Tag: Punting the Pundits

Has the American left lost sight of the big picture? While liberals have been fighting line-item battles against the Republican right, government itself has been changing — and slowly disappearing.

Are we winning some battles (not so many, come to think of it) but losing the war?

Discretionary spending has fallen dramatically — too dramatically — in recent decades, primarily as the result of lower, post-Cold War military budgets. But the promised post-Cold War “peace dividend” has failed to materialize. We’ve seen neither better public services nor wider prosperity. The military budget is still bloated, and only the wealthy and corporations are better off than they were four or five decades ago.

We need an active, independent left willing to challenge the push for smaller government. A well-managed government can revitalize the economy even as it makes our world a better place to live. Many Americans seem to understand

Ed Kilgore: Our Economic Problems Keep Changing, But The GOP’s Answers Stay The Same

The legend of Gertrude Stein’s final words is that her partner Alice B. Toklas despairingly asked her on her deathbed: “What is the answer?” And Gertrude responded: “What is the question?”

Ironic as it may seem that an expat Jewish lesbian avant-garde writer famous in the 1920s could articulate the operating principle of the Republican Party nearly a century later, it sort of does sum it all up. For today’s ideologically rigid GOP, the “answers” to national challenges are clear; the trick is to adapt them to different “questions.” [..]

What’s fascinating, though, is how these policies are offered again and again as an agenda for all seasons and all circumstances-good times (like the late 1990s), bad times (like the last few years), budget surpluses (in 2001, when George W. Bush marketed his huge package of tax cuts as a “rebate”), budget deficits (the 1980s through the early 1990s, and again since 2009), and just about every climate in between the extremes.

Lately we’re getting a slightly remixed version of the same old, same old as the “answer” to wage stagnation and income equality-essential topics for a number of reasons, notably the growth and unemployment indices making it tougher to attack Obama for a slow or nonexistent recovery from the Great Recession.

Jessica Valenti: Your feelings about vaccines don’t trump another child’s medical reality

This weekend, I heard a noise in the hallway in the middle of the night and I just knew something was wrong. Before the terrible idea in my head had time to completely form – before even checking my daughter’s small bed beside my own – I ran into the hallway and snatched up Layla, who was sleepily stumbling near the top of the second floor staircase in my parents’ house. I was terrified, but grateful that I had listened to my gut. Like every mother, I can list a dozen other moments like this with my daughter – when a doctor missed something, or when I realized her safety was at risk and no one else did.

There are things we know about our children that no one else ever will, and there is no doctor or nurse who will be closer to our children than we are. So when I hear parents who don’t vaccinate their children claiming that they “just know” that it’s the right decision, or when some say it was a mother’s instinct that told them their child was “vaccine injured”, I almost want to sympathize. The intensity of parental love combined with the medical establishment’s poor history of listening to and trusting women’s voices can make it easy to believe that we are the ones who know best. But quite simply: we’re not.

William Pfaff: It’s Time for U.S. and European Allies to Step Back From Ukrainian Conflict

President Obama is being very cautious, so far refraining from supplying the Ukrainians with offensive weapons (despite insistent demands in Congress and among Washington right-wing commentators).

The Russians seem to have no such scruples. They seem to feel themselves under assault by the West, and indeed there are many in Washington who want to see Putin and his government overthrown, convinced that Americanizing the world is the next step in the nation’s destiny.

Nuclear war is considered a possibility by both sides, for the first time since 1990. But why? The U.S. and its European allies have been the aggressors in this whole unnecessary confrontation. They are the ones who can call it off. There is zero gain in it.

Certainly, the Germans and other Europeans are aware of this. As in the old days of the Cold War, the calculations of deterrence and first-strike advantage are relevant. The U.S. seems motivated by the determination to stay Top Dog. The Russians may be motivated by fear.

TV spectators of last night’s Super Bowl were treated to many slick, high-concept ads, but one probably stuck out to the millions of McDonald’s employees who were watching: the company’s spot trumpeting its new “pay with lovin'” campaign. The company is rolling out a new way to bribe customer loyalty amid declining sales by randomly picking some who will get their food and drink for free. Instead of money, they have to pay with “lovin.'” [..]

