Former senator, 2008 Democratic candidate for presidential nominations and former Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton has announced she is again seeking the office of President of the United States.
Not everyone is jumping on board, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio told “Meet the Press” that he is holding back his endorsement until Mrs. Clinton clarified her economic platform. Too friendly with Wall St isn’t her only problem. She has been silent about the m P5+1 negotiations with Iran over it’s nuclear program. She has supported arming the so-called “moderate rebels” in Syria uprising. Where does she stand on drone attacks, targeted assassinations and overall use of military force, the out of control surveillance community?
Right now, like the song goes, “Still I wish there was somethin’ you would do or say, to try and make me change my mind and stay.”
One former Blackwater security contractor received a life sentence on Monday and three others received 30-year sentences for killing unarmed Iraqi civilians in Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007. [..]
Nicholas A. Slatten, a former Army sniper from Tennessee, was convicted of murder for firing the first fatal shots. Three others – Dustin L. Heard, also of Tennessee; Evan S. Liberty of New Hampshire; and Paul A. Slough of Texas – were convicted of manslaughter, attempted manslaughter and the use of a machine gun in a violent crime. The last charge carried a mandatory 30-year prison sentence under a law passed during the crack cocaine epidemic.
Mr. Slatten was sentenced to life in prison, and Mr. Heard, Mr. Liberty and Mr. Slough to 30 years. The men are all in their 30s.
Now where is the justice for all the other civilians who have been killed and, or, tortured by American soldiers, drone pilots and contractors? Where are the prosecutions of those who ordered it and wrote the memos that justified the violations of US and International law? Where and when will the United States do the honorable thing for them?
Today justice was served but it should just be the beginning. This is not enough.
“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”.
So Hillary Clinton is officially running, to nobody’s surprise. And you know what’s coming: endless attempts to psychoanalyze the candidate, endless attempts to read significance into what she says or doesn’t say about President Obama, endless thumb-sucking about her “positioning” on this or that issue.
Please pay no attention. Personality-based political analysis is always a dubious venture – in my experience, pundits are terrible judges of character. Those old enough to remember the 2000 election may also remember how we were assured that George W. Bush was a nice, affable fellow who would pursue moderate, bipartisan policies.
In any case, there has never been a time in American history when the alleged personal traits of candidates mattered less. As we head into 2016, each party is quite unified on major policy issues – and these unified positions are very far from each other. The huge, substantive gulf between the parties will be reflected in the policy positions of whomever they nominate, and will almost surely be reflected in the actual policies adopted by whoever wins.
However much Americans may disagree about the morality of capital punishment, no one wants to see an innocent person executed.
And yet, far too often, people end up on death row after being convicted of horrific crimes they did not commit. The lucky ones are exonerated while they are still alive – a macabre club that has grown to include 152 members since 1973.
The rest remain locked up for life in closet-size cells. Some die there of natural causes; in at least twodocumented cases, inmates who were almost certainly innocent were put to death.
How many more innocent people have met the same fate, or are awaiting it? That may never be known. But over the past 42 years, someone on death row has been exonerated, on average, every three months. According to one study, at least 4 percent of all death-row inmates in the United States have been wrongfully convicted. That is far more than often enough to conclude that the death penalty – besides being cruel, immoral, and ineffective at reducing crime – is so riddled with error that no civilized nation should tolerate its use.
Sometimes I’m challenged over my linking belligerent neoconservatives with “liberal interventionists” who justify U.S. military invasions under the “humanitarian” banner of “responsibility to protect” – or R2P – meaning to intervene in war-torn countries to stop the killing of civilians, like the 1994 slaughter in Rwanda.
And, most people would agree that there are extraordinary situations in which the timely arrival of an external military force might prevent genocide or other atrocities, which was one of the intended functions of the United Nations. But my overall impression of R2Pers is that many are careerist hypocrites who voice selective outrage that provides cover for the U.S. and its allies to do pretty much whatever they wish.
Though one can’t generalize about an entire group – since some R2Pers act much more consistently than others – many of the most prominent ones operate opportunistically, depending how the dominant narrative is going and where the power interests lie.
