Tag: TMC Politics

Oct 01 2014

Drones: Fear in the Sky

John Oliver’s “This Week Tonight” on HBO is fast becoming the show to watch, especially his longer segments. This past Sunday John explains how drones are making the blue skies terrifying.

“Drone strikes will be as much a characteristic of the Obama presidency as Obamacare or receiving racist email forwards from distant relatives.” [..]

“Drone strikes are one of those things that it’s really convenient not to think about that much,” Oliver lamented. “Like the daily life of a circus elephant or that Beck is a Scientologist.” [..]

“When children from other countries are telling us that we’ve made them fear the sky,” he insisted, “it might be time to ask some hard questions.” [..]

“Congratulations everyone. We did it. We managed to make blue skies completely terrifying.”

It’s all in how you define “imminent.”

Sep 30 2014

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: Eric Holder: The Reason Robert Rubin Isn’t Behind Bars

The big news item in Washington last week was Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to resign. Undoubtedly there are positives to Holder’s tenure as attorney general, but one really big minus is his decision not to prosecute any of the Wall Street crew whose actions helped to prop up the housing bubble. As a result of this failure, the main culprits walked away incredibly wealthy even as most of the country has yet to recover from the damage they caused.

Just to be clear, it is not against the law to be foolish and undoubtedly many of the Wall Streeters were foolish. They likely believed that house prices would just keep rising forever. But the fact that they were foolish doesn’t mean that they didn’t also break the law. It’s likely that most of the Enron felons believed in Enron’s business model. After all, they held millions of dollars of Enron stock. But they still did break the law to make the company appear profitable when it wasn’t.

In the case of the banks, there are specific actions that were committed that violated the law.

John Nichols: A Supreme Court for Billionaires, Not Voters

n case there was any remaining confusion with regard to the precise political intentions of the US Supreme Court’s activist majority, things were clarified Monday. The same majority that has made it easier for corporations to buy elections (with the Citizens United v. FEC decision) and for billionaires to become the dominant players in elections across the country (with the McCutcheon v. FEC decision) decided to make it harder for people in Ohio to vote.

Yes, this Court has messed with voting rights before, frequently and in damaging ways. It has barely been a year since the majority struck down key elements of the Voting Rights Act.

But Monday’s decision by the majority was especially blatant-and immediate. One day before early voting was set to begin in Ohio on Tuesday, the Supreme Court delayed the start of the process with a decision that will reduce the early voting period from thirty-five days to twenty-eight days.

William K. Black: Financial frauds had a friend in Holder

Eric Holder was U.S. attorney general at a time when the world desperately needed the nation’s chief law enforcement officer to hold accountable the elite bankers who oversaw the epidemic of fraud that drove the 2008 global financial crisis and triggered the Great Recession. After nearly six years in office, Holder announced on Sept. 25 that he plans to step down, without having brought to justice even one of the executives responsible for the crisis. His tenure represents the worst strategic failure against elite white-collar crime in the history of the Department of Justice (DOJ).  [..]

In addition to the failure to prosecute the leaders of those massive frauds, Holder’s dismal record includes 1) failing to prosecute the elite bankers who led the largest (by several orders of magnitude) price-rigging cartel in history – the LIBOR scandal, in which the world’s largest banks conspired to rig the reported interest rates at which the banks were willing to lend to one another, which affected prices on over $300 trillion in transactions; 2) failing to prosecute the massive foreclosure frauds (robo-signing), in which bank employees perjured themselves by signing more than 100,000 false affidavits in order to deceive the authorities that they had a right to foreclose on homes; 3) failing to prosecute the bid-rigging cartels of bond issuances in order to raise the costs to U.S. cities, counties and states of borrowing money in order to increase banks’ illegal profits; 4) failing to prosecute money laundering by HSBC for the murderous Sinaloa and Norte del Valle drug cartels; 5)  failing to prosecute the senior bank officers of Standard Chartered who helped fund of terrorists and nations that support terrorism; and 6) failing to prosecute the controlling officers of Credit Suisse who for decades helped wealthy Americans unlawfully evade U.S. taxes and then obstructed investigations by the DOJ and Internal Revenue Service for many years.  

Eugene Robinson: Get the Authorization

President Obama should call Congress back to Washington for a special session to vote on authorizing war against the Islamic State. If he does not, Congress should return on its own to conduct this vital debate.

Do your jobs, everybody.

As legal justification for the war, Obama relies on two measures, passed more than a decade ago, that authorized U.S. military action against al-Qaeda and the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. To state the blindingly obvious, things have changed.

The Islamic State is not al-Qaeda. While the 2001 authorization for war against Osama bin Laden’s terrorist group encompasses “associated forces,” al-Qaeda refuses to have anything to do with the Islamic State. And the 2002 authorization for war in Iraq-targeting a government that no longer exists-says not a solitary word about airstrikes in Syria.

Peter Rugh: After the People’s Climate March, It Is Time to Demand More

The 400,000 people who packed Manhattan’s Central Park West for the People’s Climate March on September 21 have all gone home to their apartments, farms, cabins and lobster boats. They’ve returned to Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and the Wet’suwet’en territory in British Columbia, to the Philippines and the Pacific Islands. The “U.N. Climate Summit” banner that, last week, formed the backdrop for the impassioned speeches of 120 heads of state – and Leonardo DiCaprio – has been taken down. Debate in the newly renovated General Assembly Hall has turned to terrorism – a different kind of security threat than that posed by drought and rising sea levels. The metal barricades erected against protesters who flooded the heart of global capitalism at last Monday’s Flood Wall Street demonstration have been cautiously removed by the New York Police Department. Frostpaw the polar bear has gone to jail.

