Tag: TMC Politics

Dec 24 2013

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

JP Sottile: The real war on Christmas is our corporate-driven material culture

Corporate Christmas is not a time of humble reflection, charity and modesty. It is a market opportunity to be exploited

War is hell.

And let’s face it, the battle for peace on earth and goodwill towards men isn’t for the faint of heart. Or, apparently, for the faint of light. That’s the premise of ABC’s new, three-part special – “The Great Christmas Light Fight”. After all, how better to commemorate the birth of the Prince of Peace than with a fight? And with Christmas lights, no less! [..]

Yes, Virginia, there is a war on Christmas. But it isn’t the misdirected and misanthropic battle ginned-up by self-interested media blatherati and crypto-crusaders. [..]

There is a war, but these Christmas soldiers are massed on the wrong front. The real attack is not being waged by offended non-believers or the incessant meddling of politically-correct busybodies. The real war on the spirit and meaning of Christmas is being waged by corporate profiteers through a grinding campaign of multimedia marketing.

Dean Baker: Ben Bernanke’s tenure at the Fed wasn’t net positive

Bernanke tried to boost demand, but he leaves behind high unemployment and stronger-than-ever Wall Street behemoths

Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke gave his last press conference as chair and already the retrospectives have begun. One item that should be corrected off the top, Bernanke did not just inherit an economic disaster from Alan Greenspan.

Bernanke did not go directly from being a Princeton economics professor to being Fed chair. He got there by being a member of the Board of Governors of the Fed from 2002 to 2005, and then was chair of President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers from the spring of 2005 until he took over as Fed chair in January of 2006. In other words, Bernanke held top policy posts during the period when the housing bubble was growing to ever more dangerous levels, driven by a flood of junk mortgages. [..]

In this role his performance was at best mixed. The pundits routinely give Bernanke credit for heading off a second Great Depression, but this is mostly because they heard someone else say it, not because they have any idea what it actually means.

Eugene Robinson: Person of the Year

There are really just two possible choices for person of the year. I want to say Pope Francis, but I’ve got to go with Edward Snowden.

The spiritual leader of 1.2 billion Roman Catholics and a whistleblowing fugitive from American justice have just one thing in common: impact. Francis, by shifting his church’s focus to social justice, may change the world. But Snowden, by revealing the vast extent of government surveillance, already has.

Someday, perhaps, this ranking will be reversed. I hope it is, because the change that Francis advocates is more sweeping-and long overdue. The Catholic Church, despite its many problems, remains a powerful force around the globe. If its energies are directed away from the culture wars-and toward fighting poverty, inequality and injustice-the church can play a hugely influential role in shaping the new century.

Jonathan Turley: The ‘Sister Wives’ lawsuit and the end of morality laws

The decision this month by a federal court striking down the criminalization of polygamy in Utah was met with a mix of rejoicing and rage. What was an emancipating decision for thousands of plural families was denounced as the final descent into a moral abyss by others. [..]

It’s true that the Utah ruling is one of the latest examples of a national trend away from laws that impose a moral code. There is a difference, however, between the demise of morality laws and the demise of morality. This distinction appears to escape social conservatives nostalgic for a time when the government dictated whom you could live with or sleep with. But the rejection of moral codes is no more a rejection of morality than the rejection of speech codes is a rejection of free speech. Our morality laws are falling, and we are a better nation for it.

Dave Johnson: Who Will Fight to Help the Unemployed?

At the beginning of November, the poor went over the “hunger cliff” as Food Stamps were cut. Now long-term unemployment assistance will run out at the end of December. Regular people think the government has given up on them. They have been hit by one blow after another, with little or no help in sight. They see shutdowns and budget cuts at the very time the government needs to spend more to help Americans.

This is part of the Republican effort to turn Americans against government, because the public will blame Democrats. Democrats have to stop letting Republicans get away with it, and return to being seen as trying to help the unemployed and poor. [..]

And unfortunately we need to make more Democrats understand that helping the unemployed and poor is worth going to the mat over. It is job 1 — it has to be. It is the right thing to do for the American people and for our economy. It is the thing that is needed.

If the American public sees Democrats going to the mat for them, and see Republicans continuing to obstruct efforts to help the poor and unemployed, Democracy will take care of the rest.

Robert Creamer: On December 28th Unemployment Benefits End for 1.3 Million Families — Merry Christmas from the GOP

Three days after Christmas, unemployment benefits end for 1.3 million people who have exhausted their state unemployment benefits, but still can’t find a job.

To be eligible for unemployment benefits, you have to be actively looking for a job. Virtually all of these people would rather work, but can’t find a job in today’s economy where there are three applicants for every job available.

But when the budget deal was negotiated in Congress over the last several weeks, Republican negotiators refused to agree to continue those unemployment benefits. And at the same time, they demanded the continuation of tax breaks for big oil companies and loopholes for Wall Street billionaires who get their income from hedge funds.

Merry Christmas from the GOP.

