Tag: TMC Politics

Before Tahrir Square happened almost nobody predicted that President Hosni Mubarak would be forced out of office by a movement that didn’t pick up a gun. Had President Barack Obama expected that outcome, he might have publicly backed Mubarak’s departure before, rather than after, Mubarak stepped down.

Obama can be seen as overcompensating for that performance in Libya, but there he is placing faith in weapons. Anybody can do that. Egypt still has a long way to go on its path to a just society. But the question of whether Tunisian-Egyptian movements will find success elsewhere is the question of whether people can take the far more challenging step of placing trust in nonviolence.

Chris Hedges: Throw Out the Money Changers

We stand today before the gates of one of our temples of finance. It is a temple where greed and profit are the highest good, where self-worth is determined by the ability to amass wealth and power at the expense of others, where laws are manipulated, rewritten and broken, where the endless treadmill of consumption defines human progress, where fraud and crimes are the tools of business.

The two most destructive forces of human nature-greed and envy-drive the financiers, the bankers, the corporate mandarins and the leaders of our two major political parties, all of whom profit from this system. They place themselves at the center of creation. They disdain or ignore the cries of those below them. They take from us our rights, our dignity and thwart our capacity for resistance. They seek to make us prisoners in our own land. They view human beings and the natural world as mere commodities to exploit until exhaustion or collapse. Human suffering, wars, climate change, poverty, it is all the price of business. Nothing is sacred. The Lord of Profit is the Lord of Death.

Lauren Unger-Geoffroy: Dispatches From Cairo: Keeping Up With Egypt

For God’s sake, American press! Hurry up! Get up to speed on the Egyptian revolution evolution! It is changing every day.

You journalists do deserve thanks for your international outcry about the abuse of power against citizens, notably women. Faces were red, small ignorant aggressive heads fell, the military boys are sorry and on best behavior and under the eye of officers (for now, and of course this is not static!). People are sitting on the tanks and sharing soft drinks with their soldier brothers again. They’ve turned the page, we’re on to the next chapter-this is EGYPT, my brothers. The people are forgiving, they do not hold a grudge: THE LOVE IS BACK.

John Niochols: Rand Paul’s Right About This: ‘The Military Budget is Going to Have to be Cut’

Americans need not agree with everything that Kentucky Senator Rand Paul says or does to recognize that he is one of the few members of Congress who is contributing anything more than hype and hypocrisy to the current budget debate.

Unlike House Budget Committee chair Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, and the other “deficit hawk” pretenders who back bank bailouts and every new war that a president proposes, Senator Paul keeps pushing his colleagues to get real about addressing the real bloat in the budget.

It was refreshing to hear all those unambiguous declarations from President Obama on Wednesday. “I will not” let Medicare become a voucher program or deprive families with disabled children of needed benefits. “We will” reform government health care programs without disavowing the social compact. “I refuse” to sign another renewal of the Bush tax cuts for millionaires. Republicans “want to give people like me a $200,000 tax cut that’s paid for by asking 33 seniors each to pay $6,000 more in health costs. … And it’s not going to happen as long as I’m president.”

OK, there weren’t any lines with the simple heat of “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” or the terse power of “Make my day.” But Obama’s budget manifesto represented a significant warming of his usually cool rhetoric. He said he wanted to find common ground but instead devoted much of the speech to drawing lines in the sand.

And thank goodness. If ever there were a time when lines desperately needed to be drawn, it’s now.

Joe Conason: Democrats Can Win the Budget Debate

Having hesitated to fully enter the fiscal fray, President Obama has at last delivered a plausible, principled response to the budgetary flimflams of the far right. But one speech, even a very good speech, won’t fulfill his obligation in this fateful argument.

What Obama began to do this week is what Democrats ought to have been doing forcefully for many weeks, which is to ensure that Americans understand the central differences between Democratic and Republican budgeting-and how the party’s contrasting programs would affect them and their families. While acknowledging the need to bring the federal budget closer to balance in coming years, the president laid down real markers concerning how that objective should and should not be achieved.

