06/03/2015 archive

Jun 03 2015

Bounty Hunters

WikiLeaks Launches Campaign to Offer $100,000 “Bounty” for Leaked Drafts of Secret TPP Chapters

Wanted Dead or Alive: $100,000 for Full Text of Trans-Pacific Partnership

by Jon Queally, Common Dreams

Tuesday, June 02, 2015

“The transparency clock has run out on the TPP,” said WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. “No more secrecy. No more excuses. Let’s open the TPP once and for all.”

Despite unprecedented efforts by negotiating governments to keep it under wraps, WikiLeaks has been able to obtain and publish three leaked chapters of this super-secret global deal over the last two years. However, there are believed to be 26 other chapters of the deal to which only appointed negotiators, trade officials, and chosen representatives from big corporations have been given access.

“Today, WikiLeaks is taking steps to bring about the public’s rightful access to the missing chapters of this monster trade pact,” the group said in a statement. “The TPP is the largest agreement of its kind in history: a multi-trillion dollar international treaty being negotiated in secret by the US, Japan, Mexico, Canada, Australia and 7 other countries. The treaty aims to create a new international legal regime that will allow transnational corporations to bypass domestic courts, evade environmental protections, police the internet on behalf of the content industry, limit the availability of affordable generic medicines, and drastically curtail each country’s legislative sovereignty.”

All Hands On Deck: House Fast Track Vote Expected This Week

by Dave Johnson, Common Dreams

Monday, June 01, 2015

The vote in the House of Representatives on fast track trade authority, preapproving the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) before the public finds out what is in it, is coming up very soon. It is even possible it could happen later this week. The Senate has already passed fast track; if the House passes this it goes to President Obama and he will sign it. That will make TPP a done deal.

…

We don’t know much about the contents of TPP – a secret investor/corporate rights agreement negotiated by corporate representatives with labor, environment and other “stakeholders” kept away from the negotiations – but we do know Nike wants it because it will lower tariffs on the shoes they import from Vietnam. We also know that the lowered tariff will mean New Balance may stop making shoes inside the U.S. We know that it opens up Vietnam, which pays workers less than a dollar an hour, for even more “outsourcing” of American jobs. We know that it lets corporations sue governments in “corporate courts” if they think laws and regulations might hurt their profits. (It even lets tobacco companies sue governments for trying to help citizens quit smoking, because that lowers tobacco company profits.)

…

Starting this week people should call and show up at the local offices of their member of Congress. Bring a sign if you show up. Get others to come with you. (Use our click-to-call tool to contact your member of Congress. Or you can click here to find the office of your representative.)

Ask your representative if she or he has read TPP. Get them on record whether they have read it.

…

Then ask them why you can’t see the text of TPP, especially if they are about to vote to preapprove it with fast track? Why is it being kept secret? (Why are the already-completed parts secret?)

Jun 03 2015

The Spying’s Not Over

3 Ways USA Freedom Act Fails to Stop FBI Spying on Americans

Vast Majority of Spying Will Continue Despite Expiration of Patriot Act Provisions

Jun 03 2015

Dispatches From Hellpeckersville- Renal Failure Again

Mom was in the hospital for four days, then a week ago Sunday she was released, now I just got a call that her blood work shows she’s back in renal failure. I’m not surprised. Now we’re waiting on a call back to see if she’s going back in the hospital. I don’t know how much more my dad can take.

We’ve have been doing everything we can for her. She hasn’t been fully awake for weeks. Yet she’ll eat a little, we’ve been getting her to drink plenty, but it’s not enough. And she’s starting to clamp her mouth shut. It’s the blood pressure med they say. She’s on her third one. Well, shit. What’s worse, the blood pressure being high or kidney failure? I see my mom dying. Dad still thinks she’s coming back. I wish it could be true, but I have a really hard time believing it.

At this point I’m praying that it could be over for her. She would never want this. Even if she could snap back, snap back to what? Dad is trying desperately shout her back, he can’t let go.

They just called back. I need to call the ambulance to come get her.

Shit.

Jun 03 2015

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Wednesday is Ladies’ Day.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Katrina vanden Heuvel: The dangerous ‘red-state model’

“My focus is to create a red-state model that allows the Republican ticket to say, ‘See, we’ve got a different way, and it works,’ ” Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback said in 2013.

Brownback was talking about the massive supply-side tax cuts at the center of his policy agenda, which he had promised would provide “a shot of adrenaline into the heart of the Kansas economy.” Instead, it led to a deep hole in the state budget, a downgrade in the state’s credit rating and weak economic growth compared with neighboring states. As top income earners and business owners pocketed their tax cuts, Kansas’s poverty rate went up. [..]

However, Kansas’s budget woes have overshadowed another important element of Brownback’s red-state experiment: his refusal to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. In the latest issue of The Nation, features editor Kai Wright reports on the devastating consequences of that decision.

