Tag: Politics

“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.

Paul Krugman: British Fashion Victims

In the spring of 2010, fiscal austerity became fashionable. I use the term advisedly: the sudden consensus among Very Serious People that everyone must balance budgets now now now wasn’t based on any kind of careful analysis. It was more like a fad, something everyone professed to believe because that was what the in-crowd was saying.

And it’s a fad that has been fading lately, as evidence has accumulated that the lessons of the past remain relevant, that trying to balance budgets in the face of high unemployment and falling inflation is still a really bad idea. Most notably, the confidence fairy has been exposed as a myth. There have been widespread claims that deficit-cutting actually reduces unemployment because it reassures consumers and businesses; but multiple studies of historical record, including one by the International Monetary Fund, have shown that this claim has no basis in reality.

No widespread fad ever passes, however, without leaving some fashion victims in its wake. In this case, the victims are the people of Britain, who have the misfortune to be ruled by a government that took office at the height of the austerity fad and won’t admit that it was wrong.

Eugene Robinson: Lawyers got it right on the foreclosure mess

Don’t blame the lawyers. The crisis over faulty or fraudulent paperwork in mortgage foreclosures — which is either a big deal or a humongous deal, depending on which experts you believe — is the fault of arrogant, greedy lenders who played fast and loose with the basic property rights of homeowners.

Banks and other lenders, it seems, made statements in courts of law that turned out not to be true. Because judges have such an underdeveloped sense of humor when it comes to prevarication, this mess may be with us for a while.

The mortgage industry would love to blame the whole thing on predatory, opportunistic lawyers who are seizing on mere technicalities to forestall untold numbers of foreclosures that should legitimately proceed. The bankers are right when they complain that the delays are gumming up the housing market, as potential buyers for soon-to-be-foreclosed properties are forced to bide their time until all the questions about documentation and proper title are answered.

Linda Greenhouse: Calling John Roberts

As 1997 wound down, Bill Clinton was in the White House, the Republicans controlled the Senate, and the Clinton administration’s judicial nominees were going nowhere. Nearly one in 10 federal judgeships was vacant, a total of 82 vacancies, 26 of which had gone unfilled for more than 18 months. In Democratic hands back in 1994, the Senate had confirmed 101 nominees. In 1997, under the Republicans, the number dropped to 36.

On New Year’s Eve, a major public figure stepped into this gridlock. He was a well-known Republican, and although he had set aside overt partisanship, his conservative credentials remained impeccable. He had given no one a reason to think he was favorably disposed toward the incumbent administration or its judicial nominees. Yet there he was, availing himself of a year-end platform to criticize the Senate and to warn that “vacancies cannot remain at such high levels indefinitely without eroding the quality of justice.”

His name was William H. Rehnquist, chief justice of the United States, using his annual year-end report on the state of the federal judiciary to declare that with “too few judges and too much work,” the judicial system was imperiled by the Senate’s inaction. “The Senate is surely under no obligation to confirm any particular nominee,” he said, “but after the necessary time for inquiry, it should vote him up or vote him down to give the president another chance at filling the vacancy.”

Jon Stewart, as he did when he appeared on the now defunct “Crossfire” once again tells it like it is on the very network he criticizes during his appearance on “Larry King Live”

From Rayne in Jane Hamsher’s Valerie Jarrett Responds to Dan Choi

Remember the James Bond movie, Goldfinger?

“Mr. Bond, we have a saying in Chicago. The first time is happenstance. The second time is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action.”

Is this the second time or the third time for Jarrett?

What Jane said:

Number one, when did Obama say that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is unconstitutional? I’m rather sure she’s putting words in his mouth, I’d be happy to be wrong about that.

Further, Judge Virginia Phillips has already ruled Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell unconstitutional.   If the President truly does believe Don’t Ask, Don’t tell is unconstitutional, he has all of the justification he needs to let Judge Phillips’ decision stand.

But there is an extremely serious problem with having Valerie Jarrett continue to be the White House spokesperson on this matter.  I defended Jarrett earlier this week over her use of the words “lifestyle choice” when addressing the issue of LGTB teen suicide.  I said it didn’t make her a bad person, but it did show she was out of touch with the discourse in the LGBT community.  And that meant she emphatically should not be in charge of LGBT issues at the White House.

