Tag: Politics

Dec 14 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”.

Katrina vanden Heuvel: Russia’s Great December Evolution

On December 10, in what one Russian blogger called “The Great December Evolution”-a play on the Bolsheviks’ Great October Revolution-tens of thousands of people protested peacefully in central Moscow. It was the most striking display of grassroots democracy and activism since the early 1990s. Police showed restraint, and Moscow’s mayor even provided free bus rides to protesters who had arrived at the wrong location. “Everything is flowing and changing,” a Russian friend e-mailed me Sunday night. [..]

The air of infallibility Putin has enjoyed-and counted on -for the past decade is deflated.

Also gone is the nearly unconditional support most Russians had not just for Putin but for the system he has built and presided over in the past decade. That system, at least in the popular thinking, and according to legitimate polls, brought stability and prosperity after the chaos and poverty of Yeltsin’s 1990s. But for many Russians, especially younger ones, those days are a fading memory and the quest for political and free speech rights is sharpening. The involvement of so many young people in Moscow’s protests is, as one journalist put it, “a game-changer….All at once, a generation understood it has two options: to leave the country, or to start the struggle.”

Amy Goodman: Climate Apartheid

Despite the pledges by President Barack Obama to restore the United States to a position of leadership on the issue of climate change, the trajectory from Copenhagen in 2009, to Cancun in 2010, and, now, to Durban reinforces the statement made by then-President George H.W. Bush prior to the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, the forerunner to the Kyoto Protocol, when he said, “The American way of life is not up for negotiation.”

The “American way of life” can be measured in per capita emissions of carbon. In the U.S., on average, about 20 metric tons of CO2 is released into the atmosphere annually, one of the top 10 on the planet. Hence, a popular sticker in Durban read “Stop CO2lonialism.” [..]

So it seems U.S. intransigence, its unwillingness to get off its fossil-fuel addiction, effectively killed Kyoto in Durban, a key city in South Africa’s fight against apartheid. That is why Anjali Appadurai’s closing words were imbued with a sense of hope brought by this new generation of climate activists:

“[Nelson] Mandela said, ‘It always seems impossible, until it’s done.’ So, distinguished delegates and governments around the world, governments of the developed world, deep cuts now. Get it done.”

Carole Joffe: Facebook Twitter You Tube RSS Email Updates

Vulnerable Women and Contraception: Obama Turns Clock Back Nearly 100 Years

“For a woman to ‘ask her physician’ for a safe and effective contraceptive  presupposed that she had a physician, that she could afford a contraceptive, and that the physician would be willing to give it to her, regardless of her marital status.”

These are the words of the historian Sheila Rothman, writing about the setbacks Margaret Sanger faced in the 1920s and 1930s in trying to realize her vision of making birth control widely available to all women, including the poorest-and about the ultimate “ownership” of contraceptive services during that era by physicians. Sanger’s original vision was a fleet of clinics, to be run by public health nurses. But as Rothman and others have documented, when she attempted to open such clinics, she experienced repeated arrests and the closures of her facilities, as contraception was then illegal. In the years leading up to the 1965 Supreme Court Griswold decision, which legalized birth control for married persons, only physicians were legally permitted to provide such services, and as the quote from Rothman implies, this situation put poor women at a tremendous disadvantage.

Rothman’s critique, written in the 1970s about events in the ’20s and ’30s,  is remarkably relevant to today’s leading reproductive controversy: the Obama administration’s overruling of the FDA decision to allow over-the-counter status of Plan B, an Emergency Contraceptive product, for young women under the age of seventeen. If one substitutes “teenager” for “woman” and “Plan B” for “a safe and effective contraceptive” in Rothman’s quote, one can readily appreciate how, once again in America’s longstanding reproductive wars, the needs of the most vulnerable are willfully neglected.

Laura Flanders: What a Difference an Occupation Makes

It was never a genuine question. Money media prattled on about Occupy Wall Street’s supposedly ineffable demands the same way they batted aside the end capitalism signs to wonder what the Seattle protesters had on their minds. That said, the Occupy movement has always been more about doing than demanding and this week, OWS stepped it up another notch.

On December 6, OccupyYourHomes joined with local community organizers to take on the housing crisis. In twenty-five cities, protesters interrupted house auctions, blocked evictions and occupied foreclosed homes. In East New York they moved Alfredo Carrasquillo, Tasha Glasgow and their two children into a foreclosed home that had stood empty for three years. I attended the action Tuesday and couldn’t drag myself away. Even as the rain drizzled and the temperature sank, I watched the numbers of protesters grow and thought of the many, many members of underfunded community groups I’ve spoken to over the years. Among those, Community Voices Heard, New York Communities for Change, Picture the Homeless, Organize for Occupation, VOCAL-NY and Reclaim the Land. They talked on GRITtv about toxic loans and targeted neighborhoods, forced foreclosures, fear and the general lack of national interest.

Karen Greenberg: How Terrorist ‘Entrapment’ Ensnares Us All

When the government gets in the business of playing along with terror plots, it’s not just justice that suffers – but our safety

Two weeks ago, Jose Pimentel was arrested as an alleged terrorist bomb-maker as a result of an NYPD sting. Within hours of the arrest, his attorney raised the prospect of a possible entrapment defense. Last month, when Mansour Arbabsiar was indicted for trying to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States on behalf of Iran, he, too, was the subject of a sting, in this case by the FBI, and he claimed entrapment. These are but the latest iterations of dozens of terrorism cases that have come through the system with varying degrees of “entrapment” claims by the defense at the time of arrest. The Fort Dix case from New Jersey in 2007, and the more recent instances of the sole terrorism suspects in Portland, Washington, DC and Baltimore are among the many cases in which some sort of entrapment was alleged (at least, at the outset).

