Tag: Punting the Pundits

Alexis Tsipras, leader of the left-wing Syriza coalition, is about to become prime minister of Greece. He will be the first European leader elected on an explicit promise to challenge the austerity policies that have prevailed since 2010. And there will, of course, be many people warning him to abandon that promise, to behave “responsibly.”

So how has that responsibility thing worked out so far?

To understand the political earthquake in Greece, it helps to look at Greece’s May 2010 “standby arrangement” with the International Monetary Fund, under which the so-called troika – the I.M.F., the European Central Bank and the European Commission – extended loans to the country in return for a combination of austerity and reform. It’s a remarkable document, in the worst way. The troika, while pretending to be hardheaded and realistic, was peddling an economic fantasy. And the Greek people have been paying the price for those elite delusions.

Jonathan Schwartz: Survivor of ‘Charlie Hebdo’ Massacre ‘Very Happy Obama Didn’t Come to Paris’

In a new interview Laurent Léger, an investigative reporter at Charlie Hebdo and a survivor of the January 7th assault on the magazine’s Paris office, condemned President Obama for his administration’s attack on press freedom.

“You have to be very happy Obama] didn’t come to the march in Paris,” said Léger. “[His administration’s actions are] an absolute scandal. It’s very good he didn’t come to the march that day.” A 2013 report by the Committee to Protect Journalists [stated that the Obama administration’s “war on leaks and other efforts to control information are the most aggressive… since the Nixon administration.” Eight whistleblowers have been prosecuted by Obama’s Justice Department under the 1917 Espionage Act, twice as many as under all other presidents combined. [..]

Léger said he believed many French officials at the January 10th rally in Paris protesting the assault on Charlie Hebdo were sincere. However, he described the presence of numerous top officials from countries with poor records on freedom of the press as “incredible and ludicrous. It’s too bad that the cartoonists who were killed couldn’t be there to see it. If they had, they would have made some fantastic cartoons.”

Lyric R Cabral and David Felix Sutcliffe: Counter-terrorism is supposed to let us live without fear. Instead, it’s creating more of it

How many ‘terrorism plots’ initiated by FBI informants will the agency interrupt before Congress finally performs some oversight?

People think that catching terrorists is just a matter of finding them – but, just as often, terrorists are created by the people doing the chase. [..]

The stated purpose of the FBI’s counter-terrorism mission is to enable Americans to go about their daily lives without fear. But in addition to imprisoning hundreds of Muslim men caught up in the FBI’s informant-led traps, the agency has actively created and encouraged a pervasive climate of fear and suspicion among Americans exercising their constitutional right to freedom of religion. In fact, the FBI’s tactics have profoundly impacted law enforcement’s ability to maintain a relationship of trust with Muslim American communities, much to the detriment to our collective national security. Authorities must rein in the informant program, and institute immediate congressional oversight, if they sincerely aim to defend the liberty and security of all Americans, regardless of race or religion.

Wendall Potter: Health Insurers’ Stock Soars as They Dump Small Business Customers

Several million previously uninsured Americans now have coverage because of Obamacare, but it could be argued that the people who have benefited most from the law — at least financially — are the top executives and shareholders of the country’s health insurance companies.

Among those who apparently have not yet benefited much at all, at least so far, are owners of small businesses who would like to keep offering coverage to their employees but can no longer afford it. They can’t afford it because insurers keep jacking their rates up so high every year that more and more of them are dropping employee health benefits altogether.

And let’s be clear, these insurers aren’t suffering. UnitedHealth Group, the largest health insurer, reported last week that it made $10.3 billion in profits in 2014 on revenues of $130.5 billion. Both profits and revenues grew seven percent from 2013.

American politics are dominated by those with money. As such, America’s tax debate is dominated by voices that insist the rich are unduly persecuted by high taxes and that low-income folks are living the high life. Indeed, a new survey by the Pew Research Center recently found that the most financially secure Americans believe “poor people today have it easy.”

The rich are certainly entitled to their own opinions-but, as the old saying goes, nobody is entitled to his or her own facts. With that in mind, here’s a set of tax facts that’s worth considering: Middle- and low-income Americans are facing far higher state and local tax rates than the wealthy. In all, a comprehensive analysis by the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy finds that the poorest 20 percent of households pay on average more than twice the effective state and local tax rate (10.9 percent) as the richest 1 percent of taxpayers (5.4 percent). [..]

