Tag: Politics

Aug 06 2012

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

Chris Hedges:The Science of Genocide

Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.

On this day in 1945 the United States demonstrated that it was as morally bankrupt as the Nazi machine it had recently vanquished and the Soviet regime with which it was allied. Over Hiroshima, and three days later over Nagasaki, it exploded an atomic device that was the most efficient weapon of genocide in human history. The blast killed tens of thousands of men, women and children. It was an act of mass annihilation that was strategically and militarily indefensible. The Japanese had been on the verge of surrender. Hiroshima and Nagasaki had no military significance. It was a war crime for which no one was ever tried. The explosions, which marked the culmination of three centuries of physics, signaled the ascendancy of the technician and scientist as our most potent agents of death. [..]

All attempts to control the universe, to play God, to become the arbiters of life and death, have been carried out by moral idiots. They will relentlessly push forward, exploiting and pillaging, perfecting their terrible tools of technology and science, until their creation destroys them and us. They make the nuclear bombs. They extract oil from the tar sands. They turn the Appalachians into a wasteland to extract coal. They serve the evils of globalism and finance. They run the fossil fuel industry. They flood the atmosphere with carbon emissions, doom the seas, melt the polar ice caps, unleash the droughts and floods, the heat waves, the freak storms and hurricanes.

James Hansen: Climate Change is Here – and Worse Than We Thought

When I testified before the Senate in the hot summer of 1988 , I warned of the kind of future that climate change would bring to us and our planet. I painted a grim picture of the consequences of steadily increasing temperatures, driven by mankind’s use of fossil fuels.

But I have a confession to make: I was too optimistic.

My projections about increasing global temperature have been proved true. But I failed to fully explore how quickly that average rise would drive an increase in extreme weather.In a new analysis of the past six decades of global temperatures, which will be published Monday, my colleagues and I have revealed a stunning increase in the frequency of extremely hot summers, with deeply troubling ramifications for not only our future but also for our present.

Glenn Greenwald: Obama the Pioneer

The accusation that the President has failed to deliver Change is, in certain key respects, unfair

Earlier this week, The New Yorker‘s Steve Coll wrote an excellent column on President Obama’s kill list and assassination powers. Regarding the lawsuit brought by the ACLU and CCR on behalf of three American victims of Obama’s assassinations – a legal challenge which CBS News‘ Andrew Cohen called “the most important lawsuit filed so far this year” and “the most important lawsuit filed in the war on terror since President Barack Obama took office” – Coll argued that it “is to the due-process clause what the proposed march of neo-Nazis through a community that included many Holocaust survivors in Skokie, Illinois, was to the First Amendment”: “an instance where the most onerous facts imaginable should lead to the durable affirmation of constitutional principle, as Skokie did.”

Coll also pointed to “evidence ] suggesting that the Obama Administration leans toward killing terrorism suspects because it does not believe it has a politically attractive way to put them on trial,” which tracks [Noam Chomsky’s pithy observation earlier this year: “If the Bush administration didn’t like somebody, they’d kidnap them and send them to torture chambers. If the Obama administration decides they don’t like somebody, they murder them.” Coll also dissects the standard excuses offered by Obama defenders for the seizure of this power, including the moral and factual defects of the excuse that it’s acceptable to kill an accused Terrorist suspect if it’s difficult to apprehend and try him (in the Awlaki case, the Obama administration never even charged or indicted him before executing him).

Robert Kuttner: Don’t Blame Bernanke

Let’s not expect central bankers to bail out the continuing economic mess. That’s not who they are, and cheap money can only do so much to levitate a deflated economy.[..]

If you watched any of the PBS encore broadcast of the Ken Burns documentary, The War, this past week, you have some sense of what kind of a production machine can be energized by government contracts in the face of a depressed economy. There is so much that we could spend that money on — energy self sufficiency, infrastructure, a smart electrical grid, public transportation, better education at all levels — all of which would not only create economic activity and jobs, but would make for a more productive economy. But nothing like this is part of the mainstream conversation. If you propose this sort of thing, you are packed off to the Museum of Un-reconstructed Keynesians. White House economists quietly admit that you are right, but you are politically radioactive (even with a Nobel Prize.)

Eric Margolis: Drone Attacks Only Create More Enemies for the US

I was visiting Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States when the phone on his desk rang.

“The hot line,” he said. “Sorry I have to take this call.”

As he listened, his face grew darker and darker. Finally, he banged down the phone and exploded: “Another US drone attack that killed a score of our people. We were never warned the attack was coming. We are supposed to be US allies!”

This strongly pro-American ambassador was wrong. While the US hails Pakistan as a key non-NATO ally, the US treats it like a militarily occupied country. The government in Islamabad is left to observe increasing drone attacks and CIA ground operation with deepening embarrassment and helplessness.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: Happy 151st Birthday, Federal Income Tax!

Yesterday I got an email for the President’s birthday inviting me to sign an e-card (and no doubt asking for contributions, too.) The subject line, “Big Birthday,” could have been about another landmark: Today, August 5, the Federal income tax turned 151 years old.

Now that’s a big birthday. Bring out the balloons and party hats.

I can hear people saying, “Is this guy crazy? Doesn’t he pay taxes? Who likes giving up a big chunk of money?”