This is a problem in a counterterrorism world where law enforcement relies on preventive stings as its main strategy. By definition, the strategy precludes a defense. Legally, entrapment is mostly about the suspect’s predisposition because the other element of entrapment, inducement by the government to commit the crime, is usually not disputed. Thus, if the government can show that the defendant was inclined to the crime, then the entrapment-by-inducement defense cannot prevail in court. In a terrorism case, the fact of being willing to commit an act of terrorism is seen as predisposition, no matter how much of a Catch-22 this may be. As a result, lawyers rarely choose to mount the defense.

Mary Bottari FOX News, OWS, Banksters, and Bombs

Last week, tragedy was averted when savvy security at Deutsche Bank (DB) in Frankfurt, Germany, spotted a suspicious package and sequestered a letter bomb intended for the DB CEO. This was the second time Deutsche Bank was attacked in this manner. In 1989, their CEO was killed by a bomb later traced to violent extremists in Germany’s Red Army Faction.

Scanning the horizon for someone to blame for the latest attack on Germany’s largest bank, FOX news pundit Dan Gainor worked “the Internets.” Did he detail Deutsche Bank’s track record of making friends by ripping off consumers and foreclosing on their homes? Did he mention that Deutsche Bank stirred public ire when it was bailed out by multiple governments, including two billion from the U.S. Federal Reserve? Did he even bother to notice that it was widely reported that an Italian anarchist group had already claimed responsibility for the attack?

No. In his piece on FOX News, “Left, Obama Escalate War on Banks Into Dangerous Territory,” Gainor decided to go after the bank-busting activists at the Center for Media and Democracy in Madison, Wisconsin, specifically our BanksterUSA.org site, because the Bankster masthead is riddled with bullet holes.

Miriam Pemberton: Military Spending is the Weakest Job Creator

Even before the supercommittee’s demise, the defense industry and its Pentagon and congressional allies were making preemptive strikes on the next phase: the automatic cuts, half of them from defense, that are supposed to follow the supercommittee’s failure. And with national unemployment rates stuck near 9 percent, the effect of these cuts on jobs has loomed large in their sights.

The largest defense industry trade association, the Aerospace Industries Association, recently funded a study predicting $1 trillion in military cuts over 10 years would add 0.6 percent to the national unemployment rate. The Pentagon then funded its own study that conveniently rounded that prediction up to an even 1 percent.

The glaring flaw in these studies is that they make claims about the effect on the economy as a whole as if these military cuts were being made in a vacuum.

Dec 14 2011

Extractionism: Grand Larceny By The Banks

Extractionism: taking money from others without creating anything of value; anything that produces economic growth or improves our lives.

MSNBC talk show host, Dylan Ratigan has a new book, Greedy Bastards, coming out in January and has been promoting the premise of the book, how the banks have shaken down taxpayers, in a series of on-line pod casts. He recently interviewed Yves Smith, author of ECONned and proprietress of naked capitalism, gave Dylan an education of how the banks have been extracting capital for themselves and why investors are afraid to take them to court for fear the government will retaliate.

Under an extractionist system, we find lose value at a faster rate over time, while we need to be creating it.  Instead of giving people incentives to make good deals where both sides can benefit, extractionist systems rewards those who take and take some more, and give nothing in return.  Sadly, extractionism has crept its way into every aspect of our economy – it’s everywhere, from trade to taxes to banking.

Let’s take a look at banking as an example.  As Yves Smith explains, financial firms do provide valuable services to our economy, like establishing stable and reliable methods of payment for goods and services, and selling bonds and stocks to help raise new money to fund big projects. There are more than that, of course, but those are two basic examples of valuable services that our banking and financial sector provides.

Now, let’s look at how they can also be extractive – almost always going back  the lack of transparency in the financial markets.

Yves identifies two main extractive techniques of our financial industry.  The first is charging too much for goods or services. “Even fairly sophisticated customers can’t know what the prices are of many of the products, so it’s difficult for them to do side-to-side comparisons,” says Yves.

The second method is producing products that are so complicated – like in the swaps market – that clients can’t see hidden risk in them.  “This has unfortunately become extremely common now that we have a lot more use of derivatives. Many of the formulas that are used they are disclosed by they are extremely complicated, and then on top of that, the risk models that are commonly used for evaluating the risk actually understate the risk,” says Yves.

(emphasis mine)

In the interview Yves makes suggestions how this can be fixed:

  • 1. A small tax on all financial transactions.

  • 2. Give financial institutions a bigger financial responsibility when they knowingly recommending bad products or dubious strategies.

  • 3. We need increased political pressure for an effective and robust Securities and Exchange Commission.

  • 4. More inspection of what the banks are doing in their over-the-counter businesses.

    • The full interview transcript is here.

    Yes, we do need a Constitutional amendment to get money out of politics so this can be stopped.

    h/t Yves Smith @ naked capitalism

    Dec 13 2011

    Obama’s War On Women Goes To Court

    The latest shot in the war on women by the Obama administration goes to court. A federal court judge in Brooklyn, NY will hear challenge by the Center for Reproductive Rights to the constitutionality of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’ veto of the Federal Food and Drug Administrations decision to make the “morning after” pill. Plan B, available without a prescription thus making it accessible to teen age girls under the age of seventeen.

