During the night of April 6, a giant bust of Edward Snowden was placed atop a pillar in Brooklyn’s Fort Green Park by an anonymous group. Fort Greene Park is home to the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument, dedicated to colonial revolutionaries who died during the War of Independence on British prison ships docked on the Brooklyn waterfront.
While most people slept, a trio of artists and some helpers installed a bust of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in Brooklyn on Monday morning. The group, which allowed ANIMAL to exclusively document the installation on the condition that we hide their identities, hauled the 100-pound sculpture into Fort Greene Park and up its hilly terrain just before dawn. They fused it to part of the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument, a memorial to Revolutionary War soldiers. [..]
The idea for the Snowden tribute was conceived about a year ago by two New York City-based artists with a history of pulling off notable public interventions. They linked up with a renowned sculptor on the West Coast who was sympathetic to their cause.
The bust was found by the NYC police and the parks department covered the bust with a tarp and removed it to an unknown location. That didn’t deter the Snowden supporters, the next night the bust was replaced with a hologram.
That first lightning strike by an anonymous group of artists was followed by a second, carried out before dawn on Tuesday, by a group calling itself the Illuminators.
“We recreated it digitally,” said Grayson Earle, 28, a member of the second group. “We used some projection mapping software so we could put the image exactly where we wanted.”
So for about 20 minutes on Tuesday morning, a hologram of the Snowden bust hovered in the park, at the same spot where the object had rested the day before.
“We wanted to further the discussion,” said Kyle Depew, 29, who came up with the idea for the hologram.
“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”.
Want to see how secrecy is corrosive to democracy? Look no further than a series of explosive investigations by various news organizations this week that show the government hiding surveillance programs purely to prevent a giant public backlash.
USA Today’s Brad Heath published a blockbuster story on Monday about the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) running a massive domestic spying operation parallel to the NSA’s that was tracking billions of international calls made by Americans. They kept it secret for more than two decades. According to the USA Today report, the spying program was not only used against alleged terrorist activity, but countless supposed drug crimes, as well as “to identify US suspects in a wide range of other investigations”. And they collected information on millions of completely innocent Americans along the way.
Heath’s story is awash with incredible detail and should be read in full, but one of the most interesting parts was buried near the end: the program was shut down by the Justice Department after the Snowden leaks, not because Snowden exposed the program, but because they knew that when the program eventually would leak, the government would have no arguments to defend it.
The long knives have been coming out over Social Security lately. The latest wave of attacks was triggered by an amendment from Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) which would have expanded Social Security benefits, and which won the support of most Democrats in the Senate. That signaled a potential shift in the political tide – toward Social Security in particular and economic populism in general.
It also meant that it was time to suit up conservatism’s frayed old straw men and send them into dubious battle once again.
The attackers this time around include a “libertarian” finance writer, an editor for the National Review, and – inevitably – the editorial board of the Washington Post. But the battle against economic populism isn’t just being waged by the right. There are factions within the Democratic Party that want to re-empower its “centrist” wing, and they’ve been pushing back on the party’s new populism – which the movement to expand Social Security both reflects and reinforces – this week as well.
There is a fear I feel when I am in spaces dominated by powerful white people, and it can’t be captured on video. Black folks and other people of color will understand the fear I feel, but after the past week – after watching Walter Scott run away from a white police officer and then fall as he is shot in the back, and watching others watch it – I am not sure white people will ever understand it, even when they, too bear witness to the violent end of a black life. [..]
The visible carnage of a shooting like Walter Scott’s – and whichever new one will come in the next weeks – heightens the anxiety that black people feel in a white supremacist America, no matter how many white people watch and decry the violence. But addressing such obviously graphic brutality, and then ignoring the institutional discrimination that allows it to continue, cannot change how racism consigns black people to premature death in ways visibly and equally invisibly insidious, nor stop us from being afraid that we might be next.
Meanwhile, big money is taking over our democracy.
If there were ever a time for a bold Democratic voice on behalf of hardworking Americans, it is now.
Yet I don’t recall a time when the Democratic Party’s most prominent office holders sounded as meek. With the exception of Elizabeth Warren, they’re pussycats. If Paul Wellstone, Teddy Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, or Ann Richards were still with us, they’d be hollering.
The fire now is on the right, stoked by the Koch brothers, Rupert Murdoch, and a pocketful of hedge-fund billionaires.
Today’s Republican firebrands, beginning with Ted Cruz, blame the poor, blacks, Latinos, and immigrants for what’s been happening. They avoid any mention of wealth and power.
The case of Walter Scott shows just how valuable a citizen with a camera can be. Video footage capturing excessive police force can make all the difference in securing justice. Yet, in the conversation about more dashboard and body cameras for police, what gets lost is the value of video shot by citizen witnesses. We don’t need more video from the police perspective, but more from our own. [..]
Concerns about abuse and selective use of the cameras by police are well-founded, especially given that the rules are far from clear about when cameras will be on, what penalties (if any) there will be if an officer turns off their camera or loses footage, and who will have access to bodycam video. The original police accounts of the South Carolina shooting were shown to be so far from the truth – compare the original story from the Post And Courier with what we know now – that leaving police to record and publish video of events seems risky, to say the least.