According to the Super Bowl ad, this can range from being told by the cashier to call your mother and tell her you love her (no word on what happens if you don’t have a mother) to being commanded to dance to giving the cashier a fist bump. Leaving aside what customers may think of being asked to perform these tasks in return for their food, little attention is given to the other side of the register: the workers themselves.

McDonald’s employees are notoriously low-paid. Average hourly pay, according to Glassdoor, is $8.25 for a crew member. (It’s just slightly more for the food and beverage industry generally at $8.84.) Even in a low-paid service job, of course, there is a minimum expectation of professional behavior at work that would require being polite and even friendly to customers.

John Nichols: People Power Is Winning Net Neutrality

Can the people ever win in an new age of oligarchy, when corporate power is so frequently and thoroughly unbound?

Yes, sometimes, they can.

After years of bumbling, blustering and bureaucratic attempts to avoid necessary action, the Federal Communications Commission is expected to move on Thursday to defend net neutrality. According to the design and technology blog Gizmodo, “It’s Finally Game Time for Net Neutrality.” The more staid Wall Street Journal explains that the commission majority is moving to “fully embrace the principle known as net neutrality”-the “central element” of which “would be a ban on broadband providers blocking, slowing down or speeding up specific websites in exchange for payment.”

Translation: The FCC is preparing to defend the Internet as we know it against subdivision by profiteers who would create a “fast lane” for paying content from multinational corporations and billionaire-backed politicians and a “slow lane” for communications from those who are not on the winning side of the income-inequality chasm.

Eugene Robertson: Golden Opportunity for GOP Deal-Making

To understand why the centerpiece initiative of President Obama’s budget makes so much sense, imagine that U.S. corporations decided to bring home-in cash-the estimated $2 trillion in profits they are stashing overseas to avoid paying taxes.

If they shipped the money by air, cargo planes stuffed with dollar bills would land at aging airports that no longer measure up to international standards. If they sent it by sea, the cash would arrive at ports too antiquated to accommodate the newest and biggest container ships. Either way, the money would eventually be loaded onto trucks that headed for their final destinations via crumbling, traffic-choked freeways and rusting bridges.

So the president’s idea is hard to argue with: Impose a one-time 14 percent tax on those foreign profits to partially fund a multi-year, $478 billion program to renew the nation’s sagging infrastructure. The rest of the money would come from the existing gasoline tax.

Corporations would surely squawk-since at present they are paying no U.S. tax on that offshore money-but in return they would get permanent cuts in corporate tax rates, with the levy on overseas profits slashed nearly by half. And Republicans have long maintained that they want corporate tax reform and recognize the need for new infrastructure spending.

Therefore, given the Mad Hatter’s logic that holds sway in Washington, GOP leaders immediately announced their opposition to Obama’s budget and everything it stands for.

It’s not just that anti-vaccination is selfish. It’s selfishness for its own sake, a way for snobs to distinguish themselves from the vaccinating masses. Anti-vaccination is tailormade for deeply selfish people, because it gives them a chance to show off how superior they think they are while shifting the cost of their choice on other people, from their own children to the beleaguered school officials and pediatricians who have to deal with them.

But what if we changed the equation, so that parents could not shift all the costs for their choice onto others? The easiest and most straightforward way to do that would be to start fining parents who don’t vaccinate, with exceptions for the few that have immune-suppressed kids who can’t handle it. It’s the only thing that actually addresses the deep selfishness at the heart of anti-vaccination. Appealing to the common good won’t work, since they think they are better than common. Appealing to their own pocketbooks, on the other hand, might just work.

