Tag: TMC Politics

Or will she and Harry Reid, the Tony Soprano of Washington, give in to the system that feeds their power and play nice?

If you want to understand the real nature of the current tussle between the Senate and the CIA, with Dianne Feinstein and now Harry Reid denouncing John Brennan and Langley for essentially spying on the Senate’s intelligence oversight committee, all you really need to do is watch a few reruns of The Sopranos. [..]

If you want to understand a fight, it’s as important to understand what’s not happening as what is. So, yes, Feinstein, Brennan and Reid are throwing punches, and cursing, and scratching and biting. But is anyone trying to gauge out an eye? Has anyone pulled a weapon? Are the combatants trying to kill – or merely to wound?

Why does Feinstein, whose oversight committee has reviewed a reported six million documents and produced a 6,300-page report on CIA practices Feinstein calls “brutal” and “horrible” and “un-American”, insist on referring merely to a CIA “interrogation” program rather than calling it a torture program, which is what the program actually was? Why doesn’t she declassify the report simply by introducing it into Senate proceedings pursuant to the Constitution’s Speech or Debate clause?

Richard (RJ) Eskow: The Moral Power of Free Universal Higher Education

The costs are startling-but it’s important not to focus on numbers alone.

Social progress is never a straightforward, linear process. Sometimes society struggles to recognize moral questions that in retrospect should have seemed obvious. Then, in a historical moment, something crystallizes. Slavery, civil rights, women’s rights, marriage equality: each of these moral challenges arose in the national conscience before becoming the subject of a fight for justice (some of which have yet to be won).

I believe the moment will come, perhaps very soon, when we as a society will ask ourselves: How can we deny a higher education to any young person in this country just because she or he can’t afford it?

The numbers show that barriers to higher education are an economic burden for both students and society. They also show that the solution — free higher education for all those who would benefit from it — is a practical goal.

But, in the end, the fundamental argument isn’t economic. It’s moral.

Paul Buchheit: Overwhelming Evidence that Half of America is In or Near Poverty

And it’s much worse for black families.

The Charles Koch Foundation recently released a commercial that ranked a near-poverty-level $34,000 family among the Top 1% of poor people in the world. Bud Konheim, CEO and co-founder of fashion company Nicole Miller, concurred: “The guy that’s making, oh my God, he’s making $35,000 a year, why don’t we try that out in India or some countries we can’t even name. China, anyplace, the guy is wealthy.”

Comments like these are condescending and self-righteous. They display an ignorance of the needs of lower-income and middle-income families in America. The costs of food and housing and education and health care and transportation and child care and taxes have been well-defined by organizations such as the Economic Policy Institute, which calculated that a U.S. family of three would require an average of about $48,000 a year to meet basic needs; and by the Working Poor Families Project (pdf), which estimates the income required for basic needs for a family of four at about $45,000. The median household income is $51,000.

The following discussion pertains to the half of America that is in or near poverty, the people rarely seen by Congress.

Robert Naiman: With International Law in the News, Could We Make the U.S. Comply?

I didn’t join the chorus ridiculing the U.S. for the hypocrisy of its new romance with international law following the Russian occupation of Crimea. Even prominent Democratic activist Markos Moulitsas mocked Secretary of State Kerry for lecturing Russia on international law after voting for the illegal Iraq war. The hypocrisy charge has gotten good play.

But we shouldn’t be completely content with the hypocrisy charge. There’s something too easy about the charge of hypocrisy, a reason the charge is so popular. You can denounce someone for being hypocritical without taking a stand on the underlying issue.

If Russia is allowed to violate international law the way that the U.S. and Israel routinely do, it will not make the world more just. Russia may have legitimate grievances and legitimate interests in Ukraine, but as Secretary of State Kerry rightly argued – even if he was a hypocrite while doing so – that doesn’t justify violating international law. We don’t want to live in the world in which Russia is allowed to join the U.S.-Israel club of international law violators. We want to live in the world in which the U.S. and Israel are held to the same standards of compliance with international law to which the U.S. and Europe are now ostensibly trying to hold Russia.

Dear President Obama:

As you ponder your potential moves regarding President Vladimir V. Putin’s annexation of Crimea (a large majority of its 2 million people are ethnic Russians), it is important to remember that whatever moral leverage you may have had in the court of world opinion has been sacrificed by the precedents set by previous American presidents who did not do what you say Mr. Putin should do – obey international law.

The need to abide by international law is your recent recurring refrain, often used in an accusatory context toward Mr. Putin’s military entry in Crimea and its subsequent annexation, following a referendum in which Crimean voters overwhelmingly endorsed rejoining Russia. True, most Ukrainians and ethnic Tatars boycotted the referendum and there were obstacles to free speech. But even the fairest of referendums, under UN auspices, would have produced majority support for Russia’s annexation.

