Tag: TMC Politics

Aug 08 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

John Kiriakou: Obama’s Abuse of the Espionage Act is Modern-Day McCarthyism

Shame on this president for persecuting whistleblowers with a legal relic, while administration officials leak with impunity

The conviction of Bradley Manning under the 1917 Espionage Act, and the US Justice Department’s decision to file espionage charges against NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden under the same act, are yet further examples of the Obama administration’s policy of using an iron fist against human rights and civil liberties activists.

President Obama has been unprecedented in his use of the Espionage Act to prosecute those whose whistleblowing he wants to curtail. The purpose of an Espionage Act prosecution, however, is not to punish a person for spying for the enemy, selling secrets for personal gain, or trying to undermine our way of life. It is to ruin the whistleblower personally, professionally and financially. It is meant to send a message to anybody else considering speaking truth to power: challenge us and we will destroy you.

Mark Weisbot: Mass Media Helps Keep Americans in the Dark About U.S. Foreign Policy

The United States still has military spending that is higher in real, inflation-adjusted terms than it was during the peak of the Reagan Cold War build-up, the Vietnam War, and the Korean War. We seem to be in a state of permanent warfare, and — we have recently learned — massive government spying and surveillance of our own citizens. This is despite an ever-receding threat to the actual physical security of Americans. Only 19 people have been killed acts of terrorism in the United States since September 11, 2001; and none or almost none of these were connected to foreign terrorists. And there are no “enemy states” that pose a significant military threat to the United States — if any governments can be called “enemy states” at all.

One of the reasons for this disconnect is that most of the mass media provide a grossly distorted view of U.S. foreign policy. It presents an American foreign policy that is far more benign and justifiable than the reality of empire that most of the world knows. In a well-researched and thoroughly documented article published by the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA), Keane Bhatt provides an excellent case study of how this happens.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: 7 Things About Prosecuting Wall Street You Wanted to Know (But Were Too Depressed to Ask)

President Obama’s Justice Department, under the direction of Attorney General Eric Holder, hasn’t indicted a single bank executive for the massive Wall Street crime wave that devastated the economy. The regulatory reform which followed the 2008 crisis wasn’t nearly enough, and yet Republicans are trying to weaken even that.

And just this week there were several news stories about bank crime. What do they mean? Why haven’t any bankers gone to jail? What’s going on in this country?

Here are seven things about Wall Street crime and Washington “justice” you might have wanted to know, but were probably too depressed to ask. It’s true that there’s a shortage of justice where bankers are concerned. But don’t get depressed. Get serious – about demanding change.

Juan Cole: How the GOP Libya Witch Hunt Made Us Close Our Mideast Embassies and Crippled U.S. Diplomacy

About those US embassy closures in the Middle East:  they make the US look like a wimp. [..]

As with George Mitchell and Northern Ireland, the most effective uses of American power have been diplomatic.  But hawks in Washington always want to drag us into foreign wars, in part to benefit their buddies in the arms industry.  The current GOP is divided on the issue of US power abroad, with Libertarians like Rand Paul viewing foreign wars as a waste of money and a fruitless enterprise, but hawks like John McCain and Lindsey Graham failing to discover a potential war that they don’t just love to death.

But the GOP is inadvertently pushing the US into a posture of dangerous diplomatic weakness.  This weakness is clear in the unprecedented closing of 21 US embassies in the Middle East this weekend because of a vague terrorist threat apparently emanating from “al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,” based in Yemen.

Jared Berstein: [Threatening to ‘Reform’ the Earned Income Tax Credit Threatening to ‘Reform’ the Earned Income Tax Credit]

Devoted readers know that I’m careful not to shoot everything that moves, but the more I hang around the DC tax debate, the more I’m exposed to deeply misguided thinking that seems largely motivated by the conviction that poor people — in this case, the working poor — have too much money and the wealthy have too little.

That’s the lesson from a report by the Tax Foundation on the “benefits” of getting rid of the Earned Income Tax Credit — a wage subsidy for low-income workers — and giving everybody else a tax break.

Jim Hightower: Forget Student Loans — Make Higher Ed Free

Well, finally! Hard-right congressional leaders and the Obama White House have agreed that interest rates on student loans should not double to nearly 7 percent, as they let happen early in July. Instead, college students will be billed at a rate that will steadily rise higher than 8 percent.

This is progress?

Temporarily, yes, because the new law drops this year’s rate to 3.8 percent. But, for the longer run, obviously not. Even capping the interest rate at 8.25 percent, as the White House demanded, is too high, for it still saddles students with a crushing debt of some $20,000 to $40,000 for a four-year degree, just as they’re getting started on their economic path.