Considering that anti-vaccination is primarily a matter of elite people showing off their elite status through anti-vaccination, the fine can’t be small or they’ll just see it as the price of doing business. Perhaps $5,000, per kid, per year the kids aren’t vaccinated. The money can go toward paying for public health initiatives for people who would kill to have the access to healthcare that anti-vaccination people turn their noses up to. Not only would that actually help people, but it would highlight some of the unspoken classism underlying the anti-vaccination movement. I realize that just straight-up fining people is politically unpopular in our era of soft

Robert Reich: Welcome to the Share-the-Scraps Economy

How would you like to live in an economy where robots do everything that can be predictably programmed in advance, and almost all profits go to the robots’ owners?

Meanwhile, human beings do the work that’s unpredictable – odd jobs, on-call projects, fetching and fixing, driving and delivering, tiny tasks needed at any and all hours – and patch together barely enough to live on.

Brace yourself. This is the economy we’re now barreling toward.

They’re Uber drivers, Instacart shoppers, and Airbnb hosts. They include Taskrabbit jobbers, Upcounsel’s on-demand attorneys, and Healthtap’s on-line doctors.

They’re Mechanical Turks.

The euphemism is the “share” economy. A more accurate term would be the “share-the-scraps” economy.

Michelangelo Signorile: Does Mike Huckabee Really Believe Serving Gays Is Like Forcing Jews to Sell ‘Bacon-Wrapped Shrimp’?

Just a week ago, Mormon church leaders held a scam of a press conference in which they claimed to support anti-discrimination protections for LGBT people, whom they agreed had been discriminated against for centuries. This was at first a shocker, because only seven years ago they urged church members to promote that very discrimination. They implored them to help stop gay marriage in another state, California, raising millions of dollars and sending missionaries door to door in California, telling people to vote for hate and pass Prop 8. And the leaders weren’t now offering an apology for that recent horrendous action. [..]

Mike Huckabee on Sunday spelled it out a bit more (though it’s still quite unclear), outlining the parameters of how this debate may take place among GOP potential presidential contenders. Speaking on CNN, he compared homosexuality to drinking, swearing or liking “classical music and ballet and opera.” As he explained it, these are all “lifestyles” and choices — the long-time anti-gay lie on homosexuality — and said that he has many friends who do or like those things, but they’re not his “cup of tea.” Protecting religious liberties thus means that Christians should not have to accept, or cater to, people whose choices are an affront to their faith.

And that’s when Huckabee defined a bit more just what safeguarding religious liberties means — and how Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio and others will have to address it. Amid the stories of bakers and florists turning away gay customers seeking services for their weddings, and for-profit wedding chapels refusing to marry gays, Huckabee, though he wasn’t very clear, seemed to be likening laws protecting gays in these businesses to forcing Jews to “serve bacon-wrapped shrimp in their deli.”

Will Rogers: Hiding in Plain Sight: America’s Most Effective Conservation Program

On Monday, the White House released its latest budget proposal, a thick and heavy document with hundreds of pages and hundreds of thousands of numbers detailing how the Obama Administration intends to spend almost $4 trillion in the year which begins next October 1.

Budget day is part of the ritual of Washington D.C., with supporters of the White House praising the president’s choices, and opponents criticizing them. That holds true regardless of which party controls the White House and Congress.

Buried in today’s budget is a plan to spend $900 million next year for a program which has been one of the most effective in the nation since it was created 50 years ago. It is the Land and Water Conservation Fund, often referred to inside the Beltway by its acronym — LWCF. And we strongly applaud the president’s recommendation and will be working to secure congressional approval.

‘Grexit’ leverage could help country stay in the eurozone with better treatment

Every fan of the market knows the importance of exit. If your breakfast cereal is too bland, you can buy a different brand of cereal. If your barber charges too much, you can look for a new barber who will charge less. The option to leave is crucial since it forces the cereal producer and the barber to try to please their customers in order to keep them.

The same logic applies to Greece’s position in the euro. The country’s newly elected Syriza-led government intends to press the European Union (EU) for concessions that will allow it to restart its economy. The policies that have been imposed by the EU on Greece since the crisis could win a Nobel Prize for economic mismanagement. [..]