This week, Senator Hatch will reportedly introduce “fast track” (trade promotion authority) legislation in the Senate, to help President Obama complete the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade and investment deal with eleven other countries in Asia and the Americas. “Fast Track” authority would allow the President to submit trade agreements to Congress without giving members of Congress the opportunity to amend the deal. Experience has shown that these trade and investment deals typically result in job losses and downward pressure on the wages of most American workers. The last thing America needs is renewal of fast track and more trade and investment deals rushed through Congress.
The administration has claimed that the TPP will create jobs, but it will not. There are other policies that have attracted bipartisan support, including ending currency manipulation and rebuilding infrastructure that could each create millions of U.S. jobs. President Obama has limited political capital to expend with the Republican-controlled Congress and he must choose his policies wisely.
As she struggled to keep her 2008 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination alive, Hillary Clinton took a turn toward economic populism. It helped; after a series of setbacks in early caucus and primary states, Clinton’s abandonment of frontrunner caution and embrace of “I’m in this race to fight for you” rhetoric played a significant role in securing her big wins in states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania. Ultimately, she gained more votes than Barack Obama and came close to wrestling the nomination from him. If Clinton had run from the start as a populist, there is no telling what might have happened. But the important thing to remember is that Clinton did not turn up the volume until she felt she had no other choice-and by then it was too late. [..]
Clinton is running another race for the presidency, and this time she is starting with the populist themes she used at the end of her last race. That’s progress-for her, for her party and maybe for her country. But that’s not enough progress. Clinton needs to be pinned down on the details and prodded to go big.
Activist pressure is essential, and it may move Clinton some. But a real race for the nomination, as opposed to a coronation, is the best guarantee that the party will produce a sufficiently populist nominee to strike the chords that will inspire voters. If Clinton is not up to the task, then Democrats had better find an alternative. If Clinton recognizes that she must not merely note the crisis but address it-recognizing the concerns about her record and answering them with an economic agenda that makes real the populist promise-then she will have the right message for a nomination fight and for a November fight that will require a lot more than platitudes.
The U.S. is running around in circles in the Middle East, patching together coalitions here, acquiring strange bedfellows there, and in location after location trying to figure out who the enemy of its enemy actually is. The result is just what you’d expect: chaos further undermining whatever’s left of the nations whose frailty birthed the jihadism America is trying to squash.
And in a classic tale of unintended consequences, just about every time Washington has committed another blunder in the Middle East, Iran has stepped in to take advantage. Consider that country the rising power in the region and credit American clumsiness for the new Iranian ascendancy.
“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”.
This Week with George Stephanopolis: This Sunday’s guests on “This Week” are: Secretary of State John Kerry; former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee; Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT); and former First Lady Laura Bush.
The roundtable guests are: Democratic strategist Donna Brazile; Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, Republican strategist and pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson, and radio and television host Tavis Smiley.
Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Scheiffer’s guests are: Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY); chairman of the Republican National Committee, Reince Priebus; Secretary of State John Kerry; and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MI).
His panel guests are: Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal; John Heilieman, Bloomberg Politics; David Ignatius, The Washington Post; Susan Page, USA Today; and CBS News Political Director John Dickerson.
Meet the Press with Chuck Todd: This Sunday’s guest are: Bill de Blasio,Mayor of New York City; Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY); and Secretary of State John Kerry.
The panel guests are: David Brooks, The New York Times; Hugh Hewitt, “The Hugh Hewitt Show“; Maria Hinojosa, host of NPR’s “Latino USA“; and Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Mayor of Baltimore City.
State of the Union: This Sunday’s host is Dana Bash. Her guests are: Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY); former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee (D?); Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) and former Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA).
OK. You can go out and enjoy the sunshine or just go back to bed.
During the night of April 6, a giant bust of Edward Snowden was placed atop a pillar in Brooklyn’s Fort Green Park by an anonymous group. Fort Greene Park is home to the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument, dedicated to colonial revolutionaries who died during the War of Independence on British prison ships docked on the Brooklyn waterfront.
While most people slept, a trio of artists and some helpers installed a bust of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in Brooklyn on Monday morning. The group, which allowed ANIMAL to exclusively document the installation on the condition that we hide their identities, hauled the 100-pound sculpture into Fort Greene Park and up its hilly terrain just before dawn. They fused it to part of the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument, a memorial to Revolutionary War soldiers. [..]
