Tag: TMC Politics

Jun 14 2012

Egypt: Court Desolves Parliament, Election Unconstitutional

Egypt’s high court has dissolved the first democratically elected Parliament and declared that former President Hosni Mubarak’s last prime minister, Ahmad Shafiq, can remain in the race for president:

The rulings by the Supreme Constitutional Court, whose judges are Mubarak appointees, escalated the power struggle between the Brotherhood and the military, which stepped in to rule after Mubarak’s fall. The decisions tip the contest dramatically in favor of the ruling generals, robbing the Brotherhood of its power base in parliament and boosting Ahmad Shafiq, the former Mubarak prime minister who many see as the military’s favorite in the presidential contest against the Brotherhood’s candidate.

Senior Muslim Brotherhood leader and lawmaker Mohammed el-Beltagy said the rulings amounted to a “full-fledged coup.”

“This is the Egypt that Shafiq and the military council want and which I will not accept no matter how dear the price is,” he wrote on his Facebook page.

The Brotherhood and liberal and leftist activists who backed last year’s revolution against Mubarak accused the military of using the constitutional court as a proxy to preserve the hold of the ousted leader’s authoritarian regime and the generals over the country. Many of them were vowing new street protests.

Hossam Bahgat, director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, said in a Twitter post:

According to the BBC, last year’s Parliamentary elections were “against the rules”

The court had been considering the validity of last year’s parliamentary election, because some of the seats were contested on a proportional list system, with others on the first-past-the-post system.

It decided that the election law had allowed parties to compete for seats reserved for independent candidates.

The head of the supreme court Farouk Soltan told Reuters: “The ruling regarding parliament includes the dissolution of the lower house of parliament in its entirety because the law upon which the elections were held is contrary to rules of the constitution.”

Many of the seats ruled unconstitutional were won by the Muslim Brotherhood.

In his New York Times article, David D. Kirkpatrick noted the consequences of the new president taking power with no Parliament to hold him on check:

The ruling means that whoever emerges as the winner of the runoff will take power without the check of a sitting Parliament and could even exercise some influence over the election of a future Parliament. It vastly compounds the stakes in the presidential race, raises questions about the governing military council’s commitment to democracy, and makes uncertain the future of a constitutional assembly recently formed by Parliament as well.

The decision, which dissolves the first freely elected Parliament in Egypt in decades, supercharges a building conflict between the court, which is increasingly presenting itself as a check on Islamists’ power, and the Muslim Brotherhood.

The ruling, by the highest judicial authority in Egypt, cannot be appealed and it was not clear how the military council, which  has been governing Egypt since Mr. Mubarak’s downfall in February 2011, would respond. But in anticipation that the court’s ruling could anger citizens, the military authorities reimposed martial law on Wednesday.

The ruling is a result of the Islamic dominated Parliament passing a law that barred prominent figures from the old regime from running for office. Critics of the law said that it targeted Shafiq and the court, in its ruling, said that the law lacked “objective grounds”, was discriminatory and violated “the principle of equality.”

Since the Mubarak’s fall, Egypt’s military has promised to hand power to an elected president by the start of July, but with no constitution and now the prospect of no parliament to write one, the new president is unlikely have his powers defined by the time he comes into office. And that has all the earmarks of a disaster for the Arab Spring and democracy in Egypt.

Jun 14 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

Ibrahim Mothana: How Drones Help Al Qaeda

“DEAR OBAMA, when a U.S. drone missile kills a child in Yemen, the father will go to war with you, guaranteed. Nothing to do with Al Qaeda,” a Yemeni lawyer warned on Twitter last month. President Obama should keep this message in mind before ordering more drone strikes like Wednesday’s, which local officials say killed 27 people, or the May 15 strike that killed at least eight Yemeni civilians.

Drone strikes are causing more and more Yemenis to hate America and join radical militants; they are not driven by ideology but rather by a sense of revenge and despair. Robert Grenier, the former head of the C.I.A.’s counterterrorism center, has warned that the American drone program in Yemen risks turning the country into a safe haven for Al Qaeda like the tribal areas of Pakistan – “the Arabian equivalent of Waziristan.”

New York Times Editorial: The Court Retreats on Habeas

When the Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that Congress could not strip federal courts of jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus petitions from non-American prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, the 5-to-4 majority opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy appeared to be a landmark victory for the rights of detainees. “The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times,” Justice Kennedy wrote in Boumediene v. Bush, and “the framers decided that habeas corpus, a right of first importance,” must be part of the American legal framework.

But this week the court rejected appeals in seven habeas cases involving detainees challenging the legality of their imprisonment. (The justices also rejected an appeal in a separate civil suit brought by Jose Padilla, an American citizen, against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other officials for abuse and torture during his detention.) With no dissents in the denials, it is devastatingly clear that the Roberts court has no interest in ensuring meaningful habeas review for foreign prisoners.

E. J. Dionne, Jr.: Billionaires Against Billionaires

For those who believe money already has too much power in American politics, 2012 will be a miserable year. The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, lassitude at the Federal Election Commission and the growing audacity of very rich conservatives have created a new political system that will make the politics of the Gilded Age look like a clean government paradise.

