Tag: Politics

Nov 19 2014

Can the US political system deal with climate change?

The American “system” has been a bit tardy in its response to climate change. Experts tell us that the longer it takes to make needed changes, the more difficult it will be to make them.

As 350.org’s Bill McKibben puts it:

We’re talking about a fight between human beings and physics. And physics is entirely uninterested in human timetables. Physics couldn’t care less if precipitous action raises gas prices, or damages the coal industry in swing states. It could care less whether putting a price on carbon slowed the pace of development in China, or made agribusiness less profitable.

Physics doesn’t understand that rapid action on climate change threatens the most lucrative business on Earth, the fossil fuel industry. It’s implacable. It takes the carbon dioxide we produce and translates it into heat, which means into melting ice and rising oceans and gathering storms. And unlike other problems, the less you do, the worse it gets.  Do nothing and you soon have a nightmare on your hands.

We could postpone healthcare reform a decade, and the cost would be terrible — all the suffering not responded to over those 10 years. But when we returned to it, the problem would be about the same size. With climate change, unless we act fairly soon in response to the timetable set by physics, there’s not much reason to act at all.

Unless you understand these distinctions you don’t understand climate change — and it’s not at all clear that President Obama understands them.

There are lots of reasons why the response of the system has been so slow. There is significant resistance in the system to the sort of changes that need to be made. That resistance has manifested itself in a number of ways, from President Obama using the spies at the NSA to kill global agreements on climate change to the bipartisan popularity of climate change denial in Congress, the media and the public relations industry, despite virtually indisputable scientific evidence.

Resistance is created by a variety of groups based on their perceived interests. Enormously wealthy, powerful corporations and individuals who want to preserve their profits from fossil fuels and related industries, people who rely on jobs created or enabled by fossil fuel industries, people who fear economic chaos and the loss of their comforts due to actions to stop climate change, and politicians whose fortunes depend upon the money and other resources of the fossil fuel industry are some huge sources of systemic inertia.

Nov 18 2014

Fighting Big Money in Politics

This past election saw the lowest voter turn out in 70 years, This happened for a number of reasons, one of which was uninspiring candidates who offered little to no policy agenda, voter fatigue (boredom?) and new voter ID laws that suppressed voters. Another factor that may have effected turn out was the $4 billion that was spent on this campaign flooding the airways with uninspired advertising that turned people off and the lack of an unbiased, independent media. Many candidates couldn’t get their message to the voters because they didn’t have the money for campaign ads and the corporate owned media, with its own agenda, favored certain candidates.

This week Bill Moyers spoke with two academics who got involved this election attempting to spark public interest without the big money. They related their experiences and the lessons they learned about the state of the American democracy.

Lawrence Lessig, who teaches law at Harvard, is a well-known Internet activist and campaign finance reform advocate. This election cycle, he started a crowd-funded SuperPAC aimed at reducing the influence of money in politics. Lessig tells Bill: “Our democracy is flat lined. Because when you can show clearly there’s no relationship between what the average voter cares about, only if it happens to coincide with what the economic elite care about, you’ve shown that we don’t have a democracy anymore.”

Zephyr Teachout, a professor of constitutional and property law at Fordham Law School, ran against New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary. She received more than a third of the vote and carried 30 of the state’s 62 counties, surprising everyone – including Cuomo. “When you talk about the corruption in Congress, people are talking about the same thing that Madison was talking about. This sense that our public servants are just serving themselves,” Teachout tells Bill.

Nov 18 2014

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Trevor Timm: If you thought the Isis war couldn’t get any worse, just wait for more of the CIA

Even America’s top spies know that arming rebels is ‘doomed to failure’ – but that can’t stop Obama’s gun-running operation

As the war against the Islamic State in Syria has fallen into even more chaos – partially due to the United States government’s increasing involvement there – the White House’s bright new idea seems to be to ramping up the involvement of the intelligence agency that is notorious for making bad situations worse. As the Washington Post reported late Friday, “The Obama administration has been weighing plans to escalate the CIA’s role in arming and training fighters in Syria, a move aimed at accelerating covert U.S. support to moderate rebel factions while the Pentagon is preparing to establish its own training bases.”

Put aside for a minute that the Central Intelligence Agency has been secretly arming Syrian rebels with automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, ammunition and antitank weapons since at least 2012 – and with almost nothing to show for it. Somehow the Post neglected to cite a front-page New York Times article from just one month ago alerting the public to the existence of a still-classified internal CIA study admitting that arming rebels with weapons has rarely – if ever – worked: [..]

The Times cited the most well-known of CIA failures, including the botched Bay of Pigs invasion and the arming of the Nicaraguan contra rebels that led to the disastrous Iran-Contra scandal. Even the agency’s most successful mission – slowly bleeding out the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s by arming the mujahideen – paved the way for the worst terrorist attack on the US in its history.

Dean Baker: The Problem of ‘Stupid’ in Economics

M.I.T. Professor Jonathan Gruber has inadvertently become a YouTube celebrity as a result of a video of him referring to the public as “stupid.” The immediate point of reference was the complexity of the design of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which Gruber was describing as being necessary politically in order to deceive the public. With the right-wing now in a state of near frenzy after the Republican election victories, the Gruber comment was fresh meat in their attack on the ACA.