Dec 24 2013

The Quality of Mercy

President Barack Obama has been quite miserly with his power to pardon and commute sentences. Since taking office, the president has only pardoned 39 people and commuted only one sentence, the fewest of any president in history. His recent “binge” commuting the sentences of eight federal prisoners who were convicted of crack cocaine offenses was was the first time retroactive relief was provided to a group of inmates who would most likely have received significantly shorter terms if they had been sentenced under current drug laws, sentencing rules and charging policies. All eight had already served 15 years and six had been sentenced to life. Unfortunately, that doesn’t do much for the thousands of other prisoners sentenced under the draconian laws that preceded  Fair Sentencing Act of 2010. Prison overcrowding in the country costs tax payers billions each year and most of the inmates are minorities and non-violent drug offenders.

The other prison population that could use a little mercy is the aged who, for the most part, no longer a danger to society. According a report by the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General, in just the past three years, the number of inmates over the age of 65 has grown by almost a third, while the population under 30 fell by 12 percent and are two to three times more expensive to keep in prison than their younger counterparts. Perhaps, as the report suggests, it is time for a compassionate release program for sick and infirm inmates.

“If the Risk Is Low, Let Them Go”: Elderly Prison Population Skyrockets Despite Low Risk to Society

Even amidst a modest reduction in the U.S. prison population, the number of aging men and women expected to die behind bars has skyrocketed in a system ill prepared to handle them and still oriented toward mass incarceration. We speak about the problems facing aging prisoners with Mujahid Farid, who was released from a New York state prison in 2011 after serving 33 years. He is now lead organizer with RAPP, which stands for “Release Aging People in Prison.” Their slogan is “If the risk is low, let them go.” His campaign work is part of Soros Justice Fellowship and is housed at the Correctional Association of New York. We are also joined by Soffiyah Elijah, executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, which monitors conditions in state prisons. “The parole board routinely denies people based on the nature of the offense, the one thing that no one can change, just like we can’t change our height or our eye color,” Elijah notes. “We need to look at that and say, if someone presents a low risk to recidivate, then we should be releasing them from prison. We’re wasting precious taxpayer dollars incarcerating people, and it’s much more expensive to incarcerate people who are older.”



Trancript can be read here



Transcript can be read here

Dec 23 2013

Punting the Pundits

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

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

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Paul Krugman: Bits and Barbarism

This is a tale of three money pits. It’s also a tale of monetary regress – of the strange determination of many people to turn the clock back on centuries of progress.

The first money pit is an actual pit – the Porgera open-pit gold mine in Papua New Guinea, one of the world’s top producers. [..]

The second money pit is a lot stranger: the Bitcoin mine in Reykjanesbaer, Iceland. Bitcoin is a digital currency that has value because … well, it’s hard to say exactly why, but for the time being at least people are willing to buy it because they believe other people will be willing to buy it. [..]

The third money pit is hypothetical. Back in 1936 the economist John Maynard Keynes argued that increased government spending was needed to restore full employment. [..]

But don’t let the fancy trappings fool you: What’s really happening is a determined march to the days when money meant stuff you could jingle in your purse. In tropics and tundra alike, we are for some reason digging our way back to the 17th century.

Joseph E. Stiglitz: In No One We Trust

In America today, we are sometimes made to feel that it is naïve to be preoccupied with trust. Our songs advise against it, our TV shows tell stories showing its futility, and incessant reports of financial scandal remind us we’d be fools to give it to our bankers.

That last point may be true, but that doesn’t mean we should stop striving for a bit more trust in our society and our economy. Trust is what makes contracts, plans and everyday transactions possible; it facilitates the democratic process, from voting to law creation, and is necessary for social stability. It is essential for our lives. It is trust, more than money, that makes the world go round.

We do not measure trust in our national income accounts, but investments in trust are no less important than those in human capital or machines.

Heidi Moore: Ben Bernanke’s final message: get your economic act together, Congress

In his final press conference as Federal Reserve chair, Bernanke squarely blames Congress for slowing economic recovery

On his way out of the Federal Reserve for good, chairman Ben Bernanke just gave Congress a big kick in the rear, using his final press conference to blame congressional budget battles for slowing down the economy and increasing unemployment.

Bernanke pulled back on the Federal Reserve’s $85bn-a-month stimulus, turning it into a $75bn-a-month stimulus. In any other year, the Fed’s pullback on a major, multi-trillion-dollar stimulus after four years should indicate that the economy is better and can stand on its own.

Yet, that is not why the Fed is throttling back on the bond-buying program known as quantitative easing. Bernanke’s statements have been so cautious on the economy that one journalist asked him if the Fed is pulling back because it is simply “giving up” on finding a way to create economic growth.

It’s a good question.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: ‘Green Shoots’: The Year in Wall Street Reform

One year ago a good argument could have been made for cynicism and despair, at least when it came to financial reform. More than four years after an epidemic of Wall Street fraud took down the economy, there had been no indictments of financial executives. Bank CEOs were still treated like royalty in Washington and New York. We still lacked comprehensive regulatory reform. The president’s much-hyped task force on foreclosure fraud had negotiated a cushy, bank-friendly settlement aimed more at placating the public than in restoring justice to ripped-off homeowners.

Twelve months later, things are still tough. The only bank indictments we’ve seen are of low-level officials. We still don’t have meaningful reform. And yet there are unexpected and promising signs.

Call them “green shoots.” True, it’s a problematic phrase, it’s been used so often to raise false economic hopes since 2008. These shoots could wither and die. But there’s something in the air we wouldn’t have predicted one year ago: Hope.

