Tag: Punting the Pundits

Wedded bliss is becoming an elite privilege

Add marriage to the growing list of victims of government policies that favor the rich at the expense of everyone else. Marriage is becoming less common down the income ladder and more common and durable among the prosperous, analysis of marriage, divorce and other records shows.

Social conservatives say marriage makes for economically sound families, but the empirical evidence shows that, on the contrary, steady incomes and jobs make for sound marriages. Job stability benefits both employers through greater productivity and families through more cohesion.

Marriage inequality also affects children. Prosperous parents lavish investments of time and money for enrichment classes and social activities on their offspring, while poor parents struggle just to pay the rent at the expense of interacting with their children as budgets for preschoolers and child-development programs take hit after hit.

Eugene Robinson: Time for the GOP to Pitch In

With Republican majorities in both houses, the new Congress should begin by focusing on traditional GOP priorities: improving the nation’s sagging infrastructure, reforming an unwieldy tax code and finding ways to boost middle-class opportunity.

When pigs fly, you say? Skepticism is definitely in order. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner have a fundamental choice to make. They can acknowledge the obvious areas of common ground they share with President Obama-thus showing that the Republican Party can participate responsibly in government-or they can throw temper tantrums. [..]

It is perhaps inevitable that the GOP will use its control of Congress to highlight the party’s pet issues-advocacy for the Keystone XL pipeline, for example, and opposition to the Affordable Care Act. Every once in a while, Republicans may even muster the needed 60 votes in the Senate-and force Obama to use his veto. But then what? Passing a bunch of bills that have no chance of ever becoming law is not the best advertisement for effectiveness.

McConnell told the Post he wants voters to see his party as a “responsible, right-of-center, governing majority.” Well, two obvious things such a majority should be doing right now are celebrating the economic recovery and looking for ways to ensure that more of its benefits reach the middle class.

Joe Nocera: The Moral of the Kulluk

The cover story of The New York Times Magazine on Sunday, “The Wreck of the Kulluk,” by McKenzie Funk, is one of those articles that you can’t put down even though you know how it turns out. The Kulluk was an offshore exploratory drilling rig, owned by Royal Dutch Shell, which, in December 2012, ran aground in some of the most inhospitable waters in the world. [..]

As regular readers know, I am hardly opposed to drilling for oil or gas. Yet this particular high-risk venture seems both foolish and unnecessary. For one thing, the world is awash in oil, thanks to a slowdown in demand and increase in supply because of the fracking revolution. For another, the price of oil is so low as to make new, expensive exploration in the Arctic unprofitable.

Most of all, though, we’re just not ready to drill for this oil. As LeVine put it, “I don’t believe we have the technological capability to extract these resources safely.” To me, that is the real moral of the story of the Kulluk.

Adam Lee: If peace on earth is our goal, atheism might be the means to that end

The quiet truth behind the inescapable headlines about man’s inhumanity to man is that the world is actually becoming a more peaceful place. Deaths from war and conflict have been declining for decades – and, if current trends continue, we can make them rarer still.

What mysterious force is sowing peace among humankind? One possible reason is that there are more atheists and nonbelievers than ever before. [..]

Of course, not every atheist is peaceful and not every religious person is violent. Avowedly pacifist faiths like the Quakers or Unitarian Universalists have played an important role in peace movements and, in the other direction, there are lamentably prominent atheists like Sam Harris or the late Christopher Hitchens who’ve been entirely too cavalier about imperialism and military aggression. But in general, the trend is that, as the world becomes less religious, we can expect it to become even more peaceful.

The War Machine is the violent nexus of military and economic forces that grinds us up to perpetuate itself. With politicians of all stripes in its pockets and buoyed by lobbyists, the War Machine is beyond the reach of civil government and easily tramples individual souls, especially when they inhabit bodies of color. War is a big, multi-trillion-dollar business, requiring the sales, construction and operation of guns, drones, missiles, governmental armies, private armies, public prisons, private prisons and the like.