Apart from merits of the ACA, there is something grating about seeing a prominent economist refer to the American public as “stupid.” After all, the country and the world have suffered enormously over the last seven years because the leading lights of the economic profession were almost completely oblivious to the largest asset bubble in the history of the world. [..]

There is some truth to Gruber’s comment in that most people are ill-informed about major public policy issues, including health insurance. This is in large part due to the fact that, unlike Gruber, most people have day jobs. They put in their shift at work and then often have child care and other family responsibilities. Most of them probably don’t have much time to read the Congressional Budget Office’s latest report on the health care system.

But even worse, when people do take the time to get informed, the media let them down badly. Stories even in the best of outlets, like the New York Times and National Public Radio, often present information in ways that are misleading and often meaningless to nearly all readers.

Les Leopold: We Are the Most Unequal Society in the Developed World… And We Don’t Know It

The American people have spoken. But what did we really say about inequality?

At first glance, it seems that extreme inequality mattered little to the majority of voters who put pro-business candidates into office. After all, the Republicans, along with far too many Democrats, are certain to cater to their Wall Street/CEO donors. Do Americans really want an ever rising gap between the super-rich and the rest of us? [..]

Americans are virtually blind to the growing gap between CEO pay and the pay of the average worker. As the chart below shows that gap has increased dramatically. In 1965, for every dollar earned by the average worker, CEOs earned 20 dollars. By 2012, that gap mushroomed to 354 to one.

Zoë Carpenter: Senate Democrats Are About to Do Something Truly Stupid

In a cockeyed attempt to save one of their own, Senate Democrats are poised to do something truly stupid. Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu, after failing to win enough votes to avoid a runoff in her Senate race, is centering her prolonged bid for re-election on a bill to fast-track the Keystone XL pipeline. Democrats have long blocked such legislation in the Senate, but all of a sudden they’ve decided to bring it up for a vote, likely before Thanksgiving.

The decision is both hypocritical and irrational. Landrieu’s victory or loss will not alter the balance of the Senate. More importantly, there is no evidence to suggest that passing a pro-KXL bill will improve Landrieu’s chances in the runoff, where she faces Representative Bill Cassidy, a Republican who is just as pro-Keystone as she is. (He sponsored the House version of Landrieu’s bill, and the lower chamber is scheduled to vote Friday.) Landrieu’s entire re-election campaign centered on her being big oil’s best friend; voters know that already, and it wasn’t enough.

Joe Conason: Immigration, Impeachment and Insanity on the Republican Right

Obstructing, denouncing and demonizing Barack Obama are so central to the existence of the Republican Party today that its leaders simply ignore the real purposes of the president’s proposed immigration orders. So someone should point out that his imminent decision will advance priorities to which the Republican right offers routine lip service: promoting family values, assisting law enforcement, ensuring efficient government and guarding national security.

Much of the argument for immigration reform-and, in particular, the president’s proposed executive orders-revolves around the imperative of compassion for immigrant families. That is a powerful claim-or should be, at least, for the self-styled Christians of the Republican right. If they aren’t moved by empathy for struggling, aspiring, hardworking people, however, then maybe they should consider the practicalities.

America is not going to deport millions upon millions of Latino immigrants and their families to satisfy tea party prejudices, even if that were possible. Attempting to do so would be a gigantic waste of taxpayers’ money, an unwelcome burden on thousands of major employers and an inhumane disgrace with international consequences, none of them good. It might or might not be “legal,” but it would surely be stupid.

Dave Zirin: New NBA Union Chief Michele Roberts Slams the League’s Old Labor Practices

The labor movement slogans that have guided generations include “an injury to one is an injury to all” and “solidarity forever.” But my favorite-because it speaks most directly to strategy-is, “The best way to avoid a strike is to prepare for one.” In other words, bosses will only back down and blink if they survey your side and think that they can lose.

That is why anyone who cares about the rights of labor on the highest possible public platform has to be inspired by the recent comments of new NBA Players Association Executive Director Michele Roberts. In an interview with Pablo Torre of ESPN the Magazine, Roberts took a step back from the decades of established labor practices that have governed sports and basically said, “This is bullshit.” [..]

Make no mistake what this is about. The league is about to be engorged by television revenue, $24 billion over six years, as live sports has become the tent pole of commercial television in our live streaming and DVR’d universe. Roberts is sending a shot across the bow that the owners will not be the primary beneficiaries of this broadcast bonanza and they will no longer, as she put it, “control the narrative.”

Nov 17 2014

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Steven Rattner: nequality, Unbelievably, Gets Worse

THE Democrats’ drubbing in the midterm elections was unfortunate on many levels, but particularly because the prospect of addressing income inequality grows dimmer, even as the problem worsens.

To only modest notice, during the campaign the Federal Reserve put forth more sobering news about income inequality: Inflation-adjusted earnings of the bottom 90 percent of Americans fell between 2010 and 2013, with those near the bottom dropping the most. Meanwhile, incomes in the top decile rose. [..]

Perhaps income disparity resonated so little with politicians because we are inured to a new Gilded Age.

But we shouldn’t be. Nor should we be inattentive to the often ignored role that government plays in determining income distribution in each country.

Here’s what’s rarely reported:

Before the impact of tax and spending policies is taken into account, income inequality in the United States is no worse than in most developed countries and is even a bit below levels in Britain and, by some measures, Germany.

However, once the effect of government programs is included in the calculations, the United States emerges on top of the inequality heap.