Robert Kuttner: More About a New Freedom Summer

Last week, in this space, I proposed a “Freedom Summer 2014”, aimed at ensuring that nobody would be prevented from voting next fall due to the lack of a government-issued photo ID card. The 5-4 ruling of the Roberts Supreme Court last June in Shelby County v. Holder, overturning major sections of the 1965 Civil Rights Act, permitted all sorts of mischief by Republican state officials aimed at raising obstacles to the right to vote.

My thought was that an army of volunteers, making sure that everyone had the necessary ID, would shame rightwing officials trying to suppress the right to vote and mobilize lots of voters in an off-year that is likely to be difficult for progressives.

In the week since I wrote that post, I’ve gotten a lot of email. Nobody thinks this is a bad idea. The only question is whether a new Freedom Summer could be pulled off at the necessary scale, and whether it could make a real difference.

In the course of digging deeper into those questions, here’s what I’ve learned.

Tom Engelhardt: ‘Bride & Boom’: We’re Number One… In Obliterating Wedding Parties

Washington’s Wedding Album From Hell

The headline — “Bride and Boom!” — was spectacular, if you think killing people in distant lands is a blast and a half.  Of course, you have to imagine that smirk line in giant black letters with a monstrous exclamation point covering most of the bottom third of the front page of the Murdoch-owned New York Post.  The reference was to a caravan of vehicles on its way to or from a wedding in Yemen that was eviscerated, evidently by a U.S. drone via one of those “surgical” strikes of which Washington is so proud.  As one report put it, “Scorched vehicles and body parts were left scattered on the road.” [..]

And were a wedding party to be obliterated on a highway anywhere in America on the way to, say, a rehearsal dinner, whatever the cause, it would be a 24/7 tragedy. Our lives would be filled with news of it. Count on that.

But a bunch of Arabs in a country few in the U.S. had ever heard of before we started sending in the drones?  No such luck, so if you’re a Murdoch tabloid, it’s open season, no consequences guaranteed.

Dec 22 2013

Punting the Pundits: Sunday Preview Edition

“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: Guests on this Sunday’s “This Week” are: House Intelligence Committee Chair Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI); and Senate Intelligence Committee member Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO); legendary actors Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Patrick Stewart.

Sitting at the roundtable are ABC News contributor Donna Brazile; ABC News political analyst Matthew Dowd;, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol; Willett Advisors chair and former counselor to the Treasury Secretary Steven Rattner; and Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Schieffer’s guest is former acting director of the CIA Michael Morell.

Joining him on the panel discussing the best books of 2013 are Rick Atkinson, author of “The Guns at Last Light,” Michael Connelly, author of “The Gods of Guilt,” Terry McMillan, author of “Who Asked You?” and George Saunders, author of “The Tenth of December.”

A 65-year CBS News tradition continues with a year-end report from CBS News correspondents Margaret Brennan, Nancy Cordes, Major Garrett and David Martin.

Meet the Press with David Gregory: On this week’s MTP, an exclusive interview with the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund Christine Lagarde; other guests are Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK); Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK);  Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Rep. Peter King (R-NY).

At the roundtable the guests are New York Times columnist David Brooks; Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne; former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and Republican strategist Ana Navarro.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Ms. Crowley’s guests are Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV); Representatives Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) and Aaron Schock.

Her panel guests are Washington Post‘s Dan Balz; New York Times‘ Mark Leibovich; Mark Halperin of Time Magazine and CNN “Crossfire” host Newt Gingrich.

Dec 21 2013

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: Mr. Obama’s Disappointing Response

By the time President Obama gave his news conference on Friday, there was really only one course to take on surveillance policy from an ethical, moral, constitutional and even political point of view. And that was to embrace the recommendations of his handpicked panel on government spying – and bills pending in Congress – to end the obvious excesses. He could have started by suspending the constitutionally questionable (and evidently pointless) collection of data on every phone call and email that Americans make.

He did not do any of that. [..]

In other words, he never intended to make the changes that his panel, many lawmakers and others, including this page, have advocated to correct the flaws in the government’s surveillance policy had they not been revealed by Edward Snowden’s leaks.

And that is why any actions that Mr. Obama may announce next month would certainly not be adequate. Congress has to rewrite the relevant passage in the Patriot Act that George W. Bush and then Mr. Obama claimed – in secret – as the justification for the data vacuuming.

Charles M. Blow: ‘Duck Dynasty’ and Quackery

I must admit that I’m not a watcher of “Duck Dynasty,” but I’m very much aware of it. I, too, am from Louisiana, and the family on the show lives outside the town of Monroe, which is a little over 50 miles from my hometown. We’re all from the sticks.

So, when I became aware of the homophobic and racially insensitive comments that the patriarch on the show, Phil Robertson, made this week in an interview in GQ magazine, I thought: I know that mind-set.

Robertson’s interview reads as a commentary almost without malice, imbued with a matter-of-fact, this-is-just-the-way-I-see-it kind of Southern folksiness. To me, that is part of the problem. You don’t have to operate with a malicious spirit to do tremendous harm. Insensitivity and ignorance are sufficient. In fact, intolerance that is disarming is the most dangerous kind. It can masquerade as morality.