    The Center for Reproductive Rights and other groups have argued that contraceptives are being held to a different and non-scientific standard than other drugs and that politics has played a role in decision making. Social conservatives have said the pill is tantamount to abortion.

    Judge Edward Korman was highly critical of the government’s handling of the issue when he ordered the FDA two years ago to let 17-year-olds obtain the medication. At the time, he accused the government of letting “political considerations, delays and implausible justifications for decision-making” cloud the approval process.

    In court papers prior to Wednesday’s hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Landau said the government had complied with Korman’s orders by lowering the cutoff for over-the-counter sales of the drug from 18 to 17.

    He said the plaintiffs “unfairly accuse FDA of bad faith and delay.”

    And will wonders never cease. Mayor Michael Bloomberg raised his voice in support of making Plan B morning-after contraceptive available over the counter to young teenage girls. And just where did NYC’s speak-his-mind mayor do this? At a press conference in Queens, NY during an event promoting the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness with none other than Kathleen Sebelius in attendance:

    “It would be much better if these young girls didn’t get pregnant, but once that happens I think this should be available,” Hizzoner told reporters.

    Speaking minutes later at the same event, Sebelius said: “I felt that the data presented, and justification for [making Plan B available to] all ages, did not match.” [..]

    He called FDA director Peggy Hamburg, who served as the city’s Health Department commissioner during the Dinkins administration, a “first rate scientist.”

    “I think her advice should be followed,” he said prior to the jobs event at LaGuardia Community College in Long Island City.

    Dec 13 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”.

    New York Times Editorial: Targeting the Unemployed

    The latest Republican plan might extend the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits, but it would do so at the expense of vulnerable Americans.

    The House Republican leadership managed to get one thing right in its bill to extend the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits. The bill does, indeed, extend the payroll tax cut for another year, but, beyond that, there is a lot to dislike. To help pay for the package, for instance, the bill would cut social spending more deeply than is already anticipated under current budget caps without asking wealthy Americans to contribute a penny in new taxes.

    It also holds the expiring provisions hostage to irrelevant but noxious proposals to undo existing environmental protections. Worse, it would make unemployment compensation considerably stingier than it is now.

    Michael Hudson: Europe’s Transition From Social Democracy to Oligarchy

    The easiest way to understand Europe’s financial crisis is to look at the solutions being proposed to resolve it. They are a banker’s dream, a grab bag of giveaways that few voters would be likely to approve in a democratic referendum. Bank strategists learned not to risk submitting their plans to democratic vote after Icelanders twice refused in 2010-11 to approve their government’s capitulation to pay Britain and the Netherlands for losses run up by badly regulated Icelandic banks operating abroad. Lacking such a referendum, mass demonstrations were the only way for Greek voters to register their opposition to the €50 billion in privatization sell-offs demanded by the European Central Bank (ECB) in autumn 2011.

    The problem is that Greece lacks the ready money to redeem its debts and pay the interest charges. The ECB is demanding that it sell off public assets – land, water and sewer systems, ports and other assets in the public domain, and also cut back pensions and other payments to its population. The “bottom 99%” understandably are angry to be informed that the wealthiest layer of the population is largely responsible for the budget shortfall by stashing away a reported €45 billion of funds stashed away in Swiss banks alone. The idea of normal wage-earners being obliged to forfeit their pensions to pay for tax evaders – and for the general un-taxing of wealth since the regime of the colonels – makes most people understandably angry. For the ECB, EU and IMF “troika” to say that whatever the wealthy take, steal or evade paying must be made up by the population at large is not a politically neutral position. It comes down hard on the side of wealth that has been unfairly taken.

    Dean Baker: A Tale of Two Deficit Charts

    Not long after I first came to Washington 20 years ago I was at a conference dealing with Social Security privatization. One of the panelists used a number for the administrative costs of private accounts that was far lower than the numbers I had seen in the literature. After the panel, I asked one of the other panelists about her best estimate of the administrative costs of private accounts. She said that this depended on whether I was interested in advocacy or policy.

    I was somewhat taken aback by her response, but after a moment I told her that I was interested in accuracy. I have always felt that this is the best approach to policy questions.

    Accuracy has not featured prominently in Washington budget debates in recent decades. There is an enormous amount of misunderstanding about the deficit, much of it deliberately promoted by politicians. We hear endless tales of out-of-control government spending and chronic deficits. This is nonsense as the data clearly show, but unfortunately both parties have an interest in promoting the deceptions.

    Jim Hightower: Don’t Call Gingrich a “Lobbyist”

    Gingrich, his lawyers, and his staff adamantly insist that it’s rude and crude to call him a lobbyist.

    Mea culpa, I misspoke, my bad. I stand corrected. I have called Newt Gingrich a lobbyist.

    Apparently, he hates that tag, even though he has indeed gotten very wealthy by taking big bucks from such special interest outfits as IBM, Astra Zeneca, Microsoft, and Siemens in exchange for helping them get favors from federal and state governments.

    But Gingrich, his lawyers, and his staff adamantly insist that it’s rude and crude to call him a lobbyist. No, no, they bark, the Newt is “a visionary.”

    Eugene Robinson: A Mild Victory in Durban

    I’m inclined to believe that the apparent result of the climate change summit in Durban, South Africa, might turn out to be a very big deal. Someday. Maybe.

    That’s my view, but it’s hardly universal. After the meeting ended Sunday, initial reaction basically ranged from “Historic Breakthrough: The Planet Is Saved” to “Tragic Failure: The Planet Is Doomed.” Such radically different assessments came from officials and activists who have the same general view of climate change-that it’s real and something must be done about it-and who fully understand the agreement that the delegates in Durban reached.

