Tag: Politics

Dec 29 2011

Montanans Move To Recall Congressional Delegation

Montana residents William Crain, an artist and Stewart Rhodes, an attorney, have launched a petition to recall the state’s congressional delegation, Sen. Max Baucus (D), Sen. Jonathan Tester (D) and Rep. Denny Reberg (R) over their vote for the National Defense Authorization Act that explicitly authorized the indefinite detention of terrorism suspects, including American citizens. Montana is one of nine states that has provisions to recall its elected federal officials. Under the Montana Recall Act all state officials in Montana are subject to recall for physical or mental lack of fitness, incompetence, violation of the oath of office, official misconduct, or conviction of a felony offense. The Montana petitions (there is one for each of the three), states the following “reason for recall”:

   1. “The Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees all U.S citizens: “a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed…”

   2.  The National Defense Authorization Act of 2011 (NDAA 2011) permanently abolishes the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial, “for the duration of hostilities” in the War on Terror, which was defined by President George W. Bush as “task which does not end” to a joint session of Congress on September 20, 2001.

   3.  Those who voted Aye on December 15th, 2011, Bill of Rights Day, for NDAA 2011 have attempted to grant powers which cannot be granted, which violate both the spirit and the letter of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

   4.  The Montana Recall Act stipulates that officials including US senators can only be recalled for physical or mental lack of fitness, incompetence, violation of the oath of office, official misconduct, or conviction of a felony offense.

   5. Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act reads in substance: “Congress affirms that the authority of the President to detain …A person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda…or associated forces…including any person who has…directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces…The disposition of a person…may include…Detention…without trial until the end of the hostilities…”

   6. “Substantial support” of an “associated force” may imply citizens engaged in innocuous, First Amendment activities.  Direct support of such hostilities in aid of enemy forces may be construed as free speech opposition to U.S. government policies, aid to civilians, or acts of civil disobedience.

   7. Section 1021 reads: “Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect existing law.”  But “existing law” may be construed to refer to Padilla v. Rumsfeld in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld the government’s claim of authority to hold Americans arrested on American soil indefinitely.

   8. Thus Senators Bacus, Tester, and Congressman Rehberg who voted Aye on December 15th, 2011, Bill of Rights Day, for NDAA 2011 have violated his Oath of Office to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution which guarantees all citizens the right to a jury trial “In all criminal prosecutions.”

According to the press release, Mr. Rhodes stated:

These politicians from both parties betrayed our trust, and violated the oath they took to defend the Constitution. It’s not about the left or right, it’s about our Bill of Rights. Without the Bill of Rights, there is no America. It is the Crown Jewel of our Constitution, and the high-water mark of Western Civilization. [..]

Two time Medal of Honor winner Marine General Smedley Butler once said “There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights.” Time to fight.

It’s not clear if the courts will allow states to recall their federal politicians. It hasn’t gotten very far in the past. In 1967, a recall campaign was waged against Sen Frank Church by Ron Rankin, a Republican county commissioner in Kootenai County in northern Idaho. The U.S. District Court for Idaho ruled that the state’s recall laws did not apply to U.S. senators and that such a recall would violate the U.S. Constitution. Since Idaho’s State Attorney General Alan Shephard decided to accept the court’s ruling, writing that “It must be pointed out that a United States senator is not a state officer but a federal officer whose position is created by Article I, Section I of the United States Constitution. There seems to be no provision for canvassing the votes of a recall election of a United States senator.”

However, it can be argued that since there is no provision provided in the Constitution to recall members of congress, that right is preserved for the states under the 10th Amendment which states:  

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Leaving Mr. Rhodes’ affiliation with The Oath Keepers, a group that has been criticized in the past for adopting extremist views and language, and for their supposed ties to white supremacist and militia groups, the petition drive does have some merits. If successful, it could lead to other states passing laws to provide for the recall of elected federal officers who think that the Constitution is quaint. Good luck to them and perhaps good riddance to Baucus, Tester and Reberg.

Dec 28 2011

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

Amanda Marcotte: 2011: The War on Contraception

The year 2011 will be remembered by reproductive rights supporters as the year that the anti-choice movement really turned up the aggression, destroying the objections of moderate liberals who thought that pro-choice activists were being hysterical little ladies with our constant warnings about anti-choicers.

Up until late 2010, you could still find many a liberal who would argue that conservatives “don’t really” want to ban abortion, but instead dangle the promise of doing so in front of a bunch of religious zealots to get their votes. Now those liberals realize the religious zealots actually exert quite a bit of control, in both their direct control over the Republicans and their ability to make the Democrats jump around nervously.

