Tag: Politics

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

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: Voodoo Time Machine

Many of us in the econ biz were wondering how the new leaders of Congress would respond to the sharp increase in American economic growth that, we now know, began last spring. After years of insisting that President Obama is responsible for a weak economy, they couldn’t say the truth – that short-run economic performance has very little to do with who holds the White House. So what would they say?

Well, I didn’t see that one coming: They’re claiming credit. Never mind the fact that all of the good data refer to a period before the midterm elections. Mitch McConnell, the new Senate majority leader, says that he did it, that growth reflected “the expectation of a new Republican Congress.”

The response of the Democratic National Committee – “Hahahahahahaha” – seems appropriate. I mean, talk about voodoo economics: Mr. McConnell is claiming not just that he can create prosperity without, you know, actually passing any legislation, but that he can reach back in time and create prosperity before even taking power. But while Mr. McConnell’s self-aggrandizement is funny, it’s also scary, because it’s a symptom of his party’s epistemic closure. Republicans know many things that aren’t so, and no amount of contrary evidence will get them to change their minds.

At least Mr. McConnell didn’t do what many of his colleagues have done when faced with inconvenient facts: resort to conspiracy theories.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: The GOP’s Social Security Assault Has a Human Cost

It is striking that on their first day — their very first day! — congressional Republicans moved against Social Security’s disability insurance fund, before some of them had even found the restrooms or put out their family photos.

As Jerry Seinfeld might ask, “Who does that?”

Although the move was somewhat secretive, a number of very smart people caught it and brought it to the public’s attention. “The New Republican Attack on Social Security Starts Now!” Nancy Altman and Eric Kingson wrote in The Huffington Post. “House Rule Could Hurt Vulnerable Disability Beneficiaries,” explained Kathy Ruffing at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. “Republican Congress Launches With Back-Door Attack On Social Security Benefits,” wrote Alan Pyke of Think Progress.

“Well,” said Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times, “that didn’t take long.”

No, indeed. And it’s worth remembering that this GOP move doesn’t just hurt an abstract entity called “Social Security.” It hurts people — living, breathing human beings.

This particular move targeted the disabled. Here’s how: The overall Social Security fund is well-funded for the next two decades or so (and easily remedied beyond that point), but the disability insurance trust fund needs a short-term cash infusion from the larger retirement account.

Freedom of the Press and Speech have come under attack lately from the and, strangely, from the so-called left. The vicious attack on the office of “Charlie Hebdo” was especially vicious but there are more subtle attacks on our rights from the US Department of Justice. Even though Attorney General Eric Holder has said that he would force New York Times reporter James Risen to reveal the sources for his book “State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration,” Holder approved the issue of a limited subpoena requiring Risen to testify at the trial of former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling who is being charged as a whistleblower under the 1917 Espionage Act. On January 5th in an unusual pre-trial hearing, Risen finally testified, for the first time under oath, in a Virginia federal courtroom

The terse, and at times combative, testimony prompted a lawyer for Sterling to question whether prosecutors could even proceed with their case.

There are many unequivocal statements the government cannot prove without Risen, said Edward MacMahon, a lawyer for Sterling. Sterling was indicted on unauthorized disclosure of national defense information and other charges in 2010. [..]

On Monday, Risen said he did not want to provide any information to the government that it might be able to use as a “building block” to prove or disprove a “mosaic” it was trying to make. He made the comments just days before Sterling is scheduled to begin trial on Jan. 12.

New York Times reporter Mark Appuzo spoke with Democracy Now!‘s Amy Goodman and  Juan González about the possibility of Risen being held in contempt and going to jail

It remains to be seen if Risen will testify at all. If he does and stick to his guns, will Holder stick to his statement that no journalist would go to jail on his watch for doing his or her job?

“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

New York Times Editorial Board: The Charlie Hebdo Massacre in Paris

The brutal terrorist attack on the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris on Wednesday has badly shaken France. But the French have reacted with a fierce determination to defend their freedoms. President François Hollande, speaking from outside the magazine’s office a couple of hours after the murder of 12 people, was crystal clear: This was an assault, he said, on “the expression of freedom” that is the “spirit of the republic.” [..]

President Hollande has wisely appealed for national unity. His sentiments were echoed by former President Nicolas Sarkozy, who asked the public to avoid the temptation to “lump together” terrorists with Muslims, and he called for a united front against terrorism. Dalil Boubakeur, the rector of the Grand Mosque in Paris, expressed his community’s anguish over the attack. He did not mince words: “This is a deafening declaration of war,” he said.