Since Greece has a trade surplus, it already doesn’t need to borrow to finance essential imports. (The recent plunge in oil prices could save Greece $9 billion a year, or close to 4 percent of GDP.) The drop in the drachma relative to the euro will further improve its trade position, leading to a boost in net exports and a sharp upturn in employment. It is certainly plausible that Greece’s economy will in very short order make up the ground lost to an initial period of instability and then continue on a path of robust growth.

This is where the EU has inadvertently done Greece a favor. It has damaged Greece’s economy and society so severely that the disruptions caused by leaving the euro are likely to seem minor by comparison.

Joseph Hickman: To be commander at Gitmo, no experience necessary

No one in charge of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility has had a background in detention. Why?

Thirteen years ago, the United States started bringing detainees that were captured in the global war on terror to its detention facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Nine months after the first detainees arrived at Guantánamo, the Department of Defense (DoD) created the “Joint Task Force Guantanamo” (JTF-GTMO). Their stated mission is to maintain safe, humane, legal and transparent detention operations.

In the intervening years, detainees and human rights watchdog groups, have filed hundreds of complaints and allegations of mistreatment and abuse against JTF-GTMO. Since its inception, eleven commanders have led JTF-GTMO. Those commanders are responsible for creating, approving and ensuring the enforcement of all operational procedures for the guard force, and for the proper care and wellbeing of the detainees.

Yet, of the eleven JTF-GTMO commanders, not a single one had any experience or training in detention operations prior to arriving at Guantánamo.

Zoë Carpenter: The Main Problem With Obama’s Climate Policy? It Makes No Sense

Not for the first time, the Obama administration is offering doublespeak when it comes to energy and the environment. On Sunday the White House announced its intention to designate more than 12 million acres in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as Wilderness, which would put the area permanently off limits to oil and gas drilling. “Obama’s Arctic Power Grab,” is how Politico described the move, framing it as a sign of “Obama’s shift to the left on environmental issues.” Oil executives and Alaskan politicians responded with apocryphal statements. Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, who chairs the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, went so far as to claim that Obama had “effectively declared war on Alaska.”

Two days later the administration unveiled a five-year plan that would open up a vast new stretch of ocean off the coast of Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia to oil and gas drilling, and sell new leases for drilling in the Arctic. More than 3 billion barrels of oil await the drilling rigs on the outer continental shelf of the Atlantic, according to estimates from the early 1980s. The New York Times reports that the reserves could be even greater. “This is a balanced proposal that would make available nearly 80 percent of the undiscovered technically recoverable resources, while protecting areas that are simply too special to develop,” Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said in a statement.

Let’s hear that again: the Obama administration proposes to open up nearly 80 percent of the nation’s untapped offshore oil and gas reserves by 2022. The sick irony of that figure is that 80 percent also happens to be the proportion of proven fossil-fuel reserves that must stay in the ground in order to avoid the extremely unpleasant effects of more than 2 degrees Celsius of global warming.

J.P. Morgan was recently socked in the wallet by financial regulators who levied yet another multibillion-dollar fine against the Wall Street baron for massive illegalities.

Well, not a fine against John Pierpont Morgan, the man. This 19th-century robber baron was born to a great banking fortune and, by hook and crook, leveraged it to become the “King of American Finance.” During the Gilded Age, Morgan cornered the U.S. financial markets, gained monopoly ownership of railroads, amassed a vast supply of the nation’s gold and used his investment power to create U.S. Steel and take control of that market. [..]

Moving the clock forward, we come to JPMorgan Chase, today’s financial powerhouse bearing J.P.’s name. The bank also inherited his pattern of committing multiple illegalities-and walking away scot-free.

Oh, sure, the bank was hit with big fines, but not a single one of the top bankers who committed gross wrongdoings were charged or even fired-much less sent to jail.

Jared Bernstein: The 529 Microcosm: A Revealing Political Train Wreck with Regard to an Inefficient Tax Break

This little train wreck over the White House’s proposal and then retraction of a plan to cut back on a wasteful yet beloved tax benefit is highly instructive. It’s a clear example of how much hot air there is in these fiscal debates, where policy makers and pundits scold everyone within earshot of the need for “fiscal responsibility,” then punt when they’ve got a chance to actually… you know… do something responsible.