Bernd Heinrich: Revitalizing Our Forests

THIS Christmas season, I am roasting chestnuts by the fire. American chestnuts, to be exact. These nuts, once widespread, were almost wiped out by a fungal blight. For a century, most of the chestnuts we eat, like the sweet Castanea sativa variety, have been imported from Europe and Asia.

And yet, I have been enjoying American chestnuts for several years now, harvested from some trees that are now part of my forest of 600 acres in western Maine. [..]

My trees seem to have some blight resistance, which could mean they were selected for those traits; some of the old trees did have the ability to avoid the blight.

Since the 1980s, researchers have worked to select chestnuts for resistance to the blight, slowly and methodically crossing and back crossing, testing and measuring the trees’ response to exposure. That’s traditional tree breeding.

But meanwhile, researchers at SUNY’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry have been trying to create a better chestnut tree by inserting into it a gene derived from wheat, one that would enhance the tree’s resistance to the chestnut fungal blight. [..]

How will those trees evolve over time with their altered genome? Will they crowd out the remaining natural chestnuts? The consequences of genetic engineering can be unpredictable – genes behave and are expressed in complex ways.

Joe Conason: Who Is Really Waging War on Christmas? Look in the Mirror, Scrooges

Spreading holiday cheer, a Western tradition for hundreds of years, no longer engages our so-called conservatives as the end of the year approaches. In fact, the innocent phrase “happy holidays” only infuriates them. The new Yuletide ritual exciting the right is the “War on Christmas”-an annual opportunity to spread religious discord and community conflict, brought to us by those wonderful folks at Fox News.

Once started, wars tend to escalate and intensify-and the War on Christmas is no exception. The same right-wing Christian ideologues enraged by any multicultural or ecumenical celebration of the season-the people trying to transform “Merry Christmas” from a kind greeting into a mantra of hate-are now merrily inflicting additional misery on the nation’s downtrodden.

Just in time for the birthday of baby Jesus, they are cutting food stamps and unemployment benefits. And they insist with breezy heartlessness that it’s all for the benefit of the poor.

Eugene Robinson: Making the Right Call on NSA

In plain language, the panel lays out just what the NSA has been doing: obtaining secret court orders compelling phone service providers to “turn over to the government on an ongoing basis call records for every telephone call made in, to, or from the United States through their respective systems.”

That is a jaw-dropping sentence. No less stunning, however, is the panel’s assessment of the program’s worth as a tool to fight terrorism: from all available evidence, zero. [..]

Unless we want to accept an Orwellian future in which privacy is a distant memory-and I don’t-we need to limit the NSA’s authority to surveillance of legitimate foreign targets.

A presidential order isn’t enough, because future presidents could change it. Congress needs to pass a law telling the agency, in no uncertain terms, what it must never do.

David Sirota: Edward Snowden Is the Whistle-Blower of the Year

For months, a debate over Edward Snowden’s status has raged. In the back and forth, one question about this icon who disclosed NSA abuses has dominated: Is he or is he not a whistle-blower with all the attendant protections that should come with such a designation?

As of this week’s federal court ruling saying the NSA’s data collection programs are probably unconstitutional, that debate is finally over. After all, if the most basic definition of a government whistleblower is one who uncovers illegal or unconstitutional acts, then the ruling proves Snowden is the dictionary-definition of a whistleblower. [..]

He certainly does not deserve the ire directed at him. At the very minimum, he does not deserve to have House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers publicly offer to help extrajudicially execute him with a drone strike (yes, that really happened).

What he really deserves, though, is a nation’s thanks for exposing-and hopefully halting-the violations of civil liberties happening in our midst.

Dec 20 2013

Punting the Pundits

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

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

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Paul Krugman: Osborne and the Stooges

There was, I’m pretty sure, an episode of “The Three Stooges” in which Curly kept banging his head against a wall. When Moe asked him why, he replied, “Because it feels so good when I stop.” [..]

Some background: In 2010, most of the world’s wealthy nations, although still deeply depressed in the wake of the financial crisis, turned to fiscal austerity: slashing spending and, in some cases, raising taxes in an effort to reduce budget deficits that had surged as their economies collapsed. Basic economics said that austerity in an already depressed economy would deepen the depression. But the “austerians,” as many of us began calling them, insisted that spending cuts would lead to economic expansion, because they would improve business confidence.

The result came as close to a controlled experiment as one ever gets in macroeconomics. Three years went by, and the confidence fairy never made an appearance. In Europe, where the austerian ideology took hold most firmly, the nascent economic recovery soon turned into a double-dip recession. In fact, at this point key measures of economic performance in both the euro area and Britain are lagging behind where they were at this stage of the Great Depression.

New York Times Editorial Board: Release the Torture Reports

A dozen years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, it is appalling that official reports about the extent and nature of the rendition, detention and torture that came in their aftermath are still being kept from the American public and even members of Congress charged with overseeing intelligence activities. [..]

The lack of transparency was underlined on Tuesday during a hearing on the nomination of Caroline Krass to be the C.I.A.’s top lawyer. Senator Mark Udall, a Colorado Democrat, disclosed the existence of an internal study done by the C.I.A. under Mr. Brennan’s predecessor, Leon Panetta, that contradicted the agency’s response to the Senate study. Mr. Udall said he believed it was “consistent with the Intelligence’s Committee’s report.” Mr. Udall said: “This raises fundamental questions about why a review the C.I.A. conducted internally years ago – and never provided to the committee – is so different from the C.I.A.’s formal response to the committee study.”