Just days after the 9/11 attacks, an editorial in the newspaper Le Monde declared: “We are all Americans.” In France, “Je suis Charlie” – “I am Charlie” – has gone viral as the words to show solidarity with the victims at Charlie Hebdo. This attack was an assault on freedom everywhere. On Wednesday, the American Embassy in Paris put that message on its social media accounts.

Charles M Blow: Who Should Apologize in Police Conflict?

Patrick Lynch, the president of New York City’s largest police union, has once again called on Mayor Bill de Blasio to apologize to the police officers.

But this raises a real question: Apologize for what? Is the current tiff between the police and the mayor really just about protests and officers killed, or is it about something much bigger: diverging philosophies of basic fairness, the acquisition and application of power, and the structures of oppression demanding submission? [..]

It seems to me, in the New York standoff, that the mayor owes no apology for fighting to overturn stop-and-frisk, disclosing that he talked to his son about encounters with police officers, or being compassionate to protesters. That is the man New Yorkers elected.

This, to my mind, is an attack on him as an agent of change. It is a battle to see which arm has the most muscle: the one that wants to deny bias, explicit or implicit, in the exercise of its power while simultaneously clinging to that bias; or the one committed to questioning the power and acknowledging the bias. Eventually, we will have to wrestle with the question of which of those forces must win for us to be true and whole.

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

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

Wednesday is Ladies’ Day.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Katrina vanden Heuvel: Antonin Scalia: Torture’s Not Torture Unless He Says It Is

Perhaps, as Justice Scalia told a Swiss university audience earlier this month, it is indeed “very facile” for Americans to declare that “torture is terrible.” The justice posited to his listeners a classic ticking-time-bomb scenario-this one involving “a person that you know for sure knows the location of a nuclear bomb that has been planted in Los Angeles and will kill millions of people”-and asked, “You think it’s clear that you cannot use extreme measures to get that information out of that person?” Now, I didn’t see that episode of 24, but I have read my Bill of Rights, and I’m far more inclined to align myself here with James Madison than with Jack Bauer-or with Antonin Scalia.

Psychopaths, sadists, and Scalia notwithstanding, no one really asks the asinine question, “Is torture terrible?” because it’s already been answered. Torture, George Washington told his troops in 1775, brings “shame, disgrace, and ruin” to the country; earlier this month, Sen. John McCain called the CIA’s enhanced interrogation tactics “shameful and unnecessary” and decried their employment. The UN expressly banned torture in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 and twice underlined the position in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (adopted in 1966) and Convention Against Torture (adopted in 1984). Common Article 3 to the Geneva Conventions (1949) prohibits “violence of life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture,” as well as “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.” Finally, torture is illegal in the United States under federal law. [..]

It is a travesty that we must countenance a Supreme Court justice who holds such contempt for both domestic and international law-and for human dignity and decency as well. There is no justice in torture, and we cannot tolerate a justice who is for torture.

Zoë Carpenter: White House Threatens to Veto Keystone XL Legislation

President Obama will not sign legislation to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, the White House said Tuesday. The veto threat came as Republicans assumed the majority in both chambers of Congress, having promised to make green-lighting the tar sands project their first priority.

“There is already a well-established process in place to consider whether or not infrastructure project like this are in the best interest of the country,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters.

The veto threat isn’t altogether surprising. The White House has said repeatedly that the president is committed to the review pending in the State Department, which is held up by an ongoing court case in Nebraska. Obama has also spoken skeptically in recent weeks about claims that the project would spur economic growth and contribute to domestic energy security. [..]

Obama’s commitment to the review process means we can expect the drama to carry on at least until the Nebraska Supreme Court case is decided. And even if Obama vetoes Congress’ KXL bill on the grounds that it undercuts his authority, it’s possible that he would approve the project itself later on. Activists are continuing to demonstrate against the pipeline this week, aware that the fight is very much still on.

From torture and black sites to continued drone strikes on sovereign countries, the CIA has been secretly undermining US foreign policy around the world but mostly in the Middle East and Near Asia.

MSNBC’s host Rachel Maddow discusses how the CIA making deals for black site torture facilities undercut the State Department calling for open disclosure about the prisoners that were being held in those countries.

She is joined by Philip Zelikow, counselor to the State Department from 2005 to 2007, to discuss the conflict between the CIA and State Department.