The benefit in question is the 529 college savings plan, a tax break that allows people to save as much as they want without paying tax on either accruals or withdrawals (the accounts must be used to pay for college). It turns out that 70 percent of the benefits of 529s go to the top five percent of households — those with incomes above $200,000. The problem with that, as higher education scholar Sandy Baum recently noted, is that “[529s] primarily provide a subsidy to people who would save in other forms anyway.”

So the WH, to their credit, proposed to tax withdrawals from the plans (accruals would remain untaxed) while significantly boosting better targeted measures to help lower-income households afford college (the 529 change was to be grandfathered in, i.e., applied solely to new plans).

Joe Conason: End Poverty? Reduce Inequality? What Republicans Must Do First

The latest fad among would-be Republican presidential contenders is to proclaim their deep commitment to fighting poverty and inequality-which sounds as plausible as a promise by McDonald’s to abolish greasy food.

Decades of abuse of the nation’s poor and working families, which reached a crescendo in Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” campaign in 2012, hasn’t left much space for Republicans to follow the public morality of Pope Francis. Yet for the moment at least, they seem to think that they must.

They also seem to believe that reminiscing about bread-bag overshoes, like Senator Joni Ernst, or jeering the wealth of the Clintons, like RNC chair Reince Priebus, will somehow transform them into Franciscan populists. But such delusional ploys only make them look ridiculous.

So in the gracious spirit of the pontiff, who told us that even atheists can be saved, let’s help our Republican brothers and sisters.

Texas legislator Molly White joined some more famous conservatives in the ‘Super Bowl of Bigotry’ this week, vying for the title of Biggest Islamophobe

In many parts of the United States, if you want to win an election, you need talking points full of misinformation and bigotry towards Muslims to scare the wits out of non-Muslim Americans in to voting for you (and others to fund your campaign). Events in the Middle East simply provide more fuel to an already-raging fire, and convince officials elected to serve all of their constituents that their inappropriate and bigoted comments will not only go unchallenged but will be applauded. [..]

Meanwhile, American Muslims continue to build civic and electoral power. From serving on state party committees in California to founding the first-ever Muslim Democratic Club in New York City (dedicated to electing Muslims on all levels of government across the nation, which I co-founded and of which I am currently the president), American Muslims are an emerging political bloc. We are not waiting for validation from bigoted politicians or to pass tests of our allegiance from the likes of White – and we will respond to bigotry, regardless of party affiliation. As the 2016 elections quickly approach, we as voters expect real debates on issues impacting all Americans: the economy, education, healthcare and national security. It is our responsibility to keep elected officials and candidates accountable to all the people they serve; that is how we pledge our allegiance.

Ladar Levison: Prosecutors used the same legal strategy against Barrett Brown as they did me. Are you next?

FBI agents and the state’s lawyers misrepresented events to create a false narrative, and the judges in both our cases bought it

When it happened to me, I dismissed it as an anomaly. The government – while trying to access the private emails of my company’s 410,000 users – made material misrepresentations to the courts in a coordinated campaign to portray me as obstinate and uncooperative. Their intent? To manipulate a judge into accepting an unconstitutional legal theory. It cost me my business.

Barrett Brown, whose investigative journalism frequently embarrassed the DOJ and FBI, wasn’t quite so lucky. Last week, he was sentenced to five years in prison, followed by another two years of supervised release. He was also ordered to pay $890K in restitution. That was the penalty for pleading guilty to three charges: “accessory after the fact”, a charge he faced for attempting to negotiate redactions in the stolen data, “obstructing justice” because he moved his laptop from a table to a cabinet, and “threatening a federal agent” in a video posted on the internet. The justification provided for his harsh sentence was a “trafficking in stolen authentication features” charge, for sharing a hyperlink to a public website, that the prosecution dropped before his plea. ]..]

