Tag: TMC Politics

Feb 05 2015

And You’re Telling Us This Why?

Leaks of sensitive information by the administration are apparently quite acceptable, even if it might jeopardize other covert operations or lives, just so long as it makes the administration look good in the press.

MSNBC’s host Rachel Maddow reviews the details of a CIA-involved assassination from 2008, reported for the first time in The Washington Post over the weekend, and wonders about the reason and timing of such sensitive, secret story being reported in the press.

CIA and Mossad killed senior Hezbollah figure in car bombing

By By Adam Goldman and Ellen Nakashima, January 30, 2015, Washington Post

On Feb. 12, 2008, Imad Mughniyah, Hezbollah’s international operations chief, walked on a quiet nighttime street in Damascus after dinner at a nearby restaurant. Not far away, a team of CIA spotters in the Syrian capital was tracking his movements.

As Mughniyah approached a parked SUV, a bomb planted in a spare tire on the back of the vehicle exploded, sending a burst of shrapnel across a tight radius. He was killed instantly.

The device was triggered remotely from Tel Aviv by agents with Mossad, the Israeli foreign intelligence service, who were in communication with the operatives on the ground in Damascus. “The way it was set up, the U.S. could object and call it off, but it could not execute,” said a former U.S. intelligence official.

The United States helped build the bomb, the former official said, and tested it repeatedly at a CIA facility in North Carolina to ensure the potential blast area was contained and would not result in collateral damage. [..]

The United States has never acknowledged participation in the killing of Mughniyah, which Hezbollah blamed on Israel. Until now, there has been little detail about the joint operation by the CIA and Mossad to kill him, how the car bombing was planned or the exact U.S. role. With the exception of the 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden, the mission marked one of the most high-risk covert actions by the United States in recent years.

U.S. involvement in the killing, which was confirmed by five former U.S. intelligence officials, also pushed American legal boundaries.

Obama Order Sped Up Wave of Cyberattacks Against Iran

Daid Sanger, June 1, 2012, The New York Times

From his first months in office, President Obama secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding America’s first sustained use of cyberweapons, according to participants in the program.

Mr. Obama decided to accelerate the attacks – begun in the Bush administration and code-named Olympic Games – even after an element of the program accidentally became public in the summer of 2010 because of a programming error that allowed it to escape Iran’s Natanz plant and sent it around the world on the Internet. Computer security experts who began studying the worm, which had been developed by the United States and Israel, gave it a name: Stuxnet.

At a tense meeting in the White House Situation Room within days of the worm’s “escape,” Mr. Obama, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency at the time, Leon E. Panetta, considered whether America’s most ambitious attempt to slow the progress of Iran’s nuclear efforts had been fatally compromised.

John McCain demands leak investigation

By Austin Wright, June 5, 2012, Politico

Arizona Sen. John McCain on Tuesday demanded an investigation into the recent leaks of classified information on U.S. intelligence operations.

The ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, who lost the 2008 presidential election to Barack Obama, accused the White House of leaking sensitive details on covert missions to The New York Times in order to “paint a portrait of the president of the United States as a strong leader on national security issues.”

McCain also said the Obama administration might have been responsible for blowing the cover of a Pakistani doctor who helped U.S. commandos locate Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. The doctor, Shakil Afridi, has been sentenced by a Pakistani court to 33 years in prison.

“This is not a proud day for the United States of America,” McCain said in a fiery speech on the Senate floor. “Our friends are not the only ones who read The New York Times. Our enemies do too.”

McCain said Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) had agreed hold hearings on the issue. “Regardless of how politically useful they might have been to the president, they have to stop – the leaks have to stop,” McCain demanded.

The New York Times: These were not leaks

By Dylan Byers, June 7, 2012, Politico

Caught in the crosshairs of a contentious dispute between the White House and Congress, The New York Times is vowing to charge ahead with its coverage of developments in U.S. national security – and denying that the paper is on the receiving end of silver-platter leaks from the Obama administration.

“These are some of the most significant developments in national security in a generation,” Times managing editor Dean Baquet told POLITICO on Thursday, referring to his paper’s recent reports on the Obama administration’s use of drone strikes and cyberattacks. “We’re going to keep doing these stories.”

Following Sen. John McCain’s demand for an independent investigation into White House security leaks, Republicans and Democrats on both the House and Senate intelligence committees issued a joint statement on Wednesday calling on the Obama administration “to fully, fairly and impartially investigate” whether or not administration officials were responsible for leaking information that appeared in the recent Times’ articles.