Of course, if you aren’t poor, you may be reading this and thinking that these trends have no real-world impact on your life. But think again: In September, Standard & Poor’s released a study showing that increasing economic inequality hurts economic growth and subsequently reduces public revenue. As important, the report found that the correlation between high inequality and low economic growth was highest in states that relied most heavily on regressive levies such as sales taxes.

In other words, regressive state and local tax policies don’t just harm the poor-they end up harming entire economies. So if altruism doesn’t prompt you to care about unfair tax rates and economic inequality, then it seems self-interest should.

Mark Weisbot: In Syriza, Greece Has a Real Choice

Greek voters should not be intimidated into voting against the anti-austerity party.

Here we go again. There is talk of Greece exiting the euro, and the German government has tried to say that it would be no big deal for Europe, then apparently walked back from that position. At the same time, the German government appears to be trying to influence the Greek election scheduled for January 25 by saying that if the left party Syriza wins, a Greek exit will follow. [..]

We have seen most of this story before, but the way it is presented in most of the press can be confusing. Most importantly, all this talk of how financial markets will respond to the election is somewhat misleading. The financial markets are not the driving force here. Rather, it is the European authorities, led by the European Central Bank. Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, proved this beyond a shadow of a doubt in July 2012, when he put an end to the financial crisis in Europe with just a few words, announcing that the bank was “ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro.”

He didn’t even have to back the statement up with any hard cash. Yields on the troubled European governments’ bonds – including the potentially euro-meltdown-size debt of Italy and Spain — went into decline and the financial crisis of the euro was over.

Joshua Kopstein: In Obama’s war on hackers, everyone loses

Persecution of Barrett Brown offers chilling preview of cybersecurity proposals

For weeks, President Barack Obama has been pushing a set of controversial cybersecurity proposals. He prominently mentioned the plans during his State of the Union address, stressing the need for legislation, using that classic political pretext for demolishing civil liberties, protecting children.

“No foreign nation, no hacker, should be able to shut down our networks, steal our trade secrets or invade the privacy of American families, especially our kids,” he said during the speech, dutifully ignoring the elephant in the room: the U.S. government’s role in doing much of the same.

But Obama’s proposals are a mixed bag of old and dangerous ideas. He wants to create information-sharing regimes between private companies and the government to detect threats as well as expand the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), the draconian anti-hacking law that the government used to prosecute the late Internet activist Aaron Swartz. Both steps would not only be ineffective at improving cybersecurity in any practical sense but also further empower the government to go after activists and journalists such as Barrett Brown, who was sentenced Thursday to 63 months in prison

Henner Weithöner: Coal Casts Cloud Over Germany’s Energy Revolution

The energy market in Germany’s saw a spectacular change last year as renewable energy became the major source of its electricity supply-leaving lignite, coal and nuclear behind.

But researchers calculate that, allowing for the mild winter of 2014, the cut in fossil fuel use in energy production meant CO2 emissions fell by only 1%.

Wind, solar, hydropower and biomass reached a new record, producing 27.3% (157bn kilowatt hours) of Germany’s total electricity and overtaking lignite (156bn kWh), according to AGEB, a joint association of energy companies and research institutes.

This was an achievement that many energy experts could not have imagined just a few years ago.

“Imagine if we did something different.”

Those were just seven words out of close to 7,000 that President Barack Obama spoke during his State of the Union address. He was addressing both houses of Congress, which are controlled by his bitter foes. Most importantly, though, he was addressing the country. Obama employed characteristically soaring rhetoric to deliver his message of bipartisanship. “The shadow of crisis has passed, and the State of the Union is strong,” he assured us.

From whose lives has the shadow of crisis passed? And for whom is this Union strong?

Jessica Valenti: The Republican abortion bill shows they still believe many women lie about rape

In a move being credited to the wisdom of Republican women lawmakers, the House will not be voting on a sweeping 20 week abortion ban that only allowed for rape and incest exceptions if the victims reported their assaults to police. (Because Republicans know just how much women love to lie about rape and incest to get those sweet, sweet abortions!)