Barrett Brown and I don’t have a lot in common: I’m a clean-cut, successful American entrepreneur, and, at the time of his arrest, Barrett was eking out an existence as an independent journalist while attempting to cope with a series of personal problems. We were both singled out by the government for what they thought we could – and would – tell them about other people. When we resisted, they twisted our words, our actions and the law. The result has been a set of disturbing court decisions that may give the government the ability to selectively prosecute anyone they wish. This time it was a journalist. Next time it could be you.

Andrew Bacevich: Save Us From Washington’s Visionaries

En route back to Washington at the tail end of his most recent overseas trip, John Kerry, America’s peripatetic secretary of state, stopped off in France “to share a hug with all of Paris.” Whether Paris reciprocated the secretary’s embrace went unrecorded.

Despite the requisite reference to General Pershing (“Lafayette, we are here!”) and flying James Taylor in from the 1960s to assure Parisians that “You’ve Got a Friend,” in the annals of American diplomacy Kerry’s hug will likely rank with President Eisenhower’s award of the Legion of Merit to Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza for “exceptionally meritorious conduct” and Jimmy Carter’s acknowledgment of the “admiration and love” said to define the relationship between the Iranian people and their Shah.  In short, it was a moment best forgotten.

Alas, this vapid, profoundly silly event is all too emblematic of statecraft in the Obama era.  Seldom have well-credentialed and well-meaning people worked so hard to produce so little of substance.

Steven W. Thrasher: Legal same sex marriage is coming to Alabama – it’s just a question of when

In a state where interracial marriage remained unconstitutional until the year 2000, is there hope for same sex couples who want to wed right now?

“Honestly, I thought it was a hoax,” Kacie Reeves of Jasper, Alabama said of when she heard that a federal judge ruled that same sex marriages would be allowed in her home state. She and her fiancée, Brittany Rush, had long planned a wedding for friends and family in May – after which they planned to “take a vacation and drive to some other state where we could make it legal.” [..]

The brides-to-be still have good reasons to be skeptical about getting legally wed at home. Shortly after the jubilant news, a 14-day stay was put in effect. Then, in a letter to Alabama governor Robert Bentley, Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore wrote that nothing “grants the federal government the authority to redefine the institution of marriage” and vowed to “stop judicial tyranny and any unlawful opinions issued without constitutional authority.”

Judge Moore is as wrong about same sex marriage as he was about refusing to remove a 2.6 ton statue of the 10 Commandments from government property (which saw him removed from the bench more than a decade ago): the federal ruling indeed applies to all Alabama officials. But while a ruling in favor of same sex marriage by the Supreme Court this spring could potentially create a right to it in all 50 states, will that stop Alabama’s legal obfuscation and insurrection on marriage equality, given its history?

The fact that this even needs to be said demonstrates that there’s been a breakdown in the democratic process, but we’ll say it anyway: Our number-one priority should be protecting the planet for future generations. That said, green energy makes sense even if we base our thinking on economic considerations alone.

Energy policies can roughly be divided into two kinds: those which benefit society as a whole, and those which only benefit the very few — the Koch brothers and their ilk.

Guess which kind the GOP supports? Republicans are blocking pro-growth, job-creating green energy investments while pushing a pipeline that would enrich the few at the expense of the many — with potentially disastrous environmental consequences.

If you want to know why, follow the money.

Dave Johnson: Let’s Take Apart the Corporate Case for Fast Track Trade Authority

U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Michael Froman appeared before Congress Tuesday to make the corporate argument for “fast track” trade promotion authority. The USTR and President Obama are pushing fast-track pre-approval for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and other big “trade” agreements they are working on. The Chamber of Commerce, Business Roundtable and other corporate groups and lobbyists are also pushing hard for Congress to pass fast track.

The promoters of fast track say we need it to push “trade” agreements through Congress to expand trade and increase exports. “What we’re going to do through this trade agreement is open up markets,” Froman told Congress Tuesday, “and then level the playing field so we can protect workers, protect American jobs and then ensure a fair and level playing field by raising labor and environmental standards, raising intellectual property rights, standards and enforcement, making sure that we’re putting disciplines on state-owned enterprises that pose a real threat to workers.”