Every day, presidential actions by you violate international law because they infringe upon national sovereignties with deadly drones, flyovers and secret forays by soldiers – to name the most obvious.

Joe Conason: Framed for Crimea: Obama’s Critics Issue Hollow Indictments

To hear the Republicans shrieking about Crimea-from those howling simpletons on Fox News to the churlish statesmen of the United States Senate-all blame rests with President Barack Obama. In the midst of a real and potentially dangerous crisis, every opportunistic politician and pundit on the right excoriates him as a president so “weak” that he practically invited Vladimir Putin’s aggression.

Aggression is an apt description of the Russian takeover of the Crimean Peninsula, despite the complexity of the events and history that led here-and despite the evident enthusiasm of the Crimean population. Like many borders drawn on maps, this one was far from indisputable in moral or political terms. And without endorsing Russia’s questionable version of events, it is also true that the overthrow of the Yanukovych regime and the inclusion of neo-fascist elements in Kiev’s new government raised real issues of legitimacy and security.

Yet those questions cannot excuse Russia’s military intimidation of Ukraine or the staged and stampeded referendum that led to annexation. What Putin is doing violates basic international norms, which demand respect for national sovereignty and democratic processes.

Lee Fang: How the Gas Lobby Is Using the Crimea Crisis to Push Bad Policy and Make More Money

A small group of pundits and politicians with close ties to the fossil fuel industry are using the crisis in Crimea to demand that the United States promote natural gas exports as a quick fix for the volatile situation. But such a solution, experts say, would cost billions of dollars, require years of development, and would not significantly impact the international price of gas or Russia’s role as a major supplier for the region. Rather, the move would simply increase gas prices for American consumers while enriching companies involved in the liquified natural gas (LNG) trade.

On Capitol Hill, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Representative Fred Upton (R-MI) was among the first to use the crisis in Ukraine to demand that the Department of Energy speed up the approval process for new LNG terminals. “Now is the time to send the signal to our global allies that US natural gas will be an available and viable alternative to their energy needs,” said Upton in a statement. As we’ve reported, Upton’s committee is managed in part by Tom Hassenboehler, a former lobbyist who joined Upton’s staff last year after working for America’s Natural Gas Alliance, the primary trade group pushing to expand natural gas development and LNG exports.

Solitary confinement’s psychological effects are obvious enough. But you have to hear it from the prisoners to be truly horrified

Sarah Shourd still has nightmares about the 13 months she spent in solitary confinement in Iran. “It reduces you to an animal-like state,” she tells me. Shourd recalled the hours she spent crouched down at the food slot of her cell door, listening for any sign of life. Or pounding on the walls until her knuckles bled. Or covering her ears to drown out the screams – the screams she could no longer distinguish as her own – until she felt the hands of a prison guard on her face, trying to calm her. [..]

Scientific studies have shown that it can take less than two days in solitary confinement for brainwaves to shift towards delirium or stupor (pdf). For this reason, the United Nations has called on all countries to ban solitary confinement – except in exceptional circumstances, and even then to impose a limit of no longer than 15 days so that any permanent psychological damage can be averted. Shourd spent a total of 410 days in solitary and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder after her release. She still has trouble sleeping. But since returning home, she has spent much of her time trying to draw attention to the plight of more than 80,000 Americans who are held in isolation on any given day, some of whom do not count their stay in days or months, but in years and even decades.

John Glaser: The CIA impunity challenge

The intelligence agency – and the White House – are holding hostage the truth about torture

The White House and the CIA are currently engaged in an unrelenting battle to cover up the George W. Bush administration’s torture program and to maintain a system of impunity for what are obvious war crimes. Disturbingly, they are even willing to break the law – again – to win that battle.

The historic testimony given by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., on the Senate floor on March 11 laid bare the efforts of the Central Intelligence Agency to block the publication of a 6,300-page investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee into the Bush-era interrogation program. She accused the CIA of violating both statutory laws and the Constitution.

Michael Cohen: The NRA’s surgeon general warning: a reminder of gun control’s scarlet letter

Dr Vivek Murthy believes what most Americans believe. But the only thing that stops a good guy against guns is the gun lobby

Few Americans have likely heard of Vivek Murthy, President Obama’s nominee to be the nation’s Surgeon General. But let me tell you, this guy has got some pretty nutty views.

Don’t believe me. Listen to what the National Rifle Association has to say about him (pdf): “Dr Murthy’s record of political activism in support of radical gun control measures raises significant concerns.”

“Radical gun control measures”! Go on.

