3 Ways USA Freedom Act Fails to Stop FBI Spying on Americans
Vast Majority of Spying Will Continue Despite Expiration of Patriot Act Provisions
June 2015 archive
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.
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.
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-
- Tuesday 6/2: Bill de Blasio
- Wednesday 6/3: Melissa McCarthy
- Thursday 6/4: Steve Buscemi
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.
Jun 02 2015
Stasi Style Secret Surveillance Flights
As revealed today by The Associated Press and CNN, the FBI has been operationg a secret fleet of planes and drones, kept off the offical books by a system of fake front companies.
While this was previously acknowledged in a DoJ IG report in 2012, the report was heavily redacted. These planes are equipped with both visual survielance tools and cell phone tower spoofers which, while the FBI claims are only used against specific investigations, but the very nature of how they operate (sucking down all cell phone communications in a specific tower area) means they are bulk collection tools.
Additionally these flights are much more numerous than previously indicated, with the AP reporting as many as 30 in 30 days over 11 states.
These flights are routinely conducted without a warrant and under a supposed system of internal review that the DoJ claims is a “state secret”, meaning of course without any regulation at all at the whim of whoever.
Does the FBI have a secret surveillance air force?
By Pamela Brown, CNN
2:17 PM ET, Tue June 2, 2015
The FBI uses a fleet of planes registered under fictitious companies in order to conduct warrantless surveillance during federal, state and local investigations. The surveillance is conducted without a court order, but with oversight from within the Department of Justice, according to a senior law enforcement official.
…
The agency flew above more than 30 cities in 11 states over a 30 day period, according to the AP review, and their report also said planes was masked by the existence of at least 13 fictitious companies.
…
The senior law enforcement official confirmed the existence of the fleet of planes to the CNN and said they are registered under fictitious companies because the FBI wants to be as discreet as possible.“Anytime you mask your activity for operational or safety reasons you use a front company,” said the official. “You don’t want to put people on to what you’re doing – we know we’re going to need air aviation support for cases.”
The planes, which are equipped for electronic surveillance, are used both for FBI investigations and also at the request of state and local officials, according to the FBI. During recent Baltimore riots, for instance, the FBI used the surveillance aircraft at the request of the Baltimore Police Department.
…
According to the senior law enforcement official, the FBI does not need a court issued warrant to fly these surveillance planes because of rules established by the Department of Justice.
Report: FBI behind spy planes flying over US cities
Associated Press
June 2, 2015 10:39AM ET
The FBI is operating a small air force with scores of low-flying planes across the country carrying video and, at times, cellphone surveillance technology – all hidden behind fictitious companies that are fronts for the government, The Associated Press has learned.
The planes’ surveillance equipment is generally used without a judge’s approval, and the FBI said the flights are used for specific ongoing investigations.
…
U.S. law enforcement officials confirmed for the first time the wide-scale use of the aircraft, which the AP traced to at least 13 fake companies, such as FVX Research, KQM Aviation, NBR Aviation and PXW Services.Even basic aspects of the program are withheld from the public in censored versions of official reports from the Justice Department’s inspector general.
The FBI has been careful not to reveal its surveillance flights in court documents.
…
(T)he planes can capture video of unrelated criminal activity on the ground that could be handed over for prosecutions.Some of the aircraft can also be equipped with technology that can identify thousands of people below through the cellphones they carry, even if they are not making a call or are not in public.
…
“These are not your grandparents’ surveillance aircraft,” said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union, calling the flights significant “if the federal government is maintaining a fleet of aircraft whose purpose is to circle over American cities, especially with the technology we know can be attached to those aircraft.”During the past few weeks, the AP tracked planes from the FBI’s fleet on more than 100 flights over at least 11 states plus the District of Columbia, most with Cessna 182T Skylane aircraft. These included parts of Houston, Phoenix, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, Minneapolis and Southern California.
Evolving technology can record higher-quality video from long distances, even at night, and can capture certain identifying information from cellphones using a device known as a cell-site simulator – or StingRay, to use one of the product’s brand names. These can trick cellphones into revealing identification numbers of subscribers, including those not suspected of a crime.
Officials say cellphone surveillance is rare, although the AP found in recent weeks FBI flights circling large buildings for extended periods where aerial photography would be less effective than electronic signal collection. Those sites included Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota.
