Tag: Politics

Punting the Pundits

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

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

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Jessica ValentiWhy don’t Americans call mass shootings ‘terrorism’? Racism

When tragedies happen, it’s natural for people to come together in the spirit of protecting each other. So after the massacre at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, people responded in an effort to make sense of seemingly nonsensical violence – to provide comfort in the midst of confusion.

But for some people, their attempt to make sense of violence was more about rejecting the blatantly obvious – that the shooter was a racist intent on perpetrating an act of terrorism – than it was to comfort a community in pain. [..]

The excuses to call a white, male mass-killer anything but “a terrorist” are familiar – they’re part of a refrain repeated over and over again when a horrific crime intended to terrify a group of people is committed by a white man. It’s a refrain of denial. (The same denial happened when Elliot Rodger penned a misogynist manifesto before his killing spree: He’s not sexist, he’s just crazy!)

But the question, especially for white people who engage in the excuse-making, is: why are you so intent on defining situations like those in Charleston as not-terrorism? Why are you so invested in the idea that the crime was not one of hatred?

Paul Krugman: Voodoo, Jeb! Style

On Monday Jeb Bush – or I guess that’s Jeb!, since he seems to have decided to replace his family name with a punctuation mark – finally made his campaign for the White House official, and gave us a first view of his policy goals. First, he says that if elected he would double America’s rate of economic growth to 4 percent. Second, he would make it possible for every American to lose as much weight as he or she wants, without any need for dieting or exercise.

O.K., he didn’t actually make that second promise. But he might as well have. It would have been just as realistic as promising 4 percent growth, and considerably less irresponsible.

I’ll get to Jeb!onomics in a minute, but first let me tell you about a dirty little secret of economics – namely, that we don’t know very much about how to raise the long-run rate of economic growth. Economists do know how to promote recovery from temporary slumps, even if politicians usually refuse to take their advice. But once the economy is near full employment, further growth depends on raising output per worker. And while there are things that might help make that happen, the truth is that nobody knows how to conjure up rapid productivity gains.

Why, then, would Mr. Bush imagine that he is privy to secrets that have evaded everyone else?

Robert Greenwald: Does Endless War and Illegal Surveillance Sound Like Security to You?

In our new film series, some of the smartest thinkers of our time warn that the runaway national security state, and the endless war and surveillance that underpins it, is creating a more perilous world.

So why aren’t these issues being discussed by the 2016 presidential candidates? How come new ideas about national security aren’t part of the platforms being debated? When will candidates start devising smart, compassionate solutions, not the same old militaristic pathways that, this century alone, have cost over one million human lives, trillions of dollars, and driven a global surge of violence?

Too many candidates are endorsing the conventional political wisdom that more military invasion, occupation, droning and Pentagon spending will somehow make us more secure.

That’s why we think that now is a more important time than ever to challenge the status quo.

Scott Lemieux: The supreme court is right: Confederate flag license plates aren’t free speech

Most states, including some very conservative ones, prefer not to give their endorsement to white supremacist symbols – though there are notable exceptions, like South Carolina, that infamously prefer to display the Confederate flag on state property. On Thursday, appropriately enough, a slim majority of the US supreme court ruled that Texas was not required to give its imprimatur to the Confederate flag. [..]

In a 5-4 ruling – with the four Democratic nominees joined, interestingly, by Justice Clarence Thomas, the Court’s only African American member – the court held that Texas was not required to issue the pro-Confederate plate design. This is not an easy case, but the Court’s opinion is probably right. [..]

Individuals have the right to express hateful ideas in public, but the state is not required to endorse them. Either way, state governments, like individuals, are allowed to determine the content of the messages they wish to send. If one wants the state to send better messages, the solution is to elect better public officials.

Robert Reich: Making the Economy Work for The Many and Not the Few #10: End Mass Incarceration, Now.

Imprisoning a staggering number of our people is wrong. The way our nation does it is even worse. We must end mass incarceration, now.

If I’m walking down the street with a Black or Latino friend, my friend is way more likely to be stopped by the police, questioned, and even arrested. Even if we’re doing the exact same thing–he or she is more likely to be convicted and sent to jail.

Unless we recognize the racism and abuse of our criminal justice system and tackle the dehumanizing stereotypes that underlie it, our nation – and our economy – will never be as strong as it could be.

Please take a moment to watch the accompanying video, and please share it so others can understand what’s at stake for so many Americans.

Julia Craven: Racism Is Not A Mental Illness

An act of terrorism unfolded on American soil last night when Dylann Roof allegedly killed nine people at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina.

The victims were attending a Wednesday night Bible study. Roof reportedly sat in on this service for about an hour before going on a shooting rampage. His intention was “to shoot black people” — a plot that had been in the works for at least six months. Sylvia Johnson, a relative of one of the victims, said Roof told his targets, “You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.”  [..]

When white people go on shooting sprees, their actions are frequently attributed to mental illness and, thus, they’re not considered fully accountable for the harm they’ve inflicted. This narrative — which is not afforded to people of color — feeds into the assumption that incidents like what happened at Emanuel AME Church are isolated tragedies executed by lone gunmen. Essentially, it excuses the system that allows racialized terrorism to keep happening.

Punting the Pundits

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

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

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Trevor Timm: Torture is a war crime the government treats like a policy debate

The Senate commendably passed an amendment “outlawing” torture by a wide margin on Monday, but given that torture is already against the law – both through existing US statute and by international treaty – what does that really mean? [..]