    The optimists and the pessimists disagree mostly on what they believe governments can do to curb the carbon and methane emissions that are warming the atmosphere, and when they are likely to do it. My conclusion is that for now, at least, the conceptual advance made in Durban is as good as it gets.

    Ari Berman: ‘Occupy the Voting Booth’-Thousands March to Protect the Vote

    Tomorrow Attorney General Eric Holder will gave a major speech on voting rights at the LBJ presidential library in Austin. According to the library, “Holder will discuss the importance of ensuring equal access to the ballot box and strengthening America’s long tradition of expanding the franchise.”

    Holder’s speech could not come at a more critical time. Over the last year we’ve witnessed an unprecedented GOP war on voting, with a dozen Republican governors and state legislators passing laws to restrict voter registration drives, require birth certificates to register to vote, curtail early voting, mandate government-issued photo IDs to cast a ballot and disenfranchise ex-felons who’ve served their time. The Brennan Center for Justice has estimated that “these new laws could make it significantly harder for more than 5 million eligible voters to cast ballots in 2012,” and notes that “these new restrictions fall most heavily on young, minority and low-income voters, as well as on voters with disabilities.”

    George Zornick: Meltdown at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission

    Tensions at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the nation’s chief overseer of civilian nuclear materials, finally boiled over into public finger-pointing and accusations of malfeasance late Friday-creating what one lawmaker called “a regulatory meltdown.” It’s a messy conflict, but one thing is clear: the nuclear industry has many friends on the NRC.

    On Friday, Representative Darrell Issa released a letter written in October by four of the commission’s five members. It accused the fifth member, Gregory Jaczko-who is also the NRC Chairman-of “causing serious damage” to the agency with “increasingly problematic and erratic behavior.” The commissioners feel Jaczko limited their role and bullied them in an emergency review of the nation’s nuclear facilities following the Fukushima meltdown in March.

    Dec 12 2011

    America’s Descent Into Fascism

    Well worth the 50 minutes.

    Conversations with History: Glenn Greenwald

    Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes writer Glenn Greenwald for a discussion of his new book, “With Liberty and Justice for Some.” Greenwald traces his intellectual odyssey; analyzes the relationship between principle, power, and law; and describes the erosion of the rule of law in the United States. Highlighting the degree to which the legal system frees the powerful from accountability while harshly treating the powerless, Greenwald describes the origins of the current system, its repudiation of American ideals, and the mechanisms which sustain it. He then analyzes the media’s abdication of its role as watchdog role. He concludes with a survey of the the record of the Obama administration in fulfilling its mandate, argues for an alternative politics, and offers advice for students as they prepare for the future. Series: “Conversations with History”

    h/t Michael Kwiatkowski @ Progressive Independence

    Dec 12 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: Depression and Democracy

    It’s time to start calling the current situation what it is: a depression. True, it’s not a full replay of the Great Depression, but that’s cold comfort. Unemployment in both America and Europe remains disastrously high. Leaders and institutions are increasingly discredited. And democratic values are under siege.

    On that last point, I am not being alarmist. On the political as on the economic front it’s important not to fall into the “not as bad as” trap. High unemployment isn’t O.K. just because it hasn’t hit 1933 levels; ominous political trends shouldn’t be dismissed just because there’s no Hitler in sight.

    Robert Reich: The Remarkable Political Stupidity of Wall Street

    Wall Street is its own worst enemy. It should have welcomed new financial regulation as a means of restoring public trust. Instead, it’s busily shredding new regulations and making the public more distrustful than ever.

    The Street’s biggest lobbying groups have just filed a lawsuit against the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, seeking to overturn its new rule limiting speculative trading.

    For years Wall Street has speculated like mad in futures markets – food, oil, other commodities – causing prices to fluctuate wildly. The Street makes bundles from these gyrations, but they have raised costs for consumers.

    In other words, a small portion of what you and I pay for food and energy has been going into the pockets of Wall Street. It’s just another hidden redistribution from the middle class and poor to the rich.

    Alexander Cockburn: Barack Obama Plays the Teddy Roosevelt Card a Little Late

    When in doubt, wheel on Teddy Roosevelt. It’s article one in every Democratic president’s playbook. Roosevelt was president from 1901 to 1909. He was manly; he ranched in North Dakota and explored the Amazon. He was a rabid imperialist, charging up San Juan Hill and sending the Great White Fleet round the world. And he loved the wilderness – so long as it was suitably cleansed of Indians. “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians,” he wrote in “The Winning of the West,” “but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.”

    When necessary, he could play the populist rabble-rouser’s card, flaying the corporations, railing against “the malefactors of great wealth.” But on Roosevelt’s watch modern corporate America came of age.

    Williams Rivers Pitt: Short Tales From Bizarro World: The GOP Primaries Edition

    Bahwitabah da bang da bang diggy diggy diggy said the boogie said up jumped the Mitty…

    Sorry, couldn’t help myself. You see, I was perusing the New York Daily News and came across this little gem about Mitt Romney choosing the Kid Rock song “Born Free” as his 2012 campaign anthem. “The patriotic pick,” reported the Daily News, “comes as Romney tries to shake the image that he’s a buttoned up elitist who has little in common with the average American.”

    Mitt Romney and Kid Rock. Throw them together with Fred Phelps and the ghost of Lee Atwater, and you’d have the most phenomenally deranged golf foursome in the history of the universe.

