Tag: TMC Politics

Tunisian Spring, while promising, will be incomplete without economic reforms

On Dec. 17, 2010, a Tunisian street vendor named Mohammed Bouazizi staged a desperate protest against corrupt local officials by setting himself on fire. The act helped trigger a revolution in his country and a wave of uprisings across North Africa and the Middle East. The consequences of his actions were complex, but his demands were simple: He wanted to earn a good living, start a business and be treated with dignity.

Bouazizi’s story reminds us that the roots of extraordinary political upheaval in what came to be known as the Arab Spring were fundamentally about economic freedom. Creating opportunity for young people besieged by high unemployment is a challenge that must be addressed head-on by governments in the region. The United States will continue to serve as a partner in that effort, through both our government and our private sector.

Steven Zhou: Canada doesn’t need a US-style surveillance state

The latest anti-terrorism bill promoted by Stephen Harper’s Conservatives is a threat to both liberty and safety

Thanks to leaks by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, we now know that the modern U.S. security state makes Big Brother from George Orwell’s “1984” look quaint. Thanks to the Conservative administration of Stephen Harper, Canada is heading quickly in the same direction. Bill C-51, currently under debate in Parliament, represents the most sweeping threat to Canadian civil liberties yet.

The Tories have long emphasized the danger of domestic terrorism, but there is little evidence that Canada faces an imminent threat. And only six Muslims were involved in planning terrorism on U.S. soil in 2014, the fewest since 2008. The exact figures for Canada are unknown, but they are almost certainly even lower.

The government’s actual motivation appears to be political opportunism. Last fall, polls showed Harper and the Conservatives badly trailing Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party. Then in October, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, a troubled Quebec Muslim man, killed a soldier at the National War Memorial in Ottawa. Later that month, Martin Rouleau killed a soldier in Quebec. Harper wasted no time in announcing that his administration would quickly pass laws to bolster public safety. Since then, his position in the polls has improved steadily.

Michael T. Klare: The Real Story Behind the Oil Price Collapse

Many reasons have been provided for the dramatic plunge in the price of oil to about $60 per barrel (nearly half of what it was a year ago): slowing demand due to global economic stagnation; overproduction at shale fields in the United States; the decision of the Saudis and other Middle Eastern OPEC producers to maintain output at current levels (presumably to punish higher-cost producers in the U.S. and elsewhere); and the increased value of the dollar relative to other currencies. There is, however, one reason that’s not being discussed, and yet it could be the most important of all: the complete collapse of Big Oil’s production-maximizing business model.

Until last fall, when the price decline gathered momentum, the oil giants were operating at full throttle, pumping out more petroleum every day.  They did so, of course, in part to profit from the high prices.  For most of the previous six years, Brent crude, the international benchmark for crude oil, had been selling at $100 or higher.  But Big Oil was also operating according to a business model that assumed an ever-increasing demand for its products, however costly they might be to produce and refine.  This meant that no fossil fuel reserves, no potential source of supply-no matter how remote or hard to reach, how far offshore or deeply buried, how encased in rock-was deemed untouchable in the mad scramble to increase output and profits.

The Justice Department’s exposé of the bigoted law enforcement practices at play in Ferguson, Mo., has rightly led to an exodus of officials from the town government. In the week since the report was made public, the police chief, the city manager and the municipal court judge have all stepped down, and the city’s court has been placed under state supervision. [..]

The housecleaning among the political leadership in Ferguson is a necessary step. But the illegal and discriminatory measures uncovered by the Justice Department are not limited to that troubled municipality. Indeed, the evidence strongly suggests that Ferguson is not even the worst civil rights offender in St. Louis County and that adjacent towns are also systematically targeting poor and minority citizens for street and traffic stops to rake in fines, criminalizing entire communities in the process.

Dave Johnson: Will Media Continue Its Blackout Of Progressive Budget?

Next week, progressives in Congress will release their annual budget proposal. They do this every year, and every year the national news media largely ignores it. Will the elite media report on it this year? Make some noise, and maybe they will.

There are alternative ways to run a government budget, but they are just excluded from the national debate. The elite position creates a “conventional wisdom” that there are no alternatives. But America’s top income tax rate used to be more than 90 percent, to combat inequality and the threat inequality poses to democracy – and the rich still got richer. At the same time, the corporation tax rate was 50 percent, and corporations paid 32 percent of all taxes. That has dropped to just 8.9 percent now, and Congress and the president are now proposing to reduce the corporate tax rate dramatically – again. As a result of these cuts, inequality has soared, budgets have been thrown out of balance, schools have declined, we no longer even maintain – never mind modernize – our crucial infrastructure.

