Tag: Punting the Pundits

Those in the reality-based community may laugh, but in Republican presidential politics, extremism is virtue

Is the way to watch the Republican debates tonight to set out a bowl of popcorn in the expectation that this conglomeration of candidates will produce truly memorable Comedy Central moments?

As Bill Schneider at Reuters put it, “Is 2016 the year of the Republican clown car?”

Dana Milbank of The Washington Post was quick to answer, “Clown car.” Politico’s Roger Simon said the “clown car has become a clown van.”

Sen. Ted Cruz is frying bacon on a rifle barrel. Sen. Lindsey Graham put his cellphone in a blender. Former Fox News host and ex-Gov. Mike Huckabee is running as the candidate of “Bubbaville.” Gov. Chris Christie is doing a Tony Soprano imitation, but fatter. Gov. Scott Walker claims that it’s God’s plan for him to run for president.

The biggest clown of all has jumped into the lead.

But before we chortle and view it all as fodder for the new host of “The Daily Show,” we should take a longer and deeper look at Republican presidential politics.

Norman Solomon: Bernie Sanders should stop ducking foreign policy

The progressive favorite has views on foreign affairs but has avoided articulating them to voters

Senator Bernie Sanders has sparked a strong grassroots response in his run for the Democratic presidential nomination on social and economic issues. At the same time, he has given short shrift to foreign policy, military spending and war. That approach should change.

I’m among millions of supporters who are enthusiastic about the clarity of his positions in taking on Wall Street, corporate power and economic inequality. But we also need Sanders to be clear about what he would do as commander in chief of the world’s leading military power. {..]

As a genuine economic populist who thrives on fighting for the interests of working people while challenging Wall Street and big banks, Sanders differs significantly from Hillary Clinton. But on foreign policy, he cannot rely simply on his 2002 congressional vote against the invasion of Iraq to set himself apart. (Clinton’s vote in favor was a contributing factor to her loss to Obama in the 2008 presidential race.) Now, Sanders should make clear how he currently differs – or agrees – with Clinton on key aspects of war policies, foreign affairs and the military-industrial complex.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: “Open Borders”: A Gimmick, Not a Solution

Newsweek recently published an article by Daniel Bier with the headline “Bernie Sanders on Immigrants: Silly, Tribal and Economically Illiterate.” The piece, when it is not distracting the reader with rather unimaginative vitriol (phrases like “lame socialist agenda” are hardly Pulitzer material), bases its argument on a trendy libertarian idea called “open borders.”

Like many libertarian ideas, “open borders” is bold, has superficial intellectual appeal – and is incapable of withstanding thoughtful scrutiny. It would benefit the wealthy few at the expense of the many, here and abroad. [..]

“Open borders” is a recipe for the further commodification of human beings. It treats people as economic inputs to be moved about the globe at the whim of global capital. It is neither rational nor humane, and it has yet to receive the thorough public debunking it deserves. We need a systemic solution to global wealth inequality, rather than intellectual gimmicks designed to promote exploitation and sow confusion.

Some tips on how to respond to some of the most common arguments.

Last month, a group with the name Center for Medical Progress started releasing videos claiming that Planned Parenthood is illegally selling fetal tissue. Anti-choicers are always floating ridiculous conspiracy theories about Planned Parenthood, and unsurprisingly, these videos turned out to be a pile of lies. Despite this, Senate Republicans had a symbolic grandstanding “defund Planned Parenthood” bill and some are calling to shut the government down if Democrats don’t cave into demands to destroy the national chain of women’s health centers.

Because of this, many conservatives – some of them our own relatives – are now spouting a bunch of false talking points about the supposed evils of Planned Parenthood. Here are some tips on how to respond to some of the most common arguments that are floating around. [..]

These conservative talking points are easy to debunk, but it’s also important not to get so much in the weeds that you forget the larger point: The assault on Planned  Parenthood is not about the videos at all, but a larger war on women being waged by conservatives. It’s all tied up in conservative efforts to push abstinence-only education, to fight Obamacare’s contraception coverage, to shut down abortion and family planning clinics, and even to halt IUD programs that are known to reduce teen pregnancy. The videos are just a pretense. The real goal is to make it harder for women-especially low-income women – to have happy, healthy sex lives.