Yes, I pay my taxes, and there are lots of other bills on the family table. Among other things I’m a small business owner, and our ongoing “invisible recession” has taken a toll on my income. Under the circumstances I can’t say I like paying taxes. Or, more precisely, I don’t enjoy the process. But then I think about what it would cost us, financially and otherwise, not to have the Federal income tax.

It could cost seniors $30,000, $40,000 or more to buy health insurance, for example – that is, if they could afford it at all. And what would it cost to use the public highways if they’d been built for profit – $500 per year? $5,000? Then there are those things the private sector wouldn’t bother with at all, like disease prevention. I’d guess we’d just get sick more often.

When I think about that I become downright grateful. So Happy 151st Birthday, Federal income tax! May you have many more to come.

Aug 05 2012

Know the Person by the Friends They Keep

There are a lot of people who support health and safety regulations will be heartened by this man’s departure from the Obama Administration:

White House regulatory czar Cass Sunstein, an intellectual mentor to President Obama whose skeptical approach to rule-making frustated the president’s liberal allies, announced Friday he was leaving his post.

Sunstein will depart by the end of the month, officials said. He is returning to the job he left, a professorship at Harvard Law School. In addition, Sunstein will head a new Harvard program on “behavioral economics and public policy.” [..]

Sunstein heads a relatively obscure agency, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which acts as a gatekeeper for new federal regulations.

In Washington’s wonkier circles, he also has become a symbol of a central contradiction of Obama’s White House. In seeking bipartisan common ground, the administration has often embraced policies that disappointed its friends – without disarming its enemies.

Among those who won’t miss Cass is  Rena Steinzor of the Center for Progressive Reform

Cass Sunstein brought impressive credentials and a personal relationship with the President to his job as Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. But in the final analysis, Sunstein has continued the Bush Administration’s tradition of using the office to block needed health and safety protections disliked by big business and political contributors. Worse, the narrative that Sunstein helped craft about the impact of regulations on American life – that regulatory safeguards are fundamentally suspect – was discordant with the rest of the President’s agenda and the arguments he makes for his reelection.

Some of the regulations that Sunstein blocked would have reduced the level of ozone in the air, improved work place safety and protected children who live and work on farms He also reduced federal inspectors in poultry plants because of insustry complaints that it would slow down production.

While as Dan Froomkin at Huffington Post notes, Sunstein received some “warm praise”:

White House Office of Management and Budget director Jeffrey Zients credited him with helping design “numerous rules that are, among other things, saving lives on the highways by making vehicles safer and reducing distracted driving; dramatically increasing the fuel economy of the nation’s cars and trucks; protecting public health by reducing air pollution; making our food supply safer; and protecting against discrimination on the basis of disability and sexual orientation.”

But that is a modest record in the context of the wholesale deregulation during the Bush/Cheney era and the unprecedented regulatory failures of the recent past: financial crisis; the BP oil spill; the Upper Big Branch mine explosion; a bevy of food– and toy-related health scares and the imminent dangers of climate change.

But it is those who will miss him, that speak the loudest about why true progressives should rejoice at his departure:

John Graham, who ran OIRA in George W. Bush’s first term, said Sunstein was an able administrator.

“He was a strong force for creative policy solutions in a political environment that was highly polarized,” Graham said in an e-mailed statement.

Sunstein also was hailed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s largest business lobbying group, and the Business Roundtable, a Washington-based group of business executives.

“The Chamber has enjoyed a good working relationship with Cass Sunstein and we wish him well in his return to Harvard Law,” Bruce Josten, the Chamber’s executive vice president for government affairs, said in an e-mailed statement.

“Cass Sunstein will be missed,” said John Engler, the former Michigan Republican governor who is Business Roundtable president. “Cass accepted the input of business, sought balance and understood that regulations do have costs. We hope his replacement will strike the same tone.”

And this praise that just speaks volumes

“Cass Sunstein appeared to recognize the harm overly burdensome regulations inflict on economic growth and job creation – although he was not able to stop the tsunami of regulations enacted by the Obama administration,” Representative Darrell Issa of California, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said in a statement.

No one should expect President Obama will appoint someone who would be more transparent or, for that matter, less big business friendly. Nor should anyone believe that Sunstein will fade away into the academia at Harvard. There is this loathsome possibility:

Sunstein has long been rumored as a potential choice of Obama for a Supreme Court vacancy, if one were to open.

 

If you don’t think that Sunstein on the Supreme Court would be a bad idea, then read about his view of the First Amendment and free speech

Many millions of people hold conspiracy theories; they believe that powerful people have worked together in order to withhold the truth about some important practice or some terrible event. A recent example is the belief, widespread in some parts of the world, that the attacks of 9/11 were carried out not by Al Qaeda, but by Israel or the United States. Those who subscribe to conspiracy theories may create serious risks, including risks of violence, and the existence of such theories raises significant challenges for policy and law. The first challenge is to understand the mechanisms by which conspiracy theories prosper; the second challenge is to understand how such theories might be undermined. Such theories typically spread as a result of identifiable cognitive blunders, operating in conjunction with informational and reputational influences. A distinctive feature of conspiracy theories is their self-sealing quality. Conspiracy theorists are not likely to be persuaded by an attempt to dispel their theories; they may even characterize that very attempt as further proof of the conspiracy. Because those who hold conspiracy theories typically suffer from a crippled epistemology, in accordance with which it is rational to hold such theories, the best response consists in cognitive infiltration of extremist groups. Various policy dilemmas, such as the question whether it is better for government to rebut conspiracy theories or to ignore them, are explored in this light.  [..]