But the fact that the White House has not raised complaints about the Times’ reports further stokes congressional concern that the administration was somehow involved in leaking the stories.

Condoleezza Rice Testifies on Urging The Times to Not Run Article

By Matt Apuzzo, January 15, 2015, New York Times

White House officials favor two primary tactics when they want to kill a news article, Condoleezza Rice, the former national security adviser, testified Thursday: They can essentially confirm the report by arguing that it is too important to national security to be published, or they can say that the reporter has it wrong.

Sitting across from a reporter and editor from The New York Times in early 2003, Ms. Rice said, she tried both.

Testifying in the leak trial of Jeffrey Sterling, a former C.I.A. officer, Ms. Rice described how the White House successfully persuaded Times editors not to publish an article about a secret operation to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program. James Risen, a Times reporter, ultimately revealed the program in his 2006 book, “State of War,” and said that the C.I.A. had botched the operation. Prosecutors used Ms. Rice’s testimony to bolster their case that the leak to Mr. Risen had harmed national security.

“This was very closely held,” Ms. Rice said. “It was one of the most closely held programs in my tenure as national security adviser.”

Ms. Rice’s account also threw a light on how the government pressures journalists to avoid publishing details about United States security affairs. It is a common practice that is seldom discussed.

C.I.A. Officer Is Found Guilty in Leak Tied to Times Reporter

By Matt Apuzzo, January 26, 2015, New York Times

Jeffrey A. Sterling, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer, was convicted of espionage Monday on charges that he told a reporter for The New York Times about a secret operation to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program.

The conviction is a significant victory for the Obama administration, which has conducted an unprecedented crackdown on officials who speak to journalists about security matters without the administration’s approval. Prosecutors prevailed after a yearslong fight in which the reporter, James Risen, refused to identify his sources.

The case revolved around a C.I.A. operation in which a former Russian scientist provided Iran with intentionally flawed nuclear component schematics. Mr. Risen revealed the operation in his 2006 book, “State of War,” describing it as a mismanaged, potentially reckless mission that may have inadvertently aided the Iranian nuclear program.

One can only surmise the reason for the need to release the Mossad/CIA assassination plot at this time.  

Feb 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

Katrina vanden Heuvel: Time For a ‘New Deal’ For Greece

Don’t believe the tripe about the crisis in Europe. With the election of the Syriza Party in Greece, the Greek people have offered Europe hope. This is Europe’s chance to turn from the crippling austerity that has left the South mired in depression and the North sinking in deflation. Syriza is calling for a “New Deal,” not only for Greece but for all of Europe.

The question is whether the rest of Europe will exhibit statesmanship-or condemn the people of Europe to years more of misery. The initial reactions in Germany and Brussels opt for misery. Now is the time for the Obama administration, progressives in Congress and across the country to join in a bold call to save Europe from its folly.

The facts of the situation are clear. The Greek debt cannot be repaid. When the bottom dropped out of the global economy, Greece, plagued by a corrupt and indebted government, was the most vulnerable of the European Union nations. The so-called “troika”-the EU, the European Central Bank and the IMF-stepped in to bail out reckless banks, assume most of the debt, and inflict harsh terms on the Greeks to repay it. The Greeks have sold off their assets, crushed workers, trampled labor laws and slashed vital public services to ensure that the private bankers be paid.

Michelle Goldsberg: The GOP’s Embrace of Anti-Vaxxers Reveals the Craziness Gap in American Politics

It is grotesque that, in the midst of the current measles outbreak, some leading Republicans are humoring vaccine denialists, but it is not surprising. It is, rather, a near-perfect illustration of the craziness gap in American politics. Vaccine skepticism is one of those issues, like 9/11 Trutherism, where parts of the fringe right and fringe left, each driven by their own distinct fears about authority, curve around and meet each other. Yet only the fringe right finds indulgence among mainstream politicians.

There is a popular perception that vaccine refusal is driven by the sort of affluent, vaguely left-wing parents satirized by the Los Feliz Day Care Twitter feed. (“Vax or no vax, none of our kids had measles, and we only went to Disneyland to protest commercialism and the anthropomorphization of animals.”) But susceptibility to misinformation about vaccines is less about politics than about paranoia, and paranoia, whether towards Big Pharma or big government, operates in many different cultural milieus. A recent paper by Yale Law School’s Dan M. Kahan found that perception of “vaccine risks displayed only a small relationship with left-right political outlooks,” though it is slightly more common on the right. “Respondents formed more negative assessments of the risk and benefits of childhood vaccines as they became more conservative and identified more strongly with the Republican Party,” it said.