Trevor Timm: First Snowden. Then tracking you on wheels. Now spies on a plane. Yes, surveillance is everywhere

The US government’s secret airborne dragnet is just the latest tool to snoop on your phone. Why aren’t we stopping this?

US government-owned airplanes that can cover most of the continental United States are covertly flying around the country, spying on tens of thousands of innocent people’s cellphones. It sounds like a movie plot, but in a remarkable report published on Thursday, the Wall Street Journal exposed that these spy planes are part of an actual mass surveillance program overseen by the Justice Department (DOJ). And it’s been kept secret from the public for years.

The Journal explained that the US Marshals Service, a sub-agency under DOJ’s control, has a small fleet of Cessna airplanes that are currently armed with high-tech surveillance gear called “dirtboxes” – essentially fake cell towers tricking your phone into connecting to them – that can vacuum the identifying information and location of ten of thousands of phones in a single flight. [..]

You might ask: Why are the US Marshals – the fugitive-chasing agents of Tommy Lee Jones lore – get the authority to launch this type of mass surveillance operation at all? That’s unclear, but thanks to some digging by the surveillance crowd on Twitter shortly after the Journal published its story, we know the marshals are far from the only US agency using dirtboxes.

Sam Pizzigati: Some ‘Old’ News for a Newly Elected Congress

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has just released its latest appraisal of America’s income breakdown. Whatever yardstick you use, the CBO shows, the rich are winning. Big.

How much income do America’s households take in? How much do they have left after taxes? Do federal taxes leave the nation less or more unequal?

Questions don’t get much more basic than these. Or more complicated either.

How, for instance, do we define income? Everyone agrees, of course, that anything anyone collects from a paycheck should count as income. As should any interest collected from a bank account or any profits from the sale of an asset.

But what about the money an employer shells out to cover an employee’s health insurance premiums? Or contributes into an employee’s 401(k)? Should these dollars be counted as income for the employee?

Calculating how much taxes people pay can pose similar puzzlers. How do we treat the taxes corporations pay on their income? Who in the end bears that burden? Shareholders? Consumers?

Paul Krugman: When Government Succeeds

The great American Ebola freakout of 2014 seems to be over. The disease is still ravaging Africa, and as with any epidemic, there’s always a risk of a renewed outbreak. But there haven’t been any new U.S. cases for a while, and popular anxiety is fading fast.

Before we move on, however, let’s try to learn something from the panic.

When the freakout was at its peak, Ebola wasn’t just a disease – it was a political metaphor. It was, specifically, held up by America’s right wing as a symbol of government failure. The usual suspects claimed that the Obama administration was falling down on the job, but more than that, they insisted that conventional policy was incapable of dealing with the situation. Leading Republicans suggested ignoring everything we know about disease control and resorting to extreme measures like travel bans, while mocking claims that health officials knew what they were doing.

Guess what: Those officials actually did know what they were doing. The real lesson of the Ebola story is that sometimes public policy is succeeding even while partisans are screaming about failure. And it’s not the only recent story along those lines.

Will Hutton: Banking is changing, slowly, but its culture is still corrupt

The latest financial scandal indicates how hard it is to stamp out double-dealing when bankers are allowed to live by their own rules

Another week, another financial scandal. Six global banks, including RBS and HSBC, were fined £2.6bn last week for rigging the foreign exchange markets. Since 2008, total fines levied in Europe and the US for banking crimes and misdemeanours now top £100bn, with banks making provision for a further £60bn. British banks alone have set aside an estimated £30bn for fines, provisions and litigation costs.

What has gone wrong with western finance?

The systemic ripping off of customers continued after the financial crisis to constitute what is now the biggest-ever global corporate scandal. Banks worldwide duped clients into buying products that were either not needed or provided no purpose. Worse, they organised financial markets whose purpose was to serve their own interests rather than those they purported to serve. It has proved a hard habit to break.

Robert Kuttner: Notes for Next Time: From Turnoff to Turnout

The voting turnout in this year’s congressional and gubernatorial elections was the lowest since 1942. Much of the story was in young people, poor people, black and Hispanic citizens who tend to support Democrats voting in far lower numbers than in 2008 or 2012. The Democrats just weren’t offering them very much.

But the other part of the Election Day story was older voters and the white working class, especially men, deserting the Democrats in droves — again, because Democrats didn’t seem to be offering much. Republicans, at least, were promising lower taxes.

Turnout on average dropped from 2012 by a staggering 42 percent. But as Sam Wang reported in a post-election piece for the American Prospect, the drop-off was evidently worse for Democrats.

The two parts of this story seem to create an impossible conundrum for Democrats: Do more for minorities and the poor, and you presumably risk driving social conservatives even further into the arms of Republicans. But ignore the needs of those who need more government activism — and the Democratic base fails to turn out.

Nov 16 2014

Punting the Pundits: Sunday Preview Edition

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

The Sunday Talking Heads:

This Week with George Stephanopolis: The guests on Sunday’s “This Week” are Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) and  Rep. Tom Cole(R-OK).

The roundtable guests are Democratic strategist Donna Brazile; Republican strategist Ana Navarro; and ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Schieffer’s guests are: Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT); Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO);  Director of National Intelligence James Clapper; Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; and former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

Meet the Press with Chuck Todd: Sunday’s MTP guests are: Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R).