One would’ve thought pre-9/11 that it would be hard to write the current law prohibiting torture any more clearly. Nothing should have allowed the Bush administration to get away with secretly interpreting laws out of existence or given the CIA authority to act with impunity. The only reason a host of current and former CIA officials aren’t already in jail is because of cowardice on the Obama administration, which refused to prosecute Bush administration officials who authorized the torture program, those who destroyed evidence of it after the fact or even those who went beyond the brutal torture techniques that the administration shamefully did authorize. [..]

Instead of treating torture as the criminal matter that it is, the Obama administration effectively turned it into a policy debate, a fight over whether torture “worked”. It didn’t of course, as mountains of evidence has proved, but it’s mind-boggling we’re even having that debate considering that torture is a clear-cut war crime. It’s like debating the legality of child slavery while opening your argument with: “well, it is good for the economy.”

Steven W. Thrasher: The nine people killed in Charleston are victims of America’s racist present

The Charleston massacre at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church ought to put to rest the lie that if black people are just good enough, we will be left to live in peace.

We are so often told that if we didn’t just didn’t break the law in the first place, or resist arrest, or walk around with our spines upright and our spirits joyful that we would not face broken spines and the murder of both body and soul. But the list of things black Americans cannot do without the fear of being murdered grows week by week and day by day – and it is gathering up increasingly passive and pacifist activities. The doing-while-black factor (“Driving While Black” from New Jersey to Ferguson, “Walking While Black” in Florida, “Swimming While Black” in Texas) now must also include “Praying While Black” in church. [..]

I grew up in church. The folks that show up on a Wednesday evening are the best of the best – the people who are looking out for their communities and making sure everyone makes it through the week. My revulsion at this act of terrorism happened in black church on a Wednesday night is twofold: I’m horrified that nine lives have been stolen, destroying life as it was known for countless families and an entire congregation; I’m nauseated that the good folks taking care of their communities on Wednesday nights will now do so with varying degree of terror forever.

Gary Younge: Charleston church shooting: Without gun control, racism will keep killing black people

This time it’s different.

Mass shootings have become a banal fact of death in America. (Last year there were 283 incidents in which four or more people were shot.) The nation as a whole, meanwhile, has become newly sensitised to racial violence, with growing activism around police shootings. In April video of a white policeman shooting Walter Scott – an unarmed African American – eight times in the back in as he ran away in North Charleston, South Carolina, went viral.

But the shooting of nine black church-goers in Charleston (not far from where Scott was killed) by a white gunman in what police are treating as a “hate crime” marks a doubling down on the nation’s twin pathologies of racism and guns. Both are deeply rooted in the nation’s history since its founding: neither are going anywhere soon.

New York Times Editorial Board: A Rebuke to Military Tribunals

In 2008, Ali al-Bahlul, a propagandist for Al Qaeda who has been held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, since early 2002, was convicted by the military tribunal there and sentenced to life in prison. But officials had no evidence that Mr. Bahlul was involved in any war crimes, so they charged him instead with domestic crimes, including conspiracy and material support of terrorism.

Last Friday, a panel of the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., reversed Mr. Bahlul’s conspiracy conviction because, it said, the Constitution only permits military tribunals to handle prosecutions of war crimes, like intentionally targeting civilians. (The court previously threw out the other charges on narrower grounds.) [..]

The appellate panel’s majority agreed. If the government were to prevail, Judge David Tatel wrote in concurrence, “Congress would have virtually unlimited authority to bring any crime within the jurisdiction of military commissions – even theft or murder – so long as it related in some way to an ongoing war or the armed forces.”

America’s civilian courts are not just the constitutionally proper place to try federal crimes, Judge Tatel added, they are very good at it. “Federal courts hand down thousands of conspiracy convictions each year, on everything from gun-running to financial fraud to, most important here, terrorism.”

Dave Johnson: Walmart’s Huge Tax Dodge

A new report released Wednesday that Walmart is dodging taxes by stashing $76 billion of profits outside of the country using 78 subsidiaries in 15 tax havens raises a question: Why is Congress and the White House considering policies that reward tax dodgers like this?

You may have heard that Walmart pays its workforce so little that they qualify for government assistance like food stamps and Medicaid. That costs taxpayers billions (and raising their minimum pay to only $9 per hour isn’t going to change that very much).

You may have heard that the Walmart heirs have more wealth than 42 percent of Americans combined. That was a 2012 figure – it has only gotten worse since.

You may have heard that the Walmart heirs helped finance an effort to cut estate taxes in 2006. That cost taxpayers billions.

Now we hear that Walmart and the Walton hairs are not only getting billions in tax subsidies like these – they also dodge paying taxes on their profits.

Jeff Biggers: Pope’s encyclical links climate and migration crises

New message urges dialogue that recognizes climate migration as a long-term reality

Among the various revelatory aspects of Pope Francis’ encyclical on climate change, released to the public today, one of the overlooked warnings buried in the nearly 200-page document could trigger a new dialogue on another urgent global crisis: migration.

In the encyclical’s first chapter, the pope’s greatly anticipated letter recognizes the “tragic rise” of immigrants fleeing poverty from environmental ruin in an age of climate change.

Declaring that refugees who have yet to be recognized by international governing bodies “bear the loss” of abandonment, the pope calls out the “widespread indifference” to “these tragedies” taking place around the world. Importantly, the letter cites the environmental effects of the “enormous consumption of some rich countries” and its repercussions on the farming practices in the poorest places on earth, notably in Africa.