We can have a budget that serves “We, the People.” It’s about priorities. Frankly, in the richest country in history, it is possible to make sure that everyone has a job, good medical care, a good retirement, a good free education, and keep our infrastructure modernized and up-to-date – and all while making sure that the budget is balanced. It really is just a matter of priorities – choices about how we distribute the country’s resources. Unfortunately for 99 percent of us, “we” choose intense inequality and a vast military machine.

David Swanson: Which Party Do You View Iran Through?

Most people in the United States have little contact with Iran or its culture. Iran comes up as a scary threat in the speeches of demagogues. A range of debate is offered between obliterate it and pressure it into compliance with our civilized norms, or at least the civilized norms of some other country that doesn’t obliterate or pressure people.

So how do Americans view Iran? Many view it, like all governmental matters, through the lens of either the Democratic or the Republican Party. The Democratic President has come to be seen as on the side of preventing a war with Iran. The Republican Congress has come to be seen as pushing for that war. In this framework, something remarkable happens. Democrats begin recognizing all of the arguments against war that ought to be applied to every war.

Pension contributions aren’t gifts, and the free market doesn’t exist

Americans are being duped about many crucial economic concepts because of misleading terms that pollute popular understanding.

This problem caught my attention last week when a state treasurer spoke just before me at a national conference on pension plans and, along with the event host, referred to “contributions” to pension plans.

They are not alone. News reports routinely refer to contributions to pension plans by industry and government. Journalists perpetuate this misunderstanding by accepting the language politicians and others use without checking the facts, as when Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin said four years ago that he wanted state workers to “contribute more” to their pensions so taxpayers could contribute less.

Using the term “contribution” creates the false impression that pensions are a gift and therefore optional. There are no taxpayer contributions to public worker pension plans. All the money in these plans – except for investment earnings – is compensation that workers have earned.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: Will Social Security Decide Race for Maryland U.S. Senate Seat?

The race for Barbara Mikulski’s seat in the U.S. Senate has just begun. But Social Security is already shaping up as a major issue, especially between two leading contenders: U.S. Reps. Chris Van Hollen and Donna Edwards.

Van Hollen is favored by some party leaders, including Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. Edwards, for her part, is extremely popular among progressives and economic populists. Democracy for America and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee promoted a “draft Edwards” movement before she declared her candidacy on Tuesday.

Van Hollen has a problem. He was an outspoken supporter of the Simpson-Bowles plan, a proposal drawn up by the two co-chairs of a presidential commission on federal deficits and Social Security. When their commission failed to agree on recommendations, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles issued their own.

Oliver Burkeman: Capitalism was supposed to reduce red tape. Why is bureaucracy worse than ever?

Last month, I became a customer of Time Warner Cable, New York’s favorite quasi-monopolistic provider of patchy broadband that’s worse than the internet in Bucharest. Given the firm’s reputation, I was genuinely surprised at how smoothly it all went, up to the point at which I’d entered my debit card details. (I know, I know; in hindsight it seems so obvious.) Then the trouble began. It took five visits from engineers, plus countless phone calls, to get things working; the job required a specific ladder, but the booking system seemed serially unable to dispatch a van equipped with one. Finally connected, I went online to cancel the stopgap internet service I’d been using from another company, only to find that online cancelation wasn’t allowed. And yet, how weird is this: when the day came for Time Warner to process my first month’s payment, everything went off without a hitch. [..]

But there’s something strange about this utterly familiar aspect of modern life, as the anthropologist David Graeber notes in his new book, The Utopia of Rules: it’s the opposite of how the free-market world’s meant to work. Capitalism is supposed to be “dynamic, free, and open“; even those of us who favor a big role for government in promoting social welfare tend to accept that this comes at the cost of more red tape. We oppose free-market fundamentalists – but we grudgingly concede that the world for which they yearn would probably involve less brain-meltingly tedious admin.

Mark Weibrot: Obama absurdly declares Venezuela a security threat

Channeling Reagan, Obama continues US pressure on Latin American leftist governments

Yesterday the White House took a new step toward the theater of the absurd by “declaring a national emergency with respect to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by the situation in Venezuela,” as President Barack Obama put it in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner.

It remains to be seen whether anyone in the White House press corps will have the courage to ask what in the world the nation’s chief executive could mean by that. Is Venezuela financing a coming terrorist attack on U.S. territory? Planning an invasion? Building a nuclear weapon?