But before we pat all those kind, considered Republican women on the back for their reasoned withdrawal of support for a bill that would’ve made women file police reports 20 weeks after being assaulted in order to have the option of not being forced to have their rapist’s baby, let’s not forget that all of this is just political posturing. The bill – or even another, less extreme 20 week abortion ban – was unlikely to ever pass the Senate, and President Obama made clear that he would veto it (pdf) if it did.

So backing off on yet another terrible anti-abortion bill – they tried this in 2011 with the “forcible rape” provisions in the Hyde Amendment renewal – is not a sign that Republicans will be more moderate with their future restrictions on reproductive rights, or that Republican women will be able to temper the radical anti-choice agenda of their party.

Lauren Carasik: Holder assails policing for profit

Attorney general’s initiative curbs but does not eliminate controversial asset seizure policies

On Jan. 16, outgoing U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced sweeping revisions to the federal civil asset forfeiture policy, barring state and local police from using federal law to confiscate cash and other property. Under the oft-criticized equitable sharing program, the federal government “adopts” assets seized by state and local law enforcement and then funnels up to 80 percent of the value back to the agencies.

The program invited malfeasance by giving cash-strapped police departments incentive to confiscate property believed to be involved in illicit activities even when the owners were not accused – much less convicted – of any crime. The program’s abuses have garnered bipartisan support for reform, and critics are praising Holder’s changes.

While the improvements are laudable, they will not end the abuse for a number of reasons. First, local agencies may continue the programs under state laws. Second, Holder did not ban forfeiture for state and federal joint operations. And finally, the changes fall short of addressing the how civil forfeiture tramples due process rights.

Norman Solomon: Leak Trial Shows CIA Zeal to Hide Incompetence

Six days of testimony at the trial of former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling have proven the agency’s obsession with proclaiming its competence. Many of the two-dozen witnesses from the Central Intelligence Agency conveyed smoldering resentment that a whistleblower or journalist might depict the institution as a bungling outfit unworthy of its middle name.

Some witnesses seemed to put Sterling and journalist James Risen roughly in the same nefarious category — Sterling for allegedly leaking classified information that put the CIA in a bad light, and Risen for reporting it. Muffled CIA anger was audible, coming from the witness stand, a seat filled by people claiming to view any aspersions on the CIA to be baseless calumnies.

Other than court employees, attorneys and jurors, only a few people sat through virtually the entire trial. As one of them, I can say that the transcript of USA v. Jeffrey Alexander Sterling should be mined for countless slick and clumsy maneuvers by government witnesses to obscure an emerging picture of CIA recklessness, dishonesty and ineptitude.

Ask Maine State Senator Ed Youngblood what’s changed most since he first ran for office in 2000 and the answer is easy: the money. Back then, legislative races in the state attracted less than a quarter of a million dollars in outside spending. By 2012, political groups were pouring more than $3.5 million into those contests. Much of that swell had to do with the decision that the Supreme Court handed down five years ago today in Citizens United v. FEC, the case that opened the door for unlimited corporate political spending. [..]

Maine seems to illustrate a dire state of affairs, with out-of-date rules governing an electoral landscape that has been profoundly altered by unfettered big money. At the federal level campaign finance reform looks increasingly partisan, and with Republicans in control of Congress there’s little hope for movement on any of the several bills Democrats have put forward.

But the real action is at the state and local level, and Maine is actually one of the places where reformers are most hoping for progress. There, Youngblood is one champion in a campaign to strengthen the same public financing program that got him elected. Lawmakers in a number of other states and municipalities are considering proposals ranging from similar public financing programs to stricter disclosure requirements and incentives for small donors. “Efforts to simply restrict big expenditures are going to run afoul of the Supreme Court until we win a constitutional amendment, ” explained Nick Nyhart, president and CEO of the reform group Public Campaign. “In the near term, the most important things we can win right now, the things that will make most change immediately, are small donor-enhancing systems.”

Michael Winship: In SOTU, President Punts on Income Inequality

Much of the buildup to President Obama’s State of the Union address made it sound as if he was going to read chapter and verse from French economist Thomas Piketty’s book, Capital in the 21st Century – you know, last year’s 700-plus page best seller, the one that was unexpectedly all the rage as it argued that vast economic inequality is as much about wealth (what’s owned) as it is about income (what’s earned). That one. [..]