The summit convened by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, which served as the inspiration for the People’s Climate March and Flood Wall Street, occurred ahead of conferences scheduled for Lima in December and Paris in 2015, where new long-term agreements for reducing greenhouse gas emissions will be hammered out. If we are to believe 98 percent of the world’s scientists, the future of human subsistence on this planet hinges on the strength of the pacts world governments will forge. Precious time will tell what the lasting impacts of the demonstrations will be, but already the protests that shook New York and much of the world (there were over 2,000 People’s Climate Marches globally) appear to have left their mark upon upper echelon spheres of powe

Wendall Potter: Improving the ‘Patient Experience’ By Eliminating the Big Insurance Company

Health care provider organizations that are working directly with employers like Boeing — and cutting out the insurance company middlemen — believe they can do more than save money for those employers. They’re confident they can also improve both health care quality and service for workers and their families in ways that insurance companies cannot.

Employers are starting to realize that insurers might not be, as they have claimed, “part of the solution” to achieving a more patient-centered health care system. In fact, in some ways they have been part of the problem.

Providence-Swedish Health Alliance, a not-for-profit, hospital-based accountable care organization (ACO), will soon be providing both coverage and care to many Boeing employees, along with UW (University of Washington) Medicine — without an insurance firm. Officials at Providence-Swedish told me Boeing chose to work with them directly in part because of the firm’s desire to ensure their employees had a “better patient experience.” While cutting costs and improving quality of care were priorities, improving service and reducing hassles that have become synonymous with insurance company interactions was equally important to Boeing.

>/div>

Sep 29 2014

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

New York Times Editorial Board: A Group Shout on Climate Change

The marchers and mayors, the ministers and presidents, have come and gone. So what is the verdict on Climate Week, the summit meeting on global warming convened by the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, in New York?

The meeting was not intended to reach a global agreement or to extract tangible commitments from individual nations to reduce the greenhouse gases that are changing the world’s ecosystems and could well spin out of control. Its purpose was to build momentum for a new global deal to be completed in December 2015, in Paris.

In that respect, it clearly moved the ball forward, not so much in the official speeches but on the streets and in the meeting rooms where corporate leaders, investors, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and state and local officials pressed the case for stronger action.

PAul Krugman: Our Invisible Rich

Half a century ago, a classic essay in The New Yorker titled “Our Invisible Poor” took on the then-prevalent myth that America was an affluent society with only a few “pockets of poverty.” For many, the facts about poverty came as a revelation, and Dwight Macdonald’s article arguably did more than any other piece of advocacy to prepare the ground for Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty.

I don’t think the poor are invisible today, even though you sometimes hear assertions that they aren’t really living in poverty – hey, some of them have Xboxes! Instead, these days it’s the rich who are invisible.

But wait – isn’t half our TV programming devoted to breathless portrayal of the real or imagined lifestyles of the rich and fatuous? Yes, but that’s celebrity culture, and it doesn’t mean that the public has a good sense either of who the rich are or of how much money they make. In fact, most Americans have no idea just how unequal our society has become.

Trevor Timm: Mr President, will you tell us the truth? 8 questions we must ask Obama about secret war

Because the air strikes in Iraq didn’t work, but the US is bombing Syria now. Because the model is a failure. Because he hasn’t had to answer for anything yet

In case you missed it, the US military expanded its war on Isis into a second country this week. And, no, you didn’t miss President Obama giving an interview or taking any questions about the air strikes – because he didn’t, and he hasn’t. Since all acts of war deserve questioning, here is what every reporter and citizen might ask the American president about a military campaign that has been conducted, thus far, by way of misleading euphemisms and possibly illegal rationale.

Robert Kuttner: Bridging the Chasm

For half a century beginning with Franklin Roosevelt, there was a direct connection between the problems that afflicted American society and the remedies on offer from our democratic system.

High unemployment? The New Deal, the World War II mobilization, and the postwar boom took care of that.

Stagnant wages? With unions, growing productivity, minimum wage laws, and other regulation of labor standards — American real wages tripled.

Education? The G.I. bill, massive investment in public universities, community colleges, and later in public elementary and secondary education produced a better educated and more productive population. And until the 1980s, public higher education was basically free.

Robert Reich: Raising Most People’s Wages

I was in Seattle, Washington, recently, to congratulate union and community organizers who helped Seattle enact the first $15 per hour minimum wage in the country.

Other cities and states should follow Seattle’s example.

Contrary to the dire predictions of opponents, the hike won’t cost Seattle jobs. In fact, it will put more money into the hands of low-wage workers who are likely to spend almost all of it in the vicinity. That will create jobs.

Conservatives believe the economy functions better if the rich have more money and everyone else has less. But they’re wrong. It’s just the opposite.

Jason Edward Harrington: Take it from an airport security agent: it’s OK to laugh at toothpaste terror threats

You know what’s not funny? Government officials who use shoe, underwear and even cupcake bomb scares as an excuse to drop bombs of their own

The other day in Syria, the US conducted air strikes on a relatively unknown and possibly non-existent entity called the Khorasan group, which sounds more like a job-killing consulting firm than a people-killing al-Qaida spinoff. It was a surprise plot point in the campaign against Isis that left the kind of Strangelovian headlines that have become par for the course in the War on Terror. Take this one, from the Independent: “Syria air strikes: Khorasan Group ‘were working to make toothpaste bombs and explosives that could pass through airport security'”. Or this one: “Khorasan Group plotted attack against US with explosive clothes”.