While the War Machine has been operated most obviously overseas in places like the Middle East, and domestically behind bars, it is now increasingly clear that the War Machine is also operating on America’s streets.

The War Machine has always made for strange bedfellows. Even as the conflict in Afghanistan, America’s longest foreign war, ostensibly ends, America’s largest police department and its union are in sometimes open conflict against their civilian commander, supported by a right wing that normally hates public unions.

Jared Bernstein: Ed Kleinbard Calls Out ‘Dynamic Scoring’

There are many strong, substantive reasons to be worried about the use of “dynamic scoring” by the new Republican Congress. As Ed Kleinbard tells it in Saturday’s NYT, the new majority is instructing the official scorekeepers of the revenue implications of tax changes to employ models that incorporate macroeconomic feedback.

As I argued here, such a move engenders at least two big concerns. First, there’s the uncertainty of the estimates, providing a plum opportunity for cherry picking: [..]

Or, as Ed puts it, dynamic scoring provides us with “…greater exposure to the risk of a political thumb on the scale.”

The second problem, well covered by Ed, is that the R’s obviously hope that dynamic scoring will provide them the cover they need to cut taxes in ways that the current scoring approach will not (though I should note here that David Wessel disagrees – he doesn’t think these scores will differ enough from current methods to provide such cover; I’m with Ed on this). That leads to larger budget deficits and since tax increases are off the table with this crowd, that means greater pressure on the spending side of the budget.

Norman Solomon: Why Jeffrey Sterling Deserves Support as a CIA Whistleblower

The trial of former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, set to begin in mid-January, is shaping up as a major battle in the U.S. government’s siege against whistleblowing. With its use of the Espionage Act to intimidate and prosecute people for leaks in “national security” realms, the Obama administration is determined to keep hiding important facts that the public has a vital right to know.

After fleeting coverage of Sterling’s indictment four years ago, news media have done little to illuminate his case — while occasionally reporting on the refusal of New York Times reporter James Risen to testify about whether Sterling was a source for his 2006 book “State of War.”

Risen’s unwavering stand for the confidentiality of sources is admirable. At the same time, Sterling — who faces 10 felony counts that include seven under the Espionage Act — is no less deserving of support.

Revelations from brave whistleblowers are essential for the informed consent of the governed. With its hostilities, the Obama Justice Department is waging legalistic war on our democratic rights to know substantially more about government actions than official stories. That’s why the imminent courtroom clash in the case of “United States of America v. Jeffrey Alexander Sterling” is so important.

Les Keopold: The Eight Ugly Scars of Runaway Inequality

America is the richest country in all of history. We have the largest economy and the largest number of millionaires and billionaires. At the same time, however, we lead the developed world in economic inequality. In 1965, CEOs received $20 for every dollar earned by the average worker. Today the gap is $354 to $1.  [..]

These are more than cold statistics. They also tell the story of a nation in serious trouble. Runaway equality is lacerating the fabric of our society. [..]

The powerful will never be persuaded by intellectual arguments from even the very best economists. Instead, history shows it will take countervailing power and a virtual uprising by the rest of us. For a short time, Occupy Wall Street focused the national debate on economic inequality. It will take a massive new movement for economic justice with staying power to remove the ugly scars of runaway inequality.

In this new year, let’s hope we gain the courage to build it.

It has been just over 50 years since U.S. Surgeon General Luther Terry released the groundbreaking report, “Smoking and Health.” The report concluded, “Cigarette smoking is a health hazard of sufficient importance in the United States to warrant appropriate remedial action.” The tobacco industry intensified its campaign to defend smoking, funding bogus groups and junk science. Now, a similar war on the truth is being waged by the fossil-fuel industry to deny the science of climate change.