Not that anyone really expected the president to address Congress like a tutorial in global economics, but the Piketty meme took hold in a lot of the media. “Echoes of Piketty in Obama Proposal to Address Income Inequality” read a headline in The New York Times previewing the address just hours before it was delivered. The Washington Post‘s Wonkblog predicted, “President Obama finally has his Piketty moment.” The paper’s Matt O’Brien wrote, “The state of the union is pretty good, actually, but President Obama has an idea to make it better: taxing Wall Street and the super-rich to make middle-class work even more worthwhile. It’s Piketty with an American accent.”

If only.

Charles M. Blow: Inequality in the Air We Breathe?

There is a long history in this country of exposing vulnerable populations to toxicity.

Fifteen years ago, Robert D. Bullard published Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class and Environmental Quality. In it, he pointed out that nearly 60 percent of the nation’s hazardous-waste landfill capacity was in “five Southern states (i.e., Alabama, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas),” and that “four landfills in minority ZIP codes areas represented 63 percent of the South’s total hazardous-waste capacity” although “blacks make up only about 20 percent of the South’s total population.”

More recently, in 2012, a study by researchers at Yale found that “The greater the concentration of Hispanics, Asians, African-Americans or poor residents in an area, the more likely that potentially dangerous compounds such as vanadium, nitrates and zinc are in the mix of fine particles they breathe.”

Among the injustices perpetrated on poor and minority populations, this may in fact be the most pernicious and least humane: the threat of poisoning the very air that you breathe.

I have skin in this game. My family would fall in the shadow of the plume. But everyone should be outraged about this practice. Of all the measures of equality we deserve, the right to feel assured and safe when you draw a breath should be paramount.

Brendan Fischer: 5 Years after Citizens United, Democracy Is for Sale

Over the last five years, the Koch political network has evolved into what many have described as a shadow political party. The Kochs and their network of wealthy donors spent $300 million in the 2014 elections, after raising at least $400 million in the 2012 presidential races, with almost all of the spending passing through an array of political vehicles that are officially “independent” from candidates and political parties.

Today, candidates who receive the blessing of Charles and David can watch their political fortunes skyrocket, thanks to the huge financial resources the Kochs and their deep-pocketed allies can funnel into elections. Joni Ernst, for example, was a local elected official four years ago, yet this year was sworn-in as a U.S. Senator and delivered the Republican response to the State of the Union address–a rapid trajectory which she attributes to support from the Koch political network.

If a “Koch primary”–where a handful of wealthy donors can determine political futures, regardless of political party–sounds more like an oligarchy than a democracy, you are probably right.

Five years after the Supreme Court’s disastrous 5-4 decision in Citizens United, there’s a lot to be angry about.

With election spending out of control, and super PACs empowering giant corporations and billionaires like no time since the Gilded Age, Big Money is not just influencing who’s elected to office in this country, but what elected officials do.

Consider how the new Congress has opened: A House of Representatives leadership effort to skirt normal procedure and rush through a repeal of key Dodd-Frank provisions to rein in Wall Street speculative activities. A House of Representatives vote to authorize construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. A House vote to handcuff consumer, health, safety, environmental and other regulatory agencies so that they cannot issue new rules to address corporate abuse and protect the American public. Another House vote to repeal the Dodd-Frank measure, after the initial rush effort failed to garner a needed two-thirds majority. Meanwhile, in the slower-moving Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has decided Keystone legislation will be the first significant matter taken up.

Joanna Moorehead: So Catholics needn’t breed like rabbits. Then let’s drop the contraception con

Whatever the pope says, the vast majority of us have already voted with our gonads and ignored the church’s nonsense

Clarity has never been a strong point at the Vatican. This is, after all, an institution that has chosen for centuries to communicate with its followers via erudite documents written in Latin, which must be first translated and then interpreted for us, the faithful in the pew.

But even by its own standards, this week’s papal pronouncements have been bewildering. We thought that, whatever else wasn’t clear, one thing we did know was that the church doesn’t approve of contraception. But during his in-flight press conference en route home from his Philippines trip, we hear Pope Francis telling us that we don’t after all have to breed “like rabbits”.

[..]