Bryce Covert: A Job at McDonald’s Now Includes Singing and Dancing on Demand

TV spectators of last night’s Super Bowl were treated to many slick, high-concept ads, but one probably stuck out to the millions of McDonald’s employees who were watching: the company’s spot trumpeting its new “pay with lovin'” campaign. The company is rolling out a new way to bribe customer loyalty amid declining sales by randomly picking some who will get their food and drink for free. Instead of money, they have to pay with “lovin.'” [..]

According to the Super Bowl ad, this can range from being told by the cashier to call your mother and tell her you love her (no word on what happens if you don’t have a mother) to being commanded to dance to giving the cashier a fist bump. Leaving aside what customers may think of being asked to perform these tasks in return for their food, little attention is given to the other side of the register: the workers themselves.

McDonald’s employees are notoriously low-paid. Average hourly pay, according to Glassdoor, is $8.25 for a crew member. (It’s just slightly more for the food and beverage industry generally at $8.84.) Even in a low-paid service job, of course, there is a minimum expectation of professional behavior at work that would require being polite and even friendly to customers.

John Nichols: People Power Is Winning Net Neutrality

Can the people ever win in an new age of oligarchy, when corporate power is so frequently and thoroughly unbound?

Yes, sometimes, they can.

After years of bumbling, blustering and bureaucratic attempts to avoid necessary action, the Federal Communications Commission is expected to move on Thursday to defend net neutrality. According to the design and technology blog Gizmodo, “It’s Finally Game Time for Net Neutrality.” The more staid Wall Street Journal explains that the commission majority is moving to “fully embrace the principle known as net neutrality”-the “central element” of which “would be a ban on broadband providers blocking, slowing down or speeding up specific websites in exchange for payment.”

Translation: The FCC is preparing to defend the Internet as we know it against subdivision by profiteers who would create a “fast lane” for paying content from multinational corporations and billionaire-backed politicians and a “slow lane” for communications from those who are not on the winning side of the income-inequality chasm.

Eugene Robertson: Golden Opportunity for GOP Deal-Making

To understand why the centerpiece initiative of President Obama’s budget makes so much sense, imagine that U.S. corporations decided to bring home-in cash-the estimated $2 trillion in profits they are stashing overseas to avoid paying taxes.

If they shipped the money by air, cargo planes stuffed with dollar bills would land at aging airports that no longer measure up to international standards. If they sent it by sea, the cash would arrive at ports too antiquated to accommodate the newest and biggest container ships. Either way, the money would eventually be loaded onto trucks that headed for their final destinations via crumbling, traffic-choked freeways and rusting bridges.

So the president’s idea is hard to argue with: Impose a one-time 14 percent tax on those foreign profits to partially fund a multi-year, $478 billion program to renew the nation’s sagging infrastructure. The rest of the money would come from the existing gasoline tax.

Corporations would surely squawk-since at present they are paying no U.S. tax on that offshore money-but in return they would get permanent cuts in corporate tax rates, with the levy on overseas profits slashed nearly by half. And Republicans have long maintained that they want corporate tax reform and recognize the need for new infrastructure spending.

Therefore, given the Mad Hatter’s logic that holds sway in Washington, GOP leaders immediately announced their opposition to Obama’s budget and everything it stands for.

Feb 03 2015

The Anti-Vaxxer Hoax

In the last few years there have been increasing reports of outbreaks of childhood diseases that were thought to have been eradicated, or at least very rare occurring in UN-vaccinated migrant populations and third world countries. In the last few months, there have been outbreaks of pertussis and measles in cities across the US. This is troubling and the main cause appears to be a growing group of people who have fallen for a debunk premise that vaccines for these diseases were somehow linked to the rise in autism. The British doctor who wrote that paper has been prosecuted for fraud and has lost his license to even practice medicine. Let’s be very clear about these vaccines. They are safe and they work. There is no debate, or at least there shouldn’t be.

MSNBC’s “All In” host Chris Hayes is joined by Retro Report‘s Bonnie Bertram to trace the current anti-vaccine movement back to one debunked, discredited study published in 1998.