The fact that Jarrett could use a term that is like fingernails on a chalkboard to LGBT people, and still be out there as White House spokesperson on the issue of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, is symptomatic of something deeply wrong.

DADT may well be unconstitutional in light of the 2003 Supreme Court ruling that struck down Texas sodomy laws

WASHINGTON – In an historic decision with wide-ranging implications, the U.S. Supreme Court today struck down a Texas law that makes some kinds of sexual intimacy a crime, but only for gay people. The decision overrules the court’s 1986 decision in Bowers v. Hardwick, which was widely condemned for treating gay people as second-class citizens.  It was hailed by the American Civil Liberties Union as a major milestone in the fight for constitutional rights.

“”This decision will affect virtually every important legal and social question involving lesbians and gay men,”” said James Esseks, Litigation Director of the ACLU’s Lesbian and Gay Rights Project.  “”For years, whenever we have sought equality, we’ve been answered both in courts of law and in the court of public opinion with the claim that we are not entitled to equality because our love makes us criminals.  That argument – which has been a serious block to progress — is now a dead letter.””  Esseks added, “”from now on, cases and political debates about employment, custody and the treatment of same-sex couples should be about merit, not about who you love.””  

In sweeping language, the Court said the Constitution protects the right of gay people to form intimate relationships and “”retain their dignity as free persons.””  Gay people, the Court said, have the same right to “”define one’s concept of existence, of meaning, or the universe, and of the mystery of human life,”” that heterosexuals do.  The Bowers decision, the Court said, “”demeans the lives of homosexual persons.””.

(emphasis mine)

“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.

Joe Cirincione: British Budget Collapse Foreshadows Cuts to Come in U.S. Defense Budget

Great Britain’s cuts, particularly to its nuclear forces, are the canary in the defense budget mine. Just as massive deficits forced the conservative UK government to cut deep into its military programs, the United States will soon have to choose: update its force structure or cling to obsolete Cold War posture?

The UK may have waited too long to make the cuts. It is now forced to cut military personnel by 10 percent, and scrap an aircraft carrier and the entire fleet of Harrier jump jets (a very versatile, though very dangerous, fighter jet in which I once flew).

Less controversial is the plan to delay a decision on building a new generation of nuclear-armed submarines to replace the four existing Trident subs, each armed with 16 missiles carrying a total of 48 hydrogen bombs per sub.

Johann Hari: The Tea Party’s Wildest Dreams Come True — in Britain. The Result? Disaster

Margaret Thatcher is lying sick in a private hospital bed in Belgravia — but her political children have just pushed her agenda further and harder and deeper than she ever dreamed of. The government of David Cameron just took the Tea Party’s deepest fantasies — of massive budget cuts, introduced immediately — and imposed them on Britain. When was the last time Britain’s public spending was slashed by more than 20 percent? Not in my mother’s lifetime. Not even in my grandmother’s lifetime. No: It was in 1918, when a conservative-liberal coalition said the best response to a global economic crisis was to rapidly pay off this country’s debts. The result? Unemployment soared from six percent to 19 percent, and the country’s economy collapsed so severely that they lost all ability to pay their bills, and the debt actually rose from 114 percent to 180 percent. “History doesn’t repeat itself,” Mark Twain said, “but it does rhyme.”

George Osborne, the finance minister, has just gambled Britain’s future on an extreme economic theory that has failed whenever and wherever it has been tried. In the Great Depression, we learned some basic principles. When an economy falters, ordinary people — perfectly sensibly — cut back their spending and try to pay down their debts. This causes a further fall in demand and makes the economy worse. If the government cuts back at the same time, then there is no demand at all, and the economy goes into freefall. That’s why virtually every country in the world reacted to the Great Crash of 2008 — caused entirely by deregulated bankers — by increasing spending, funded by temporary debt. Better a deficit we repay in the good times than an endless depression. The countries that stimulated hardest, like South Korea, came out of recession first.

Bob Cesca: The Republican Swindle About ‘Obamacare and Stimulus’

If you happen to be a swing voter who’s considering the Republican slate next month, you’re being tricked. That’s not to say you’re an idiot, but the Republicans are doing an excellent job masking over what they really stand for, and millions of Americans seem to be falling for it.