This isn’t the first time the plane-flying public has gotten word of cavity-fighting and/or sartorial threats to international airliners: the concept of the toothpaste bomb first surfaced during the Sochi Olympics earlier this year, and the clothes-dipped-in-liquid-explosives menace came to attention back in August 2013. And of course, just a few months ago, there was speculation about the need for airline passengers to fear an iBomb. The only thing that changed between then and now is that anonymous officials slapped a name on the alleged masterminds behind these absurd plots, and then dropped bombs on them.

Sep 28 2014

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

The Sunday Talking Heads:

This Week with George Stephanopolis: The guests are: House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH);   former FBI Special Agent Ali Soufan; and former Counterterrorism Coordinator for the Homeland Security Department John Cohen.

At the roundtable are: Yahoo News national political columnist Matt Bai; ABC News political analyst Matthew Dowd; Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MI); and syndicated radio host Laura Ingraham.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr, Schieffer’s guests are: Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken; Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA); former Gen. Carter Ham; Michèle Flournoy, former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy; and Mike Morell, former deputy director of the CIA.

His panel guests are: Peter Baker, The New York Times; Kim Strassel, The Wall Street Journal; Michael Crowley, Time Magazine; and Ruth Marcus and Michael Gerson of The Washington Post.

Meet the Press with Chuck Todd: This week’s MTP is preempted for the final round of the Rider’s Cup. Golf is most likely more interesting.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Ms. Crowley’s guests are:  Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken; Sen Chris Murphy (D-CT); former Joint Chiefs Chairman Richard Myers and former Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns.

Her panel guests are Ken Cuccinelli, president of the Senate Conservative Fund; Mercedes Schlapp, co-founder of Cove Strategies; CNN contributor LZ Granderson;  and Penny Lee, Venn Strategies.

Sep 27 2014

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

New York Times Editorial Board: Losing the Race Against Ebola

There is an urgent need to provide more health workers to track down every patient’s contacts for testing, and more workers to bury victims safely. Home health kits are needed to protect people from infection when family members become sick, and local leaders must persuade an often hostile public to take precautions. Health care systems that have disintegrated must be rebuilt so that people don’t die from other afflictions while treatment facilities are clogged with Ebola patients. It is a task of mind-boggling complexity, requiring international assistance on a massive scale.

Many countries and organizations have pledged to contribute money or health resources, although the speed of delivery is uncertain. President Obama told the United Nations on Thursday that there was “still a significant gap between where we are and where we need to be.” Faster action is desperately needed to prevent hundreds of thousands or even a million deaths.

Glenn Greenwald: Inside the Shadowy Manipulation of American Journalists by Former Treasury Officials on the UAE’s Payroll

The tiny and very rich Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar has become a hostile target for two nations with significant influence in the U.S.: Israel and the United Arab Emirates. Israel is furious over Qatar’s support for Palestinians generally and (allegedly) Hamas specifically, while the UAE is upset that Qatar supports the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt (UAE supports the leaders of the military coup) and that Qatar funds Islamist rebels in Libya (UAE supports forces aligned with Ghadaffi).

This animosity has resulted in a new campaign in the west to demonize the Qataris as the key supporter of terrorism. The Israelis have chosen the direct approach of publicly accusing their new enemy in Doha of being terrorist supporters, while the UAE has opted for a more covert strategy: paying millions of dollars to a U.S. lobbying firm – composed of former high-ranking Treasury officials from both parties – to plant anti-Qatar stories with American journalists. That more subtle tactic has been remarkably successful, and shines important light on how easily political narratives in U.S. media discourse can be literally purchased. [..]

One of the most critical points illustrated by all of this tawdry influence-peddling is the alignment driving so much of US policy in that region. The key principals of Camstoll have hard-core neoconservative backgrounds. Here they are working hand in hand with neocon journalists to publicly trash a new enemy of Israel, in service of the agenda of Gulf dictators. This is the bizarre neocon/Israel/Gulf-dictator coalition now driving not only U.S. policy but, increasingly, U.S. discourse as well.One of the most critical points illustrated by all of this tawdry influence-peddling is the alignment driving so much of US policy in that region. The key principals of Camstoll have hard-core neoconservative backgrounds. Here they are working hand in hand with neocon journalists to publicly trash a new enemy of Israel, in service of the agenda of Gulf dictators. This is the bizarre neocon/Israel/Gulf-dictator coalition now driving not only U.S. policy but, increasingly, U.S. discourse as well.

Glen Ford: The Big Switch: Obama Preparing to Bomb His Way to Regime Change in Syria

The strategic ‘rebel’ breakthrough is being prepared in the vulnerable southern underbelly of the country

The U.S. offensive against ISIS in Syria will very soon revert to its original mission: regime change in Damascus, the strategic objective that unites America’s Euro-Arab-Turkish-Israeli coalition. Although U.S. military planners insist it will take eight months to a year to fully assemble and train a “moderate” Syrian rebel spearhead to confront government forces, political and military realities dictate that the Americans must move much more quickly to upset the balance of forces on the ground. Otherwise, the whole structure of western dominance in the region could unravel – catastrophically.