Jaon Walsh: The GOP crack-up continues: The raging civil war over the disgusting “cuckservative” slur

Combining racism and misogyny, the insult lets Donald Trump backers claim other Republicans aren’t real men

“Cuckservative,” you see, is short for a cuckolded conservative. It’s not about a Republican whose wife is cheating on him, but one whose country is being taken away from him, and who’s too cowardly to do anything about it.

OK, that’s gross and sexist enough already, but there’s more. It apparently comes from a kind of pornography known as “cuck,” in which a white husband, either in shame or lust, watches his wife be taken by a black man. Lewis explains it this way: “A cuckservative is, therefore, a race traitor.”

This is not merely a new way to shout “RINO.” It’s a call to make the GOP an explicitly racist party, devoted to the defense of whites. It’s no accident it’s taken off in the wake of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign launch/performance art, where he attacked illegal Mexican immigrants as “rapists” and “criminals.”

Rachel Rye Butler: Why the Voting Rights Act Matters for Environmentalists

Why environmental activists are joining the call to restore the Voting Rights Act and give equal voice to all in American democracy.

Many people who care about climate change understand the corrupting influence of big money in politics, and rightfully sound the alarm when elected officials who are supposed to represent their constituents instead protect corporate profits. This is especially true when it comes to big political spenders and climate polluters like the Koch Brothers and the fossil fuel companies like Shell.

However, voter suppression and disenfranchisement are not as commonly talked about in the environmental community. This despite the fact that denying the right to vote strips people of access to a cornerstone of our democracy and a way to have their interests represented in decisions that impact them-including issues of climate and environmental health.

It’s high time we make those connections.

Amy B. Dean: Washington has failed to enforce labor rights. Can cities step in?

With cities raising minimum wages and passing paid sick leave, communities must make sure employers comply with the law

In the past year Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland and Seattle have all scheduled minimum wage increases, to rates ranging from $12.25 to $15.00. At least 18 cities and four states now have passed paid sick leave laws. San Francisco also passed the Retail Workers’ Bill of Rights, which will guarantee employees fair notice of their schedules for shifts.

All these measures create important improvements for working families. But how can these newly won rights be protected?

The federal government is unlikely to help. The U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division has fewer than 1,500 investigators for America’s 135 million-person workforce – about one for every 96,000 workers. And state-level labor departments aren’t faring much better.

With this in mind, some local leaders have turned to a surprisingly simple solution: enlisting community members to help monitor and enforce new protections.

What once looked like a foregone conclusion now appears stalled by major policy disagreements. What’s next?

Since the passage of fast-track authority, the biggest obstacle to more corporate-written international trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has not been unions or environmentalists or public health advocates. It’s been the calendar. And jostling by TPP member countries over domestic priorities may have just created such a calendar problem that we will not see a deal completed by the end of the Obama presidency.

Ministerial meetings in Maui last week were supposed to end in an agreement between the 12 nations negotiating TPP. But those talks broke up on Friday without a breakthrough. Officials played down the differences, claiming that anywhere from 90 to 98 percent of the details have been finalized. But the outstanding issues involve the basic building blocks of a trade agreement – specifically, what industries get tariff elimination and unfettered market access, and which remain protected. [..]

This is what happens when world leaders try to make deals they know their populations will detest. Apparently the last threads of democracy remaining are strong enough that, sooner or later, these same leaders must stand before their people and defend gutting regulations, selling out their sovereignty and benefiting multinational corporations instead of the public. It’s apparently hard to find a good time to do that.

Jeb Lund: The secret to gaffe-free Republican debates: limit their speaking time

How often in politics do your problems get to seem like virtues? After months of hang-wringing over whether the crowded Republican field would lead to debates as messy and unintelligible as a bachelor party at a chain restaurant, the party’s first crack at it turned out to be surprisingly polished. And while the New Hampshire “Voters First” forum’s structure was not identical to a debate, it showed that limited time and tight structure can, barring a Trump-sized implosion mid-stage, give every candidate a chance to look good. [..]