II. Governmental Responses

What can government do about conspiracy theories? Among the things it can do, what should it do? We can readily imagine a series of possible responses. (1) Government might ban conspiracy theorizing. (2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories. (3) Government might itself engage in counterspeech, marshaling arguments to discredit conspiracy theories. (4) Government might formally hire credible private parties to engage in counterspeech. (5) Government might engage in informal communication with such parties, encouraging them to help. Each instrument has a distinctive set of potential effects, or costs and benefits, and each will have a place under imaginable conditions. However, our main policy idea is that government should engage in cognitive infiltration of the groups that produce conspiracy theories, which involves a mix of (3), (4) and (5).

Remember when global warming was considered a “conspiracy theory”? How about that silly conspiracy theory that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11?

Aug 05 2012

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:

Up with Chris Hayes: Up with Chris Hayes is postponed for coverage of the 2012 Summer Olympics.

This Week with George Stephanopolis: This Sunday’s guests are Democratic National Committee chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., and Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus.

The roundtable will debate the latest jobs report and all the week’s politics, with ABC News’ George Will, ABC News senior political correspondent Jonathan Karl, conservative commentator Ann Coulter, former Obama White House environmental adviser Van Jones, and former Counselor to the Treasury Secretary and Lead Auto Adviser Steven Rattner.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Joining Mr. Schieffer will be TIME Magazine‘s Michael Crowley, Bloomberg‘s Julianna Goldman, CBS News Political Correspondent Jan Crawford and CBS News Congressional Correspondent Nancy Cordes.

The Chris Matthews Show: This Chris Matthews Show is postponed for coverage of the 2012 Summer Olympics.

Meet the Press with David Gregory: Meet the Press is postponed for coverage of the 2012 Summer Olympics.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: This Sunday Ms. Crowley’s guests are Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC); Obama Campaign Senior Adviser Robert Gibbs; BET Founder Bob Johnson; former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina; CNN Senior Congressional Correspondent Dana Bash; and Peter Baker of the New York Times.

Aug 03 2012

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

Gore Vidal: America the Great … Police State

The following was first published July 28, 2009.

For those of us who had hoped that the Obama administration would present us with a rebirth of the old republic that was so rudely erased a few years ago by that team of judicial wreckers, Bush and Gonzales, which led, in turn, to a recent incident in Cambridge, Mass. that inspired a degree of alarm in many Americans. But what was most alarming was the plain fact that neither the president nor a “stupid” local policeman seemed to understand the rules of behavior in a new America, where we find ourselves marooned as well as guarded (is that the verb?) by armed police who have been instructed that they are indeed, once armed, the law and may not be criticized verbally or in any other way and are certainly not subject to any restrictions as to whom they arrest or otherwise torment.

This is rather worse than anyone might have predicted, even though the signs have been clear for some years that ours is now a proto-fascist nation and there appears to be no turning back; nor, indeed, much awareness on the part of our ever-alert media. Forgive me if you find my irony heavy, but I too get tired of carrying it about in “the greatest nation in the country,” as Spiro Agnew liked to say.

New York Times Editorial: A Pernicious Drive Toward Secrecy

In response to recent news media disclosures about the so-called kill list of terrorist suspects designated for drone strikes and other intelligence matters, the Senate Intelligence Committee has approved misguided legislation that would severely chill news coverage of national security issues

Drafted in secret without public hearings, the provisions are part of the intelligence authorization bill for fiscal 2013. If enacted, the bill would undermine democracy by denying Americans access to information essential to national debate on critical issues like the extent of government spying powers and the use of torture.

Under the measure, only the director, deputy director and designated public affairs officials of intelligence agencies would be permitted to “provide background or off-the-record information regarding intelligence activities to the media.” Briefings on sensitive topics by lower-level or career officials, who are not quoted by name, would be prohibited, shutting off routine news-gathering and exchanges that provide insight into government policies. None of these traditional press activities compromise the nation’s safety. There is no exception carved out for whistle-blowers or other news media contacts that advance the public’s awareness of government operations, including incidents of waste, fraud and abuse in the intelligence sphere.

Paul Krugman: Debt, Depression, DeMarco

There has been plenty to criticize about President Obama’s handling of the economy. Yet the overriding story of the past few years is not Mr. Obama’s mistakes but the scorched-earth opposition of Republicans, who have done everything they can to get in his way – and who now, having blocked the president’s policies, hope to win the White House by claiming that his policies have failed.

And this week’s shocking refusal to implement debt relief by the acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency – a Bush-era holdover the president hasn’t been able to replace – illustrates perfectly what’s going on.

Some background: many economists believe that the overhang of excess household debt, a legacy of the bubble years, is the biggest factor holding back economic recovery. Loosely speaking, excess debt has created a situation in which everyone is trying to spend less than their income. Since this is collectively impossible – my spending is your income, and your spending is my income – the result is a persistently depressed economy.

Amy Goodman: The Obama Administration Torpedoes the Arms Trade Treaty

Quick: What is more heavily regulated, global trade of bananas or battleships? In late June, activists gathered in New York’s Times Square to make the absurd point, that, unbelievably, “there are more rules governing your ability to trade a banana from one country to the next than governing your ability to trade an AK-47 or a military helicopter.” So said Amnesty International USA’s Suzanne Nossel at the protest, just before the start of the United Nations Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which ran from July 2 to July 27. Thanks to a last-minute declaration by the United States that it “needed more time” to review the short, 11-page treaty text, the conference ended last week in failure.