The idea for the Snowden tribute was conceived about a year ago by two New York City-based artists with a history of pulling off notable public interventions. They linked up with a renowned sculptor on the West Coast who was sympathetic to their cause.
The bust was found by the NYC police and the parks department covered the bust with a tarp and removed it to an unknown location. That didn’t deter the Snowden supporters, the next night the bust was replaced with a hologram.
That first lightning strike by an anonymous group of artists was followed by a second, carried out before dawn on Tuesday, by a group calling itself the Illuminators.
“We recreated it digitally,” said Grayson Earle, 28, a member of the second group. “We used some projection mapping software so we could put the image exactly where we wanted.”
So for about 20 minutes on Tuesday morning, a hologram of the Snowden bust hovered in the park, at the same spot where the object had rested the day before.
“We wanted to further the discussion,” said Kyle Depew, 29, who came up with the idea for the hologram.
“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”.
Want to see how secrecy is corrosive to democracy? Look no further than a series of explosive investigations by various news organizations this week that show the government hiding surveillance programs purely to prevent a giant public backlash.
USA Today’s Brad Heath published a blockbuster story on Monday about the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) running a massive domestic spying operation parallel to the NSA’s that was tracking billions of international calls made by Americans. They kept it secret for more than two decades. According to the USA Today report, the spying program was not only used against alleged terrorist activity, but countless supposed drug crimes, as well as “to identify US suspects in a wide range of other investigations”. And they collected information on millions of completely innocent Americans along the way.
Heath’s story is awash with incredible detail and should be read in full, but one of the most interesting parts was buried near the end: the program was shut down by the Justice Department after the Snowden leaks, not because Snowden exposed the program, but because they knew that when the program eventually would leak, the government would have no arguments to defend it.
The long knives have been coming out over Social Security lately. The latest wave of attacks was triggered by an amendment from Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) which would have expanded Social Security benefits, and which won the support of most Democrats in the Senate. That signaled a potential shift in the political tide – toward Social Security in particular and economic populism in general.
It also meant that it was time to suit up conservatism’s frayed old straw men and send them into dubious battle once again.
The attackers this time around include a “libertarian” finance writer, an editor for the National Review, and – inevitably – the editorial board of the Washington Post. But the battle against economic populism isn’t just being waged by the right. There are factions within the Democratic Party that want to re-empower its “centrist” wing, and they’ve been pushing back on the party’s new populism – which the movement to expand Social Security both reflects and reinforces – this week as well.
There is a fear I feel when I am in spaces dominated by powerful white people, and it can’t be captured on video. Black folks and other people of color will understand the fear I feel, but after the past week – after watching Walter Scott run away from a white police officer and then fall as he is shot in the back, and watching others watch it – I am not sure white people will ever understand it, even when they, too bear witness to the violent end of a black life. [..]
The visible carnage of a shooting like Walter Scott’s – and whichever new one will come in the next weeks – heightens the anxiety that black people feel in a white supremacist America, no matter how many white people watch and decry the violence. But addressing such obviously graphic brutality, and then ignoring the institutional discrimination that allows it to continue, cannot change how racism consigns black people to premature death in ways visibly and equally invisibly insidious, nor stop us from being afraid that we might be next.
Meanwhile, big money is taking over our democracy.
If there were ever a time for a bold Democratic voice on behalf of hardworking Americans, it is now.
Yet I don’t recall a time when the Democratic Party’s most prominent office holders sounded as meek. With the exception of Elizabeth Warren, they’re pussycats. If Paul Wellstone, Teddy Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, or Ann Richards were still with us, they’d be hollering.
The fire now is on the right, stoked by the Koch brothers, Rupert Murdoch, and a pocketful of hedge-fund billionaires.
Today’s Republican firebrands, beginning with Ted Cruz, blame the poor, blacks, Latinos, and immigrants for what’s been happening. They avoid any mention of wealth and power.
The case of Walter Scott shows just how valuable a citizen with a camera can be. Video footage capturing excessive police force can make all the difference in securing justice. Yet, in the conversation about more dashboard and body cameras for police, what gets lost is the value of video shot by citizen witnesses. We don’t need more video from the police perspective, but more from our own. [..]