Up through 2010, you could find many liberals who would laugh condescendingly when you would point out that the anti-choice movement not only wants to ban abortion, but has an eye out for destroying access to contraception, as well. No one is laughing at the supposedly hysterical ladies anymore. Turns out, we were right all along, and everyone knows it, including the White House.

H. Patricia Hynes: Women are the Biggest Losers: Reflecting on the War in Iraq

In the third week of December 2011, a confluence of political events profoundly affecting Iraqi and American women took place. [..]

The same week, Yanar Mohammed, founding director of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), was interviewed on the state of Iraq as the American occupation ends. She described Iraqi cities full of destroyed buildings and broken streets, with intermittent electricity and unsafe drinking water. Iraq, she said, is now a country of 99% poor and 1% rich living in the Green Zone, burdened with the most corrupt government in the world that is giving control of oil resources to multinational oil companies.

Iraqi women “are the biggest losers” in this war, Mohammed asserted, ending up with extreme lack of freedom, lack of social security, lack of opportunity, and increased sexual terror. Her organization has conducted extensive high-risk investigations into the prevalence and plight of Iraqi widows, women kidnapped and killed, and women trafficked into prostitution. Fifteen percent of Iraq’s 1 to 2 million widows are seeking temporary marriages out of economic desperation and extreme insecurity in being a single woman. By 2006, OWFI had observed an “epidemic rise” in the number of women prostituted in brothels, workplaces, and hideouts in Baghdad. Through covert investigation, they learned of the trafficking of women within Iraq for Iraqi men in all regions and for US military, as well as to nearby countries. Democracy in Iraq has been crushed for women.

Laura Flanders: Winning Basic Care for Care Givers

Will Occupy Wall Street alter anything about the way money media cover movements? [..]

Take a rule change that would improve life for millions of home care workers. In 1974, when the Labor Department extended federal labor protections to in-home workers, they created an exemption for “companion services,” understood at the time to mean mostly casual babysitters or relatives. Since then, under various definitions, home care has mushroomed into a multibillion-dollar business dominated by large for-profit agencies-one of the fastest growing sectors of our economy. In-home work is slated to grow by 50 percent between 2008 and 2018 and yet much of the workforce still exists in an unprotected legal murk where their work is “expected, but not respected,” as Tracy Dudzinski a home care worker and advocate for home care workers put it in a conference call for reporters.

Amy Goodman: If You Can’t Beat Them, Enjoin Them (From Voting)

All eyes are on Iowa this week, as the hodgepodge field of Republican contenders gallivants across that farm state seeking a win, or at least “momentum,” in the campaign for the party’s presidential nomination. But behind the scenes, a battle is being waged by Republicans-not against each other, but against American voters. Across the country, state legislatures and governors are pushing laws that seek to restrict access to the voting booth, laws that will disproportionately harm people of color, low-income people, and young and elderly voters.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund have just released a comprehensive report on the crisis, “Defending Democracy: Confronting Modern Barriers to Voting Rights in America.” In it, they write: “The heart of the modern block the vote campaign is a wave of restrictive government-issued photo identification requirements. In a coordinated effort, legislators in thirty-four states introduced bills imposing such requirements. Many of these bills were modeled on legislation drafted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)-a conservative advocacy group whose founder explained: ‘Our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.'”

Ruth Marcus: Oh, please: The hypocrisy of Gingrich and Romney

To use the adverbs of which he is so fond, it is magnificently, fundamentally, literally ironic that Newt Gingrich, the master of slasher political rhetoric, is busy mewling over those meanie attack ads being run against him.

And to employ Mitt Romney’s favorite piece of management-consultant speak, with regards to those terrible, horrible nasty outside groups, it’s a bit rich for the former Massachusetts governor to bemoan their existence and assert that there’s absolutely, positively nothing he could do to get them to stop.

How dumb do they think we are?

Kathy Kelly: Assembly Time

Arab Spring, European Summer, American Autumn, and now the challenge of winter. Here in Kabul, Afghanistan, the travelers of our small Voices for Creative Nonviolence delegation share an apartment with several of the creative and determined “Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers” who’ve risked so much for peace here and befriended us so warmly over the past two years.

Our apartment doesn’t have indoor heating or hot tap water. We bundle up, overnight, in blankets, quilts and sleeping bags, and the Westerners, unaccustomed to the indoor cold, wear at least five layers of clothing during the daytime. Tap water is contaminated, electricity shortages are frequent, and internet access is spotty, but compared to those who live in Kabul’s refugee camps, we’re ensconced in plenty of creature comforts.