Americans won’t even fully know what’s happening to them because so much can be donated in secrecy to opaque organizations. It’s always helpful for voters to know who is trying to buy an election, and for whom. This time, much of the auction will be held in private. You can be sure that the candidates will find out who helped elect them, but the voters will remain in the dark.

Amy Goodman: Across That Bridge, Again

As the election season heats up, an increasing number of states are working to limit the number of people who are allowed to vote. Already we have a shamefully low percentage of those eligible to vote actually participating. Florida, a key swing state, is preparing for the Republican National Convention, five days of pomp promoted as a celebration of democracy. While throwing this party, Florida Republican Gov. Rick Scott, along with his secretary of state, Ken Detzner, are systematically throwing people off the voter rolls, based on flawed, outdated Florida state databases.

Many eligible Florida voters recently received a letter saying they were removed and had limited time to prove their citizenship.  Hundreds of cases emerged where people with long-standing U.S. citizenship were being purged. According to the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, “of those singled out to prove their citizenship, 61 percent are Hispanic when only 14 percent of registered Florida voters are Hispanic,” suggesting an attempt to purge Latinos, who tend to vote Democratic. Recall the year 2000, when then-Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris systematically purged African-Americans from voter rolls. The U.S. Justice Department has ordered Detzner to stop the purge, but he and Gov. Scott promise to continue. The Justice Department has sued the state in federal court, as have the ACLU and other groups.

Robert Sheer: See You at the Club: Fed Fat Cats Dip Into the Till

Statistics are boring, but it’s important to wrap your head around this latest one from the Federal Reserve as the definitive epitaph for the American dream. Wall Street’s financial shenanigans, the banking games that made some fat cats outrageously wealthy as they turned home mortgages into toxic securities, wiped out 20 years of growth in American families’ net worth. [..]

That outcome, disastrous to the American ideal of a nation of mostly middle-class stakeholders competing on a relatively equal economic playing field, was preordained. When tens of millions lost their jobs and homes as a result of financial swindles that the Federal Reserve failed to prevent, this ostensibly public agency, with strong bipartisan support in the White House and Congress, adroitly directed the flow of public funds to save the bankers while abandoning their victims.

Robert Reich: A Back Door to the Public Option

Any day now the Supreme Court will issue its opinion on the constitutionality of the Accountable Care Act, which even the White House now calls Obamacare.

Most high-court observers think it will strike down the individual mandate in the Act that requires almost everyone to buy health insurance, as violating the Commerce Clause of the Constitution – but will leave the rest of the new healthcare law intact. [..]

The fact is, there’s enough the public likes about Obamacare that if the Court strikes down the individual mandate that won’t be the end. It will just be the end of the first round.

Jun 13 2012

JP Morgan’s CEO And The Grand Lie

“We are not in the hedge fund business.”

Jamie Dimon, CEO JP Morgan Chase

JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon testified today before the Senate Banking Committee about the $2 billion plus loss from it’s “London Whale” gambling with depositor and tax payer money. He was hardly contrite. Not only did Dimon whine about the complexity of the federal regulatory system but he lied, blatantly, this from Yves Smith at naked capitalism:

In Senate testimony, Dimon revealed his idea of “portfolio hedging” to be even more egregious than the harshest critics thought. Dimon presented the job of the CIO to be to make modest amounts of money in good times and to make a lot of money when there’s a crisis. (That does not appear to be narrowly true, since in the last couple of years, during which there was no crisis, the CIO’s staff were among the best paid in the bank and produced significant profits for the bank. That is a bald faced admission that the CIO’s mandate had nothing to do with hedging. A hedge is a position taken to mitigate losses on an underlying exposure should they occur. Instead, Dimon has admitted that the mission of the CIO is to place bets on tail risks that are unrelated to JP Morgan’s exposures. A massive, systemically destructive strategy like the Magnetar trade would fit perfectly within the CIO’s mandate.

Needless to say, this definition is an inversion of not just what the Volcker rule was meant to stand for (limiting financial firm gambles with taxpayer money), it’s NewSpeak, or in this case, DimonSpeak: “a hedge is whatever I say it is, no more and no less.” Another bit of DimonSpeak was his specious response when he was arguing against the Volcker rule. The JP Morgan chief asserted that a customer loan could be construed to be a prop trade. Um, no, Volcker applies to trading books. The fact that he’d run a line like that shows how little he thinks of the intelligence of the Senate Banking Committee and the public generally. [..]

It was instructive to see how effective confident misrepresentation can be. Most of the Republican senators fawned over Dimon after the ritual scolding at the top of the hearings, and I suspect most of the media will simply replay his lines uncritically. There were a few that will work against him, like his reluctant admission that the Volcker rule might have prevented the failed London trade. But in general, reducing complex situations to soundbites allows for obfuscation and misdirection, which is exactly what Dimon and his ilk are keen to have happen.