There isn’t much that could be considered controversial in the treaty. Signatory governments agree not to export weapons to countries that are under an arms embargo, or to export weapons that would facilitate “the commission of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes” or other violations of international humanitarian law. Exports of arms are banned if they will facilitate “gender-based violence or violence against children” or be used for “transnational organized crime.” Why does the United States need more time than the more than 90 other countries that had sufficient time to read and approve the text? The answer lies in the power of the gun lobby, the arms industry and the apparent inability of President Barack Obama to do the right thing, especially if it contradicts a cold, political calculation.

John Nichols: A Presidential Candidate Willing to Get Arrested to Fight Foreclosure Abuse

It is not quite true that a third-party presidential candidate has to get arrested to get attention from the media. Dr. Jill Stein, the Green Party’s nominee for the presidency this year, has gotten her share of attention-in part because she is a genuinely impressive contender, in part because her campaign has been strikingly focused and professional in its approach.

But Stein got a good deal of attention Wednesday for a good reason. She was busted with fellow Greens and activists from the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign outside the Philadelphia office of Fannie Mae, the government-backed mortgage lender that is foreclosing on precisely the people it is supposed to help.

Most politicians avoid saying-let alone doing-anything of consequence regarding the foreclosure crisis. But Stein, her vice presidential running-mate (Cheri Honkala, who last year mounted a campaign for sheriff in Philadelphia as part of an anti-foreclosure fight), labor lawyer James Moran and Sister Margaret McKenna of the Medical Mission Sisters were arrested after attempting to gain access to the Fannie Mae office through an adjacent financial institution on Philadelphia’s “Bankers Row.”

The charge was one that any activist would be proud of: “defiant trespassing.”

Jodi Jacobson: Ninth Circuit Court Blocks Arizona’s Extreme Abortion Ban

As women across the country celebrate the first day of coverage without co-pays of a wide range of preventive care services, including contraception without a co-pay, health and rights groups are fighting in the courts to maintain access to safe abortion care at the state level.

And yesterday afternoon, they won a battle in that fight.

On Wednesday afternoon, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit blocked enforcement of Arizona’s 20-week abortion ban, signed into law earlier this year by Governor Jan Brewer. On Monday night, the Center for Reproductive Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union filed an emergency appeal with the Ninth Circuit Court seeking an injunction blocking the law from going into effect tomorrow, after a district court judge refused to do so.

The bill is considered by many to be the most restrictive ban in the nation, and may present a direct challenge to Roe. Based on false claims that a fetus at 20-weeks’ gestation can feel pain, it criminalizes virtually all abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy and contains only narrow exceptions for medical emergencies, forcing a physician caring for a woman with a high-risk pregnancy to wait until her condition poses an immediate threat of death or major medical damage before offering her the care she needs.

Aug 03 2012

You Know It’s Bad

You know it’s bad when even the neo-conservatives admit it.

American Enterprise Institute: U.S. Austerity Measures Hurting Broader Economy

Austerity lovers of the world take note: Cutting government spending hurts the economy and it’s not just the Paul Krugmans of the world that say so.

The American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank, has some data out indicating that cutting government spending may be off-setting private sector growth. That’s notable, especially when coming from an organization with the motto “Freedom. Opportunity. Enterprise.”

Public sector GDP — a measure of the goods and services produced by the government — has shrunk for eight consecutive quarters, according to AEI. At the same time, private sector growth has increased for 12 quarters in a row, indicating that America’s slow overall GDP growth may mostly be a result of a drop in government spending.

In just the last year, federal spending has fallen more than 3 percent, and the cuts may be countering private-sector growth, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The findings show that slashing government spending may not exactly be the best way to boost the economy, even though that’s exactly what lawmakers around the world are considering. That some of the data comes from conservative-leaning AEI adds fuel to the arguments of progressive economists, who argue that painful austerity measures don’t help economies in trouble; they hurt them.

Would somebody please wake up and smell the coffee?  

Aug 02 2012

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

Gail Collins: For God, Texas and Golf

Texas Republicans have just nominated a Senate candidate who is promising to protect America’s golf courses from the United Nations.

This is not actually the most important point about Ted Cruz, the Tea Party favorite who scored a dramatic upset victory over the state’s lieutenant governor on Tuesday. But we don’t really need to go over his basic agenda because you can pretty much guess it. (Hint: cutspendingshrinkgovernmentrepealObamacare.) Also, he memorized the Constitution in high school. And he wants to abolish the Internal Revenue Service.

But about golf: In a blog posting early this year, Cruz vowed that as senator he would fight against “a dangerous United Nations plan” on environmental sustainability that he said was aimed at abolishing “golf courses, grazing pastures and paved roads.” He blamed all this on the Democratic financier-philanthropist George Soros.

Gore Vidal: We Are the Patriots

The following essay appeared in the June 2, 2003 edition of The Nation magazine, and we reprint it today following news that Gore Vidal died yesterday at the age of 86.