David Sirota: Ikea Joins the Race to the Bottom

When it comes to ubiquitous symbols of mass American culture, the 1999 movie “Fight Club” aptly reminded us that bland Ikea furniture is now on par with mom and apple pie.

The film, of course, was lamenting more the ennui of homogenization than Ikea’s particular business model, because Ikea’s market saturation was always considered somewhat laudable thanks to the company’s seemingly special ethos. Based in Sweden, the blue-and-yellow behemoth was known to consumers as one of the few courageous anti-Wal-Marts in the big-box world-a firm whose Scandinavian-socialist flavor appeared to assure us that it was probably treating its workers better than most multinationals, thus giving America a rare haven of guilt-free shopping.

Or so it seemed, until the Los Angeles Times this week published a damning story about Ikea’s manufacturing plant in Danville, Va.

John Nichols: Paul Ryan’s Authoritarian Freakout: Losing Control of Budget Voting, Congressman Screeches ‘Shut it Down’

Paul Ryan claims to be a huge fan of novelist Ayn Rand, the libertarian favorite whose books and essays celebrated bold and unexpected acts of rebellion against autocrats and authoritarians

The House Budget Committee chair positions himself as such a Randifarian that he requires his staff to read the Russian immigrant’s objectivist tracks.

But, while Rand at her best celebrated creative dissent, Ryan’s got a big problem with it-a big-government problem.

The congressional prima donna was set to take his star turn Friday, with the easy passage of a plan that begins the process of privatizing Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid-not for the purpose of balancing the budget but rather to steer federal funds into the coffers of the Wall Street speculators who have funded Ryan’s rise to political prominence.

Barack Obama, March 28, 2011, explaining America’s involvement in the war in Libya:

   Of course, there is no question that Libya — and the world — would be better off with Qaddafi out of power. I, along with many other world leaders, have embraced that goal, and will actively pursue it through non-military means. But broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake.

Barack Obama, David Cameron, Nicolas Sarkozy, joint Op-Ed, yesterday:

   The bombing continues until Gaddafi goes

   Our duty and our mandate under UN Security Council Resolution 1973 is to protect civilians, and we are doing that. It is not to remove Gaddafi by force. . . . However, so long as Gaddafi is in power, Nato and its coalition partners must maintain their operations so that civilians remain protected and the pressure on the regime builds. Then a genuine transition from dictatorship to an inclusive constitutional process can really begin, led by a new generation of leaders. For that transition to succeed, Colonel Gaddafi must go, and go for good.

Whatever one thinks about this war limited humanitarian intervention on the merits, this is not the mission that Obama cited when justifying America’s involvement. It’s the opposite:  “broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake” v. “so long as Gaddafi is in power, Nato and its coalition partners must maintain their operations.” To claim that “regime change” is subsumbed under the goal of “protecting civilians” is to define that objective so broadly as to render it meaningless and, independently, is to violate Obama’s explicit decree at the start that regime change would not be the military goal.  Finally, note the blithe dismissal of the very limited U.N. Resolution that initially justified all this: it does not provide for regime change in Libya by force, acknowledged the three leaders, but that, in essence, is what we’re going to do anyway (continue “operations” until he’s gone).

John Nichols: How Socialists Built America

This article is adapted from The “S” Word: A Short History of an American Tradition… Socialism, published in March by Verso.

If there’s one constant in the elite national discourse of the moment, it is the claim that America was founded as a capitalist country and that socialism is a dangerous foreign import that, despite our unwarranted faith in free trade, must be barred at the border. This most conventional “wisdom”-increasingly accepted at least until the recent grassroots mobilizations in Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan and Maine-has held that everything public is inferior to everything private, that corporations are always good and unions always bad, that progressive taxation is inherently evil and that the best economic model is the one that allows the wealthy to gobble up as much of the Republic as they choose before anything trickles down to the great mass of Americans. Rush Limbaugh informs us regularly that proposals to tax people as rich as he is for the purpose of providing healthcare for kids and jobs for the unemployed are “antithetical” to the nation’s original intent and that Barack Obama’s reforms are “destroying this country as it was founded.”