American policy makers have made it a point, expressed consistently over time, to emphasize that intelligence estimates do not, in and of themselves, constitute policy decisions, and are useful only in so far as they inform policy makers who then make the actual decisions. The logic of this argument allows for the notion of detached decision-making on the part of the policy makers, and includes a built-in premise that the estimates they use are constructed in such a manner as to allow for a wide range of policy options. This model of decision-making works well on paper, and within the realm of academic theory, but in the harsh reality of post-9/11 America, where overhyped information is further exaggerated through a relentless 24-hour news cycle that encourages simplicity to the point of intellectual dishonesty, it is hard to imagine a scenario where such a pattern of informed, deliberate decision-making has, or could, occur. [..]
The bottom line is that the IAEA’s continued ability to account for Iran’s safeguarded nuclear materials remains the best deterrent against any Iranian nuclear weapons program. Iran and the international community still have a long way to go before they will be able to reach any accommodation which provides Iran with the nuclear enrichment capabilities it desires while operating within an expanded framework of safeguards the IAEA and the West require. The nuclear framework agreement recently concluded between Iran and the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany goes a long way toward achieving this, but the devil is in the details, and those details need to be hammered out by June 30.
The battle over citizens’ right to privacy and the government’s mass collection of private data that has nothing to do with protecting the country from terrorist attacks, is coming to a head on June 1. That’s when the Patriot Act’s section 215, the provision of the act that the NSA used to authorize its bulk telephone metadata collection program, must either be renewed by congress or it expires. The problem is the lack of interest by the American public. In an extended segment of his HBO program, “This Week Tonight,” John Oliver found a subject that might pique their interest, “dick pics.” He presented his idea to Edward Snowden in a one on one exclusive interview.
So why all the trouble? In theory, Snowden’s revelations are old, they have proven to be either inaccessible or not titillating enough for the American public, and Oliver already covered the issue himself on the show in an interview with former NSA chief General Keith Alexander less than a year ago.
As it turns out, Oliver wasn’t satisfied. Using the June 1 expiration of controversial sections of the Patriot Act as a peg, Oliver decided to revive the conversation anew by highlighting one specific aspect of the surveillance issue that a majority of Americans could relate to.
And Sunday’s final product is earning Oliver plaudits across the Internet. In the interview, Oliver accomplishes several feats. He’s not only funny (Snowden apparently misses eating Hot Pockets, the sodium vehicle of the American freezer section), but also incisive and tough. [..]
But most notably of all, Oliver might finally have pinpointed a way to make the debate about surveillance accessible to a wide audience. By honing on one aspect of the government surveillance, the capacity for intelligence agencies to access “dick pics,” he captures the attention and summons the outrage of numerous passersby in a filmed segment in Times Square. Many of those interviewed can’t properly identify Edward Snowden or don’t quite recall what he had done, but all recoil at the thought of government access to intimate photography.
Thanks to John’s interview and the above viral video, which at this posting has
Privacy advocates experienced a major setback in November when a surveillance reform bill, the FREEDOM Act, died in a Senate procedural vote. But now they’re back, and with a new, simple question for Americans – Can they see your junk?
Playing off Oliver’s hilarious skit, one privacy activist built cantheyseemydick.com, which breaks down how each NSA program could be used to access private communications. Despite its flippant tone, the website offers simple explanations of complex programs that are difficult to understand.
On a more serious note, a new coalition of privacy groups led by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today launched the Fight 215 campaign calling for an end to the NSA’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone records.
EFF activist Nadia Kayyali told TechCrunch the organizations launched the campaign today because of the impending deadline, but they were very excited about the Last Week Tonight with John Oliver skit and the attention it has already brought to surveillance reform.
With this campaign, the privacy advocates have taken a direct stance, end the bulk collection of Americans’ telephone records. [..]
Even with the new public attention on surveillance reform, privacy advocates face an uphill battle in Congress. Although surveillance reform is an issue that does not fall squarely on party lines, reform efforts in the Democratic-controlled Senate last year were thwarted primarily by Republican votes. Now Republicans control both chambers of Congress.
As the June 1 deadline approaches, no one in Congress has laid out a comprehensive plan to address government surveillance this year. Kayyali attributes the lack of action on the Hill to uncertainty.
“I think a lot of people, including people who want to see good legislation passed, weren’t certain where to start from,” Kayyali said. “It’s hard to say what Congress is thinking.”
As members look to form that plan, Kayyali hopes the new campaign will send them a clear message.
EEF and thirty other civil liberties organizations have launched a call in campaign, Fight 215. They will help connect you to your representatives to tell them to end mass surveillance.
“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”.
As Republican presidential hopefuls trot out their policy agendas – which always involve cutting taxes on the rich while slashing benefits for the poor and middle class – some real new thinking is happening on the other side of the aisle. Suddenly, it seems, many Democrats have decided to break with Beltway orthodoxy, which always calls for cuts in “entitlements.” Instead, they’re proposing that Social Security benefits actually be expanded.
This is a welcome development in two ways. First, the specific case for expanding Social Security is quite good. Second, and more fundamentally, Democrats finally seem to be standing up to antigovernment propaganda and recognizing the reality that there are some things the government does better than the private sector. [..]
And in the real world of retirement, Social Security is a shining example of a system that works. It’s simple and clean, with low operating costs and minimal bureaucracy. It provides older Americans who worked hard all their lives with a chance of living decently in retirement, without requiring that they show an inhuman ability to think decades ahead and be investment whizzes as well. The only problem is that the decline of private pensions, and their replacement with inadequate 401(k)-type plans, has left a gap that Social Security isn’t currently big enough to fill. So why not make it bigger?