The committee must insist on the Obama administration’s cooperation in making public all three documents – the Senate Intelligence Committee report, the official C.I.A. response to it, and the internal C.I.A. study.

Marcy Wheeler: The NSA Review Panel Didn’t Answer the Real Question: Was Any of This Legal?

President Obama’s NSA review is cast as a set of ‘policy recommendations’ as if this is all just a political debate

President Obama’s NSA review panel makes it clear that many of the things NSA has been doing are bad from a policy perspective. But the real question we should be asking is: are they legal?

Early leaks about the review panel suggested it had found all the NSA’s (and other agencies they imply, such as FBI) activities to be legal. That’s based, in part, on this statement:

   Significantly, and in stark contrast to the pre-Fisa era, the Review Group found no evidence of illegality or other abuse of authority for the purpose of targeting domestic political activity. This is of central importance, because one of the greatest dangers of government surveillance is the potential to use what is learned to undermine democratic governance. On the other hand, as discussed later in this report, there have been serious and persistent instances of noncompliance in the Intelligence Community’s implementation of its authorities. Even if unintentional, these instances of noncompliance raise serious concerns about the Intelligence Community’s capacity to manage its authorities in an effective and lawful manner.

But notice that statement did not say the panel had found everything to be legal. On the contrary, it applied that judgment only to illegality or abuse “for the purposes of targeting domestic political activity”. That leaves open a whole slew of potential abuse, even illegal activities, targeting Americans for reasons outside of politics.

That’s what the report should have tackled, but it didn’t. Instead, we have tame sounding “policy recommendations” as if this is all just a matter of political disagreement over the budget or farm bill.

Lincoln Mitchell: Can the U.S. Stop Itself from Widespread Surveillance?

On Monday U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon ruled that the NSA surveillance program was unconstitutional. The gist of his ruling is that collecting data on the telephone calls of every American violates the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure. It should be pretty obvious to most Americans that collecting data in this way is not compatible with the values and laws governing our democracy, but it is still good to have that confirmed by a federal judge.

The ruling itself is interesting, but the question of how any administration, Democratic or Republican believed that surveillance of that kind was, or should be legal, is more significant. Edward Snowden’s name is well known, as he was the one who drew attention to this violation of the rights and privacy of millions of Americans, but the names of the probably thousands of Americans who knew of this policy and said or did nothing are still unknown. Those are the people, not Snowden, whose decisions and conduct have weakened our country.

MJ Rosenberg: George Washington Spinning In Grave Over Senate Iran Resolution

Just when President Obama was starting to believe that it was safe to go back into the water, the lobby has come out with a new Iran sanctions resolution designed to torpedo negotiations with Iran. And, once that is accomplished, it provides for automatic U.S military backing for Israel if Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu decides to bomb.

This may be the lobby’s most brazen attempt yet at subverting negotiations and, in Andrew Sullivan’s words, “handing over American foreign policy on a matter as grave as war and peace to a foreign government….” [..]

The bill is almost like an exploding Christmas present. It looks pretty under the tree, all wrapped up nicely, but then in six months it blows down the house. [..]

Although damaging (there is no telling how the Iranian government will react to such an insulting action by Congress while it is in the midst of negotiating with the administration) the resolution is par for the course. If it’s not one donor-backed lobby dictating policy, it’s another.

But then the bill goes off in a truly unprecedented direction. It states that if negotiations fail (it defines failure as leaving Iran with the capacity for any nuclear enrichment at all) and Prime Minister Netanyahu decides to dispatch his bombers, the United States is automatically at war too.

Robert Reich: The Meaning of a Decent Society

It’s the season to show concern for the less fortunate among us. We should also be concerned about the widening gap between the most fortunate and everyone else.

Although it’s still possible to win the lottery (your chance of winning $636 million in the recent Mega Millions sweepstakes was one in 259 million), the biggest lottery of all is what family we’re born into. Our life chances are now determined to an unprecedented degree by the wealth of our parents.

That’s not always been the case. The faith that anyone could move from rags to riches — with enough guts and gumption, hard work and nose to the grindstone — was once at the core of the American Dream. [..]

But for more than three decades we’ve been going backwards. It’s far more difficult today for a child from a poor family to become a middle-class or wealthy adult. Or even for a middle-class child to become wealthy.

Dec 20 2013

White Elephants & Bipartisan Determination for War

Afghan IG reopens probe into huge Leatherneck command center

By J. Taylor Rushing, Stars and Stripes

Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John Sopko notified Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel of the news in a Nov. 27 letter that was released by Sopko’s office Thursday. In the letter, Sopko complains that he never received an answer to questions he sent in July to Hagel, U.S. Central Command Commander Gen. Lloyd Austin III and U.S. Forces-Afghanistan Commander Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr., about the mammoth building, dismissed by many as a “white elephant,” never to be used. [..]

Sopko specifically complains about an investigation into the building by Maj. Gen. James Richardson, deputy commander of support for U.S. Forces in Afghanistan that was finished last month. Sopko said he delayed his own investigation to wait on Richardson’s report. A partial draft of the report was sent to Sopko, but he said it was sloppy, incomplete and actually suggests that taxpayer-funded construction should continue. [..]