These corporate arguments (you can see them in this Chamber of Commerce slide show “Ten Reasons Why America Needs Trade Promotion Authority”) just make me more skeptical of what they are selling. Here’s why.

John Nichols: If Elections Matter for Greece, Why Not America?

Elections are supposed to have consequences. When countries establish electoral processes that are sufficiently free and functional to ascertain the clear will of the people-and when those votes are cast and counted in an election that draws a solid majority of eligible voters to the polls-that will should be expressed as something more than a New York Times headline or a Fox News alert. It should be expressed in leadership, law and governance.

That governance should be sufficient to address poverty, tame inequality and conquer injustice. And if outside forces thwart those initiatives, that government should challenge them on behalf of the common good. After all, if meaningful economic and social change cannot by achieved (or at the very least demanded) with a stroke of the ballot pen, then what is the point of an election?

Media Benjamin: Take Cuba Off the Terrorist List

The new U.S.-Cuba talks are a refreshing burst of sunshine in the 54-year dismal relationship between neighbors separated by a mere 90 miles. The nations negotiated a successful swap of prisoners. The onerous travel restrictions the U.S. government placed on just visiting the island are starting to crumble. Embassies in Washington and Havana will soon be opened. Rules designed to ease trade are being written. But despite this long-awaited meltdown of U.S. policies that added to the island’s economic woes but never succeeded in tumbling Cuba’s communist government, a portion of the Cold War edifice remains intact: Cuba is still on the U.S. state sponsors of terrorism list. [..]

Most people around the world would find it very strange that Cuba would be on a “terrorist list,” as it is most known worldwide for exporting doctors, musicians, teachers, artists, and dancers — not terrorists.

Syriza’s win signals rise of anti-austerity progressive tide in Europe

With Sunday’s elections, the Greeks sent a message to Europe’s austerity-peddling elites of the so-called troika of the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission and the European Central Bank negotiating their country’s debt: You don’t own us. [..]

Greece’s elections represented the bubbling over of rage from a population that has suffered the most from the eurozone’s “Hunger Games” approach to the 2007 global financial crisis. Struggling countries have been forced to impose savage cuts on their worn-down populations and pursue competitiveness through reducing wages, decimating worker protections and slashing social safety nets. The choice of the charismatic 40-year-old Alexis Tsipras as prime minister- a man who believes in economic policies linked to the needs of ordinary people rather than the desires of bankers – marks a radical change in tone for Europe.

For starters, Syriza’s victory announces the failure of austerity policies that produce misery rather than growth. By now there is wide consensus among economists that if Europe had passed a robust stimulus plan designed to put enough money in the pockets of ordinary people to drive demand and adopted a bolder monetary policy aimed at boosting the economy, Greece would not have ended up with a crippled economy, disastrous unemployment currently[ more than 60 percent among youths] and a pervasive sense of desperation among the masses. Nearly a third of Greeks are living below the poverty line.

Heather Digby Parton Meet the CIA’s secret protector: Why Sen. Richard Burr is its favorite “overseer”

No, GOP is not going back to its old isolationist ways. Here’s why the intelligence community is licking its chops

One of the newest pieces of conventional wisdom among the political commentariat is the idea that under the influence of the Tea Party and the libertarians, the Republicans are no longer the national security hawks they once were. They are going back to their old isolationist ways, the thinking goes, because Rand Paul is running for president and he doesn’t support military adventurism overseas (except when he does) and the right wing of the GOP is uninterested in national security.

As I have written before, this is a fallacy. And we can see that playing itself out in living color as the GOP Senate’s newest committee chairmen take their gavels. Yes, we have seen the embarrassing spectacle of climate change denier James Inhofe being promoted to head the environmental committee and the neo-Confederate anti-immigration zealot Jeff Sessions being named to head a panel on immigration.  But nothing is as astonishing as the Senate’s greatest protector of the intelligence services being named the committee assigned to intelligence “oversight.”  That would be Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina.

