Tag: TMC Politics

May 06 2015

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

Katrina vanden Heuvel: The Enduring Shame of ‘Separate and Unequal’

n July 1966, James Baldwin published “A Report from Occupied Territory,” a despairing essay in The Nation contemplating race relations in Harlem and other American cities. Describing the deep sense of alienation and despair in the black community, Baldwin wrote, “The children, having seen the spectacular defeat of their fathers-having seen what happens to any bad nigger and, still more, what happens to the good ones-cannot listen to their fathers and certainly will not listen to the society which is responsible for their orphaned condition.” Fifty years later, it’s heartbreaking and infuriating to read those words and realize how little has changed.

The riots that erupted in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray, who sustained fatal injuries in police custody last month, were as predictable as they were painful to watch. Across the country, Gray is the latest in a long line of black men killed, inexplicably, in brushes with the law; Baltimore is the latest city, but likely not the last, where blacks’ legitimate frustration has reached a boiling point and spilled into the streets. And yet the unrest in Baltimore and other cities is about more than a single death or even the single issue of police brutality. It’s about the structural racism, inequality and poverty that have pervaded our cities and plagued our society for too long.

Chelsea E Manning: We’re citizens, not subjects. We have the right to criticize government without fear

When freedom of information and transparency are stifled, then bad decisions are often made and heartbreaking tragedies occur – too often on a breathtaking scale that can leave societies wondering: how did this happen? Think about the recent debates on torture, assassination by unmanned aircraft, secret warrants and detentions, intelligence and surveillance courts, military commissions, immigration detention centers and the conduct of modern warfare. These policies affect millions of people around the world every day and can affect anyone – wives, children, fathers, aunts, boyfriends, cousins, friends, employees, bosses, clergy and even career politicians – at any time. It is time that we bring a health dose of sunlight to them.

I believe that when the public lacks even the most fundamental access to what its governments and militaries are doing in their names, then they cease to be involved in the act of citizenship. There is a bright distinction between citizens, who have rights and privileges protected by the state, and subjects, who are under the complete control and authority of the state.

Alison Bethel McKenzie: Press freedom is declining in the US

Once a global beacon, the American press has suffered from scandal, unpopularity and government crackdowns

While American journalists have long been hailed as flag bearers of the profession – able to report, write and broadcast in mostly ideal circumstances – in the past two decades or more, we have seen a number of cases of fabrication by journalists who have shamed the profession at large and undermined public trust. The more journalism loses popular support, the greater the leverage the public and government officials have to restrict press freedom.

No longer can U.S.media ignore the issue of press freedom and point fingers at other nations for their poor records. Today journalists in the United States are under fire more than ever.

In 2015 the United States’ ranking in the Reporters Without Borders index of press freedom dropped from 20 in 2010 to 49 – four steps above Haiti. Placing higher than the United States: Namibia, Latvia, Suriname, El Salvador, Samoa and Burkina Faso.

The reason for the drop? Frequent attacks on journalists by the public and law enforcement during demonstrations and other high-profile events, threats against journalists who refuse to reveal their sources and the government’s failure to pass a federal shield law protecting journalists.

Sarah Knuckey and Hina Shamsi:

In releasing information on April 23 about a drone strike that killed two western hostages in Pakistan in January, the Obama administration demonstrated that it is able and willing to acknowledge responsibility for strikes, carry out investigations into them, and publicly offer compensation to victims’ families.

This approach should be the rule rather than the exception.

But to the families of hundreds of Pakistani and Yemeni victims of US drone strikes, the United States has offered only silence. President Obama stated that he decided to release information about the January strike because “the Weinstein and Lo Porto families deserve to know the truth.” They certainly do. And so do Yemeni and Pakistani families who have lost their loved ones and who thus far have been denied even simple acknowledgment. The contrast is glaring, unfair, and likely to increase the already strong anti-American sentiment the lethal force program has caused abroad.

These limited disclosures also underscore the urgent need for meaningful oversight and implementation of reforms – including restrictions on the killing authority that President Obama announced in 2013, but from which he then partially exempted the CIA’s strikes in Pakistan.

Michele Simon: Meat lobby peddles doubt to undermine dietary guidelines

The Dietary Guidelines for Americans, updated every five years, never fails to cause a stir. For the current revision, released in February, a federally appointed scientific committee – after a two-year review of the latest research and numerous public hearings – has recommended (PDF) lowering consumption of red meat and processed meat.

Despite being fairly tepid, this advice set off a media firestorm, driven by a defensive meat industry and others who have been muddying the waters for some time on the role of meat in the diet. The meat lobby is taking full advantage of the current “debate.” [..]

Most of the discourse around red meat has largely focused on two issues: whether or not saturated fat is unfairly vilified as contributing to heart disease, and how, despite lowering their intake of red meat, Americans continue to gain weight.

The nutritionally myopic approach to meat-eating’s relationship to heart disease and obesity plays right into the meat lobby’s game. It’s a strategy honed by the tobacco industry decades ago: Create enough doubt to maintain the status quo – in this case, the promotion of red meat by the federal government.