GOP Push To Pass “Clean” Fast Track

Up Date: 6/18/2015 This morning the House passed Fast Track by 218-208, with 28 Democrats voting for it. It now must return to the Senate because it didn’t include Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) which failed to pass the House as a separate bill last week. The president has said that the would veto it if it did not include the TAA.

The bill was attached to HR 2146 Defending Public Safety Employees’ Retirement Act.

The push is on to get Fast Track passed. After the Democrats, led by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, killed the Trade Promotion Authority by voting against Trade Adjustment Assistance, the Republicans are bringing a “clean” bill to the floor. Well not quite “clean.” This is the latest from Huffington Post

To move a clean fast-track bill, the House Rules Committee attached the legislation Wednesday evening to a firefighter and police retirement bill sent over by the Senate.

Once the clean TPA bill is sent back to the Senate, it will be up to the upper chamber to handle TAA independently. [..]

The plan, according to Democratic and Republican sources, is that after the clean TPA bill is passed and sent to the Senate, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) will then attach TAA to the African Growth and Opportunity Act, a separate trade bill involving African countries.

As Republicans revealed their strategy, House and Senate Democrats who had previously voted in favor of fast-track headed to the White House to meet with Obama about the path forward. The question will be whether Republican leaders and Obama can convince Senate Democrats to vote for fast-track on the promise that TAA will reach the president’s desk later. [..]

A Senate Democratic aide confirmed that there is no agreement among Republicans and pro-trade Democrats in the upper chamber about how to move forward once fast-track is sent their way. Talks are expected to continue tomorrow.

Stand by.  

Just When We Need Him, Stephen Is Back

Yesterday another Republican thew his hat onto the GOP Presidential candidate clown car, billionaire real estate magnate Donald Trump. In a rambling disconnected speech that was panned by both the right and left media pundits, he managed to insult China, Mexico and the intelligence of most voters. Trump made Jon Stewart’s night but what was really the topper was former Comedy Central host Stephen Colbert’s response to The Donald.

Sporting a Trump-style hairdo, Colbert was rolled to a podium in “a giant human trashcan” to announce he would still be hosting the “Late Show.” But mostly, he just rambled for more than six minutes, mimicking Trump’s own rambling speech.

“My mouth still has more to say,” he said as he babbled on about China, Mexico, lunch, bicycle racing, card tricks, hats and more.

“I agree with Donald that America is dead — buried in a coffin, in salted earth with our enemies pissing on it and laughing” Colbert said. “And Donald Trump is the only man who can — excuse me, I’m just moved — I’m physically moved by the knowledge that Donald Trump is the only man who can dig up the corpse of that nation and marry it.”

At one point, he literally foamed at the mouth.

Punting the Pundits

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

Wednesday is Ladies’ Day.

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

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Katrina vanden Heuvel: Cracks appear in the climate change deniers’ defenses

In April 2009, as the political right was finding its voice in the tea party, South Carolina Republican Rep. Bob Inglis was making the case for a carbon tax. “I’m a conservative. I believe in accountability,” he said. “Global warming is not a matter of belief. It’s a matter of facts.” He added, “We don’t want to be a party of deniers.”

Most of his party disagreed. A year later, Inglis was trounced in a Republican primary, his staunchly conservative record proving insufficient to overcome this heretical deviation. On the surface, it may appear that little has changed in the intervening years. But cracks are appearing in the climate change deniers’ defenses. Today, the movement to seriously address global warming is gaining unlikely supporters, a potential preview of the tectonic shift to come.

Last month, six major oil and gas companies based in Europe, including BP and Royal Dutch Shell, wrote a letter officially endorsing an international price on carbon. “Climate change is a critical challenge for our world,” they declared. “The challenge is how to meet greater energy demand with less [carbon dioxide]. We stand ready to play our part.” In the short term, these companies stand to benefit from carbon pricing, which would shift demand away from coal. But even if their position is partially self-serving, it’s an important declaration, and one that deeply undercuts the climate change deniers’ arguments. Even oil companies, we can now say, believe climate change is real – and admit it’s something they are causing.

Ashley Gorski: New Docs Raise Questions About CIA Spying Here at Home

The current debate about government surveillance has largely overlooked the CIA, possibly because we know little about the agency’s activities within the United States. While the relevant legal authorities governing the CIA, including Executive Order 12333, set out the CIA’s mandate, they do so in broad terms. Beyond the generalities in EO 12333 and other laws, the public has had few opportunities to examine the rules governing the CIA’s activities.

But we know more today than we did a few weeks ago. In response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the ACLU and Yale Law School’s Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic, the CIA has released a slew of documents concerning CIA surveillance under EO 12333. (The Justice Department has also recently released a set of documents related to the executive order.)

The national debate in the 1970s about the proper limits of U.S. government spying on its own citizens was, to a large extent, about the CIA. In the wake of the Watergate scandal and news stories about other illegal CIA activity, President Gerald Ford and Congress launched investigations into the full range of CIA misdeeds – from domestic spying programs and infiltration of leftist organizations to experimentation on non-consenting human subjects and attempts to assassinate foreign leaders.

Zoë Carpenter: Meet the ‘Snake-Oil Salesman’ From Utah Who Wants to Transform the American West

To cash-strapped counties in the American West, Ken Ivory is offering what sounds like salvation. Underfunded schools, potholed roads, cuts to law enforcement-those can be reversed, the Republican state representative from Utah suggests in presentations to county commissioners, Tea Party groups, and Fox News viewers, if states force the federal government to turn over millions of acres of public land to local authorities.