Who do they think they are kidding? Some may say that the language is just there because it is necessary under U.S. law in order to impose the latest round of sanctions on Venezuela. That is not much of a defense, telling the whole world the rule of law in the United States is something the president can use lies to get around whenever he finds it inconvenient.

Jeb Lund: Republicans’ new climate strategy: just ban the words ‘climate change’

You might have missed it, but Florida has solved climate change. Our state, with 1,300 miles of coastline and a mean elevation of 100 feet, did not, however, limit greenhouse emissions. Instead, the state’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), under Republican governor Rick Scott, forbade employees from using terms like “climate change,” “global warming” or “sea-level rise”. They’re all gone now. You’re welcome, by the way.

It’s pointless to call linguistic distortions of reality like this Orwellian: people tune you out when you use that word and, besides, Big Brother at least had wit. These are just the foot-stamping insistent lies of intellectual toddlers on the grift. It is “nuh-uh” as public policy. This is an elected official saying, “I put a bag over your head, so that means now I’m invisible” and then going out looting. Expect to see it soon wherever you live.

Collective bargaining and good public policy is needed for California’s tech corridor to foster widely shared prosperity

Silicon Valley is the center of innovation in our economy. But are the profits it generates bolstering a strong middle class?

This question is as relevant today as it was in the 1990s, when the dotcom boom began. In fact, tech billionaires have since increased their lobbying in Washington and Sacramento, and now play an increasingly influential role in political debates. Last month, the Capital and Main website released a series of articles on inequality in California. The state “is the home to more superrich than anywhere else in the country,” the authors noted. “And it also exhibits the highest poverty rate in the nation, when cost of living is taken into account.”

The report added that Silicon Valley’s digital innovation has led to “unprecedented” rise in productivity levels. “But virtually all of the economic benefits went to those at the top,” it said.

A Michele Dickerson: Why does America continue to subsidize housing for the wealthy?

Many people in the US have given up on the American dream of owning a house: US homeownership rates have now dropped to the lowest point in almost 20 years. But the government shouldn’t be focusing on trying to raise that rate – for now, their priorities should lie with increasing affordable housing.

For too long, well-off, high-income homeowners have benefited from generous government support. All the while, ordinary Americans are struggling to pay the rising rent. It is time to stop prioritizing home sales – increasingly out of reach for many Americans – and help everyday people attain a much more basic, and pressing need: affordable housing.

Since the Great Depression, US housing policies have aimed almost exclusively at encouraging Americans to become homeowners. Housing policies favor and heavily subsidize homeownership because it is said to help create strong communities and build family wealth. But it would be a mistake to continue with this approach now.

Trisha Pritikin: Fukushima victims speak. Will anyone listen?

Four years later, Japanese police and prosecutors have yet to conduct a thorough investigation

On March 11, 2011, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake off the coast of northeastern Japan triggered a tsunami that led to the meltdown of three nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. While immediate health consequences are yet to be determined, more than 159,000 people were evicted from areas deemed too radioactive for human habitation. The World Health Organization has warned about “increased risk of certain cancers” for people in the most contaminated areas.

In the U.S. the disaster led to the creation of a federal task force and new safety and security standards at nuclear plants. On the fourth anniversary of the Fukushima disaster, Americans may be surprised to learn that no one in Japan has been held accountable. In fact, Japanese police and prosecutors have yet to conduct a thorough investigation.

The Fukushima victims are demanding criminal prosecution of the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) and relevant government officials for criminal negligence for not safeguarding the reactors and the often catastrophic mishandling and misinformation during and after the disaster.

Lori Gruen: Let clowns be clowns and elephants be elephants

Ringling Bros. finally bows to public distaste for its exploitation of highly intelligent, social animals

the use of elephants in its circus shows by 2018. “There has been a mood shift among our consumers,” said Alana Feld, the company’s vice president of entertainment.

After more than 125 years using elephants and decades of defending its elephant shows against growing criticism, the most popular circus has finally recognized that public sentiment has swung against it. Satisfying its customers is, of course, what all businesses do, and the circus has acknowledged that it is getting harder and more expensive to fight various laws banning the use of exotic animals in towns across the U.S. How did this mood shift happen? Why have people changed their views about elephants used for entertainment?

Part of the credit for changing attitudes is due to the tireless animal activists who appear regularly, rain or shine, to protest when the circus comes to town. They hand out flyers and carry placards with information about the tragic conditions that the elephants have to endure while traveling to entertain audiences.