The contradiction at the heart of the western crisis in Syria, is the refusal of tens of thousands of jihadists to act as mere foot soldiers for the West and Arab monarchs. The jihadist genie is out of the bottle, and its conjurers and paymasters cannot put it back. The problem is not just Isis. The Islamic State has swelled through absorption of other Islamic fighters pursuing a similar theo-political logic, one that seeks its own version of “liberation” from western shackles and, increasingly, the overthrow of royal regimes allied with the United States. ISIS has become engorged with defectors from other Islamist organizations more dependent on and obedient to proxy war planners in Riyadh, Doha, Ankara and Washington. Therefore, ISIS must be punished, to reduce its appeal to the jihadist rank and file, who make up the bulk of effective fighters arrayed against the Syrian state. For the same reasons, those jihadists not yet in ISIS’s orbit, who are the West’s only actually existing resources on ground, must be provided a redemptive victory, and quickly, before the whole edifice of proxy war disintegrates.

Shamus Cooke: The Unspoken Consequences of Bombing Syria

Now that U.S. bombs are falling in Syria, will Islamic extremism be stopped in its tracks? Such a question is an insult to the intellect, yet it’s the dominant theory in Washington D.C., where years of Middle East war have taught politicians nothing.  

Bombing yet another Middle East country will create yet more extremists, while broadening an already-existing proxy war in Syria between regional rivals. Obama’s strategy to combat ISIS purposely excludes key players that, if included, could actually help stop the fighting. The strategy of exclusion will thus intensify the regional proxy fight, leading to the likelihood of even deeper U.S. involvement in the Syrian war and a broader conflagration.

Iran, Syria, and Russia were not invited to join the war against ISIS, since the broader regional proxy war is a war between the U.S. and its allies versus Syria, Iran, Hezbollah and Russia.

Syria cannot join the anti-ISIS coalition even though Syria has been fighting ISIS for over two years. Obama’s reason is that the Syrian government has “no legitimacy.” But Obama’s “coalition” of Gulf states are composed of totalitarian dictatorships that, in comparison, make Syria look like the bastion of democracy.

David Sirota: A Pension Jackpot for Wall Street

Most consumers understand that when you pay an above-market premium, you shouldn’t expect to get a below-average product. Why, then, is this principle often ignored when it comes to managing billions of dollars in public pension systems?

This is one of the most significant questions facing states and cities as they struggle to meet their contractual obligations to public employees. In recent years, public officials have shifted more of those workers’ pension money into private equity, hedge funds, venture capital and other so-called “alternative investments.” In all, the National Association of State Retirement Administrators reports that roughly a quarter of all pension funds are now in these “alternative investments”-a tripling in just 12 years.

Those investments are managed by private financial firms, which charge special fees that pension systems do not pay when they invest in stock index funds and bonds. The idea is that paying those fees-which can cost hundreds of millions of dollars a year-will be worth it, because the alternative investments will supposedly deliver higher returns than low-fee stock index funds like the S&P 500.

Unfortunately, while these alternative investments have delivered a fee jackpot to Wall Street firms, they have often delivered poor returns, meaning the public is paying a premium for a subpar product.

Sep 26 2014

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

George Zornick: The Blotch on Eric Holder’s Record: Wall Street Accountability

Attorney General Eric Holder will announce Thursday he is stepping down from the post he has held for nearly six years-making him one of the longest-serving attorneys general in American history.

Holder was the first African-American to hold the position and will surely be remembered as a trailblazer for civil rights. From sentencing reform to combating voter suppression to investigating some of the country’s most violent police forces, Holder made huge progressive strides. It’s no coincidence Holder called the civil rights icon Representative John Lewis on Tuesday before his resignation became public. White House officials are already pushing out narratives about Holder’s “historic legacy of civil rights enforcement and restoring fairness to the criminal justice system.”

But there is one area where Holder falls woefully short: prosecution of Wall Street firms and executives. He came into office just months after widespread fraud and malfeasance in the financial sector brought the American economy to its knees, and yet no executive has faced criminal prosecution. Beyond the crash, Holder established a disturbing pattern of allowing large financial institutions escape culpability.

John Nichols: Barbara Lee Was Right in 2001. She’s Still Right Now.

It has been thirteen years since Congresswoman Barbara Lee cast her lonely vote against authorizing President Bush to launch what she warned could be an ill-defined and endless war. Days after she cast that vote, the California Democrat appeared before hundreds of students at Mills College in Oakland and was greeted for the first time by the chant, “Barbara Lee speaks for me.”

At time when media and political elites said Lee had isolated herself politically, she was embraced by Americans who questioned why Congress was not living up to its constitutionally defined responsibility to check and balance the tendency of executives to “blank check” powers for continual warmaking.

So it was, once more, on Tuesday evening, as television screens were filled with reports of airstrikes by the United States and its allies against targets in Syria. Lee appeared at the 2014 convention of National Nurses United in Las Vegas, where she was honored for her championship of peace and justice during the course of her congressional career.

When Lee came to the stage, a thousand nurses spontaneously began to chant, “Barbara Lee speaks for me.”

Stephen W. Thrasher: How much can Eric Holder get done on race before he steps down as attorney general?

The first black president turned over his public confrontation of structural racism entirely to his outgoing attorney general. What now?

Where is the first black president’s justifiable anger about racism now that he never has to run for office again? Where is he when another black child, John Crawford, is murdered on camera by police, in five seconds, in the pet-food aisle of a Walmart? What is Obama doing about the prejudice and violence faced by brown people here at home?