During the testimony, Dimon admitted to responsibility for the failed trade that could possibly lead to criminal charges for violation of Sarbanese-Oxley, but even under this Democratic administration, no one believes that, certainly not Yves or David Dayen at FDL:

Dimon also deflected blame for the losses. David Dayen recounts the conference call that took place during the hearing with economists Rob Johnson and Bill Black:

Dimon tried to blame the losses on a lot of factors, and in such a way that doesn’t trip up his priorities later. As economist Rob Johnson mentioned in a conference call, Dimon has been lobbying vociferously against things like the Volcker rule. So he doesn’t want this Fail Whale mix-up to lead to a stronger regulatory environment. He tried to explain the trades as a hedge (never saying that they were one, but that he “believed” they were one, to keep him out of trouble), that would make small amounts of money in good times and more money when things went bad. They were also specifically tied to business in Europe. Bill Black, who was also on the call, targeted this as a non sequitur. “He said that senior management ordered the CIO to get out of the risk out of this underlying supposed hedge,” Black said. “But a hedge is supposed to be reducing risk, and it was protecting you from Europe going bad, when Europe is going bad. So it should have been making more money at this time.”

Black continued. “Instead of reducing the risk, the CIO went into a vastly more complex series of derivatives and went far larger, and they hid the losses. I mean, my God. They violated direct orders, lose a ton of money and lie about it. Dimon described a massive insurrection by the CIO.”

Most of the senators soft peddled their questions and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) actually asked Dimon for advice about banking regulations and Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) doesn’t believe in second guessing the banksters. The closest any of the questioners came to holding Dimon accountable for the losses was Sen Jeff Merkley (D-OR). It was during that exchange that Dimon admitted he was responsible for the losses.

All in all another farce by our politicians who are owned by the man before them.

Jun 13 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”.

Wednesday is Ladies’ Day

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Elinor Ostrom: Green from the Grassroots

((Note: Elinor Ostrom, the first and only woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Economics, died today (6/12) at the age of 78. In her final syndicated column, she champions those local communities that have not waited for global agreements or policies from above, but have taken it upon themselves to create ‘organic’ policies to manage shared resources and adapt to current global challenges and the ones ahead.))

Much is riding on the United Nations Rio+20 summit. Many are billing it as Plan A for Planet Earth and want leaders bound to a single international agreement to protect our life-support system and prevent a global humanitarian crisis.

Inaction in Rio would be disastrous, but a single international agreement would be a grave mistake. We cannot rely on singular global policies to solve the problem of managing our common resources: the oceans, atmosphere, forests, waterways, and rich diversity of life that combine to create the right conditions for life, including seven billion humans, to thrive.

We have never had to deal with problems of the scale facing today’s globally interconnected society. No one knows for sure what will work, so it is important to build a system that can evolve and adapt rapidly.

Katrina vanden Heuvel: Obama’s ‘Kill List’ Is Unchecked Presidential Power

A stunning report in the New York Times depicted President Obama poring over the equivalent of terrorist baseball cards, deciding who on a “kill list” would be targeted for elimination by drone attack. The revelations – as well as those in Daniel Klaidman’s recent book – sparked public outrage and calls for congressional inquiry.

Yet bizarrely, the fury is targeted at the messengers, not the message. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) expressed dismay that presidential aides were leaking national security information to bolster the president’s foreign policy credentials. (Shocking? Think gambling, Casablanca). Republican and Democratic senators joined in condemning the leaks. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. – AWOL in the prosecution of rampant bank fraud – roused himself to name two prosecutors to track down the leakers.

Please. Al-Qaeda knows that U.S. drones are hunting them. The Pakistanis, Yemenis, Somalis, Afghanis and others know the U.S. is behind the drones that strike suddenly from above. The only people aided by these revelations are the American people who have an overriding right and need to know.

Margaret Kimberly: Freedom Rider: The Obama Thrill is Gone

Few predict that Barack Obama will generate the Black turnout that propelled him to victory in 2008. “A small but growing number” of Black former Obama enthusiasts “have grown weary of the charade and know they have been played for fools.” Race pride motivated them the first time around, but that is harder to muster for “a man who never saw them as anything more than saps who would vote for him no matter what he said or did.”

Black Americans’ devotion to Barack Obama during his 2008 run for the presidency was unparalleled in American political history. From the moment he won the Iowa caucus and proved that white people would vote for him, any and all questions or concerns raised about Obama were promptly forgotten. The opportunity to see a black president created a level of enthusiasm previously unseen, and unfortunately a blind devotion too. A group of reliably progressive people changed their political religion and coalesced nearly unanimously around the only kind of person the system will allow to compete, a corporatist and imperialist with no inclination to put black people anywhere on the agenda of the day.

Diane Ravitch: Mitt Romney’s Blueprint for Privatizing American Education

On 23 May, the Romney campaign released its education policy white paper titled A Chance for Every Child: Mitt Romney‘s Plan for Restoring the Promise of American Education. If you liked the George W Bush administration’s education reforms, you will love the Romney plan. If you think that turning the schools over to the private sector will solve their problems, then his plan will thrill you.

The central themes of the Romney plan are a rehash of Republican education ideas from the past 30 years, namely, subsidizing parents who want to send their child to a private or religious school, encouraging the private sector to operate schools, putting commercial banks in charge of the federal student loan program, holding teachers and schools accountable for students’ test scores, and lowering entrance requirements for new teachers. These policies reflect the experience of his advisers, who include half a dozen senior officials from the Bush administration and several prominent conservative academics – among them, former Secretary of Education Rod Paige and former Deputy Secretary of Education Bill Hansen, and school choice advocates John Chubb and Paul Peterson.