Controversy over the building is not new – members of the Senate Armed Services Committee have been publicly critical of the construction, most recently after an initial Army investigation into the building in May determined that the building was unwanted and unnecessary, and could be converted into a gymnasium and movie theatre.

10 Democratic Committee Chairs Warn Menendez’s Iran Sanction Bill Could Blow Up Negotiations

By Ryan Grim, Huffington Post

In a remarkable rebuke to Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), 10 other Senate committee chairs are circulating a joint letter to Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, urging him to reject an effort by Menendez to tighten sanctions on Iran and warning that his bill could disrupt ongoing nuclear negotiations.

The senators write in their letter that “at this time, as negotiations are ongoing, we believe that new sanctions would play into the hands of those in Iran who are most eager to see the negotiations fail.”

Earlier Thursday, a senior White House official had accused Menendez of undermining the negotiations. [..]

Yet Menendez is not alone in his call for tougher sanctions. The proposed Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act, introduced in the Senate on Thursday by Menendez and Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), is co-sponsored by 12 other Democrats — including Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) — and 12 other Republicans.

Senate passes $607B Defense bill

By Jeremy Herb and Ramsey Cox, The Hill

The Senate on Thursday evening passed the $607 billion Defense authorization bill that will reform the way the military handles sexual assault cases and loosen the restriction on transferring Guantánamo Bay detainees to foreign countries.

The Senate sent the bill to the president’s desk for the 52nd straight year in a 84-15 vote, after some legislative maneuvering was needed to extend the streak and quickly get a compromise bill through both chambers this month.

Nearly three-quarters of Republicans joined most Democrats in voting for the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which authorizes $527 billion in base defense spending and $80 billion for the war in Afghanistan.[..]

The final bill included many new reforms to how the military prosecutes sexual assault and treats victims. The bill strips commanders’ ability to overturn guilty verdicts, changes the military’s pre-trial rules for interviewing victims, expands a special victims counsel for sexual assault survivors and makes retaliating against victims a crime.

The bill does not, however, include a controversial proposal from Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) to take sexual assault cases from the chain of command. Before Thanksgiving, Republicans blocked Reid’s attempt to hold votes on Gillibrand’s amendment and a competing measure from Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.).

The stupid just burns.

Dec 20 2013

The Ayes Have It, The NSA Went Too Far

President Obama’s panel of security and civil liberties experts finished their work giving their recommendations to the president last Friday. The report was released to the public Tuesday. Much to the surprise of the war on terror hawks, it slammed the mass surveillance programs vindicating what critics have been saying since Edward Snowden’s revelations.

A presidential advisory panel has recommended sweeping limits on the government’s surveillance programs, including requiring a court to sign off on individual searches of phone records and stripping the National Security Agency of its ability to store that data from Americans. [..]

The recommendations include tightening federal law enforcement’s use of so-called national security letters, which give the government sweeping authority to demand financial and phone records without prior court approval in national security cases. The task force recommended that authorities should be required to obtain a prior “judicial finding” showing “reasonable grounds” that the information sought is relevant to terrorism or other intelligence activities.

In addition, the panel proposed terminating the NSA’s ability to store telephone data and instead require it to be held by the phone companies or a third party. Access to the data would then be permitted only through an order from a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

The panel called for more independent review of what the NSA collects and the process by which it goes about gathering data.

Amid an international furor over NSA spying on the leaders of allied nations such as Germany, the review group recommended that the president personally approve all sensitive methods used by the intelligence community.

President’s Review Group on Intelligence  and Communications Technologies Report On NSA

Marcy Wheeler, at emptywheel, has been pouring over the report and has pulled out what she thinks is pertinent here, here and here.

In a re-published article by Kara Brandeisky of ProPublica, that she wrote for Techdirt back in August, the folks there note that the surveillance reforms the Pres. Obama supported before he was president are remarkably similar to the Task Force’s proposals:

As a senator, Obama wanted to limit bulk records collection.

Obama co-sponsored a 2007 bill, introduced by Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., that would have required the government to demonstrate, with “specific and articulable facts,” that it wanted records related to “a suspected agent of a foreign power” or the records of people with one degree of separation from a suspect. The bill died in committee. Following pressure from the Bush administration, lawmakers had abandoned a similar 2005 measure, which Obama also supported. [..]

As a senator, Obama wanted to require government analysts to get court approval before accessing incidentally collected American data.

In Feb. 2008, Obama co-sponsored an amendment, also introduced by Feingold, which would have further limited the ability of the government to collect any communications to or from people residing in the U.S.

The measure would have also required government analysts to segregate all incidentally collected American communications. If analysts wanted to access those communications, they would have needed to apply for individualized surveillance court approval.

The amendment pfailed 35-63 http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/… Obama later reversed his position and supported what became the law now known to authorize the PRISM program. That legislation – the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 – also granted immunity to telecoms that had cooperated with the government on surveillance. [..]

As a senator, Obama wanted the executive branch to report to Congress how many American communications had been swept up during surveillance.

Feingold’s 2008 amendment, which Obama supported, would have also required the Defense Department and Justice Department to complete a joint audit of all incidentally collected American communications and provide the report to congressional intelligence committees. The amendment failed 35-63. [..]