What’s more, we are warmed by a sense of shared purpose, our spirits high, building and exploring relationships which are a model and a hope to us, in these dark warlike times, of peaceful futures. Parts of each day are dedicated to informal language exchanges, studying Pashto, Dari, and English. I know it’s a temporary experience, for me, but I feel intensely grateful for the chance to be part of this all-too unusual community. We make our own hope. It’s a cold world but the work to bring each other through it, itself is warming.

Hadley Freeman: My top 2012 prediction: the Republicans try to ban sex for women

In 2011 America’s right wing, and especially the Christian right wing, at last let slip what their problem is with contraception and abortion: it’s not squeamishness, morality or a fondness for hanging outside Planned Parenthood clinics toting misspelt placards – they just don’t like women having sex. At all. As Amanda Marcotte wrote this week, in 2011 the anti-choice movement “stopped trying so hard to manage mainstream perceptions of themselves as somehow just great lovers of fetal life, and are coming out with their anti-sex agenda”. This was borne out in their frankly unhinged attacks on Planned Parenthood, the HPV vaccine, insurance coverage of contraception and, as I discussed last week, the puritanical mood they created that encouraged President Obama to restrict access to Plan B, or the morning-after pill, none of which have much to do with abortion and everything to do with women’s temerity to have sex.

Thus, in 2012 the Republicans propose the female anti-sex bill, in which women are expressly forbidden from having sex with anyone other than the occasional lecherous politician who happens to hurl himself, bodily, sweatily, in her lucky, lucky path.

Dec 28 2011

Killing SOPA & PIPA

This is one of the few times that you will hear me advocate for the death penalty but we need to kill SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act). Our friend Gaius Publius at AMERICAblog has a list of companies, organization and wayward Democrats who have supported these Internet killing bills. There is still time for us to get the message to them that we are not pleased and what happened to Go-Daddy can happen to them.

I have already communicated to Sen Gillibrand that so long as she supports either bill, she would not be getting any contributions from me or my family members.

Here is GP’s list of companies:

   Estée Lauder Companies: (212) 572-4200

   Fraternal Order of Police (FOP)

   Go Daddy: (480) 505-8800

   International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW): (202) 833-7000

   International Brotherhood of Teamsters

   International Union of Police Associations

   L’Oreal: (212) 818-1500

   Major League Baseball

   Marvel Entertainment: (212) 576-4000

   MasterCard Worldwide: (800) 622-7747

   Minor League Baseball (MiLB)

   National Center for Victims of Crime

   National Crime Justice Association

   National District Attorneys Association: (703) 549-9222

   National Domestic Preparedness Coalition

   National Football League

   National Governors Association, Economic Development and Commerce Committee

   National League of Cities

   National Narcotics Offers’ Associations’ Coalition

   National Sheriffs’ Association (NSA)

   Revlon

   The United States Conference of Mayors: [email protected]

   Tiffany & Co.

   A lot of these folks have IP “content” – the NFL, for example – but also fan vulnerability.

   And what about the unions (IBEW, Fraternal Order of Police)? Also, why do organizations like the Sheriff’s Association care about IP law? A little something extra in the retirement-fund Christmas basket? Or maybe groups like these just haven’t heard from the rest of us.

   Given who’s on this list, I’m kind of waiting for the Catholic Bishops to weigh in.

Also these are the so called “progressive” Democratic Senators who have a foolishly co-sponsored the bills:

   Sherrod Brown [OH] – (202) 224-2315

   Al Franken [D-MN] – (202) 224-5641

   Kirsten Gillibrand [D-NY] – (202) 224-4451

   Amy Klobuchar [D-MN] – (202) 224-3244

   Sheldon Whitehouse [D-RI] – (202) 224-2921

Pick a few of your favorites and send them a message. Be polite. 😉

Dec 28 2011

Kicking the Debt Ceiling Into 2013

While he is on vacation in Hawaii, President Barack Obama will ask Congress to raise the debt ceiling for the third and last time under the agreement that was negotiated last August. The increase, which is expected to be made by December 30, can only be stopped by passage of a “resolution of disapproval” which the President can veto. That isn’t likely since the last resolution was blocked by the Democrats in the Senate and since Congress in recess until the end of January, well past the 15 days Congress has to vote in the resolution of disapproval.