Aug 07 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”.

Wednesday is Ladies’ Day.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Katrina vanden Heuvel: A Debt-Free College Education

Last Wednesday – almost a month after Congress failed to prevent student loan rates from doubling – Democrats and Republicans reached a compromise that will keep rates low, at least temporarily, for most graduates.

From a body with a record of procrastinating on student debt worse than students procrastinate on term papers, this was welcome news. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. [..]

A stopgap reduction in loan rates won’t do anything to fix this. We need a whole new model for financing higher education.

Fortunately, though Washington remains perpetually paralyzed, some states are demonstrating refreshing creativity and determination in tackling this issue. Last month, the Oregon legislature passed a bill that paves the way for students to attend state and community colleges without having to pay tuition or take out traditional loans.

Alexis Baden-Mayer: Monsanto Hates Democracy

Monsanto hates democracy because democracy doesn’t work for Monsanto.

Nine out of 10 of us want to know where Monsanto’s been hiding the GMOs in our food and a most of us wouldn’t eat those GMOs if we knew where they were.

If everything in this country were decided democratically, most of the food we eat would be non-GMO and Monsanto would be driven out of business.

We don’t have a problem convincing people we’re right, we have a problem with our democracy when we can’t get the politicians to pass the laws that the majority of us want.

But no government, no matter how corrupted by corporate money, will be able to stop us when we get the nine out of 10 people who agree with us to take action with us. And that’s what’s starting to happen.

Ellen Brown: The Detroit ‘Bail-In’ Template: Fleecing Pensioners to Save the Banks

The Detroit bankruptcy is looking suspiciously like the bail-in template originated by the G20’s Financial Stability Board in 2011, which exploded on the scene in Cyprus in 2013 and is now becoming the model globally. In Cyprus, the depositors were “bailed in” (stripped of a major portion of their deposits) to re-capitalize the banks. In Detroit, it is the municipal workers who are being bailed in, stripped of a major portion of their pensions to save the banks. [..]

Interestingly, Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero, Snyder’s Democratic opponent in the last gubernatorial race, proposed a solution that could have avoided either robbing the pensioners or scaring off the bondholders: a state-owned bank. If the state or the city had its own bank, it would not need to borrow from Wall Street, worry about interest rate swaps, or be beholden to the bond vigilantes. It could borrow from its own bank, which would leverage the local government’s capital into credit, back that credit with the deposits created by the government’s own revenues, and return the interest to the government as a dividend, following the ground-breaking model of the state-owned Bank of North Dakota.

There are other steps that need to be taken, and soon, to prevent a cascade of municipal bankruptcies.  The super-priority of derivatives in bankruptcy needs to be repealed, and the protections of Glass Steagall need to be restored. While we are waiting on a very dilatory Congress, however, state and local governments might consider protecting themselves and their revenues by setting up their own banks.

Lisa Graves: Voices Rising Against Hedge Fund Millionaire Larry Summers to Head the Fed

Opposition is growing to the idea of President Obama naming Larry Summers to head the Federal Reserve. As William Greider wrote in The Nation, “Summers is a toxic retread from the old boys’ network and a nettlesome egotist who offended just about everyone during his previous tours in government. More to the point, Summers was a central player in the grave governing errors that led to the financial collapse and a ruined economy.”

Summers is so cocksure and callous he once suggested using “underpopulated countries in Africa” as toxic waste dumps. [..]

The last thing America needs right now is a Friedmanite at the helm of the Fed. Summers would bring more winter in the economy for ordinary Americans while his buddies on Wall Street would get more and more of America’s wealth to offshore.

Valerie Strauss: Five Absurdities about High-Stakes Standardized Tests

Barely a day goes by when the education world isn’t treated to some new story involving high-stakes standardized tests, the chief metric of “accountability systems” in the modern era of school reform.

It might be about how student test scores went up or down or all around; about how standardized tests were incorrectly scored by giant companies that make millions from testing contracts; that some questions on the test don’t make any sense; that the high stakes being attached to the results – which are being used to evaluate students, teachers, principals, schools, districts and states – have gone from being unfair to preposterous.

Sue Sturgis: The South’s Widening War on Abortion Rights

Date on which North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) signed into law a bill that requires the state’s abortion clinics to meet the same standards as ambulatory surgical centers, despite a campaign promise that he would not sign any legislation that further restricts abortion: 7/30/2013

Additional cost to build a clinic that meets ambulatory surgical center standards: $1 million

Number of bodyguards that accompanied McCrory the following day when he left the executive mansion and stepped into the street to deliver cookies to abortion rights advocates protesting outside, who returned them with a note that said, “We want women’s health care, not cookies”: 4

Aug 06 2013

Are the Embassy Threats Exagerated? Or Manufactured?