Zoë Carpenter: How Edward Snowden Sparked a Librarians’ Quarrel

From the Cold War to the Patriot Act, librarians have fought to defend privacy against the intrusions of the security state. This resistance, which I wrote about a few weeks ago, has come both from individual librarians like Zoia Horn, and from the American Library Association, which lobbies on legislative issues in Washington and advocates broadly for intellectual freedom.

However, there is also a serious debate within the profession about whether the ALA is doing enough to put its privacy and intellectual freedom principles into action. That long-simmering controversy spilled over in the summer of 2013, shortly after documents leaked by Edward Snowden made their way into the pages of The Guardian, The Washington Post, and other outlets.

At its meeting in late June of that year, the ALA’s governing council considered a resolution to recognize Snowden as “as a whistleblower who…has performed a valuable service in launching a national dialogue about transparency, domestic surveillance, and over classification.” The resolution passed easily, by a vote of 105 to 39. “It had more resonance than anything else we had done,” recalled Al Kagan, a member of the ALA council who represents the Social Responsibilities Roundtable (SRRT), a progressive unit with the ALA.

Michelle Chen: How the Retail Industry Keeps People of Color in Poverty

The second-largest source of jobs for black people in the country is also one of the worst industries to work in. Although big retailers tout their “entry level” positions as a path to the middle class, retail work is built on dead-end jobs that perpetuate racial inequality.

A new report by the think tank Demos and the NAACP shows that the retail industry, a leading source of employment in the post-recession “recovery,” is creating many more bad jobs than good ones-and blacks and Latinos are stuck in the lowest-paid positions with the least opportunity for advancement.

Some leading retailers have faced legal challenges in recent years over racial or gender discrimination against workers, but the most harmful forms of racial bias operate just below the surface. Bad retail jobs compound the deeper economic and social barriers that disproportionately affect blacks and Latinos. Though black workers don’t differ greatly from whites in terms of education level or the age of the workforce, Demos reports, “Black and Latino retail workers are more likely to be working poor, with 17 percent of Black and 13 percent of Latino retail workers living below the poverty line, compared to 9 percent of the retail workforce overall.”

Joan Walsh: White progressives’ racial myopia: Why their colorblindness fails minorities – and the left

Increasingly, though, black and other scholars are showing us that racial disadvantage won’t be undone without paying attention to, and talking about, race. The experience of black poverty is different in some ways than that of white poverty; it’s more likely to be intergenerational, for one thing, as well as being the result of discriminatory public and private policies.

Ironically, our first black president has exhausted the patience of many African Americans with promises that a rising economic justice tide will lift their boats. President Obama himself has rejected race-specific solutions to the problems of black poverty, arguing that policies like universal preschool, a higher minimum wage, stronger family supports and infrastructure investment, along with the Affordable Care Act, all disproportionately help black people, since black people are disproportionately poor.

At the Progressive Agenda event last month, I heard activists complain that they’d been told the same thing: the agenda will disproportionately benefit black people, because they’re disproportionately disadvantaged, even if it didn’t specifically address the core issue of criminal justice reform. (De Blasio later promised the agenda would include that issue.) But six years of hearing that from a black president has exhausted people’s patience, and white progressives aren’t going to be able to get away with it anymore.

Heather Digby Parton: Hillary Clinton’s toughest adversary: The world-historic narcissism of the political press

After he ended his long and storied career with CBS last Sunday with his final appearance as the host of Face the Nation, Bob Schieffer went on Fox News and spoke to Howard Kurtz. And if the old trope that a “gaffe” is when someone accidentally tells the truth, then Schieffer committed one last gaffe on his way out the door. Kurtz, king of the leading question, asked Schieffer if the media gave Barack Obama an incredibly easy ride in 2008 and Schieffer replied ” I don’t know, maybe we were not skeptical enough. It was a campaign.”

He did catch himself and quickly added that it is the role of the opponents to “make the campaign.” He said, “I think, as journalists, basically what we do is watch the campaign and report what the two sides are doing.”

Except when they’re not being “skeptical enough” or giving them an “easy ride.”

He sort of gave the game away, didn’t he? The press wasn’t skeptical enough. Of what? Has President Obama subsequently been accused of scandal? Is he corrupt? Compared to other recent administrations (ahem), the Obama White House has been downright saintly. Is he unusually unpopular? No, the country is divided along party lines; but he is just as popular with the people who voted for him as he ever was. So what should the press have been more skeptical about? It must be his policies, which apparently Howard Kurtz and Bob Schieffer don’t like and believe should have been more thoroughly challenged. That’s a long way from “We watch the campaign and report what the two sides are doing.”

Jun 03 2015

The Breakfast Club (Respect)

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover  we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

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This Day in History

Ed White is the first American to walk in space; Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini and Pope John XXIII die; Britain’s Duke of Windsor weds Wallis Simpson; Poet Allen Ginsberg and entertainer Josephine Baker born.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

I’m not concerned with your liking or disliking me… All I ask is that you respect me as a human being.