Pres. Obama is expected to ask for authority to increase the borrowing limit by $1.2 trillion which is within $100 billion of the current cap of $15.194 trillion. The motivation to request this raise now is mostly political and tied to the election next November, as noted by David Dayen at FDL:

In numbers that came out earlier this month, the deficit under current law for Fiscal Year 2012, ending September 30, is set to be right around $1 trillion. That doesn’t leave a lot of wiggle room for the White House to get to the next election without having to deal with the debt limit again, especially if new measures like the payroll tax go unfunded. [..]

That seems to be the motivating factor here. The White House simply does not want to go through another bruising debt limit fight again before the election. That places a limit on borrowing in the next fiscal year. It explains why the “fight” over the American Jobs Act wasn’t that major a fight, because passing all of the measures without paying for them immediately would require raising the debt limit again. And paying for them immediately would make the stimulative effect irrelevant. A couple of the measures, like the payroll tax and unemployment benefits, could conceivably pass while allowing the Treasury to squeeze past the elections under the debt limit. But the numbers are pretty close.

David Weigel at Slate points out, with some amusement, another reason to make the request now:

Both parties like to vote against debt limit hikes, when they can — makes for good TV ads. The problem this time is that they may never get a chance. The Washington Post‘s sharp congressional reporter Felicia Sonmez points out that Congress is actually out of town until January 17. [..]

Congress is still playing the unconstitutional game of pro forma sessions to prevent the president form making recess appointments. Technically, the resolution could be passed but it would have to be by unanimous consent and that is just not going to happen. So as Weigel notes unless some renegade congress critter demands a vote, even Congress keep from getting near the “burning wreckage” of this fight.

Dec 27 2011

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”.

The New York Times Editorial: Keeping Students From the Polls

Next fall, thousands of students on college campuses will attempt to register to vote and be turned away. Sorry, they will hear, you have an out-of-state driver’s license. Sorry, your college ID is not valid here. Sorry, we found out that you paid out-of-state tuition, so even though you do have a state driver’s license, you still can’t vote.

Political leaders should be encouraging young adults to participate in civic life, but many Republican state lawmakers are doing everything they can instead to prevent students from voting in the 2012 presidential election. Some have openly acknowledged doing so because students tend to be liberal.

John Nichols: ‘Politico’ Is Right (and Wrong) About the Edgiest Electoral Test of 2012

‘Tis the season for lists. And so it should come as no surprise that the Politico, the Washington-insider journal that covers every aspect of national politics, has offered up a Boxing Day analysis of “2012’s Top Unanswered Questions.”

What is surprising, and significant, is that the first item on the Politico list does not involve a Congressional or presidential race.

Rather, it focuses on a fight in the states, where the direction of the nation is being determined by pitched battles between right-wing Republican governors and defenders of public education and public services.

Politico’s top unanswered question for 2012 was: “Can Democrats claim a scalp in Wisconsin?”

Putting aside the clichéd and offensive “get a scalp” language, the analysis turns attention to what will indeed be one of the great political battles of the coming year.

Dean Baker: Obama’s stimulus failure

The president could have rescued the economy by pushing for more stimulus. Not doing so was an error of epic proportions

The economy badly needs stimulus. The collapse of the housing bubble caused us to lose more than $1.2tn in annual demand. Residential construction collapsed when the bubble burst, falling by more than 4 percentage points of GDP, which translates into approximately $600bn a year in lost annual demand.

The collapse of the bubble also led to the destruction of close to $8tn of bubble-generated housing equity. The wealth effect of this equity on consumption generated close to $500bn in annual consumption demand. This also was lost when the bubble burst.

Eugene Robinson: A Brainpower Revolution

This is a moment when policymakers should be thinking big, not small. History will little note nor long remember that the payroll tax holiday was extended for two months rather than 12. The complex and difficult questions we’re avoiding, however, may haunt us through the century.

Let me be clear that I applaud President Obama and the Democrats for the political victory they won last week. The impact was to weaken the influence of the most reactionary and clueless faction in Congress-the tea party Republicans-and strengthen the hand of both progressives and pragmatic conservatives. This can only be a good thing.

Melvin A. Goodman: The Bush/Obama War Against Truth

The campaign to intimidate potential whistleblowers or dissidents within the government is consistent with the national security state that the Bush and Obama administrations have created over the past decade. [..]

This trend is particularly regrettable because government oversight processes have been severely weakened during the Bush and Obama administrations. The Offices of Inspector General, particularly at the CIA and the Department of Defense, have been downgraded and significantly weakened. The House and Senate Intelligence Committees are unwilling to investigate illegal conduct in the intelligence community.

President Obama, who endorsed protection for courageous whistleblowers during his campaign, has been both unwilling to investigate crimes of the Bush administration and most willing to invoke the Espionage Act of 1917 to harass genuine whistleblowers.