Unlike George W Bush, who had to negotiate with a Democratic Congress to pass No Child Left Behind, Romney feels no need to compromise on anything. He needs to prove to the Republican party’s base – especially evangelicals – that he really is conservative. And this plan is “mission accomplished”.

Michelle Chen: Working Women’s Bodies Besieged by Environmental Injustice

From birth control pills to equal pay, women are a favorite target in the country’s most heated political wars. But a much quieter struggle is being waged over women’s bodies in their neighborhoods and workplaces, where a minefield of pollutants threaten working mothers and their children.

According to new research from the the National Birth Defects Prevention Study, working pregnant women who are exposed on the job to toxins known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are more likely to have children with gastroschisis, a rare birth defect in which the intestines stick out from the baby’s body, generally requiring surgical repair.

The study, summarized by Environmental Health News, reveals a distinct link between women’s occupational exposure and the prevalence of the defect: “mothers who were exposed to PAHs had 1.5 times the risk of having a baby with gastroschisis compared to women who were not exposed to PAHs at work.”

Sarah Laskow: Waffling on Climate Change? Consult Friends, Not Science

Ever since climate scientist James Hansen first testified before Congress about global warming in 1988, the scientists, advocates, academics and former vice-presidents who work to stop climate change have presumed that the science matters. Hansen began his testimony by telling the assembled senators (pdf): “The earth is warmer in 1988 than at any time in the history of instrumental measurements,” in full confidence that instrumental measurements would matter more than the weather outside the politicians’ front doors. Like Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth, Hansen depended on graphs (he called them “viewgraphs”) and numbers to help make his case. Almost two decades later, when Gore first raised the alarm about climate change with his documentary, his strategy rested on that same science: I dare you to look at this PowerPoint and tell me climate change isn’t a problem! It is an expectedly rational assumption to make, that a rational science like science should be a trump card. Inconveniently, it’s not true.

A study published last week in Nature Climate Change, a leading, meticulously vetted journal of climate research, showed that the more scientifically literate people are, the less worried they are about climate change. “As respondents’ science-literacy scores increased, concern with climate change decreased,” wrote the study’s authors, a group that includes researchers from Ohio State, George Washington University and Yale University.

Jun 12 2012

NN12: Schneiderman Keynote A Snoozer

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

The much anticipated keynote address on the opening night at Netroots Nation 12 in Providence, RI was, I dare say, over two hours of my life I will never get back. While I understand the need for levity, thus the comedic interludes by emcee Baratunde Thurston, the number of speakers was just too many and they were unfortunately long winded, even for politicians. I wasn’t alone in that assessment. After nearly two hours Schneiderman had not reach the stage, so I decided to “stretch my legs” before I embarrassed my self by dozing off and falling out of my seat, although, it might have more entertaining for some than Mr. Thurston. I wasn’t alone. In the lobby outside the ballroom, I ran into an Obama supporter who found that she and I had something in common, this was booooooooring. I missed the New York Attorney General’s address and opted for the hotel restaurant for some food and libation. So here is the entire opening keynote with Schneiderman coming in at the last fifteen minutes.

Here is more agreement about the anesthesia effects of the evening from FDL blogger masachio

Schneiderman chose the pander speech. He started by explaining that real change comes from the grassroots, leaders emerge from struggles over real problems. That’s us, the Netroots! We are the leaders of the future!

He continues: We are in a transitional era now, just like the early 30s. We democrats stand for the rule of law applicable to everyone equally just like President Obama. Someone from the audience suggests loudly that locking up banksters would be a good start, and Schneiderman says he’ll get to that. Which he does a few minutes later saying that he can’t comment on the investigation he is doing. Everyone is really nice about this bit of foolery, and it was at this point I realized I would prefer to be drinking. I mutter at my tablemates that banksters and pot smokers do not face the same application of the rule of law, but no one hears me because they are stunned into dopiness.

The somnolence continues. [..]

After the speech, Schneiderman told a Talking Points Memo reporter that “nothing was off the table.” So if that’s true, when do the prosecutions start? Oh, wait, the “special unit” still has no office or telephone number after six months.

Jun 12 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 Buchheit: War or Revolution Every 75 Years. It’s Time Again.

When Charles Dickens wrote “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” to begin “A Tale of Two Cities,” he compared the years of the French Revolution to his own “present period.” Both were wracked with inequality. But he couldn’t have known that 75 years later inequality would cause the Great Depression. Or that 75 years after that, in our own present period, extreme inequality would return for a fourth time, to impact a much greater number of people. He probably didn’t know that the cycles of history seem to drag the developed world into desperate times about every 75 years, and then seek relief through war or revolution.

It’s that time again.

Three cycles (225 years) ago, in the years before the French Revolution, inequality was at one of its highest points ever. While it’s estimated that the top 10% of the population took almost half the income, as they do today, the Gini Coefficient was between .52 and .59, higher than the current U.S. figure of .47. The French Revolution began a surge toward equality that lasted well into the 19th century.

New York Times Editorial: Now, Spain

Two weeks after Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy of Spain vowed “there will be no Spanish banking rescue,” and after days of delay in which Mr. Rajoy pressed European officials for sounder rescue terms, Spain has now joined Greece, Ireland and Portugal as the latest bailout recipient. Catastrophe averted? Hardly.

