Tag: TMC Politics

Sep 25 2012

Punting the Pundits

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

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

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Dean Baker: Debt Worries: Economists Fail Arithmetic, Again

The Washington political establishment has decided that reducing the debt should be the country’s number one economic priority. The tens of millions who are unemployed, underemployed or out of the workforce altogether due to the fallout from the collapse of the housing bubble will just have to wait until things get better; limiting the growth of the debt is the order of the day in Washington. [..]

Is it possible that many of the world’s leading economists are completely missing the boat in their understanding of the way in which the debt poses a burden on the economy? While that may seem far-fetched, almost all of the world’s leading economists completely missed the housing bubbles, in the United States and elsewhere, and the dangers the housing bubbles posed to the economy. In fact, the reason that the United States and other countries are facing large deficits today is almost entirely the result of the failure of the economists who were guiding policy in the years preceding the crash. [..]

In fact, they were anxious to put Social Security money in the stock market. The Republican economists wanted to get the money into the market through private accounts, and the Democratic economists wanted to do it by investing the Social Security trust fund directly. Either way, both got their arithmetic wrong.

Robert Reich: Mitt Romney’s Biggest Problem: He’s Giving the GOP Exactly What It Wants in a Candidate

I’ve spent the past few days debating right-wingers – among them, Grover Norquist and Ann Coulter. This isn’t my idea of fun. I do it because apparently many Americans find these people persuasive, and it seems important to try to show why they’re profoundly wrong.

There are two major theories about why Romney is dropping in the polls. One is Romney is a lousy candidate, unable to connect with people or make his case.

The second is that Americans are finally beginning to see how radical the GOP has become, and are repudiating it. [..]

Romney’s failing isn’t that he’s a bad candidate. To the contrary, he’s giving this GOP exactly what it wants in a candidate. And that’s exactly the problem for Romney – as it is for every other Republican candidate – because what the GOP wants is not at all what the rest of America wants.

John Nichols: Top GOP Senate Candidate Just Says It: ‘Do Away With Medicare, Medicaid’

Paul Ryan admits that he’s an “end Medicare as we know it” candidate.

But, somehow, we are not supposed to think that he would actually end the popular and successful healthcare program for the elderly, as well as related Medicaid programs for the poor and people with disabilities.

The “as we know it” part provides a sort of cover, as least in the eyes of a media that is more inclined toward stenography than journalism. [..]

Only when a candidate starts talking about ending entitlement programs-as in “doing away” with them-can we be serious about the immediate threat those programs actually face.

Meet Tommy Thompson, former Republican governor of Wisconsin, former Bush-Cheney administration secretary of health and human services, former candidate for the Republican nomination for president and mentor to Paul Ryan.

Paul Buchheit: Now We Know Our ABCs. And Charter Schools Get an F.

The Chicago teacher strike is over, but the assault on our nation’s children has just begun. As with all free market systems, the price is set high enough to ensure a profit for the companies doing business, even though not everyone will be able to afford their product.

With our private health care system, 1 out of 6 Americans are uninsured. It’s frightening to think of a private educational system in which 1 out of 6 children have to settle for an inferior education.

We’ve learned a lot in recent years from the struggles within our schools. Here are three sensible considerations for anyone involved in the education of our children.

Sam Pizzagati; The ‘Self-Made’ Hallucination of America’s Rich

Like Mitt Romney, most Americans who amass grand fortunes have a substantial head start.

Let’s cut Mitt Romney some slack. Not every off-the-cuff comment he made at that now infamous, secretly taped $50,000-a-plate fundraiser in Boca Raton reveals an utterly shocking personal failing. Take, for instance, Mitt’s remark that he has “inherited nothing.”

Not quite “nothing.” But there’s no reason to pick on Mitt either. Most deep pockets, not just Mitt, consider themselves “self-made.” The best evidence of this predilection to claim “self-made” status? The annual September release of the Forbes magazine list of the 400 richest Americans. [..]

Forbes made the same observation last year, too, and most news outlets took that claim at face value. But United for a Fair Economy did not. The Boston-based group’s analysts took the time to investigate the actual backgrounds of last year’s Forbes 400. They released their findings (pdf) on the same day Forbes released the new 2012 list.

The basic conclusion from these findings: Forbes is spinning “a misleading tale of what it takes to become wealthy in America.” Most of the Forbes 400, like Mitt, have benefitted from a level of privilege unknown to the vast majority of Americans.

Joe Conason: Looking for That ’47 Percent,’ Mitt? Check Red States and Elderly Republicans

While Mitt Romney may well wish he had expressed himself more “elegantly” at the swanky Boca Raton fundraiser where he denounced half the voting population as shiftless, government-entitled moochers, he isn’t backing away from those secretly recorded remarks-although what he said was entirely inaccurate, as well as obnoxious. [..]