The Republican strategy for this midterm election is simple: Treat voters like easily manipulated hoopleheads. The GOP and its various apparatchiks are spending untold millions of dollars, much of it from anonymous donors and, perhaps, even some illegal foreign donors, in order to play out this nationwide swindle. They’re investing heavily on the wager that Americans are so kerfuffled by the slow-growth (but growth nevertheless) economy that they’re willing to buy any line of nonsense as an alternative solution.

Regarding that nonsense, just about every GOP solution and every GOP idea reveals either a hilariously obvious contradiction or an utterly transparent hypocrisy. Say nothing of unchecked awfulness like Southern Strategy race-baiting or bald-faced lies. But it doesn’t seem to matter much because they’ve buried most of it under heaping piles of inchoate outrage and fear. Just like always. It’s not unlike the 2000s all over again. They’re engaging in the same bumper sticker sloganeering and myopic agitprop, but with updated content for 2010.

“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.

Dean Baker: Timothy Geithner forecloses on the moratorium debate

By refusing to halt foreclosures to sort out the mortgage mess, the treasury secretary again shows his favour to Wall Street

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is good at telling fairy tales. Geithner first became known to the general public in September of 2008. Back then, he was head of the New York Federal Reserve Board. He was part of the triumvirate, along with Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke and then Treasury secretary Henry Paulson, who told congress that it had to pass the Tarp or the economy would collapse. . . . .

Now, Geithner has a new fairytale. This time, it is that if the government imposes a foreclosure moratorium, it will lead to chaos in the housing market and jeopardise the health of the recovery.

For the gullible, which includes most of the Washington policy elite, this assertion is probably sufficient to quash any interest in a foreclosure moratorium. But those capable of thinking for themselves may ask how Geithner could have reached this conclusion.

Amy Goodman: When Banks Are the Robbers

The big banks that caused the collapse of the global finance market, and received tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded bailouts, have likely been engaging in wholesale fraud against homeowners and the courts. But in a promising development this week, attorneys general from all 50 states announced a bipartisan joint investigation into foreclosure fraud.

Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, GMAC and other big mortgage lenders recently suspended most foreclosure proceedings, following revelations that thousands of their foreclosures were being conducted like “foreclosure mills,” with tens of thousands of legal documents signed by low-level staffers with little or no knowledge of what they were signing.

Then the Obama administration signaled that it was not supporting a foreclosure moratorium. Not long after, Bank of America announced it was restarting its foreclosure operations. GMAC followed suit, and others will likely join in. So much for the voluntary moratorium.

Dana Milbank: A Tea Party of populist posers

On the morning of Oct. 14, a cyber-insurgency caused servers to crash at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The culprits, however, weren’t attacking the chamber; they were well-meaning citizens who overwhelmed the big-business lobbying group with a sudden wave of online contributions. It was one of the more extraordinary events in the annals of American populism: the common man voluntarily giving money to make the rich richer. . . .

A movement of the plutocrats, by the political professionals and for the powerful: Now that’s something Tea Partyers should be mad about.

U.S. Military Moves to Accept Gay Recruits

The United States military, for the first time, is allowing its recruiters to accept openly gay and lesbian applicants.

The historic move follows a series of decisions by a federal judge in California, Virginia A. Phillips, who ruled last month that the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law violates the equal protection and First Amendment rights of service members. On Oct. 12, she ordered the military to stop enforcing the law.

President Obama has said that the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy “will end on my watch.” But the Department of Justice, following its tradition of defending laws passed by Congress, has fought efforts by the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay organization, to overturn the policy.

Judge Phillips on Tuesday denied requests by the government to maintain the status quo during the appeals process.

The Pentagon has stated its intent to file an appeal in case of such a ruling. But meanwhile, it has started complying with Judge Phillips’s instructions while the dispute over her orders plays out.

With this announcement, Lt. Dan Choi, the Iraq war veteran, Arab linguist, and West Point grad turned “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal activist, decided to take the opportunity to do what he has said he has always wanted to do, serve his country in the military. First, he tried to enlist in the Marine Corps but being 29 made him one year too old. So instead, Dan went to the Army recruiters and filled out the application to re-enlist. He will return at 10 AM to begin processing as an enlisted soldier, most likely a specialist since he is a college graduate.

Dan, you rock.