The political roundtable guests are: Former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, Carly Fiorina; Reid Wilson, The Washington Post; Helene Cooper, The New York Times; and Chris Matthews, MSNBC host.

Guests on the health panel are: Neera Tanden, Center for American Progress; Avik Roy, Opinion Editor, Forbes; and Dr. Toby Cosgrove, President and CEO, Cleveland Clinic.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Ms. Crowley’s guests are: Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL); Sen. Al Franken (D-MN); and Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-CA).

Her panel guests are S.E. Cupp, LZ Granderson, Penny Lee and Mercedes Schlapp .

Nov 14 2014

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

New York Times Editorial Board: Race, Politics and Drawing Maps

The Supreme Court Hears an Alabama Case on the Voting Rights Act

As long as politicians are entrusted with drawing legislative maps, they will use their pen to gain partisan advantage. Courts generally do not interfere with that process, but there are limits to this where race is involved. The problem is figuring out which motive – race or partisanship – underlies the redistricting. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court considered this issue in a thorny case that could have significant implications for the future of the Voting Rights Act.

The main legal question before the justices was whether Alabama lawmakers had paid too much attention to race when they redrew the state’s district lines.

The 1965 voting law requires states to create districts where minorities can elect candidates of their choice, specifically in places where whites and blacks tend to pick different candidates. That’s clearly the case in Alabama, where, in 2008, Barack Obama received 98 percent of the black vote and 10 percent of the white vote.

Paul Krugman: China, Coal, Climate

It’s easy to be cynical about summit meetings. Often they’re just photo ops, and the photos from the latest Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting, which had world leaders looking remarkably like the cast of “Star Trek,” were especially cringe-worthy. At best – almost always – they’re just occasions to formally announce agreements already worked out by lower-level officials.

Once in a while, however, something really important emerges. And this is one of those times: The agreement between China and the United States on carbon emissions is, in fact, a big deal.

To understand why, you first have to understand the defense in depth that fossil-fuel interests and their loyal servants – nowadays including the entire Republican Party – have erected against any action to save the planet.

Glenn Greenwald: Cynics, Step Aside: There is Genuine Excitement Over a Hillary Clinton Candidacy

It’s easy to strike a pose of cynicism when contemplating Hillary Clinton’s inevitable (and terribly imminent) presidential campaign. As a drearily soulless, principle-free, power-hungry veteran of DC’s game of thrones, she’s about as banal of an American politician as it gets. One of the few unique aspects to her, perhaps the only one, is how the genuinely inspiring gender milestone of her election will (following the Obama model) be exploited to obscure her primary role as guardian of the status quo.

That she’s the beneficiary of dynastic succession – who may very well be pitted against the next heir in line from the regal Bush dynasty (this one, not yet this one) – makes it all the more tempting to regard #HillaryTime with an evenly distributed mix of boredom and contempt. The tens of millions of dollars the Clintons have jointly “earned” off their political celebrity – much of it speaking to the very globalists, industry groups, hedge funds, and other Wall Street appendages who would have among the largest stake in her presidency – make the spectacle that much more depressing (the likely candidate is pictured above with Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein at an event in September).

But one shouldn’t be so jaded. There is genuine and intense excitement over the prospect of (another) Clinton presidency. Many significant American factions regard her elevation to the Oval Office as an opportunity for rejuvenation, as a stirring symbol of hope and change, as the vehicle for vital policy advances…

David Sirota: Wall Street Takes Over More Statehouses

No runoff will be needed to declare one unambiguous winner in this month’s gubernatorial elections: the financial services industry. From Illinois to Massachusetts, voters effectively placed more than $100 billion worth of public pension investments under the control of executives-turned-politicians whose firms profit by managing state pension money.

The elections played out as states and cities across the country debate the merits of shifting public pension money-the retirement savings for police, firefighters, teachers and other public employees-from plain vanilla investments such as index funds into higher-risk alternatives like hedge funds and private equity funds.

Critics argue that this course has often failed to boost returns enough to compensate for taxpayer-financed fees paid to the financial services companies that manage the money. Wall Street firms and executives have poured campaign contributions into states that have embraced the strategy, eager for expanded opportunities. The election results affirmed that this money was well spent: More public pension money will now likely be entrusted to the financial services industry.

Robert L. Borosage: More Than the Minimum: Obama’s Next Executive Action

With a stroke of the pen, the president can have a dramatic effect on the lives of Lewis and millions of workers, leveraging not only the $1 trillion in spending on federal contracts, but setting an example that will accelerate similar action at the state and local level.

The choice here is a simple one. President Obama has held up Costco as an example of a good jobs employer that is remarkably successful. It pays its workers a decent wage with good benefits, doesn’t reward its CEO obscene bonuses, and respects workers’ rights. In stark contrast, Walmart pays its workers so little that taxpayers end up paying billions to subsidize their low wages and lousy benefits. Clearly, the federal government should be standing on the side of good employers rather than rewarding exploitative ones that layoff part of their costs on taxpayers.

Last week’s election showed that Americans are unhappy with a recovery that does not include them. A Hart poll for the AFLCIO showed that more than four out of five voters (87 percent) reported that they were sinking or treading water in this economy.

Democrats paid the price for that discontent. The big winners, even in red states like Arkansas and Nebraska, were initiatives to raise the minimum wage and guarantee sick leave.