It isn’t just the secret dealing to cover up the crime of torture that is damaging foreign policy, drone strikes that allegedly target Al Qaeda and ISIS leaders have angered the governments of the countries that have been attacked. The effectiveness of these strikes are dubious since there is no evidence of their effectiveness. What is certain is that the strikes have killed more civilians than terrorists and made Americans less safe.

Scott Horton, human rights attorney and contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine, joined Democracy Now!‘s Amy Goodman to the US secret foreign policy of drone sites and torture black sites.

At least nine Pakistanis were killed Sunday in a U.S. drone strike in North Waziristan, the first reported drone strike of 2015. News accounts of the strike are based on unnamed Pakistani government and security officials. The Obama administration has said nothing so far. For years, the United States did not even publicly acknowledge the existence of the drone strikes. The drone program is just one example of the national security state’s reliance on secret operations. The recent Senate Intelligence Committee report revealed another example: the shadowy network of overseas CIA black sites where the United States held and tortured prisoners. The report also noted the CIA shrouded itself in a cloak of secrecy keeping policymakers largely in the dark about the brutality of its detainee interrogations. The agency reportedly deceived the White House, the National Security Council, the Justice Department and Congress about the efficacy of its controversial interrogation techniques

And the Reign Of Morons dawns. Many in the Beltway are beside themselves which, I guess, is easier than talking to some of the new unmoored members of our national legislature — and speaking of unmoored members, congrats to my new friend, United States Senator Joni Ernst. And all of you sweaty people waiting on hold in your cars for Mark Levin or Laura Ingraham, dream big. Anything is possible. Of course, the overall narrative is that we are in for a period of sensible conservative governance which, while it may collide from time to time with a Democratic president who declines to become whit…er…turn into Mitt Romney despite the clear verdict of a third of the voting populace, can prove that our new congressional leadership can “govern” while keeping its toes out of the oatmeal. This is why I saw Dana Bash this morning, talking to new Congressman Lee Zeldin of New York, who looks more like a member of the largely mythical Not Insane caucus than does, say, Jody Hice, the guy from Georgia who believes Islam is not a religion, or Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin, who believes that gay people are after him (Not bloody likely, Glenn), or Mark Walker, the North Carolinian who wants to start a new Mexican war, this time with…frickin’ laser beams. Better to bring out Zeldin as the face of the freshman follies. He did, after all, get elected from a “blue state.” Of course, Zeldin is a good little GOP squirrel who knows where all the nuts are buried. [..]

It will be interesting to see if this constructed narrative of Responsible Conservative Government holds true through the first time the president vetoes something on the new Congress’s wish list. In fact, the person for whom I would have sympathy, if I felt any sympathy for him at all, is not Boehner but Mitch McConnell, whose new senatorial majority is studded with jumped-up loons from the fringes of Republican state goverrnments, like my new friend Joni, and which also still contains both Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, with their national ambitions and their utterly self-involved attitude toward their jobs. This is a harder wrangle for McConnell, who still isn’t altogether popular, than the one Boehner faces. And, of course, it should be said that the Democratic party is positioned quite well to make the lives of both Boehner and McConnell utterly miserable, but very likely won’t do it, because Joe Manchin (D-Anthracite). If there really is rising populist power in the Democratic party, then here’s a chance to prove it. Screw with these people every way you can. Make the even more radical Republican state governments more furious at the “Washington establishment” than it already is. Monkeywrench the whole business and explain in simple terms to the country why you’re doing it. This has to start in the White House. The rest of the country needs to be protected from the hazardous material for which a third of it voted.

And first up on the agenda is the Keystone XL Pipeline but apparently not without a fight from the Democrats and the White House. Once more from Charlie

Well, give them credit. They started off the way they said they would. The first issue of the new Congress is indeed our old friend, the Keystone XL pipeline, the continent-spanning death funnel that will bring the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel from the environmental moonscape of northern Alberta to the refineries on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico and thence to the world. And, it seems, they’ve picked the fight they wanted to fight.

   White House press secretary Josh Earnest says he does not expect Obama would sign any Keystone legislation that reaches his desk. The spokesman says there is a “well-established” review process that is being run by the State Department that should not be undermined by legislation. Earnest also says the pipeline’s route through Nebraska also must be resolved.

Now, let us take to heart the advice of Mr. Winston Wolf. The White House veto threat is not a categorical threat to the pipeline’s construction. The president is saying that the bill in question is premature, that it is short-cutting established procedure that already is underway, and that it is an improper federal infringement upon the function of the state judiciary of Nebraska. The president has not eliminated any of his options. [..]