Concerns about abuse and selective use of the cameras by police are well-founded, especially given that the rules are far from clear about when cameras will be on, what penalties (if any) there will be if an officer turns off their camera or loses footage, and who will have access to bodycam video. The original police accounts of the South Carolina shooting were shown to be so far from the truth – compare the original story from the Post And Courier with what we know now – that leaving police to record and publish video of events seems risky, to say the least.
American policy makers have made it a point, expressed consistently over time, to emphasize that intelligence estimates do not, in and of themselves, constitute policy decisions, and are useful only in so far as they inform policy makers who then make the actual decisions. The logic of this argument allows for the notion of detached decision-making on the part of the policy makers, and includes a built-in premise that the estimates they use are constructed in such a manner as to allow for a wide range of policy options. This model of decision-making works well on paper, and within the realm of academic theory, but in the harsh reality of post-9/11 America, where overhyped information is further exaggerated through a relentless 24-hour news cycle that encourages simplicity to the point of intellectual dishonesty, it is hard to imagine a scenario where such a pattern of informed, deliberate decision-making has, or could, occur. [..]
The bottom line is that the IAEA’s continued ability to account for Iran’s safeguarded nuclear materials remains the best deterrent against any Iranian nuclear weapons program. Iran and the international community still have a long way to go before they will be able to reach any accommodation which provides Iran with the nuclear enrichment capabilities it desires while operating within an expanded framework of safeguards the IAEA and the West require. The nuclear framework agreement recently concluded between Iran and the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany goes a long way toward achieving this, but the devil is in the details, and those details need to be hammered out by June 30.
The battle over citizens’ right to privacy and the government’s mass collection of private data that has nothing to do with protecting the country from terrorist attacks, is coming to a head on June 1. That’s when the Patriot Act’s section 215, the provision of the act that the NSA used to authorize its bulk telephone metadata collection program, must either be renewed by congress or it expires. The problem is the lack of interest by the American public. In an extended segment of his HBO program, “This Week Tonight,” John Oliver found a subject that might pique their interest, “dick pics.” He presented his idea to Edward Snowden in a one on one exclusive interview.
So why all the trouble? In theory, Snowden’s revelations are old, they have proven to be either inaccessible or not titillating enough for the American public, and Oliver already covered the issue himself on the show in an interview with former NSA chief General Keith Alexander less than a year ago.
As it turns out, Oliver wasn’t satisfied. Using the June 1 expiration of controversial sections of the Patriot Act as a peg, Oliver decided to revive the conversation anew by highlighting one specific aspect of the surveillance issue that a majority of Americans could relate to.
And Sunday’s final product is earning Oliver plaudits across the Internet. In the interview, Oliver accomplishes several feats. He’s not only funny (Snowden apparently misses eating Hot Pockets, the sodium vehicle of the American freezer section), but also incisive and tough. [..]
But most notably of all, Oliver might finally have pinpointed a way to make the debate about surveillance accessible to a wide audience. By honing on one aspect of the government surveillance, the capacity for intelligence agencies to access “dick pics,” he captures the attention and summons the outrage of numerous passersby in a filmed segment in Times Square. Many of those interviewed can’t properly identify Edward Snowden or don’t quite recall what he had done, but all recoil at the thought of government access to intimate photography.
Thanks to John’s interview and the above viral video, which at this posting has
Privacy advocates experienced a major setback in November when a surveillance reform bill, the FREEDOM Act, died in a Senate procedural vote. But now they’re back, and with a new, simple question for Americans – Can they see your junk?
Playing off Oliver’s hilarious skit, one privacy activist built cantheyseemydick.com, which breaks down how each NSA program could be used to access private communications. Despite its flippant tone, the website offers simple explanations of complex programs that are difficult to understand.
On a more serious note, a new coalition of privacy groups led by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today launched the Fight 215 campaign calling for an end to the NSA’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone records.
EFF activist Nadia Kayyali told TechCrunch the organizations launched the campaign today because of the impending deadline, but they were very excited about the Last Week Tonight with John Oliver skit and the attention it has already brought to surveillance reform.
With this campaign, the privacy advocates have taken a direct stance, end the bulk collection of Americans’ telephone records. [..]
