations like Maryland, will positively swell with voters today, causing long enough lines to provoke outrage.  I’ll be out there at 7AM.

• When Obama makes his inauguration day address, the District of Colombia will swell with the biggest event it’s ever had.  If the same regurgitated speech in a campaign that lasted two grueling years can fill 100k seat stadiums multiple times a day, Inauguration Day will draw millions – and the low-attendence restricted-ticket events planned (where controversy has arisen over things like restricting crowds in front of bleachers) will be ill-equipped to handle it.  I’ll be out there at 7AM as well.

Update:

Arrived at poll at 7:30AM to a line that was just doubling back as it reached the end of the elementary school’s property.  I heard “Been here 90 minutes” from the people coming out.  There was a lot of chatter about Palin’s outrages and Obama’s merits as well as a few Democrats at their table – but not a vocal McCain supporter in earshot.  An hour and 15 minuts later, I was out, and the line appeared to be shorter by about 10%.