Leaving aside the significant probability that his listeners included a few of the thousands of millionaires who paid no income taxes last year, there is no reason to believe that voters who don’t pay income taxes are certain to vote Democratic. A substantial number of the people who are too poor to pay income taxes, thanks to tax reforms supported by Ronald Reagan, are among the Southern whites inclined to vote for Romney. In 2008, according to the New York Times, 25 percent of voters earning under $15,000 per year and 37 percent of those earning between $15,000 and $30,000 per year voted for John McCain and Sarah Palin.

Sep 24 2012

US Authorizes Terrorism

The Obama administration has now taken an even lower road the Bush/Cheney regime when it comes to terrorism and terrorist organizations. US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton is expected to inform Congress that she will be removing Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) from the department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO). MEK was designated a terrorist organization in 1997 during the Clinton administration and was one of the reasons for the justification of the Bush invasion of Iraq. MEK has also has been linked to the assassinations of several of Iran’s nuclear scientists.

The decision was driven by a steady flow of funds to members of Congress, lobbying firms and former officials in support of Iranian group:

The campaign to bury the MEK’s bloody history of bombings and assassinations that killed American businessmen, Iranian politicians and thousands of civilians, and to portray it as a loyal US ally against the Islamic government in Tehran has seen large sums of money directed at three principal targets: members of Congress, Washington lobby groups and influential former officials.

There is a long list of MEK supporters from both sides of the aisle: Democrats Howard Dean, Ed Rendell, Wesley Clark, Bill Richardson, and Lee Hamilton;

Republicans Rudy Giuliani, Fran Townsend, Tom Ridge, Michael Mukasey, ex-FBI director Louis Freeh, Newt Gingrich and Andrew Card. Current Republican Congress members Ted Poe, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the chair of the House of Representatives foreign affairs committee,; Mike Rogers, chairman of the House of Representatives intelligence committee;  Dana Rohrabacher, chairman of the foreign affairs committee’s oversight subcommittee

Lobbyist groups: DLA Piper; Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld; and DiGenova & Toensing;

Government outsiders and journalists: Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Eli Wiesel; pro-Israel supporter Alan Deschowitz; The Washington Post‘s Carl Bernstein and the Chicago Tribune‘s Clarence Page. Townsend and Rendell are both cable news contributors.

Glenn Greenwald, writing at The Guardian, has five lessons to be learned about :the rot and corruption at the heart of America’s DC-based political culture”:

Lesson One: There is a separate justice system in the US for Muslim Americans.

The past decade has seen numerous “material support” prosecutions of US Muslims for the most trivial and incidental contacts with designated terror groups. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that any Muslim who gets within sneezing distance of such a group is subject to prosecution. Indeed, as I documented last week, many of them have been prosecuted even for core First Amendment activities: political advocacy deemed supportive of such groups. [..]

In sum, there are numerous American Muslims sitting in prison for years for far less substantial interactions with terror groups than this bipartisan group of former officials gave to MEK. This is what New York Times Editorial Page Editor Andrew Rosenthal meant when he wrote back in March that the 9/11 attacks have “led to what’s essentially a separate justice system for Muslims“. The converse is equally true: America’s political elites can engage in the most egregious offenses – torture, illegal eavesdropping, money-driven material support for a terror group – with complete impunity.

Lesson Two: The US government is not opposed to terrorism; it favors it.

The history of the US list of designated terrorist organizations, and its close cousin list of state sponsors of terrorism, is simple: a country or group goes on the list when they use violence to impede US interests, and they are then taken off the list when they start to use exactly the same violence to advance US interests. The terrorist list is not a list of terrorists; it’s a list of states and groups which use their power to defy US dictates rather than adhere to them.

Lesson Three: “Terrorism” remains the most meaningless, and thus the most manipulated, term in political discourse.

Terrorism, at least in its applied sense, means little other than: violence used by enemies of the US and its allies. Violence used by the US and its allies (including stateless groups) can never be terrorism, no matter how heinous and criminal.

Lesson Four: Legalized influence-peddling within both parties is what drives DC.

MEK achieved its goal by doing more than merely changing the beneficiaries of its actions from Saddam to the US and Israel. It also found a way – how it did so remains a mystery – to funnel millions of dollars into the bank accounts of key ex-officials from both parties, a bipartisan list of DC lobbyist firms, and several key journalists. In other words, it achieved its policy aims the same way most groups in DC do: by buying influence within both parties, and paying influence-peddlers who parlay their political celebrity into personal riches.

Lesson Five: there is aggression between the US and Iran, but it’s generally not from Iran.

Over the last decade, the US has had Iran almost entirely encircled, thanks in part – only in part – to large-scale ground invasions of the nations on its eastern and western borders. Some combination of Israel and the US have launched cyberwarfare at the Iranians, murdered their civilian scientists, and caused explosions on its soil. The American president and the Israeli government continuously and publicly threaten to use force against them.