I belong to a minority that is now one of the smallest in the country and, with every day, grows smaller. I am a veteran of World War II. And I can recall thinking, when I got out of the Army in 1946, Well, that’s that. We won. And those who come after us will never need do this again. Then came the two mad wars of imperial vanity–Korea and Vietnam. They were bitter for us, not to mention for the so-called enemy. Next we were enrolled in a perpetual war against what seemed to be the enemy-of-the-month club. This war kept major revenues going to military procurement and secret police, while withholding money from us, the taxpayers, with our petty concerns for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

But no matter how corrupt our system became over the last century–and I lived through three-quarters of it–we still held on to the Constitution and, above all, to the Bill of Rights. No matter how bad things got, I never once believed that I would see a great part of the nation–of we the people, unconsulted and unrepresented in a matter of war and peace–demonstrating in such numbers against an arbitrary and secret government, preparing and conducting wars for us, or at least for an army recruited from the unemployed to fight in. Sensibly, they now leave much of the fighting to the uneducated, to the excluded.

Matt Stoller: Obama’s Second Term Agenda: Cutting Social Security, Medicare, and/or Medicaid

This is probably the least important Presidential election since the 1950s. As an experienced political hand told me, the two candidates are speaking not to the voters, but to the big money. They hold the same views, pursue the same policies, and are backed by similar interests. Mitt Romney implemented Obamacare in Massachusetts, or Obama implemented Romneycare nationally. Both are pro-choice or anti-choice as political needs change, both tend to be hawkish on foreign policy, both favor tax cuts for businesses, and both believe deeply in a corrupt technocratic establishment.

So while the election lumbers on like the death rattles of the wounded animal known American democracy, no one on either side is asking what the plan is for the next term. For Obama, his team is going into rooms of donors and shouting “Supreme Court”, while mumbling something about bipartisanship and $4 trillion, or Simpson-Bowles. What this means is that term two of the Obama White House will be organized around cutting entitlements.

Glen Ford: Romney and the “Culture” of White Supremacy

“For the Mormon American multimillionaire, human destiny and divine will are revealed in macroeconomic data.” But Mitt Romney’s assertion that Palestinian underdevelopment is proof of Israeli cultural superiority is no more racist than the usual celebrations of western wealth, power and so-called “civilization.” In the U.S., most whites view economic disparities between races “as more a natural phenomenon than evidence of cumulative injustice.”

White supremacy is Mitt Romney’s religion, although I’d be willing to bet he has not uttered the epithet “nigger” since reaching adulthood. For Romney and his ilk, it is axiomatic that God’s blessings are manifest in the world through the distribution of wealth. Had God not favored Europeans, He would never have allowed them to expropriate the vast bulk of the Earth’s bounty. They have prospered because their ways are righteous – or, in more modern, secular terms, they possess a superior “culture.”

Jim Hightower: A Wall Street Devil Gets Religion … and an Apt Epitaph

Hallelujah and Holy Smokes! Wall Street has had a “come to Jesus” moment – the biggest sinner on the Street has repented!

He is Sandy Weill, the once-lionized dealmaker who turned our banks into financial “supermarkets” that tie us everyday depositors and Main Street borrowers to the profiteering schemes of unbridled Wall Street traders and the whims of global speculators. Thanks, Sandy – for nothing.

Beginning in the late 1980s, Weill went on a decade-long merger binge, taking over Travelers Insurance, Smith Barney, Aetna, Solomon Brothers and other powerhouses of high finance, culminating in 1998 with his grabbing of Citibank. The whole empire was named Citigroup, Weill was paid a king’s ransom, and his conglomerated entity was widely hailed as a work of genius. Only one problem: It was illegal.

George Zornick: It’s Time for Obama to Fire DeMarco-Will He?

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac won’t reduce the principal of underwater homeowners-FHFA head Edward DeMarco made that official yesterday. Despite the fact that FHFA analysts concluded this week that forgiving certain mortgage debts could save public money, DeMarco said yesterday he would not allow it because of the “costs and risks”-he is particularly concerned that people might strategically default to qualify for help. [..]

Progressives have been pushing hard on the White House to replace DeMarco-and now that DeMarco has dug himself in, why not do that, especially now that he has gone through the motions of considering and then denying write-downs.

Many progressive critics of the administration correctly note that for years, the administration opposed principal reduction too, and has only recently come around to it. So was that a true policy evolution, or political theatre in an election year? Forcing in an FHFA chief who will do principal reduction-or failing to install that person-would go a long way to answering that question.

Aug 01 2012

How To Lose a Slam Dunk

What was should have been an open and shut case against a mid-level executive with Citibank over the banks’s sale of risky collateralized debt obligations (CDO) somehow was lost by Security and Exchange Commission lawyers.

The Securities and Exchange Commission had accused Brian Stoker, a former midlevel Citigroup executive, with negligence related to his role in creating exotic mortgage securities known as collateralized debt obligations, or C.D.O.’s. In a lawsuit filed last October, the government said that Mr. Stoker, who prepared sales materials for C.D.O.’s, knew or should have known that he was misleading investors by not disclosing that Citigroup helped select the underlying mortgage securities in the C.D.O. and then placed a large bet against it.

The jury rejected the S.E.C.’s case, concluding that Mr. Stoker was not liable under the securities laws. In addition to handing up its verdict, the jury also issued an unusual statement.

“This verdict should not deter the S.E.C. from investigating the financial industry, to review current regulations and modify existing regulations as necessary,” said the jury’s statement, which was read aloud in the courtroom by Judge Jed S. Rakoff, who presided over the two-week trial in Federal District Court in Manhattan.