Even with the new public attention on surveillance reform, privacy advocates face an uphill battle in Congress. Although surveillance reform is an issue that does not fall squarely on party lines, reform efforts in the Democratic-controlled Senate last year were thwarted primarily by Republican votes. Now Republicans control both chambers of Congress.
As the June 1 deadline approaches, no one in Congress has laid out a comprehensive plan to address government surveillance this year. Kayyali attributes the lack of action on the Hill to uncertainty.
“I think a lot of people, including people who want to see good legislation passed, weren’t certain where to start from,” Kayyali said. “It’s hard to say what Congress is thinking.”
As members look to form that plan, Kayyali hopes the new campaign will send them a clear message.
EEF and thirty other civil liberties organizations have launched a call in campaign, Fight 215. They will help connect you to your representatives to tell them to end mass surveillance.
“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”.
As Republican presidential hopefuls trot out their policy agendas – which always involve cutting taxes on the rich while slashing benefits for the poor and middle class – some real new thinking is happening on the other side of the aisle. Suddenly, it seems, many Democrats have decided to break with Beltway orthodoxy, which always calls for cuts in “entitlements.” Instead, they’re proposing that Social Security benefits actually be expanded.
This is a welcome development in two ways. First, the specific case for expanding Social Security is quite good. Second, and more fundamentally, Democrats finally seem to be standing up to antigovernment propaganda and recognizing the reality that there are some things the government does better than the private sector. [..]
And in the real world of retirement, Social Security is a shining example of a system that works. It’s simple and clean, with low operating costs and minimal bureaucracy. It provides older Americans who worked hard all their lives with a chance of living decently in retirement, without requiring that they show an inhuman ability to think decades ahead and be investment whizzes as well. The only problem is that the decline of private pensions, and their replacement with inadequate 401(k)-type plans, has left a gap that Social Security isn’t currently big enough to fill. So why not make it bigger?
We can’t believe we have to explain 9/11, ISIS and Iraq again. But as the right’s lies add up, here goes
Foreign policy is already looming much larger in the 2016 election than it did in 2012. When Obama ran for re-election, the inescapable fact that Osama bin Laden had been killed on his watch (after Bush had admittedly lost interest in him) essentially foreclosed any serious foreign policy challenge from the Republicans. Hence the profound silliness of their Benghazi obsession, and Obama’s cool, detached debate invitation to “Please proceed…” [..]
At the moment, Obama’s historic nuclear deal with Iran is center stage, but the much more widespread geopolitical problem typified by (though not limited to) ISIS has a much more pervasive political influence. Case in point: the emergence of ISIS, with its provocative spectacles of violence have unexpectedly renewed American’s willingness to send troops to fight overseas, completely forgetting that this was precisely bin Laden’s reason for 9/11 in the first place: to lure the U.S. into a “holy war” with Islam. Election year dynamics being what they are, there’s no telling how badly this could turn out. So before we go off and blow several trillion dollars recruiting the next wave of terrorists, perhaps it would be a good idea to reconsider what we did the last time around.
The gun lobby jumps through hoops each year to comply with the same regulations they would much rather dismantle
Reports of road rage incidents resulting in gun violence are on the rise. In fact, they are now so common that newspapers report them as if they are fender benders. [..]
New laws that allow the open carry of loaded guns in public places – and such laws are springing up all over the nation – have resulted in even more terrifying confrontations: For example, parents are forced to deal with gun activists brandishing their firearms in front of their kids in a public park, shouting: “Look at my gun! There’s nothing you can do about it!” Likewise, workers in businesses serving the public are forced to deal with customers blithely slinging loaded semi-automatic weapons over their shoulders, or casually leaning firearms up against tables. These owners have little recourse but to pray they don’t become the victim of one of the thousands of firearm-related accidents that occur all over the country every year.
But never let it be said that the gun rights zealots are totally rigid in their thinking and have no common sense at all. I have written in the past about the odd hypocrisy of gun proliferation advocates in Republican state houses who refuse to people the right to carry firearms in their work places, even as they pass laws making everyone else work in a world where an angry person with a gun might very well lose his or her temper and decide to make their point with a bullet.