The story about Alaska’s GOP Senate Candidate Joe Miller’s detaining and handcuffing a reporter at public event on public property because he didn’t want to take questions was bad enough. Now it turns out that the “security guards” were Active Duty members of the Armed Services. These men may be in a some trouble since they are in direct violation of the Department of Defense Directive 1344.10 titled “Political Activities by Members of the Armed Services”. While these fellows may have a lot of explaining to do to their commanding officers, that aside, as Glenn Greenwald stated:

The legality is the least of the concerns here.  That directive exists because it’s dangerous and undemocratic to have active-duty soldiers taking an active role in partisan campaigns; having them handcuff journalists on behalf of candidates is so far over that line that it’s hard to believe it happened.  

The real issue, though, is Joe Miller: the fact that he did this and then emphatically defended it reveals the deep authoritarianism of many of these “small-government, pro-Constitution” right-wing candidates.  Any American of minimal decency should be repelled by this incident.

We may have laughed at the bearded Mr. Miller’s “pompous piety”, as Matt Taibi of Rolling Stone described the disclosures of Mr. Miller and his family having benefited from the very welfare state that he currently rants against in his campaign for the Senate, but he has clearly stepped over the line with his use not only of unnecessary and excessive force but using Active Duty Military to carry out his orders. This incident was anti-democratic and un-American and should be completely intolerable.

Reality check ala Rachel:

There was not an ideological coherence to what’s going on in right wing politics.  There’s not a cogent argument to make about what kind of challenge these folks present and what’s going to happen in these elections.

It’s not the deficit.  It’s not big government.  It’s not the stimulus.

It’s not Obamacare.  It’s not populism.  It’s not that all of these people are outsiders.

It’s none of these things.  These things are all provably not what’s going on.  They’re not bolstered by the facts no matter how many times you hear from the Beltway media.  This is not what’s happening.

But the media dressing these guys up like there is some coherent narrative, like there is some cogent argument here, that conveniently obscures what’s really going here, which is that we are on the precipice of elevating the federal office, the most extreme and in some cases strange set of conservative candidates in a lifetime.

Yes, this has happened to a smaller degree before.  In 1994, in the first midterm election after the last Democrat president was elected, we got a slate of candidates that included Helen Chenoweth of Idaho, Steve Stockman of Texas.  These two were so close to the militia movement in this country that Mr. Stockman actually received advance notice that the Oklahoma City bombing was going to happen.

There are extremist candidates who from time to time survive the churn of electoral politics and actually make it into the mainstream.  There’s always a few.  But there has never been this many.

None of this makes any sense.  We’re just about to elect a whole bunch of extremists-unless thing change in the next two week.

Listen as Rachel debunks the campaign lies and the MSM narrative as she exposes the Republicans “wish list” for the extremist agenda that it is.

Two weeks out.  How do Democrats run against this?  

“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.

Robert Reich The Perfect Storm

It’s a perfect storm. And I’m not talking about the impending dangers facing Democrats. I’m talking about the dangers facing our democracy.

First, income in America is now more concentrated in fewer hands than it’s been in 80 years. Almost a quarter of total income generated in the United States is going to the top 1 percent of Americans.

The top one-tenth of one percent of Americans now earn as much as the bottom 120 million of us.

The perfect storm: An unprecedented concentration of income and wealth at the top; a record amount of secret money flooding our democracy; and a public becoming increasingly angry and cynical about a government that’s raising its taxes, reducing its services, and unable to get it back to work.

We’re losing our democracy to a different system. It’s called plutocracy.

Dean Baker: Liar Liens and Wall Street’s Foreclosure Scam

The highest rates of foreclosure are on the quick and dirty loans made at the peak of the bubble.

As we all know there is a major philosophical divide in U.S. politics. One the one hand there are those who think it is the role of government to help ensure that the vast majority of the population can enjoy a decent standard of living. On the other side are those who believe the role of government is to transfer as much money as possible to the rich and powerful. The latter group seems to be calling the shots these days.

This is seen clearly in the ” liar lien” scandal: the flood of short order foreclosures that ignore standard legal procedures. The banks have been overwhelmed by the unprecedented volume of defaulting mortgages in the wake of the housing crash. Even under normal circumstances foreclosure rates that in some areas exceed ten times normal levels would create an administrative nightmare.