Joan Walsh: When “political correctness” hurts: Understanding the micro-aggressions that trigger Jonathan Chait

A new opus on progressive racial extremism features the liberal writer’s trademark mix of insight and overreaction

When New York magazine teased Jonathan Chait’s coming opus on race, politics and free speech last Friday – “Can a white liberal man critique a culture of political correctness?” – the hook alone was enough to send his Twitter haters into multiple ragegasms. I thought folks should save themselves some grief and at least wait until the story itself appeared before defaulting to fury. Maybe it wouldn’t be that bad.

But to anyone who hated that teaser, I’m sure, the story itself is just that bad. Chait continues to pick the scab of his suffering over the fact that the every musing of white liberal men (and women, to be fair) about race and politics is no longer welcomed for its contribution to the struggle. He no doubt finished his piece before the Twitter backlash against Nick Kristof for suggesting the police reform movement find a more “compelling face” than Mike Brown, because he doesn’t mention it, though it’s the kind of thing that sets him off.

This is not to say that there are no good points in Chait’s piece, only that his tone of grievance and self-importance, as though he’s warning us of a threat to our democracy that others either can’t see or are too intimidated to fight, makes it very hard to parse.

Presidential aspirants in both parties are talking about saving the middle class. But the middle class can’t be saved unless Wall Street is tamed.

The Street’s excesses pose a continuing danger to average Americans. And its ongoing use of confidential corporate information is defrauding millions of middle-class investors.

Yet most presidential aspirants don’t want to talk about taming the Street because Wall Street is one of their largest sources of campaign money. [..]

It’s nice that presidential aspirants are talking about rebuilding America’s middle class.

But to be credible, he (or she) has to take clear aim at the Street.

That means proposing to limit the size of the biggest Wall Street banks; resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act (which used to separate investment from commercial banking); define insider trading the way most other countries do – using information any reasonable person would know is unavailable to most investors; and close the revolving door between the Street and the U.S. Treasury.

It also means not depending on the Street to finance their campaigns.

Sarah Laskow: Snow looks pretty. But climate change and the storms it triggers are dangerous

‘Global warming’ doesn’t stop when winter comes – and dramatic cold weather events are exactly what scientists predict will be the result

It isn’t news to anyone that global temperatures are rising. Last month was the warmest December the world has seen in 135 years. Last year was the warmest year on record: according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the average combined temperature of land and ocean surfaces was 1.24°F about the 20th century average.

Yet, as you may have noticed or read, it’s been snowing on the east coast of the United States – a lot. And that too is the result of what we call “global warming”.

It seems to be counterintuitive. Aren’t we worried about melting ice? Yes. Isn’t snowpack diminishing high in the mountains, where it matters most? Yes. But it is also true that in some places in the world – and the northern United States is one of them – dramatic winter snowstorms are exactly what scientists expect from climate change.

Robert Kuttner: A Break in the Greek Tragedy

Europe should count itself lucky that a leftwing anti-austerity party won the Greek elections, swept into office by citizens who’ve had enough. Elsewhere in Europe, seven years of stupid, punitive, and self-defeating austerity policies have led to gains by the far right.

If a radical left party is now in power in Athens and sending tremors through Europe’s financial markets, the EU’s smug leaders and their banker allies in Frankfurt, Brussels and Berlin have only themselves to blame.

Alexis Tsipras, leader of the winning Syriza coalition, says he doesn’t want Greece to leave the Euro. He just wants Europe’s leaders to renegotiate Greece’s debt. It’s about time. [..]

This crisis could have ended years ago with far less suffering for ordinary people who had no responsibilities for the offending policies. Greece, after all, has about two percent of the EU’s total economic product — and it has about 25 percent less than it had before the crisis. (That’s how well austerity medicine worked.) Writing off Greece’s debt outright would have cost peanuts, and still would.

The EU should have given Greece serious debt relief in 2009. Now, finally, there is a government in Athens that will demand it. But that will require a very high stakes game of chicken. Tsipras has to be willing to risk a default, and the financial shocks that would set off. He has to gamble that the IMF and the European Commission would institute an emergency damage control plan.