Over the past several years Ivory has made himself the leading evangelist for the land-transfer movement, which is undergoing something of a resurrection in Western states. He’s also facing new accusations of fraud. In early June, the watchdog group Campaign for Accountability filed complaints in three states alleging that Ivory is scamming local governments out of thousands of taxpayer dollars every year by “making false statements” to convince them to support his nonprofit, “which exists primarily to pay him and his wife,” the complaint reads. What Ivory really has to offer, according to CFA’s Anne Weismann, is not salvation but “snake oil.”

Jessica Valenti: Jeb Bush can’t end the war on women with good domestic violence policies

Any Republican running for president in 2016 needs women voters to win, and the last few years of bone-headed statements and even more bone-headed policies – from “legitimate rape” to transvaginal ultrasounds, and from the wage gap to birth control coverage in insurance policies – haven’t made that easy. So perhaps it was inevitable that former Florida governor Jeb Bush would think that if he says “domestic violence” enough times, female voters will magically appear.

The difficulty for Bush is that other policies that he favors don’t protect women from domestic violence: they put victims at further risk. [..]

But while Bush passed the Family Protection Act while governor, which increased criminal consequences for abusers, increased funding for women’s shelters and his wife, Columba Bush, made working against domestic violence a big part of her tenure as Florida’s first lady, it’s going to take more to close the voting gender gap than focusing on just one women’s issue. Because one policy that affects women’s lives can’t be cleaved off from all the other, important policies that affect women just because they’re less ideologically convenient – especially when they’re interconnected.

Access to abortion, for example, makes it easier for women to leave their abusive partners.

Naomi Oreskes: The Hoax of Climate Denial: Why “Politically Motivated” Science Is Good Science

Recently, the Washington Post reported new data showing something most of us already sense: that increased polarization on Capitol Hill is due to the way the Republican Party has lurched to the right. The authors of the study use Senator John McCain to illustrate the point. McCain’s political odyssey is, in some dismaying sense, close to my own heart, since it highlights the Republican turn against science.

As unlikely as it might seem today, in the first half of the twentieth century the Republicans were the party that most strongly supported scientific work, as they recognized the diverse ways in which it could undergird economic activity and national security. The Democrats were more dubious, tending to see science as elitist and worrying that new federal agencies like the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health would concentrate resources in elite East Coast universities.

In recent decades, of course, the Republicans have lurched rightward on many topics and now regularly attack scientific findings that threaten their political platforms. In the 1980s, they generally questioned evidence of acid rain; in the 1990s, they went after ozone science; and in this century, they have launched fierce attacks not just on climate science, but in the most personal fashion imaginable on climate scientists.

Torture, the CIA and Helen Mirren

After much wrangling with the White House and the CIA, the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) released the 525 page executive summary of its full 6000 page report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation better known as the Torture Report. After five years and $40 million, the bulk of the report remains classified. If the executive report is any sample of what the CIA did, the rest of the report is must be really damning.

In a laughable move today, the Senate today passed an amendment to the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act that would forbid the use of torture by any agent of the U.S. government and standardize certain noncoercive interrogation methods across the government’s military and intelligence arms. This is “laughable” because torture is already against the law in this country, President Obama chose not the enforce the laws.

Instead the Obama administration has kept hidden much of the evidence under the guise of “national security,” in clear violation of US and International laws. Even more laughable is President Obama’s statement after the release of the SSCI’s executive report when he said, “one of the strengths that makes America exceptional is our willingness to openly confront our past, face our imperfections, make changes and do better.”  It was nauseating to hear that statement praised. Without holding anyone accountable, by promoting and appointing to office those who authorized and ordered torture, Pres. Obama is complicit in their crimes.

Yesterday another CIA atrocity has been exposed:

CIA torture appears to have broken spy agency rule on human experimentation

By Spencer Ackerman, The Guardian

The Central Intelligence Agency had explicit guidelines for “human experimentation” – before, during and after its post-9/11 torture of terrorism detainees – that raise new questions about the limits on the agency’s in-house and contracted medical research.

Sections of a previously classified CIA document, made public by the Guardian on Monday, empower the agency’s director to “approve, modify, or disapprove all proposals pertaining to human subject research”. The leeway provides the director, who has never in the agency’s history been a medical doctor, with significant influence over limitations the US government sets to preserve safe, humane and ethical procedures on people.

CIA director George Tenet approved abusive interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, designed by CIA contractor psychologists. He further instructed the agency’s health personnel to oversee the brutal interrogations – the beginning of years of controversy, still ongoing, about US torture as a violation of medical ethics.

But the revelation of the guidelines has prompted critics of CIA torture to question how the agency could have ever implemented what it calls “enhanced interrogation techniques” – despite apparently having rules against “research on human subjects” without their informed consent.

Indeed, despite the lurid name, doctors, human-rights workers and intelligence experts consulted by the Guardian said the agency’s human-experimentation rules were consistent with responsible medical practices. The CIA, however, redacted one of the four subsections on human experimentation.

“The more words you have, the more you can twist them, but it’s not a bad definition,” said Scott Allen, an internist and medical adviser to Physicians for Human Rights.

The agency confirmed to the Guardian that the document was still in effect during the lifespan of the controversial rendition, detention and interrogation program.