Jessica Valenti: To make a 10-year-old give birth isn’t just horrifying – it’s life threatening

Would anyone in their right mind think it reasonable that a 10-year-old carry a pregnancy to term? This is not a thought experiment but the horrible story of a real child in Paraguay: raped by her stepfather and now denied an abortion.

According to Amnesty International – which is leading the charge to obtain an abortion for the child – the young girl’s condition became public when she went to the hospital complaining of stomach pain and was found to be 21 weeks pregnant. [..]

Paraguay has very strict laws on abortion – the procedure is only permitted when a person’s life is at risk. There are no exceptions for rape or incest.

Antonio Barrios, the Health Minister of Paraguay, said: “there is no indication that the health of the [girl] is at risk … therefore we are not, from any point of view, in favor of the termination of the pregnancy”.

There are so many levels of horror here it’s hard to know where to begin but this, perhaps, is the most baffling: in what universe is a 10-year-old delivering a child not a risk to her life?

May 06 2015

Lindsey, You Can Come Out Now

More Americans feel comfortable with a presidential candidate who identifies as gay or lesbian than with one who identifies as an evangelical Christian, according to a new poll.

Really??? Seriously, it is

The latest WSJ/NBC poll listed a series of qualities in a potential presidential candidate and asked respondents whether they’d “be enthusiastic,” “be comfortable with,” “have some reservations about” or “be very uncomfortable with” a candidate with each of those qualities.

The results revealed that Americans are actually quite open to having a gay presidential candidate. Sixty-one percent said they would be either enthusiastic about or comfortable with a gay or lesbian candidate, while only 37 percent said they would have reservations or be uncomfortable.

By comparison, respondents were a little less comfortable with the prospect of a candidate who is an evangelical Christian. Fifty-two percent said they’d be enthusiastic about or comfortable with an evangelical Christian running for president, while 44 percent expressed some degree of hesitancy about the idea. (Two percent of respondents said they were not sure about a gay or lesbian candidate, while four percent were not sure about an evangelical.)

So, throw your hat in the ring, Huckleberry, you might actually have a good chance, but you have to stop saying nonsense like this:

“Al Qaeda, Al Nusra, Al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula… Everything that starts with ‘Al’ in the Middle East is bad news” – these were Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina words at an AIPAC New England Leadership Dinner in Boston’s Convention Center last night.

Senator Graham, who strongly hinted about his intentions on running for presidency, should have probably checked the dictionary before making such a comment. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, Al in Arabic is simply meaning “the.” “It often prefixes Arabic proper nouns, especially place-names; an example is Al-Jazīrah (Arabic: “The Island”), the name of an interfluvial region in Sudan. The article is often used in lowercase form, hence al-Jazīrah.”, Britannica explains.

Lindsey, dear, we know you were just being “funny” but the Islamaphobia won’t win you the nomination or the White House.

May 05 2015

Common Core, Standardized Testing and Vomit

I don’t often delve into the dark world of what education in the United States has become since my child was in school in the 70’s & 80’s. But lately it has factored into politics here in New York State and across the country with the advent of Common Core, standardized testing and for profit charter schools that are encroaching on America’s once excellent public system of education. The arguments in the past were mostly over funding, teachers’ salaries and contracts. Parents used to just worry about homework, grades and snow days. Some things remain the same, but now, add to the list: teacher evaluations, tenure, funding charter schools, teaching to tests, vomit and incontinence:

The principals’ letter on the new exams lists a number of problems with the exams and said many children reacted “viscerally” to the tests:

   We know that many children cried during or after testing, and others vomited or lost control of their bowels or bladders. Others simply gave up. One teacher reported that a student kept banging his head on the desk, and wrote, “This is too hard,” and “I can’t do this,” throughout his test booklet.

It urges parents to help children who scored poorly understand that it isn’t their fault.

It has become so bad that in NY state as many as 200,000 students opted out of the mandatory testing:

New York’s rejection of the Common Core tests crosses geographical, socio-economic and racial lines.

There are also reports that student opt-outs were suppressed by administrators in some districts, who called in non-English speaking parents and pressured them to rescind their opt-out letters. Parent activist Jeanette Deutermann states that she “was contacted by dozens of NYC teachers who were horrified by the scare tactics being used on parents in their schools, to coerce them into participating in this year’s assessments. Language barriers and the absence of a social media presence resulted in a lack of knowledge about their rights to refuse the test. Teachers reported that administrators exploited this language and information barrier, telling parents that their children would not be promoted if they refused, or that they simply had no right to refuse. This is blatant discrimination at best.”

Despite attempts to suppress opt out, refusal rates were over three times last year’s 60,000, and activist parents are already planning to increase numbers next year. The opt-out movement is spreading across the nation. PARCC opt out is taking off in Colorado, New Jersey and California, especially among high-school students. [..]

Opt out is far bigger than a test refusal event. It is the repudiation of a host of corporate reforms that include the Common Core, high-stakes testing, school closings and the evaluation of teachers by test scores.   These reforms are being soundly rejected by parents and teachers.