We expected a Bush/Cheney administration to bend the law in their direction. But who would have expected Obama, a Harvard-trained lawyer and a teacher of constitutional law, to follow suit?

Wendell Potter: When Medicare Isn’t Medicare

Let’s say you have a Ford and decide to replace everything under the hood with Hyundai parts, including the engine and transmission. Could you still honestly market your car as a Ford?

That question gets at the heart of the controversy over who is being more forthright about GOP Rep. Paul Ryan’s plan to “save” Medicare, Republicans or Democrats.

If you overhaul the Medicare system like you did your Ford and tell the public it’s still Medicare, are you doing so honestly? [..]

PolitiFact’s Washington-based editor defended the choice by contending that Ryan’s proposal to restructure Medicare by providing beneficiaries subsidies to buy private insurance would not “end” the program. It would still be Medicare, he reasoned.

What he’s missing is that Ryan’s proposal would change the program so fundamentally as to represent the equivalent of replacing the engine and transmission.

Dec 27 2011

Did They? Or Didn’t They?

Saturday evening I received an e-mail from Stratfor, a security think tank based in Texas, that their web site had been hacked by “an unauthorized party” and they had shut down their servers and e-mail while the incident was under investigation by law enforcement. (Yes, I have an account.) The news of the breach hit the front page of the New York Times on Christmas morning:

On Saturday, hackers who say they are members of the collective known as Anonymous claimed responsibility for crashing the Web site of the group, Stratfor Global Intelligence Service, and pilfering its client list, e-mails and credit card information in an operation they say is intended to steal $1 million for donations to charity. The hackers posted a list online that they say contains Stratfor’s confidential client list as well as credit card details, passwords and home addresses for some 4,000 Stratfor clients. The hackers also said they had details for more than 90,000 credit card accounts. Among the organizations listed as Stratfor clients: Bank of America, the Defense Department, Doctors Without Borders, Lockheed Martin, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the United Nations.

The group Lulz Security (LulzSec), a hacking group loosely affiliated with Anonymous, has taken responsibility for the attack. LulzSec, which derives its name from the neologism “LOL, may have been involved in a previous attack against the security firm HBGary. One of its founders, Sabu, seems to act as its leader and decides what targets to attack next and who could participate in these attacks. However, the media has continued to give credit to Anonymous. Anonymous released a statement denying that they are responsible:

“The Stratfor hack is not the work of Anonymous. Stratfor is an open source intelligence agency, publishing daily reports on data collected from the open Internet. Hackers claiming to be Anonymous have distorted this truth in order to further their hidden agenda, and some Anons have taken the bait,” the group claimed in an online communiqué.

“The leaked client list represents subscribers to a daily publication which is the primary service of Stratfor. Stratfor analysts are widely considered to be extremely unbiased. Anonymous does not attack media sources.”



According to Anonymous, Stratfor has been deliberately misrepresented by “these so-called Anons” and portrayed in false light as a company which engages in activity similar to HBGary. 



“Sabu and his crew are nothing more than opportunistic attention whores who are possibly agent provocateurs… As a media source, Stratfor’s work is protected by the freedom of press, a principle which Anonymous values greatly. This hack is most definitely not the work of Anonymous,” the group added.

Since disarray and disagreement within groups and organizations these days seems to be the trend, re: Republicans and Democrats, why should Anonymous be any different? LOL

Dec 26 2011

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”.

Paul Krugman: Springtime for Toxics

Here’s what I wanted for Christmas: something that would make us both healthier and richer. And since I was just making a wish, why not ask that Americans get smarter, too?

Surprise: I got my wish, in the form of new Environmental Protection Agency standards on mercury and air toxics for power plants. These rules are long overdue: we were supposed to start regulating mercury more than 20 years ago. But the rules are finally here, and will deliver huge benefits at only modest cost.

So, naturally, Republicans are furious. But before I get to the politics, let’s talk about what a good thing the E.P.A. just did.

Matt Taibbi: A Christmas Message From America’s Rich

It seems America’s bankers are tired of all the abuse. They’ve decided to speak out.

True, they’re doing it from behind the ropeline, in front of friendly crowds at industry conferences and country clubs, meaning they don’t have to look the rest of America in the eye when they call us all imbeciles and complain that they shouldn’t have to apologize for being so successful.

But while they haven’t yet deigned to talk to protesting America face to face, they are willing to scribble out some complaints on notes and send them downstairs on silver trays. Courtesy of a remarkable story by Max Abelson at Bloomberg, we now get to hear some of those choice comments.