“Doubt is our product,” states a 1969 memo from the tobacco giant Brown and Williamson, “since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the mind of the general public.” Brown and Williamson was a member of “Big Tobacco,” along with Philip Morris USA, R.J. Reynolds, Lorillard Tobacco Company, U.S. Tobacco, Liggett Group, and American Tobacco. In 1994, the CEOs of these seven companies lied before Congress, claiming that nicotine was not addictive-even though secret research conducted by their corporations proved they knew otherwise. The image of the seven executives with their right hands in the air, swearing an oath to tell the truth, became an iconic image of a deceitful, deadly industry.

Joe Conason: GOP, Stop Making Excuses for Scalise

The unsavory story of Rep. Steve Scalise, Louisiana Republican and House majority whip, should serve as a clear warning to the leaders of the Republican Party. They need to ask why their message attracts some of the most despicable elements in American society-and why they can’t effectively reject those extremists.

Despite many fervent vows of “outreach” and “inclusion” by top Republicans, they keep making the wrong choices. Both House Speaker John Boehner and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy have expressed their confidence in Scalise despite his “mistake.” And the excuses they now offer on behalf of the man chosen for the third-highest position in their congressional caucus are rapidly eroding.

Michael Brenner: Know When to Fold ‘Em

Barack Obama reportedly takes pride in his skill as a card player. Poker is the prime game of politics and politicians. The president’s record suggests that he is something less than its master. The list of those who have fleeced him is a long and varied one. It includes: the Republican Congressional leadership (habitually); the Wall Street barons; Big Pharma; the Intelligence chiefs; Robert Gates; David Petraeus; Leon Panetta; Bibi Netanyahu (numerous occasions); King Abdullah (Saudi Arabia); Hamid Karzai; General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi; Recep Tayyip Erdogan; and Bashar Assad. Indeed, there is only one group of players whom he beats regularly — the “liberals” whose gambling instincts have been honed in endless games of rainy-day Scrabble.

So, some advice on how to raise his game is in order. The popular country-and-western ballad The Gambler can serve as a rich source of pithy poker axioms. [..]

Barack Obama reportedly takes pride in his skill as a card player. Poker is the prime game of politics and politicians. The president’s record suggests that he is something less than its master. The list of those who have fleeced him is a long and varied one. It includes: the Republican Congressional leadership (habitually); the Wall Street barons; Big Pharma; the Intelligence chiefs; Robert Gates; David Petraeus; Leon Panetta; Bibi Netanyahu (numerous occasions); King Abdullah (Saudi Arabia); Hamid Karzai; General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi; Recep Tayyip Erdogan; and Bashar Assad. Indeed, there is only one group of players whom he beats regularly — the “liberals” whose gambling instincts have been honed in endless games of rainy-day Scrabble.

So, some advice on how to raise his game is in order. The popular country-and-western ballad The Gambler can serve as a rich source of pithy poker axioms.

The Internet is the most democratic communication platform in history, largely because we’ve had network neutrality rules that make sure all web traffic is treated equally, and no voices are discriminated against. Because of network neutrality rules, activists can turn to the Internet to bypass the discrimination of mainstream cable, broadcast and print outlets as we organize for change. It is because of net neutrality rules that the Internet is the only communication channel left where Black voices can speak and be heard, produce and consume, on our own terms.

But, right now, Black online voices are threatened. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is drafting and preparing to vote on new rules that will either preserve the level online playing field we’ve enjoyed for the last several decades, or destroy it.  

The FCC can take a clear path to prevent discrimination online. The agency can reclassify broadband as a common carrier service under Title II of the Communications Act. Reclassifying the Internet with strong, bright line net neutrality rules can guarantee every Internet user’s right to connect with any person or website, on any device or cell phone, without discrimination, censorship or other interference.  

Jeb Lund: If you’re a politician and your chummy past with neo-Nazis resurfaces, don’t worry. Ask Ron Paul

I’m not a fan of hot takes, but this time I’m putting my foot down. Nazis are bad.

But apparently some kids missed the public service announcements about it. Louisiana Representative Steve Scalise, the House GOP Whip and third-highest ranking member of the House GOP leadership tried to “groove” on Nazism in 2002, appearing at a convention of the European-American Unity and Rights Organization (EURO), which was founded by Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard and neo-Nazi David Duke.