Leave it to John Oliver, host of HBO’s “Last Week Tonight” to hammer home everything that is wrong with standardized testing:

“Something is wrong with our system when we just assume a certain number of students will vomit,” Oliver said. “Standardized tests are supposed to be an assessment of skills, not a rap battle on ‘8 Mile’ Road.”

May 05 2015

Punting the Pundits

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

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

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

New York Times Editorial Board: Runaway Drug Prices

A drug to treat abnormal heart rhythms can cost about $200 on one day and more than $1,300 the next. A diagnosis of multiple sclerosis can lead to a drug bill of at least $50,000 a year. How companies set prices of specialty drugs for these and other complex diseases, like cancer and AIDS, has been a mystery to the patients who need them. Now the Obama administration and some states are tackling that lack of transparency and the rising costs. [..]

A recent report in The Wall Street Journal described how Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, based in Canada, bought the rights to two lifesaving heart drugs on Feb. 10 and raised their prices the same day. The list price for a one-milliliter vial of Isuprel, used to treat abnormal heart rhythms, rose to $1,347 from $215. The price for a two-milliliter vial of Nitropress, for dangerously high blood pressure and acute heart failure, increased from to $806 from $258. The Journal cites similar increases for Ofirmev pain injections and Vimovo pain tablets after new companies acquired the rights.

Bills have been introduced in several states requiring drug makers to report profits and expenses for costly drugs or sometimes for all drugs, according to The Journal’s pharmaceutical blog. Such disclosures might shame companies into restraining their price increases and provide state officials with information to determine what action to take.

Paul Krugman: Race, Class and Neglect

Every time you’re tempted to say that America is moving forward on race – that prejudice is no longer as important as it used to be – along comes an atrocity to puncture your complacency. Almost everyone realizes, I hope, that the Freddie Gray affair wasn’t an isolated incident, that it’s unique only to the extent that for once there seems to be a real possibility that justice may be done.

And the riots in Baltimore, destructive as they are, have served at least one useful purpose: drawing attention to the grotesque inequalities that poison the lives of too many Americans.

Yet I do worry that the centrality of race and racism to this particular story may convey the false impression that debilitating poverty and alienation from society are uniquely black experiences. In fact, much though by no means all of the horror one sees in Baltimore and many other places is really about class, about the devastating effects of extreme and rising inequality.

Rev. Dan Schatz: How Not to Celebrate Cinco de Mayo

About a year ago I read an eloquent and powerful article on Cinco de Mayo by Sudie Hoffman at the Zinn Educational Project. In this must-read blog post, Hoffman correctly names the damaging ethnic stereotypes embodied in the commercial appropriation of this day as it is celebrated in the United States. [..]

Why do we do this? Why do good, thoughtful people who would never think to celebrate African American culture with fried chicken, watermelons, and Sambo figurines nevertheless feel it perfectly appropriate to “honor” Mexico with racist tropes?

I don’t have an answer to this. I hate to think people actually believe those stereotypes, but it’s likely some do. Or maybe they simply don’t stop to think about how hurtful and damaging those kinds of images can be.

On the other hand, there is a reason Cinco de Mayo came to the U.S., and it wasn’t to celebrate a dictator. In the 1960s Chicano activists thought that this day might become a bridge to better understanding and acceptance of Mexican Americans in the United States, and a window to authentic Mexican culture. It didn’t turn out that way, but there is no reason we cannot return to that initial intent.

Dean Baker: Celebrating the Flash Crash with a Wall Street Sales Tax

This week marks the fifth anniversary of the flash crash. For those who don’t remember, the Flash Crash was when the stock market lost almost nine percent of its value from its opening level, with most of this decline occurring in a five-minute period.  [..]

The issue of short-term trading is the key here. There was no event in the world that triggered the plunge. There was no outbreak of war, major terrorist incident, or natural disaster that sent stock prices plummeting. There wasn’t even a bad profit report from a major company. The crash was based simply on program trading that fed back on itself, turning a downward blip into a major plunge. [..]

The traders now siphon off more than $200 billion (1.3 percent of GDP) a year from the productive economy. Much of this money is the income of super-rich bankers and hedge fund partners.

There is a simple and easy way to reduce the amount of money being drained away by short-term traders. A financial transactions tax, effectively a modest sales tax applied to trades, would drastically reduce the amount of short-term trading while raising a huge amount of revenue.

Jason Downs: How Do We Prevent Another Freddie Gray?

Telling the truth requires courage. Lying is easy. Telling half-truths is the coward’s way out. But telling the truth in the face of adversity calls for great courage. Accepting the truth, especially when this truth offends your sensibilities, requires even greater courage.

Discussing Freddie Gray’s homicide without discussing race is as incomplete as discussing the history of the United States without discussing slavery. It’s a half-truth. [..]

Once the truth is known, once dirty little secrets are revealed, the frustration shown yesterday is better understood, which is not the same as condoning any more violence. Freddie Gray’s homicide was not an isolated incident; it was the tipping point. That said, the question now is how to honor this truth?