Jun 02 2015
John Oliver – FIFA the Farce Continues
Last year, John Oliver, the host of HBO’s “Last Week Tonight,” gave a scathing and hilarious report on the corrupt world of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, a.k.a. FIFA. John now gives us another of his gleeful soliloquies on the current arrests of fourteen FIFA officials, recapping some of pathetic defenses and the farcical re-election of Sepp Blatter for a fifth term as president.
After explaining the players in the fraud (including FIFA snitch Chuck Blazer, a man who looks like “Bad Santa”, Mr. Jack “Not the Onion” Warner, and Evil FIFA President Sepp Blatter), Oliver listed the extent of FIFA’s corruption and cruelty. Blatter, for instance, is the kind of guy who would make women play World Cup soccer on Astroturf, which bangs up people’s legs something awful: “The last time an athlete’s legs were beaten up that badly in advance of an major competition was when Tonya Harding was unwilling to settle for silver.” But Blatter may be best known for inexplicably granting the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, which has seen nearly 1,200 people die during the construction of its stadium.
Oliver was hardly surprised that Blatter subsequently won re-election, one day after the massive wave of arrests, due to the weird profit-sharing system of FIFA, in which every country gets the same amount of money regardless of their population. With that, he cheered on America and begged them to arrest Blatter, because that would do more for the American image abroad than anything else. “Imagine if the Dutch suddenly found a reason to extradite Donald Trump,” he explained.
“The problem is all the arrests in the world are going to change nothing if Blatter’s still there, because to truly kill a snake you must cut off its head-or in this case, its asshole,” the HBO host said.
He pleads for advertisers to withdraw their support for FIFA until the governing body comes to its senses and axes Blatter.
I would like to make a plea to them tonight: Please make Sepp Blatter go away. I will do anything. Adidas, I will wear one of your ugly shoes. One of these shoes that make me look like the Greek god of aspiring DJs. McDonalds, I will take a bite out of every item on your Dollar Menu-which tastes like normal food that was cursed by a vindictive wizard. And I will even make the ultimate sacrifice: Budweiser, if you pull your support and help get rid of Blatter, I will put my mouth where my mouth is, and I will personally drink one of your disgusting items. I’m serious. It could be a Bud-Lite. I will even drink a Bud-Lite Lime, despite the fact that all the lime in the world cannot disguise the fact that this tastes like a puddle beneath a Long John Silver’s dumpster. But I will do it. I will drink one maintaining eye contact with the camera and say it’s delicious, because if you get rid of the Swiss demon who has ruined the sport I love, this stuff will taste like fucking Champagne!”
Jun 02 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.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.
Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt
Dean Baker: The Federal Reserve Board’s Payroll Tax on our Children
The deficit hawks appear to be making a comeback, at least in the media, if not among the public at large. This isn’t surprising since we have billionaires prepared to spend large chunks of their money to scare people about the deficit, regardless of how unimportant it might be as an economic concern.
The latest storyline is that the deficit may not be a problem now, but it is projected to grow in size over the next decade. In particular, as interest rates rise we will be forced to divert an increasing portion of government spending to interest payments and away from things we might really care about like improving infrastructure and education.
There are many things wrong with this analysis, most obviously that even if interest payments rise as projected, relative to the size of the economy they will still be less in 2025 than they were in the early 1990s. And the interest burden in 1990s didn’t prevent us from having a decade that ended with four years of broadly shared wage growth and low unemployment. So the horror story here doesn’t look quite so frightening.
Richard (RJ) Eskow: Is Jeb’s Social Security Flub the Worst Bush Gaffe Yet?
George W. Bush: His policies brought untold harm, but at least his gaffes offered some occasional lighthearted moments. Now his brother Jeb may have outdone him in the faux pas department — but there’s nothing funny about it.
The former Florida governor has been running on a platform which includes cutting Social Security benefits, so he’s been talking about raising the retirement age. But, as it happens, he doesn’t even know what the retirement age is.
When he was asked about it, Jeb responded in the tortured syntax characteristic of his clan: “We need to look over the horizon and begin to phase in, over an extended period of time, going from 65 to 68 or 70.”
Except that the retirement age isn’t 65, and hasn’t been for some time. The current retirement age is 66, and it will continue to rise. People born in 1959 won’t be able to retire until they are 67 years old.
If you’re going to cut a program which affects the lives of most Americans, the least you can do is get the facts right. Jeb didn’t. That’s worse than a candidate getting the price of bread or milk wrong, or a president’s wonderment at the fact that grocery stores have scanners.
Bill George: Soccer’s FIFA Is Morally Bankrupt — Corporations Should Suspend Sponsorships Until Blatter Resigns
The fish rots from the head, and this is undoubtedly the case with FIFA and its leader, Sepp Blatter.