But these were not ordinary loans. The highest rates of foreclosure are on the quick and dirty loans made at the peak of the bubble. These loans were issued to be sold. Almost immediately after the ink was dry, the issuers would sell these loans off to Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, or other investment banks to turn them into mortgage backed securities. The investment banks themselves were running short order operations. More rapid securitization meant more profits.

Robert Kuttner: Recovery, Please

Will the recession just go on and on and on? In the absence of far more vigorous government action, it certainly looks that way.

At a recent conference sponsored by several think tanks, Paul Krugman declared that the recession could literally continue indefinitely because the economy is stuck in a cycle of depressed wages, reduced consumer purchasing power, damaged banks, and business hesitancy to invest — and no strategy on the political horizon is about to alter this dynamic.

It’s not surprising to hear that from Krugman. The startling thing was that his two co-panelists, former Reagan chief economist Martin Feldstein and the chief economist of Goldman Sachs, Jan Hatzius, agreed that massive stimulus spending was the necessary cure.

“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.

Paul Krugman: Rare and Foolish

Last month a Chinese trawler operating in Japanese-controlled waters collided with two vessels of Japan’s Coast Guard. Japan detained the trawler’s captain; China responded by cutting off Japan’s access to crucial raw materials.

And there was nowhere else to turn: China accounts for 97 percent of the world’s supply of rare earths, minerals that play an essential role in many high-technology products, including military equipment. Sure enough, Japan soon let the captain go.

I don’t know about you, but I find this story deeply disturbing, both for what it says about China and what it says about us. On one side, the affair highlights the fecklessness of U.S. policy makers, who did nothing while an unreliable regime acquired a stranglehold on key materials. On the other side, the incident shows a Chinese government that is dangerously trigger-happy, willing to wage economic warfare on the slightest provocation.

Sherrod Brown: For Our China Trade Emergency, Dial Section 301

TEN years ago this fall the Senate sold out American manufacturing. By a vote of 83 to 15, it established so-called permanent normal trade relations with China, paving the way for that country to join the World Trade Organization. As a result, Chinese imports to the United States fell under the same low tariffs and high quotas as those from countries like Canada and Britain.

Today, though, our trade relations with China are anything but normal. The 2000 agreement’s proponents insisted it would enable a billion Chinese consumers to buy American products. Instead, our bilateral trade deficit has increased 170 percent, largely because China has undermined free-market competition through illegal subsidies and currency manipulation.

Unless the administration takes punitive steps in response to China’s unfair trade practices, the American economy – and the American worker – will continue to suffer.

Sherrod Brown, a Democratic senator from Ohio, is a member of the President’s Export Council and the author of “Myths of Free Trade.”

Glenn Greenwald: How propaganda is disseminated: WikiLeaks Edition

This is how the U.S. government and American media jointly disseminate propaganda: in the immediate wake of some newsworthy War on Terror event, U.S. Government officials (usually anonymous) make wild and reckless — though unverifiable — claims. The U.S. media mindlessly trumpets them around the world without question or challenge. Those claims become consecrated as widely accepted fact. And then weeks, months or years later, those claims get quietly exposed as being utter falsehoods, by which point it does not matter, because the goal is already well-achieved: the falsehoods are ingrained as accepted truth.

I’ve documented how this process works in the context of American air attacks (it’s immediately celebrated that we Killed the Evil Targeted Terrorist Leader who invariably turns out to be alive and then allegedly killed again in the next air strike], while the [dead are always, by definition, “militants”); with covered-up American war crimes, with the Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman frauds — the same process was also evident with the Israeli attack on the flotilla — and now we find a quite vivid illustration of this deceitful process in the context of WikiLeaks’ release of Afghanistan war documents. . . .

John Nichols: Obama is Wrong, the Republicans are Right

The Obama administration’s Department of Justice is seeking to overturn the world-wide injunction against enforcment of the noxious “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. . . .

There have been lots of objections. But the loudest complaints are coming from Republicans. Not, unfortunately, all Republicans. But the Log Cabin Republicans — the gay and lesbian group that secured the injunction from a federal judge — are mounting the defense of the injunction. . . .

The Log Cabin lawyer is right: legally, logically and morally. The Department of Justice does have a responsibility to enforce the law, even when the law is objectionable. But it does not have a responsibility to defend a policy that a federal judge has soundly and unequivocally identified as an assault on the Constitution that violates the basic premises of a free and just society.