Their action is a brazen, breathtaking attempt to sabotage U.S. foreign policy and stampede America into another war in the Middle East.

While U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is trying to negotiate the most critical elements of a deal to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons and avoid war, the Republicans are actively trying to undermine his efforts to get a deal.[..]

If the Iranians are unwilling to sign a verifiable agreement with the international community to limit the application of their nuclear know-how to peaceful purposes, the U.S. will be left with two horrible options: a nuclear Iran or war.

Unbelievably, these GOP senators are actively discouraging Iran from signing such a deal by arguing that the United States cannot be trusted to keep up our end. That is shocking. It’s like someone interfering with negotiations being conducted by a hostage negotiator by trying to convince a hostage taker not to surrender because he will shoot him anyway.

Paul Buchheit: How to Become a Conservative in Four Embarrassing Steps

Not that we’d want to. But many Americans, perplexingly, have taken that path in the last ten years, as 27 percent of those polled now consider themselves ‘mostly’ or ‘consistently’ conservative, up from 18 percent in 2004. (Conservatives were at 30 percent in 1994. Liberals increased from 21 to over 30 percent in the 1990s and have remained approximately the same since then.)

The language of true conservatives often turns to denial, dismissal, and/or belligerence, without verifiable facts of any substance. There is also evidence for delusional thinking and a lack of empathy. Here are four ways to be just like them.

Dave Johnson: How Our Trade Policies Kill Jobs

Trade is great. We all trade. A lot of us trade labor for money that buys other things. A farmer trades corn for money that buys other things, and so on. No one is “against trade.”

But is anything called “trade” always good for all involved? Imagine you’re a farmer and you make a deal to trade corn and wheat to get money for a new tractor. So the farmer orders a new tractor, but the “trade partner” never buys any corn or wheat. After a while the “trade partner” shows up with a big bill, saying the farmer owes money for the tractor. And then the farmer finds out that the “trade partner” plans to use the proceeds from the sale of the tractor to grow their own corn.

In modern terms, we would say that the farmer was “running a trade deficit.” How much damage do you think that “trade deficit” is doing to that farmer, and the farmer’s ability to make a living in the future? How long do you think that farmer would let that “trade agreement” continue?

John Atcheson: Partners in Stupidity and the War on Terror

Casus belli anyone? So Obama wants Congress to authorize a war on ISIS. They’ll do it, of course, but not before the usual partisan sniping.

So far the “debate” has been a festival of irrelevance. Should it be sun-setted? Is three years right? What about the open-ended authorization for Al-Qaeda from 1991? Does it limit a future President’s options?

Oh, the self-satisfied sagacity of these people. Why, they’ve thought of everything … well almost everything.

Among the things that’s missing in this discussion is the Casus Belli … you may remember the search for the missing Casus Belli just before we hurdled headlong into the Iraqi War – you know, the one that created ISIS in the first place? The one that gave them arms, motivation and a modicum of training?

There’s also no acknowledgement that the “war on terror” approach to terrorism has been a complete, utter and abject failure. In fact, it encourages terrorism as a tactic, and serves as a recruitment tool. Here’s why.

The U.S. economy is picking up steam but most Americans aren’t feeling it. By contrast, most European economies are still in bad shape, but most Europeans are doing relatively well.

What’s behind this? Two big facts.

First, American corporations exert far more political influence in the United States than their counterparts exert in their own countries.

In fact, most Americans have no influence at all. That’s the conclusion of Professors Martin Gilens of Princeton and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University, who analyzed 1,799 policy issues and found that “the preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”

Frederick AO Schwarz Jr: Embarrassment – not security – drives government secrecy

American democracy has a secrecy problem. Part of the cure is the discovery and publication of excessive secrets – and, for this, we need a vibrant free press, including online investigative journalism sources and traditional newspapers.

Investigative journalism is vital to democracy – but it is threatened by shifts in technology and economics. Although two grants totaling only $2,500 enabled Seymour Hersh to uncover the My Lai massacre, investigative journalism was and is generally expensive. As Hersh himself later said , “what it takes is time and money”; moreover, he struck out “one time in three.”

According to Alex Jones, the director of Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on the Media, a skilled investigative reporter can cost more than $250,000 a year for only a handful of stories. Even when a news organization is fed hidden information, the legwork required to check it can be extraordinarily expensive. Indeed, before the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel published information provided by WikiLeaks, it took a team of 50 nearly four months to analyze the American diplomatic cables and the so-called war logs took a team of 30 around two months.