How do we prevent another Freddie Gray? How do we prevent explosions of community anger and frustration that burn down portions of our city?

Wendell Potter: Why Health Insurers May Be Destined to Follow Blockbuster Into Irrelevance

Remember Blockbuster?

In its heyday — which wasn’t so long ago — Blockbuster had 60,000 employees and 9,000 locations. For most Americans, for a minute anyway, it was the place to rent a movie. Then along came Netflix. And Redbox, which operates most of the movie-rental kiosks in convenience and grocery stores. [..]

What will be the next Blockbuster? It very well might be your health insurance company, says Steven Brill, the entrepreneur and journalist whose 26,000-word Time magazine cover story about the absurdly high costs of American health care captured the nation’s attention two years ago.

“I see insurance companies as the weak players” in the U.S. health care system, Brill told me in a recent interview. By that he meant that insurers have become increasingly impotent middlemen in the battle to rein in health care costs. [..]

Hospitals will have to be regulated in ways they haven’t been regulated before, he says. There will need to be standard-of-care regulations. And limits on profit margins.

Brill believes that if those and other regulations can be put in place, quality of care will go up and costs will come down. If they aren’t, however, we may be worse off than we are now.

May 04 2015

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

Richard (RJ) Eskow: After Baltimore: Soul Searching in Another America

When asked about Baltimore last week, President Obama said this: “… if we think that we’re just gonna send the police to do the dirty work of containing the problems that arise (in our inner cities), without as a nation and as a society saying what can we do to change those communities … then we’re not gonna solve this problem.”

He added:

“We can’t just leave this to the police. I think there are police departments that have to do some soul searching. I think there are some communities that have to do some soul searching. But I think we, as a country, have to do some soul searching.”

The President is right. But how, exactly, does a nation go about searching its soul in times like these?

Perhaps it begins by reflecting on his own brilliant words from the 2004 Democratic Convention — the words that set him on the path to the White House. “There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America,” Barack Obama said that night, “there’s the United States of America.”

That summer evening seems so long ago now.

Robert Reich: Trans-Pacific Trickle-Down Economics

Have we learned nothing from thirty years of failed trickle-down economics?

By now we should know that when big corporations, Wall Street, and the wealthy get special goodies, the rest of us get shafted.

The Reagan and George W. Bush tax cuts of 1981, 2001, and 2003, respectively, were sold to America as ways to boost the economy and create jobs.

They ended up boosting the take-home pay of those at the top. Most Americans saw no gains.

In fact, the long stagnation of American wages began with Reaganomics. Wages rose a bit under Bill Clinton, and then started plummeting again under George W. Bush.

Trickle-down economics proved a cruel hoax. The new jobs created under Reagan and George W. Bush paid lousy wages, the old jobs paid even less, and we ended up with whopping federal budget deficits.

Dean Baker: Hit Job: Daniel DiSalvo on Public Sector Unions

Daniel DiSalvo doesn’t like public sector unions. That is the main takeaway from Government Against Itself (Oxford University Press) DiSalvo’s new book on public sector unions. In the course of reading the book, they are likely to conclude that he is not especially fond of unions or workers, in general. He also doesn’t like Social Security and Medicare. He even manages to get in a drive-by directed at Senator Elizabeth Warren.

But the main villain of the book is clearly public sector unions. DiSalvo paints a dark conspiracy where public sector unions push for ever higher pay and benefits, work rules that allow for endless loafing on the job, and disciplinary policies that prevent even the most incompetent from being fired. High costs and low productivity strain public budgets, but the political power of public sector unions prevents effective steps to counter their abuses. Since the unions are such large donors to political campaigns, politicians can’t stand up to them. It’s a moving story — the data just don’t quite fit the picture.

Robert Kuttner: Some More Radical Ideas for Hillary

I am going to periodically suggest ideas that Hillary Clinton might consider — both to establish that she is a real-deal progressive and to rally political support from voters whom the economy is leaving behind. Clinton might even outflank some leading progressives by going beyond what is considered politically safe in the current environment.

Another name for that is leadership. So if Hillary wants to show that she’s a fighter, let her pick some good fights. [..]

It’s time. Some Wall Street supporters might get off her bandwagon — and good riddance. She has plenty to spare.

May 03 2015

Punting the Pundits: Sunday Preview Edition

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

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

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

The Sunday Talking Heads:

This Week with George Stephanopolis: The guests on today’s “This Week” are:  Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD);  Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC); and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).

The roundtable guests are: Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol; former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson; editor and publisher of The Nation Katrina vanden Heuvel; and former Bush White House press secretary Dana Perino.,

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Schieffer’s guests are: Cornell William Brooks, President of the NAACP; Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI); and CBS News correspondent Seth Doane in Nepal.

His panel guests are: Sherrilyn Ifill, director of the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund; Ramesh Ponnuru of National Review;, Michele Norris of NPR; author and economist Dr. Julianne Malveaux; and Michael Gerson, The Washington Post.

Meet the Press with Chuck Todd: The guests are: Rep. John Boehner (R-OH); and former Gov. Martin O’Malley (D-MD); and Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Mayor of Baltimore.