Strange, the US intelligence agencies didn’t intercept any communications warning of the prison breaks but have info on alleged “imminent attacks.”

Yemen on ‘high alert’ over warning of imminent al-Qaida attack

by Ian Black, The Guardian

US personnel flown out of country as reports claim ‘extraordinary and unprecedented’ security measures in force in capital Sana’a

Yemeni security forces have been put on high alert amid warnings of an imminent attack by al-Qaida in Sana’a, as the US and Britain withdrew embassy staff and urged their citizens to leave the country.

BBC Arabic quoted a Yemeni security source as saying that “extraordinary and unprecedented” security measures had been put in place, with armoured vehicles deployed at the presidential palace and other sensitive government and foreign installations in Yemen’s capital.

Dozens of al-Qaida operatives were said to have streamed into Sana’a in the last few days, apparently to take part in a terrorist attack, the BBC said. The Yemeni claim could not be independently confirmed.

US embassy closures used to bolster case for NSA surveillance programs

by Spencer Ackerman and Dan Roberts, The Guardian

Congress told that NSA monitoring led to interception of al-Qaida threats but privacy campaigners fear ulterior political motives

US embassies in the Middle East are to remain closed for the rest of the week as supporters of the National Security Agency’s sweeping surveillance powers used the unspecified terror alert to bolster the case against reining in the controversial measures.

The closures follow the alleged interception of al-Qaida communications in Yemen, which intelligence committee members in Congress have been told were collected overseas using powers granted to the NSA under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act – not the bulk surveillance programs disclosed by the Guardian and the Washington Post thanks to whistleblower Edward Snowden.

A privacy group questioned the publicity given to the latest alert after the State Department announced on Sunday evening that the number of embassies and consulates closed “out of an abundance of caution”

would be increased, with some remaining shut for up to a week.

Rebublican senator Saxby Chambliss said the NSA had identified threats that were the most serious for years and akin to levels of “terrorist chatter” picked up before 9/11.

On Democracy Now!, journalist for The Guardian, Glenn Greenwald discusses the latest terrorist treats and the closings ogf US embassies int the the region.



Transcript can be read here

The Obama administration has announced it will keep 19 diplomatic posts in North Africa and the Middle East closed for up to a week, due to fears of a possible militant threat. On Sunday, Senator Saxby Chambliss, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the decision to close the embassies was based on information collected by the National Security Agency. “If we did not have these programs, we simply would not be able to listen in on the bad guys,” Chambliss said, in a direct reference to increasing debate over widespread spying of all Americans revealed by Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian. “Nobody has ever questioned or disputed that the U.S. government, like all governments around the world, ought to be eavesdropping and monitoring the conversations of people who pose an actual threat to the United States in terms of plotting terrorist attacks,” Greenwald says.

Aug 06 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

Peter Van Buren: Welcome to Post-Constitution America

What If Your Country Begins to Change and No One Notices?

On July 30, 1778, the Continental Congress created the first whistleblower protection law, stating “that it is the duty of all persons in the service of the United States to give the earliest information to Congress or other proper authority of any misconduct, frauds, or misdemeanors committed by any officers or persons in the service of these states.”

Two hundred thirty-five years later, on July 30, 2013, Bradley Manning was found guilty on 20 of the 22 charges for which he was prosecuted, specifically for “espionage” and for videos of war atrocities he released, but not for “aiding the enemy.”

Days after the verdict, with sentencing hearings in which Manning could receive 136 years of prison time ongoing, the pundits have had their say. The problem is that they missed the most chilling aspect of the Manning case: the way it ushered us, almost unnoticed, into post-Constitutional America.

Lance deHaven-Smith: As an American, I question the US travel alerts and embassy closures

We’ve seen this before where US presidents cite terrorism concerns in an effort to win back public opinion

It is unfortunate, but true that Americans cannot trust the statements of their leaders about threats to national security. Ironically, this is especially so when questions are being raised about the competence of the government or the legitimacy of its policies. The United States government has a long history of deflecting criticism by crying wolf, especially the terrorism kind of wolf. [..]

There are several reasons to wonder if this threat is being concocted – or at least exaggerated – for political purposes. One reason, of course, is the timing of the alert. Allegedly based on electronic eavesdropping, the alert comes in the midst of a national and international political firestorm over the continuing revelations of Edward Snowden about the electronic surveillance programs of the National Security Agency. Opposition to the NSA dragnet that is sweeping up data on millions of Americans’ emails, phone calls, and internet activities is snowballing in US public opinion and in Congress. The NSA programs have also become a major issue in the domestic politics of America’s allies.