Richard (RJ) Eskow : Bill Clinton’s Out of Touch Economically — and That’s a Big Deal

He’s eloquent, he’s popular … and he’s out of touch with the daily lives of most Americans. Bill Clinton’s economic worldview spells trouble, both for a party that’s still reeling from defeat and for a nation where millions of people struggle just to make ends meet.

Hillary Clinton, the heavily-favored contender for the Democratic nomination, has made Bill’s presidency and her role in it an essential part of her resume. But “Clintonism,” the Wall Street-friendly economic ideology of a bygone era, has passed its sell-by date. The former president’s latest remarks confirm that.

The 1990s are over. This is a different country now, both economically and politically. But the presumptive nominee’s partner and most important colleague still holds views which are sharply at odds with both economic reality and the nation’s mood. That’s a big deal. His opinions could have a profound impact on our political and economic future.

If Hillary Clinton disagrees with the former president’s views, she hasn’t said so.

Nov 14 2014

America’s War on the Homeless

There appears to be a war on the homeless and needy in certain states and not just the red ones:

To Clear Waikiki For Tourists, Hawaii Gives 120 Homeless People A One-Way Ticket Out Of State

by Bryce Covert, November 10, 2014

Hawaii’s Institute for Human Services (IHS) is beginning a $1.3 million campaign to clear the homeless out of Waikiki, a big spot for tourists, after businesses have complained that the homeless are hurting tourism.

The majority of the money will be used for intensive outreach services to connect the homeless with shelter, employment, and medical services. IHS’s goal is to move 140 people into shelters or housing in the first year.

But it also plans to fly back to the mainland United States another 120 people, who will be identified through a vetting process it says is aimed at making sure they have a plan in place when they get there. “We found out that many [Waikiki homeless] are transient who made a choice to become homeless, as well as people who became homeless shortly after arriving in Hawaii,” said Kimo Carvalho, development and community relations manager for IHS.

Last year, state lawmakers $100,000 in funding to give Hawaii’s homeless population one-way flights out of the state back to the mainland. But Gov. Neil Abercrombie (D) refused to release the funding amid concerns that people would fly to the state and expect a free ticket home.

Fort Lauderdale Votes To Make It Harder To Feed The Homeless, Joining Two Dozen Other Cities

by Alan Pyke, October 22, 2014

A few hours before dawn on Wednesday morning, city counselors in Fort Lauderdale, FL passed a bill to make it harder to feed the homeless. Amid raucous protests from activists, the council voted 4-1 in favor of a long-pending slate of new regulations on where and how groups can provide food to homeless people.

The vote makes the south Florida city the 13th in the country to pass restrictions on where people can feed the homeless in the past two years, and the 22nd town to make it harder to feed homeless people through either legislation or community pressure since the beginning of 2013, according to a report released Monday by the National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH).

Counting towns that are still in the process of advancing some sort of crackdown, NCH says, 31 American cities “have attempted to pass new laws that restrict organizations and individuals from sharing food with people experiencing homelessness” in 2013 and 2014.

Florida City Will Throw Homeless People In Jail For Asking For Money

by Scott Keyes, November 10, 2014

Lake Worth, FL, a city of approximately 35,000 people just south of West Palm Beach, voted last week to impose a crackdown on homeless people who ask passersby for spare change.

Ordinance No. 2014-34 was approved by a unanimous vote on November 4th. The new law bans panhandling on city-owned property, such as near bus stops, ATMs, and other downtown areas, as well as on private property without express permission. According to the Palm Beach Post, “That covers most of downtown,” effectively banning all panhandling in the area where homeless people would be able to raise the most money.

The measure also bans “aggressive panhandling,” a nebulous term that theoretically prohibits panhandling in a threatening manner, though in reality is so subjective it gives authorities free rein to crack down on any homeless person asking for money.

If a homeless person is convicted under the new law, he or she could face as much as 60 days in jail or a $500 fine.

California City Bans Homeless From Sleeping Outside: If They Leave, ‘Then That’s Their Choice’

by Bryce Covert, November 10, 2014

Last week, the city council of Manteca, CA unanimously passed two ordinances aimed at clearing out the homeless population.

One will ban people from sleeping or setting up encampments on any public or private property as of December 4, although the homeless won’t be jailed or fined. It will, however, allow the police to tear down any homeless sleeping areas as soon as they appear without having to be invited by the property owner, as was the case previously.

Explaining why the ordinance is necessary, Police Chief Nick Obligacion said, “The goal is actually to correct the wrong. So, if the correction is them leaving Manteca, then that’s their choice.” He also opposes any sort of shelter for the homeless.

The other ordinance bans public urination and defecation, but also comes after the city temporarily closed public restrooms in a park, a location often used by the homeless to relieve themselves in private.

90-Year-Old Man Arrested In Florida For Feeding The Homeless

by Scott Keyes, November 6, 2014

There are a lot of strange local ordinances in this country. But perhaps none are stranger than the one that resulted in the arrest of a nonagenarian for giving food to hungry people.

Last month, Ft. Lauderdale city officials passed a new measure to crack down on people feeding the homeless. On Sunday, two days after the new law went into effect, Arnold Abbott, 90, a longtime advocate for the homeless and regular volunteer at a local soup kitchen, was arrested for the crime of giving food to the needy. He now faces up to 60 days in jail and a $500 fine. Two local pastors were also arrested and face the same potential sentences.