Bailouts – this one is worth up to $125 billion – are supposed to help restore investor confidence. But investors have clearly figured out what too many European politicians are still denying: serial bailouts, piecemeal plans and one-size-fits-all austerity are not a solution.

On Monday, Spanish and Italian borrowing costs spiked after Mr. Rajoy, the day before, had lamely tried to downplay the new bailout – calling it a line of credit – while Mario Monti, Italy’s prime minister, publicly warned of a “permanent risk of contagion.”

Robert Kuttner: Which Road for Europe?

This month, Europe will either sink deeper into economic crisis, or drastically reverse course. The results from the first round of the French legislative elections Sunday are encouraging. Projections suggest that after the second round next Sunday, President Francois Hollande’s Socialist Party will either have an absolute majority, or, at worst, a working majority with other left parties. This will increase Hollande’s leverage within Europe as a counterweight to German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Merkel’s strategy, for now, has been to change the subject. With insane austerity policies having been inflicted on weak economies at the insistence of the German government, Merkel, confronted with a worsening crisis, has been speaking grandiosely of deeper European integration.

But the kind of fiscal integration that Merkel proposes will take years if not decades, and the European economy is going up in smoke right now. Fiscal and tax integration will be even less plausible if it includes German-style austerity.

Simon Johnson: We Need a Watchdog for all the New Watchdogs

Two years after passage of the Dodd- Frank financial reform law, how are we doing putting in place crucial provisions, including a way to control systemic risk?

Not well, according to Sheila Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. during the 2008-2009 economic disaster and author of some of the reforms in the act. [..]

Her point is simple. The Dodd-Frank Act created the all- important Financial Stability Oversight Council (known as FSOC and pronounced F-Sock). It replaced the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, a panel frequently mentioned in former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s memoir of the financial crisis, “On the Brink.” That working group lacked authority to coordinate the alphabet soup of regulators overseeing the U.S. financial system.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: The “Fiscal Cliff”? A Hoax. The Democrats’ “Long Game”? A Myth. This Is the Real Budget Battle

Suddenly the headlines are filled with talk of an impending “fiscal cliff,” a series of tax and budget changes which the news pages say is an impending catastrophe and which the editorial pages are urging Washington lawmakers to prevent.

How would they do that? Why, with the same “Grand Bargain” we keep hearing about, an economically destructive plan in which Democrats betray their principles by imposing benefit cuts to Social Security and Medicare in return for the Republicans’ grand concession of raising taxes on – you.

It’s a nearly surreal situation: Democrats acting like Republicans, and Republicans acting like Visigoths about to sack every city on the continent. All this surreality raises all sorts of Zen-like questions.

Josh Silver: Citizens United Mastermind Ousted From RNC

On Friday, Indiana attorney Jim Bopp quietly lost reelection to the Republic National Committee. Bopp is the architect of the infamous Citizens United Supreme Court case that gave us super PAC’s and the torrent of political spending that has turned elections into auctions. [..]

Bopp’s extremism helps us understand the irrationality of the Citizens United case, which actually asserts that super PACs do not create corruption or even the appearance of corruption. You have to be an extremist or just naive to buy that assertion. Bopp’s actions demonstrate that the infamous court case is part of the broader effort cede control of our country to monied interests while our leaders — and the public — become more polarized and divided.

Nancy Altman and Eric Kingson: Alan Simpson: Pulling Apart Social Security, And Proud of It

Dear Senator Simpson,

Your plan would begin pulling apart our Social Security system brick by brick. Unfortunately, you seem to think that bigotry and bullying will silence those of us who are trying to educate the public about the devastating cuts in your plan. No amount of ageism, however, can hide the harm your plan would cause for Americans — young and old, alike.

That is why we ask that you stick to your word and have an open and public discussion with young people, who would be hit hardest by the drastic cuts in your plan, and we have started a petition to gather the support of others who think you shouldn’t go back on your word.

A bigot is someone who stereotypes an entire group of people with a pejorative label as a way of advancing his or her own views and prejudices. An ageist, a term coined by the late Dr. Robert Butler, the founding director of the National Institute on Aging, is someone who directs that prejudice against older people.

Jun 11 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: Another Bank Bailout

Oh, wow – another bank bailout, this time in Spain. Who could have predicted that?

The answer, of course, is everybody. In fact, the whole story is starting to feel like a comedy routine: yet again the economy slides, unemployment soars, banks get into trouble, governments rush to the rescue – but somehow it’s only the banks that get rescued, not the unemployed.

Just to be clear, Spanish banks did indeed need a bailout. Spain was clearly on the edge of a “doom loop” – a well-understood process in which concern about banks’ solvency forces the banks to sell assets, which drives down the prices of those assets, which makes people even more worried about solvency. Governments can stop such doom loops with an infusion of cash; in this case, however, the Spanish government’s own solvency is in question, so the cash had to come from a broader European fund.

New York Times Editorial Nuclear Time Warp

Did House Republicans somehow miss the end of the cold war? At a time when, for the sake of both security and fiscal responsibility, the country should be reducing its nuclear arsenal, the House has approved a defense authorization bill for 2013 that threatens to freeze the number of weapons at current levels and, over time, waste billions of dollars on unnecessary purchases and programs.

Thankfully, the bill isn’t likely to become law. But it is worth taking a closer look, both for what it says about Republicans’ misplaced strategic priorities – and about how far President Obama has already gone to appease them.