The truth is that the pope – a charismatic and decent-seeming guy whose finger is a good deal closer to the people’s pulse than his predecessor’s was – is tying himself in knots trying to appear “modern” at the same time as adhering to official teaching. And it simply won’t wash. The church has been peddling a nonsense on contraception for almost 50 years. The vast majority of us church-going, “faithful” Catholics have voted with our gonads and ignored it, and at some point (soon, please!) Rome is going to have to admit it has been wrong, and that the “contraceptive culture” is not about a lack of respect for human life, it’s quite simply about a sensible realisation that most couples can raise two, three or four children better, in every way, than they can raise 10, 11 or 12.

Richard Zombeck: Obama Opens Door for GOP to Blow It

President Obama announced some radically redistributive measures during the State of the Union on Tuesday. The Robin-Hood-esque plan proposes raising the taxes and cutting tax breaks on the super-rich and easing the burden on poorer Americans. Needless to say, members of the GOP are not pleased and haven’t been since the plan was announced last Saturday night.

Republicans, as a rule, hate tax increases, especially when they have an adverse effect on the very rich and corporations – such as making them slightly less rich. They also apparently hate tax cuts, especially when it would improve the lives of working families and the poor. [..]

The GOP could see the president’s proposals as an opportunity to work with him to improve the lives of regular Americans and make a real difference in people’s lives. They would get and most likely take credit for all of it.

If the last six years are any indication of what the next two will look like, however, the more likely scenario is that this severely divided and dysfunctional party that is the GOP will spin off into separate camps, subjecting the rest of us to a clown-car demolition derby rife with inane rants about socialism, anti-capitalism, and class warfare. In the meantime, the rich will get richer, the working class will continue to struggle, the middle class will disappear, and more people will be pushed into poverty.

The president should use the political theatre of this address to focus American’s attention squarely on the loss of human life when police kill black civilians

Tuesday at President Obama’s penultimate State of the Union address, when Obama points for effect at someone sitting with the First Lady as her guest, every single guest around her should be a family member of someone killed by a police officer. [..]

This of course will never happen, but it’s what I want.

President Obama should use the political theatre of his “Skutniks” – the humans used to give a face to presidential pet problems since Ronald Reagan invited Lenny Skutnik to the State of the Union in 1982 – to focus American’s attention squarely on the loss of human life when cops kill black civilians. If President Obama wants us to believe that he thinks black life matters, it’s not enough for him to form a task force on 21 century policing: task forces and commissions are where serious reforms go to be forgotten.

Robert Reich: The New Compassionate Conservatism and Trickle-Down Economics

Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney are zeroing in on inequality as America’s fundamental economic problem.

Bush’s new Political Action Committee, called “The Right to Rise,” declares “the income gap is real” but that “only conservative principles can solve it.”

Mitt Romney likewise promised last week that if he runs for president he’ll change the strategy that led to his 2012 loss to President Obama (remember the “makers” versus the “takers?”) and focus instead on income inequality, poverty, and “opportunity for all people.”

The Republican establishment’s leading presidential hopefuls know the current upbeat economy isn’t trickling down to most Americans.

But they’ve got a whopping credibility problem, starting with trickle-down economics.

Nick Turse: The Golden Age of Black Ops

Special Ops Missions Already in 105 Countries in 2015

In the dead of night, they swept in aboard V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft.  Landing in a remote region of one of the most volatile countries on the planet, they raided a village and soon found themselves in a life-or-death firefight.  It was the second time in two weeks that elite U.S. Navy SEALs had attempted to rescue American photojournalist Luke Somers.  And it was the second time they failed. [..]

Despite its massive scale and scope, this secret global war across much of the planet is unknown to most Americans.  Unlike the December debacle in Yemen, the vast majority of special ops missions remain completely in the shadows, hidden from external oversight or press scrutiny.  In fact, aside from modest amounts of information disclosed through highly-selective coverage by military media, official White House leaks, SEALs with something to sell, and a few cherry-picked journalists reporting on cherry-picked opportunities, much of what America’s special operators do is never subjected to meaningful examination, which only increases the chances of unforeseen blowback and catastrophic consequences.        

Ronald Weitzer: Diversity among police officers is key, but it won’t solve the problems with policing

Shared training and on-the-job socialization results in many similarities among officers regardless of race – including in how they treat non-white citizens

In Ferguson, Missouri, 50 of the 53 police officers are white in a city that is two-thirds African American. In Connecticut’s state capital, Hartford, 66% of the police department is white but only 16% of the residents are. And these are just two examples: despite progress over the past 50 years, many police departments remain predominantly white in cities and towns where the majority of the population is nonwhite. [..]