Michael Boyle: President Obama’s disastrous counterterrorism legacy

A president who came into office pledging to take the ‘war on terror’ out of the shadows plunged it deeper into those shadows

When future historians look back on the presidency of Barack Obama, they will conclude that counterterrorism was the policy area with the biggest gap between the hopes of his supporters and reality of his actions in office. [..]

While Obama has had some important accomplishments, he has failed to deliver on a comprehensive counterterrorism policy that does not undermine American ideals. Although he ended the use of torture by US personnel, his administration has refused to seek accountability for those in the Bush administration that instituted this practice. Rendition of terrorist suspects to foreign countries has continued, with the US now only receiving unverifiable “assurances” that torture will not be used. Guantánamo Bay will remain a national disgrace for the foreseeable future. In the last few months, the US has even resorted to the grotesque spectacle of force-feeding its detainees to keep them alive during Ramadan.

John Nichols: Big Media Story Isn’t Bezos and the Post, It’s the RNC Threatening CNN, NBCn

So if the sale of the Post is not as dramatic a development as might initially seem to be the case, what is?

The big deal in media this week has to do with the relationship of broadcast and cable news networks to the two major political parties. And it matters-more-because it gets to question that is at the heart of all of our discussions about the future of print, broadcast and digital media: Will we have a sufficient journalism, and a sufficiently independent journalism, to sustain democracy?

Ever since the Democratic and Republican parties took over the nation’s presidential debates in 1987, with the creation of a corporate-funded “Commission on Presidential Debates” run by the former chairs of the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee, the dialogue in presidential election years has been the ultimate insiders’ game.

Dean Baker: The Economy Is Awful and Larry Summers Should Not Be Fed Chair

In his recent defense of Larry Summers, President Obama appeared to be badly confused about the state of the economy. This apparently leads him to believe that the country should be grateful to Larry Summers for his successes, as opposed to furious at him for his failures.

Obama’s story is that the economy was in a free fall when he took office and the program that was in large part designed by Summers helped turn it around. While it is true that the economy was in free fall, there was no reason to expect that to continue regardless of what policies were pursued. Note that in every single wealthy country the sharp drop in output at the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 was stopped and reversed by the end of the year. Other countries were not able to rely on the genius of Larry Summers in setting their policies.

Robert Reich: The Three Biggest Lies About Why Corporate Taxes Should Be Lowered

nstead of spending August on the beach, corporate lobbyists are readying arguments for when Congress returns in September about why corporate taxes should be lowered.

But they’re lies. You need to know why so you can spread the truth. [..]

Corporations want corporate tax reduction to be the centerpiece of “tax reform” come the fall. The president has already signaled a willingness to sign on in return for more infrastructure investment. But the arguments for corporate tax reduction are specious.

Aug 06 2013

NSA Handing Information to DEA and DOJ

The National Security Agency isn’t just looking to “keep us safe” from terrorists by collecting metadata, the NSA is sharing its information with the secretive Special Operations Division of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) which is then passing that information to local authorities, covering up the NSA source.

U.S. directs agents to cover up program used to investigate Americans

by John Shiffman and Kristina Cooke, Reuters

A secretive US Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans.

Although these cases rarely involve national security issues, documents reviewed by Reuters show that law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin – not only from defense lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges.

The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to “recreate” the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant’s constitutional right to a fair trial. If defendants don’t know how an investigation began, they cannot know to ask to review potential sources of exculpatory evidence – information that could reveal entrapment, mistakes or biased witnesses.

It isn’t just the DEA that is doing this, the Justice Department is also receiving information about non-terrorist related criminal activity.

NSA handing over non-terror intelligence

by Stewart M. Powell, SFGate

The National Security Agency is handing the Justice Department information, derived from its secret electronic eavesdropping programs, about suspected criminal activity unrelated to terrorism.

This little-known byproduct of counterterrorism surveillance continues amid controversy over the NSA’s wide-ranging collection of domestic communications intelligence, including Americans’ telephone calling records and Internet use.

It is unclear whether the referrals have been built upon the content of telephone calls and emails. Administration officials have previously assured Congress that NSA surveillance focuses on so-called metadata and in the main does not delve into the content of individual calls or email messages.

Also, some in the legal community question the constitutionality of criminal prosecutions stemming from intelligence-agency eavesdropping.