We can’t believe we have to explain 9/11, ISIS and Iraq again. But as the right’s lies add up, here goes
Foreign policy is already looming much larger in the 2016 election than it did in 2012. When Obama ran for re-election, the inescapable fact that Osama bin Laden had been killed on his watch (after Bush had admittedly lost interest in him) essentially foreclosed any serious foreign policy challenge from the Republicans. Hence the profound silliness of their Benghazi obsession, and Obama’s cool, detached debate invitation to “Please proceed…” [..]
At the moment, Obama’s historic nuclear deal with Iran is center stage, but the much more widespread geopolitical problem typified by (though not limited to) ISIS has a much more pervasive political influence. Case in point: the emergence of ISIS, with its provocative spectacles of violence have unexpectedly renewed American’s willingness to send troops to fight overseas, completely forgetting that this was precisely bin Laden’s reason for 9/11 in the first place: to lure the U.S. into a “holy war” with Islam. Election year dynamics being what they are, there’s no telling how badly this could turn out. So before we go off and blow several trillion dollars recruiting the next wave of terrorists, perhaps it would be a good idea to reconsider what we did the last time around.
The gun lobby jumps through hoops each year to comply with the same regulations they would much rather dismantle
Reports of road rage incidents resulting in gun violence are on the rise. In fact, they are now so common that newspapers report them as if they are fender benders. [..]
New laws that allow the open carry of loaded guns in public places – and such laws are springing up all over the nation – have resulted in even more terrifying confrontations: For example, parents are forced to deal with gun activists brandishing their firearms in front of their kids in a public park, shouting: “Look at my gun! There’s nothing you can do about it!” Likewise, workers in businesses serving the public are forced to deal with customers blithely slinging loaded semi-automatic weapons over their shoulders, or casually leaning firearms up against tables. These owners have little recourse but to pray they don’t become the victim of one of the thousands of firearm-related accidents that occur all over the country every year.
But never let it be said that the gun rights zealots are totally rigid in their thinking and have no common sense at all. I have written in the past about the odd hypocrisy of gun proliferation advocates in Republican state houses who refuse to people the right to carry firearms in their work places, even as they pass laws making everyone else work in a world where an angry person with a gun might very well lose his or her temper and decide to make their point with a bullet.
Dick Cheney’s ridiculous claims about Barack Obama this week fit into a longstanding right-wing tradition
It is a well known fact that liberals hate America, or as the always rational Ann Coulter once said, “even fanatical Muslim terrorists don’t hate America like liberals do.” While I would estimate that Islamic terrorists probably hate America just a tad more than liberals, it is true that liberals tend to be less brazenly patriotic than god-fearing, flag-waving conservatives. According to Pew polls, 81 percent of “business conservatives” often feel U.S. pride, while only about 40 percent of “solid liberals” feel the same way. It seems like liberals are just not as infatuated with the idea of America as conservatives are. [..]
But here’s the thing: Criticizing the actions of America seems to be a whole lot more patriotic than sitting back and buying into false talk of American exceptionalism, when reality tells a different story. One does not have to constantly feel pride about one’s country to be a patriot, and carrying on that way can blind a person when their country is actually on the wrong side.
So, yes, conservatives do tend to feel more pride in America than liberals do. But what does this really tell us? Not that conservatives are any more or less patriotic than liberals, but that they are more likely to be fooled by nationalistic propaganda. A rational person looks at their own actions, or their country’s actions dispassionately, and is able to admit when they are wrong. Blind patriotism is never able to make such an admission, and will resort to fairy tales in order to defend indefensible actions.
There are a lot of fairy tales in the United States. But true patriots live in the real world; when they see a problem with their country, they seek to expose and to change it – not mask it with ardent deception.
We marched through the cold snow, the winter nights, the brutal winds, the shivering rain… for justice. For months, we have not let up. We refuse to let the death of Eric Garner be in vain, so we have made demands, organizations joined forces and thousands of young people took to the streets. I am beyond disbelief that even though there is a glaring problem with the policies of policing in New York City and in our country coupled with an inherently flawed justice system, not one new law has been passed since a father of four was choked out on a hot, summer day last July in Staten Island. Mr. Governor, not one. [..]
You have to restore faith within the criminal justice system here in New York State. Without action, everyday it is deteriorates more and more. The country is at a breaking point. With the death of Mr. Walter Scott in North Charleston, South Carolina over the weekend, we are witnessing the end of the rope. You must lead. If you have any ambition for office beyond our home state, now is the time to show the nation that you can make a decision to protect the people and restore confidence in our criminal justice system. There is much you can do and need to do besides this, but this should have been done by now.
Next week as Congress returns, House Republicans will address what they consider one of the nation’s most pressing problems: relieving the tax burdens on multimillionaires — not the 1 percent but the wealthiest 0.2 percent, two of 1000 — by eliminating the estate tax. Its repeal will cost $269 billion over 10 years, but Republicans find the cause so compelling that they would add that sum to our deficits rather than struggle with “paying” for it.
The bill, of course, has no chance of becoming law. If necessary, the president will veto it. It is a message bill. Conservatives love to rail against what they have been taught to call the death tax. Republicans want voters — or more importantly billionaire donors — to know that, even with inequality at record extremes, with the wealthiest 0.1 percent of families possessing as much wealth as 90 percent of American families, they are on the case, standing strong to defend the inheritances of the sons and daughters of the privileged few.
“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”.
In less than 60 days, Congress – whether they like it or not – will be forced to decide if the NSA’s most notorious mass surveillance program lives or dies. And today, over 30 civil liberties organizations launched a nationwide call-in campaign urging them to kill it.