The White House has already made it clear that the recommendations are just that and has already said it will not separate the US Cyber Command from the NSA. So basically, as Charles Pierce pointedly put it, “the White House can tell the committee to pound sand.”

And, even if it doesn’t, there is no reason on god’s earth why anyone should believe that the NSA actually would abide by any agreement going forward. The all-too-human, but curiously error-prone heroes of our intelligence community, imbued as they are with a mission mindset that is perilously close to messianic, can be presumed eventually to breach by unfortunate accident almost any new protocol put in place. (And that’s not even to mingle with the wilder fauna in the jungle.)

At Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman and Juan González discuss the panel recommendations with Kirk Wiebe, a retired National Security Agency official who worked there for over 32 years, and Ben Wizner, Edward Snowden’s legal adviser and director of the Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project at the American Civil Liberties Union.



Transcript can be read here



Transcript can be read here

Let the conversation continue.

Dec 19 2013

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: Turn Off the Data Vacuum

In the days after one of the biggest national security leaks in United States history revealed the existence of vast, largely unchecked government surveillance programs, President Obama said he would “welcome” a robust national debate over the appropriate balance between protecting national security and respecting individual privacy and civil liberties.

The answer has now landed squarely on Mr. Obama’s desk, with the release late Wednesday afternoon of a remarkably thorough and well-reasoned report calling on the government to end its bulk phone-data collection program and to increase both the transparency and accountability of surveillance programs going forward. [..]

The surveillance programs began before Mr. Obama’s presidency, but he allowed them to continue and grow in unprecedented ways. Lately, he has expressed an openness to reforming the programs themselves and the operations of the intelligence court. One important step would be to support legislation in Congress that would achieve many of the panel’s goals, and codify them to restrain future presidents.

But Mr. Obama need not wait for Congress to act to implement the reforms he said he wants. He can quickly adopt his panel’s recommendation and end the ineffective and constitutionally dangerous dragnet surveillance.

Emily Bazelon: Snap Out of It

If this judge doesn’t buy the legal basis for the NSA’s intrusive phone snooping, no one should.

If you have been lulled into a state of somnolence about former government contractor Edward Snowden’s revelations that the government is collecting records of every phone call you’ve made, for years, it’s time to snap out of it. That’s the bracing effect of Judge Richard Leon’s Monday ruling that the National Security Agency is probably violating the Constitution with its 7-year-old program for collecting “telephony metadata”-the euphonic phrase for whom you call and whom you receive calls from.

In June, when we learned about this NSA program in the first wave of news about the huge trove of documents that Snowden leaked, some responses were too dismissive, saying that what the NSA is doing isn’t all that invasive, since this isn’t about the contents of phone calls, and in any case, collecting and trawling through all that metadata is a crucial tool for thwarting imminent terrorist attacks. Judge Leon didn’t accept the first claim and has eviscerated the second one. This is what judicial review is all about-checking government power and calling government bullshit. And it comes today from a judge appointed by President George W. Bush who has previously ruled in favor of “expansive government power,” as Glenn Greenwald, breaker of much of the Snowden news, puts it. In other words, if Judge Leon didn’t buy the government’s argument about why it needs to collect and keep all this metadata, other judges-and many of the rest of us-may see it the same way.

Robert Sheer: Progressives on the Take

How can President Obama be so right and so wrong in the same moment? On the one hand, he warns us that sharply rising income inequality “is the defining challenge of our time” and pledges to reverse “a dangerous and growing inequality and lack of upward mobility. …” But then he once again turns to the same hacks in the Democratic Party who helped create this problem to fix it.

His tough speech on income inequality earlier this month was delivered at the Center for American Progress, founded by John Podesta. As chief of staff to Bill Clinton, Podesta helped lead the charge to deregulate Wall Street, which resulted in the banking bubble that wiped out the savings of tens of millions of Americans.

But instead of chastising Podesta for the errors of his ways, Obama in 2008 appointed him to oversee his presidential transition team. That led to the appointment of Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner, two former Clinton officials responsible for the banking meltdown, to repair it. Just this past week, it was announced that John Podesta would be reappointed as a senior adviser to the Obama White House.

 

Bill Moyers and Michael Winship: Gunpowder and Blood on Their Cold, Dead Hands

This grim anniversary of the Newtown, Conn., killings, with 28 dead, reminded us of that moment back in 2000 when Charlton Heston made his defiant boast at the NRA convention that gun control advocates would have to pry his rifle from his “cold, dead hands.” You would have thought he had returned to that fantasy world of Hollywood where, in a previous incarnation, he portrayed those famous Indian killers Andrew Jackson and Buffalo Bill Cody, whose Wild West, as Cody marketed it, still courses through the bloodstream of American mythology.

For sure, Heston wasn’t channeling his most famous role, as Moses in The Ten Commandments, striding down from Mount Sinai with a stone tablet on which had been chiseled God’s blueprint for a civilized society, including, “Thou Shalt Not Kill!”

But the Good Lord seems not to have anticipated the National Rifle Association, its delegates lustily cheering Heston as his demagoguery brought them to their feet. Started after the Civil War by two former officers of the Union army who were disconsolate that their troops had shown such poor marksmanship in battle, its purpose was to “promote and encourage rifle shooting on a scientific basis.” Now, its conscience as cold and dead as Charlton Heston’s grip on his gun, the NRA has become the armed bully of American politics, the enabler of the “gunfighter nation,” as cultural historian Richard Slotkin calls it, whose exceptionalism of which so many patriots fervently boast, includes a high tolerance for the slaughter of the innocent.