Dick Cheney’s ridiculous claims about Barack Obama this week fit into a longstanding right-wing tradition
It is a well known fact that liberals hate America, or as the always rational Ann Coulter once said, “even fanatical Muslim terrorists don’t hate America like liberals do.” While I would estimate that Islamic terrorists probably hate America just a tad more than liberals, it is true that liberals tend to be less brazenly patriotic than god-fearing, flag-waving conservatives. According to Pew polls, 81 percent of “business conservatives” often feel U.S. pride, while only about 40 percent of “solid liberals” feel the same way. It seems like liberals are just not as infatuated with the idea of America as conservatives are. [..]
But here’s the thing: Criticizing the actions of America seems to be a whole lot more patriotic than sitting back and buying into false talk of American exceptionalism, when reality tells a different story. One does not have to constantly feel pride about one’s country to be a patriot, and carrying on that way can blind a person when their country is actually on the wrong side.
So, yes, conservatives do tend to feel more pride in America than liberals do. But what does this really tell us? Not that conservatives are any more or less patriotic than liberals, but that they are more likely to be fooled by nationalistic propaganda. A rational person looks at their own actions, or their country’s actions dispassionately, and is able to admit when they are wrong. Blind patriotism is never able to make such an admission, and will resort to fairy tales in order to defend indefensible actions.
There are a lot of fairy tales in the United States. But true patriots live in the real world; when they see a problem with their country, they seek to expose and to change it – not mask it with ardent deception.
We marched through the cold snow, the winter nights, the brutal winds, the shivering rain… for justice. For months, we have not let up. We refuse to let the death of Eric Garner be in vain, so we have made demands, organizations joined forces and thousands of young people took to the streets. I am beyond disbelief that even though there is a glaring problem with the policies of policing in New York City and in our country coupled with an inherently flawed justice system, not one new law has been passed since a father of four was choked out on a hot, summer day last July in Staten Island. Mr. Governor, not one. [..]
You have to restore faith within the criminal justice system here in New York State. Without action, everyday it is deteriorates more and more. The country is at a breaking point. With the death of Mr. Walter Scott in North Charleston, South Carolina over the weekend, we are witnessing the end of the rope. You must lead. If you have any ambition for office beyond our home state, now is the time to show the nation that you can make a decision to protect the people and restore confidence in our criminal justice system. There is much you can do and need to do besides this, but this should have been done by now.
Next week as Congress returns, House Republicans will address what they consider one of the nation’s most pressing problems: relieving the tax burdens on multimillionaires — not the 1 percent but the wealthiest 0.2 percent, two of 1000 — by eliminating the estate tax. Its repeal will cost $269 billion over 10 years, but Republicans find the cause so compelling that they would add that sum to our deficits rather than struggle with “paying” for it.
The bill, of course, has no chance of becoming law. If necessary, the president will veto it. It is a message bill. Conservatives love to rail against what they have been taught to call the death tax. Republicans want voters — or more importantly billionaire donors — to know that, even with inequality at record extremes, with the wealthiest 0.1 percent of families possessing as much wealth as 90 percent of American families, they are on the case, standing strong to defend the inheritances of the sons and daughters of the privileged few.
“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”.
In less than 60 days, Congress – whether they like it or not – will be forced to decide if the NSA’s most notorious mass surveillance program lives or dies. And today, over 30 civil liberties organizations launched a nationwide call-in campaign urging them to kill it.
Despite doing almost everything in their power to avoi voting for substantive NSA reform, Congress now has no choice: On 1 June, one of the most controversial parts of the Patriot Act – known as Section 215 – will expire unless both houses of Congress affirmatively vote for it to be reauthorized.
Section 215 of the Patriot Act was the subject of the very first Snowden story, when the Guardian reported that the US government had reinterpreted the law in complete secrecy, allowing the NSA to vacuum up every single American’s telephone records – who they called, who called them, when, and for how long – regardless of whether they had been accused of a crime or not.
The March job numbers came in somewhat worse than most analysts had expected. The slower job growth was largely attributable to unusually bad weather in late February and early March, but most of the commentators seem to be missing this fact. Many are warning that the economy might be weaker than they thought.