Citibank has already entered an agreement to pay $285 million to settle a civil suit filed by the SEC about the CDO’s. As part of the agreement, Citibank would not have to admit to any wrong doing. Judge Rakoff has rejected that deal and told the parties to prepare for a trial. That ruling is being appealed.

Mr. Stoker’s lawyer depicted him as a “scapregoat” who was merely doing what he was told. Stoker knew full well that the CDO’s were very risky but failed to warn investors who lost over a billion dollars, but he was following instruction from the higher ups. Seriously? The Nuremberg defense is now acceptable?

As Yves Smith observes the SEC showed abject incompetence in prosecuting Stoker:

The SEC’s performance in the case at issue, SEC v. Stoker, was such a total fail that the odds are high that any motivated member of the top half of the NC readership would have done a better job of arguing this case pro se than the SEC did. Even though this case was argued before a jury (ooh, scary! They might go into My Eyes Glaze Over mode on CDO details), the basic issues were simple. The CDO squared that Citigroup director Brian Stoker marketed to investors was presented as having its assets selected by an independent asset manager. This is crucial. Just as investors in mutual funds understand they are hiring a fund management firm, and they compete on track records, so to were managed CDOs sold on the notion that the managers were serving the interests of the investors. And this is particularly important for CDOs, since the fact that the final asset list is made available shortly before closing makes it pretty much impossible for investors to evaluate a CDO on their own even if they had the skills and motivation. [..]

So what did the SEC’s strategy appear to be? This seems to have been a parallel to the approach in the Goldman suit against Goldman’s Fabrice Tourre: to target an non-executive and get him to roll the higher ups. But Tourre and Stoker were both enough made men to be willing to fight. Stoker had a $2.2 million guarantee for 2007. Guys like that do not want to lose their access to the industry meal ticket.

So what was Stoker’s defense? That he was being scapegoated, and Citi should really be on trial. Huh? In prosecutions, whether other parties are being charged is irrelevant. The question at hand is: did the party on trial engage in the conduct in question or not? Saying, “I was only the car driver in the robbery, I didn’t enter the convenience store” does not get you off of being an accessory to a crime. It’s pretty bloomin’ obvious that Stoker misrepresented the deal to investors. He had held securities industry licenses; he knew what the standards were.

It’s fairly obvious from day one of this entire case against Citibank that the SEC was trying very hard to let them off the hook. It is past time that the SEC was staffed with people who are more willing to regulate the banks and up hold the law. I have some heavy doubts that will ever happen under this administration or any other, now or in the future.

Aug 01 2012

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”.

Wednesday is Ladies’ Day

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Yves Smith: Will Romney Repeat the Palin Strategy and Choose Florida’s Attorney General Pam Bondi for VP?

The woman who punted on the foreclosure crisis makes the short list. Word is, she’s dumber than Palin.

This election, despite Romney’s shambolic Presidential campaign (his London gaffes were epic), he’s running neck and neck with Obama. The fact that he has any hope is due to Obama’s fealty to big corporate interests, particularly banks, and his neoliberal instincts. In early 2009, with the financiers cowed and desperate, and the country eager for a new direction, Obama could have taken far more decisive steps to right the economy. But again and again, Obama has sold out ordinary citizens, from folding on a proposal to end the preferential treatment of incomes of private equity magnates (they structure their deals to get capital gains treatment when they have no capital at risk), to pushing through a mortgage settlement that did perilous little for borrowers but served as a back door bailout to banks, or his enriching Big Pharma and the health care insurer though the ACA.

But Romney may be determined to snatch defeat from the jaws of a possible victory. Business Insider reports that the newest addition to the list of possible VP candidates is…Florida’s Pam Bondi. We’ve refrained from writing about her at NC merely because there seemed to be far more important targets. But contrast her conduct as the AG of one of the ground zeros of the foreclosure crisis, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada. Shortly after the robosigning scandal broke, Masto got legislation passed that made it a crime (a felony) to file improper paperwork with the courts, subject to 10 years in jail and fines of $10,000 per violation. (Note that this legislation did not change the legal requirement for foreclosure; it simply criminalized failure to comply. What did Bondi do? She fired two staffers in her office who were taking document fraud seriously.

New York Times Editorial: Three Rulings Against Women’s Rights

At a time when abortion rights and women’s access to affordable contraception are threatened by political attacks, judges in three newly decided federal cases failed to preserve constitutional protections for women.

On Monday, Judge James Teilborg of the United States District Court in Phoenix upheld an Arizona law signed by Gov. Jan Brewer in April that bans all abortion procedures at 20 weeks from a woman’s last menstrual period, which is about 18 weeks after fertilization.

It is the most aggressive of the previability abortion bans passed recently by a handful of states. It defies binding Supreme Court precedent that prevents states from banning abortions before a fetus can survive outside the womb, which generally occurs at about 24 weeks.

Margaret Nosek: Happy Birthday to Medicare

With all the commotion surrounding the Supreme Court and the Affordable Care Act (ACA), it would be easy to overlook an important birthday: Today is the 47th anniversary of Medicare, the public health insurance program that covers our nation’s seniors and people with severe disabilities.

It’s a birthday that deserves to be celebrated, including here in the Lone Star State. Medicare provides 48 million Americans – about 3 million of them in Texas – with reasonably good access to health care, thereby easing their suffering, prolonging their lives, and reducing financial pressures on them and their families. Before Medicare was enacted in 1965, most retired older people were at risk of financial ruin when they got sick. Medicare changed that picture, and our state and nation are much better for it.