So, good for the White House. It said the right thing today. (Win The Morning!) If the president vetoes this faith-based legislation, good for him, too. But, in that case, the story will be White House Wins First Showdown (!) There will still be the State Department report, and the Nebraska Supreme Court, and nobody’s really out of the woods yet because the pipeline is inherently dangerous, the fuel that it will carry is inherently poisonous, the company seeking to build (and to profit by) the pipeline is inherently dishonest. Some things don’t change. You can paint pretty flowers on the death-funnel, but it’s still a death-funnel.

With the price of oil dropping like a stone, Keystone XL may not be cost effective for its Canadian owners or its foreign customers.

Homicide rates are falling in most major cities across the US, especially in cities like New York, Detroit and Chicago. What is most notable in NYC is that the overall crime rate has fallen in 2014, the first year of the de Balsio administration, despite the end of “stop and frisk,” which was declared unconstitutional as carried out by the NYPD.

While this is good news, the NYPD has continued to throw its prolonged temper tantrum. Again on Sunday at the funeral for slain NYC Police Officer Wenjian Liu, a group of thin skinned members turned their backs to the screen as the mayor spoke. Since the slaying of the two officers on December 20, arrests and ticketing had fallen dramatically in all five boroughs

Police union leaders have denied the declines represent any organized work action, though they have urged their members to put their own safety first, which could curb enforcement in all but the clearest situations that called for an arrest.

The sustained declines, however, suggest something of a coordinated effort, even if it was not sanctioned by union leaders.

“People are talking to each other,” Edward D. Mullins, president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, said on Sunday. “It became contagious.”

Even though both the mayor and his police commissioner William Bratton are touting  “Broken Windows” and a modified “stop and frisk,” declaring the policies are “here to stay,” the slow down may prove that the policies are broken. Civil rights attorney and former Brooklyn, N.Y., prosecutor, Charles F, Coleman, Jr. believes “Broken Windows” is a failure and it’s time to drop it.

At this point, there has been no significant impact to public safety because of the slowdown-during which tickets and summons for minor offenses have dropped more than 90 percent-and we’ve seen anything but the doomsday crime spree that Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch seemed to hope might cause widespread fear among New Yorkers.

Lynch, who leads the NYPD’s largest and most influential union, has been very critical of de Blasio in past weeks, accusing him of expressing anti-policing sentiments in his remarks after the Staten Island grand jury’s nonindictment in the Eric Garner choke hold case. [..]

In many ways, the slowdown is backfiring terribly and should force a bigger discussion about not only the need to revisit the “broken windows” approach to law enforcement in urban communities but also the age-old trend of funding America’s cities on the backs of the poor.

The broken-windows approach to law enforcement, which de Blasio endorsed during the early days of his tenure, is essentially Reaganomics’ trickle-down theory of policing. (Remember how well that worked out?) The idea is essentially that focusing on strict policing of smaller offenses will deter larger crimes from happening. However, the notion that police, by cracking down on low-level crimes like selling loose cigarettes and open containers, are going to deter hardened criminals is a dubious theory at best. This is, in part, because economics drives most real crime more than any other factor. [..]

So what is the real takeaway from the NYPD slowdown where “broken windows” is concerned? We already knew that it was flawed in theory, and we have seen it fail miserably in application. One wild and crazy idea is that this approach to policing and the slowdown are both about little more than power and economics. The Police Department is attempting to flex its muscles to remind de Blasio and the thousands of nonviolent protesters who have dared to speak out against NYPD practices that the city needs them. The message is essentially that, even beyond the prevention of crime, police are still needed to help generate critical amounts of revenue for the city’s operating budget.

These silly games aren’t limited to the Big Apple, however. From as far away as Ferguson, Mo., we’ve witnessed how municipalities balance their budgets on the backs of the poor through the financial windfall created by excessive fines and tickets (which, as an aside, invalidates the claim that there’s no such thing as police quotas). The same thing can be said forWashington, D.C., Philadelphia, Los Angeles and scores of other cities across the country. Pat Lynch is no doubt aware of this, and beyond any ineffective fear tactics, his real play here may very well be an intentional swipe at the city’s pocketbook, which could threaten to hijack next year’s budget.

If anything, that seems like a real crime worth policing.

Chris Hayes, host of MSNBC’s “All In,” addressed the massive drop in crime, the slow down and “Broken Windows” with author and former NYC police officer Pater Moskos.

It’s time for the end of this discriminatory policy and focus on the real concerns of our communities, jobs and education.