Other Agencies Clamor for Data N.S.A. Compiles

by Eric Lichtblau and Michael S. Schmidt, The New York Times

The National Security Agency’s dominant role as the nation’s spy warehouse has spurred frequent tensions and turf fights with other federal intelligence agencies that want to use its surveillance tools for their own investigations, officials say.

Agencies working to curb drug trafficking, cyberattacks, money laundering, counterfeiting and even copyright infringement complain that their attempts to exploit the security agency’s vast resources have often been turned down because their own investigations are not considered a high enough priority, current and former government officials say.

Intelligence officials say they have been careful to limit the use of the security agency’s troves of data and eavesdropping spyware for fear they could be misused in ways that violate Americans’ privacy rights.

The recent disclosures of agency activities by its former contractor Edward J. Snowden have led to widespread criticism that its surveillance operations go too far and have prompted lawmakers in Washington to talk of reining them in. But out of public view, the intelligence community has been agitated in recent years for the opposite reason: frustrated officials outside the security agency say the spy tools are not used widely enough.

At emptywheel, bmaz points out this is nothing in the Reuter’s article on the SOD wasn’t already known, just no one has been paying attention:

First, the headline is misleading. The caption is:

   Exclusive: U.S. directs agents to cover up program used to investigate Americans

Well, not really (and, in fairness, the actual body of the article is about a practice that is a result of the SOD). DEA’s Special Ops Division is neither new nor secret in the least, and there is no way to “cover it up”. Google it; I got “About 289,000 results (0.29 seconds)” as a return. You will get something similar. The revelation that SOD was used in the Viktor Bout case is also not new, here is a Time story detailing it from 2011.

In fact, any criminal defense attorney who did cocaine hub conspiracy cases in the 90′s could have told you most of the Reuter’s article in their sleep. That was exactly the scene that DEA-SOD was born from. As the war on drugs went nuclear, the DEA devised what they termed the “Kingpin Strategy” (pdf):

   In 1992, the DEA instituted the Kingpin Strategy that focused investigative and enforcement efforts on specific drug trafficking organizations. The DEA planned to dis- able major organizations by attacking their most vulnerable areas-the chemicals needed to process the drugs, their finances, communications, transportation, and leadership structure.

   The Kingpin Strategy held that the greatest impact on the drug trade took place when major drug organizations were dis- rupted, weakened, and destroyed. This strategy focused enforcement efforts and resources against the highest-level traffickers and their organizations, and provided a systematic way of attacking the various vulnerabilities of the organiza- tions. By systematically attacking each of these vulnerabilities, the strategy aimed to destroy the entire organization, and with it, the organization’s capacity to finance, produce, and distrib- ute massive amounts of illegal drugs. Each blow weakened the organization and improved the prospects for arresting and prosecuting the leaders and managers of the organizations.

   The Kingpin Strategy evolved from the DEA’s domestic and overseas intelligence gathering and investigations.

And from Kingpin sprung the Special Operations Division:

   Under the original Kingpin Strategy, DEA headquarters often dictated the selection of Kingpin targets. In response to the SACs’ concerns, Administrator Constantine agreed to allow them more latitude in target selection. In conjuction with this decision, he established the Special Operations Division at Newington, Virginia, in 1994 to coordinate multi-jurisdictional investigations against major drug trafficking organizations responsible for the flow of drugs into the United States.

On this morning’s Democracy Now!, Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald responded to a report by Reuters.



Transcript can be read here.

“It’s a full-frontal assault on the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments and on the integrity of the judicial process, because they’re deceiving everyone involved in criminal prosecutions about how this information has been obtained,” Greenwald says.

Aug 05 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

Robert Kuttner: Obama, the Economy and the Movement

The latest figures on the economy make it all too clear that we are stuck in a feeble recovery that could go on for several years to come. Growth was only 1.4 percent in the first half of 2013, and the economy is still creating too few jobs to increase worker earnings, which actually declined in July. [..]

For three decades, this society has been dividing into haves and have-nots. Yet the struggles of ordinary people have been weirdly disconnected from our politics. Democrats express an economic populism when their backs are to the wall, but our Democratic presidents tend to get captured by economic elites.

Rebuilding the economy from the middle out is a start. Even better would be rebuilding it from the bottom up.

Paul Krugman: Republicans Against Reality

Last week House Republicans voted for the 40th time to repeal Obamacare. Like the previous 39 votes, this action will have no effect whatsoever. But it was a stand-in for what Republicans really want to do: repeal reality, and the laws of arithmetic in particular. The sad truth is that the modern G.O.P. is lost in fantasy, unable to participate in actual governing.