The Medicare program is not perfect, of course. It has burdensome co-pays and deductibles, and its benefits could be better. But it remains immensely popular, and it’s not hard to figure out why. A new study in the journal Health Affairs found that “Medicare beneficiaries age 65 and older are more satisfied with their health insurance, have better access to care, and are less likely to have problems paying medical bills than working-age adults who get insurance through employers or purchase coverage on their own.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

Like a caveman frozen in a glacier, Mitt Romney is a man trapped in time – from his archaic stance on women’s rights to his belief in Herbert Hoover economics.

And now it appears his foreign policy is stuck in the past, as well. [..]

Romney’s world is one of special relationships, particularly with Britain, Israel and Poland – the three nations he’s visiting. It’s also a world of special enmities – against Iran – and unending suspicions – about China and Russia. For Romney, there are three types of countries: countries that are with us; countries that are against us; and countries that will be against us, sooner or later.

If this seems like foreign policy out of a 20th-century history book – or the George W. Bush neocon playbook – that’s because it is. A President Romney wouldn’t bring about “another American century.” Rather, he would return us to some of the worst policies of the last century.

Jennifer Granholm: Fiscal cliff dive only way out

“Going over a cliff” sounds deadly. Free fall. Air below. The landing could spell disaster.

Or it could bring a cool blast of sweet relief.

The Congress is staring over a fiscal cliff. One that we’re warned will pull down our nation on Dec. 31 if there’s no agreement to extend the Bush tax cuts or avert automatic spending cuts that Congress agreed to in the debt ceiling debate in the summer of 2011 – cuts weirdly named, like the title monster in a B horror film, “The Sequester.” The Sequester will kidnap a helpless victim, with the initials D.C., and threaten to push her over the cliff. Bwaahahahaha!

The fiscal cliff is exciting to both actuaries and Democrats. The Congressional Budget Office and many progressives, including Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), see the cliff as an opportunity: If Grover Norquist-induced pledge intransigence prevents House Speaker John Boehner’s tea party caucus from compromising, the rational solution is to allow the tax cuts to expire and the sequester cuts to take place – then resolve the problem immediately after the new Congress begins on Jan. 3, 2013.

Bryce Covert: Will Women Get Pushed Off the Fiscal Cliff?

Remember that time when Congress almost defaulted on our debt? It may seem like a distant nightmare, but we’re still living with repercussions from the debt ceiling showdown. In order to get Congress to lift the ceiling a year ago, President Obama struck a deal that will cut $2.4 trillion in spending over ten years and formed a Congressional committee that was supposed to recommend ways to cut another $1.5 trillion from the deficit. If the committee failed to come up with the cuts, sequestration would kick into gear, with $1 trillion in cuts evenly split between defense and non-defense spending come January 2. The latter never came to fruition, so we’re now on a collision course with the former.

These automatic cuts, known as sequestration, have (unsurprisingly) become a political hot potato. They’ve even trickled into the campaign trail. But if the cuts move forward, the pain won’t just be political. They’ll hurt everyday Americans-but not across the board. Women are going to shoulder a disproportionate amount of the burden. While the defense lobby has been loudly pushing back on the $500 million to be slashed from its budgets, the $500 million cuts from domestic programs could be devastating, especially for women.

Maureen Dowd: Gadding of a Gawky Gowk

When Barack Obama went abroad in July 2008, searching for some foreign policy cred, European leaders smothered him with love and respect.

More than 200,000 Germans thronged to the Victory Column in Berlin, hailing him as “Redeemer” and “Savior.” In a joint press conference in Paris, a smitten Nicolas Sarkozy was so touchy-feely that even Obama looked a little embarrassed.

“You must want a cigarette after that,” I teased Obama on the plane to London later.

Poor Mitt Romney had no such magic carpet ride. He insulted the British and infuriated the Palestinians while pandering to the Israelis and American Jewish voters, including donors like the Las Vegas billionaire Sheldon Adelson who tagged along.

Aug 01 2012

Humans Did It

A skeptical physicist ends up confirming climate data

by Brad Plumer

Back in 2010, Richard Muller, a Berkeley physicist and self-proclaimed climate skeptic, decided to launch the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project to review the temperature data that underpinned global-warming claims. Remember, this was not long after the Climategate affair had erupted, at a time when skeptics were griping that climatologists had based their claims on faulty temperature data.

Muller’s stated aims were simple. He and his team would scour and re-analyze the climate data, putting all their calculations and methods online. Skeptics cheered the effort. “I’m prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong,” wrote Anthony Watts, a blogger who has criticized the quality of the weather stations in the United Statse that provide temperature data. The Charles G. Koch Foundation even gave Muller’s project $150,000 – and the Koch brothers, recall, are hardly fans of mainstream climate science.

So what are the end results? Muller’s team appears to have confirmed the basic tenets of climate science. Back in March, Muller told the House Science and Technology Committee that, contrary to what he expected, the existing temperature data was “excellent.” He went on: “We see a global warming trend that is very similar to that previously reported by the other groups.” And, today, the BEST team has released a flurry of new papers that confirm that the planet is getting hotter. As the team’s two-page summary flatly concludes, “Global warming is real“.