Remember Osama bin Laden and how well that went.

Where is the protest from the so-called progressive left who were so opposed to the right wing Republican fetish with a war with Iran? ‘It’s OK if you’re Obama” should not be acceptable.

Sep 24 2012

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: The Optimism Cure

Mitt Romney is optimistic about optimism. In fact, it’s pretty much all he’s got. And that fact should make you very pessimistic about his chances of leading an economic recovery.

As many people have noticed, Mr. Romney’s five-point “economic plan” is very nearly substance-free. It vaguely suggests that he will pursue the same goals Republicans always pursue – weaker environmental protection, lower taxes on the wealthy. But it offers neither specifics nor any indication why returning to George W. Bush’s policies would cure a slump that began on Mr. Bush’s watch.

In his Boca Raton meeting with donors, however, Mr. Romney revealed his real plan, which is to rely on magic. “My own view is,” he declared, “if we win on November 6, there will be a great deal of optimism about the future of this country. We’ll see capital come back, and we’ll see – without actually doing anything – we’ll actually get a boost in the economy.”

Are you feeling reassured?

Robert Kuttner: Filling Geithner’s (Small) Shoes

Timothy Geithner has said that he’ll step down as Treasury Secretary at the end of Obama’s first term. Assuming that Mitt Romney keeps self-destructing and Obama wins a second term, who should succeed him?

Just as Obama’s choice in 2008 of an economic team led by Larry Summers and Tim Geithner told you a lot about what kind of president he’d be (and not be), Obama will signal a lot in his selection of Geithner’s replacement. [..]

This is a key appointment, folks. Should not be left to the usual suspects. Progressive community should be paying attention, big time.

Neta C. Crawford: ‘Targeted’ Drones Strikes and Magical Thinking

As we enter year twelve of the “war on terror,” drones are arguably the coolest tool in the American military arsenal. There is a breathless tone in describing these machines that loiter for hours, then fire Hellfire missiles at remote targets. But just below the gee-wiz is a simmering debate over the secrecy and legality of their strikes in Pakistan and Yemen. [..]

It took years for the U.S. to acknowledge that civilian casualties were not only a grave concern to Afghans and Iraqis, but were also hurting the U.S. war efforts. Generals admitted that for every civilian killed, a number of insurgents were born and attacks on U.S. soldiers grew. It is time that the U.S. apply these lessons from Afghanistan and Iraq to the not-so-secret, not-so-legal, and probably not-so-precise drone war.

Robert Reich: What Mitt Romney Really Represents

It’s not just his giant income or the low tax rates he pays on it. And it’s not just the videotape of him berating almost half of America, or his endless gaffes, or his regressive budget policies.

It’s something that unites all of this, and connects it to the biggest underlying problem America faces – the unprecedented concentration of wealth and power at the very top that’s undermining our economy and destroying our democracy. [..]

So much wealth and power have accumulated at the top of America that our economy and our democracy are seriously threatened. Romney not only represents this problem. He is the living embodiment of it.

Ari Melber: Republicans Are Fact-Checked at Twice the Rate of Democrats

A tabulation of recent rulings from PolitiFact, a prominent but increasingly controversial website devoted to fact-checking candidates’ claims, found that “statements by Mitt Romney and other Republicans” were rated false “twice as often as statements by President Obama and other Democrats.” That’s a lot more false statements by Republicans, which makes it harder to cling to the false equivalency that “both sides do it.”

Or maybe not.

A snap poll of conservative reactions shows that the study of Politifact, from George Mason’s Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA), proves the conservative theory that the fact-checkers are out to get Republicans. [..]

And the Romney campaign is entitled to that view. To paraphrase Gore Vidal, though, it doesn’t matter what he thinks of the facts-what matters is what the facts think of him.

Framk Bruni: A New Inning, Late in the Game

THE way Kevin McClatchy figured it, he had to choose. He could indulge his dream of presiding over a big-time professional sports team, or he could be open about his sexuality. The two paths didn’t dovetail.

He went with sports, and in February 1996, at the age of 33, became the youngest owner in major league baseball when he led a group of investors who bought the Pittsburgh Pirates. For the next 11 years, he was the team’s managing general partner and chief executive officer, not to mention its public face. And for all of that time, he took pains not to let his players, the owners of other teams or anyone beyond a tiny circle of family and close friends learn that he was gay.

Sep 24 2012

Election 2012: Congress

Despite the Obama administration’s poor performance, it appears that President Obama is on his way to a second term. It also appears that the Senate will continue to remain in the hands of the Democrats and now there is speculation that favors the Democrats taking back the House of Representatives.

What has changed? Up with Chris Hayes host Chris Hayes and The Nation‘s Washington correspondent, John Nichols discuss the status of heavily contested U.S. House and Senate races across the country, and the polls that show a potential uptick for Democrats.