The panel guests are: Tom Brokaw, NBC News; author Wes Moore; April Ryan, American Urban Radio Networks; and Kimberley Strassel, The Wall Street Journal.

State of the Union with Jake Tapper: Mr. Tapper’s guests are: Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD); Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter (D); and Birmingham Mayor William Bell (D); former Baltimore Ravens Dj Bryant; Charles M. Blow, The New York Times; and Tara Wall, journalist and media entrepreneur.

His panel guests are; Errol Lewis, NY1; S.E. Cupp, CNN; and Michael Smerconish, CNN.

Now go out and play in the sun, or just go back to sleep.

May 02 2015

Punting the Pundits

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

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

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

New York Times Editorial Board: More Excuses on the Patriot Act

Software designers have a term – “minimal viable product” – to describe early versions of things like iPhone apps that they can rush to market. The idea is to get something out and refine it as they go along. That’s the argument being made for a measure in Congress that would modify the Patriot Act to make it somewhat harder for the government to conduct mass surveillance of Americans without regard to whether they committed any misdeeds.

Sure, there are compromises, Americans are told, but we should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. The bill is a “critical first step toward reining in” surveillance by the National Security Agency and is a basis for more reform, said Human Rights Watch.

Except the Constitution is not Candy Crush. [..]

The American Civil Liberties Union believes the bill doesn’t sufficiently tighten the definition of the terms used to justify data collection, or properly limit the retention of information about people who are not suspected of wrongdoing, or require meaningful disclosure of so-called “backdoor” searches of databases by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It does not appoint an advocate to argue before the FISA court on behalf of civil liberties; instead, it simply appoints a panel of experts to advise the court, where only the government is allowed to present a case, in secret.

Paul Krugman: Ideology and Integrity

The 2016 campaign should be almost entirely about issues. The parties are far apart on everything from the environment to fiscal policy to health care, and history tells us that what politicians say during a campaign is a good guide to how they will govern.

Nonetheless, many in the news media will try to make the campaign about personalities and character instead. And character isn’t totally irrelevant. The next president will surely encounter issues that aren’t currently on anyone’s agenda, so it matters how he or she is likely to react. But the character trait that will matter most isn’t one the press likes to focus on. In fact, it’s actively discouraged.

You see, you shouldn’t care whether a candidate is someone you’d like to have a beer with. Nor should you care about politicians’ sex lives, or even their spending habits unless they involve clear corruption. No, what you should really look for, in a world that keeps throwing nasty surprises at us, is intellectual integrity: the willingness to face facts even if they’re at odds with one’s preconceptions, the willingness to admit mistakes and change course.

And that’s a virtue in very short supply.

Anna Feigenbaum: The profitable theatrics of riot control

Militarized policing was designed to destroy the dignity of those who contest power

The unrest in Baltimore after the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray after he was critically injured in police custody has reopened longstanding debates over public-order policing. Where does protest end and rioting begin? What counts as violence? Is property damage ever legitimate? Listening to Fox News analyze the meaning of the word “thugs,” it feels as if we are doomed to repeat Martin Luther King Jr.’s quote “Riots are the language of the unheard” until we are blue in the face.

Baltimore, like Ferguson, Missouri, has seen the deployment of a hypertechnologized warrior-cop style of policing that has become unnervingly familiar, with recent exposés focusing further attention on the militarization of law enforcement. But these practices of so-called riot control are far from new.

Riot control is – and always has been – about criminalizing acts of disobedience by controlling people, public space and even the air we breathe. The disturbing forms of policing we see in Baltimore provide a small window into a sprawling, transnational business with roots in colonialist violence.

Andrew Elrod: Fast-tracking free trade is good for profits, not people

Congress should resist Obama’s push for Trans-Pacific Partnership

Upon signing the Trade Act of 1974, President Gerald Ford declared that the new trade agreements to come “will mean more and better jobs for American workers, with additional purchasing power for the American consumer.” The bill established the fast-track procedures that prohibit congressional amendments to trade and investment treaties; it was, he said, “one of the most important measures to come out of the 93rd Congress.”

Ford was right about that. Thanks to fast track, trade policy has become increasingly centralized in the office of the president over the past four decades. Though they expired for the first time in the aftermath of NAFTA, fast-track powers were again authorized under George W. Bush in 2002, allowing his administration to sign an astounding 11 trade agreements before Congress again revoked the powers in 2007. Today President Barack Obama would like to start the process again. He is now urging Congress to grant fast-track powers for the next six years, in part so his administration can finalize negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the largest investment treaty in history, encompassing 12 nations that account for 40 percent of global commerce. House leaders will begin canvassing votes today, with early indications suggesting that the president’s effort may fall short. And for good reason.

Donald Earl Collins: Freddie Gray: Don’t let the 1% determine police reform for the 99%

The history of policing in the US has been one of protecting private property, money and lives of the affluent and politically powerful, at least since the NYPD’s founding in 1845. Any new efforts at police reform – calls for which are growing stronger with each new death of an unarmed person of color at the hands of the police – will be unsuccessful if they exclude revisions to this most basic of reasons for the existence of modern law enforcement.