As I sat in a New York auditorium Tuesday afternoon, disappointed that my black president had checked out on racism (if he had ever checked in), it became increasingly obvious that Obama has now turned over his public confrontation of racism entirely to another black man: Eric Holder.

The US attorney general may not exactly be the “Obama Anger Translator” dreamed up by Key and Peele, but Holder is Obama’s black id. Whatever fight this administration might have left on systemic racism would be channelled through him. And now that Holder is stepping down, whatever hope might’ve been left in this failed chapter is fading fast.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: Everything That’s Wrong With The NFL Is Wrong With America, Too

The NFL has 1,856 employees and paid $107.7 million per year in salaries last year. Goodell was paid more than $44 million. That means more than 40 percent of the organization’s entire payroll went to one individual. See the problem?

Sexism. A culture of violence. Untrustworthy leadership. Runaway wealth inequality. An indifference to workers’ health. Employees who are above the law. Hush-hush financing. Multimillion-dollar tax breaks.

We’re not talking about corporate CEOs or the Christmas parties on Wall Street. We’re talking about the National Football League.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s handling of Ray Rice’s videotaped brutality has brought the NFL back into the public eye. It’s a sorry spectacle which others have addressed at length, so we’ll just repeat the cliché: It’s the cover-up, stupid.

For my personal assessment of Goodell, we can turn the mic over to Bill Simmons and UltraViolet.

As for the NFL itself, let’s just say it’s America in microcosm.

Robert Borosage: Bill Clinton’s Corporate Fantasy

Bill Clinton predicts corporations will care less about profits and more about workers and communities, without government action. Terrific, but the big companies aren’t with the program. Their CEOs are cashing in and leaving communities and countries behind.

At annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative, former President Bill Clinton predicted the corporations would soon care less about maximizing profits and more about employees and society. This would happen without significant government involvement because “of proof that markets work better that way.” Companies would understand that they gain greater overall success by taking care of their employees and doing good for more than only their shareholders.

We should only hope. This revolution in the corporate worldview would be immensely important, to say the least. The focus on “shareholder value” — magnified by lavish executive compensation packages – has driven executives to focus on meeting short-term profit goals, scramble for every tax dodge, trample worker rights, and play communities and countries off against one another in a brutal race to the bottom.

There are socially responsible companies. Many gather at the Social Venture Network. Socially responsible investment funds give investors the ability to screen their investments. The recent movement to divest from fossil fuel companies is an example.

Sadly, there is little to suggest that major corporations have gotten the former president’s message. Current trends suggest the reverse: that CEOs are plundering their companies assets, cashing in their future to reap short-term profits and bonuses.

Sep 25 2014

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

Dennis J. Kucinich: The Real Reason We Are Bombing Syria

This attack on Syria, under the guise of striking ISIS, is by definition, a war of aggression. It is a violation of international law. It could lead to crimes against humanity and the deaths of untold numbers of innocent civilians. No amount of public relations or smooth talking can change that.

And yes, members of this Democratic administration, including the president who executed this policy, must be held accountable by the International Criminal Court and by the American people, who he serves.

But as we know, war is a powerful and cynical PR tactic. I expect the bombing of Syria will momentarily boost the White House’s popularity with self-serving heroic accounts of damage inflicted upon ISIS (and the U.S. equipment they use). Stuffing the November ballot box with bombs and missiles may even help the Democratic Party retain the Senate.

But after the election the voters will discover that the president played into the hands of extremists, hurt civilians, and embroiled our country deep into another conflict in the Middle East.

Jonathan Hafetz: Don’t Execute Those We Tortured

After years of legal battles, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, will finally be put on trial before a military commission at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, though a trial date hasn’t yet been set. If he is convicted, as expected, he will almost certainly face the death penalty. And, assuming one believes in the death penalty, it would be hard to think of a stronger candidate for its use.

But there are reasons Mr. Mohammed should not be executed, irrespective of how one feels about capital punishment. He was the victim of blatantly illegal treatment – the C.I.A. waterboarded him 183 times in March 2003, and threatened to kill his children while imprisoning him in a secret jail – at the hands of the government. [..]

The absence of accountability for those who encouraged and conducted torture leaves the criminal sentencing of convicted terrorists as one of the few tools, however imperfect, that remain for addressing past abuses of law, and restoring America’s reputation for dedication to the norms of international law. If convicted, Mr. Mohammed should be spared, because his execution – after years of mistreatment in a series of secret C.I.A.-run prisons before he was moved to Guantánamo – would send a disastrous message about impunity for torture and about the rule of law.

Robert Parry: Obama’s Novel Lawyering to Bomb Syria

The Obama administration has devised an extraordinary legal justification for carrying out bombing attacks inside Syria: that the United States and its Persian Gulf allies have the right to defend Iraq against the Islamic State because the Syrian government is unable to stop the cross-border terror group. [..]

Yet, beyond the danger to world order if such an expansive theory is embraced by the international community (does anyone remember how World War One got started?), there is the hypocrisy of the U.S. government and many of those same Gulf allies arming, training and funding Syrian rebels for the purpose of preventing the Syrian military from controlling its territory and then citing that lack of control as the rationale to ignore Syria’s sovereignty.

In other words, the United States, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan and other enemies of Syria covertly backed the rebels inside Syria and watched as many of them – including thousands of the U.S.-preferred “moderates” – took their newly acquired military skills to al-Qaeda affiliates and other terrorist organizations. Then, the U.S. and its allies have the audacity to point to the existence of those terror groups inside Syria as a rationale for flying bombing raids into Syria.