Ralph Nader: Let Them Hear the Rumble! Invest in People, Not War

Earlier this month, a delegation of activists took to Capitol Hill to demand a decrease in the massive, out-of-control military budget. As millions of Americans struggle with inadequate health care, low wages, deteriorating public services and uncertainty about their futures as the wage gap between the wealthy elite and the working poor widens, billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars are pouring into the coffers of the Department of Defense every year. The Pentagon budget currently makes up half of the U.S. government’s entire operating budget. Estimated to be around $716 billion in 2013, the U.S. defense budget is greater than the defense budgets of the next ten highest spending nations combined. The gathering was, appropriately, scheduled on International Human Rights Day. [..]

The consortium of activists’ are asking Congress to slash the bloated military budget and use the significant savings to enhance critical social programs that actually help people, things like food stamps, Social Security and improved full Medicare-for-all healthcare. They also suggested a massive public works agenda that creates good paying un-exportable jobs in every community around the country — jobs that include clean, renewable energy for the future. And what of America’s crumbling infrastructure? Our clinics, roads, schools, bridges, libraries, public transit, public water and sewage systems and national parks are in dire need of repair and modernization. The savings from defense spending could be used to repair infrastructure — much of which was a product of FDR’s New Deal in the 1930s — and ensure a cleaner, safer, more prosperous America.

These are proposals that would benefit our citizenry rather then ravage and destroy countries abroad whose citizens far too regularly become victims in the U.S.’s perpetual military adventures.

Norman Solomon: Under Amazon’s CIA Cloud: The Washington Post

News media should illuminate conflicts of interest, not embody them. But the owner of the Washington Post is now doing big business with the Central Intelligence Agency, while readers of the newspaper’s CIA coverage are left in the dark.

The Post‘s new owner, Jeff Bezos, is the founder and CEO of Amazon — which recently landed a $600 million contract with the CIA. But the Post‘s articles about the CIA are not disclosing that the newspaper’s sole owner is the main owner of CIA business partner Amazon. [..]

And there’s likely to be plenty more where that CIA largesse came from. Amazon’s offer wasn’t the low bid, but it won the CIA contract anyway by offering advanced high-tech “cloud” infrastructure.

Bezos personally and publicly touts Amazon Web Services, and it’s evident that Amazon will be seeking more CIA contracts. Last month, Amazon issued a statement saying, “We look forward to a successful relationship with the CIA.”

As Amazon’s majority owner and the Post‘s only owner, Bezos stands to gain a lot more if his newspaper does less ruffling and more soothing of CIA feathers.

Dean Baker: The End of the Assault on Social Security and Medicare

When Senator Elizabeth Warren came out for increasing Social Security last month it set in motion a remarkable turn of events. For over a decade the only discussion of Social Security by the Washington power types was over how much to cut it and when. The extreme left position was that current spending was about right.

Senator Warren changed the debate when she endorsed a bill proposed by Iowa Senator Tom Harkin that would index retirees’ benefits to an index that more closely tracks the cost-of-living of seniors. The bill also would raise benefits by roughly $70 a month. As a result of Warren’s prominence in national politics, and the fact that raising Social Security benefits is actually quite popular, the Washington insider types were forced to take the idea seriously.

Dec 18 2013

Equal Employment Regardless of Credit Score

In a press release, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren along with five other Senate Democrats announced the introduction of legislation to end the practice of some employers to require a job applicant to disclose their credit rating.

Senator Warren Introduces Legislation to Prohibit Employers from Requiring Credit Report Disclosure

Dec 17, 2013

Fact Sheet is Available Here (pdf)

Text of the Legislation is Available Here (pdf)

Washington, DC – United States Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) today introduced the Equal Employment for All Act with Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.). The legislation would prohibit employers from requiring potential employees to disclose their credit history as part of the job application process. It was previously thought that credit history may provide insight into an individual’s character, but research has shown that an individual’s credit rating has little to no correlation with his or her ability to be successful in the workplace.

“A bad credit rating is far more often the result of unexpected medical costs, unemployment, economic downturns, or other bad breaks than it is a reflection on an individual’s character or abilities,” Senator Warren said.  “Families have not fully recovered from the 2008 financial crisis, and too many Americans are still searching for jobs. This is about basic fairness — let people compete on the merits, not on whether they already have enough money to pay all their bills.”

A study from the Federal Trade Commission earlier this year suggested that errors in credit reports are common and, in many cases, have been difficult to correct.  “It makes no sense to make it harder for people to get jobs because of a system of credit reporting that has no correlation with job performance and that can be riddled with inaccuracies,” Warren said. [..]

Senator Warren’s bill is based on H.R. 645, which was introduced by Congressman Steve Cohen (TN-9) in 2011.

Sen. Warren joins the host of MSNBC’s “All In” Chris Hayes to talk about her bill to stop employers from using an applicant’s credit score in the vetting process.

Take Action and sign the petition to support Equal Employment for All Act and end the practice of denying employment based on credit scores,

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