Freddie Gray is just the latest in a long list of men and women of color who have died during a police encounter in the last year, a list that already includes Walter Scott, Eric Garner, Miriam Carey, Tamir Rice, Antonio Zambrano-Montes and Michael Brown. Some have suggested that one possible solution is the introduction of police body cameras, which are far from being the panacea they are made out to be – the purchase and maintenance of which just happen to benefit corporations. That is why it is vital that any efforts to fix our broken police departments are not one-off trends promoted by and for the benefit of elites.

Robert L. Borosage: The Sanders Challenge

Tweeting that “America needs a political revolution,” Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders threw his hat into the race for the Democratic nomination for president this week. Sanders is in many ways the mirror image of Hillary Clinton, the prohibitive favorite in the race. She has universal name recognition, unlimited funds and a campaign operation overrun with political pros. He is not widely known, has little money, and has never run a national campaign. Sanders is not easy, not blow dried and not scripted. But in a populist moment, he is the real deal — a full throated, unabashed, independent, uncorrupted, straight-talking populist. And that is a big deal.

Sanders will focus his campaign on the great challenges facing the country: a politics corrupted by big money, and an economy where the rules have been rigged by the few to benefit the few. That reality won’t be changed by politics as usual, where the viability of a candidate is measured by how much money he or she can amass in the backroom “money primary,” and the message of a candidate is judged by its poll-tested ability to appeal to voters without alarming donors. It will take an independent political movement to change our course — and Sanders will run as its Tom Paine, summoning Americans to save their democracy.

May 01 2015

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

David Cay Johnson: Baltimore riots speak the language of the dispossessed

Upheaval will end when political classes listen to more than just the rich

Monday’s riots in Baltimore offered a powerful warning about what lies ahead for America if its epidemic of inequality continues. But will we understand the message in the chaos?

“A riot is the language of the unheard,” the Rev. Martin Luther King said. What gets lost in translation is the logic that motivates rioters, whose inability to articulate their frustration finds expression in rocks thrown at police, looting neighborhood stores and setting fires. To outside observers, these actions appear irrational and self-defeating.

But their rhetoric is as old as civilization. Riots are a way for the oppressed to make their frustration known in the vain hope that those in power will respond with better policies.

Alex S. Vitale: Don’t count on Loretta Lynch to tame the police

New attorney general and the Justice Department she inherits have poor track records on law enforcement reform

More than five months after her nomination, Loretta Lynch has finally been confirmed as attorney general of the United States. No sooner did she assume office than Baltimore exploded into a level of civil unrest not seen there since 1968. Charm City is the latest symptom of a profound crisis of law enforcement that began with the killings of Eric Garner and Michael Brown last summer and continues as high profile police killings of unarmed black men occur almost every week. This crisis is one of the biggest issues facing Lynch, but unfortunately the record of the Department of Justice (DOJ) on police reform is discouraging. [..]

Unfortunately, nothing in Lynch’s past suggests that she will undertake structural reform. As U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, she was involved in only one case of police misconduct, the brutal 1997 beating and sexual assault of Abner Louima. While her team won a conviction, Louima’s lawyer accused her of failing to bring charges in other clear cases of abuse. Others charged her with ignoring broader patterns of misconduct that might have implicated the NYPD’s street crimes unit – the plainclothes anti-crime unit involved in the 1999 killing of Amadou Diallo – and then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

Lynch has continually stressed that minority communities need to place more trust in police. According to her aides, she sees improving police morale as one of her top priorities. Unlike Holder, she has been a forceful participant in the war on drugs and opposes exploring changes in federal marijuana law. The Justice Department has never been an ideal institution for taming the police, but under Lynch the fight for reform may become even more difficult.

Joshua Kopstein: Feds are using fear, not facts, in anti-encryption crusade

Federal agencies say encryption will doom us, but they’re already using spy tools that circumvent it

For months, the FBI, the National Security Agency and an alphabet soup of other spooky agencies have been lashing out at tech companies that have responded to former NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s surveillance revelations by starting to protect customers with stronger encryption. But it’s increasingly obvious that the government’s crypto panic is powered by fear, not facts. [..]

The reason the FBI, Homeland Security and other agencies want us to imagine these frightening scenarios is that their encryption problem is just that: imaginary. It’s built on the false premise that making encryption more accessible will allow criminals to shield themselves from the law. The only solution, the government says, is for companies to put backdoors into their devices and apps, which by definition means installing defects that make our data more vulnerable to criminals and spies.

One need look only at what law enforcement agencies are doing in secret to see that these predictions of digital anarchy are pure fantasy.

Michele Goodwin: Watch Out, Joe Camel Is Back: Big Tobacco and the TPP

The Obama administration is poised to finalize the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement. If Congress passes the current trade promotion authority bill, the TPP will become subject to a simple up or down vote, without possibility for any amendment. The Obama administration refuses to tell the public what’s in the agreement and Congress seems pressed to accept provisions that many Americans might deplore. This is a problem. Consider the TPP’s secretive advocacy for big tobacco.