At the New York Times, Nate Silver, who writes Five Thirty Eight, gives his analysis on key Senate races and what has gone wrong for GOP Candidates:

Since we published our initial Senate forecast on Tuesday, Republicans have seen an additional decline in their standing in two major races.

Two polls of Virginia published on Wednesday gave the Democrat, the former Gov. Tim Kaine, leads of 4 and 7 percentage points over the Republican, the former Senator George Allen. [..]

The other problematic state for Republicans is Wisconsin, where their candidate, the former Gov. Tommy Thompson, had once appeared to hold the advantage.

Mr. Thompson’s Democratic opponent, Representative Tammy Baldwin, had published an internal poll earlier this week showing her pulling into the lead. [..]

Wednesday also brought bad news for Republicans in Massachusetts, where a fourth consecutive poll showed the Democrat Elizabeth Warren ahead of Senator Scott Brown; in Connecticut, where a poll gave the Democrat Chris Murphy a slight advantage over their candidate, Linda McMahon; and in Florida, where a Fox News poll gave the Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson a 14-point lead.

The Democrats’ chances of controlling the Senate have increased to 79 percent in the forecast, up from 70 percent on Tuesday.

Nate has two theories on what has effected the downturn for the GOP:

Theory No. 1: Is Romney a Downballot Drag?

Mr. Romney has not dictated much in the way of detailed programs in these areas, and some of the policy stances that he has articulated are unpopular.

Mr. Romney has also been less able to campaign effectively against an unpopular Democratic initiative, the Democrats’ health care bill, because he passed a similar bill as governor of Massachusetts.

Finally, some voters who disapprove of Mr. Obama, but who also have lukewarm feelings toward Mr. Romney, might lean toward voting Democrat for Senate in effort to ensure divided government, especially since Republicans also have control of the House.

Theory No. 2: G.O.P. Conservatism Is Hurting

An alternative hypothesis is that the shift has to do with overall perceptions of the Republican platform.

Nate’s last comment in the article was that if this trend continues with the Senate races leaning to Democrats just how vulnerable is the GOP to losing the House? Well here are a couple of articles that discuss just that possibility:

Breaking blue? Will Romney-Ryan troubles give Dems shot at House Majority?]

by Michael John Spinelli

(As) Romney-Ryan lose steam just when they’re supposed to be gaining on the White House, Republicans, including House Ohio Congressman and House Speaker John Boehner, show by actions they took last week that maintaining control of the people’s chamber may not be the slam dunk they once thought.

Reports surfaced late last week that House Republicans are throwing in $3.2 million to save their majority. Speaker John Boehner, one report said, is in “all-out panic mode,” manifested by his initiative to ask his Republican Members to put up $3.2 million from their coffers to save their shaky House majority.

If the Senate can stay in Democratic control, as many pollsters believe it can, and the House gavel leaves Boehner’s grip to be wielded by California congresswoman Nancy Pelosi again, President Obama’s second term will turn on a dime from being four years of more GOP obstruction to his every policy recommendation, to a term he can double down on, learning from the battlefield of missed first-term opportunities. [..]

Democrats are currently leading in national “generic ballot polls that ask people which party they prefer for House races (without naming candidates), Dylan Matthews at Wonkblog writes, about the fact that has led a forecasters like Princeton’s Sam Wang to conclude that, based on past elections, Democrats are favored to retake the House. Wang puts the odds of that occurring at 74 percent.

The article by Mr. Wang that is cited above is from August. This is Mr. Wang’s latest analysis of the Democrat’s change of taking back the House:

Conditions through August showed a 2% lead on the generic Congressional ballot for Democrats. As of September 20th, in the wake of the Democratic convention, the lead has widened to 4.0 +/- 2.0%. Although it has yet to be appreciated by pundits, this could well translate to a November loss of the House of Representatives by Republicans. Based on the generic Congressional ballot, the probability of a Democratic takeover is 74% with a median 16-seat majority. Whichever party is in control, the seat margin is headed for being narrower than the current Congress. Like any probability in the 20-80% range, this is a knife-edge situation. This picture may change over the coming six weeks as more information, especially district-level polls, becomes available. [..]

Predicting the House outcome is challenging. First, there is the basic problem that we have to estimate how far opinion will move between now and November. On top of that, there is uncertainty in knowing how the polling measurement – generic Congressional ballot preference – translates to a seat outcome.

Another approach would be to use district-by-district polls and ratings. An estimate like that can be seen from our data partner, Pollster.com. Their House outlook shows retained GOP control, and RealClearPolitics implies the same. However, many of those polls are weeks or months old. My estimate today suggests that in the coming weeks, we might look for district polls to move in the Democrats’ direction. This is also an opportunity for a detailed analytical approach, as taken elsewhere, to shine.

Regardless of which party controls the Executive Branch, it is the Congress that can dictate the direction of policies. We will be following these races and trends closely.