Murthy has some crazy, crazy ideas about guns (pdf). For example, he wants to bring back the federal assault weapons ban. He supports universal background checks; mandatory-waiting periods of 48 hours for gun purchases, mandatory safety training for gun owners and limits on ammunition purchases. He even wants to do away with laws that would prevent doctors from discussing gun safety with their patients; he wants to see laws that prohibit physicians from documenting gun ownership be repealed; and he wants to restore CDC and NIH funding to conduct firearms research.

My gosh, this guy sounds like an extremist. Maybe even a Communist. Or perhaps … an ordinary American.

John Nichols: An 87 Percent Vote for a $15-an-Hour Wage

Political insiders and prognosticators at the national level were, barely a year ago, casting doubts on the question of whether proposing a great big hike in the federal minimum wage was smart politics. While President Obama had proposed a $9-an-hour wage, Senator Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and Congressman George Miller, D-California, broke the double-digit barrier with a $10.10-an-hour proposal. But there was still skepticism about whether raising wages for the hardest-pressed American workers was a winning issue.

Polls have since confirmed that Americans from across the political and ideological spectrum are overwhelmingly in favor of a substantial increase in the minimum wage. And election results are now confirming the sentiment.

Even as they reelected Governor Chris Christie last fall, New Jersey voters gave landslide support to a measure that not only raised the state minimum wage to $9 an hour but indexed future increases to keep up with inflation. On the same day, voters in Sea-Tac, Washington, approved a $15 hourly wage, while voters in Seattle elected socialist Kshama Sawant on a “Fight for $15” platform.

Now comes a powerful signal from Chicago.

The acrimony that erupted last week between Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee (SSCI) and CIA Director John Brennan has been called a “constitutional crisis” over the oversight responsibilities of Congress versus the prerogatives of the executive branch. Commentators suggest it is a struggle over “checks and balances” and “separation of powers.” But there is much more at stake. [..]

The life-blood of democracy is limited government, rule of law, and transparency. If lawless government security agencies cannot be held accountable, democracy rots from the inside. The same can be said about presidents who use the CIA–or the NSA– for unlawful purposes. “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal,” Nixon notoriously proclaimed. If presidential “findings” (authorizations) for vast secret programs of questionable legality continue to be kept secret, accountability becomes a fiction.

Let’s not neglect what this conflict is about: torture. A government that tortures and then gets away with it is exercising power beyond all moral and legal constraint. Torture is a system crime, condemned by all civilized governments including our own. Torture is Exhibit A in the perverse logic of “by any means necessary,” a repudiation of law as such.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: Free Higher Education Is a Human Right

Social progress is never a straightforward, linear process. Sometimes society struggles to recognize moral questions that in retrospect should have seemed obvious. Then, in a historical moment, something crystallizes. Slavery, civil rights, women’s rights, marriage equality: each of these moral challenges arose in the national conscience before becoming the subject of a fight for justice (some of which have yet to be won).

I believe the moment will come, perhaps very soon, when we as a society will ask ourselves: How can we deny a higher education to any young person in this country just because she or he can’t afford it?

The numbers show that barriers to higher education are an economic burden for both students and society. They also show that the solution — free higher education for all those who would benefit from it — is a practical goal.

But, in the end, the fundamental argument isn’t economic. It’s moral.

David Cole: The CIA’s Poisonous Tree

The old Washington adage that the cover-up is worse than the crime may not apply when it comes to the revelations this week that the Central Intelligence Agency interfered with a Senate torture investigation. It’s not that the cover-up isn’t serious. It is extremely serious-as Senator Dianne Feinstein said, the CIA may have violated the separation of powers, the Fourth Amendment, and a prohibition on spying inside the United States. It’s just that in this case, the underlying crimes are still worse: the dispute arises because the Senate Intelligence Committee, which Feinstein chairs, has written an as-yet-secret 6,300 page report on the CIA’s use of torture and disappearance-among [..]

But the crime that we must never lose sight of is the conduct that led to the investigation in the first place. To recall: in 2002, shortly after the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration authorized the CIA to establish a series of secret prisons, or “black sites,” into which it disappeared “high-value” al-Qaeda suspects, often for years at a time, without any public acknowledgment, without charges, and cut off from any access to the outside world. The CIA was further authorized to use a range of coercive tactics-borrowed from those used by the Chinese to torture American soldiers during the Korean War-to try to break the suspects’ will. These included depriving suspects of sleep for up to ten days, slamming them against walls, forcing them into painful stress positions, and waterboarding them.

Eugene Robinson: A Midterm Imperative

Here is what Democrats should learn from their party’s loss in a special House election in Florida last week: Wishy-washy won’t work.

Republicans are obviously going to make opposition to the Affordable Care Act the main theme of their campaigns this fall. Democrats will be better off if they push back hard-really hard-rather than seek some nonexistent middle ground.