Richard (RJ) Escow: 40 Million Strong: Underwater Homeowners Can Fight and Win … If They Get Organized

It sounds like hype to say it, but underwater homeowners can change the course of history. It’s not me saying that — it’s the numbers. People who owe more than their homes are worth have the power to become the a powerful new political and economic force.

They’ve got the numbers, they’ve got the votes and — if they can get organized — they’ve got the economic clout. And we can prove it.

This is something I and others have been pondering for a while, and it’s been on my mind again as I look forward to being on a panel at the Take Back the American Dream conference with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, Heather McGhee from Demos and MSNBC’s Alex Wagner. It also came up in a conversation we had this weekend on The Breakdown with members of the Home Defenders League, a group that’s looking to organize underwater homeowners.

How powerful are those homeowners? The numbers are staggering.

Katrina vanden Heuvel and Robert Borosage: A Politics for the 99 Percent

This year will feature the most ideologically polarized election since the Reagan-Carter face-off of 1980. A radical-right Republican Party, backed by big-money interests, has made itself the tribune of privilege and will do significant damage if it takes control in Washington. Staving off that outcome depends on mobilizing the Democratic base. Yet President Obama’s agenda is far removed from what is needed to meet the challenges this country faces. Because of this, we believe progressives must expand the limits of the current debate, even as they rally against the threat posed by a Republican victory.

No one should discount the potential destructiveness of a victory for Mitt Romney. The widespread media assumption that he’s really a “Massachusetts moderate” who adopted extreme positions to placate the Republican electorate before resetting his Etch A Sketch would be irrelevant even if it were true. A Romney victory could be accompanied by GOP control of all branches of government, with the party’s right-wing majority in the House driving the agenda. As Grover Norquist argues, “We are not auditioning for fearless leader…. We just need a president to sign this stuff.”

Patrick Cockburn: America is Deluded by Its Drone-Warfare Propaganda

As the US and its allies ponder what to do about Syria, one suggestion advanced by the protagonists of armed intervention is to use unmanned drones to attack Syrian government targets. The proposal is a measure of the extraordinary success of the White House, CIA and Defense Department in selling the drone as a wonder weapon despite all the evidence to the contrary.

The attraction of the drone for President Obama and his administration five months before the presidential election is self-evident. The revelation that he personally selected targets from the top ranks of al-Qa’ida for assassination by remote control shows the President as tough and unrelenting in destroying America’s enemies. The programme is popular at home because the cost appears not to be large and, most importantly, there are no American casualties. The media uncritically buys into claims of the weapon’s effectiveness, conveniently diverting voters’ attention from the US army’s failure to defeat puny opponents in two vastly expensive campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Jun 10 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: Guests and topic information not listed.

The Melissa Harris-Perry Show: Guests and topic information not listed.

This Week with George Stephanopolis: Guests and topic information not listed.

 

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: On the 40th Anniversary of Watergate, the reporters who broke the story for the Washington Post, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward are guests; Gov. Martin O’Malley, D-Md., the head of the Democratic Governor’s Association; AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka: the chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and from House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI).

The Chris Matthews Show: This week Mr. Matthews is joined by Katty Kay, BBC Washington Correspondent; Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Beast Editor, The Dish; Andrea Mitchell, NBC News Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent; and John Heilemann, New York Magazine, National Political Correspondent

Meet the Press with David Gregory: MTP will not air Sunday due to NBC Sports coverage of the French Open.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Ms. Crowely talks to President Obama’s Senior Campaign Adviser, David Axelrod about the race; Senator John McCain (R-AZ) on national security leaks and the latest on the ongoing crisis in Syria; the debate over the use of drones with Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA,) and Rep. Peter King (R-NY.); and finally, a reporter roundtable (no names announced) on the political news of the week.

Jun 09 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

Joseph Stiglitz: The Price of Inequality and the Myth of Opportunity

America likes to think of itself as a land of opportunity, and others view it in much the same light. But, while we can all think of examples of Americans who rose to the top on their own, what really matters are the statistics: to what extent do an individual’s life chances depend on the income and education of his or her parents?

Nowadays, these numbers show that the American dream is a myth. There is less equality of opportunity in the United States today than there is in Europe – or, indeed, in any advanced industrial country for which there are data.

This is one of the reasons that America has the highest level of inequality of any of the advanced countries – and its gap with the rest has been widening. In the “recovery” of 2009-2010, the top 1% of US income earners captured 93% of the income growth. Other inequality indicators – like wealth, health, and life expectancy – are as bad or even worse. The clear trend is one of concentration of income and wealth at the top, the hollowing out of the middle, and increasing poverty at the bottom.

Paul Krugman: Reagan Was a Keynesian

There’s no question that America’s recovery from the financial crisis has been disappointing. In fact, I’ve been arguing that the era since 2007 is best viewed as a “depression,” an extended period of economic weakness and high unemployment that, like the Great Depression of the 1930s, persists despite episodes during which the economy grows. And Republicans are, of course, trying – with considerable success – to turn this dismal state of affairs to their political advantage.