Despite doing almost everything in their power to avoi voting for substantive NSA reform, Congress now has no choice: On 1 June, one of the most controversial parts of the Patriot Act – known as Section 215 – will expire unless both houses of Congress affirmatively vote for it to be reauthorized.
Section 215 of the Patriot Act was the subject of the very first Snowden story, when the Guardian reported that the US government had reinterpreted the law in complete secrecy, allowing the NSA to vacuum up every single American’s telephone records – who they called, who called them, when, and for how long – regardless of whether they had been accused of a crime or not.
The March job numbers came in somewhat worse than most analysts had expected. The slower job growth was largely attributable to unusually bad weather in late February and early March, but most of the commentators seem to be missing this fact. Many are warning that the economy might be weaker than they thought.
These warnings from commentators are in fact good news. They are good news first because it is almost certainly true that the economy is weaker than these analysts thought. Many had been making silly pronouncements about a new American boom that was not based in any real understanding of the economy. It’s always best when the people who are determining economic policy have some idea of the actual state of the economy.
Despite the power of incumbency, the backing of the President, and an array of wealthy and powerful backers, Rahm Emanuel nevertheless became the first mayor in Chicago history to be forced into a runoff. Sure, Chuy Garcia’s defeat was a setback for the left, but Emanuel’s struggle to retain his office is a warning for politicians everywhere: Corporate Democrats are likely to find themselves on the defensive in 2016 and beyond.
As the Chicago Sun-Times concluded, being forced into a runoff was a “huge national embarrassment” for Emanuel — one that could have ended his mayoralty. The nickname Emanuel earned during this race was “Mayor 1 Percent,” and it’s a name which is likely to stick. That reflects a new reality for “centrists” in the Emanuel/Third Way mold: corporate-friendly policies bring serious political risk.
Americans at the top of the income ladder enjoyed an astonishing year in 2012, new data show. Compared with 2011, their incomes increased by half – their second highest ever – while their tax burdens fell to almost the lowest ever.
The tax returns of the top 400 earners reported average income of $335.7 million, a real increase of more than $111 million over 2011, a new IRS report reveals.
Even better for the top 400, their taxes came to just 16.7 percent of their adjusted gross income. [..]
Although the top 400 earners is a statistical group that can change year to year, 343 taxpayers have turned up on the list five or more times since 1990. Anyone who makes the list even once would remain for life among the top one-tenth of 1 percent of Americans, those making $2 million or more, even if they achieve only average returns on their investments.
There’s a word for a government whose policies pump up the incomes of top earners and cut their tax rates while suppressing what the vast majority earn. That term is “oligarchy.”
How long will it take for the government to admit that the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay just aren’t working?
While closing arguments began Monday in the Boston Marathon bombing trial, moving toward some resolution for victims and their families, the trial of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks slated to eventually take place at Guantanamo is nowhere near even beginning. [..]
It’s time for the U.S. government to put an end to this fiasco. The legitimacy of such important terrorism cases as the September 11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people on U.S. soil is not something to be disregarded, nor is the impact on the victims’ families, who have yet to see justice done. These cases shouldn’t be maintained where they’re not working. All the military commission cases could be reliably tried in the seasoned and successful U.S. federal court system. It’s time to accept that this venture isn’t working, pack up the military commissions, transfer the cases to the United States, try the alleged perpetrators, and move on.
Not long ago I was asked to speak to a religious congregation about widening inequality. Shortly before I began, the head of the congregation asked that I not advocate raising taxes on the wealthy.
He said he didn’t want to antagonize certain wealthy congregants on whose generosity the congregation depended.
I had a similar exchange last year with the president of a small college who had invited me to give a lecture that his board of trustees would be attending. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t criticize Wall Street,” he said, explaining that several of the trustees were investment bankers.
It seems to be happening all over. [..]
Philanthropy is noble. But when it’s mostly in the hands of a few super-rich and giant corporations, and is the only game available, it can easily be abused.
Our democracy is directly threatened when the rich buy off politicians.
But no less dangerous is the quieter and more insidious buy-off of institutions democracy depends on to research, investigate, expose, and mobilize action against what is occurring.
“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.
Wednesday is Ladies’ Day.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.
Forty years ago, Frederick A.O. Schwarz Jr. played a crucial role in exposing decades of appalling secret conduct by U.S. intelligence agencies. Today, he is publishing “Democracy in the Dark: The Seduction of Government Secrecy,” a timely and provocative book exploring the origins of the national security state and the urgent challenge of reining it in. [..]
In response to the findings, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and established permanent select committees to oversee intelligence operations. Indeed, it was the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that produced the bombshell report on the CIA’s torture program released in December – though not the unredacted report the nation deserves to see. In the post-Sept. 11 era, however, these intended safeguards against excessive secrecy have undeniably and disastrously failed. As I have written before, it’s long past time to form a modern Church Committee to investigate fully secret U.S. intelligence activities in the 21st century.
If you’ve never done it before, go to Tumblr and search “thigh gap.” I will wait.
In the event that you are an old person like me, you might not have realized that Tumblr is watching your searches. Well, not your searches, exactly – you are, as we’ve established, an old person, whereas more than half of Tumblr users are under 35 and 15% are under 18. But, likely because of these demographics, the blogging site has starting noting when users search certain keywords – “anorexia”, “self-harm”, “suicide” among them – and inserts a message asking you “is everything okay?” You can still click through to your search results, but first you’re offered resources for support. [..]