    Michelle Chen: Embarrassment of Riches: Conflict Diamond Regulation Breaks Down

    The holiday season is a time of material pleasures, but it’s also a time to take stock of how our social values tend to be at odds with the objects we most prize.

    While countless American shoppers splurge this month-probably to delude ourselves momentarily that we can still afford to indulge-the social cost of one luxury item has exposed a global crisis. The human rights group Global Witness has abandoned the Kimberly Process, the international regulatory framework aimed at restricting trafficking in “conflict diamonds.” The group argues that the process, which it helped create, is broken and ridden with loopholes.

    Bill Keller: The Good Newt

    At least on one issue – immigration – Newt Gingrich gets it.

    Immigration is a subject that brings out the best and the worst in Americans.

    As taught to my fourth-grade daughter this semester, the story of the peopling of America encourages us to celebrate our identity as the land of e pluribus unum. It reminds us of the tolerance required to coexist in a culture of many cultures. It honors the courage to uproot your life so your children can have a better one.

    As it is practiced in our politics, the subject often dredges up darker feelings: tribalism, xenophobia, envy, a pull-up-the-ladder stinginess. This is not new. The English and Dutch colonists resented the immigrant waves of Irish and Germans, who resented the later waves of Italians and Poles and Jews. Polls show that Americans only halfheartedly support immigration, and less than halfheartedly in hard times.

    Thomas Edsall: Let’s Not Talk About Inequality

    Conservatism’s strength, its stress on the value of individual responsibility, is also its central weakness.

    The right’s claim that liberalism creates a deterrent to personal initiative and generates an ethos of dependency has resonated powerfully among white swing voters crucial to the ascendance of the Republican Party over the last four decades.

    As the aftereffects of the financial collapse of 2008 continue to batter the nation with high unemployment and low growth, however, the conservative message has run into headwinds.

    Dec 12 2011

    When You Don’t Fight

    The politically motivated decision to block the sale of Plan B Emergency Contraception to under seventeen year old women without a prescription by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius that was blessed by President Obama has outraged women’s groups, doctors and, yes, the FDA.

    Amanda Marcotte expressed her views on Obama using politics to trump science, common sense and good parenting:

    No one wants 11-year-olds to have sex, of course, but that concern shouldn’t play a role in this. In a press release addressing Sebelius’s decision, the Guttmacher Institute, a nonpartisan research institute that studies sexual health, noted that fewer than 1 percent of 11-year-olds are sexually active, but almost half of teenage girls are having sex by age 17. There’s no evidence to suggest that making Plan B available to all teenagers will somehow push younger teenagers to start having sex in greater numbers. If Sebelius actually had concerns about the effect of this drug on the behavior of younger teenagers, she could have looked to Canada, where Plan B is sold over the counter without age restrictions, with no discernible outbreaks of promiscuity in junior high school. Meanwhile, the United States still has a teen birth rate three times that of Canada’s, which easy access to Plan B could help curb.

    Over the past decade, more than 70 medical organizations, the bulk of the FDA’s review committees, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research have all endorsed selling Plan B over the counter with no age restrictions. The only person left standing against the switch is a career politician with a background of lobbying on the behalf of trial lawyers, whose job depends on her boss getting re-elected. Sebelius’s claim that she’s standing up for better science instead of pandering to American fears about teenage sexuality sounds hollow. As hollow as all those Republicans who flaunt the experts to deny climate change.

    Why Obama’s ‘Plan B’ Decision Is Wrong


    Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has stunned the women’s health community by halting the implementation of over-the-counter sales of the Plan B morning after emergency contraceptive pill to girls under the age of 17. Now, President Obama has come out saying that – as a father of two girls – he supports Sebelius’ common sense move. But was it a common sense move, Mr. President? Offering Plan B over the counter would have helped stem the tide of teenage pregnancies in America. Sure, Plan B is currently available to younger girls with a prescription, but many girls won’t or can’t get to a doctor in the first 72 hours after having unprotected sex. And sometimes those who do are running into activist doctors who refuse to write a prescription or activist pharmacists who won’t fill it, leaving girls out in the cold having to face a much more invasive abortion to terminate a potential pregnancy. And it’s not like plan B is a dangerous drug, it’s simply got a stronger dose of the hormone progestin than what’s found in regular birth control. If it’s a safety issue, there are far more dangerous things a 13 year old girl could walk into Rite Aid and buy. Any fear that the wider availability of the pill would increase sexual promiscuity ignores the fact that the pill isn’t cheap, plus a lot of stores would keep them in those locked cabinets with the condoms so kids couldn’t easily steal them.

    The truth of the matter is that science and common sense clearly pointed in one direction, but the politics of the situation in an election year pointed in the other. It’s just a shame that the Obama administration chose what’s politically convenient over what’s really best for the nation’s daughters–making sure they don’t put their lives on the slow track by having a baby at age 14, 15, or 16. If you agree with me, help spread this message.

    The Food and  Drug Administration approved the Plan B morning after contraceptive pill to be sold over the counter. But on Wednesday the Obama administration overruled the decision. Dr. Susan Wood, former FDA Assistant Commissioner for Women’s Health, joined Chris Hayes and his panel to talk about the controversial intervention.

    Jon Walker summed up that this is what pro-choice groups and pro-choice women legislators in the House get for not fighting Obama’s alliance with Bart Stupak over restricting access to abortion in the ACA bill and, again, when Republicans prevented the District of Columbia from using city money to pay for abortion:

    During the health care reform fight the women’s reproductive rights groups and legislators were basically sold out. President Obama decided to cut a deal with Bart Stupak’s Gang. He assumed that the pro-choice and women legislators in the House and pro-choice groups would just fall in line, and they did with very little fighting. [..]