Just to be clear, I’m not talking about policy substance. I may believe that Republicans have their priorities all wrong, but that’s not the issue here. Instead, I’m talking about their apparent inability to accept very basic reality constraints, like the fact that you can’t cut overall spending without cutting spending on particular programs, or the fact that voting to repeal legislation doesn’t change the law when the other party controls the Senate and the White House.

Am I exaggerating? Consider what went down in Congress last week.

Robert Reich: Why Republicans Want Jobs to Stay Anemic

Job-growth is sputtering. So why, exactly, do regressive Republicans continue to say “no” to every idea for boosting it — even last week’s almost absurdly modest proposal by President Obama to combine corporate tax cuts with increased spending on roads and other public works?

It can’t be because Republicans don’t know what’s happening. The data are indisputable. July’s job growth of 162,000 jobs was the weakest in four months. The average workweek was the shortest in six months. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has also lowered its estimates of hiring during May and June.  [..]

The real answer, I think, is they and their patrons want unemployment to remain high and job-growth to sputter.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: Fighting the GOP’s Hateful Agenda – Without Hate

When is it fair to say that some political battles aren’t just disagreements over policy, but actually represent a struggle between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ points of view? And when, if ever, is it helpful to say so?

There are those on the Right who debase the currency of that four-letter word – “evil” – by using it against anyone who disagrees with them. But what word do you apply to people who deny food to hungry families, voting rights to minorities, or a chance for self-advancement to hard-working students from lower-income homes?

How do you fight the hateful without succumbing to hate?

David A. Love: The US civil war is playing out again – this time over voter rights

White southern Republicans enact voter ID laws because they don’t want Democrats to vote, particularly people of color

Nearly 150 years after the end of the US civil war, the South and the federal government are poised for a rematch over the voting rights of black Americans, and ultimately over the fundamental rights of all Americans. Once again, the former Confederate states are determined to defend their traditions and way of life, while the Union forces in the North – the federal government – are positioning themselves to defend justice and equality.

But this time, in an ironic twist, two black men – President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder – are leading the charge.

In the 1860s, the fight between the North and the South was about slavery and the right of the Confederate states to maintain a dreaded institution that kept people of African descent in bondage. Unprecedented carnage resulted.

Ralph Nader: Love, Corporate-Style

Mitt Romney famously said during his most recent bid for the presidency: “Corporations are people, my friend.” Perhaps nothing else better surmises the state of our country — even the state of our culture — than a prominent politician running for the presidency openly advancing such a flawed opinion. It is no secret that corporations now wield immense power in our elections, in our economy, and even in how we spend time with our friends and families. Corporate entities, in their massive, billion dollar efforts to advertise and “brand” themselves, not only want consumers to think of them as people, but even as “friends.” If a corporation could hit the campaign trail itself, one could imagine it uttering the phrase: “Corporations are friends, my people.”

I recently came across a full-page ad in the New York Times. The ad, which shows a tiny baby’s hand clutching the fingers of an adult hand, is captioned with the words: “Love is the most powerful thing on the planet.” It goes on to read: “For all the things in your life that make life worth living — Johnson and Johnson, for all you love.” Notably, this is Johnson and Johnson’s first “corporate branding” campaign in over a decade.

This poses an interesting question. What exactly is corporate love? Love is a very human emotion — but, coming from a business conglomerate whose over-riding goal is bigger profits — this message rings hollow.

Aug 04 2013

The Drone Wars: No, We Won’t ; Yes, We will

If I were the Secretary of State, I would resign.

Despite his statements to the Pakistan government that drone strikes were winding down, Secretary of State John Kerry was contradicted by his own department:

There were more drone strikes in Pakistan last month than any month since January. Three missile strikes were carried out in Yemen in the last week alone. [..]

Most elements of the drone program remain in place, including a base in the southern desert of Saudi Arabia that the Central Intelligence Agency continues to use to carry out drone strikes in Yemen. In late May, administration officials said that the bulk of drone operations would shift to the Pentagon from the C.I.A.

But the C.I.A. continues to run America’s secret air war in Pakistan, where Mr. Kerry’s comments underscored the administration’s haphazard approach to discussing these issues publicly. During a television interview in Pakistan on Thursday, Mr. Kerry said the United States had a “timeline” to end drone strikes in that country’s western mountains, adding, “We hope it’s going to be very, very soon.”

But the Obama administration is expected to carry out drone strikes in Pakistan well into the future. Hours after Mr. Kerry’s interview, the State Department issued a statement saying there was no definite timetable to end the targeted killing program in Pakistan, and a department spokeswoman, Marie Harf, said, “In no way would we ever deprive ourselves of a tool to fight a threat if it arises.”