They love, in particular, to contrast President Obama’s record with that of Ronald Reagan, who, by this point in his presidency, was indeed presiding over a strong economic recovery. You might think that the more relevant comparison is with George W. Bush, who, at this stage of his administration, was – unlike Mr. Obama – still presiding over a large loss in private-sector jobs. And, as I’ll explain shortly, the economic slump Reagan faced was very different from our current depression, and much easier to deal with. Still, the Reagan-Obama comparison is revealing in some ways. So let’s look at that comparison, shall we?

Alan Grsyson: How You Can Tell When the Deficit Is a Problem

A few days ago, I was stuck in the car for a long drive. Because of the complete absence of progressive talk from Orlando’s airwaves, I had no real choice but to listen to the nasal maundering of Mark Levin on the radio. Levin was very upset about the federal deficit.

Interestingly, Levin was a high-level appointee in the Reagan Administration. Dick Cheney, who was Reagan’s Defense Secretary and later the Vice President, said 10 years ago that “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.”

I must concede that it is rather difficult to reconcile the conflicting statements of these two gentlemen, Messrs. Evidently, they believe deficits are a terrible tragedy when a Democrat is President, and a wonderful gift when a Republican is President.

There has got to be a more objective standard than that.

Ted Rall: Recovery? What Recovery?

Behind the New Jobs Numbers, Dull Statistics Tell a Terrifying Story

“Worst U.S. Jobs Data in a Year Signals Stalling Recovery,” The New York Times ran as its lead headline on June 2. The Labor Department reported that the U.S. economy created 69,000 jobs during May. The three-month job-creation average was 96,000. Unemployment ticked up a tenth of a point, from 8.1 to 8.2 percent.

Once again, the media is downplaying a blockbuster story-recovery? what recovery?-by dulling it down with a pile of dry, impenetrable statistics.

Wonder why you can’t find a job or get a raise, and your house has been sitting on the market for years? The new jobs numbers are the key to understanding how bad the economy is-and why it’s not likely to get better any time soon.

Joan Donovan: Translating the Quebec Student Protests

Compared to its current clamor, the Quebec student protests began last year with a whimper. In March of 2011, Finance Minister Raymond Bachand announced that Quebec student tuition would increase by $325 every year for five years. By August, student organizations were debating the possibility of an unlimited student strike. In February 2012, student organizations from several colleges and universities endorsed the action and blockaded Montreal’s Jacques Cartier Bridge, a major artery in the city. Over the next few months, numerous violent clashes with Montreal police led to mass arrests. But on May 18, 2012, Quebec’s Premier Charest raised the stakes by instituting “special” Bill 78. This law prohibited protests within 50 meters of any university, effectively making all of downtown Montreal a protest-free zone. May 22 marked the 100th day of the strike, and nearly 400,000 people marched through downtown joyously defying the law.

John Nichols: Bernie Sanders Sees Threatening ‘Aggressiveness Among the Ruling Class’

Governor Scott Walker says that, with his victory in Tuesday’s recall election, he will “tell Wisconsin, tell our country, and we tell people all across the globe that voters really do want leaders who stand up and make the tough decisions…”

Actually, cutting taxes for CEOs and corporations and then balancing budgets on the backs of teachers, nurses and snowplow drivers isn’t exactly tough work. Redistribution of the wealth upward is common practice these days.

That said: Walker’s right about the fact that his victory speaks to the state, the nation and the world.

But what does it say?

David Sirota: The War on Whistle-Blowers

When a democracy functions properly, media revelations of executive branch misconduct typically result in an investigation by the legislative branch. Watergate epitomized this healthy dynamic-illegal acts exposed by the Washington Post prompted congressional hearings and ultimately prosecutions. In other words, checks and balances functioned properly, and the system both cleansed itself of wrongdoers and rejected the Nixonian notion that no matter what a president does, it is inherently legal.

So when The New York Times this week ran the headline “Senate Will Investigate National Security Leaks About Terrorism ‘Kill List,'” it was a frightening sign that something has gone horribly wrong since the Woodward-and-Bernstein days.

Bill Boyarsky: The Invisible Man

With the Republican presidential nomination sewed up, Mitt Romney is now pretending to be acceptable to the moderate voters he will need to win in November.

Gone are the conservative promises of the primary: “I know conservatism because I have lived conservatism. … I was a severely Republican governor.” Note that his so-called severity didn’t prevent him from creating Romneycare, the model for the Affordable Health Care Act.

He fakes to the center, although his ultimate policy goal is on the right, dismantling the safety net, wiping out the health care law and assuring the wealthy of continued low taxes. Or is it? What does he really believe?

In Romney’s present incarnation, he is fixated on joblessness-blaming President Barack Obama without offering any solutions of his own. This is a path designed to appeal to moderates as well as conservatives.

Jun 07 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

New York Times Editorial: The Message From Wisconsin

When Gov. Scott Walker moved to strip Wisconsin public employees of their collective-bargaining rights last year, a few weeks after taking office, it was clear that he wasn’t doing it to save the state money. If that had been the case, he would have accepted the unions’ agreement to pay far more in health care and pension costs. His real goal was political: to break the unions by demonizing their “bosses,” ending their ability even to collect dues and removing them as a source of money and energy for Democrats.

On Tuesday, as Mr. Walker easily fought off a recall by a 7-point margin over his challenger, it became clear just how effective that strategy has been.