After reviewing the document, one watchdog said the timeline suggested the CIA manipulated basic definitions of human experimentation to ensure the torture program proceeded.

“Crime one was torture. The second crime was research without consent in order to say it wasn’t torture,” said Nathaniel Raymond, a former war-crimes investigator with Physicians for Human Rights and now a researcher with Harvard University’s Humanitarian Initiative.

In one more of his memorable segments, John Oliver, host of HBO’s “Last Week Tonight,” enlisted Dame Helen Mirren to read parts of the executive report.

We don’t need another law, we need the torturers brought to justice.

Punting the Pundits

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

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

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Dean Baker: Rich People’s Rules and the TPP

Congress gave the American people and the world something to celebrate last Friday. The House of Representatives refused to pass the package of bills that would have given President Obama fast-track authority for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). This was a huge victory for a campaign led by labor unions, environmentalists, consumer groups and other activists against the country’s biggest corporations.

A victory by the masses, or “everyday people,” over big money and big media is always grounds for celebration. But it is important to remember the game is far from over. This is one of those bills, like the TARP, where we are playing by rich people’s rules. [..]

The Bush administration and the congressional leadership regrouped and came back for a second shot. They reworked the bill some and added a package of sweeteners to win over members vote by vote. My favorite was a special tax break for producers of toy arrows. This second bill got an easy majority in the Senate and then the House buckled, as all the major news outlets promised a Second Great Depression if the bill didn’t pass.

That is how rich people’s rules work. Needless to say we will see lots of sweeteners floating around Congress as the Obama administration and Speaker Boehner struggle to get the additional votes needed to pass fast track. It will take serious pressure from the public to keep members from flipping.

Rep. John Conyers: Why the TPP Is a Terrible Deal for Most Americans

Trade agreements boost economic growth, while destroying lives and livelihoods.

Earlier this year, former Florida governor Jeb Bush travelled to my hometown of Detroit to explain his political philosophy. In a speech before local business leaders, Bush argued that the aim of government should be to promote “economic growth above all.”

“If a law or a rule doesn’t contribute to growth,” he asked, “why do it?” If a law subtracts from growth, why are we discussing it?”

The younger Bush brother is in good company. For the better part of a century, economic growth-as measured by the Gross Domestic Product (GDP)-has been the single most important guidepost for government decision-making. Nowhere is this clearer than in the current debate raging in Washington over the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement, wherein the deal’s proponents from the Chamber of Commerce to the Treasury Department routinely reach for their trump card: “Trade is good for economic growth.” [..]

As the House considers whether to “fast track” the TPP and other coming trade deals, I hope my colleagues will consider a broader set of questions than the one that Jeb Bush presented during his visit to Detroit. Instead of asking about implications for economic growth, I hope my colleagues ask: “Is this policy good for living standards? For the health of the planet? For creating jobs with dignity, promoting peace, and ensuring an educated populace?”

It’s hard to imagine the TPP passing muster when we consider values other than economic growth.

New York Times Editorial: Sticker Shock in For-Profit Hospitals

Two reports published this month provide fresh evidence of the hard-to-justify high prices that many hospitals charge for common procedures. The prices drive up premiums for many privately insured patients and can be ruinously expensive for those who are uninsured or inadequately insured or who go to a hospital or doctor outside their insurance network.

A study published in the June issue of Health Affairs, a policy journal, found that the 50 hospitals with the highest prices in 2012, the latest data available, charged an average of 10 times what is allowed by Medicare, which was used as a baseline for cost. Although hospitals routinely complain that Medicare pays too little, the allowable charges under Medicare are what the government, after extensive analysis, considers the cost of the procedure plus a reasonable amount to invest in hospital improvements and keep up with medical inflation. [..]

High prices will hit millions of people who will remain uninsured in coming years for one reason or another despite passage of the Affordable Care Act, according to the Health Affairs study. Patients with private insurance who receive care out-of-network don’t generally benefit from their insurer’s negotiated discounts may have to pay a high proportion of the full charges.

David Sirota: Has America Changed Since Edward Snowden’s Disclosures?

Two years ago this month, a 29-year-old government contractor named Edward Snowden became the Daniel Ellsberg of his generation, delivering to journalists a tranche of secret documents shedding light on the government’s national security apparatus. But whereas Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers detailing one specific military conflict in Southeast Asia, Snowden released details of the U.S. government’s sprawling surveillance machine that operates around the globe.

On the second anniversary of Snowden’s historic act of civil disobedience, it is worth reviewing what has changed-and what has not.

On the change side of the ledger, there is the politics of surveillance. For much of the early 2000s, politicians of both parties competed with one another to show who would be a bigger booster of the NSA’s operations, fearing that any focus on civil liberties risked their being branded soft on terrorism. Since Snowden, though, the political paradigm has dramatically shifted.

Eugene Robinson: You Can Call Him Jeb!

Substituting an exclamation point for his inconvenient last name, Jeb! has officially entered the presidential race. Why isn’t everyone else quaking in fear?

I can see why Hillary Clinton, the Democratic front-runner who also downplays a familiar surname, might welcome Jeb Bush’s candidacy. If the general election is Bush versus Clinton, the dynasty issue becomes a wash. Americans would just have to deal with the fact that these two families are never, ever going away.