The U.S. government is supporting big tobacco companies by negotiating dozens of international trade and investment agreements, but largely without the public’s knowledge. Historically, the U.S. has supported big tobacco to expand their profitability abroad, despite known health risks. For example, dating back to the 1990s the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that US tobacco trade surpluses doubled after “the U.S. government provided assistance in removing [trade] barriers.” The GAO report also notes how the prevalence of smoking in “Taiwan and South Korea had increased since the removal of U.S. cigarette export barriers,” which resulted in “the opening of Asian cigarette markets, [and increased] cigarette advertising…”

Robert L. Borosage: Hillary: Time to Step Up on the Trade Deal

It’s time for Hillary Clinton to take a position on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement and the fast track authority designed to ramrod it through the Congress. Hillary has been non-committal to date, with many assuming she will eventually support the president whom she served as Secretary of State.

But now the pressure to take a stand is growing. President Obama decided to call out his opponents, turning the escalating battle over fast track and TPP into an intra-party back-alley knife fight. AFLCIO President Rich Trumka, head of the 11 million member labor federation, delivered a speech making it clear that labor consider the vote on fast track and TPP fundamental. A leader of the opposition in the Congress, populist stalwart Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont just announced he would challenge Hillary for the nomination. Fast track has already passed the Senate Finance Committee. The debate on the floor will begin in May. It is time for Hillary to choose.

Most people assume, of course, that Hillary will support the treaty rather than break with the president whom she served. But, if she adheres to the standards that she put forth for the agreement, she might well surprise observers by joining the opposition.

Katha Pollitt: Charlie Hebdo’ Deserves Its Award for Courage in Free Expression. Here’s Why.

When PEN decided to award the first PEN/Toni and James C. Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage Award to the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, they surely thought they were honoring bravery in defense of free speech. This was a magazine that kept publishing after its offices were firebombed by Islamists in 2011, and kept publishing after nine staffers were horribly murdered by Islamists in January. Compare that to, say, Yale University Press, which dropped the illustrations for Jytte Clausen’s book about the Danish Mohammed cartoons after the book’s first printing, or Random House, which canceled publication of Sherry Jones’s The Jewel of Medina, a historical novel about Mohammed’s wife Aisha. Both publishing houses cited fears of violence by Muslim extremists. Those fears were not irrational. The head of the British publishing house that picked up Jones’s novel had his house firebombed-and the book was dropped. Violence works. [..]

The six writers are circulating a letter to PEN members, which many great and famous writers are signing: Joyce Carol Oates, Junot Diaz, Lorrie Moore. It seems to me these writers must be awfully sure that they will never fall afoul of either fanaticism or well-meaning liberalism. “There is a critical difference between staunchly supporting expression that violates the acceptable,” it argues, “and enthusiastically rewarding such expression.” Well, sure, but excuse me: violates the acceptable? The acceptable what? And don’t we need writing and artwork that pushes the boundary of what the acceptable is? “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom,” as Blake put it.

Norman Mailer, former president of PEN, had all sorts of reprehensible, ignorant and pigheaded views. When it came to politics, he was like a drunken uncle banging the table at Thanksgiving. But he pushed the boundaries back for every writer. And much as I dislike the vast bulk of his writing and his repulsive ideas about women-talk about punching down-if PEN gave him an award, I would just live with it.

Apr 30 2015

Why Free Trade Is Bad for America

President Barack Obama has asked congress to abrogate its constitutional responsibility to pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) with little to no debate and no changes or amendments. At this time, the House does not have the votes to pass the fast track bill. He has met with resistance from his own party, going so far as to say that Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) was spreading misinformation and didn’t know what she was talking about, in other words, lying. In reality, it is the president who is lying to the American public to push a free trade bill, that appears to be worse than NAFTA which has nearly destroyed American manufacturing. Thanks to Wikileaks you can read some of the draft provisions here.

Sen. Warren has bee a leader in the fight to stop the fast tracking of TPP, she is now joined by Representative Alan Grayson (D-FL) to stop the TPP.

Watch This Democrat Make The Case For Why Obama’s New Free Trade Deal Would Be Awful For America

By Sam Levine, Huffington Post

After President Barack Obama accused critics of his proposed trade deal of being wrong on the facts, one member of Congress released a lengthy video explaining point-by-point why he believes free trade has hurt the United States and why a new deal would be even worse.

After facing vocal criticism from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and other Democrats on his trade deal, called the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Obama accused the members of his own party of spreading misinformation. In a town hall last week, Obama challenged his critics, saying that he would be happy to debate them on the facts of the deal.

In a nine-minute video, which will be sent out to 1 million members of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee on Thursday morning, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) seems to try to meet that challenge.

Free Trade More Like Fake Trade

Americans are creating tens of millions of jobs in other countries with our purchasing power, and we are losing tens of millions of jobs in our country, because foreigners are not buying as much of our goods and services.