To start, labor failed to nominate its preferred candidate last month to run against Mr. Walker. Instead, Democrats chose Mayor Tom Barrett of Milwaukee, who then barely talked about collective-bargaining rights, sensing it would not help him. Nearly a third of union voters (presumably from private-sector unions) voted for Mr. Walker, exit polls showed, as did nearly half of voters from union households who were not union members.

Randall Fuller: Paralysis in Athens

“WHAT are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?” asked the Greek poet Constantine Cavafy in 1904. “Why do the Senators sit and pass no laws?”

Less than two weeks before Greece holds another round of national elections, Cavafy’s famous poem “Waiting for the Barbarians,” has renewed force and urgency in Athens. The elections, scheduled for June 17, will decide Greece’s fate in the euro zone and perhaps even its long-term future as a viable state. But with an excruciating choice to be made between draconian austerity measures and a departure from Europe’s shared currency, the birthplace of democracy is paralyzed with indecision and poised to descend into chaos and economic catastrophe.

Evidence of a state tottering on the edge of complete dysfunction is apparent everywhere in Athens. Traffic signals work sporadically; a sign giving the shortened hours of one of the world’s great museums, the National Archaeological Museum, is haphazardly taped to the door; police officers in riot gear patrol the perimeters of the universities, where a growing population of anarchists, disaffected young people and drug addicts congregate in communal hopelessness.

Robert Sheer: Democrats Failed in Wisconsin Because They Failed Wisconsin

On, Wisconsin! Or so it was meant to be with a union-led recall in the home state of Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette Sr., the populist governor and senator who once shaped the cry for anti-corporate social justice in this nation. After La Follette there was the Wisconsinite William Proxmire, the great conscience of the U.S. Senate, followed by the equally impressive Russ Feingold, who, despite being exactly correct in warning of the consequences of unfettered banking greed, was turned out by Wisconsin voters in 2010. Perhaps if the original McCain-Feingold legislation-gutted by the Supreme Court-was still the law of the land on campaign finance, the Democrats and their union base would have survived Tuesday’s election.

Certainly that is the excuse provided by what remains of the liberal media, which point to the lopsided advantage in funding for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and to the high court’s Citizens United ruling in seeking reasons for this “billionaire’s victory” over “people power.” But the larger truth is that the spirit of populism has been perverted by the Republican tea party right and that Democrats are left defending government bureaucracy while remaining incapable of responding to America’s widespread economic pain.

Amy Goodman: It’s One Person, One Vote, Not 1 Percent, One Vote

The failed effort to recall Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is widely seen as a crisis for the labor movement, and a pivotal moment in the 2012 U.S. presidential-election season. Walker launched a controversial effort to roll back the power of Wisconsin’s public employee unions, and the unions pushed back, aided by strong, grass-roots solidarity from many sectors. This week, the unions lost. Central to Walker’s win was a massive infusion of campaign cash, saturating the Badger state with months of political advertising. His win signals less a loss for the unions than a loss for our democracy in this post-Citizens United era, when elections can be bought with the help of a few billionaires.

The voters of Wisconsin did return control of the state Senate to the Democratic Party. The new majority will have the power to block the type of controversial legislation that made Walker famous. Meanwhile, three states over in Montana, the Democratic state attorney general, Steve Bullock, won his party’s nomination for governor to run for the seat held by term-limited Democrat Brian Schweitzer. Bullock, as attorney general, has taken on Citizens United by defending the state’s 100-year-old     corrupt-practices act, which prohibits the type of campaign donations allowed under Citizens United. The case is now before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Wisconsin’s recall is over, but the fight for democracy starts with one person, one vote, not 1 percent, one vote.

Joe Conanson: Silent Running: The Burgeoning Wisconsin Scandal That Major Media Ignored

If the Wisconsin recall is truly second in importance only to the presidential race, as many media outlets have trumpeted lately, then why have those same outlets so badly neglected one of that election’s most salient aspects?

As millions of dollars in dark right-wing money pour into the state to preserve Gov. Scott Walker from his progressive opposition, it seems relevant that he and many top aides are under investigation in a campaign finance and corruption scandal that has been growing for two years.

Yet the national media have largely ignored the fascinating details of that probe-which has already resulted in indictments, convictions and cooperation agreements implicating more than a dozen Walker aides and donors. Only readers of the local newspapers in Madison or Milwaukee would know, for instance, law enforcement documents have emerged in court during the past few days suggesting that Walker stonewalled the investigation in its initial phase.

Richard Reeves: Country For Sale

The word “takeaway” was first used in 1961, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. And then it was about Chinese restaurants. Now it is about everything, including elections.

“Three Takeaways From the Recall Vote” was the headline over the election analysis of Sean Trende, the senior election analyst of Real Clear Politics.

On Politico.com, the headline over Glenn Thrush’s analysis was, “Only One Takeaway From Wisconsin: Money Shouts.”

Trende, a great name for a political writer, began his piece on Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s surviving a recall election by saying that the results don’t tell us much about 2012. He argued that special elections are poor predictors of general elections, particularly presidential elections. This one, he said, was about one governor, one state, one issue-that is, Walker’s attempt to reduce the pay and benefits of unionized state employees. He cited exit polling that indicated most voters believe that recalls should be used only in cases of corruption.

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