The rewards to this kind of structure are obvious: even if it’s hard to elaborate on your thoughts, it’s almost harder to make a fool of yourself. Candidates only need to memorize the maybe 20 paragraphs of policy planks they have on maybe 20 major issues (and they should have done that by now, just by virtue of repeating their stump speeches, which are often repurposed versions of their book chapters), then pivot back to them after any question touches on one of those topics.

Adam Lee: There’s a silver lining in the religious right’s onslaught of discrimination

The American religious right is more determined than ever to discriminate – and that may be a good thing. It means that the privileged can no longer overlook the impact of prejudice. They no longer have the luxury of overlooking it or dismissing it as something that’s none of their concern. [..]

It’s human nature to not care about injustices that don’t directly affect you. When it’s only same-sex couples, for example, who face rejection at the county clerk’s office, it’s easy for straight people to ignore their plight. When it’s only women who are denied access to standard and necessary reproductive healthcare, it’s easy for men to dismiss it as not their problem. But when members of the majority feel the sting of unfair deprivation for themselves, they’ll gain a more intimate perspective on how prejudice hurts – and, we can hope, they’ll be more willing to support democratic means to abolish it and to create a fairer society for everyone. Ideally, of course, people would be willing to do the right thing just from hearing about the mistreatment of others, even without experiencing it personally, but this comes in a close second.

Too often, religion is thought of as a purely benevolent and positive force, despite the role it has played in justifying harmful prejudice and the ongoing denial of equal rights. But these hardball massive-resistance tactics, this stubborn desire to enforce their will despite the collateral costs, brings people face to face with the anti-human side of religious morality in a way that’s a lot harder to overlook. Atheists have long made this criticism, but ironically, it’s the religious conservatives themselves who are lending it greater weight and force.

“He can’t possibly win the nomination,” is the phrase heard most often when Washington insiders mention either Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders.

Yet as enthusiasm for the bombastic billionaire and the socialist senior continues to build within each party, the political establishment is mystified.

They don’t understand that the biggest political phenomenon in America today is a revolt against the “ruling class” of insiders that have dominated Washington for more than three decades.

In two very different ways, Trump and Sanders are agents of this revolt. I’ll explain the two ways in a moment.

Don’t confuse this for the public’s typical attraction to candidates posing as political outsiders who’ll clean up the mess, even when they’re really insiders who contributed to the mess.

What’s new is the degree of anger now focused on those who have had power over our economic and political system since the start of the 1980s.

Paul Buchheit: Great Embarrassments of an Unequal Society

America has experienced “gush-up” rather than “trickle-down.” The shame is on the adherents of unregulated free-market capitalism, who have assaulted us with the message of “winner-take-all” wealth over the common good. George Willperpetuates the neoliberal myth by quoting one of his idols, John Tamny: “Income inequality in a capitalist system is truly beautiful…it provides the incentive for creative people to gamble on new ideas..”

But in the realm of reality, there are many reasons for embarrassment:  [..]

The Greatest Embarrassment

That would be Congress itself: Allowing Americans to go without health care. Blowing off jobs bills. Ignoring infrastructure. Privatizing education and other public needs. Doing nothing about student debt. Cutting the IRS even though every hour of auditing returns $9,000 from large corporations. And on and on and on.

Terrell Jermaine Starr: Body Cams Can Capture Abuse, But Can They End Police Brutality?

The swift first-degree murder charge filed against a former University of Cincinnati police officer after his body camera captured him shooting an unarmed black man to death reflects how crucial video is in proving police misconduct.

When Ray Tensing pulled Samuel Dubose over on July 19, his body camera captured the entire stop. After Dubose was unable to produce a license and prevented Tensing from opening the driver door of his vehicle, the former cop shot him in the head. Tensing claimed he was being dragged by the car, which was proven untrue. A police report of the incident also shows officers on the scene lied about seeing Dubose’s car “dragging” Tensing. [..]

As critical as body cameras are in exposing police abuses, law enforcement experts told AlterNet that policymakers at the local and national levels need to do much more to curtail police brutality. Tensing wore a body camera, but still ended up abusing his power and shooting Dubose to death for no reason.