Why does this matter? Do police officers of different racial and ethnic backgrounds act differently while on the job? Do they have different kinds of relationships with minority communities? Aren’t all officers trained to do their jobs similarly and to treat all civilians the same regardless of race?

Research shows that, in general in the US, there is not a strong correlation, let alone a causal relationship, between an officer’s race and how officers treat members of the public when they respond to calls from civilians or stop and question them on the streets Statistics are, of course, not predictive of individual behavior, and studies of specific departments or communities vary. A 2004 study in Indianapolis (Indiana) and St. Petersburg (Florida) by Ivan Sun and Brian Payne, for example, found that black officers were more likely than white officers working in black neighborhoods to provide information, referrals to other agencies, and to treat residents respectfully, although the black officers were also more likely to use physical force against citizens in conflict situations. But, again, most studies find similarities overall in police behavior irrespective of officers’ racial background.

Earlier this month, the Pew Research Center released a study that found that most wealthy Americans believed “poor people today have it easy because they can get government benefits without doing anything in return.”

This is an infuriatingly obtuse view of what it means to be poor in this country – the soul-rending omnipresence of worry and fear, of weariness and fatigue. This can be the view only of those who have not known – or have long forgotten – what poverty truly means.

“Easy” is a word not easily spoken among the poor. Things are hard – the times are hard, the work is hard, the way is hard. “Easy” is for uninformed explanations issued by the willfully callous and the haughtily blind.

Allow me to explain, as James Baldwin put it, a few illustrations of “how extremely expensive it is to be poor.”

Mary Turck: Today’s civil disobedience continues MLK’s legacy

Protesting injustice is the best way to celebrate King’s life

On Jan. 14, authorities in Bloomington, Minnesota, filed criminal charges against 10 members of the Black Lives Matter Minneapolis group in connection with a large-scale peaceful protest at the Mall of America last month. An additional two dozen protesters were arrested for trespassing during the Dec. 20 demonstration. They may yet be charged. City attorney Sandra Johnson has said she wants to make the organizers pay for police costs and for the mall’s costs incurred in the form of additional security. [..]

King wrote his letter to clergymen who called the protest that led to his arrest “unwise and untimely.” Apparently, the protest at the Mall of America was also untimely and inconvenient. On a busy Saturday before Christmas, the mall didn’t have time or space to welcome the #BlackLivesMatter protest. After all, it is private property, meaning that anyone who enters the mall with a purpose other than spending money may be declared a trespasser. But the mall also receives millions of dollars in public financing.

“You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham,” King reminded his critics, admonishing them for failing “to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations.”

What would that kind of concern look like?

Robert Kuttner: The Politics of Gesture

Looking forward to Tuesday’s State of the Union address, we are seeing a somewhat bolder Barack Obama. The White House has already pre-announced or leaked several “fourth-quarter initiatives,” in the president’s words. Some of these can be accomplished by executive order; most will require legislation. [..]

The time to have fought for such policies was when Obama still had a majority in Congress. But back then, in 2010, he was promoting deficit reduction.

And there are two deeper problems. None of Obama’s proposals will fundamentally change the distribution of wealth and power in America. None addresses the structural erosion of decent payroll jobs.

With one hand, the administration proposes some useful, if marginal, help to working families. With the other, it is promoting trade deals such as the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), both of which will increase the power of corporations to weaken health, safety, labor and environmental regulations and increase the outsourcing of jobs.

Jason Wilson: ‘Cultural Marxism’: a uniting theory for rightwingers who love to play the victim

What do the Australian’s columnist Nick Cater, video game hate group #Gamergate, Norwegian mass shooter Anders Breivik and random blokes on YouTube have in common? Apart from anything else, they have all invoked the spectre of “cultural Marxism” to account for things they disapprove of – things like Islamic immigrant communities, feminism and, er, opposition leader Bill Shorten.

What are they talking about? The tale varies in the telling, but the theory of cultural Marxism is integral to the fantasy life of the contemporary right. It depends on a crazy-mirror history, which glancingly reflects things that really happened, only to distort them in the most bizarre ways.  [..]