Amy Goodman: Global Warming and Global Warring

Hours after 400,000 people joined in the largest climate march in history, the United States began bombing Syria, starting yet another war. The Pentagon claims that the targets were military installations of the Islamic State, in Syria and Iraq, as well a newly revealed terrorist outfit, the Khorasan Group. President Barack Obama is again leading the way to war, while simultaneously failing to address our rapidly worsening climate. The world is beset with twin crises, inextricably linked: global warming and global warring. Solutions to both exist, but won’t be achieved by bombing. [..]

Indeed, the Pentagon has long considered climate change to be a major threat to the national security of the United States. In its 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review, the Pentagon noted that the many impacts of climate change “will aggravate stressors abroad such as poverty, environmental degradation, political instability, and social tensions-conditions that can enable terrorist activity and other forms of violence.”

So it is fair to ask, why not address the threat of climate change when it is still possible? Asad Rehman, of the international environmental group Friends of the Earth, who was in New York for the climate march, told me, “If we can find the trillions [of dollars] we’re finding for conflict whether there’s been the invasion in Iraq or Afghanistan or now the conflict in Syria, then we can find the kind of money that’s required for the transformation that will deliver clean, renewable energy.”

Richard (RJ) Eskow: 100 Zephyrs: Why the Left Must Challenge Corporate Democrats

Writing in Real Clear Politics, my Campaign for America’s Future colleague Bill Scher dismisses Zephyr Teachout’s call for progressive primary challenges against conservative Democrats. Scher argues the left should focus instead on “gaining influence without launching a civil war,” arguing that “unlike the dynamic in the Republican Party, disagreements within the Democratic family are not debilitating.”

This idea has been raised before: that infighting between the party’s left and right wings are nothing more than a set of relatively minor policy differences within the “Democratic family” (to use Scher’s words), and that they’re best solved with genteel discussion and issue-oriented campaigns rather than “war”-like primary challenges.

It’s an attractive vision. Unfortunately, it’s also wrong. [..]

Elected Democrats must understand that a betrayal of their principles will have consequences for their electoral futures. There may be cases where a primary is ill-advised. But we need hundreds of Zephyr Teachouts, ready to challenge straying Dems when they break their campaign promises, shift their allegiances to the corporate “dark side,” or forget to “dance with the ones who brought ’em.”

You can call that “civil war” if you like. I prefer the term “democracy.”

Sep 24 2014

Are Syria Strikes an Illegal War?

Are the Syria strikes an illegal war? By what authority has President Barack Obama ordered these attacks? The administration says that it doesn’t need congress to approve it and congress, along with the courts, has surrendered its responsibility.

United States Bombs Syria In Latest Undeclared War

By Jonathan Turley, Constitutional Law Professor George Washington University

I just completed a two-city debate with former Bush official John Yoo on executive power with a focus on undeclared wars. It appears Yoo won the debate . . . at least with President Obama. Indeed, Yoo appears to have had Obama at “hello” to quote Jerry Maguire. Without any declaration of war, Obama has launched attacks against targets in Syria – an act of war by any measure and a violation of international law.

We have been discussing the growing concerns over President Barack Obama’s series of unilateral actions in ordering agencies not to enforce law, effectively rewriting laws, and moving hundreds of millions of dollars from appropriated purposes to areas of his choosing. One of the greatest concerns has been his unchecked authority asserted in the national security area.

The most serious acts of unilateral presidential action falls within war powers – powers that the Framers expressly and carefully limited to prevent precisely this type of attack. Of course, the Administration does not use the word “war.” I previously represented members of Congress in challenging Obama’s intervention in the Libyan civil war without a declaration from Congress. In the case, President Obama insisted that he alone determines what is a war and therefore when he needs a declaration. Since the court would not recognize standing to challenge the war, it left Obama free to engage in war operations in any country of his choosing.

Professor Turley joined David Corn, Mother Jones Washington Bureau Chief, on MSNBC’s “The Last Word” with Lawrence O’Donnell to discuss just how legal are these attacks.

US ties itself in legal knots to cover shifting rationale for Syria strikes

By Dan Roberts, The Guardian

Lawyers use Iraq’s right of self-defence and weakness of Syrian regime – which US has undermined – to justify failure to seek UN approval

In a letter to the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, released near 24 hours after attacks began, US ambassador Samantha Power argued that the threat to Iraq from Islamic State, known as Isis or Isil, gave the US and its allies in the region an automatic right to attack on its behalf. [..]

The brief letter did not mention the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, which rested on erroneous claims of weapons of mass destruction and arguably contributed to its current instability, but stresses instead the country’s right to self-defence in the face of this new threat. [..]

The US also argued that there was legal right to pursue Isis inside Syria due to the weakness of that country’s government – a regime the US has been actively urging be undermined by rebel groups for much of the past two years. [..]

Fearing that US politicians up for re-election in November may balk at voting for a third military attack on Iraq and being sucked into a Syrian quagmire, the White House has avoided seeking a fresh authorisation of the use of military force, preferring to rely on early authorisations against al-Qaida granted after the 11 September 2001 attacks.

But this means arguing that Isis is equivalent to al-Qaida, even though the groups are split – logic that several critics in Congress, such as Virginia senator Tim Kaine, have argued is flawed and requires a fresh authorisation to fix.

Power reached for similar arguments in her letter to the UN, arguing that Tuesday’s separate attack on Khorasan rebels in Syria was also an act of self defence by the US due to the group’s closeness to al-Qaida.