Nov 13 2014

Net Neutrality May Soon Be Dead, Thank You, Mr. President

The headline in the Washington Post, “Obama’s call for an open Internet puts him at odds with regulators“, is misleading. Yes, President Obama made one of his flowery speeches supporting a free and equal internet but he was the one who appointed  industry lobbyist Thomas Wheeler to head the Federal Communications Commission.

The dissonance between Obama and Wheeler has the makings of a major policy fight affecting multibillion-dollar industries. The president wants clear rules to prevent Internet service providers from auctioning the fastest speeds to the highest bidders, a scenario that could favor rich Web firms over start-ups.

Wheeler, a former lobbyist for the cable and telecommunications industry, has floated proposals that aim to limit the ability of service providers to charge Web companies, such as Netflix or Google, to reach their customers. But critics have argued that his approach would give the providers too much leeway to favor some services over others. [..]

But the move by the White House has put Wheeler in an uncomfortable spotlight. The two men have long been allies. Wheeler raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Obama’s campaign and advised the president on his transition into the White House. Obama last year appointed Wheeler to lead the FCC as it was poised to tackle its biggest issue in years – the rules that govern content on the Web.

A growing source of frustration for White House and congressional Democrats is that they have three of their own on the five-member commission at the FCC, a majority that should give them the power to push through a policy of their liking. But if Wheeler charts a different course, he could bring the other members along with him.

And, as Wheeler reminded participants at his meeting with Web companies Monday, the FCC does not answer to the Obama administration.

The article states that Obama campaigned on Net Neutrality and, according to aides, made the statement to energize his base of  young, tech-savvy progressives. Seriously? He does this now, after the drubbing in the mid-terms? Now Obama wants to curry support of the Democrats in Congress. What happened during the last six years?

And don’t forget, he appointed Wheeler because they’re friends.

Obama Calls for Net Neutrality, But His Own Industry-Tied FCC Appointee Could Stand in the Way

According to The Washington Post, Wheeler met with officials from Google, Yahoo and Etsy on Monday and told them he preferred a more nuanced solution. Wheeler reportedly said: “What you want is what everyone wants: an open Internet that doesn’t affect your business. What I’ve got to figure out is how to split the baby.” On Monday, protesters called on Wheeler to favor net neutrality as they blockaded his driveway when he attempted to go to work. Protests also took place in a dozen cities last week after The Wall Street Journal reported the FCC is considering a “hybrid” approach to net neutrality. This would apply expanded protections only to the relationship between Internet providers and content firms, like Netflix, and not to the relationship between providers and users. We discuss the ongoing debate over the Internet’s future with Steven Renderos of the Center for Media Justice.



The transcript can be read here

There is only one person to blame if the FCC sides with the industry, Barack Hussein Obama, shill for the 1%.

Nov 13 2014

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Bill de Blasio: Don’t Soul-Search. Stiffen Your Backbone.

It’s a time-honored tradition.

After months of covering the midterm elections through a prism of polls and tactics, pundits will shift their focus to the defeated party’s so-called season of “soul-searching.”

As a Democrat, I’m disappointed in last Tuesday’s results. But as a progressive, I know my party need not search for its soul — but rather, its backbone.

The truth is that the Democratic Party has core values that are very much in sync with most Americans. [..]

So where do Democrats go from here?

The 2016 presidential election is two years off, but will have a huge impact on the lives of America’s middle-class and poor. Democrats simply cannot rely on shifting demographics and a badly damaged Republican brand to hold the White House and help countless Americans who are struggling.

We must demonstrate, from coast to coast, that we are a party dedicated to lifting people out of poverty; one committed to building a bigger and more durable middle-class; one that is unafraid to ask a little more from those at the very top — the wealthy individuals and big corporations who have not only rebounded from the depths of the Great Recession, but who’ve accumulated record new wealth.

Trevor Timm: Watch out: the US government wants to pass new spying laws behind your back

Dangerous cybersecurity legislation would allow Google and Facebook to hand over even more of your information to the NSA and FBI

Never underestimate the ability of the “do-nothing” US Congress to make sure it passes privacy-invasive legislation on its way out the door. In December 2012, the Senate re-upped the NSA’s vast surveillance powers over the holidays when no one was paying attention. In December 2013, Congress weakened video-rental privacy laws because Netflix asked them to and nobody noticed.

Now, as the post-election lame-duck session opens on Wednesday in Washington, the Senate might try to sneak through a “cybersecurity” bill that would, as the ACLU puts it, “create a massive loophole in our existing privacy laws”. The vague and ambiguous law would essentially allow companies like Google and Facebook to hand over even more of your personal information to the US government, all of which could ultimately end up in the hands of the NSA and the FBI.

The House already passed a version of this bill earlier in the year, and the White House, despite vowing to veto earlier versions, told reporters an “information sharing” cybersecurity bill was on its list of priorities for the lame-duck session (while NSA reform is not).

David Cay Johnston: A ray of sunlight on secretive corporate welfare

Tell the Government Accounting Standards Board you want full disclosure on tax subsidies for corporations

Each year billions of your state and local tax dollars get diverted from public coffers for corporate subsidies. Just how much you are forced to pay for corporate welfare could soon move from the darkness of official secrecy into the light – but only if you act now.

A proposed rule requiring state and local governments to disclose the total amount of property tax and some other abatements in any year is being considered by the little-known private rule-making body known as the Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB).