Sep 23 2012

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 Chris Hayes: Chris’ Sunday guests were not yet listed at the time this was posted.

This Week with George Stephanopolis: George Stephanopoulos‘ guests on “This Week” are Obama campaign senior adviser David Axelrod and Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus.

The roundtable will debate all the week’s politics, with Republican strategist and ABC News political analyst and contributor Nicolle Wallace; former Obama domestic policy adviser Melody Barnes; conservative commentator Ann Coulter, author of the new book “Mugged“; Univision anchor Jorge Ramos; and University of California, Berkeley professor and former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich.  

No George Will?

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer:  This Sunday Mr. Schieffer sits down for an exclusive interview with former President Bill Clinton.

His roundtable guests Mother Jones‘ David Corn, who uncovered the “47 percent” video, The Wall Street Journal‘s Peggy Noonan, TIME Managing Editor Rick Stengel, former Clinton adviser and professor at Harvard University David Gergen and CBS News Political Director John Dickerson look at news from the campaign trail and offer their take on where things stand in Campaign 2012.

The Chris Matthews Show: This week’s guests Helene Cooper, The New York Times White House Correspondent; David Ignatius, The Washington Post Columnist; Major Garrett, National Journal Congressional Correspondent; and Katty Kay, BBC Washington Correspondent.

Meet the Press with David Gregory: MTP guests are Obama backer Gov. Deval Patrick (D-MA) and key Romney supporter Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH).

MSNBC’s political analyst and White House correspondent, Chuck Todd breaks down the latest polls.

The roundtable guests are Mayor of Atlanta Kasim Reed, senior Romney adviser Bay Buchanan, host of “Morning Joe” Joe Scarborough, David Brooks of the New York Times, and Democratic strategist Dee Dee Myers.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Ms. Crowley’s guests are Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC);  House Intelligence Chairman Mike Rogers (R); pollsters Whit Ayres; Anna Greenberg; Susan Page of USA Today; and CNN Senior Political Analyst Ron Brownstein.

Sep 23 2012

What We Now Know

This week marks the first anniversary of MSNBC’s Up with Chris Hayes (@upwithchris), the two hour discussion program that airs at 8 AM on Saturdays and Sundays. It has been a refreshing addition to the standard fare news talk programs, providing interesting guests from the news, news media and blogosphere. you can follow the conversation and add your own comments by following the hashtag #Uppers on Twitter, on Facebook and now at Up with Chris.Tumblr.com:

Today on Up w/ Chris Hayes we celebrated our one-year anniversary. Our first year on the air has been defined by a sense of self-discovery and experimentation, a determination to innovate, to push forward the boundaries of what our show can be. We’ve journeyed from a conference room in 30 Rockefeller Plaza to Inequalistan to Occupy Wall Street, tinkering and improving at every step of the way. And you, our online audience, have been an integral part of that process, making Up w/ Chris very much a communal enterprise.

In the spirit of that innovation, today we’re launching a Tumblr. For as much as you see on the air, there is so much more that goes into producing Up w/ Chris every week. We have a rigorous, thoughtful, creative editorial process, and we’re hoping this platform will be an expression of that. We’ll be posting considerably more of all those revealing production elements you see each week on the show: charts, graphs, photos, videos, thoughts from our producers, and more. We hope it will be evocative of the UP sensibility – weekend mornings, all week long.

We also want this to be as much of an interactive experience as possible. On Tumblr you can reply, reblog, ask us questions and more. Is there an especially knotty political issue you think UP can elucidate with a handy chart or graph? A myth we can debunk with a quick review of the empirical evidence? Some historical perspective we can provide? Let us know.

When we first launched our Twitter account – and when Wyeth Ruthven, the original #upper – created the #uppers hash tag, there were just eleven mentions. Today, our record is above 7,000. We hope to see the same growth and enthusiasm here. Welcome!

– Sal Gentile, segment & digital producer, Up w/ Chris Hayes.

Host Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) discusses what we know now with guests John Nichols, Washington correspondent for The Nation and associate editor of Wisconsin’s Capital Times; L. Joy Williams, (@ljoywilliams) political strategist and founder LJW Political Stategies, co-host of radio show “This Week in Blackness.”; Ana Marie Cox, (@anamariecox) columnist for The Guardian and founder of the political blog Wonkette; and Kevin Williamson, deputy managing editor of The National Review.

Teachers End Chicago Strike on Second Try

by Monica Davey and Steve Yaccino

CHICAGO – The Chicago Teachers Union agreed on Tuesday to end its strike in the nation’s third-largest school system, allowing 350,000 children to return to classes on Wednesday and bringing to a close, at least for now, a tense standoff over issues like teacher evaluations and job security that had upended this city for more than a week.