Is Obama misleading the world to war? Depends how you define ‘misleading’

By Trevor Timm, The Gusrdian

When it comes to military strikes against Isis in Syria, his administration’s strategy relies on what the meaning of ‘is’ is

Want to decipher what the US military is really doing in Iraq and Syria, or figure out whether its regional war against the Islamic State (Isis) is legal? Good luck. The Obama administration’s secret efforts to redefine the ordinary meaning of key legal terms and phrases has made that near impossible.

For instance, in his Tuesday statement that US airstrikes that have expanded into Syria, Obama studiously avoided any discussion about his domestic legal authority to conduct these strikes. That dirty work was apparently left up to anonymous White House officials, who told the New York Times’s Charlie Savage that both the Authorization of Use of Military Force (AUMF) from 2001 (meant for al-Qaida) and the 2002 war resolution (meant for Saddam Hussein’s Iraq) gave the government the authority to strike Isis in Syria.

In other words: the legal authority provided to the White House to strike al-Qaida and invade Iraq more than a dozen years ago now means that the US can wage war against a terrorist organization that’s decidedly not al-Qaida, in a country that is definitely not Iraq. [..]

So when you hear the words “imminent attack”, “civilians”, militants” or “ground troops” from now on, be careful: if the government says they’re not misleading you, it might only be because they’ve secretly changed the definition of “misleading”.

Public Law 107-40  – the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001

Public Law 107-243 – The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq

Neither one of those laws applies to this situation. The president is on violation of his oath of office

Sep 24 2014

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

Phyllis Bennis: “There Is No Military Solution” – But Obama Launches a New U.S. War in Syria

President Obama’s decision to bomb Syria stands in stark violation of international law, the UN Charter, and the requirements of the U.S. Constitution. It contradicts his own commitment, stated a year ago in the UN General Assembly, to reverse Washington’s “perpetual war footing.”

And it portends disaster for the people of Syria, the region, and much of the world.

The White House stated goal is to destroy the headquarters of the violent and extremist ISIS militia. But you can’t bomb extremism out of existence. The U.S. bombs do not fall on “extremism,” they are falling on Raqqah, a 2,000 year-old Syrian city with a population of more than a quarter of a million people – men, women and children who had no say in the take-over of their city by ISIS. The Pentagon is bombing targets like the post office and the governor’s compound, and the likelihood of large number of civilian casualties as well as devastation of the ancient city, is almost certain.

President Obama was right when he said there is no military solution to the ISIS crisis. Bombing Syria, without Congressional authorization, without United Nations approval, in direct opposition to the stated position of Syria’s government, will only make that crisis worse. It will give ISIS and its allies a new basis for recruitment, it will strengthen the repressive Syrian government, it will undermine Syria’s struggling non-violent opposition movement, and it will further tighten the links between ISIS supporters in Syria and in Iraq.

Karyn Strickler: Fear This, Congress: The People’s Climate March

The People’s Climate March has permanently changed national and international perception and proven that Americans care passionately about the climate issue. The diverse sea of black, brown and white people who flooded the streets of New York sent the message that climate change is a political issue for all Americans, with signs reading, “Vote Climate.” A young woman of East Indian descent carried a hand-painted, blue and green sign that said, “Change Politics, Not the Climate.”

The crowd was loud with drumming, singing and chanting. A favorite moment came when an eerie hush suddenly descended. I ducked and looked skyward, thinking something must be wrong. You could hear a cheer rise-up from miles away and cascade through the crowd. When the wave hit our section it got so loud that I’m certain the world leaders, gathered for the global summit on climate change, could hear us roar. [..]

U.S. politicians take note. Congress generally operates on two basic principles: fear and greed. U.S. Congressional leaders chase the almighty dollar to pump-up their campaign coffers, that’s the greed part. But they can’t get the vote if they don’t follow the will of the people, that’s the fear part. Yesterday’s March indicates that it’s time for politicians to wake-up and follow the people on the issue of climate change or fear for their election prospects.

Katrina vanden Heuvel: New Deal Liberalism Lives On

n the age of trickle-down economics and unrelenting attacks on the social safety net, there have been few greater champions of progressive values than Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), who hosted his final Steak Fry this year as the senior senator from Iowa. Throughout his storied career, Harkin has remained a “prairie populist.” From his landmark Americans With Disabilities Act, to his principled vote against Clinton-era financial deregulation, to his recent sponsorship of the Fair Minimum Wage Act, Harkin has always been unapologetically loyal to the fundamental belief that government can – and should – play a role in improving people’s lives. And for Harkin, who proudly displayed his father’s Works Progress Administration card on his office wall, this brand of progressivism was deeply rooted in President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal philosophy. [..]

Our current political battles, as they have been for the past 70 years, are largely defined by the right’s bitter desire to roll back the gains of the New Deal and the Great Society. And as Harkin prepares to retire next year, many have been writing obituaries for his brand of progressive politics. “Today he is seen as one of a dying breed of Democrats,” The Post’s Dan Balz observed. “[H]e remains an unabashedly and old-fashioned liberal.”

But the would-be eulogists predicting that these ideals will follow Harkin into retirement are wrong. While Harkin’s departure will be a loss, the mantle of New Deal liberalism that he proudly carried has been passed on. In recent years, what the late Sen. Paul Wellstone called “the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party” hasn’t lost its way; on the contrary, it has found it.