    Today Obama did it again. Obama’s Secretary of HHS, in a blatant, politically motivated move, took the almost unheard of step of going against FDA recommendations regarding Plan B. Science, common sense and women’s reproductive rights were all disregarded in what clearly appears to be an attempt to appease conservatives.

    This is what happens when you don’t fight the first time.  This is what happens when there is no political cost for crossing you. People learn that they can walk all over you, and they do so whenever possible.

    Dec 11 2011

    Getting Money Out Of Politics

    I’ll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one ~ unknown author #OWSNYC

    Besides shifting the conversation in the media from budget cuts, deficits and austerity to jobs, jobs, jobs, the Occupy Wall Street movement has also brought more attention to how Wall St., banks and, especially mega-corporations control the two parties and influence politics. Follow the money. Since the Supreme Court ruling that corporations are people and money talks, some politicians, organizations and a few in the media have been examining ways to get money out of politics and put government back in the hands of the governed. One of those means is a constitutional amendment as proposed by Independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders:

    Sanders’s amendment, S.J.Res. 33 (pdf), would state that corporations do not have the same constitutional rights as persons, that corporations are subject to regulation, that corporations may not make campaign contributions and that Congress has the power to regulate campaign finance.

    While the Citizens United case affected corporations, unions and other entities, the Sanders amendment focuses only on “for-profit corporations, limited liability companies or other private entities established for business purposes or to promote business interests.”

    Sanders said he has never proposed an amendment to the Constitution before, but said he sees no other alternative to reversing the Citizens United decision.[..]

    The Sanders amendment is co-sponsored by Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska), and a similar amendment has been proposed in the House by Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.).

    On December 3, the Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously to support such a constitutional amendment:

    The resolution was backed by Move to Amend, a national coalition working to abolish corporate personhood and overturn U.S. Supreme Court’s controversial Citizens United ruling. The decision gave corporations and unions the ability to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections, so long as their actions are not coordinated with a candidate’s campaign.

    “Move to Amend’s proposed amendment would provide the basis for overturning the recent Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission,” stated Mary Beth Fielder, Co-Coordinator of LA Move to Amend. “The Supreme Court has no legitimate right to grant people’s rights to corporations. We must clearly establish that it is we, The People, who are meant to rule.”

    Move to Amend hopes to get ballot initiatives put on the ballots in cities and states for the 2012 election to help voters show their representatives that they are serious about reigning corporate influences in elections:

    “These are how American amendments move forward from the grassroots when Americans say enough is enough.  We’re very proud to come together and send a message but more than that, this becomes the official position of the City of Los Angeles, we will officially lobby for this.  I also chair a group which oversees all the Democratic mayors and council members in the country and we’re going to share this with all our 3,000 members and we hope to see this start here in the west and sweep the nation until one day we do have a constitutional amendment which will return the power to the people.”

    There is some bipartisan agreement between Democrats and true conservative Republicans. Former Louisiana governor, congressman and candidate for the GOP presidential nomination, Buddy Roemer, agrees with Sen. Sanders on getting money out of politics when he appeared with Dylan Ratigan on MSNBC. You won’t hear Roemer in any of the debates that are being run by Fox, CNN but he has been getting exposure on the talk show rounds. Roemer believes, like Sanders, that “Washington is being bought and sold like a sack of potatoes”

    Like the LA City Council, Occupy Wall Street, Sen. Sanders and Gov. Roemer, we agree that this is the best solution. It will be fought by the corporations and those they control and like any fight it starts with first steps. Lets hope it grows. The survival of democracy in America depends on it.

    Contrary to the will of special interests, Buddy wants to see Washington reform that includes full disclosure of campaign contributions, 48 hour electronic reporting of campaign contributions, the elimination of the Super PACs that keep the GOP’s top contenders at the top, limiting PAC donations to same amount of money that individuals can contribute, prohibiting lobbyists from participating in fundraisers, and imposing criminal penalties on those that violate the rules of campaign finance.

    These changes seem to be what most Republican voters are looking for, but without a Super PAC to fund him, Roemer is unable to throw the millions of dollars the big spenders like Romney, Perry and even Ron Paul shell out on publicity. And Americans cannot expect those taking money from special interest groups to protect citizens from those very same special interest groups. [..]

    Buddy also wants to end corporate welfare. Corporations are big spenders when it comes to campaign contributions. While big oil companies no longer need government money to survive, since they earn billions in profits selling overpriced gasoline and oil to consumers, they are willing to shell out large amounts of campaign money to ensure the politicians that will push their agendas are elected.

    Dec 11 2011

    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”.

    The Sunday Talking Heads:

    Up with Chris Hayes:If you are an earlier riser on weekends or, like me, up all night working, I’ve heard that Hayes is a good watch and has had some very interesting guests and discussions. Guests are not announced adding to the spontaneity of the format.

    This Week with Christiane Amanpour: GOP Candidate and former ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman is This Week’s guest in Ms. Amanpour’s interview series with the potential challengers to Barack Obama.

    This Week’s roundtable guests are ABC’s George Will, Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, and Republican strategist Leslie Sanchez in Washington, and Des Moines Register political columnist Kathie Obradovich from Iowa.

    Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Guests are Republican Candidate Representative Michele Bachmann and Iowa Republican Representative Steve King. Plus a roundtable with CBS News Chief White House Correspondent Norah O’Donnell and CBS News Political Director John Dickerson

    The Chris Matthews Show: This week’s guests Joe Klein, TIME Columnist; Helene Cooper, The New York Times White House Correspondent; Gillian Tett, Financial Times U.S. Managing Editor; and John Heilemann, New York Magazine National Political Correspondent.

    Meet the Press with David Gregory: Guests are Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul (R-TX), Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

    The roundtable guests are Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, NBC News Special Correspondent Ted Koppel, NBC’s Senior Investigative Correspondent, Lisa  Myers, Republican strategist Alex Castellanos, and NBC’s Chief White House Correspondent Chuck Todd.

    State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Guests are Republican Presidential candidate, former Sen. Rick Santorum, former Rep. Bob Walker (R-PA), former Gov. John Sununu (R-NH), former Obama White House Communications Director Anita Dunn and former Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA) and Postmaster general and CEO, Patrick Donahoe.

    New York Times Editorial: A Pentagon the Country Can Afford

    There is room to cut defense spending, if it is done with prudence and innovation.

    If you listen to defense industry lobbyists, hawks in Congress and the Pentagon, the sky is falling and with it, American security. It isn’t. The failure of the “supercommittee” to reach a deficit agreement is supposed to trigger $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts in federal spending over the next decade, nearly $500 billion of that from the basic Pentagon budget. Many Republicans, and some Democrats, are already talking about getting the Pentagon off the hook. Representative Howard McKeon, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, has promised legislation to prevent the cuts from taking effect. We are no fans of the supercommittee process, but if the Pentagon’s spending is wrestled back into rationality, it will be progress. Walking away would be a blow to Washington’s financial credibility. There is room to cut, if it is done with prudence and innovation.

    Maureen Dowd: Fire and Ice Fire

    Will it be a blood match between one candidate whose blood boils over and another who is bloodless?

    A match between Gingrich and Obama would be fascinating: two men who grew up without their hot-tempered, hard-drinking fathers, vying to be the nation’s patriarch.

    The Drama Queen versus No Drama Obama. The apocalyptic prophet versus the ambiguous president.

    One hot, one cold. One struggles to stop setting fires as the other struggles to get fiery. One who’s always veering out of control, one who’s too tightly controlled. One reining it in, one letting it rip. One tamping down his pugilistic side, the other ramping it up. One channeling Ronald Reagan to seem more genial; the other channeling Harry Truman to have more spine.

    One pretending to be a populist when he can’t drag himself out of Tiffany’s; the other pretending to be a populist when he’d like to be at Davos with Jamie Dimon.

    Katrina vanden Heuvel: Andrew Cuomo and the Spirit of Occupy

    How Occupy Wall Street made Andrew Cuomo act less like Chris Christie.

    For a few weeks last month, the main outpost of Murdoch-ism in the US-the New York Post-ran the same headline on its opinion page day after day: “Read Andrew’s Lips.” It was the Post’s way of reminding New York Governor Andrew Cuomo of his “no new taxes” pledge, and the potential harm that would befall him if he reneged on it. [..]

    Fast forward six months to today. The Post is in a rage, calling the Governor a “rate-fink” and-even more odious in their eyes-comparing him to his father, the first Governor (Mario) Cuomo. They’re fuming and frothing at Cuomo’s change of heart over the last week that resulted in a partial re-establishment of the millionaire’s tax. It’s almost as if after eleven months of governing like New Jersey’s Republican Governor Christie, he converted back to the Democratic principles of Connecticut’s Dan Malloy. For his part, Cuomo has cited the state’s worsening fiscal situation as the reason for the change of heart, and no doubt that played a part. But the deeper reason, and the more interesting reason, was Occupy. As the WFP’s Dan Cantor wrote recently, and as many others have likewise noted, the Occupy movement changed the conversation in America “from austerity to inequality.” And this new tax deal in Albany, which will manifestly improve the lives of many working and poor people, is a result of that changed conversation and atmosphere.

    Vivian Gornick: Emma Goldman Occupies Wall Street

    This is the second time in living memory that an American movement protesting social injustice has embraced her.

    One afternoon in mid-October a young woman-dressed in a white Victorian shirtwaist, long black
skirt and rimless glasses shorn of earpieces-stood up in
Zuccotti Park to announce that she was Emma Goldman and that she had traveled through time to tell those gathered in the park that she loved what they were doing. Nothing in the way of OWS street theater could have better invoked the spirit of the protest than the appearance of a principled anarchist, born nearly a century and a half ago, who never considered herself more American than when she was denouncing the brutish contempt in which capitalism held the feeling life of the individual.

    “Feeling” was a key word for Emma Goldman. She always said that the ideas of anarchism were of secondary use if grasped only with one’s reasoning intelligence; it was necessary to “feel them in every fiber like a flame, a consuming fever, an elemental passion.” This, in essence, was the core of Goldman’s radicalism: a lifelong faith, lodged in the nervous system, that feelings were everything. Radical politics, in fact, was the history of one’s own hurt, thwarted, humiliated feelings at the hands of institutionalized authority.

    Stephen N. Xenakis: Healers, Torture and National Security

    In 2004, the news that Americans had committed abuse and mistreatment in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo was shocking. Even more alarming, were the revelations that physicians, psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals had assisted with interrogations that bordered on torture.

    In the span of just two generations, the United States had drifted from condemning Nazi physicians at the Nuremberg Trials for their collusion with torture, inhuman experimentation and cruel mistreatment to justifying waterboarding in the pursuit of better intelligence.