Reynard Loki: People Are Dying from Contaminated Food, but Obama and Congress Don’t Seem to Care

In 2010, after thousands of Americans were sickened by tainted spinach, peanut butter and eggs, Congress passed the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), a sweeping reform bill that gave the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) new powers to help ensure the safety of the nation’s food system. It was the nation’s first major food policy legislation since FDR signed the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act in 1938. But now, five years later, according to a recent POLITICO investigation, not a single one of the new rules has been implemented and the entire mission has a $276-million funding gap. So what happened?

In the modern global banking system, all banks need a credit line with the central bank in order to be part of the payments system. Choking off that credit line was a form of blackmail the Greek government couldn’t refuse.

Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis is now being charged with treason for exploring the possibility of an alternative payment system in the event of a Greek exit from the euro. The irony of it all was underscored by Raúl Ilargi Meijer, who opined in a July 27th blog:

   The fact that these things were taken into consideration doesn’t mean Syriza was planning a coup . . . . If you want a coup, look instead at the Troika having wrestled control over Greek domestic finances. That’s a coup if you ever saw one.

   Let’s have an independent commission look into how on earth it is possible that a cabal of unelected movers and shakers gets full control over the entire financial structure of a democratically elected eurozone member government. By all means, let’s see the legal arguments for this.

So how was that coup pulled off? The answer seems to be through extortion. The European Central Bank threatened to turn off the liquidity that all banks – even solvent ones – need to maintain their day-to-day accounting balances. That threat was made good in the run-up to the Greek referendum, when the ECB did turn off the liquidity tap and Greek banks had to close their doors.

Eugene Robinson: ‘Twas the Week Before the Republican Debate

I feel like a kid the week before Christmas. There’s just one present under the tree, but it’s all a columnist could ever hope for: the first Republican debate!

How could next Thursday night in Cleveland fail to be one of the most entertaining political spectacles we’ve seen in a long time? There are, far as I can tell, 17 candidates for the GOP nomination. Nobody’s quite sure which 10 will qualify for the prime-time clash, with the rest relegated to an earlier also-rans debate. Fox News, which is organizing the festivities, says it will use an average of national polls to make the cut, but won’t say which polls.

One hopes the poor candidates at least hear the good or bad news before they arrive in Cleveland. Imagine the phone call Rick Perry’s campaign might get: “Um, has the governor’s plane landed yet? Because it turns out we need him on stage quite a bit earlier than we thought.”

Joe Conason: Which ‘Senior Official’ Smeared Hillary Clinton?

In the aftermath of that famously discredited New York Times story about a “criminal referral” regarding Hillary Clinton’s emails, a few important questions stand out, among many that remain unanswered.

Exactly who told Times reporters Michael S. Schmidt and Matt Apuzzo that the referral to the Justice Department-concerning whether information in her emails that wasn’t classified should have been-was a matter for criminal investigation? And when will the Justice Department track down, reveal, and discipline those who made these false statements to the Times and later to other news outlets?

These unpleasant questions arise from the Times editors’ explanation of an error that is enormously troubling (and the most consequential of several substantive mistakes littered throughout Schmidt and Apuzzo’s article, as catalogued superbly by Kurt Eichenwald in Newsweek). Never was there any criminal referral, only a “security referral” prompted by the appearance of retroactively classified material in a sample of Clinton emails released by the State Department.

In short, Clinton did nothing wrong, and the ensuing journalistic firestorm was, in reality, no more than a boring bureaucratic dispute over what should or should not be kept secret.

John Atcheson: Bush-Clinton Is Not Inevitable

A funny thing happened on the way to the oligarch’s quadrennial choice between tweedle-de and tweedle-dum.  Two renegade candidates decided to ignore the script.  One, a right-wing lunatic with a boatload of money; the other a socialist/democrat relying on small contributions, which are pouring in.

As a result, the fat-cat funded ordination of Ms. Clinton and Mr. Bush is in danger of being derailed, and the old scripts are in danger of being tossed aside.  The consequences of this are different for each Party, and the stakes for the country couldn’t be higher.