The contest between Democrat Alex Sink and Republican David Jolly in Florida’s 13th Congressional District was almost like a laboratory experiment. The House seat was held for decades by the late C.W. “Bill” Young, a Republican, but voters are evenly balanced between the two parties. Sink was better known, having narrowly lost a race for governor in 2010; Jolly had deeper roots in the community. Neither displayed an overabundance of charisma.

Jolly’s narrow victory-he won by about 3,500 votes out of about 184,000 cast-is not a death knell for the Democratic Party’s prospects come autumn. But it does suggest how Democrats should not run in close races. Jolly has to run again in November, and if Sink gets another shot at him, I’d suggest she do things a bit differently.

Conservatives want to make low-income Americans feel bad about babies and diets to cut birth control and food stamps

So many of life’s problems could be solved, according to conservative provocateur Ann Coulter, if the poor could just learn to keep their knees together until they got married – and if their wealthy and educated counterparts just weren’t afraid to shame them into doing so. These pearls of wisdom, particularly the “shaming is good” part, were greeted with loud applause over the weekend at the Conservative Political Action Conference. [..]

Blaming poverty on the moral failings of the poor and criticizing their sex habits and eating habits has always been a favorite conservative sport, dating back to Victorian times. But it has been alternately sickening and fascinating to watch the current crop of American conservatives, particularly those who claim to be devotees of the original social justice champion – Jesus Christ – jump through hoops to try to find new ways to vilify the poor just so they can feel less bad (or at least appear less bad to their followers) when they do nothing to help them.

Zoë Carpenter: Why the NRA Is Blocking Obama’s Surgeon General Nominee

The post of the surgeon general has been vacant since July, and it looks likely to remain that way for some time thanks to a strident campaign led by the National Rifle Association and libertarian Senator Rand Paul against President Obama’s nominee, Dr. Vivek Murthy. [..]

This isn’t the first time the NRA has held up a nominee: the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives went without a director for seven years because of opposition from the gun lobby. But never before has the group set itself so strongly against a surgeon general nominee. So why now? The NRA said Murthy’s “blatant activism on behalf of gun control” attracted their attention. [..]

With public health professionals engaging more forcefully on the gun issue, the NRA has a pressing interest in muting their calls for stronger policy. Really, the campaign against Murthy is the continuation of a longstanding effort to make discussion of gun violence taboo. For years the NRA has worked to bury information about gun violence and its public health implications. The NRA has campaigned successfully to ban registries that collect data on guns used in crimes, and in 1996 the group fought for and won legislation that froze federal funding for research on gun violence. Although Obama lifted the restriction last year in the wake of the Sandy Hook shootings, there’s still very little money-federal and private-for gun research and not enough data, said David Hemenway, an expert on injury at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Joan Walsh: Meet Paul Ryan’s ‘Inner City Expert’ Who Claims Blacks and Latinos Have Lower IQs

Charles Murray says it’s not racist to suggest that some ethnic groups are genetically inferior to others.

I should no longer be shocked at the intellectual dishonesty of Charles Murray, but I am. On Tuesday Murray made a brief reply to his critics, most notably Paul Krugman, who have accused Murray of racism for much of his work, but especially his 1994 book, “The Bell Curve.” Murray rejoined the news cycle last week, when Rep. Paul Ryan cited him as an expert on poverty and the troubles of “inner city” men, who, in Ryan’s words, are “not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work.” [..]

When you’ve spent an entire book arguing that blacks and Latinos have lower IQ, more out-of-wedlock babies and higher reliance on welfare, it’s clear who “the wrong women” are. Oh, and the book also argued for limiting immigration, because unlike earlier waves of immigrants, today’s are coming from countries with a lower national IQ. In what world are those arguments not racist?

Jessica Valenti: Women on the Side: Why Anti-Choicers Won’t Win

As I was giving a speech at a Virginia college recently, there was a visibly annoyed young man in the audience. He shifted around in his seat and scowled. During the Q&A, his hand was one of the first that shot up.

He asked why I kept talking about abortion as a women’s rights and health issue. How could I possibly argue this, he wondered, when abortion was clearly an issue of “children’s rights.” In his mind, women were beside the point. Ancillary, really.

His frustration that I would talk about abortion as an issue of bodily rights and integrity reminded me of why Republicans will never truly win women over. Anti-choicers cannot escape the truth of their movement: despite rhetorical efforts to the contrary, the foundation of fighting against abortion accessibility is the idea that women are less important than the pregnancies they can carry. [..]

Republicans can continue their desperate move to convince Americans that being anti-choice is actually pro-woman. But we are not stupid, and they are not fooling anyone. The more anti-choice politicians, pundits and activists underestimate women by continuing with their rhetorical sleight-of-hand, the more they reveal themselves. The anti-choice movement cannot erase us from our own lives by insisting that abortion isn’t necessary. The more they try, the stronger we’ll get.