But while Clinton looks like a lock to win her party’s nomination, at this point Bush-who unveiled his Jeb! campaign logo Sunday-can’t even be considered the favorite to win his. He is certainly in the top tier of GOP candidates, and his fundraising prowess may eventually wear down his rivals. But all Bush managed to do in the long pre-announcement phase of his campaign was to send his polling numbers into a swoon.

Harvey Wasserman: Could John Kasich’s Anti-Green Legacy Propel Him to the White House?

Ohio’s Republican Gov. John Kasich has joined the 2016 herd: He has declared himself a candidate for the presidency.

But he may very well get the vice presidential nomination instead.

He may very well also be America’s most anti-green governor.

Kasich is an inveterate maverick. He recently created a characteristic stir by saying he would not have invaded Iraq. Over the decades he’s been a “budget hawk” congressman, hard-right Fox commentator, Wall Street speculator and now a second-term governor of the Buckeye State. Edgy and unpredictable, he’s gone against the GOP grain by supporting Medicaid and occasionally preaching compassion for the sick and the poor.

All of which could make him unacceptable for the GOP presidential nod.

But his stance on the environment is another story.

Fast Track Ain’t Dead Yet

This past Friday the House of Representatives passed the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), aka Fast Track, by a slim margin of 219 – 211. It did so without the crucial Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) bill which failed, massively. The TAA is included in the Senate version of Fast Track and without it Fast Track is dead and so, in all likelihood, is the Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement (TPP), its European version, Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), and the Trade in Services (TiSA) agreements.

In an unusual parliamentary maneuver, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) moved to reconsider the TAA in desperate hope that he can convince enough Democrats and Republicans to change their votes. That doesn’t appear to be possible as Joe Firestone, the managing director of New Economic Perspectives, explains:

Likelihood of Approval of TAA (and Consequently TPA/fast-track) In a Re-vote in the HouseLikelihood of Approval of TAA (and Consequently TPA/fast-track) In a Re-vote in the House

I’ve read every post-mortem on Friday’s TPA result I could find since Friday’s TAA vote. And while there’s a lot of speculation on what will happen if there is a re-vote of TAA on Tuesday, very little of the analysis seems to depart from an explanation of the actual roll call results of roll calls 361 and 362 by Party. [..]

Since, on Friday, the TAA was perceived as the key vote on both the TAA and the TPA, why was roll call 361 so decisively against both, while roll call 362, on the TPA alone was narrowly in favor of the TPA? In other words, why were these votes so at variance with each other? No post-mortem I’ve seen has really considered this carefully, and tried to explain it. But plainly, one’s explanation has to be the foundation for projecting how any re-vote in the House on the TAA/TPA is likely to come out. [..]

In short, even though the mainstream view of the maximum limit of Republican opposition to the TPA was 57, roll call 361 shows 158 Republican votes against it, an entirely unexpected result showing that the Republican leadership has lost touch with their members when it comes to gauging the extent of their resentment against leadership attempts to force trade adjustment benefits and a small tax increase down their throats for the sake of the interests of Wall Street and the multinationals. Republicans might generally support corporations and view small business as one of their important constituencies, but that doesn’t mean they love foreign multinationals and the lemon socialism they are bringing to the table.

On the Democratic side, the Party’s traditional support for trade adjustment assistance was overcome with 144 votes against, because Democrats realized that a vote for the TAA was a vote for the TPA, and the vast majority of them were against that passionately. Not just out of principle, but because 1) Democratic leadership was obviously divided on the issue with the Administration wanting it badly; 2) the formal leaders in the Houses were seemingly neutral, and many other influential Democrats, as well as the rank and file strongly against it; 3) the Democratic Party in the House was probably recognizing that the Administration had lost them the key election of 2010, and made them weaker in 2012 and 2014 then they otherwise would have been, with its insistence on passing and supporting a neo-liberal health care “reform” bill, bailing out the health care insurers, that couldn’t possibly begin to be effective until 2015; 4) the Administration had tried to lead them down a primrose path of more electoral failure with its failed “Grand Bargain” effort to cut the entitlements so important to Democratic constituencies and the identity of the Party; 5) the Administration’s determined effort to pass the potentially very unpopular package of the TPA, followed by the TPP, TTIP, and TiSA agreements would very likely also seriously erode their electoral support with their core constituencies; and 6) in the end, most of the Democratic members may have realized that there was no percentage in them voting against their own perceived interests for the sake of the President’s “legacy” and may, just perhaps, even gotten very angry over being asked to secure this legacy over their potentially very dead political bodies, in return for a TAA bill that would provide some $463 million in such assistance to be divided among a likely one million people and very possibly many more, that projections seemed to show would be put out of work by the contemplated trade agreements. Such Democrats might be forgiven for thinking that an attempt to buy them off with an average of $463 per unemployed person was not a very handsome offer from those wanting to pass the TPA and the subsequent likely trade agreements. [..]

Implications of the Explanations for a Re-vote

I think the explanations suggest that the likely result of any re-vote on the TAA will be similar to the first vote for a number of reasons. First, for Democrats, their will be resentment over the fact that the Republican leadership, with the obvious encouragement of the President isn’t respecting the decision taken by the House on Friday, and is trying to make them go on the record again in rejecting their TPA program. I think they will view this as adding insult to the injury that the Administration has done them by putting them in the position of having to vote on these trade issues in the face of their obvious desire to forget about NAFTA-like trade agreements that have already caused the Party so much grief in the past. [..]