In a sense, we have an epic contest shaping up right now.  To paraphrase Lincoln, it is a struggle to determine whether “… that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Or, to put it more mundanely, we’re struggling to see whether votes can ever trump money; whether we’ll choose to continue to live in an oligarchy or choose instead, to reclaim the Republic.

States have tried all sorts of things to prevent women from having abortions. They’ve enacted waiting periods, ultrasound laws and parental notifications. They’ve passed laws that force doctors to lie to women and force women to visit with ideological zealots. Some legislators have even attempted to make women get a man’s consent before obtaining the procedure – a paternalistic permission slip to access their legal rights.

But Alabama has brought efforts to restrict abortion to a whole new level, as the state tried this week to stop a woman from getting an abortion by terminating her parental rights… to her fetus. [..]

Baffling legal maneuvering aside, what’s worst in cases like this one in Alabama – where the state focuses its misogynist ire on the most marginalized women – is that they’re commonplace. Women in prison, women who use drugs, women of color and low-income women have long been targets for anti-choice legislators, not just because they have less support to fight back, but because the people attacking them believe that no one will care. It’s nastiness of the worst sort.

Abortion is legal. And while I’d like to say that no amount of strange, overreaching and insulting litigation or legislation will change that, it has, and it still could. And if it does, we know who will be penalized most.

David Cay Johnston: Blame government policies for the economic slowdown

Our economy is promoting the hoarding of cash and assets at the top

Around the world, financial pages report that the global economy is slowing and might even contract.

Prices of commodities are falling, with copper, cotton, grains and oil all down by about half in the last five years – a strong signal of slowing growth.

Companies are tightening their belts, with fewer perks and fringe benefits. An inadvertently leaked report showed that staff economists at the Federal Reserve are more pessimistic about the near future than the official Fed positions. And big companies with nowhere else to put their piles of cash are buying back their stock or buying up competitors, which means fewer well-paying management jobs.

Yet hardly any of these reports citing official sources and economic data connect the dots to outline what’s behind this unwelcome trend in the U.S.: government policies.

Governments are helping big industries by diminishing competition, providing abundant cheap credit for speculation rather than investment and failing to rein in price gouging. In turn, these policies produce a growing concentration of income and wealth at the top while the vast majority struggle with falling wages, flat incomes, job insecurity and a shrinking slice of investment assets.

Steven W. Thrasher: Samuel DuBose’s killing is a dark cloud with a grim silver lining

There is nothing good, but there is much bad and ugly, about the fact that Samuel DuBose’s killing at the hands of University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing was caught on video by a body camera. He is still needlessly dead.

But there is a silver lining in what it can mean going forward, as Aubrey DuBose, Samuel’s brother, articulated at a press conference on Wednesday. It’s a silver lining when a white prosecutor, Joe Deters, got up in front of the Cincinnati press and unequivocally denounced the “unnecessary” but “purposeful” killing of DuBose as “murder” – without any of the usual equivocation which makes black victims have to defend themselves from beyond the grave. There’s a lining in Deters, the representative of his city, saying that he feels “sorry for his family” and not expressing something crude like, say, blaming him for his death, as the City of Cleveland did with Tamir Rice. There’s a lining in that, unlike Ferguson Prosecutor Bob McCulloch, Deters seemed to want an indictment, got one from a grand jury and swiftly had Tensing in custody. [..]

I feel far more angry than celebratory by this video. I am angered that without the video, DuBose would have been written off as a murderous thug who deserved to die. I am angered that Cincinnati officials placed suspicion on black people citywide for the actions of a police officer. And most of all, I am angry that even wearing a body cam did not stop Tensing from shooting DuBose in the head.

Sen. Jeff Merkley: It’s Time for Shell to Abandon Its Irresponsible Arctic Drilling Plans

At this moment, the damaged Fennica icebreaker is entering the water in my home of Portland, OR, in what could be a make-or-break moment for our environment and our future climate. [..]