In a private meeting on Tuesday afternoon, 800 union delegates voted overwhelmingly to suspend the strike after classes had been halted for seven school days, which left parents at loose ends and City Hall taking legal action. The delegates, who had chosen on Sunday to extend their strike rather than accept a deal reached by negotiators for the union and the Chicago Public Schools, this time decided to abandon their picket lines.

Karen Lewis, the union president, described the voice vote as 98 percent to 2 percent in favor and a sign that the deal was seen as good, though hardly perfect.

Village relocated due to climate change

by Brook Meakins

With sea levels rising, the villagers of Vunidogoloa in Fiji have been forced to move to higher lands

For the most part, many people still experience climate change on an academic rather than a personal level. But for the villagers of Vunidogoloa on Vanua Levu, Fiji’s second largest island, climate change has become a daily intrusion on every day life. The villagers of Vunidogoloa are currently relocating to drier and higher land because of sea level rise, erosion, and intensifying floods. I had the opportunity to visit the village midway through this process – one of the very first village relocation projects in the world – and spoke with people young and old about their upcoming move.

 

Sep 22 2012

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

Gail Collins: The Polar Express

This is the season of Extreme Politics. Everything’s exciting. Mitt Romney paid taxes! Joe Biden just bought a 36-pound pumpkin! Paul Ryan is campaigning with his mom again!

Oh, and Congress is ready to go home to run for re-election. I know you were wondering. [..]

The good news is that our lawmakers spent their last pre-election days in Washington working to pass a bill that would keep the government running for the next six months. This is sometimes referred to as a “continuing resolution,” and sometimes as “kicking the can down the road.” Personally, I am pretty relieved to see evidence that this group has the capacity to kick a can. [..]

The majority leader, Harry Reid, pointed out repeatedly that he has had to struggle with 382 filibusters during his six years at the helm. “That’s 381 more filibusters than Lyndon Johnson faced,” he complained. Obviously, Robert Caro is never going to write a series of grand biographies about the life of Harry Reid.

It’s a wonder anything ever gets done. Although, actually, it generally doesn’t.

New York Times Editorial: Voter Harassment, Circa 2012

This is how [voter intimidation worked in 1966 v]: White teenagers in Americus, Ga., harassed black citizens in line to vote, and the police refused to intervene. Black plantation workers in Mississippi had to vote in plantation stores, overseen by their bosses. Black voters in Choctaw County, Ala., had to hand their ballots directly to white election officials for inspection.

This is how it works today: In an ostensible hunt for voter fraud, a Tea Party group, True the Vote, descends on a largely minority precinct and combs the registration records for the slightest misspelling or address error. It uses this information to challenge voters at the polls, and though almost every challenge is baseless, the arguments and delays frustrate those in line and reduce turnout.

Paul Krugman: In Britain and the US, Economic Mysticism Endures

In a lot of ways George Osborne, the chancellor of the Exchequer (or finance minister) is Britain’s answer to Paul Ryan, the Republican nominee for vice president. True, he’s a toned-down version – no Ayn Rand, please, we’re British – but other aspects of the package are there in full force: Mr. Osborne is articulate, has a vision that’s completely at odds with everything we actually know about macroeconomics, and he was for a while the darling not just of the right but of self-proclaimed centrists on both sides of the Atlantic.

Mr. Osborne’s big idea in 2010 was that Britain should turn to fiscal austerity now now now, even though the economy remained deeply depressed; it would all work out, he insisted, because the confidence fairy would come to the rescue.

Never mind those whining Keynesians who said that premature austerity would send Britain into a double-dip recession.

Herman Schwartz: Imprisonment without End at Guantánamo

The Supreme Court ruled in a 2008 decision that Guantánamo detainees must have a “meaningful opportunity” to challenge their detention at a habeas corpus hearing.

This decision, Boumediene v. Bush, has repeatedly been subverted, however, by right-wing judges on the federal Court of Appeals in Washington. Yet the justices don’t seem to care – for they have declined to review any of the D.C. circuit’s rulings undermining the Boumediene decision.

Their indifference was most recently demonstrated in June, when the Supreme Court refused to review a decision, Latif v. Obama, that granted government intelligence reports a presumption of accuracy – regardless of how they were prepared. As a result of the court’s action, many Guantanamo detainees face what could be many years of indefinite detention.

Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif was one of these detainees. Until last week, when he was found dead in his cell on Sept. 9. Yet the military had twice recommended that Latif be released, as Wikileaks disclosed last year. An interagency national security task force had approved this in 2009, and his release was ordered in 2010 by the district court.

Robert Reich: Four Reasons Why Romney Still Might Win

Can Romney possibly recover? A survey conducted between Sept. 12 and Sept. 16 by the Pew Research Center – before the “47 percent victim” video came to light – showed Obama ahead of Romney 51% to 43% among likely voters.

That’s the biggest margin in the September survey prior to a presidential election since Bill Clinton led Bob Dole, 50% to 38% in 1996.