What are they doing? They’re buying our assets. So we lose twice. We lose the jobs, and we are moving further toward national bankruptcy. That is the end game.

Sign the petition to Stop the TPP at Treachery.com

Apr 30 2015

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

Trevor Timm: CIA’s torture experts now use their skills in secret drones program

The controversy over the CIA’s secret drone program has gone from bad to worse this week. We now know that many of those running it are the same people who headed the CIA’s torture program, the spy agency can bomb people unilaterally without the president’s explicit approval and that the government is keeping the entire program classified explicitly to prevent a federal court from ruling it illegal. And worst of all, Congress is perfectly fine with it.

The New York Times reported on Sunday that many of those in charge of the CIA’s torture program – the same people whose names were explicitly redacted from the Senate’s torture report in order to avert accountability – “have ascended to the agency’s powerful senior ranks” and now run the CIA drone program under the agency’s Counterterrorism Center. Rather than being fired and prosecuted, they have been rewarded with promotions.



Lonnae O’Neal: Bothered by riots? Where’ve you been – for decades?

Question: Who thinks looting is bad?

Raise your hand if you know what happened to the Wall Street types who broke into the American economy, exploited every financial loophole, melted down mortgages, made off with people’s retirement funds, leaving taxpayers to bail them out in 2008.

Question: Do those billions constitute opportunistic looting?

Follow-up question: Do you think people in the inner city don’t notice what some of those folks ran out of the store with?

Raise your hand if you think the people streaming through the streets of Baltimore are thugs.

If so, question, and this is just an aside, then what word will some pundits use for Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman when he gets to bragging?

Raise your hand if you remember the 2011 uprisings in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Bahrain and Yemen to protest corrupt leaders, poverty, lack of jobs and systems that brutalize citizens, leaving them feeling unheard.

Nod if you understand that while we convene grand juries, open federal investigations and debate police rights and wrongs, sometimes the human condition spills beyond that debate.

And if you understand, deeply, that at some point, every pressurized system demands a release. Ferguson, New York, Cleveland, South Carolina, Sanford and Baltimore. Keep nodding.

Raise your hand if you think some might just call this the Urban Spring.

Matter of fact, holler if you hear me.

Bernie Sanders: So-called ‘free trade’ policies hurt US workers every time we pass them

Albert Einstein said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. As the middle class continues to decline and the gap between the very rich and everyone else grows wider, we should keep that in mind as Congress debates the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the largest trade agreement in American history.

Trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), the Central American Free Trade Agreement (Cafta) and the granting of Permanent Normal Trade Relations to China have been abysmal failures: they allowed corporations to shut down operations in the US and move work to low-wage countries where people are forced to work for pennies an hour; and they are one of the reasons that we have lost almost 60,000 factories in our country and millions of good-paying jobs since 2001.

The TPP is simply the continuation of a failed approach to trade – an approach which benefits large multinational corporations and Wall Street, but which is a disaster for working families. The TPP must be defeated, but our overall trade policy must also change for corporations to start investing in America and creating jobs here again, and not just in China and other low wage countries.

Dean Baker: The stock market isn’t in another bubble – yet

The stock market has recovered sharply from its lows during the 2008 financial crisis. All the major indices are at or near record highs. This has led many analysts to worry about a new bubble in the stock market. These concerns are misplaced.

Before going through the data, I should point out that I am not afraid to warn of bubbles. In the late 1990s, I clearly and repeatedly warned of a stock bubble. I argued that its collapse would likely lead to a recession, end the Bill Clinton-era budget surpluses and pose serious problems for pensions. In the last decade I sounded the dangers of the housing bubble as early as 2002. I recognize the dangers of bubbles and have been at the forefront of those calling attention to them. However, it is necessary to view the picture with clear eyes and not sound the alarm at every hint of froth. [..]

It is hard to make the case that current market valuations are driving the economy. Consumption is somewhat high relative to disposable income but not hugely out of line with past levels. And there is no investment boom in aggregate, even if some social media spending might be misguided.

This means that if the market were suddenly to plunge by 20 to 30 percent, we will see some unhappy shareholders, but it is unlikely to sink the economy. In short, this is not Round 3 of the bubble economy.

Jessica Valenti: College rapists should not be able to transfer schools to skip consequences

A bit of good news for college rapists: if you’ve been accused of sexual assault and don’t feel like sticking around to deal with the consequences on campus, you can simply transfer schools and no one will be the wiser. Thanks to a privacy law for students, young men accused of rape don’t even have to disclose the complaint to their new school.

Since we know that college rapists commit an average of six rapes during their time at school, these colleges – and this policy – are making it easier for sexual offenders to move on without consequence. And onto new victims. [..]

And while transfer applications also frequently ask students to reveal if they’ve been convicted of a crime, suspended or expelled, the fact that so few college rapists are punished beyond writing a research paper or letter of apology means it’s unlikely a rape accusation would ever be revealed.

Despite the threat of letting rapists simply college-hop to avoid detection and punishment, educational and even anti-rape activists are nervous about the idea of mandating disclosure of disciplinary infractions.

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