Drilling in the Arctic is the height of irresponsibility. If the Chukchi leases are developed and Shell begins operations, a major oil spill is extremely likely. We all remember the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which resulted in billions of dollars in economic damage to coastal communities and devastating pollution from the 4.9 million barrels of oil that were dumped into the warm Gulf waters. The harsh climate and remote location of the Arctic would make cleanup of a comparable spill nearly impossible, and if a spill happens during the winter, months could pass before a well could be plugged.

Additionally, we should not be investing in infrastructure that will lock in decades of production — and carbon pollution — from previously unexploited fossil fuel reserves. The science is clear that we have already discovered five times as much fossil fuel as we can afford to burn if we hope to avert catastrophic climate change. Human civilization already faces enormous challenges from climate change.

This week, we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Medicare and Medicaid, which have provided millions of Americans with accessible, affordable health care.

These are lifelines that from their start were attacked by Republicans and their extremist allies around the country. But we held strong and 50 years later, generations of Americans have benefited from Medicare and Medicaid.

Now we are witnessing another ideological attack that would put women’s health and women’s lives at risk – this time by targeting women’s reproductive health care, an issue that was resolved back in 1973.

Today, the Republican majority is forcing another vote to defund an organization that for nearly 100 years has provided women and their families with preventive and life-saving health care – Planned Parenthood.

Dean Baker: Export-Import Bank debate reveals the corruption of economics

Ending this government entry into the credit market should be a no-brainer

In the recent debate on trade policy, most reputable economists favored fast track trade authority and the approval of Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is likely to be the first trade deal to be covered by the new fast-track rules. Their argument was simple: The reduction of tariffs and other trade barriers will increase efficiency and economic growth. This is the standard argument for free trade.

Given this general view within the economics profession why TPP is good policy, it is striking that so few economists have been outspoken in opposition to the reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank, a government agency that aids U.S. exports through loan and insurance guarantees. On June 30, Congress did not reauthorize the bank, which meant that it could not extend new credit, though it could still manage its existing portfolio of loans. Republican Senators led a vote to reauthorize the bank in the Senate, and now the issue has moved to the House. The whole point of the Ex-Im Bank, of course, is to have the government subsidize selected companies by giving them access to credit at below-market interest rates. This is totally at odds with free trade. It means the government is allocating credit rather than markets. It would be expected to lead to the same type of economic distortions as tariffs and quotas.

Leonard Pitts, Jr.: Police Brutality Is A Problem For Everyone

This will not be a column about Sandra Bland, although it could be.

Certainly there is cause for outrage over the way a Texas state trooper escalated the routine traffic stop of an indignant African-American woman into a violent arrest; she died of an apparent jail cell suicide three days later. But Chuck would say that in habitually defining police violence as a black problem, we make it smaller than it is.

Chuck is a reader who responded to a question I passed on in this space a few months back from another reader, a white woman named Tracy. “What can I do?” she asked, as a private citizen, to fight police brutality against African Americans? [..]

This will not be a column about Sandra Bland, although it could be.

Certainly there is cause for outrage over the way a Texas state trooper escalated the routine traffic stop of an indignant African-American woman into a violent arrest; she died of an apparent jail cell suicide three days later. But Chuck would say that in habitually defining police violence as a black problem, we make it smaller than it is.

Chuck is a reader who responded to a question I passed on in this space a few months back from another reader, a white woman named Tracy. “What can I do?” she asked, as a private citizen, to fight police brutality against African Americans?

Dave Johnson: Did Obama Administration Downplay Malaysia Slavery To Grease Trade Deal?

Cheap labor is the whole point of our corporate-rigged, NAFTA-style trade agreements. Companies get to move jobs, factories, even entire industries out of the U.S. to countries where people are exploited, the environment is not protected and “costs” like human safety are kept low.

But even so … tolerating slavery? Flat-out slavery? Really? Unfortunately, it looks like that’s what is happening with fast-track trade promotion authority, The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Obama administration.