Reed Richardqon: Fact-checking, in the New, Old-Fashioned Way

Just in time for Christmas, PolitiFact delivered a big, fat gift to the Republican Party and its efforts to end Medicare. Sure, this gift was wrapped in a tissue-thin veneer of objectivity and held together by a transparently weak ribbon of a qualifier-it was missing the phrase “as we know it”-but when PolitiFact slapped a brazen “Lie of the Year” bow on top, all pretense pretty much disappeared.

The reaction to such a gross distortion, one that no doubt will be featured in GOP campaign ads throughout the general election next fall, was swift and full-throated:

Here’s the inestimable Pierce on its general “pissantery.”

Here’s Jonathan Cohn with an healthcare policy rebuttal.

Here’s Dave Wiegel talking about how the “lie” actually has its origins in, of all places, the Wall Street Journal.

John Nichols: A Conservative Christmas Carol of Scrooge, Marley, Gingrich and Romney

There is something painfully fitting about the fact that the race for the GOP presidential nomination is hitting its peak during the Christmastide. The open disdain for the least among us, for the toilers in the vineyards, for strangers that has been expressed by Newt “End Child Labor Laws” Gingrich, Mitt “Corporations Are People Too” Romney and their immigrant-bashing, union-hating compatriots has given the 2012 race a distinct 1843 character.

In her exceptional new biography of Charles Dickens, Claire Tomalin explains that the novelist’s tale of that latter year, A Christmas Carol, was “Dickens’ response to the condition of the working class.” And she is right, up to a point. But A Christmas Carol is, as well, Dickens’s response to those who would blame the conditions imposed by economic inequality on children who have not taught themselves how to “rise.”

In seeking to awaken a spirit of charity in his countrymen, Dickens called attention to those who callously dismissed the poor as a burden and the unemployed as a lazy lot best forced to grab at bootstraps and pull themselves upward.

New York Times Editorial: Fairness for Home Care Aides

Evelyn Coke spent 20 years as a home care aide helping the elderly and the sick, but she did not live to see fair labor laws applied to her work.

In a case that went to the Supreme Court in 2007, Ms. Coke, who died in 2009, sued her employer for years of unpaid overtime and lost, 9 to 0. This month, President Obama invoked Ms. Coke’s memory when he announced that the Labor Department had finally proposed changes to the provisions on which the court had based its decision.

At issue in Ms. Coke’s case was a 1975 labor rule that defined home care aides as “companions,” a class of workers that does not qualify for federal minimum wage and overtime protections. Ms. Coke’s lawyer, Craig Becker, argued that the rule was supposed to apply only to occasional domestic workers, like baby sitters, not home care aides – one of the nation’s fastest-growing occupations and one whose duties often include feeding, bathing and dressing clients. But the justices said that only Congress or the Labor Department could change the rule, not the court.

Ilyse Hogur: When GOP Walks, Dems Must Move From Blame to Fight

Congress officially adjourned for the year yesterday when Representative Michael Fitzpatrick (R-PA) brought down the gavel and declared class dismissed until January 2012. When Democrats protested that the majority had not allowed a vote on the bipartisan Senate deal to avoid raising the payroll tax on 160 million American workers, the GOP cut the microphones and cameras so Americans could not hear their protestations. This remarkable move prompted C-SPAN-responsible for filming the sessions so Americans can keep tabs on their lawmakers-to publicly exonerate themselves, tweeting, “C-SPAN has no control over the U.S. House TV cameras-the Speaker of the House does.”

It’s as if Speaker Boehner thinks that by shutting down the cameras, turning off the lights and going home, the movie is over. Only-to state what’s obvious to anyone who is not in the DC fog-this “movie” is a real-life nightmare for too many Americans. If this were a screenplay, this move would be a perfect way to wrap up the year defined by hyper-partisan gridlock. Cutting the C-SPAN feed that offers at least some transparency to Congress’s machinations puts an exclamation point on the ruthless serial political brinkmanship that now stands in for the business of governing the country.

Dec 26 2011

The Sham Of Foreclosure Relief

The Obama administration under the guise of trying to look like they are helping the 99% with the massive problem of the housing collapse, the banks are still let off the hook for fraud. It is crystal clear that the financial good old boys are being protected by this administration.

Foreclosure Relief? Don’t Hold Your Breath

by Gretchen Morgenson

So many were skeptical when the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency announced yet another program in April. This one was intended to provide reparations to homeowners who’d been hurt financially by foreclosure abuses at banks.

As the details trickle out, the program looks like more of the disappointing same. “This is just the next program that’s getting people’s hopes up,” said Alys Cohen, staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center in Washington. “Not only will it not help people, it could easily harm them.”