    As a retired brigadier general and Army psychiatrist, committed to a strong military and national defense, I find these scandals to be most disturbing. The complicity of psychiatrists and other physicians clearly deviated from the fundamental ethical principles of the medical profession and military medicine. My generation of soldiers, who had served during the Vietnam War, vowed not to repeat the misdeeds of the My Lai massacres and rampant indiscipline we witnessed.

    Dec 10 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”.

    John Nichols: The Koch Brothers, ALEC and the Savage Assault on Democracy

    Billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch finally got their way in 2011. After their decades of funding the American Legislative Exchange Council, the collaboration between multinational corporations and conservative state legislators, the project began finally to yield the intended result.

    For the first time in decades, the United States saw a steady dismantling of the laws, regulations, programs and practices put in place to make real the promise of American democracy.

    That is why, on Saturday, civil rights groups and their allies will rally outside the New York headquarters of the Koch brothers to begin a march for the renewal of voting rights in America.

    For the Koch brothers and their kind, less democracy is better. They fund campaigns with millions of dollars in checks that have helped elect the likes of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and Ohio Governor John Kasich. And ALEC has made it clear, through its ambitious “Public Safety and Elections Task Force,” that while it wants to dismantle any barriers to corporate cash and billionaire bucks’ influencing elections, it wants very much to erect barriers to the primary tool that Americans who are not CEOs have to influence the politics and the government of the nation: voting.

    Paul Krugman: In the Euro Zone, Looming Catastrophe

    The basic story of the euro so far is that the introduction of the currency, by creating a false sense of safety, led to large capital flows to and correspondingly large current account deficits in the southern European nations: Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain (Ireland’s is a somewhat different, though related, story, which I won’t take on here.) See the summary picture on this page.

    Now these imbalances need to be unwound. As anyone who has studied international macroeconomics can tell you, this requires two things. First, it requires a redistribution of spending, with the creditors spending more while the debtors spend less. Second, it requires a real depreciation on the part of the debtors, and a real appreciation on the part of the creditors – that is, wages and prices in the G.I.P.S. must fall relative to those in Germany.

    William Rivers Pitt: The Final Indignity, the Last Insult, the Real America

    Let’s start here.

       The Air Force dumped the incinerated partial remains of at least 274 American troops in a Virginia landfill, far more than the military had acknowledged, before halting the secretive practice three years ago, records show. The landfill dumping was concealed from families who had authorized the military to dispose of the remains in a dignified and respectful manner, Air Force officials said. There are no plans, they said, to alert those families now.

    Think about that for a long moment.

    This is a nation with a big, fat, fancy, shiny, appealing opinion of itself. The mythology of American Exceptionalism perseveres, even unto this dark and dilapidated day. We are not as others are. We are different. We are better. We honor and fete our soldiers, our veterans, our war heroes. We make movies about their bravery and their deeds, we throw parades for them annually, and when it suits us politically, we attack our political rivals for “not supporting” those who carry our banner in the field of combat.

    New York Times Editorial: Europe’s Latest Try

    We are not optimistic about Friday’s new fiscal pact. More discipline and coordination make sense, but first economies have to start growing.

    We’re losing count of how many European Union summit meetings have ended with “historic” agreements to contain the euro-zone debt crisis only to see them fall apart as markets judged they were inadequate or irrelevant to the problem of making good on old debts and generating enough growth to pay off future obligations.

    We are not optimistic that Friday morning’s agreement on a “new fiscal compact” for the euro-zone will now break that cycle.

    The agreement – all 17 members that use the euro have agreed to sign it – is built around Germany’s demand for legal commitments to maintain fiscal and financial discipline. In the long-term, more discipline and coordination and more financial transparency are good things. But a pact that binds all members to more austerity in a time of recession is exactly what Europe does not need right now. The agreement will also increase the money available for future bailouts. But the amounts are still far too small to persuade investors that Europe is prepared to back up much larger economies like Italy and Spain. And it still leaves the euro zone without a lender of last resort, like America’s Federal Reserve, to defend vulnerable countries and banks from market panic.

    Gail Collins: The Ghosts of Boyfriends Past

    After a nominee for an ambassador’s post was grilled over a boyfriend she had lived with almost 20 years ago, it might be time to adopt a statute of limitations on this sort of thing.

    New unnerving development in Congress: Some senators are claiming that a woman nominated to be ambassador to El Salvador can’t have the job because they don’t like a boyfriend she lived with almost 20 years ago.

    These days, it’s hard enough to get kids to understand the possible future employment consequences of appearing naked on Facebook. If they hear about this one, they’ll give up entirely.

    The debate involves Mari Carmen Aponte, who has been functioning as ambassador under a recess appointment by President Obama that runs out soon. The Democrats plan to make a last-ditch attempt to approve the nomination, but the Senate Republicans seem determined to block it.

    David Uhlmann: For 29 Dead Miners, No Justice

    Despite its questionable practices, Massey Energy will not be criminally prosecuted for a mine explosion that killed 29 workers in West Virginia.

    EARLY on April 5, 2010, in the heart of West Virginia coal country, a huge explosion killed 29 workers at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch Mine. Later that day, President Obama directed Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis to conduct “the most thorough and comprehensive investigation possible” and to work with the Justice Department to investigate any criminal violations.

    On Tuesday, the Labor Department issued a 972-page report on the calamity – the nation’s worst mining disaster in 40 years. It concluded that Massey’s “unlawful policies and practices” were the “root cause of this tragedy.” It identified over 300 violations of the Mine Safety and Health Act, including nine flagrant violations that contributed to the explosion.

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