But even being watched solely by a sophisticated algorithm feels uncanny. In 2012, Charles Duhigg revealed in the New York Times Magazine that, if you stock up on lotion and supplements at Target, the company’s purchase-analyzing algorithm will guess that you’re pregnant and start sending you coupons for baby gear. “Willies” is too weak a word for how people responded to that one – especially once Duhigg told the story of a Minneapolis father who found out that his teen daughter was pregnant only because Target figured it out first. If you’re searching for vitamins and end up getting served discounts on Diaper Genies, it may feel like you have a fairy godmother – but it also feels like you’re being spied on. And you are.
You may have heard that the government is forcing businesses not to discriminate. It isn’t. If you chose to run a business, you have to follow the laws. If you don’t, that’s a choice-and you choose to suffer the consequences.
Still, in the wake of the controversy surrounding Indiana’s law, conservatives don’t see it that way. Even potential Republican presidential candidates are getting in on the assertions. Rick Santorum recently said:
If you’re a print shop and you are a gay man, should you be forced to print ‘God Hates Fags’ for the Westboro Baptist Church because they hold those signs up? Should the government-and this is really the case here – should the government force you to do that? This is about the government coming in and saying, “No, we’re going to make you do this.” And this is where I think we just need some space to say let’s have some tolerance, be a two-way street.
There are two problems with Santorum’s reasoning. The first is that a printer doesn’t have to make such signs, under any law, because refusing to do so is not discrimination in any legally prohibited sense. A print shop can also refuse to print a poster that says, for instance, “F*ck Rick Santorum,” either because it disagrees with the language or the sentiment. Both are entirely legally permissible decisions any business can rightfully make.
In a perfect world, there would be no stigma to being a victim of sexual violence. Sexual assault survivors could come forward and talk about their stories without fear of retribution, shaming or harassment. Reporters could print the names of those assaulted, knowing that the victims’ safety would remain intact.
But we do not live in a perfect – or even near-perfect – world. And if we want rape victims to be able to tell their stories in the media, we must protect their anonymity. [..]
But one misguided suggestion to come out of the discussion about rape, reporting and responsibility is that journalists should only publish stories in which the rape survivor agrees to be named. Sonali Kohli at Quartz, for instance, argued that “there is something patriarchal and counterproductive to the idea that sexual assault is presumed to be shameful for the survivor.”
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is in Moscow today to discuss gas prices, trade and investment with Vladimir Putin; Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis recently left Washington, where he assured the IMF’s Christine Lagarde that Greece will make a loan repayment due tomorrow and discussed with her the Syriza government’s proposed reforms. A symmetrical shuttling, you could say, beyond the EU’s borders; a reasonable hedging of bets at a critical moment for Greece; an assertion of agency. But reading the Anglophone press, you might think the Greek government was about to default on its IMF loan, print drachmas, call snap elections, thumb its nose at Europe, and sell its soul to Putin for a fistful of roubles.
A fog of disinformation surrounds Greece’s ongoing negotiations with its creditors to unblock 7.2 billion euros of loan funds, without which the government is likely to run out of money in weeks (or months-this too is unclear). An April 5 piece in Financial Times, based almost entirely on blind quotes from “senior official[s]” and eurozone finance ministers, suggested that an agreement will only be possible if Syriza ditches its elected left-wing MPs and forms a coalition with two center-left parties, the discredited Pasok and newly created Potami. In The Daily Telegraph three days earlier, Euroskeptic journalist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard cited unnamed sources “close to the ruling Syriza party” to claim that Greece was about to nationalize the banking system and introduce a parallel currency. This fog is swallowed and recycled by Greece’s private TV channels, bought hacks and politicians. The effect is to spread confusion and mistrust, threatening the already tremulous negotiations, the Syriza government and what’s left of European cohesion.
“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”.
The March job numbers came in somewhat worse than most analysts had expected. The slower job growth was largely attributable to unusually bad weather in late February and early March, but most of the commentators seem to be missing this fact. Many are warning that the economy might be weaker than they thought.
These warnings from commentators are in fact good news. They are good news first because it is almost certainly true that the economy is weaker than these analysts thought. Many had been making silly pronouncements about a new American boom that was not based in any real understanding of the economy. It’s always best when the people who are determining economic policy have some idea of the actual state of the economy.
The other reason the warnings are good news is that they may slow down the Federal Reserve Board’s rush to raise interest rates. The business pages have become obsessed in recent months over the date at which the Federal Reserve Board will start raising the short-term interest rate it controls from the zero level it has been at for the last six years. There had been growing pressure on Fed Chair Janet Yellen and other doves to pull the trigger. The recognition of slower growth will help to alleviate the pressure.
On his HBO program Sunday night, John Oliver devoted 30 minutes to a discussion of U.S. surveillance programs, advocating a much more substantive debate as the June 1 deadline for renewing the Patriot Act approaches (the full segment can be seen here). As part of that segment, Oliver broadcast an interview he conducted with Edward Snowden in Moscow, and to illustrate the point that an insufficient surveillance debate has been conducted, showed video of numerous people in Times Square saying they had no idea who Snowden is (or giving inaccurate answers about him). Oliver assured Snowden off-camera that they did not cherry-pick those “on the street” interviews but showed a representative sample.
Oliver’s overall discussion is good (and, naturally, quite funny), but the specific point he wants to make here is misguided. Contrary to what Oliver says, it’s actually not surprising at all that a large number of Americans are unaware of who Snowden is, nor does it say much at all about the surveillance debate. That’s because a large number of Americans, by choice, are remarkably unaware of virtually all political matters. The befuddled reactions of the Times Square interviewees when asked about Snowden illustrate little about the specific surveillance issue but a great deal about the full-scale political disengagement of a substantial chunk of the American population.