Voting rights around the country have been under serious assault in recent years. In 2008, President Obama was elected with the outsized support of African Americans, students and women. After the 2010 mid-term elections, new Republican majorities in state houses across the country began to pursue an aggressive voter restriction strategy, not seen since the undoing of post-Civil War Reconstruction. From early 2011 through the 2012 election, state lawmakers introduced at least 180 bills to make voting more difficult in 41 states. By 2014, voter rights had been significantly impaired in 21 states, say the expert attorneys at the Brennan Center for Justice.

The attack has been particularly relentless in Wisconsin. Since being sworn into office, Governor Scott Walker and Lt. Gov. Kleefisch have ushered into law one of the strictest “voter ID” requirements in the nation, even worse than the original American Legislative Exchange Council “model” bill. Although voter fraud is virtually nonexistent in the state, experts say that some 300,000 people lack the form of ID required to vote under the new law. If historic voting patterns are any indication, the majority of them are women.

Sandra Fulton: Cyber Bill Gives Companies Perfect Cover to Gut Your Privacy

Following several high-profile data breaches – such as those at Sony and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management – Congress is once again feeling the pressure to push “cybersecurity” legislation.

The problem is, the bill they’re laser-focused on is misguided, wouldn’t protect us – and is a huge gift to companies wanting legal cover if and when they choose to violate Americans’ privacy rights. [..]

If CISA passes, companies would be permitted to monitor and then report to the government on vaguely defined “cyber-threat indicators” – a term so broad that it covers actual threats hackers pose to computer systems but also sweeps in information on crimes like carjacking and burglaries. Those are serious offenses to be sure, but they have nothing to do with cybersecurity.

While current law allows companies to monitor their own systems for cyber threats, CISA would take this to the next level. The bill would allow companies that hold huge swaths of our personal data – like health insurers and credit-card companies – to monitor and report online activity “notwithstanding any other provision of law.”

This means that CISA would undermine the strong protections embedded in laws like the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 and the Privacy Act of 1964 – laws designed to keep the government from spying on our communications.

Ruth Coniff: The Battle Over Education and Civil Rights

“This is a historic moment to end 13 years of legislative malpractice” NEA president Lily Eskelsen Garcia says of the federal K12 education law that Congress is currently hashing out.

Congress has failed to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act ever since George Bush rewrote the law and renamed it No Child Left Behind in 2002.

The original Act, signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965, was part of a civil-rights-era drive to rectify glaring inequality.

It dealt with disproportionate funding within and among the states. It created grants to help low-income students, built libraries and provided text books to schools in poor areas.

All of that changed with No Child Left Behind.

Peggy cooper Davis: The legal erasure of black families

In his new book “Between the World and Me,” Ta-Nehisi Coates recounts taking his four-year-old son, Samori, to a movie theater in Manhattan’s reputedly progressive Upper West Side. Coates and Samori are riding an escalator to exit the theater. Samori, who is doe-eyed beautiful, moves too slowly to suit a white woman on the escalator; the woman pushes him and says, “Come on.” Her tone is not described, but Coates reports his furious response in vivid detail. His rage leads to a loud argument with the woman and then with bystanders who come to her defense. Coates pushes one of the defenders, to which the defender responds, “I could have you arrested!”

Coates is a black man, a member of a socially constructed people who, he points out, have existed in America longer as slaves than as free citizens. And while it might be tempting to interpret the woman’s push and her words as ambivalent, or perhaps even as benevolent, for Coates they must have been stunningly resonant with the social disregard and legal erasure that black parents endured in slavery and in post-slavery apprentice systems – in which black children were apprenticed to former masters, sometimes against their parents’ wishes – and that they continue to endure in the racially disproportionate surveillance of clumsy child welfare systems.

I have been helping countries to overcome financial crises for 30 years, and have studied the economic crises of the twentieth century as background to my advisory work. In all crises, there is an inherent imbalance of power between creditor and debtor. Successful crisis management therefore depends on the creditor’s wisdom. In this regard, I strongly urge Germany to rethink its approach to Greece.

A financial crisis is caused by a country’s excessive indebtedness, which generally reflects a combination of mismanagement by the debtor country, over-optimism, corruption, and the poor judgment and weak incentives of creditor banks. Greece fits that bill. [..]