With Pelosi, now publicly on the anti-TPA side and Clinton certainly tending toward that definite position, how many of the 40 Democrats who voted for TAA/TPA will stick with their position? What’s in it for them to support their lame duck president, while remaining in seeming disagreement with their most likely choice for the top of their ticket in 2016? Anyone for those 40 Democrats suddenly becoming 20, or even 5 or 6, come Tuesday?

And on the Republican side, with 158 of them in opposition to the TAA/TPA on Friday, and 54 of them still in opposition to the TPA even when they had a chance to vote on a clean TPA bill which was purely symbolic and did not require them to vote for the hated TAA “welfare,” how many of them do you suppose will now vote for TAA/TPA on the re-vote? They too, will be angry at Boehner and Ryan for making them vote again on the combined TAA/TPP.

So why would that initial 158 Republican votes in opposition suddenly be less than in the first TAA vote? And even if were, and that number fell to say 146 or so in opposition, which is the other side of the coin of Boehner’s statement that he doesn’t think he can produce more than 100 votes for the TAA in the re-vote, even if there still were 20 Democrats who remain in support of TAA, then we would still have 146 Republicans + 168 Democrats or so against the TAA on Tuesday, a vote of 314 against and, at most, 120 votes for.

At Salon, lapsed blogger David Dayen points out the hurdles the GOP leadership must jump to get this to the president’s desk. The options aren’t good:

   Pass TAA on a re-vote. Speaker John Boehner set this up for a vote next week, where they will try to persuade more Democrats and Republicans. Republican support topped out at 93 (votes started moving away from TAA once it was clear it wouldn’t pass), meaning that 124 Democrats would need to give their support. That’s a very tall order, especially now that it’s clearly the only thing standing between the President and his trade authority. Democratic groups, which demanded a no vote on TAA, will surely continue to whip the vote on their side.

   Pass a separate standalone fast track bill. Just the threat of this, leaving Democrats with the President’s trade authority in place and no TAA, might be enough to get TAA passed. But it shouldn’t be. Just because 219 members voted for fast track on a meaningless vote today doesn’t mean they would be there on a standalone vote. Also, there is no way the Senate would concur on a fast-track trade bill without TAA: that would lose too many Democratic votes to pass. So this seems like an idle threat. Mitch McConnell could pass fast track with a promise to pass TAA later, but he’s already done that gambit once, getting fast track forward with a promise of a vote on reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank. That promise has been broken, and there’s no reason for Senators to believe McConnell again.

   Make changes to TAA or fast track to get enough Democrats on board: This is what Pelosi was intimating, but it’s hard to see how that could plausibly occur. They would have to get any changes agreed to by the House and the Senate, which opens the process up to a lot of messiness. And even if all the issues with TAA were dispensed with – no paying for the assistance with Medicare cuts, no exemptions for public employees, etc. – the bill has now become the impediment to more corporate-written trade deals that set regulatory caps and facilitate job loss, and liberal Democrats know it. As Rep. Keith Ellison, co-chair of the Progressive Caucus, told the Huffington Post, “You can’t take the politics out of politics.”

   Give Democrats something they want: Nancy Pelosi’s Dear Colleague letter makes this clear: “The prospects for passage (of fast track) will greatly increase with the passage of a robust highway bill.” This means that, if Republicans vote for more infrastructure spending, Pelosi would be likely to supply the votes for trade. But it’s not clear whether this is coming from Pelosi only, or if it would have buy-in from her caucus. She might be making a deal her caucus hasn’t empowered her to make. Plus, that would involve Republicans in the House and Senate agreeing to fund more infrastructure, and nobody knows where the money would come from.

Now add to the mix, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton finally addressed the issue:

“The president should listen to and work with his allies in Congress starting with Nancy Pelosi, who have expressed their concerns about the impact that a weak agreement would have on our workers to make sure we get the best strongest deal possible,” she said. “And if we don’t get it, there should be no deal.” [..]

Clinton said a final deal must protect American jobs, raise American workers’ wages and protect American national security interests.

“The president actually has this amazing opportunity now,” the Democratic presidential candidate said. “Let’s take the lemons and turn it into lemonade.”

Not as decisive as some would like but clear enough.

The fight to Stop Fast Track and these non-trade agreements is not over by a long shot. We need all hands on deck today and tomorrow before the vote.

There is no time to waste, do this NOW. Call and tell your representative to vote no on these bills.

Punting the Pundits

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

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

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Paul Krugman: Democrats Being Democrats

On Friday, House Democrats shocked almost everyone by rejecting key provisions needed to complete the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an agreement the White House wants but much of the party doesn’t. On Saturday Hillary Clinton formally began her campaign for president, and surprised most observers with an unapologetically liberal and populist speech.

These are, of course, related events. The Democratic Party is becoming more assertive about its traditional values, a point driven home by Mrs. Clinton’s decision to speak on Roosevelt Island. You could say that Democrats are moving left. But the story is more complicated and interesting than this simple statement can convey.

You see, ever since Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980, Democrats have been on the ideological defensive. Even when they won elections they seemed afraid to endorse clearly progressive positions, eager to demonstrate their centrism by supporting policies like cuts to Social Security that their base hated. But that era appears to be over. Why?

David Cay Johnson: The top .001 percent are different from you and me

New IRS report reveals new details that will anger almost everyone, including those in the top 1 percent

A new IRS report (pdf) examines incomes and tax burdens of all Americans. Its story of stagnation should be familiar to all. For 80 percent of Americans, average incomes fell between 2003 and 2012. That’s every taxpayer with income of less than $85,440 in 2012.