The idea of a cultural Marxist conspiracy has also endured because, in the absence of a genuine clash of ideas about the way the economy should be run, it provides an animating idea for the political contest. For Cater to claim that Bill Shorten is a Marxist of any kind is laughable precisely because to the extent that the opposition leader is explicitly offering anything, it’s plainly just a slightly more cushioned version of the same underlying economic orthodoxy embraced by Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey. Until that changes, the right will always be able to offer their story of victimhood and conspiracy with some hope of success.

For the first time in a long time, American police departments are on the defensive. They’re on the defense in New York, where, after the NYPD’s open insurrection against the mayor, 69% of New York “voters, black, white and Hispanic” disapprove “of police officers turning their backs on Mayor Bill de Blasio at funerals for two police officers” according to a Quinnipiac poll – and now, even some cops have started openly airing their disgust with their own union leadership. They’re on the defense in Washington, where they’re “on the hot seat” at President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. And they continue to be on the defense in municipalities across the country, as every new police shooting sparks intense national scrutiny on social and in traditional media.

Police departments usually rely on fear and lobbying to beat reforms back; police reformers can’t let them this time.

Police state apologists will try to sell fear, even though “20 years of falling crime and aggressive policing means that police violence – justified or otherwise – now appears to be a much larger share of all violence,” as Harry Siegel wrote in the New York Daily News. But while fear of crime has fallen as fear of police violence has risen, it’s still hard to argue with the good ol’ fear of terrorism.

Norman Solomon: Race, Leaks and Prosecution at the CIA

Condoleezza Rice made headlines when she testified Thursday at the leak trial of former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling – underscoring that powerful people in the Bush administration went to great lengths a dozen years ago to prevent disclosure of a classified operation. But as The Associated Press noted, “While Rice’s testimony helped establish the importance of the classified program in question, her testimony did not implicate Sterling in any way as the leaker.”

Few pixels and little ink went to the witness just before Rice – former CIA spokesman William Harlow – whose testimony stumbled into indicating why he thought of Sterling early on in connection with the leak, which ultimately resulted in a ten-count indictment. [..]

As a prosecution witness, Harlow volunteered some information that may come back to haunt the prosecutors. With alarm spreading among CIA officials, Harlow testified, someone at the agency mentioned to him that Sterling had worked on the Operation Merlin program. In his testimony, Harlow went on to say that Sterling’s name was familiar to him because Sterling, who is African American, had filed a race discrimination lawsuit against the CIA.

Left dangling in the air was the indication that Harlow thought of Sterling as a possible leaker because he’d gone through channels to claim that he had been a victim of racial bias at the CIA.  Sterling’s complaint had received substantial coverage in several major news outlets. (The CIA eventually got the suit thrown out of court on the grounds of state secrets.)

Joe Conason: Why Violent Extremists Welcome Attacks on Islam

Whenever an act of horrific terror enrages the West, a predictable second act ensues. Furious commentators and activists on the right erupt with blanket denunciations of Islam, Muslims and their supposed plots to enslave us all under Shariah, urging that we ban the religion, stigmatize its faithful and restore the Judeo-Christian exclusivity of America. Sometimes a few even seek retribution in attacks on mosques, individual Muslims and anyone unfortunate enough to “look Muslim.”

Violent or merely loud, these are the useful idiots whose divisive blundering underscores the propaganda of al-Qaida, the Islamic State group and imitators around the world. They represent precisely the opposite of what we must do and say if we are to defeat Islamist extremism in all its manifestations.

David Sirota: The Windy City’s New Gift to Big Campaign Donors

On its face, Chicago’s municipal pension system is an integral part of the Chicago city government. The system is included in the city’s budget, it is directly funded by the city, and its various boards of trustees include city officials and mayoral appointees. Yet, when it comes to enforcing the city’s anti-corruption laws in advance of the Chicago’s closely watched 2015 municipal election, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration is suddenly arguing that the pension funds are not part of the city government at all.

The counterintuitive declaration came last month from the mayor-appointed ethics commission, responding to Chicago aldermen’s request for an investigation of campaign contributions to Emanuel from the financial industry. The request followed disclosures that executives at firms managing Chicago pension money have made more than $600,000 worth of donations to Emanuel. The contributions flowed to the mayor despite a city ordinance-and an executive order by Emanuel himself-restricting mayoral campaign contributions from city contractors.