Thankfully, now that his appearance has been unearthed, the Scalise spin machine is on it: “Throughout his career in public service, Mr Scalise has spoken to hundreds of different groups with a broad range of viewpoints,” said Scalise spokesperson Moira Bagley. Ahh, yes, and there’s the expected out – he was there, but he only exhaled.

She went on: “In every case, he was building support for his policies, not the other way around.”[..]

After all, it’s probably not hard to turn a neo-Nazi into a potential Republican voter by telling him that a corporatized, authoritarian, nationalistic, militaristic party is the only thing standing between him and effete, war-losing, left-wing elites who are trying to destroy the homeland via a fifth-column of non-native minorities, college professors, “homosexuals” and other cultural degenerates.

Hell, I’m not even mad about Scalise. I’m just disappointed.

Reditt Hudson: Police officers who violate citizens’ rights must be punished. Accountability is the only way forward

There is one criminal justice system for citizens – especially black and brown ones – and another for police in the United State.

As a former cop, when I watch the video of Eric Garner being choked out, of him having his face smashed into the concrete as he told the officers that were on top of him he couldn’t breathe, there is no mistaking the truth: the only person whose life was at risk during that encounter was Eric Garner’s.

I’ve been shot at while enforcing the law in my state, and I have friends that remain with the department I worked for that have risked their lives as well; we all have tremendous respect for the job. But we all know – either from personal experience or the experience of someone close to us – that there are officers that will violate citizens’ human rights and civil liberties with impunity and who are comfortable in the knowledge that the system will protect and cover for their actions. And while the race of the officer abusing his or her authority may vary, the race of those whose rights and bodies are abused almost never does.

These inequities have led, inexorably, to the current national crisis in police-community relations – and the best way forward is to make sure we severely punish officers that violate the rights of the citizens they serve. They must be held accountable for their actions. There is one criminal justice system for citizens – especially black and brown ones – and another for police in the United State.

As a former cop, when I watch the video of Eric Garner being choked out, of him having his face smashed into the concrete as he told the officers that were on top of him he couldn’t breathe, there is no mistaking the truth: the only person whose life was at risk during that encounter was Eric Garner’s.

I’ve been shot at while enforcing the law in my state, and I have friends that remain with the department I worked for that have risked their lives as well; we all have tremendous respect for the job. But we all know – either from personal experience or the experience of someone close to us – that there are officers that will violate citizens’ human rights and civil liberties with impunity and who are comfortable in the knowledge that the system will protect and cover for their actions. And while the race of the officer abusing his or her authority may vary, the race of those whose rights and bodies are abused almost never does.

These inequities have led, inexorably, to the current national crisis in police-community relations – and the best way forward is to make sure we severely punish officers that violate the rights of the citizens they serve. They must be held accountable for their actions. There is one criminal justice system for citizens – especially black and brown ones – and another for police in the United State.

As a former cop, when I watch the video of Eric Garner being choked out, of him having his face smashed into the concrete as he told the officers that were on top of him he couldn’t breathe, there is no mistaking the truth: the only person whose life was at risk during that encounter was Eric Garner’s.

I’ve been shot at while enforcing the law in my state, and I have friends that remain with the department I worked for that have risked their lives as well; we all have tremendous respect for the job. But we all know – either from personal experience or the experience of someone close to us – that there are officers that will violate citizens’ human rights and civil liberties with impunity and who are comfortable in the knowledge that the system will protect and cover for their actions. And while the race of the officer abusing his or her authority may vary, the race of those whose rights and bodies are abused almost never does.

These inequities have led, inexorably, to the current national crisis in police-community relations – and the best way forward is to make sure we severely punish officers that violate the rights of the citizens they serve. They must be held accountable for their actions.