As depressing as that news is, the real story from the report concerns the very top level of income earners. The biggest income gap in America is not between the top 1 percent of earners and the 99 percent below them, but rather within the top 1 percent, where the split between the have-mores and the have-a-lot-mores is a fast-widening chasm.

Nearly 1.4 million households are in the top 1 percent income group, a statistical cohort whose members change somewhat from year to year.

But for the first time ever, the IRS offers a close look at the top .001 percent of taxpayers. It shows that incomes in this rarefied air – the top 1,361 households – are soaring while their tax burdens are falling

Lori Wallach: Fast Track Down

The Fast Track trade authority package was rejected Friday because two years of effort by a vast corporate coalition, the White House and GOP leaders — and weeks of deals swapped for yes votes — could not assuage a majority in the House of Representatives facing constituents’ concerns that more of the same trade policy would kill more jobs, push down wages and open a Pandora’s box of other damaging consequences.

Proponents of Fast Tracking the almost-completed, controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) say they are coming back this week for another try. And the White House was on full tilt this weekend trying to pressure House Democrats to flip their votes.

But the path to enactment of Fast Track remains unclear, even as the corporate coalition, White House and GOP leaders remain hell bent on finding it.

To understand what comes next, it’s worth unpacking what exactly happened on Friday and how we got there.

Robert Kuttner: The Real Meaning of Obama’s Trade Defeat

The proposed TPP was the latest in a series of deals that are mostly about the use of “trade” agreements to allow corporations to do end runs around national regulation. This is basically special interest legislation for elites. TPP, like NAFTA, included measures, such as sweetheart patent deals, that never could have won passage as separate legislation. The real interest group here is the corporate elite.

TPP is part of a broad ideology and set of ploys that reflects corporate dominance of the agenda. Public employees, such as those represented by SEIU, care about this, not just out of solidarity (though that’s important), but because “trade” deals have been used to promote privatization schemes and weaken financial regulation and create corporate hegemony sponsored by presidents from both parties. TPP is emblematic of the political domination by the one percent.

The labor movement is not motivated just by the loss of factory jobs but by the entire ideological assault on the security of ordinary wage earners and consumers. The picture of labor as a narrow interest group makes sense only if you buy the propaganda that TPP is mainly a trade deal.

Mark Weibrot: Germany is bluffing on Greece

Berlin is not going to force Athens out of the eurozone anytime soon

You can ignore all the talk of a “Grexit,” the bluff and bluster of right-wing German ideologues such as Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble who would celebrate it, and repetitive, stubbornly dire warnings that time is running out. Did you notice that the much-hyped June 5 deadline for the Greece’s payment to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) came and went, Greece didn’t pay and nobody fell off a cliff? Trust me, this is not a cliffhanger.

Although there have been numerous references to game theory in the ongoing commentary, it’s really not necessary if you look at the revealed preferences of those whom the Syriza government is polite and diplomatic enough to call its European partners. Take partner-in-chief German Chancellor Angela Merkel: If there’s one thing she doesn’t want to be remembered as, it’s the politician who destroyed the eurozone.

John Nicholss: The Magna Carta Said No Man Is Above the Law, But What About Corporations?

The Magna Carta reminds us that no man is above the law.

And it should be celebrated for that.

But it should not be imagined that the Magna Carta established democracy, or anything akin to it.

The great British parliamentarian Tony Benn put it well several years ago when he noted, as this 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta approached, that we still do not have democracy. [..]

If we respect the notion that the rule of law must apply to all-the most generous interpretation of the premises handed down across the centuries from those who on June 15, 1215 forced “the Great Charter of the Liberties” upon King John of England at Runnymede-then surely it must apply to corporations.

And, surely, the best celebration of those premises in the United States must be the extension of the movement to amend the US Constitution to declare that corporations are not people, money is not speech, and citizens and their elected representatives have the authority to organize elections-and systems of governance-where our votes matter more than their dollars.

Punting the Pundits: Sunday Preview Edition

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

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

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

The Sunday Talking Heads:

This Week with George Stephanopolis: The guests for Sunday’s “This Week” are: potential 2016 GOP presidential candidate New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie; and Clinton campaign senior adviser Joel Benenson.

The roundtable guests are: Weekly Standard editor “Bloody” Bill Kristol; Republican strategist Ana Navarro; Center for American Progress president Neera Tanden; and editor and publisher of The Nation Katrina vanden Heuvel.

Face the Nation: Host John Dickerson’s guests are: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT); Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC); and Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook.

His panel guests are: Ruth Marcus, The Washington Post; Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal; Mark Halperin, Bloomberg Politics; and Robert Costa, The Washington Post.

Meet the Press with Chuck Todd: The guests on Sunday’s “MTP” are: John Podesta, Chairman of Hillary Clinton’s Presidential Campaign; former GOP presidential candidate Gov. Mitt Romney;  Amb. Brett McGurk, Deputy Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL; and Bill Daley, former Chief of Staff for President Barack Obama.

The roundtable guests are: Stephanie Cutter, former Deputy Campaign Manager for President Barack Obama; Hugh Hewitt, host of “The Hugh Hewitt Show”; Andrea Mitchell, NBC News Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent; and Evan Thomas, Editor-at-Large for Newsweek.

State of the Union with Jake Tapper: Mr. Tapper will have an exclusive interview with former President William Jefferson Clinton.

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