These warnings from commentators are in fact good news. They are good news first because it is almost certainly true that the economy is weaker than these analysts thought. Many had been making silly pronouncements about a new American boom that was not based in any real understanding of the economy. It’s always best when the people who are determining economic policy have some idea of the actual state of the economy.
Despite the power of incumbency, the backing of the President, and an array of wealthy and powerful backers, Rahm Emanuel nevertheless became the first mayor in Chicago history to be forced into a runoff. Sure, Chuy Garcia’s defeat was a setback for the left, but Emanuel’s struggle to retain his office is a warning for politicians everywhere: Corporate Democrats are likely to find themselves on the defensive in 2016 and beyond.
As the Chicago Sun-Times concluded, being forced into a runoff was a “huge national embarrassment” for Emanuel — one that could have ended his mayoralty. The nickname Emanuel earned during this race was “Mayor 1 Percent,” and it’s a name which is likely to stick. That reflects a new reality for “centrists” in the Emanuel/Third Way mold: corporate-friendly policies bring serious political risk.
Americans at the top of the income ladder enjoyed an astonishing year in 2012, new data show. Compared with 2011, their incomes increased by half – their second highest ever – while their tax burdens fell to almost the lowest ever.
The tax returns of the top 400 earners reported average income of $335.7 million, a real increase of more than $111 million over 2011, a new IRS report reveals.
Even better for the top 400, their taxes came to just 16.7 percent of their adjusted gross income. [..]
Although the top 400 earners is a statistical group that can change year to year, 343 taxpayers have turned up on the list five or more times since 1990. Anyone who makes the list even once would remain for life among the top one-tenth of 1 percent of Americans, those making $2 million or more, even if they achieve only average returns on their investments.
There’s a word for a government whose policies pump up the incomes of top earners and cut their tax rates while suppressing what the vast majority earn. That term is “oligarchy.”
How long will it take for the government to admit that the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay just aren’t working?
While closing arguments began Monday in the Boston Marathon bombing trial, moving toward some resolution for victims and their families, the trial of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks slated to eventually take place at Guantanamo is nowhere near even beginning. [..]
It’s time for the U.S. government to put an end to this fiasco. The legitimacy of such important terrorism cases as the September 11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people on U.S. soil is not something to be disregarded, nor is the impact on the victims’ families, who have yet to see justice done. These cases shouldn’t be maintained where they’re not working. All the military commission cases could be reliably tried in the seasoned and successful U.S. federal court system. It’s time to accept that this venture isn’t working, pack up the military commissions, transfer the cases to the United States, try the alleged perpetrators, and move on.
Not long ago I was asked to speak to a religious congregation about widening inequality. Shortly before I began, the head of the congregation asked that I not advocate raising taxes on the wealthy.
He said he didn’t want to antagonize certain wealthy congregants on whose generosity the congregation depended.
I had a similar exchange last year with the president of a small college who had invited me to give a lecture that his board of trustees would be attending. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t criticize Wall Street,” he said, explaining that several of the trustees were investment bankers.
It seems to be happening all over. [..]
Philanthropy is noble. But when it’s mostly in the hands of a few super-rich and giant corporations, and is the only game available, it can easily be abused.
Our democracy is directly threatened when the rich buy off politicians.
But no less dangerous is the quieter and more insidious buy-off of institutions democracy depends on to research, investigate, expose, and mobilize action against what is occurring.
“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”.
Forty years ago, Frederick A.O. Schwarz Jr. played a crucial role in exposing decades of appalling secret conduct by U.S. intelligence agencies. Today, he is publishing “Democracy in the Dark: The Seduction of Government Secrecy,” a timely and provocative book exploring the origins of the national security state and the urgent challenge of reining it in. [..]
In response to the findings, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and established permanent select committees to oversee intelligence operations. Indeed, it was the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that produced the bombshell report on the CIA’s torture program released in December – though not the unredacted report the nation deserves to see. In the post-Sept. 11 era, however, these intended safeguards against excessive secrecy have undeniably and disastrously failed. As I have written before, it’s long past time to form a modern Church Committee to investigate fully secret U.S. intelligence activities in the 21st century.
If you’ve never done it before, go to Tumblr and search “thigh gap.” I will wait.