And, we are not suppose to know about the secret CIA run drone base in Saudi Arabia that was first used for the operation that killed Anwar al-Awlaki. The Saudi government is opposed to US troops operating on their soil but the CIA assassins are OK.

A couple of questions:

Who is in charge at the State Department?

Does anyone in the Obama administration talk to each other?

Does the Obama administration really think the world is all that ignorant of what they are doing?

Who’s zooming who here?

Aug 04 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:

Up with Steve Kornacki: Joining Steve Kornacki at the table will be:

Fmr. Rep. and congressional candidate Marjorie Margolies (D-PA); Kurtis Lee, political reporter, Denver Post; Dave Weigel, political reporter, Slate.com, msnbc contributor; Mark Glaze, director, Mayors Against Illegal Guns; Jared Bernstein, msnbc contributor, Sr. Fellow, Center on Budget & Policy Priorities; Avik Roy, senior fellow, The Manhattan Institute, contributor, The National Review; and Jim Demers, former co-chair, Obama 2008 Campaign

This Week with George Stephanopolis: This Sunday’s guests are: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. martin Dempsey; House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD); Rep. Peter King (R-NY); and Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald.

The political roundtable guests are:  ABC News’ George Will; ABC News Political Analyst and Special Correspondent Matthew Dowd; ABC News Senior Washington Correspondent Jeff Zeleny; Starfish Media Group CEO Soledad O’Brien; Center for American Progress President Neera Tanden former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff; and Bloomberg View columnist Jeffrey Goldberg.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Schieffer’s guests are: Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI). No other information available at this time.

Meet the Press with David Gregory: Guest on this week’s MTP are: Assistant Democratic Leader Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Vice-Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA); former Republican New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani; Bob Costas of NBC Sports; host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Joe Scarborough;former Republican Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum; managing editor of TheGrio.com, Joy Ann Reid; and NBC News Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Andrea Mitchell.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Ms. Crowley’s guests are Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC); and Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY).

Joining her for a panel discussion are Anita Dunn, Artur Davis, Donna Brazile, and Alex Castellanos.

Aug 04 2013

What We Now Know

In the week’s [Up ] segment of “What We Now Know,” host Steve Kornacki and guests Krystal Ball, MSNBC’s “The Cycle”; Rick Wilson, Republican media consultant; Evan McMorris-Santoro, White  House reporter, BuzzFeed.com; and Nia-Malika Henderson, National Political Reporter, The Washingtoacn Post, discuss what they have learned this week.

Cory Booker’s Iowa Scheduling Snafu

by Ben Jacobs, The Daily Beast

Cory Booker isn’t going to Iowa after all.

Booker, the Newark, New Jersey, mayor who is currently a candidate in New Jersey’s special election for the United States Senate, had signed a contract on May 21 to speak at the University of Iowa, according to a university spokesman. The event would take place on August 29 as part of the University’s Welcome Back Week at the beginning of the academic year. He said the event was booked through the speaker’s agency that represented Booker after a committee of students and faculty invited him to speak in early May.

However, Booker campaign spokesperson Silvia Alvarez told The Daily Beast that a visit to Iowa “was not on Booker’s schedule” and said she had no idea how the event ended up on the university’s website.

Documents Show Thatcher-Reagan Rift Over U.S. Decision to Invade Grenada

by Stephen Castle, The New York Times

LONDON – Thirty-year-old documents newly released by the British government reveal just how severely America’s decision to invade the Caribbean island of Grenada in 1983 tested the warm ties between Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President Ronald Reagan.

While the two leaders had a strong and affectionate personal rapport, the British official papers reveal how little warning Mrs. Thatcher was given about the pending military invasion, a move that left the British irritated, bewildered and disappointed. They also show how Mr. Reagan justified the secrecy as a way to prevent leaks, and how the British later concluded that the invasion had in fact been planned long in advance. At one point during tense written exchanges, both leaders claimed, in defense of their opposing approaches to the unrest in Grenada, that lives were at stake.

Aug 03 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

Ana Marie Cox: Why Have So Many Liberals Been Silent about NSA Spying?

Tea Party candidates on the right have been able to generate excitement among GOP base voters with their calls to end the National Security Agency’s domestic spying program. Senator Rand Paul appears to have staked his entire potential presidential campaign on a brash defense of personal privacy (except when it comes to abortion). Libertarian-leaning Republicans in the House have been unapologetic in their criticism of the program, their own energy magnified by near-unanimous support from conservative talk radio and bloggers.