And, remember, this recent poll was done before America watched Romney belittle almost half the nation.

For the last several days I’ve been deluged with calls from my inside-the-beltway friends telling me “Romney’s dead.”

Hold it. Rumors of Romney’s demise are premature for at least four reasons [..]

David Sirota: Drug Dealers Protecting Their Turf

If you heard a drug dealer denigrate his competitor’s product as unsafe, would you trust his criticism? Or would you think he’s a hypocrite with ulterior motives? Last week, thanks to Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper (CO), these became the central political questions in the fight over whether to continue America’s destructive War on Marijuana.

The frontline in that war is Colorado, where the federal government has interfered with its system of state-regulated medical marijuana businesses, despite President Obama’s promise to refrain from doing so. Countering that crackdown is a 2012 ballot initiative that would make Colorado the first state to fully legalize marijuana and regulate it like alcohol.

Enter Hickenlooper. In the same month a poll showed majority support for the marijuana legalization initiative, the governor blasted the measure for allegedly “detract(ing) from efforts to make Colorado the healthiest state” and for “send(ing) the wrong message to kids.”

Sep 21 2012

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; Disdain for Workers

By now everyone knows how Mitt Romney, speaking to donors in Boca Raton, washed his hands of almost half the country – the 47 percent who don’t pay income taxes – declaring, “My job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.” By now, also, many people are aware that the great bulk of the 47 percent are hardly moochers; most are working families who pay payroll taxes, and elderly or disabled Americans make up a majority of the rest.

But here’s the question: Should we imagine that Mr. Romney and his party would think better of the 47 percent on learning that the great majority of them actually are or were hard workers, who very much have taken personal responsibility for their lives? And the answer is no.

Robert L. Borosage: Senate Republicans Shaft the Vets Senate Republicans Shaft the Vets

The young men and women who serve in our military return from fighting in the longest wars in American history to the worst jobs market in generations. They suffer higher unemployment rates than the general population: over one in ten is officially counted as unemployed — and that does not include those who have stopped looking for work or are forced to work part-time.

So yesterday, in one final vile act before adjournment for the elections, Senate Republicans used a point of order to block passage of the Veterans Jobs Corps proposal that would have provided a modest $1 billion to hire veterans to tend federal lands or gain priority in hiring at police and fire departments. The bill was crafted with bipartisan support. 58 Senators supported the bill, but Republicans put together the 40 votes needed to block its passage.

Why shaft the very veterans whose service politicians sanctimoniously celebrate at every occasion?

Is it because unemployed veterans are part of Mitt Romney’s scorned 47 percent?

John Nichols: Elizabeth Warren Wins the ‘Which Side Are You On?’ Debate

An overbearing and at times ridiculously aggressive Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown came across as a desperate man Thursday night, as he attempted to gain the upper hand in the first debate of this year’s most closely watched US Senate race and, by extension, in a re-election contest that seems to be slipping away from him.

Brown literally attacked Elizabeth Warren, his surging Democratic challenger, from start to finish. [..]

Warren was smooth and effective, “explaining things” with the same assurance that Bill Clinton displayed in Charlotte. It wasn’t always easy; as Brown interrupted at every opportunity-to accuse Warren of lying about her heritage, of attacking asbestos victims, of starting Occupy Wall Street.

But Warren never sweated it. She knew she had the winning hand.

And she played it. Again and again.

Ralph Nader: Not a Gaffe, but the Real Romney

There was something missing from the release of a tape showing Mitt Romney pandering to fat cats in Boca Raton, Florida, with these very inflammatory words: “There are 47 percent who are with him, (Obama) who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. These are people who pay no income tax.” Romney said his job “is not to worry about those people.”

Hey, Mitt, why start with the 47 percent? Fully 100 percent of the nation’s 500 biggest corporations are dependent on various kinds of corporate welfare – subsidies, giveaways, bailouts, waivers, and other dazzling preferences – while many pay no tax at all on very substantial profits (see their familiar names – General Electric, Pepco, Verizon etc. – here (pdf)).

Ari Melber: Why Obama Is Right About Change, Wrong About the Outside Game

The latest miniature controversy in the presidential campaign actually touches on an important idea.

“You can’t change Washington from the inside.”

That’s what Barack Obama said he learned as president, when questioned at a forum on Thursday.

Mitt Romney seized on the remarks, saying Obama has surrendered to the forces of Washington. Romney’s aides are eager to cast Obama in his own “YouTube moment,” naturally, and challenge his commitment to “change.”

Obama is correct, of course, that fundamental reform and social change is not usually hatched by Washington insiders. That is not a controversial view. It’s the premise animating grassroots conservative activism from Grover Norquist to the Tea Party, which primaries Republicans who represent the 2-0-2 for too long.