Yet, the myth persists and it is putting not only the children whose parents refuse to vaccinate them but everyone else. Now, right wing politicians who are vying for the 2016 presidential campaign have been pandering for the votes of these ignorant people. The hypocrisy of the politicians reeks:

The vaccination controversy is a twist on an old problem for the Republican Party: how to approach matters that have largely been settled among scientists but are not widely accepted by conservatives.

It is a dance Republican candidates often do when they hedge their answers about whether evolution should be taught in schools. It is what makes the fight over global warming such a liability for their party, and what led last year to a widely criticized response to the Ebola scare.

As concern spread about an Ebola outbreak in the United States, physicians criticized Republican lawmakers – including Mr. Christie – who called for strict quarantines of people who may have been exposed to the virus. In some cases, Republicans proposed banning people who had been to the hardest-hit West African countries from entering the United States, even though public health officials warned that would only make it more difficult to stop Ebola’s spread.

Yet, they think that it’s OK for parents not to vaccinate their children against diseases that are far more contagious and killed more than the the two people who contracted Ebola from Eric Duncan who died of the disease in Dallas.


There was one far right presidential hopeful that actually said something that made sense:

Ben Carson, a potential Republican presidential candidate, on Monday strongly backed vaccinations, splitting from two possible rivals who suggested parents should decide whether to immunize their children.

“Although I strongly believe in individual rights and the rights of parents to raise their children as they see fit, I also recognize that public health and public safety are extremely important in our society,” Carson, a retired pediatric neurosurgeon, told The Hill in a statement.

“Certain communicable diseases have been largely eradicated by immunization policies in this country and we should not allow those diseases to return by foregoing safe immunization programs, for philosophical, religious or other reasons when we have the means to eradicate them,” he added.

There should be few exemptions to getting vaccinated and those should only be for persons who have a medical contraindication to vaccination, not religion or some personal philosophy. The ignorant and dangerous anti-vaccination movement needs to be stopped and all children eligible for vaccines should get them, as soon as possible.

Feb 03 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

Joseph E. Stiglitz: Don’t Trade Away Our Health

A secretive group met behind closed doors in New York this week. What they decided may lead to higher drug prices for you and hundreds of millions around the world.

Representatives from the United States and 11 other Pacific Rim countries convened to decide the future of their trade relations in the so-called Trans-Pacific Partnership (T.P.P.). Powerful companies appear to have been given influence over the proceedings, even as full access is withheld from many government officials from the partnership countries.

Among the topics negotiators have considered are some of the most contentious T.P.P. provisions – those relating to intellectual property rights. And we’re not talking just about music downloads and pirated DVDs. These rules could help big pharmaceutical companies maintain or increase their monopoly profits on brand-name drugs.

Dean Baker: Is Hillary Clinton in the Bottom 3 Percent? Turning the Corner on CEO Pay

Most of the people who have direct dealings with the former secretary of state seem to regard her very highly, certainly not in the bottom 3 percent of the population. The same could be said about former Florida governor and likely presidential candidate Jeb Bush. Erskine Bowles, the former Clinton chief of staff and patron saint of the deficit hawks, also would not usually be put in the bottom 3 percent. [..]

This is not a job where poor performance carries much of a price. Erskine Bowles was on the board of Morgan Stanley in 2008, when the Fed had to turn it into a bank holding company on an emergency basis to save it from bankruptcy. Bowles is still there today as the lead director.

The reason that the rest of us should care about corporate directors is that these are the people who determine the pay of corporate CEOs. As CEO pay has rocketed from being 20 to 30 times as much as the pay of an ordinary worker back in the 1970s to being 200 or 300 times as much today, it was the corporate directors who signed the contracts. They were the ones who said it was necessary to keep giving CEOs ever higher pay, ostensibly in the interests of the shareholders.

Amanda Marcotte: Don’t Want To Vaccinate Your Kid? You Should Get Fined $5,000

It’s not just that anti-vaccination is selfish. It’s selfishness for its own sake, a way for snobs to distinguish themselves from the vaccinating masses. Anti-vaccination is tailormade for deeply selfish people, because it gives them a chance to show off how superior they think they are while shifting the cost of their choice on other people, from their own children to the beleaguered school officials and pediatricians who have to deal with them.

But what if we changed the equation, so that parents could not shift all the costs for their choice onto others? The easiest and most straightforward way to do that would be to start fining parents who don’t vaccinate, with exceptions for the few that have immune-suppressed kids who can’t handle it. It’s the only thing that actually addresses the deep selfishness at the heart of anti-vaccination. Appealing to the common good won’t work, since they think they are better than common. Appealing to their own pocketbooks, on the other hand, might just work.