MIchelle Chen: A Year On, BP Oil Still Mars Gulf Communities, Public Scrutiny Dries Up

The April 14 meeting proceeded efficiently, as scheduled, for BP shareholders. For the workers, environmentalists and community members rallying in protest, though, the day of reckoning had yet to arrive.

The government and media may be moving on from aftermath of the Deepwater disaster, but the scars left behind by the spill are still raw and festering.

First, Congress has passed no legislation to prevent the kind of disaster that touched off the explosion that killed 11 workers and poured masses of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

Bill McKibben; What if Your President’s Just Not That Into You?

Tomorrow in Washington, at the sprawling and wonderful Power Shift, a few of us are on a panel titled “What If Your President’s Just Not That Into You?” Funny title, serious question.

The first thing: those of us in the environmental movement aren’t high school sophomores feeling jilted by their first crush. Most of us liked Obama a lot: I was among the first green leaders to join upon ‘Environmentalists for Obama,’ back when he seemed a longshot. It wasn’t because I thought he would solve every problem; it’s because I thought he’d make climate change one of the top two priorities of his presidency. And he thought so too: on the day in June of 2008 when he finally clinched the nomination he said that people would someday look back and say “this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”

Of all the topics on which I’ve focused, I’ve likely written most about America’s two-tiered justice system — the way in which political and financial elites now enjoy virtually full-scale legal immunity for even the most egregious lawbreaking, while ordinary Americans, especially the poor and racial and ethnic minorities, are subjected to exactly the opposite treatment: the world’s largest prison state and most merciless justice system. That full-scale destruction of the rule of law is also the topic of my forthcoming book. But The New York Times this morning has a long article so perfectly illustrating what I mean by “two-tiered justice system” — and the way in which it obliterates the core covenant of the American Founding: equality before the law — that it’s impossible for me not to highlight it.

The article’s headline tells most of the story: “In Financial Crisis, No Prosecutions of Top Figures.” It asks: “why, in the aftermath of a financial mess that generated hundreds of billions in losses, have no high-profile participants in the disaster been prosecuted?” And it recounts that not only have no high-level culprits been indicted (or even subjected to meaningful criminal investigations), but few have suffered any financial repercussions in the form of civil enforcements or other lawsuits. The evidence of rampant criminality that led to the 2008 financial crisis is overwhelming, but perhaps the clearest and most compelling such evidence comes from long-time Wall-Street-servant Alan Greenspan; even he was forced to acknowledge that much of the precipitating conduct was “certainly illegal and clearly criminal” and that “a lot of that stuff was just plain fraud.”

Michael Moore: This Tax Day, Make THEM Pay

Friends,

Do you wonder (like I do) what the tax accountants and executives are doing over at GE this weekend? Frantically rushing to fill out their IRS returns like the rest of us?

Hardly. They’re taking the weekend off to throw themselves a big party and have a hearty laugh at all of us. It must really crack them up to see us like suckers scurrying around to make sure we report everything to Uncle Sam — and even send him a check, if necessary.

The joke’s on us, folks. GE and tons of other corporations will have a tax bill for 2010 of ZERO. GE had $14.2 billion in profits in 2010. Yet they will contribute NOTHING to the federal government while every last dime is soaked from us.

Angi Becker Stevens: The Hypocrisy of “Informed Consent” Abortion Laws

Like most people, I don’t spend much time going through my state’s legislative website, reading the actual language of our state laws. When researching the recently proposed abortion restrictions here in Michigan, though, I felt compelled to read the actual abortion regulations as they currently stand-not just a summary, but the actual word of the law. I expected something cold and formal; legal language offering at least a surface-level impression of impartiality. So I was surprised to find, instead, that even the word of the law is actually dripping with rhetoric-and specifically, that it’s nauseatingly constructed on the premise of being “pro-woman.”