I grew up in New York in the 1960s and 70s saying a prayer whenever I heard a siren – a prayer for whomever the siren wailed, and a prayer for the men behind the siren, the policemen and firemen risking their lives every day, my uncles (and later cousins) among them. That’s what my mother taught me. I still find myself doing it sometimes. [..]

Now I live in New York again, for the first time since the 1970s, and again New York is in turmoil over the police –  not just over the killings of Garner and other unarmed black men, but over the murders of two police officers, Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, in Brooklyn on Dec. 20.  White New Yorkers fear a return to the bad old days of riots, escalating crime and attacks on police. In the 1970s, 46 officers were killed in the line of duty, according to the New York Times, and 41 more in the 1980s. Before these latest murders, the last police killing was in 2011.

Black New Yorkers say the bad old days – of police abuse – never ended. The loudest voices are on the extremes, shouting down those who are trying to find common ground.

David Dayen: 2015′s biggest days for politics: Salon’s handy calendar for the next year

Want to know which critical deadlines Republicans will sneakily try to exploit? Bookmark this timeline as a guide

The conventional wisdom is that the 114th Congress will feature mostly angry white men in suits yelling about something or other, without the normal output from a legislative branch, like “legislation.” The passage of the CRomnibus should put that theory to rest. Republicans were able to slide dozens of policy riders into a must-pass bill, with Democrats and the White House agreeing to the changes amid the risk of a government shutdown. GOP legislators are salivating at the prospect of running this movie over and over again in the final two years of the Obama presidency.

Fortunately for the Republicans, they will have quite a few opportunities to test this model, in their first year of total congressional control since 2006. The 2015 calendar is littered with a series of critical deadlines, which Republicans will surely try to exploit. You can pretty much throw out the rest of the year and just tune in to Congress around these deadline dates, most likely the only times when anything of import will actually happen. Here’s your congressional calendar for the next year:

What’s not to like about the economic record of this president?

By a host of measures, the U.S. economy has done exceptionally well under President Barack Obama. So why does he receive such poor approval ratings, especially from the most prosperous and economically conservative Americans? [..]

So what’s not to like about the economic record of this president?

What most people know is that they are working hard and getting nowhere and that even if they perform well, their jobs can evaporate in an instant.

Median household income was $59,139 last year, about $4,500 below 2007 but up all of $189 from 2012. As I showed in a previous column, the median wage last year was at its lowest level since 1998, and the average wage remains below its 2007 peak.

Therein lies a key to understanding dissatisfaction with Obama’s economic policies.  While about 10 million jobs have been added since the low point a year into his first term, wages have stagnated. [..]

Had congressional Republicans cooperated with the president, our economy would be larger by 3 percent, or about $529 billion, the St. Louis Federal Reserve and other researchers estimate. Unrealized economic output is a terrible waste, especially when it results from petty political animus.

Now that the economy is expanding at the fastest rate we’ve seen in more than a decade, public perception about Obama’s economic policies is beginning to improve. But whatever Americans ultimately conclude about Obama, they should view his economic policies in a light that balances his broad successes and failures with the declared determination of Republican congressional leaders to oppose Obama’s policies at all costs.

David Dayen: The Super Bowl doesn’t need terrorism insurance. Here’s why

In its final week, the 113th US Congress managed to pass a spending bill loaded with policy giveaways to special interests, and a year-long extension of mostly corporate tax breaks.

But they couldn’t finish off the lobbyist Triple Crown. There was one task Congress couldn’t tackle: approve an extension of the Terrorist Risk Insurance Act, known as TRIA. The bill provides lucrative government bailout protection for the insurance industry in case of a terrorist attack like 9/11 or, as Hollywood has feared, retribution for American entertainment choices by North Korea. [..]

But perhaps the expiration of TRIA can shed some light on its necessity.

Supporters claim new real estate development will collapse without affordable terrorism coverage; let’s see if that’s the case. They argue that the economy will suffer; we can certainly find out. They claim that no other solution but a government guarantee exists; we can test that theory.