U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s indictment of 14 senior FIFA officials confirms what we all knew. FIFA is a deeply corrupt organization. Lynch, who collaborated with the police in Switzerland to arrest seven FIFA officials, detailed at least $150 million in corrupt payments over 24 years. At week’s end, Justice Department officials said they were preparing additional indictments. [..]
Leaders are responsible for creating a moral climate in their organizations, and ensuring that its business affairs are carried out with integrity. Of course, there will always be individuals who deviate from company policy, in which case high integrity leaders move swiftly to terminate them and take appropriate follow-up action to prevent repeat incidents.
The vast majority of today’s business leaders do precisely that. The exceptions, such as Blatter, give a poor name to all who view leadership as a higher calling. High integrity leaders must support firm action against those who destroy important enterprises like world soccer.
C. Robert Gibson: The Democratic Party needs a swift kick in the ass
The Democratic Party’s official symbol is a jackass – and that’s exactly how the party is perceived by the American electorate right now. Only 18 states have Democratic governors, and Democrats hold a majority in both legislative houses in just 11 states. As the New York Times noted, the party hasn’t had this little power since Herbert Hoover was president. And Democrats will continue to get their asses kicked in every election until grass-roots movements organize to oust the party’s corporate-backed incumbents, make a mockery of state party bosses and take the helm once they’ve all been driven out.
Of America’s two major political parties, the Republicans have become the party of extremists determined to privatize the commons, neuter the government’s ability to police polluters and corporate tax avoiders and redistribute wealth to the rich. The Democrats, on the other hand, have simply failed to stand for anything other than a watered-down version of what Republicans are proposing. State Democratic Party chairpeople, committee members, top-level elected officials and check writers have made it clear they have no interest in changing course in their embrace of policies that disenfranchise the middle class, nor are they listening to the grass-roots movements demanding economic, environmental and racial justice. Even as the country moves further to the left, Democrats continue to lose. The 2014 midterm election cycle was a perfect example.
Bill Boyarsky: Undercutting the Patriot Act Is a Major Win for Rand Paul and Edward Snowden
While its successor may be full of ways for intelligence agents and law enforcement to invade privacy, the demise of the Patriot Act’s bulk collection of phone records is a major accomplishment for Sen. Rand Paul, for Americans suspicious of government intrusion and, above all, for Edward J. Snowden.
It is Snowden who deserves most of the credit for the expiration of the act’s most onerous provisions, which went out of effect at midnight Sunday. Now in self-exile in Russia and facing espionage charges at home, Snowden revealed how the National Security Administration was scooping up enormous masses of the private records of ordinary citizens under the guise of fighting terrorism. President Barack Obama and many other politicians, along with intelligence officials, denounced that courageous act by the onetime NSA contractor, but the disclosure resonated strongly with Americans who harbor a suspicion of government that dates back to before the American Revolution.
E.J.Dionne, Jr.: Understanding the Importance of Bernie Sanders’ Candidacy Requires Revisiting Santa Claus Politics
How is it that Democrats forgot about the joys Santa Claus can bring? How is it that Republicans managed to steal the Santa idea from the party of FDR and never let go?
Understanding why Bernie Sanders’ presidential candidacy is important requires revisiting the politics of St. Nick. The senator from Vermont has little chance of defeating Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination. But he is reminding his party of something it often forgets: Government was once popular because it provided tangible benefits to large numbers of Americans.
At a time of rising inequality and short-circuited social mobility, Sanders is unapologetic about taking some wealth and income away from those who have a lot of both to ease the path upward for those who don’t. He has proudly called himself a democratic socialist, but he doesn’t spin abstract Marxist theories. He wants government to do stuff, and the sort of stuff he has in mind is potentially quite popular.
Jun 02 2015
TBC: Morning Musing 6.2.15
I have 4 articles for you this morning!
First, a sad but needed project The Guardian is undertaking:
The Counted: People killed by police in the US
The Counted is a project by the Guardian – and you – working to count the number of people killed by police and other law enforcement agencies in the United States throughout 2015, to monitor their demographics and to tell the stories of how they died.
The database will combine Guardian reporting with verified crowdsourced information to build a more comprehensive record of such fatalities. The Counted is the most thorough public accounting for deadly use of force in the US, but it will operate as an imperfect work in progress – and will be updated by Guardian reporters and interactive journalists as frequently and as promptly as possible.
Jump!
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