Sean Palfrey: How patients can help doctors practice better, less costly medicine

The past few decades have been exciting for the practice of medicine. We have made many dramatic scientific advances and developed many tests, medications and therapies. In pediatrics, we have been blessed with breakthroughs such as vaccines that eliminate deadly infant diseases and vastly improved asthma and diabetes medications.

Doctors, always eager to take advantage of discoveries, are now often ordering expensive tests and therapies without considering how essential they might be for their patients. In the process, we are bankrupting our nation’s health system and depriving millions of people of any health care at all. Ironically, however, the United States has fallen behind in many categories of child health outcomes compared with other developed countries, including higher rates of infant mortality and teen pregnancy, more serious accidents, and more obesity and diabetes.

Paul McGeough: Hospitals Show Ugly Truth about Bahrain, as US Looks the Other Way

Tiny Bahrain, a vital American ally in the Gulf region, is reimaging itself as a classic Cold War police state in the aftermath of the democracy uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa.

The island’s Sunni hereditary monarchy, which presents itself to the world as a ”constitutional monarchy”, was ahead of the reform curve that erupted in Tunisia in January – three months earlier it set about repressing political parties and arresting majority Shiite activists by the hundreds.

But in the aftermath of declaring a state of emergency, still being enforced by troops from neighbouring Saudi Arabia, it is the kingdom’s hospitals through which the world can see the uglier side of a regime which, compared with those in Libya and Syria, has earned only the mildest of rebukes from the Obama administration.

Karen Hansen-Kuhn : The US-Colombia Trade Agreement: A Volatile Agenda on Agriculture

The new Obama trade policy, as embodied in its free-trade agreement with Colombia, sadly resembles the old Bush trade policy: promoting growth in exports and investment at the expense of local economies and resilient food systems. This is unfortunate, not only because it fails to deliver Obama’s promised “21st-century” trade agenda, but also because it ignores some of the key lessons from NAFTA and the 2008 food-price crisis. Globalization has tied our economies together so that price changes in one country transmit around the world, increasing hunger and undermining efforts to rebuild rural communities and resilient food systems.

For decades, the primary problem for agriculture had been low prices, stimulated by U.S. and European agricultural policies that compelled farmers to continue to produce more and more to make up in volume what was lost in falling prices, and to seek ever expanding markets, whether at home or abroad. Cheap imports flooded the markets of developing countries, devastating small-scale farmers in poor countries while failing to stabilize farm incomes in the U.S. and Europe.

In December, President Obama signed legislation to extend hundreds of billions of dollars in Bush tax cuts, benefiting the wealthiest Americans. Last week, Obama agreed to billions of dollars in cuts that will impose the greatest burden on the poorest Americans. And now, virtually everyone in Washington believes, the President is about to embark on a path that will ultimately lead to some type of reductions in Social Security, Medicare and/or Medicaid benefits under the banner of “reform.” Tax cuts for the rich — budget cuts for the poor — “reform” of the Democratic Party’s signature safety net programs — a continuation of Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies and a new Middle East war launched without Congressional approval. That’s quite a legacy combination for a Democratic President.

All of that has led to a spate of negotiation advice from the liberal punditocracy advising the President how he can better defend progressive policy aims — as though the Obama White House deeply wishes for different results but just can’t figure out how to achieve them. Jon Chait, Josh Marshall, and Matt Yglesias all insist that the President is “losing” on these battles because of bad negotiating strategy, and will continue to lose unless it improves. Ezra Klein says “it makes absolutely no sense” that Democrats didn’t just raise the debt ceiling in December, when they had the majority and could have done it with no budget cuts. Once it became clear that the White House was not following their recommended action of demanding a “clean” vote on raising the debt ceiling — thus ensuring there will be another, probably larger round of budget cuts — Yglesias lamented that the White House had “flunked bargaining 101.” Their assumption is that Obama loathes these outcomes but is the victim of his own weak negotiating strategy.