Considering that anti-vaccination is primarily a matter of elite people showing off their elite status through anti-vaccination, the fine can’t be small or they’ll just see it as the price of doing business. Perhaps $5,000, per kid, per year the kids aren’t vaccinated. The money can go toward paying for public health initiatives for people who would kill to have the access to healthcare that anti-vaccination people turn their noses up to. Not only would that actually help people, but it would highlight some of the unspoken classism underlying the anti-vaccination movement. I realize that just straight-up fining people is politically unpopular in our era of soft

Robert Reich: Welcome to the Share-the-Scraps Economy

How would you like to live in an economy where robots do everything that can be predictably programmed in advance, and almost all profits go to the robots’ owners?

Meanwhile, human beings do the work that’s unpredictable – odd jobs, on-call projects, fetching and fixing, driving and delivering, tiny tasks needed at any and all hours – and patch together barely enough to live on.

Brace yourself. This is the economy we’re now barreling toward.

They’re Uber drivers, Instacart shoppers, and Airbnb hosts. They include Taskrabbit jobbers, Upcounsel’s on-demand attorneys, and Healthtap’s on-line doctors.

They’re Mechanical Turks.

The euphemism is the “share” economy. A more accurate term would be the “share-the-scraps” economy.

Michelangelo Signorile: Does Mike Huckabee Really Believe Serving Gays Is Like Forcing Jews to Sell ‘Bacon-Wrapped Shrimp’?

Just a week ago, Mormon church leaders held a scam of a press conference in which they claimed to support anti-discrimination protections for LGBT people, whom they agreed had been discriminated against for centuries. This was at first a shocker, because only seven years ago they urged church members to promote that very discrimination. They implored them to help stop gay marriage in another state, California, raising millions of dollars and sending missionaries door to door in California, telling people to vote for hate and pass Prop 8. And the leaders weren’t now offering an apology for that recent horrendous action. [..]

Mike Huckabee on Sunday spelled it out a bit more (though it’s still quite unclear), outlining the parameters of how this debate may take place among GOP potential presidential contenders. Speaking on CNN, he compared homosexuality to drinking, swearing or liking “classical music and ballet and opera.” As he explained it, these are all “lifestyles” and choices — the long-time anti-gay lie on homosexuality — and said that he has many friends who do or like those things, but they’re not his “cup of tea.” Protecting religious liberties thus means that Christians should not have to accept, or cater to, people whose choices are an affront to their faith.

And that’s when Huckabee defined a bit more just what safeguarding religious liberties means — and how Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio and others will have to address it. Amid the stories of bakers and florists turning away gay customers seeking services for their weddings, and for-profit wedding chapels refusing to marry gays, Huckabee, though he wasn’t very clear, seemed to be likening laws protecting gays in these businesses to forcing Jews to “serve bacon-wrapped shrimp in their deli.”

Will Rogers: Hiding in Plain Sight: America’s Most Effective Conservation Program

On Monday, the White House released its latest budget proposal, a thick and heavy document with hundreds of pages and hundreds of thousands of numbers detailing how the Obama Administration intends to spend almost $4 trillion in the year which begins next October 1.

Budget day is part of the ritual of Washington D.C., with supporters of the White House praising the president’s choices, and opponents criticizing them. That holds true regardless of which party controls the White House and Congress.

Buried in today’s budget is a plan to spend $900 million next year for a program which has been one of the most effective in the nation since it was created 50 years ago. It is the Land and Water Conservation Fund, often referred to inside the Beltway by its acronym — LWCF. And we strongly applaud the president’s recommendation and will be working to secure congressional approval.

Feb 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

Paul Krugman: The Long-Run Cop-Out

On Monday, President Obama will call for a significant increase in spending, reversing the harsh cuts of the past few years. He won’t get all he’s asking for, but it’s a move in the right direction. And it also marks a welcome shift in the discourse. Maybe Washington is starting to get over its narrow-minded, irresponsible obsession with long-run problems and will finally take on the hard issue of short-run gratification instead.

O.K., I’m being flip to get your attention. I am, however, quite serious. It’s often said that the problem with policy makers is that they’re too focused on the next election, that they look for short-term fixes while ignoring the long run. But the story of economic policy and discourse these past five years has been exactly the opposite.