In the event that you are an old person like me, you might not have realized that Tumblr is watching your searches. Well, not your searches, exactly – you are, as we’ve established, an old person, whereas more than half of Tumblr users are under 35 and 15% are under 18. But, likely because of these demographics, the blogging site has starting noting when users search certain keywords – “anorexia”, “self-harm”, “suicide” among them – and inserts a message asking you “is everything okay?” You can still click through to your search results, but first you’re offered resources for support. [..]
But even being watched solely by a sophisticated algorithm feels uncanny. In 2012, Charles Duhigg revealed in the New York Times Magazine that, if you stock up on lotion and supplements at Target, the company’s purchase-analyzing algorithm will guess that you’re pregnant and start sending you coupons for baby gear. “Willies” is too weak a word for how people responded to that one – especially once Duhigg told the story of a Minneapolis father who found out that his teen daughter was pregnant only because Target figured it out first. If you’re searching for vitamins and end up getting served discounts on Diaper Genies, it may feel like you have a fairy godmother – but it also feels like you’re being spied on. And you are.
You may have heard that the government is forcing businesses not to discriminate. It isn’t. If you chose to run a business, you have to follow the laws. If you don’t, that’s a choice-and you choose to suffer the consequences.
Still, in the wake of the controversy surrounding Indiana’s law, conservatives don’t see it that way. Even potential Republican presidential candidates are getting in on the assertions. Rick Santorum recently said:
If you’re a print shop and you are a gay man, should you be forced to print ‘God Hates Fags’ for the Westboro Baptist Church because they hold those signs up? Should the government-and this is really the case here – should the government force you to do that? This is about the government coming in and saying, “No, we’re going to make you do this.” And this is where I think we just need some space to say let’s have some tolerance, be a two-way street.
There are two problems with Santorum’s reasoning. The first is that a printer doesn’t have to make such signs, under any law, because refusing to do so is not discrimination in any legally prohibited sense. A print shop can also refuse to print a poster that says, for instance, “F*ck Rick Santorum,” either because it disagrees with the language or the sentiment. Both are entirely legally permissible decisions any business can rightfully make.
In a perfect world, there would be no stigma to being a victim of sexual violence. Sexual assault survivors could come forward and talk about their stories without fear of retribution, shaming or harassment. Reporters could print the names of those assaulted, knowing that the victims’ safety would remain intact.
But we do not live in a perfect – or even near-perfect – world. And if we want rape victims to be able to tell their stories in the media, we must protect their anonymity. [..]
But one misguided suggestion to come out of the discussion about rape, reporting and responsibility is that journalists should only publish stories in which the rape survivor agrees to be named. Sonali Kohli at Quartz, for instance, argued that “there is something patriarchal and counterproductive to the idea that sexual assault is presumed to be shameful for the survivor.”
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is in Moscow today to discuss gas prices, trade and investment with Vladimir Putin; Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis recently left Washington, where he assured the IMF’s Christine Lagarde that Greece will make a loan repayment due tomorrow and discussed with her the Syriza government’s proposed reforms. A symmetrical shuttling, you could say, beyond the EU’s borders; a reasonable hedging of bets at a critical moment for Greece; an assertion of agency. But reading the Anglophone press, you might think the Greek government was about to default on its IMF loan, print drachmas, call snap elections, thumb its nose at Europe, and sell its soul to Putin for a fistful of roubles.
A fog of disinformation surrounds Greece’s ongoing negotiations with its creditors to unblock 7.2 billion euros of loan funds, without which the government is likely to run out of money in weeks (or months-this too is unclear). An April 5 piece in Financial Times, based almost entirely on blind quotes from “senior official[s]” and eurozone finance ministers, suggested that an agreement will only be possible if Syriza ditches its elected left-wing MPs and forms a coalition with two center-left parties, the discredited Pasok and newly created Potami. In The Daily Telegraph three days earlier, Euroskeptic journalist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard cited unnamed sources “close to the ruling Syriza party” to claim that Greece was about to nationalize the banking system and introduce a parallel currency. This fog is swallowed and recycled by Greece’s private TV channels, bought hacks and politicians. The effect is to spread confusion and mistrust, threatening the already tremulous negotiations, the Syriza government and what’s left of European cohesion.
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