While Prof Muller admitted that global warming was very real, he was still a skeptic as to its cause. Until now:

The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic

by Richard A. Muller

CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.

My total turnaround, in such a short time, is the result of careful and objective analysis by the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, which I founded with my daughter Elizabeth. Our results show that the average temperature of the earth’s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases.

(Richard A.) Muller’s research was intended to prove the opposite. The physicist and his team even took the most common arguments raised by climate deniers, putting them to the test to see if skeptics’ claims had merit. It’s why the Kochs got out their checkbook in the first place.

But Muller is now telling his benefactors what they don’t want to hear (a.k.a., the truth): the climate crisis is real and it’s caused by human activity. Whether humanity chooses to deal with the reality of the crisis remains to be seen, but we can’t say we weren’t warned.

Jul 31 2012

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

Dean Baker: The CEO Plan to Steal Your Social Security and Medicare

Many people are following the presidential election closely with the idea that the outcome will have a major impact on national policy. However, according to Steven Pearlstein, a veteran Washington Post columnist and reporter, it may not matter who wins the election. In a column last week, Pearlstein told readers that the top executives of some of the country’s largest companies are getting together to craft a budget package that they will try to push through Congress and get the president to sign. [..]

Many of the same folks who brought the economy to ruin just a few years ago are now going to come up with a plan that is supposed to set the budget and the economy on a forward path. At the center of their proposal are big cuts in Social Security and Medicare.

Robert Reich: The Terrible Economy and the Anti-Election of 2012

The worst economy since the Great Depression and you might think at least one of the candidates would come up with a few big ideas for how to get us out of it.

But you’d be wrong. Neither candidate wants to take any chances by offering any large, serious proposals. Both are banking instead on negative campaigns that convince voters the other guy would be worse.

President Obama has apparently decided against advancing any bold ideas for what he’d do in the second term, even if he has a Congress that would cooperate with him.

He’s sticking to a worn script that says George W. Bush caused the lousy economy, congressional Republicans have opposed everything he’s wanted to do to boost it, it’s slowly on the mend anyway, the Bush tax cuts shouldn’t be extended for the rich, and we shouldn’t take a chance electing Romney.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: The GOP/Lockheed Martin “Layoff Notice” Hoax – We’ll Need Some “E. Coli Notices” If It Succeeds

The defense fatcats and their Republican kittens in Congress are up in arms – metaphorically speaking,of course – over the possibility that an agreement which the GOP signed might actually take effect as agreed.

They hate when then happens. So they’re cooking something up that could create big problems for your wallet … not to mention your digestive tract.

Republicans routinely express contempt at the thought of using government funds to save jobs. But when it comes to defense spending, they want us to know that government funds should be used to save jobs. For their part, defense contractors just want our money. So, in what appears to be a coordinated plan, Lockheed Martin is threatening to send out fraudulent “layoff notices” to over one hundred thousand employees, while its minions in Congress simultaneously demand that the Pentagon do the same.

David Shuster: Yes, Protecting the Social Safety Net Is a Political Winner

As Republicans target America’s social safety net, a top Democrat is now urging colleagues to join the fight, describing Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security as “winners.”

Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), Co-Chair of the House Task Force on Seniors, spoke with reporters today to mark the 47th anniversary of Medicare. She said, “If everybody took a deep breath and looked at the reality of how this is going to help them and their families, this is a great issue for us to campaign on.” [..]

Congresswoman Schakowsky was a member of the Simpson-Bowles Commission and voted against the co-chairs’ plan. She knows that it would be bad policy to cut Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare, and even worse politics. Democrats should follow her lead: Instead of running away from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, they should run toward the programs and vow to protect them. It’s an approach that will win in November and strengthen our society.

Colin A. Carter and Henry I. Miller: Corn for Food, Not Fuel

IT is not often that a stroke of a pen can quickly undo the ravages of nature, but federal regulators now have an opportunity to do just that. Americans’ food budgets will be hit hard by the ongoing Midwestern drought, the worst since 1956. Food bills will rise and many farmers will go bust.

An act of God, right? Well, the drought itself may be, but a human remedy for some of the fallout is at hand – if only the federal authorities would act. By suspending renewable-fuel standards that were unwise from the start, the Environmental Protection Agency could divert vast amounts of corn from inefficient ethanol production back into the food chain, where market forces and common sense dictate it should go.

Robert Fisk: Syrian War of Lies and Hypocrisy

The West’s real target here is not Assad’s brutal regime but his ally, Iran, and its nuclear weapons

Has there ever been a Middle Eastern war of such hypocrisy? A war of such cowardice and such mean morality, of such false rhetoric and such public humiliation? I’m not talking about the physical victims of the Syrian tragedy. I’m referring to the utter lies and mendacity of our masters and our own public opinion – eastern as well as western – in response to the slaughter, a vicious pantomime more worthy of Swiftian satire than Tolstoy or Shakespeare. [..]

And all the while, we forget the “big” truth. That this is an attempt to crush the Syrian dictatorship not because of our love for Syrians or our hatred of our former friend Bashar al-Assad, or because of our outrage at Russia, whose place in the pantheon of hypocrites is clear when we watch its reaction to all the little Stalingrads across Syria. No, this is all about Iran and our desire to crush the Islamic Republic and its infernal nuclear plans – if they exist – and has nothing to do with human rights or the right to life or the death of Syrian babies. Quelle horreur!

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