The program arose out of a regulatory review in late 2010 of loan servicing practices at the nation’s largest banks. The review followed the robo-signing scandal that erupted after consumer lawyers – not regulators, mind you – identified numerous apparent forgeries and other improper foreclosure documents filed with courts by banks and their representatives. [..]

Some of the problems were aired at a Senate subcommittee hearing on Dec. 13. Three Democrats – Robert Menendez of New Jersey, Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Jack Reed of Rhode Island – expressed doubts about the program to Julie L. Williams, chief counsel at the comptroller’s office. The senators were especially vocal about the potential for conflicts of interest among the consultants hired to conduct the reviews. [..]

Michael Olenick, a specialist in mortgage research, said he spotted a conflicted consultant after one hour of digging. Allonhill, a smallish firm appointed by Aurora Bank, a mortgage servicer, is headed by Sue Allon, whose previous small firm acted as credit risk manager in a 2003 mortgage pool for which Aurora oversaw the loans’ servicing. The prospectus on that deal noted that Murrayhill, Ms. Allon’s former firm, would “monitor and advise the servicers with respect to default management of the mortgage loans.” It also said that Murrayhill would make recommendations to the servicers regarding delinquent loans.

Now, under the comptroller office’s program, Ms. Allon’s firm may be analyzing the treatment of borrowers on whose loans it acted as credit risk manager. “This conflict is so deep and so obvious, how could anybody have missed it?” Mr. Olenick asked.

What is even more troublesome is that, as Yves Smith at naked capitalism emphasizes, homeowners are required to give up rights that may be needed to protect themselves in the future:

This is yet another Obama Administration “pretend we are helping ordinary citizens when we are in fact helping the banks” scheme. The most damning tidbit comes late in the article, that borrowers may (I’d assume will) be asked to sign releases that are far broader than the matters under examination. In other words, to get whatever relief the OCC provides, borrowers may unwittingly give up rights worth far more:

   For example, participants in line to get remuneration may be asked to give up their rights to defend themselves if they get into financial trouble again.

   “This process is not meant to fix the original lending practices, so people need to hang on to their right to challenge the original loan later,” she [Cohen] said.

And after all that, the homeowner could still lose their home. This didn’t surprise Alys Cohen who said, “This is the O.C.C . that we’re talking about, [,,] It has a long record of favoring banks over homeowners.”  

Dec 25 2011

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”.

The Sunday Talking Heads:

Up with Chris Hayes:A Tweet from Chris: “Hey #uppers: we’ve got a new show tomorrow, Saturday at regular time, 7am. It’s a special year-in-review episode. No show on Sun.“

This Week with Christiane Amanpour:This week will look back at 2011. The political roundtable with ABC’s George Will, Cokie Roberts, Jonathan Karl, and former Republican National Committee Chairman and Bush White House counselor Ed Gillespie dissect the political events of 2011 and look forward to the 2012 election year. Also a foreign policy roundtable discusses the ripple effects of the year’s tumultuous international events, with Council on Foreign Relations president Richard Haass and U.S. Institute of Peace fellow Robin Wright, the author of “Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across the Islamic World.”

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer:CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell, Nancy Cordes, David Martin, Bob Orr, Anthony Mason, Elizabeth Palmer and John Dickerson join Bob Schieffer for a look back at 2011 and to make predictions on 2012.

The Chris Matthews Show:This week’s guests are Kathleen Parker, The Washington Post Columnist, Rick Stengel, TIME Managing Editor, Chuck Todd, NBC News Chief White House Correspondent and Katty Kay, BBC Washington Correspondent who will discuss the best and worst moments of 2011.

Meet the Press with David Gregory:A special Christmas edition  with roundtable guests NBC Special Correspondent Tom Brokaw, New York Times columnist and author Thomas Friedman, Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker and former mayor of New Orleans, now president of the National Urban League, Marc Morial. Plus a special Christmas Day reflection from the Archbishop Emeritus of Washington, DC, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Sen. Dick Lugar (R-IN) will discuss the future of North Korea, congressional gridlock, and his own re-election struggles with the tea party. The Hill’s A.B. Stoddard and CNN Senior Political Analyst Ron Brownstein will break down this contentious year in Washington and gives an outlook for 2012. A previously unseen portion of our interview with former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on the legacy of Iraq, her regrets, and her relationship with Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld will be aired.

Have some egg nog and ignore these crazy people.

gif-Merry Christmas Pictures, Images and Photos

Dec 24 2011

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”.