What do Bolton, Netanyahu, Graham and a whole host of others in Washington opposing this deal have in common? They were passionate supporters of the Iraq war and continue to hold that view today. [..]
Of course, we all know how this played out: no WMDs, tens of thousands of Americans killed or wounded, countless Iraqi civilians dead, nearly $4 trillion spent, and ISIS on a rampage throughout the Middle East.
Why should we listen to these people again?
The reality is that there is no better Iran deal, and those calling for one never offer a viable plan on how to get there. In fact, the real alternative is war, which will come at tremendous cost.
“After you’ve dropped those bombs on those hardened facilities, what happens next?” former commander of U.S. Central Command Gen. Anthony Zinni (ret.) once wondered. “[I]f you follow this all the way down, eventually I’m putting boots on the ground somewhere. And like I tell my friends, if you like Iraq and Afghanistan, you’ll love Iran.”
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker plays politics to win. As a political careerist who has run two dozen primary and general election campaigns since 1990, he leaves nothing to chance. And the partisans who have allied with him have embraced the view that the best way to prevail in politics is to “have it all”-control of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government.
This week, Walker’s allies are focused on securing control of the judicial branch of state government in Wisconsin. The Republican Party of Wisconsin and groups that have consistently backed Walker’s agenda are leading the charge to oust a state Supreme Court justice who has championed judicial independence and to change the way in which the high court is organized-with an eye toward ousting another independent jurist from the position of chief justice.
The Wisconsin fights, which will play out in two statewide votes Tuesday, have received little national attention. Yet they are instructive for those who seek to understand the relentless pursuit of power by Walker and his political allies-and the approach that the all-but-announced Republican presidential contender and his associates would bring to Washington if they realize their national ambitions.
Numerous health studies on strip mining have cleared the way for federal intervention
President Barack Obama’s budget proposal last month for an effective Appalachian regeneration fund opened a new door to the future for ailing coal mining communities. The Power Plus Plan supports reclamation and reforestation projects, job training and transition programs for unemployed coal miners, as well as pension plans for retired miners.
The plan’s focus on diversifying the region’s economy is welcome acknowledgment that it is locked in a “death spiral,” as one analyst recently noted – a result of the coal industry’s shift to the heartland and western coal fields and a rapidly changing global energy market.
But for Appalachia to truly move on, another door must be closed on its deadly past. It’s time for Obama and for Congress to recognize the indubitable scientific data on the mounting health damages of mountaintop removal (MTR) mining and enact a moratorium on all such radical strip mining operations through the Appalachian Community Health Emergency Act.
“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”.
Britain’s economic performance since the financial crisis struck has been startlingly bad. A tentative recovery began in 2009, but it stalled in 2010. Although growth resumed in 2013, real income per capita is only now reaching its level on the eve of the crisis – which means that Britain has had a much worse track record since 2007 than it had during the Great Depression.
Yet as Britain prepares to go to the polls, the leaders of the coalition government that has ruled the country since 2010 are posing as the guardians of prosperity, the people who really know how to run the economy. And they are, by and large, getting away with it.
There are some important lessons here, not just for Britain but for all democracies struggling to manage their economies in difficult times. I’ll get to those lessons in a minute. But first, let’s ask how a British government with such a poor economic record can manage to run on its supposed economic achievements.
What are we to make of the fact that some big corporations are turning out to be the relative good guys, on issues as varied as same-sex marriage, the environment and even (to a limited extent) workers’ wages? Last week, the governors of Indiana and Arkansas were forced to back down and dilute bogus “religious freedom” laws intended to shelter discrimination against gays and lesbians, in large part because their corporate bigwigs told them to stop embarrassing the state and scaring off business.
In Indiana, these included the Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, the Indiana Pacers and even the Indy 500. In Arkansas, the pressure came, among others, from (shudder) Walmart, whose executives urged the hapless governor, Asa Hutchinson, to veto the bill. [..]
What gives here? Are big corporations the new custodians of social conscience?
Hardly. If you take these one at a time, a few things are at work. For starters, most big corporate executives are more cosmopolitan than the religious far right, and they also worry mightily about reputational damage.
The GOP presidential field in particular and the Republican Party in general have decided to treat the Iran negotiations the way they did Obamacare, as the unfortunate apparent achievement of a president they had determined to emasculate, which needs to be abrogated yesterday. In short, they are making the Iran talks a partisan domestic issue, refusing to recognize it as a diplomatic victory. [..]
So, just to recap: The usually flamboyant Ted Cruz has been more cautious and circumspect than Scott Walker in his reaction to the Iran deal. Walker used the unfortunate phrase “blow up” about a nuclear negotiation and does not seem to understand how international sanctions work, nor that unilateral US sanctions wouldn’t much hurt Iran. Marco Rubio needs new glasses, since he seems not to be able to read the fine print of the agreement.
And Rand Paul is AWOL on one of the most important issues facing the country.
The Republican presidential field is not ready for prime time regarding the Iran deal.
As for the rank and file GOP congress representatives, such as Louis Gohmert (R-TX), they just raved like lunatics, talking about bombing each and every centrifuge in Iran. But then they were going to fix Iraq by bombing it, too.
Governors who thought tax cuts for the rich would create trickle-down prosperity are waking up
Conservative U.S. governors who came to power during the 2010 Tea Party electoral wave are facing a reality check. A few years ago, catering to a far-right constituency, they campaigned on pledges of slashing taxes and bolstering business. Their subsequent policies have benefited the wealthy but failed to bring trickle-down prosperity to their states.