You can’t really understand Obama’s relationship to the inside game, however, without digging into the weeds of his unusual experiment with a grassroots, outside game: The 2009 creation of Organizing for America (OFA), which was designed to extend his massive field army from the last campaign into a governing force.

Katrina venden Heuvel: Progressives must work to retake the Supreme Court

While the election is dominated by talk of the economy and Mitt Romney’s latest foreign policy blunder, don’t lose sight of one important fact: Perhaps nothing will have a bigger impact on the United States’ future than the Supreme Court. And with four justices above the age of 70, the next president of the United States could have enormous power to shape the court for generations to come. Age is not, as Playboy mogul Hugh Hefner has suggested, just a number.

In a government paralyzed by partisan gridlock on the most important matters of the day, the Supreme Court has become what Bill Moyers calls “The Decider.” A majority of the justices has taken a far right turn in its decisions. [..]

They’re right. The court headed by right-wing Chief Justice John Roberts has suppressed the ability to organize through labor unions. It has weakened the right to bring class-action lawsuits. It has impeded ordinary people’s access to courts. It has given corporations more power – and personhood – to inflict their will on Americans. It has shielded financial institutions from accountability. It even threatened the Constitution’s commerce clause in its health-care decision, putting a range of social programs and protections at risk.

Sep 21 2012

They See Dead Voters

A North Carolina anti-election fraud group delivered a list of nearly 30,000 names to the state board of elections insisting that the names be removed from eligible voters list because, the group claims, these voters are dead. The facts are not all of these people are dead and the group, the Voter Integrity Project, had no evidence that any voted were cast by anyone using a dead person’s name.

The board began reviewing the list last Tuesday and determined that it had almost 20,000 of the names from a 10-year audit of data from the state Department of Health and Human Services, said Veronica Degraffenreid, the board’s director of voter registration and absentee voting.

More than one third of those 20,000 names were already listed as inactive, meaning they were on track for removal from the voting rolls, Degraffenreid said. Of the remaining names provided by the Voter Integrity Project, 4,946 had a match on first and last names and date of birth, Degraffenreid said, and county election boards will investigate to see if they should be removed.

She said that of all the records submitted by the organization, 196 showed voting activity after their date of death, though many of them died within days of the election and had submitted absentee ballots. [..]

Meanwhile, cases of fraud remain rare. In 2009, the board referred 29 cases of double voting to county district attorneys, according to a board report. Since 2000, the board has referred one case of voter impersonation, the report states.

Some voters were pretty upset when they received letters from their local board of elections informing them that they were no longer eligible to vote because they were dead.

Carolyn Perry remembers voting in her first election. It was 1967 in Ohio, a municipal election, and she was 21 years old.

“The people at the polls introduced me and said, ‘This is Carolyn and this is her first time to vote,'” recalled the retired special education teacher.

Perry, who has been registered to vote in North Carolina since at least 1975, according to election records, was dismayed to receive a letter this month from the Wake County Board of Elections suggesting she may no longer be qualified to vote because she might be dead.

“My initial reaction? I was mad as hell,” Perry said Monday morning. [..]

“I’ve had some people call who have been enraged,” said Gary Sims, deputy director of the Wake County Board of Elections. Others, he says, have laughed off the errant letters. That range of reactions has been seen in other states where either official actions or similar nonprofit-driven efforts have sought to purge dead voters. [..]

Gary Bartlett, director of the State Board of Elections, said state officials discovered that the Department of Health and Human Services wasn’t reporting some deaths that occurred out of state to elections officials. Those voters are now being investigated, he said.

But Bartlett adds that neither the state nor any of the county boards have yet discovered someone who voted when they should not have as a result of the Voter Integrity Project’s submission. Bartlett says he doesn’t rule out the possibility it could happen, but he points out that election officials have access to Social Security numbers, birthdays and drivers license numbers that citizen groups cannot legally get. All of those pieces of information have been used to differentiate between those who are really dead and those who are expected to show up at the polls this November, he said.

Sep 21 2012

“The West Wing” Returns

Don’t get excited. “The West Wing” hasn’t really returned but the cast did get together to make a campaign video for cast member, Mary ” Kate Harper” McCormack‘s sister, Bridget Mary McCormack who is running for State Supreme Court Judge in Michigan. The video also has a voting education lesson in it about filling out the non-partisan section of the voting ballot. This is how Michigan and 14 other states choose their supreme court justices. If you think that these races aren’t important, remember that this week the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that returned that state’s controversial voter ID law (pdf) back to the Commonwealth Court for review.

Bridget Mary McCormack is a professor at the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor, Michigan, who also serves as Michigan Law School’s associate dean of clinical affairs. From her wikipedia bio, she is the founder and co-director of the Michigan Innocence Clinic, the first exclusively non-DNA innocence clinic in the country. Lawrence O’Donnell interviewed the woman who reunited the “West Wing” on his show “The Last Word.”

Load more