Jessica Valenti: Roger Goodell wants YOU to accept his nightmare of violence and sexism

Throwing money at women’s rights groups is not how you fix a fundamentally misogynist institution

In the wake of the Ray Rice horror show, and the Adrian Peterson horror show, and the Greg Hardy horror show, and the Ray McDonald horror show, and the Daryl Washington horror show, and the Jonathan Dwyer horror show, and the 725 other arrests among the players who make money for him, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell announced on Friday afternoon in a mea culpa press conference that all 32 teams and their employees must attend educational sessions on domestic violence and sexual assault. Sounds promising, until you get to the part where it’s the NFL itself that’s designing the program. Will there be sessions on “hiding videos for beginners?” A lunch program on crafting the perfect tweet to blame a player’s battered spouse? How to blame your parents for beating your four-year-old son?

I understand that these programs are likely the first of many stops on the NFL apology tour, but I find it difficult to believe the answer to all of this drawn-out wrongdoing will be found in NFL locker rooms, with employees listening to mandatory NFL-designed domestic violence speakers. According to Goodell’s announcement, these compulsory programs are being developed by the NFL Players Association and a “top group of experts” that the NFL hired last week. And the woman in charge of one anti-violence organizations the NFL plans to “partner” with told me Sunday night that, as of right now, the relationship is purely financial.

This is what Roger Goodell and the NFL are asking of us: to accept their nightmare of violence, sexism and cover-ups with the hope that a dash of contrition and remedial classes on why hitting women is wrong will make everything OK.

Joan Walsh: The Dick Cheney view of presidential power is winning

Feckless Congress campaigns instead of voting on Syrian airstrikes, while McCain and Graham want to move on Assad

President Obama warned earlier this month that he intended to use airstrikes in Iraq and Syria to “degrade and destroy” ISIS. Immediately the New York Times as well as legal scholars shrieked that the president needed to seek authorization of any Syria strikes from Congress. “Nothing attempted by his predecessor, George W. Bush, remotely compares in imperial hubris,” wrote Yale law professor Bruce Ackerman.

But Congress shrugged. After voting to fund the training of Syrian rebels, both the Senate and the House departed to campaign in the 2014 midterms.

Now that the bombs are dropping, few in Congress are even bothering to argue that they ought to deal with the question when they get back after the election. Sen. Tim Kaine is an exception: he is accusing his colleagues of accepting Dick Cheney’s view of the president’s power to wage pre-emptive war.

Heather Digby Parton: The right’s new religious war: Why they see ISIS as Christianity’s big threat

From Ann Coulter to Ted Cruz, a new strain of far-right thinking is developing a scary foreign policy

   “This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while…”

   – George W. Bush, September 16, 2001

Most people probably recall that comment pretty vividly as it provoked an outcry among America’s allies in both Europe and the Middle East for obvious reasons. The word “crusade” in that particular context is an explicit historical reference that places the “war on terrorism” in the category of a religious conflict. Bush, to his credit, never used the word again and went out of his way throughout his term to downplay any talk that he was waging a religious war.

Not that it stopped the usual suspects from saying so, of course. Ann Coulter issued a notorious cri de guerre on behalf of the entire conservative movement in October of 2001 saying, “we should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity!” Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association, whose radio show is frequented by Republican officials and conservative luminaries has been preaching this gospel for some time as well.

Sep 24 2014

Khorasan Who?

First it was Al Qaeda, then it was ISIS (or Is, or ISIL, whatever), now a new “monster under the bed” has been marched out as the latest excuse to bomb another Muslim country, number seven for President Barack Obama, who has managed to surpass any of his predecessors. So who and what is “Khorasan”? Are we now suppose to believe a proven liar, James Clapper, that this group is such a threat to US national security that it’s necessary to violate Syria’s sovereignty, further enabling terrorist groups to attract members? All of a sudden this group is an imminent threat when as recently as Monday weren’t even on the radar.

Marcy Wheeler isn’t biting into this either:

It appears the legal logic behind the attack (besides the fact that Congress hurriedly approved funding for war through December so it could get back to the campaign trail) is that in addition to striking ISIS in Syria (an attack we don’t have any reasonable  legal justification for) we are also attacking a group that James “Too Cute by Half” Clapper just rolled out, “Khorasan,” which unlike ISIS has not been kicked out of Al Qaeda and therefore might be targetable under the 2001 AUMF. [..]

Today’s continuation of that narrative appears in CNN (and ABC, which I won’t link to because of their infernal auto-play ads), which doesn’t ask how the US hoped to surprise Khorasan if they had just rolled them out as the big new boogeymen. [..]

The threat of Ibrahim al-Asiri – who with one bomb that could not have worked and several more claimed attacks identified by double agents in Saudi employ not only created the excuse for millions of dollars in TSA scanner profits, but also the ability to label Yemen an “imminent” threat and therefore bomb it – has moved to Syria.

Label the country an “imminent” threat. Then bomb.

In Obama’s statement, he emphasized the Khorasan tie.

She’s not the only one questioning the latest excuse to start another war:

So far the only source for any information about this new group comes from two people, who as Marcy says, “have a somewhat strained relationship with the truth and a very cozy relationship with disinformation,” Clapper and Mike Rogers (R-MI), chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

This latest US military intervention has gone from a humanitarian rescue, to assisting the Iraq army fighting ISIS to bombing another sovereign nation under the guise of “national security” in a mere 6 weeks. While there is no dispute that ISIS and Kordasan are terrorist groups and some very bad people, but this has the whiff of being just another excuse to overthrow Syrian President Bashir Assad.  

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