It is the morning after the Tea Party. Republican governors are waking up to a sluggish job market, stagnant wages, state deficits and impoverished services. The party’s trickle-down ideology is no way to manage a government. And a state cannot be run on tax cuts alone. [..]
Conservative governors now recognize the need to generate revenue to maintain schools and highways. But they are still not taking responsibility and cleaning up the messes they have created. Rather than reversing tax cuts for the wealthy, many are implementing regressive measures that penalize middle-class taxpayers.
“Of the 10 or so Republican governors who have proposed tax increases, nearly all have called for increases in consumption taxes, which hit the poor and middle class harder than the rich,” The New York Times reported last month. This includes new taxes on gas, e-cigarettes, movie tickets and services such as haircuts.
America’s is a sickness of the mind, the unwavering belief by people in power that free-market capitalism will somehow work for everyone.
As with a virus that refuses to die, the effects are insidious, because the very rich have convinced themselves that they made it on their own, and that others have only themselves to blame if they are poor.
Rahm Emanuel is Mayor 1%. He speaks a politician’s words to entice many Chicagoans to vote for him, but his actions are on behalf of his friends and colleagues in the business world. [..]
Like its mayor, Chicago has two faces. The rest of the nation sees the glitz and glamour of Chicago’s magnificent downtown, but the city’s south and west sides, according to urban analyst Daniel Hertz, are more dangerous than in the 1990s. This is part of the sickness: a persistent inequality, moreso of wealth than of income, that plagues America and manifests itself in the questionable dealings of a man like Rahm Emanuel. He may best be remembered as the privatizer of Chicago and, as Perlstein suggested, “a strikingly corrupt mayor.”
“We’re too big and complicated a system to do anything in reaction to a particular group or something happening,” Karen King, who has the wonderful title of “chief people officer” at McDonald’s, said Wednesday, explaining her company’s decision to raise wages for some of its employees.
If you believe that, don’t go near anyone purporting to sell you a bridge, even if it comes with fries on the side. [..]
But the prime mover behind these raises, whether company-specific or legislative, is the workers themselves. The campaigns of the fast-food workers, Wal-Mart employees and others have functioned as a kind of second act to the Occupy Wall Street movement, not just highlighting the enormous disparities of income and wealth in our society but also putting forth a concrete demand, as Occupy never did, to remedy some of inequality’s most remediable extremes.
The depth of the sectarian war unleashed in Yemen shows itself in almost every Gulf Arab official statement and in the official press. [..]
Saudis are being told to regard their country’s struggle as a decision even more important than Saudi Arabia’s appeal to the US to send troops to the land of the Two Holy Mosques in 1990 – a view Osama bin Laden might have disagreed with.
What is less clear, however, is where Washington stands amid all this rhetorical froth in the Gulf and real dead bodies in Yemen. There have been reports in the Arab states that US drone attacks have been made as part of the coalition’s battle in Yemen, that American intelligence has been pin-pointing targets for the Saudis (with the usual civilian casualties). There was a time when America’s war in Yemen seemed to be just part of the whole War on Terror fandango throughout the Middle East. Not any more.
“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”.
This Week with George Stephanopolis: The guests on Sunday’s “This Week” are: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; California Gov. Jerry Brown; Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput; Major League Baseball commissioner emeritus Bud Selig and ESPN’s Keith Olbermann.
The roundtable guests are: Democratic strategist Donna Brazile; ABC News political analyst Matthew Dowd; ABC News Chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl; and Associated Press Chief White House correspondent Julie Pace.
Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Schieffer’s guests are: U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz; Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC); former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA); and Sarah Warbelow, Legal Director for the Human Rights Campaign.
His panel guests are: David Sanger, The New York Times; David Ignatius, The Washington Post; CBS News State Department Correspondent Margaret Brennan; Ruth Marcus, The Washington Post; and Jeffrey Goldberg, Atlantic.
Meet the Press with Chuck Todd: The guests on “MTP” this Sunday are: MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred; Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York; and Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA). The rest remains a mystery.
State of the Union: Jim Acosta will host this Sunday’s SOTU. His guests are Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA).
“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”.
A small part of the Middle East may soon be off limits to US bombing and killing, so naturally Republicans and their neocon allies are furious.
The tentative Iran deal announced on 3 April, in which Western leaders and the Islamic republic agreed on strict limits to Iran’s nuclear program, was hailed by many as a breakthrough, given that it could avert yet another US-led war in the Middle East. So almost immediately, it was denounced by key conservative members of Congress, neocons, and Republican presidential candidates, whose unquenched thirst for blood almost always outweighs their supposed commitment to peace. [..]
When neocons like Bolton come out of the woodwork to denounce the chance for peace with Iran, it’s always amusing to remember the people most responsible for helping the country to start its nuclear energy program: Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. They pushed President Ford to sign a deal to sell Iran nuclear material in 1976, but somehow that’s never brought up when Fox News is calling Iran “the devil”.
There’s still a long way to go this deal can become a signed pact, but given that the terms were better than expected, the Obama administration seems to have finally done something that could have lasting positive impact on the Middle East.
But as the day went on, it became clear that Overton’s argument wasn’t some fringe theory: It’s shaping up as a core tenet of one “compromise” approach to religious freedom laws that’s under consideration, in the wake of the backlash to the Indiana law, which Overton fervently supported as written. It’s at the heart of the fix to the law Jeb Bush pushed Wednesday night with pro-gay rights Republican donors. [..]