In fact, we already have some evidence that the industry caterwauling is overblown: the NFL has said they will not need to cancel the Super Bowl in the wake of the failure to pass TRIA, despite news reports to that effect.

Congress rarely gets the chance to run a natural experiment on whether the policies they enact make sense in the real world. The bungling of TRIA provides that opportunity. It’s up to them whether or not they seize it.

John Nichols: Bill de Blasio Is Not the First New York City Mayor to Clash With Police Unions

The leaflet was meant to highlight anger on the part of police officers with the mayor of New York. It encouraged officers to fill their names in on a document that read, “I, . . ., a New York City police officer, want all of my family and brother officers who read this to know [that] in the event of my death [the mayor and his police commissioner should] be denied attendance of any memorial service in my honor as their attendance would only bring disgrace to my memory.”

That’s how deep the divisions ran.

Yes, “ran.”

The leaflet mentioned above was distributed in 1997. The mayor in question was Rudolph Giuliani, and The New York Times reported on rank-and-file members of the powerful Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association urging fellow officers to sign the documents. Though the union did not officially sanction the jab at the mayor, its circulation among officers “demonstrates the depths of their discontent,” reported the Times in an article on a contract dispute in which Giuliani was taking a hard line against pay increases. [..]

In his eulogy for Officer Ramos, Mayor de Blasio preached a gospel of reconciliation that sought to reduce the current animosity, describing how police officers “help make a place that otherwise would be torn with strife a place of peace.” The mayoral olive branch was not accepted Saturday, just as previous efforts by previous mayors to ease tensions with the PBA have hit rough spots. This is a part of the story of big-city policing and politics. But it is not the whole story. The whole story tells us that it is possible for a strong mayor to get through hard times that include clashes with a strong police union, to propose and implement reforms that the mayor, many police officers and most citizens know to be necessary, and to survive politically. This is the historical reality, as opposed to the media-frenzy spin of the moment. And it is this reality that Mayor de Blasio would do well to keep in mind through the weeks and months to come.

Eugene Robinson: Economic Facts Get in the Way of Presidential Ambitions

Uh-oh. Now that the economy is doing well, what are Republicans-especially those running for president-going to complain about? And what are Democrats willing to celebrate?

Last week’s announcement that the economy grew at a 5 percent rate in the third quarter of 2014-following 4.6 percent second-quarter growth-was the clearest and least debatable indication to date that sustained recovery is no longer a promise, it’s a fact. [..]

GOP candidates face a dilemma. To win in the primaries, where the influence of the far-right activist base is magnified, it may be necessary to continue the give-no-quarter attacks on Obama’s record, regardless of what the facts might say. But in the general election, against a capable Democratic candidate-someone like Hillary Clinton, if she decides to run-pretending that up is down won’t cut it. [..]

Likewise, Elizabeth Warren charges that the administration’s coziness with Wall Street helps ensure that the deck remains stacked against the middle class. Warren says she isn’t running for president but wants to influence the debate. She has. Clinton’s speeches have begun sounding more populist, in spite of her long-standing Wall Street ties.

You know the old saying about how there’s no arguing with success? Our politicians are about to prove it wrong.

When a peaceful protest tips into violence, the state’s case for the legitimacy of its use of suppressive force is validated, instantly. This is counterproductive, obviously, when the reason for protesting in the first place is to end what we see as wrongful use of state force. This is also a large part of why I am a pacifist: for pragmatic reasons. I subscribe to the belief that non-violent means are more effective than violent ones. I cannot assure you that I would subscribe to this same belief if I was black. I do not know that I would.

I have taken part in – and plan to continue to take part in, and encourage others to take part in – the current protests against racist policing in America, but I know and encourage others to remember this: Black people are on the front lines. It is first and foremost a black movement. Black people are risking far more by being out there face-to-face with cops than white people. (Recent history proves this all too convincingly.) White people’s role in protest should be a secondary one – a strictly supportive role, not agitating or bottle-throwing so much as chanting along, marching in time, bearing witness, simply being there to be counted.