Those advocates of civil liberties (some of them quite new to the cause) have a convenient explanation for why Democrats have been less vocal and slower to criticize the collection of metadata from everyday American citizens: slavish devotion to President Obama, whatever policies he might champion.

 

Ira Chernus: [Why Do We Have an Espionage Act? Why Do We Have an Espionage Act?]

Military justice is to justice as military music is to music. In a civilian court, anyone accused of a crime has the right to trial by a jury of their peers. In the military, a soldier accused of a very serious crime can be tried without any jury at all. In a civilian court, the judge explains the decision as soon as it’s handed down. In the military, the judge just announces the decision and passes sentence.

In Bradley Manning’s case, Judge Denise Lind did say “she would issue findings later that would explain her ruling on each of the charges.” We don’t know how long “later” may be. All we know now is that Judge Lind does not think Manning was aiding the enemy.

Which raises an interesting question: If you take classified documents, but you don’t do it to help some enemy, apparently you haven’t done any harm to the United States. So why is it a crime? Why does it count as “spying” at all? I always thought “spying” meant one side stealing secrets from the other side.

Marcy Wheeler: James Cole: “Of Course We’d Like Records of People Buying” Pressure Cookers

Now that the Suffolk cops have revealed they investigated Michele Catalano’s family because of a tip from her husband’s former employer about his Google searches and not FBI or NSA analysis of Google data themselves, a lot of people are suggesting it would be crazy to imagine that the Feds might have found Catalano via online searches.

Which is funny. Because just a day before this story broke, this exchange happened in the Senate between Senate Judiciary Chair Patrick Leahy and Deputy Attorney General James Cole. (after 1:45, though just before this exchange Leahy asks whether DOJ could use Section 215 to obtain URLs and bookmarks, among other records, which Cole didn’t deny)

   Leahy: But if our phone records are relevant, why wouldn’t our credit card records? Wouldn’t you like to know if somebody’s buying, um, what is the fertilizer used in bombs?

   Cole: I may not need to collect everybody’s credit card records in order to do that.

   [snip]

   If somebody’s buying things that could be used to make bombs of course we would like to know that but we may not need to do it in this fashion.

John Nichols: Bankrupting Democracy in Detroit

The citizens of one of our largest cities are being shut out of the decisions that will affect their future.

After decades of deindustrialization compounded by state and federal neglect, Detroit has been placed on a crash course that could see it in bankruptcy before year’s end. Yet instead of running away from this challenge, legislators, a former police chief and a former county prosecutor are all competing in an August 6 primary and a November 5 general election to choose a new mayor. The timing couldn’t be better for voters to weigh in on the city’s tough choices and set priorities-and to choose leaders to implement them. There is just one problem: the winner of the election will not have the authority to govern.

Michael German: Let’s Be Very Clear, Edward Snowden is a Whistleblower

My American Civil Liberties Union colleagues and I have been extremely busy since the Guardian and the Washington Post published leaked classified documents exposing the scope of the government’s secret interpretations of the Patriot Act and the 2008 amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allow the FBI and NSA to spy on hundreds of millions of innocent Americans. We haven’t written much about the alleged leaker of this information, Edward Snowden, however, mainly because we took his advice to focus on what the NSA and FBI were doing, rather than on what he did or didn’t do. (See exceptions here and here).

But I did want to clear up a question that seems to keep coming up: whether Snowden is a whistleblower. It is actually not a hard question to answer. The Whistleblower Protection Act protects “any disclosure” that a covered employee reasonably believes evidences “any violation of any law, rule, or regulation,” or “gross mismanagement, a gross waste of funds, and abuse of authority, or a substantial and specific danger to public health or safety.”

Amy Traub; Fast Food Shouldn’t Mean Low Wages

The idea is simple: people who get up and go to work every day in one of the world’s richest countries should not have to live in poverty.

That’s why, across the country and throughout the week, low-wage fast food and retail employees walked out on strike, calling for $15 an hour and respect for their right to organize a union.  Claudette Wilson and her co-workers walked out from a Burger King in Detroit, joined by other fast food workers. Andrew Little and his fellow employees went on strike from Victoria’s Secret and other stores and restaurants in Chicago. In St. Louis, members of the United Mine Workers joined employees of Jack in the Box and Hardee’s among other fast food franchises in solidarity. And Terrance Wise hit the picket lines in Kansas City on strike from his part-time jobs at Pizza Hut and Burger King. Workers were striking in Flint and Milwaukee as well. Here in New York, I and some Demos colleagues had a chance to join a rally in support of workers at the McDonalds in Union Square.

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