The 2016 silly season has started early with the GOP clown car filled to nearly overflowing. The new Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would love to not let this congress do anything that would prevent a Republican becoming president but with the likes of Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee and Chris Christie vying for camera time, Mitch’s main goal is “don’t be scary”

“I don’t want the American people to think that if they add a Republican president to a Republican Congress, that’s going to be a scary outcome. I want the American people to be comfortable with the fact that the Republican House and Senate is a responsible, right-of-center, governing majority,” the Kentucky Republican said in a broad interview just before Christmas in his Capitol office.

Mitch has his work cut out for himself.

Then there is that little problem of the illusion of an improving economy, and falling gas and oil prices.

Editor-in-Chief of Vox.com Ezra Klein and Dan Dicker, energy contributor at The Street.com, joined MSNBC’s “All In” host Chris Hayes to discuss the impact on the 2016 elelction,

Get the popcorn.

“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: The greatest trick Obama ever pulled was convincing the world America isn’t still at war

The holiday headlines blared without a hint of distrust: “End of War” and “Mission Ends” and “U.S. formally ends the war in Afghanistan”, as the US government and Nato celebrated the alleged end of the longest war in American history. Great news! Except, that is, when you read past the first paragraph: “the fighting is as intense as it has ever been since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001,” according to the Wall Street Journal. And about 10,000 troops will remain there for the foreseeable future (more than we had a year after the Afghan war started). Oh, and they’ll continue to engage in combat regularly. But other than that, yeah, the war is definitely over.

This is the new reality of war: As long as the White House doesn’t admit the United States is at war, we’re all supposed to pretend as if that’s true. This ruse is not just the work of the president. Members of Congress, who return to work this week, are just as guilty as Barack Obama in letting the public think we’re Definitely Not at War, from Afghanistan and Somalia to the new war with Isis in Iraq and Syria and beyond.

Llewellyn Hinkes-Jones: Stop Subsidizing Big Pharma

Robert J. Beall, the president and chief executive of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, called his recent decision to sell the royalty rights to his organization’s research a “game changer.” Indeed: Deals like this, in which an investment company paid the foundation $3.3 billion for its future royalties from several cystic fibrosis drugs it helped finance, could revolutionize the way medical research is funded. Rather than the staid model of government-funded institutions handing out grants to academic research facilities, a new breed of “venture philanthropies” like the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation could corral private investment into developing lifesaving drugs quickly and cheaply.

The problem is that venture philanthropy is, essentially, another term for privatizing scientific research. Instead of decisions about the fate of scientific funding being made by publicly oriented institutions, those decisions are being put in the hands of anonymous philanthropists and ostensibly benevolent nonprofits.

“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: Don’t believe what you hear about the U.S. economy

The latest numbers, when put in context, hardly impress

The end of the year produced a number of media celebrations for the United States’ economic comeback. News stories endlessly touted the 5.0 percent GDP growth number for the third quarter, contrasting it with weak growth in Europe, slowing growth in China and a recession in Japan. Reporters also touted the 321,000 jobs gained in November – the strongest such growth in almost three years. In addition, the month’s 0.4-percent rise in the average hourly wage was taken as evidence that workers were now sharing in the benefits of growth. [..]

Real, sustained real wage growth requires much more tightening of the labor market. Even if the economy were to sustain a pace of 300,000 new jobs a month (it won’t), the labor market still would not have made up the ground lost in the recession by the end of 2015. Most American workers are still far from feeling confident that they can ask for a pay raise or find another job that will pay them more.

These circumstances should be front and center as the Federal Reserve Board sets economic policy in 2015. There will be growing pressure on the Fed to raise interest rates as the financial industry starts warning about incipient inflation. Everyone should realize the purpose of higher interest rates is to slow the economy and keep people from getting jobs. That is not a policy that is in most people’s interests.

Robert Kuttner: Austerity Killing You? How About a Trade Deal?

Europe is right on the edge of another downward lurch into prolonged deflation. GDP growth is hovering right around zero. Germany, as an export powerhouse, continues to thrive, but at the expense of the rest of the continent — victims of German-imposed budget austerity demands. The euro, which keeps sinking against the U.S. dollar, is now trading at just $1.20, its lowest level in four and a half years. [..]

So what does Europe have left? It is a mark of the delusion of Europe’s leaders that the EU is putting its chips on a trade deal with the U.S. — the so-called Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. TTIP is not really a trade deal at all but a series of measures intended to promote further deregulation of economic, financial, health, labor, safety, privacy, and environmental protections on both sides of the Atlantic. TTIP was designed by corporations to weaken labor and government — and would do just about nothing to get Europe out of its austerity trap.