Robert Reich: The Republican’s Magical Mystery Tour (Coming Soon)

According to reports, one of the first acts of the Republican congress will be to fire Doug Elmendorf, current director of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, because he won’t use “dynamic scoring” for his economic projections.

Dynamic scoring is the magical-mystery math Republicans have been pushing since they came up with supply-side “trickle-down” economics.

It’s based on the belief that cutting taxes unleashes economic growth and thereby produces additional government revenue. Supposedly the added revenue more than makes up for what’s lost when Congress hands out the tax cuts.

Dynamic scoring would make it easier to enact tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, because the tax cuts wouldn’t look as if they increased the budget deficit.

Incoming House Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) calls it “reality-based scoring,” but it’s actually magical scoring – which is why Elmendorf, as well as all previous CBO directors have rejected it.

Few economic theories have been as thoroughly tested in the real world as supply-side economics, and so notoriously failed.

Mike Gravel: The law will protect any member of Congress who releases the full torture report. Someone needs to step up

I took a risk so that Americans knew what our government did in Vietnam. Today’s elected representatives should do the same for Iraq and Afghanistan

It should be easy to get the entire report on the record: any information held by the Congress is technically already in the record, so no one need read it in its entirety on the floor of either congressional chamber or enter it in the committee or subcommittee record, the way I had to with the Pentagon Papers. A member of Congress may hand out the information to the press or the public, so long as the distribution occurs on property associated with the Senate or House of Representatives: the constitution does not qualify how “Speech and Debate ” is exercised, only that it occur “in either House”.

But why is it necessary? The torture report released to the public was incomplete – and only a full release of the Torture Report and the million or more documents in CIA possession but which the Intelligence Committee still has access can lay bare the full horrors of what the government perpetrated in our names.

Bruce Fischer: In Black Lives Matter Protest, Corporate Rights Trump Free Speech

Minnesotans protesting police violence and institutional racism could face “staggering” fees and criminal charges for a protest at Mall of America, with the City of Bloomington announcing plans to force organizers to pay for the mall’s lost revenue during the exercise of their free speech rights, highlighting important questions about free speech in an era of privatized public spaces. [..]

Can the Mall of America prohibit the exercise of free speech and assembly on its premises? And can it pick-and-choose who it allows to assemble? Last year, for example, the Mall allowed around 7,000 people to gather in the same rotunda to honor a young white man who died of cancer.

The First Amendment protects against government suppression of speech, but not private responses to the exercise of free speech and expression. And the Mall of America is considered private property, despite receiving hundreds of millions in public subsidies since it was built, including an additional $250 million approved last year.

For decades, courts have struggled with how to protect free speech in public forums that have grown increasingly privatized.

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These are Dickensian times, when charity is rationed by politicians and pundits callously dismiss the poor as a burden best forced by hunger to grab at bootstraps and pull themselves upward.

Charles Dickens wrote of such times in 1843.

But surely he would have recognized 2014, a year that began with the Congress of the wealthiest nation in the world locked in debate over cutting funds for nutrition programs that serve those who are in need. The cuts were approved and, as the year progressed, so there came the announcements that tens of thousands of Americans would no longer have access to food stamps.

Food stamp cuts in a land of plenty are just one measure of the cruelty of the moment. There are also the threats to cut benefits for the long-term unemployed and to restrict access to welfare programs, which come even as Congress delivers another holiday-season “wish list” to the banking behemoths that have figured out how to crash economies and still profit.

Amy Goodman: Mark Udall Can Make History by Releasing the Torture Report

Mark Udall, the outgoing Democratic senator from Colorado, may be a lame duck, leaving office in less than a week. But his most important work in the Senate may still be before him. For the week he remains in office, he still sits on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. He worked on that committee’s epic, 6,700-page, still-secret report, the “Committee Study of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program,” otherwise known as the torture report. The intelligence committee has recently released a heavily redacted declassified executive summary of the report, in which new, gory details of the torture conducted during the Bush/Cheney administration have been made public for the first time.