In 44 states, laws let county, city and other local officials grant tax reductions or exemptions to companies, often with little disclosure and no accountability. Exemptions from taxes benefit thousands of companies, from online retailer Amazon to shampoo maker Zotos International.

The proposal is tepid and narrow, but far better to let in a ray of light than to allow these deals the cover of total darkness in which they are typically carried out.

Dean Baker: Obama should devote final years to changing economic conversation

Intransigent Republican Congress and pro-austerity know-nothings need to have their views challenged

Presidents are rarely able to accomplish much in the last two years of a second term. Tuesday’s election results guaranteed that President Barack Obama will not be able to accomplish anything legislatively in the remainder of his term. The Republicans will demand that he surrender his firstborn just to get an undersecretary through the Senate approval process.

If Obama recognizes this reality, perhaps he can take the opportunity to spend his remaining years more constructively by permanently transforming the shape of the economic debate in the United States and overseas. [..]

By making it very clear that Obama can accomplish nothing by working with Congress, the elections last week put him in a situation where he has nothing to lose. This gives him the opportunity to step away from the Washington political nonsense and try to permanently change the nature of economic debates domestically and internationally.

If he succeeds, he will have done an enormous service to the country and the rest of the world. He can create a political environment in which his successors can talk honestly about the country’s economic problems and then work to fix them.

Scott Lemieux: In a divided America, partisan and race-based redistricting are indistinguishable

When the vast-majority of minority voters identify as Democrat, drawing Congressional lines based on party affiliation will have a racial component

One of the most profane parts of American democracy is the act of gerrymandering – which is to say, redrawing the boundaries of congressional districts less to reflect population shifts than to ensure the electoral results your party prefers. But like the word “fuck”, we’ve become so inured to gerrymandering that even in its ugliest incarnation – the “motherfucker” of all gerrymandering, if you will, racial gerrymandering – the scourge hardly registers as an epithet at all.

At the US supreme court on Wednesday, in a seemingly boring case about the particulars of this most insidious problem, chief justice John Roberts said he understood that states “have to hit this sweet spot between those two extremes without taking race predominantly into consideration”.

In other words, redrawing district boundaries to benefit Republicans over Democrats in party gerrymandering is totally legal (the “sweet spot”). Redrawing them to disenfranchise black voters instead of white voters are both a disgusting misuse of political power and illegal racial gerrymandering … even if the results – the diminution of minority voters’ electoral power – are the same. But then again, using semantics to avoid addressing racism is exactly the problem with a conservative Roberts court that has been gutting voter rights for going on two years now.

Jeb Lund: A flu shot won’t make Ebola go away, but it might kill our anti-doctor hysteria

Finally, something anti-vaxxers and smug liberal elitists can agree upon

Last month, I became a father for the first time, and with parenting has come a slew of unanticipated responsibilities. Did you know that you have to shop for a pediatrician? I had hoped someone looked at Google Maps and assigned the one closest to you. (They don’t.)

So with a new baby in hand and Ebola and annual flu shots in the news, I found myself asking a bunch of unfamiliar baby doctors a question I never thought I’d have to ask a medical professional: “How do you feel about vaccines?”

My first prospective doctor looked at me, bit her lip and squirmed, so I bailed her out and said, “Look, don’t get me wrong: herd immunity is extremely my shit.” She visibly relaxed then because conversations like that – and about Ebola – often turn rapidly and radically in the opposite direction. [..]

This is the state of our science conversation: hyped non-dangers, self-created unnecessary dangers, being wrong about the facts both coming and going. Polls still suggest that Ebola is a greater threat and that the authorities are deliberately doing less than they can to fight it; meanwhile, the measles have reached a 20-year high and parents are saying, Screw it, let’s roll the dice on Madison and Tyler getting some – at least it’ll be something to write about in that 17-page brick of a Christmas form letter we’ll send out printed in Comic Sans.

Nov 12 2014

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Wednesday is Ladies’ Day.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Katrina vanden Heuvel: Republicans will now taste their bitter harvest

In the early 3rd century B.C., after King Pyrrhus of Epirus again took brutal casualties in defeating the Romans, he told one person who offered congratulations, “If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined.” In his more sober moments, Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), about to achieve his lifelong ambition of becoming Senate majority leader, may wonder whether he, too, has achieved a pyrrhic victory.

Republicans are still crowing about the sweeping victories in 2014 that give them control of both houses of Congress. They will set the agenda, deciding what gets considered, investigated and voted on. Their ideas will drive the debate.

But Republicans have no mandate because they offered no agenda. Republicans reaped the rewards of McConnell’s scorched-earth strategy, obstructing President Obama relentlessly, helping to create the failure that voters would pin on the party in power. But the collateral damage is that the “party of ‘no’ ” has no agreement on what is yes. Instead of using the years in the wilderness to develop new ideas and a clear vision, Republicans have used them only to sharpen their tongues, grow their claws and practice their backhands.

Sarah Jaffe: The secret to raising the minimum wage may be to stop trusting Democrats

Voters said yes to wage increases at the ballot box – even in the most conservative places. What now?

In too many places, elected Democrats have failed – with or without Republican obstruction – to stand up for working people, especially when it comes to raising the minimum wage.

But if you think it’s weird that voters turned out last week to support liberal ballot initiatives like minimum-wage increases and paid sick-time laws – even in red states like Arkansas and Alaska – while simultaneously casting their ballots for all those Republican legislators and governors, think again: the devil is really in the details – and the GOP just pulled a fast one on worker’s rights. [..]