Jackie Robinson

Jun 03 2015

On This Day In History June 3

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

Click on image to enlarge

June 3 is the 154th day of the year (155th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 211 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1916, United States President Woodrow Wilson signs into law the National Defense Act, which expanded the size and scope of the National Guard, the network of states’ militias that had been developing steadily since colonial times, and guaranteed its status as the nation’s permanent reserve force.

The National Defense Act of 1916 provided for an expanded army during peace and wartime, fourfold expansion of the National Guard, the creation of an Officers’ and an Enlisted Reserve Corps, plus the creation of a Reserve Officers’ Training Corps in colleges and universities. The President was also given authority, in case of war or national emergency, to mobilize the National Guard for the duration of the emergency.

The act was passed amidst the “preparedness controversy”, a brief frenzy of great public concern over the state of preparation of the United States armed forces, and shortly after Pancho Villa’s cross-border raid on Columbus, New Mexico. Its chief proponent was James Hay of Virginia, the chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs.

Sponsored by Rep. Julius Kahn (R) of California and drafted by the House Chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs Rep. James Hay (D) of Virginia, it authorized an army of 175,000 men, a National Guard of 450,000 men. It created the modern Army Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) and empowered the President to place obligatory orders with manufacturers capable of producing war materials.

Langley Field in Virginia was built as part of the act. Now U.S. Air Force Command HQ as Langley Air Force Base, this “aerodrome” was named after air pioneer Samuel Pierpont Langley (died 1904). The President also requested the National Academy of Sciences to establish the National Research Council to conduct research into the potential of mathematical, biological, and physical science applications for defense. It allocated over $17 million to the Army to build 375 new aeroplanes.

Perhaps most important, it established the right of the President to “Federalize” the National Guard in times of emergency, with individual States’ militias reverting to their control upon the end of the declared emergency. With the Defense Act, Congress was also concerned with ensuring the supply of nitrates (used to make munitions), and it authorized the construction of two nitrate-manufacturing plants and a dam for hydropower as a national defense measure. President Wilson chose Muscle Shoals, Alabama as the site of the dam. The dam was later named for him, and the two Nitrate plants built in Muscle Shoals were later rolled into the Tennessee Valley Authority in 1933.

Developments after September 11, 2001

Prior to the attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001, the National Guard’s general policy regarding mobilization was that Guardsmen would be required to serve no more than one year cumulative on active duty (with no more than six months overseas) for each five years of regular drill. Due to strains placed on active duty units following the attacks, the possible mobilization time was increased to 18 months (with no more than one year overseas). Additional strains placed on military units as a result of the invasion of Iraq further increased the amount of time a Guardsman could be mobilized to 24 months. Current Department of Defense policy is that no Guardsman will be involuntarily activated for more than 24 months (cumulative) in one six year enlistment period.

Traditionally, most National Guard personnel serve “One weekend a month, two weeks a year”, although personnel in highly operational or high demand units serve far more frequently. Typical examples are pilots, navigators and aircrewmen in active flying assignments, primarily in the Air National Guard and to a lesser extent in the Army National Guard. A significant number also serve in a full-time capacity in roles such as Active Guard and Reserve (AGR) or Air Reserve Technician or Army Reserve Technician (ART).

The “One weekend a month, two weeks a year” slogan has lost most of its relevance since the Iraq War, when nearly 28% of total US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan at the end of 2007 consisted of mobilized personnel of the National Guard and other Reserve components.

Jun 03 2015

The Daily/Nightly Show (Citoyens, vouliez-vous une révolution sans révolution?)

The aim of constitutional government is to preserve the Republic; that of revolutionary government is to lay its foundation.

Buh-bye Sepp.  So long Denny.

Slavery Day

You stop being racist and I’ll stop talking about it.

Just in case you don’t get it, slavery is bad.

So Is Child Molesting

Tonightly our panelists are Marc LaMont Hill, Jamilah Lemieux, and Godfrey.  I have no idea what we’ll be talking about, but I’m guessing it’s not Sepp Blatter’s resignation or the prospects of Team USA in Group D (of Death) in the Women’s World Cup.

Continuity

Spring Cleaning

This week’s guests-

Bill de Blasio tonight.  Mayor and all.  I feel that in some respects he’s been a profound disappointment, TMC is willing to give him a chance and since she lives there and is usually much more radical than I (I still believe in quaint things like rule of Senate procedure and the utility of the Electoral College if you can make it work for you) I’m willing to reserve judgement for now.  Should be a patty cake interview, he’s exactly the kind of moderate liberal Jon loves.

La terreur n’est autre chose que la justice prompte, sévère, inflexible; elle est donc une émanation de la vertu; elle est moins un principe particulier, qu’une conséquence du principe général de la démocratie, appliqué aux plus pressants besoins de la patrie.

McChrystal off not a moment too soon, no extended at all, lying bastard.  The real news below.