For the far right, of course, even Indiana’s compromise is going too far. (Santorum is “disappointed” in his “dear friend” Mike Pence.) My friend Greg Sargent thinks it’s progress that some space has opened up within the GOP to at least debate these issues, and I guess that’s true. But the religious freedom argument should be simple: If your religion tells you it’s wrong to be gay, then don’t have gay sex, or get gay married. It’s amazing to watch Bush and others contort themselves to make floral arranging and cake baking a form of religious expression, to pander to the far right, though it’s not likely to work. This debate will get sillier before it’s settled.
It’s been heartening to see such a strong reaction to Indiana’s new law enabling bigotry against gay people over the past few days. A bright light is now shining on the cleverly framed “Religious liberty” movement and it’s going to be politically risky in the future for any officials to use the Supreme Court’s “Hobby Lobby” invitation to social conservatives to use a religious liberty doctrine to allow businesses to discriminate against gays and lesbians. This is very good news. The Big Money Boyz decided that it was bad for business and the only people to whom conservative leaders listen more closely than the members of the religious right are the leaders of corporate America.
Unfortunately, as you will undoubtedly recall, the Hobby Lobby decision, which for the first time granted religious status to a corporation, wasn’t actually about gay rights. It was about denying female employees health insurance coverage for contraception due to the employers religious objection. (The employee’s beliefs were not deemed to be relevant.) So far, there hasn’t been much outcry against that in Indiana or elsewhere. Indeed, in Indiana the clock has been turned so far back on women’s rights that they are now imprisoning women for having abortions. Yes, you read that right.
For those pining for a Democratic Party that tries to represent more than the whims of the rich and powerful, these are, to say the least, confusing times. [..]
It would be easy to conclude that the status quo is winning Democratic politics – but a series of high-profile elections shows the trends are markedly different outside the national political arena.
Two years ago, the era of billionaire Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his Wall Street-worshiping city politics ended when populist Democrat Bill de Blasio and a slate of progressive city councilors backed by New York’s Working Families Party were swept into office promising to increase taxes on millionaires and fund universal pre-kindergarten. A year later, New York’s conservative Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his $40 million campaign war chest couldn’t muster two-thirds of the Democratic primary vote against an unknown progressive opponent named Zephyr Teachout. Though Cuomo was ultimately reelected, he was humiliated, and his future prospects have been significantly diminished.
Now comes Chicago, where Mayor Rahm Emanuel has shuttered schools, handed out big corporate subsidies, blocked a financial transaction tax and pushed for cuts to city workers’ retirement benefits. He made the old corporate Democratic assumption, betting that he could easily win reelection by simply spending opponents into the ground.
Lambasted as “Mayor 1 Percent,” Emanuel has been forced to champion more progressive policies to try to appease the Democratic base – he suddenly backed a $13 minimum wage and signed an ordinance compelling developers to pony up more cash for affordable housing. His underfinanced opponent Garcia still may lose the April 7th election, but in a city that has for decades been under the thumb of corporate Democrats’ political machine, a deeper victory for progressives has already happened.
Close to the end of the March 25 testimony in the Dzhokhar Tsarnaev trial for his role in the April 25, 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, the government submitted a series of exhibits with chats from the defendant. One described (pdf) wanting President Obama to win the Presidential election as the “lesser of two evils” but asserting “killing Muslims is the only promise Obama or Mitt Romney] will fulfill.” One [joked (pdf) about sex even while discussing studying the Quran. Another described transferring from UMass Dartmouth (in reality, Dzhokhar was already failing out), joking about transferring to an Ivy League school, but ending by saying “I wanna bring justice for my people.” These were chats with no context, simply read by an FBI agent, without even any guidance about with whom Dzhokhar was chatting.
About the only one that made sense was one from December 25, 2012 that read “Doing something with Tamerlan,” Dzhokhar’s older brother who would go on to be killed in a police shoot out after the attack. “I’ll hit you up in a bit bro.”
But when the defense tried to introduce related chats, noting how religious Tamerlan had become and explaining that the older brother had influenced Dzhokhar so much he had been sober for a month, the witness said he wasn’t sure it was about Dzhokhar’s older brother.
It was just an example of the degree to which the prosecution in the marathon trial are cherry picking narrowly from the complex cultural world of Dzhokhar, a Chechen immigrant who grew up steeped in American culture in Cambridge, MA.
The good news is that the economy today is much better than it was six years ago when George W. Bush left office. The bad news is that, despite these improvements, the 40-year decline of the American middle class continues. Real unemployment is much too high, 35 million Americans continue to have no health insurance and more of our friends and neighbors are living in poverty than at almost any time in the modern history of our country.
Meanwhile, as the rich become much richer, the level of income and wealth inequality has reached obscene and unimaginable levels. In the United States, we have the most unequal level of wealth and income distribution of any major country on earth, and worse now then at any other time since the 1920s. Today, the top one-tenth of 1 percent of our nation owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent, and one family owns more wealth than the bottom 42 percent. In terms of income, 99 percent of all new income is going to the top 1 percent. [..]
Clearly, the struggle to create a nation and world of economic and social justice and environmental sanity is not an easy one. But this I know: despair is not an option if we care about our kids and grandchildren. Giving up is not an option if we want to prevent irreparable harm to our planet.
We must stand up and fight back. We must launch a political revolution which engages millions of Americans from all walks of life in the struggle for real change. This country belongs to all of us, not just the billionaire class.
Please join the grass-roots revolution that we desperately need.
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