Andrew Bacevich: Rationalizing Lunacy: The Intellectual as Servant of the State

Policy intellectuals — eggheads presuming to instruct the mere mortals who actually run for office — are a blight on the republic. Like some invasive species, they infest present-day Washington, where their presence strangles common sense and has brought to the verge of extinction the simple ability to perceive reality. A benign appearance — well-dressed types testifying before Congress, pontificating in print and on TV, or even filling key positions in the executive branch — belies a malign impact. They are like Asian carp let loose in the Great Lakes.

It all began innocently enough.  Back in 1933, with the country in the throes of the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt first imported a handful of eager academics to join the ranks of his New Deal.  An unprecedented economic crisis required some fresh thinking, FDR believed. Whether the contributions of this “Brains Trust” made a positive impact or served to retard economic recovery (or ended up being a wash) remains a subject for debate even today.   At the very least, however, the arrival of Adolph Berle, Raymond Moley, Rexford Tugwell, and others elevated Washington’s bourbon-and-cigars social scene. As bona fide members of the intelligentsia, they possessed a sort of cachet.

Darren Wilson was innocent. If only the city’s cops offered their own citizens the same due process he received.

Yesterday the Justice Department released the results of a long and thorough investigation into the killing of Michael Brown by Officer Darren Wilson. The investigation concluded that there was not enough evidence to prove a violation of federal law by Officer Wilson. The investigation concluded much more. The investigation concluded that physical evidence and witness statements corroborated Wilson’s claim that Michael Brown reached into the car and struck the officer. It concluded that claims that Wilson reached out and grabbed Brown first “were inconsistent with physical and forensic evidence.” [..]

Unlike the local investigators, the Justice Department did not merely toss all evidence before a grand jury and say, “you figure it out.” The federal investigators did the work themselves and came to the conclusion that Officer Wilson had not committed “prosecutable violations under the applicable federal criminal civil rights statute, 18 U.S.C. § 242.”

Our system, ideally, neither catches every single offender, nor lightly imposes the prosecution, jailing, and fining of its citizens. A high burden of proof should attend any attempt to strip away one’s liberties. The Justice Department investigation reflects a department attempting to live up to those ideals and giving Officer Wilson the due process that he, and anyone else falling under our legal system, deserves.

One cannot say the same for Officer Wilson’s employers.

David Cay Johnston: Another Obama regulator refuses to regulate

FERC chairwoman Cheryl LaFleur should lose her job for bias, incompetence or both

Hardly anyone has heard of Cheryl LaFleur, but she is one of America’s most powerful government officials, entrusted with vast authority to oversee the electricity, oil and natural gas industries. She chairs the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), a tiny government agency with only 1,500 employees. Its budget is covered not by taxpayers but by the industries it regulates.  

Her sworn duties include making sure charges for electricity are always just and reasonable. That means suppliers should be reasonably compensated and customers should pay reasonable prices. But she has consistently ignored this responsibility. When presented with serial indicators of unjust prices, she puts on a blindfold and sits on her hands.

In a Feb. 18 letter to six senators and 13 representatives, LaFleur demonstrated beyond any doubt her fealty to electricity companies and disregard for consumers. The 19 legislators expressed alarm over the quadrupling of prices paid just to have power plants available in New England to supply electricity during peak times. The price was $1 billion and change five years ago. Last month’s auction hit $4 billion and would have been much higher but for price caps.

LaFleur, a Harvard educated lawyer, politely thanked the lawmakers for writing her about their concerns. She then told them that nothing could be done.

Mike Daisey: We can’t rely on corporations like Fox to care about ethics in journalism

We can get into trouble telling stories.

Few things evoke more high-handed, Puritanical moralizing than someone else doing something untoward that each of us has done ourselves – like telling a story that isn’t strictly or literally true. We condemn others’ embellishments, in part, because we’re the ones who didn’t get caught. [..]

But stories are not journalism, though (again, with the question of the nature of language) we call them that. There are, however, few forms of storytelling that have the specific aspirations that journalism does: it is the attempt to do the impossible and tell the literal truth – which is what makes it noble. Once we admit that every story is fiction, it makes the attempt to tell the truth so much more important; and when we as listeners take the risk to believe, it’s incredibly damaging when that trust is violated.

Bill O’Reilly’ and Brian Williams’ cases could not be more similar: both are prominent broadcast journalists in television at the top of their game; and both told war stories that contain inaccuracies so blatant that common sense says they lied. But one of these men has been heavily punished and the other will not only survive, but be rewarded because one asked for our trust, and then other never bothered to earn it nor care if he did.