When a country’s prosperity depends on the continued inflow of capital, a sudden stop or reversal of financial flows triggers a sharp contraction. In Greece, the easy lending stopped with the 2008 global financial crisis. The economy shrunk by 18 percent from 2008 to 2011, and unemployment soared from 8 percent to 18 percent.

The most obvious cause was lower government spending, which reduced aggregate demand. Public-sector workers lost their jobs, and construction projects ground to a halt. As incomes declined, other domestic sectors collapsed.

Dave Zirin: Why Boston Was Compelled to Pull Their 2024 Olympic Bid

The crumbling of Boston’s 2024 Olympic bid is a victory for activists and a loss for the city’s most entrenched business interests.

“What we do matters.” “We are many, they are few.” “The squeaky wheel gets the grease.”

These phrases are what people trying to affect change often say quietly to avoid slouching into despair. Today, they are what crews of Bostonians are singing to one another over rowdy, joyous toasts, confident that their actions just beat back the most powerful plutocrats in town. Make no mistake about it: The 2024 Summer Olympics were on a runaway freight train toward Boston until serious groups of committed citizens got in the way. Local sports legends like Larry Bird and David Ortiz were part of the thirty person ceremonial board of directors preaching that the Olympics would be all financial boom and patriotic pageantry. The powerful-and less telegenic-brokers behind them had the money, the media, and the mayor. But they did not have the people and that made all the difference. [..]

This is an absolute victory for the people of Boston. It is particularly critical for those who would have been most likely to suffer under the weight of a massive police and military presence in the city. But it is also a very positive development for everyone who loves Olympic sports. The IOC is only going to change its methods of extortion when city after city across the globe say ‘hell no’ to their outlandish demands, always conjoined with the economic prerogatives of local business titans and the politicians they grease. Boston should be proud. They have now joined Kraków and Oslo among those who have sent the IOC packing. Now it’s the turn of Los Angeles, Toronto, Budapest, Hamburg, Paris, and Rome, all in the running for 2024, to add their names to this list. Thank you Boston for saving your city and rebuffing those who would ruthlessly exploit what we love about sports and remake our cities into unrecognizable dystopian theme parks.

Hassen Hussein: What exactly is Obama’s Africa legacy?

Washington’s engagement with the continent continues to prioritize security over human rights and economic partnership

President Barack Obama today concludes his triumphant fourth trip to Africa, which featured a return to Kenya and a controversial stopover in Ethiopia, the seat of the African Union. During the visit, he attended an entrepreneurial summit in Nairobi and held discussions with Kenyan, Ethiopian and other regional leaders on matters ranging from U.S.-Africa trade and investment and regional security to human rights.

Obama is the first sitting U.S. president to visit the two countries. And as the first African-American president, he is still a subject of pride to Africans and their vast diaspora. Yet the question must be asked: What exactly is Obama’s Africa legacy? What are the symbolism and substance of what is likely his final trip to Africa as president? Did the U.S. Africa policy evolve or regress during his administration? Although I would like to join those celebrating the homecoming of a local son, I am filled with melancholy and mixed emotions. Obama’s presidency has fallen short of our admittedly high expectations.

Joshua Kopstein: Don’t fear the drones, fear the cops

Civilian incidents shouldn’t overshadow dangers of letting police drones rule the skies

In the last few years, media reports on hobbyist drones have flown in a frightening and predictable pattern. Nearly every week, these small, camera-equipped, radio-controlled helicopters are framed as public hazards or futuristic tools for criminals – crashing on the White House lawn, attempting cross-border drug deliveries, flying too close to airplanes or attacking Enrique Iglesias on stage. Too often and much to their users’ dismay, they’re conflated with the military death machines (regrettably also called drones) that fire missiles at suspected terrorists and unsuspecting civilians overseas under dubious legal justifications. [..]

While these stories clearly resonate with members of the drone-fearing public, the hype and hysteria can overshadow the fact that drones, like all technologies, are imperfect tools: not good or evil or neutral, beholden to their users and hard coded with the biases of their creators. And if there’s a group of drone users that deserves scrutiny and fear, it’s not our next-door neighbors; it’s the police.