Udall is angry about the U.S. torture program. He is angry about the heavy redaction of the executive summary, and the CIA and White House interference in the intelligence committee’s oversight work. He wants the full report made available to the public. While it is still secret, Udall could release the classified document in its entirety. To understand how, it helps to go back to 1971, the release of the Pentagon Papers and a senator from Alaska named Mike Gravel.

Syreeta McFadden: We declared in 2014 that black lives matter because we saw how often they didn’t

The great divide between black and white America will continue to insist upon itself. Racialized income inequality, the lingering effects of housing discrimination and persistent school segregation fuel the separation of communities, or at least prevent us from mixing, meeting and socializing interracially which, in turn, fuels indifference and the false narrative of a colorblind society.

Were we truly so naive to believe that post-racial America was a real thing?

We are past the point where any of us should be satisfied with flat conversations around racisms – structural or interpersonal. We are past the point that we can deflect. It’s time that we ask harder questions of ourselves and entertain – even demand – difficult answers. We shouldn’t have to have another march from Ferguson to Jefferson City to assert the personhood of black Americans in 21st century America. We can’t be afraid to talk honestly about the brutal legacy of slavery or its phantom effects that pervade every aspect of our society. We can’t be afraid to acknowledge racism for fear of being labeled racist.

We can’t rely on the reality of the Obama presidency to substitute for the deep, authentic work of interrogating who we really are, and the depths of our racial fears and biases. We cannot have to march in the streets for another year, and another, to remind America that black lives matter.

Nicholas Phillips: Missouri showed off America’s worst in 2014. Are we really this damn divided?

Missouri lore has it that in 1899, the state’s congressman Willard Duncan Vandiver averred in a speech, “Frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me.”

That’s the homespun skepticism that earned Missouri its unofficial nickname – the stuff of license plates: the Show-Me State. Folks here in the middle of America pride ourselves on a preference for facts over foolishness, deeds over declarations. But what Missourians lack is a robust self-skepticism – the ability to admit that we are wrong, or plain don’t know. And in the tumult of the past year – whether from faith- and fear-based state laws that even our most backward southern neighbors won’t enact, or the unrest and police violence in the streets of Ferguson – that character flaw was laid bare. In 2014, Missouri showed itself, and the nation, at its most benighted. [..]

More than 120 years ago, Missouri’s greatest writer and sage, Mark Twain, wrote, “Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul in this world – and never will.”

If Missouri or any other American state with similar conflicts – racial, religious, political, whatever – have any hope of healing, it lies with those who are serious and sturdy enough to ditch their petrified opinions, to embrace complexity and to absorb facts that make them uneasy. The power-elite must do it. The strong young leaders of the Ferguson protests must keep pushing them to do it, and keep doing it themselves. We’ll all be served by a healthy self-skepticism.

Sonali Kolhatkar: The Sony Hack Revealed How Hollywood Fails Us All

Whether or not North Korea was really behind the devastating Sony hack, and whether or not the U.S. government orchestrated North Korea’s Internet outage in retaliation, one thing is clear: The incident has exposed Hollywood’s serious race problem yet again. People of color are barely visible on our screens, while women’s roles are generally foils for men. When minorities and women are present, the film industry usually relies on racist and sexist tropes.

I have not seen “The Interview”-Sony Pictures Entertainment’s targeted film about a foolhardy assassination attempt on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that supposedly irked the Guardians of Peace hacker group so much, it motivated the members to devastate Sony’s servers. But even simply watching the trailer reveals that the film’s premise is perfectly in line with standard Hollywood fare that serves up comedies through the eyes of self-effacing white men whose harebrained schemes and screwball antics are expected to make audiences wish they were dumb enough to be so hip.

Pop culture defines how we as a society view ourself. It also reflects and informs our implicit biases against one another. And it has remained far behind the times. As the hue of our society continues to diversify, our TV and movie screens remain largely the domain of straight, white men.