Jon Walker: Obama’s Budget Promises on Bush Tax Cuts, Drug Price Negotiation Ring Hollow

The deficit reduction plan President Obama vaguely outlined yesterday lacks basic credibility. The problem isn’t that the math doesn’t add up-it is at least a dramatic improvement over Republican Paul Ryan’s plan, which literally defies logic and basic math. This issue is that many of the reductions President Obama promised yesterday come from actions that he has been promising for years, yet when the opportunity came up to fulfill them, he actively violated his word.

In the speech, Obama again promised huge deficit reductions from both letting the Bush tax cuts expire for those making over $250,000, and fixing Medicare Part D by allowing Medicare to directly negotiate for lower drug prices. We are supposed to believe he will fight for these despite having laid down on both before.

Katrina vanden Heuvel: Fighting for a People’s Budget

On Wednesday, President Obama spoke in eloquent language of our social contract, of a progressive patriotism, and of a role for government that helps us “do together what we cannot do as well for ourselves.” It was a clear rebuke to the GOP’s Robin Hood in Reverse agenda-taking from the poor and middle-class in order to preserve tax breaks for corporations and the wealthiest Americans.

Obama made the right choice in defending Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and pushing instead for healthcare reform-even putting negotiating drug prices on the table. He again refused to renew the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy-a pledge he has made and broken in the past. He also called for cuts in a defense budget that has contributed 2 out of 3 dollars in increased discretionary spending since 2001

Mike Lux: It’s All One Story

I’m going to comment on the President’s budget speech in a minute, but first I want to highlight something happening on Capitol Hill today that really ties together the Republican governing philosophy.

There is a certain rich irony in Darrell Issa bringing Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker to the Capitol for a hearing on how Moody’s has boosted Wisconsin’s credit rating because of the union busting measures Walker has been pushing in the state. So in one sentence, you have a leader of the House Republicans that are trying to do away with Medicare and Medicaid, the governor who most personifies the attempt to crush collective bargaining in this country, and one of the principal companies at the dead center of the fraud on Wall Street that brought down the world economy. They should take their show on the road. You could entitle it “Cruelty, Arrogance, and Fraud: How to Dismantle the American Middle Class in Three Easy Steps.”

Issa, Walker, and Moody’s belong together. This is all one story – the story of a relentless assault on the working middle class and those desperately trying to gain a foothold on the ladder up to it.

Johann Hari]: This royal frenzy should embarrass us all

Republicans are not the Grinch, trying to ruin the ‘big day’ for William and Kate. We are proposing a positive vision

Okay, let’s cut a deal here. If Britain can afford to spend tens of millions of pounds on the royal wedding, we have to spend an equal amount distributing anti-nausea pills across the land – to all of us who can’t bear to see our country embarrass itself in this way. Don’t let the Gawd-bless-you-ever-so-‘umbly-yer-Majesty tone of the media coverage fool you. Most British people are benignly indifferent to the wedding of William Windsor and Kate Middleton. The 20 percent of us who are republicans, like me, have it slightly worse. We will suffer that face-flushing, stomach-shriveling embarrassment that strikes when somebody you love – your country – starts to behave in a deeply weird way in a public place.

Of course, when two people get married, it’s a sweet sight. Nobody objects to that part. On the contrary: republicans are the only people who would let William Windsor and Kate Middleton have the private, personal wedding they clearly crave, instead of turning them into stressed-out, emptied-out marionettes of monarchy that are about to jerk across the stage. We object not to a wedding, but to the orgy of deference, snobbery, and worship for the hereditary principle that will take place before, during and after it.