Benghazi: A tale of two scapegoats?

(Rice)

I offer this post not as an apologist for anything that led up to the deadly attack in Benghazi last Sept. 11, but only as an example of the back stories in Washington that often reveal grudges, petty personality conflicts and raw partisan conflicts.

(Nuland)

Clearly, mistakes were made that led to killing of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, a highly respected U.S. foreign service officer, at the diplomatic outpost in Libya. Clearly, there was a frantic, “cover your a—“ battle within the Obama administration between the State Department and the CIA in the days immediately following the terrorist attack.

But when Congress got involved, old Washington ways subtlety infected the whole fact-finding process. Democrats and Republicans put support for their "team" ahead of sorting out the truth. In a revealing piece in the New York Times, the very different treatment of two potential scapegoats makes me wonder how very differently this story would have played out if Victoria Nuland of the State Department appeared on all those Sunday news-talk shows following the attack rather than UN Ambassador Susan Rice.

The many emails that have surfaced show that Nuland played a key role in toning down the now-infamous talking points that Rice delivered on five news shows.

So, here is how the Times frames the issue:

“Nuland, a well-regarded 29-year veteran of the Foreign Service, once served as deputy national security adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney and as ambassador to NATO under President George W. Bush. She is married to Robert Kagan, a (well known) neoconservative historian and commentator who advised Mitt Romney during the 2012 campaign.

“Rice, by contrast, was a former Clinton administration official and a foreign policy adviser to Obama in his 2008 campaign, during which she tangled with the Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain. When Rice emerged as a leading candidate for Secretary of State after Obama’s re-election, McCain, an Arizona Republican, became one of her most formidable opponents on Capitol Hill. Under pressure, she eventually pulled her name from consideration.”

“When Obama (recently) nominated Nuland as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs, (Sen. Lindsey) Graham and McCain issued a joint statement declaring, ‘… Victoria Nuland has a long and distinguished record of service to our nation in both Republican and Democrat administrations.’

Both Rice and Nuland became involved in the Benghazi controversy after the fact: “… Nuland when she was brought into a Friday night deliberation involving the State Department, the CIA, the White House and other agencies about talking points prepared by the CIA; and Rice when she was handed the finished talking points the night before she went on television.”

Michele Bachmann for Senate

Wednesday was a sad day for political pundits everywhere as Michele Bachmann, perhaps the greatest sufferer of foot-in-mouth disease ever to emerge on Capitol Hill, announced that she is retiring. 

News outlets and liberal bloggers had a field day with the news of the Minnesota Republican’s departure, offering several versions of Bachmann’s “greatest hits” – the inaccurate or just plain wacky quotes she has spewed during her seven years in the House and her several months on the 2012 presidential campaign trail.

I say, let’s get Michelle back out there. Have her run for U.S. Senate in 2014 in Minnesota against Democratic Sen. Al Franken, the former jokester from Saturday Night Live.

That would likely become the most wildly entertaining congressional race in U.S. history.

Alas, if Bachmann declines, I suspect no one in the media will be more disappointed than the folks at Politifact.com. The fact-checking organization, known for its infamous “Pants On Fire” ratings for politicians' most blatant lies, has practically created a cottage industry out of monitoring the congresswoman’s miscues.

Overall, Politifact has rated 59 of Bachmann’s statements on their “Truth-O-Meter.” Here’s the scorecard:

True:                       5     (8 percent)

Mostly True:            4     (7 percent)

Half True:                6     (10 percent)

Mostly False:           8     (14 percent)

False:                     21     (36 percent)

Pants on Fire:        15     (25 percent)

As Politifact noted, Bachmann was gold from the beginning. “She had a remarkable streak: Her first 13 ratings were False or Pants on Fire.”

As my Macomb Daily colleague, Frank DeFrank, points out, Bachmann’s most comical miscue may have come during a December 2011 presidential debate when, in response to criticism of her truth-telling record from Newt Gingrich, the congresswoman said that, after a previous debate, Politifact came out and said, “Everything I said was true.”

For that statement, Politifact gave her a “Pants on Fire” rating.

Here is the Politifact sendoff posted on Wednesday: “Bachmann isn't leaving immediately, however, so we will keep the Truth-O-Meter turned on”

As for Bachmann's rhetorical track record and ratings, you can see them all.

Levin warns against cuts in middle-class tax deductions

While Sen. Carl Levin has focused intently on corporations that avoid taxes by hiding profits and other financial assets overseas, his brother, Congressman Sandy Levin, is warning against putting all tax deductions on the table when discussing tax reform.

The top-ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, Levin has issued a statement in response to the Congressional Budget Office’s new report on the major tax expenditures in the IRS code:

“The CBO report underscores the need to go beyond the rhetoric of lowering tax rates without indication of how that would be achieved or the implications for economic growth and tax equity. The report confirms distributional analyses that the Joint Committee on Taxation provided to Ways and Means Democrats two years ago that showed how some tax preferences decisively benefit only the very wealthy while others are significant for middle-income taxpayers. The preferences that benefit the very wealthy highlight the ability to obtain the needed revenues to address the (budget) sequester and achieve a balanced approach to tax reform.”

Among the CBO report’s key findings:

Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance

“The exclusion of employers’ contributions for health care, health insurance premiums, and long-term-care insurance premiums for their employees is the single largest tax expenditure in the individual income tax code; it is estimated to reduce tax liabilities by $260 billion (or $140 billion excluding the effects on payroll taxes) in 2013.” CBO estimates that 66 percent of the benefit accrues to the bottom 80 percent of the income distribution.

Home Mortgage Interest

“The deduction for interest paid on mortgages for owner-occupied residences, which CBO estimates will equal $70 billion in 2013, is the [second]-largest itemized deduction. It is also the least tilted toward the top of the income distribution, in part because the law caps the maximum mortgage amount on which interest payments can be deducted (generally limited to the first $1 million of mortgage debt) and in part because mortgage debt rises less rapidly with income than do other deductible expenses.”

Capital Gains and Dividends

“Virtually all of the benefits from the preferential tax rates on those sources of income accrue to the top quintile (top one-fifth) of households. The tax expenditure for that group will equal 1.7 percent of their after-tax income in 2013, CBO estimates. Within the top quintile, the tax expenditure is heavily concentrated in the top 1 percent of households, because a large share of investment income in the form of capital gains realizations and dividends accrues to those taxpayers. The top 1 percent of households will receive more than two-thirds of the total value of the benefit in 2013, CBO estimates, which will equal 5.3 percent of their after-tax income.”