The “minimum wage economy” is all too real for far too many people, many of whom long ago lost hope that the politicians for whom they’re supposed to take time off work (and, in many cases, forfeit pay) to elect will do anything for them – and turnout was the lowest since World War II. But a minimum-wage ballot initiative seems like a relatively easy sell for Americans, and this year’s election results indicate that many people don’t even think of it as much of a partisan issue anymore.

Wenonah Hauter: Standing by Those Who Stand in the Way of Fracking Infrastructure

It all began taking shape back in March of 2013, when Sandra Steingraber – the noted biologist, author, educator and advisor of Americans Against Fracking – and 11 other courageous individuals were arrested for blockading the entrance to a natural gas compressor station on the banks of Seneca Lake, in the environmentally sensitive Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. These so-called “Seneca Lake 12” were simply doing what countless other Americans have done over generations when they knew their health and safety were threatened, when their elected leaders weren’t there to help, and when they had no other choice: they stood up for their neighbors, their families and themselves, and were hauled off to jail. Sandra spent 10 days behind bars after defiantly refusing to pay a fine.

The narrative of the Seneca Lake 12 is becoming all too familiar, as concerned residents across the nation are often finding no legal means of resistance against the incessant development of dangerous fossil fuel infrastructure spurred on by fracking. Thanks to the decimation of campaign finance laws by the U.S. Supreme Court, state and federal politicians have become increasingly bought off by the unlimited wealth of the oil and gas industry. As such, pleas from desperate local officials and community groups to reject hazardous infrastructure projects fall on deaf ears.

Amanda Marcotte: If anti-feminists believe false rape accusations are common, why don’t they warn men to protect themselves?

Having read, sadly, a shocking number of people who engage in rape apology, one of the weirdest things about it is how the same person can simultaneously argue 1) that rape isn’t real but is simply women getting revenge because they didn’t get a post-one-night-stand phone call and 2) that women only have themselves to blame if they’re victimized because they partied/willingly had sex/wore something slutty. This seems like a contradiction to me because if women aren’t actually under real threat of rape, why would they have to take precautions? If rape isn’t a thing that happens, then there’s no reason to be careful.

But the contradiction really goes deeper than that, I realized upon reading about Lincoln University president Robert R. Jennings’s lecture to young women about their supposedly awful behavior around men. Jennings was trotting out the usual rape-isn’t-real-but-it’s-on-women-to-stop-the-thing-we-don’t-call-rape contradictory argument, but his argument really drove home how nonsensical it all is.

Maya Schenwar: Prisons Are Destroying Communities and Making All of Us Less Safe

Isolation does not “rehabilitate” people. Disappearance does not deter harm. And prison does not keep us safe.

“Prison,” writes Angela Davis, “performs a feat of magic.” As massive numbers of homeless, hungry, unemployed, drug-addicted, illiterate, and mentally ill people vanish behind its walls, the social problems of extreme poverty, homelessness, hunger, unemployment, drug addiction, illiteracy, and mental illness become more ignorable, too. But, as Davis notes, “prisons do not disappear problems, they disappear human beings.” And the caging and erasure of those human beings, mostly people of color and poor people, perpetuates a cycle in which large groups are cut off from “mainstream society” and denied the freedoms, opportunities, civic dignity, and basic needs that allow them a good life.

In many jails and prisons, incarcerated people are tossed into a dank, dungeon-like solitary confinement cell when they are determined to have “misbehaved.” It’s dubbed “the Hole.” Isolated and dark, it shuts out almost all communication with fellow prisoners and the outside. Guards control the terms of confinement and the channels-if any-by which words can travel in and out. The Hole presents a stark symbol of the institution of prison in its entirety, which functions on the tenets of disappearance, isolation, and disposability. The “solution” to our social problems-the mechanism that’s supposed to “keep things together”-amounts to destruction: the disposal of vast numbers of human beings, the breaking down of families, and the shattering of communities. Prison is tearing society apart.

Stephennie Mulder: The blood antiquities funding ISIL

The sale of illegal antiquities is now estimated to be ISIL’s second-largest revenue stream after oil.

Recently, in an exclusive event at New York’s Metropolitan Museum, Secretary of State John Kerry stood – with perhaps unintended irony – before the facade of the ancient Egyptian Temple of Dendur to back an initiative to track losses of Syrian and Iraqi antiquities, including the destruction of monuments and looting of precious objects from archaeological sites.

Kerry blamed “barbaric” practices of groups like the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), who profit by sponsoring highly organised groups of looters who sell the objects, fresh from the ground, to middlemen.

But one might ask: Who buys them?

It’s politically advantageous to blame ISIL. But it is another barbarism, one that unfolds in the hushed and elegant showrooms of antiquities merchants and auction houses in the Middle East, Europe and the United States, that is the true engine of this commerce.

Antiquities trafficking is a booming business in Syria and Iraq, and not only ISIL is to blame. Syrian government forces have been filmed piling delicately carved funerary statues from Roman-era Palmyra into the back of a pick-up truck, and at the ancient site of Apamea, a capital of the successors to Alexander the Great, the sudden appearance of a vast, lunar landscape of over 4,000 illegal excavation holes indicate it was also looted while under the army’s control.

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