Justina C. Ray: Reindeer Are Fading Into Holiday Myth

Climate change and large-scale development are making it hard for reindeer to survive.

CHRISTMAS is tied to the magical north and to the reindeer – creatures of mythical power that fly through the night across the world, helping to distribute happiness and good will. But reindeer do exist – we call them caribou in North America – and these animals and their home in the boreal woodlands and on the barren-ground tundra are in trouble.

For the past decade, I have been conducting aerial surveys of caribou herds. As I sit strapped in small planes in minus-20-degree temperatures, it amazes me that that they survive against the challenges of their environment – particularly the females. These animals spend most of the year on the move and live in places that seem intolerably harsh. They undertake long journeys of hundreds or thousands of miles and return to give birth in the same traditional areas. Such large-scale migrations are an ecological phenomenon that, sadly, is fast disappearing across the planet.

Justina C. Ray, a wildlife biologist, is executive director and senior scientist at the Wildlife Conservation Society Canada.

Joe Nocera: The Big Lie

This is why the myth lives on that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac started the housing crisis

You begin with a hypothesis that has a certain surface plausibility. You find an ally whose background suggests that he’s an “expert”; out of thin air, he devises “data.” You write articles in sympathetic publications, repeating the data endlessly; in time, some of these publications make your cause their own. Like-minded congressmen pick up your mantra and invite you to testify at hearings.

You’re chosen for an investigative panel related to your topic. When other panel members, after inspecting your evidence, reject your thesis, you claim that they did so for ideological reasons. This, too, is repeated by your allies. Soon, the echo chamber you created drowns out dissenting views; even presidential candidates begin repeating the Big Lie.

Gail Collins: Remember the Alamo

What’s the last political lesson of 2011 to be learned from Congress passing a two-month extension of a popular tax cut?

Just in time for the holidays, Congress showed us it can work in a spirit of bipartisan cooperation to pass a two-month extension of a popular tax cut. On its own! With perhaps a small amount of prodding.

The payroll tax cut bill zipped through Congress on Friday, approved by a Senate with only two members present and then passed by a near-empty House in a five-minute session. Then everybody went away. Why can’t they do this all the time?

The House Republicans, who had tried to hold up the bill out of principle, only to be pummeled by everyone from John McCain to The Wall Street Journal editorial page, hunkered down for a seriously sulky Christmas.

Eugene Robinson: Obama Benefits From Republican Civil War

Finally. After a year of artful camouflage and concealment, Republicans let us glimpse the rift between establishment pragmatists and tea party ideologues. There may be hope for the republic after all.

Forty Republican senators, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, joined Democrats in voting for compromise legislation providing a two-month extension of unemployment benefits and the payroll tax cut. The bill passed by 89-10, the kind of margin usually reserved for ceremonial resolutions in favor of motherhood. Senators clearly were confident that House approval would quickly follow.

But it didn’t, because House Speaker John Boehner couldn’t get his tea party freshmen to go along. The result was a kind of intramural sniping among Republicans that we haven’t seen in years.

E. J.Dionne, Jr.: The GOP’s Iowa Chaos

OTTUMWA, Iowa-Is Rick Santorum the next non-Romney to emerge from the pack? Could he conceivably win Iowa?

That these are plausible questions tells you all you need to know about the unsettled nature of the Republican presidential contest-particularly here, the state whose caucuses on Jan. 3 have become a bookie’s nightmare. At the moment, anyone among the six major candidates has a reasonable chance of coming in first or second, and the contest is becoming less settled as the brief Christmas interlude in campaigning approaches.

Joe Conason: The Bigots and Billionaires in Ron Paul’s Orbit

The latest evidence of simmering racial resentment on the American political fringe showed up Monday in a Facebook post by a California man who urged the assassination of the president and his two daughters in obscene, racist language. Aside from the Secret Service, there was little reason for most of us to pay attention to this sick boob-except that he was identified as a local political leader of the tea party and an avid supporter of Rep. Ron Paul, the Texas Republican who now seems likely to place first in the Iowa presidential caucuses.

To those who have followed Paul’s long career as a failed presidential candidate-these campaigns have become a family business-the appearance of yet another racist nut job in his orbit is scarcely news. The newsletters that earned millions of dollars for him from gullible subscribers over the decades were often soiled with vile invectives against blacks and other minorities. He is a perennial favorite of the John Birch Society and kindred extremists on the right. He once refused to return a donation from a leader of the Nazi-worshipping skinheads in the Stormfront movement.

What is it about the kindly old doctor that attracts some of the most violent and reactionary elements in society to his banner?

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