Robert Kuttner: America Should Send More People to Prison

You know the statistic. We incarcerate a higher proportion of the population than any other country does. Russia and South Africa rank respectively second and third.

Hundreds of thousands of young, now aging, men, are doing hard time for possession of small amounts of drugs. More and more people find themselves in jail because they got caught with bench warrants for their arrest for exorbitant fines they could not afford to pay. More than a century after debtors prisons were abolished, thousands are again behind bars because of debts.

But one category of felon is free on the street. I refer, of course, to corporate criminals.

Dean Baker: Greece needs an exit option

‘Grexit’ leverage could help country stay in the eurozone with better treatment

Every fan of the market knows the importance of exit. If your breakfast cereal is too bland, you can buy a different brand of cereal. If your barber charges too much, you can look for a new barber who will charge less. The option to leave is crucial since it forces the cereal producer and the barber to try to please their customers in order to keep them.

The same logic applies to Greece’s position in the euro. The country’s newly elected Syriza-led government intends to press the European Union (EU) for concessions that will allow it to restart its economy. The policies that have been imposed by the EU on Greece since the crisis could win a Nobel Prize for economic mismanagement. [..]

Since Greece has a trade surplus, it already doesn’t need to borrow to finance essential imports. (The recent plunge in oil prices could save Greece $9 billion a year, or close to 4 percent of GDP.) The drop in the drachma relative to the euro will further improve its trade position, leading to a boost in net exports and a sharp upturn in employment. It is certainly plausible that Greece’s economy will in very short order make up the ground lost to an initial period of instability and then continue on a path of robust growth.

This is where the EU has inadvertently done Greece a favor. It has damaged Greece’s economy and society so severely that the disruptions caused by leaving the euro are likely to seem minor by comparison.

Joseph Hickman: To be commander at Gitmo, no experience necessary

No one in charge of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility has had a background in detention. Why?

Thirteen years ago, the United States started bringing detainees that were captured in the global war on terror to its detention facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Nine months after the first detainees arrived at Guantánamo, the Department of Defense (DoD) created the “Joint Task Force Guantanamo” (JTF-GTMO). Their stated mission is to maintain safe, humane, legal and transparent detention operations.

In the intervening years, detainees and human rights watchdog groups, have filed hundreds of complaints and allegations of mistreatment and abuse against JTF-GTMO. Since its inception, eleven commanders have led JTF-GTMO. Those commanders are responsible for creating, approving and ensuring the enforcement of all operational procedures for the guard force, and for the proper care and wellbeing of the detainees.

Yet, of the eleven JTF-GTMO commanders, not a single one had any experience or training in detention operations prior to arriving at Guantánamo.

Zoë Carpenter: The Main Problem With Obama’s Climate Policy? It Makes No Sense

Not for the first time, the Obama administration is offering doublespeak when it comes to energy and the environment. On Sunday the White House announced its intention to designate more than 12 million acres in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as Wilderness, which would put the area permanently off limits to oil and gas drilling. “Obama’s Arctic Power Grab,” is how Politico described the move, framing it as a sign of “Obama’s shift to the left on environmental issues.” Oil executives and Alaskan politicians responded with apocryphal statements. Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, who chairs the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, went so far as to claim that Obama had “effectively declared war on Alaska.”

Two days later the administration unveiled a five-year plan that would open up a vast new stretch of ocean off the coast of Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia to oil and gas drilling, and sell new leases for drilling in the Arctic. More than 3 billion barrels of oil await the drilling rigs on the outer continental shelf of the Atlantic, according to estimates from the early 1980s. The New York Times reports that the reserves could be even greater. “This is a balanced proposal that would make available nearly 80 percent of the undiscovered technically recoverable resources, while protecting areas that are simply too special to develop,” Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said in a statement.

Let’s hear that again: the Obama administration proposes to open up nearly 80 percent of the nation’s untapped offshore oil and gas reserves by 2022. The sick irony of that figure is that 80 percent also happens to be the proportion of proven fossil-fuel reserves that must stay in the ground in order to avoid the extremely unpleasant effects of more than 2 degrees Celsius of global warming.

Feb 01 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 guest for this Sunday’s “This Week” is Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI).

The roundtable guests are: Matthew Dowd, ESPN columnist; CNN contributor LZ Granderson; PBS “NewsHour” co-host Gwen Ifill; and National Review editor Rich Lowry.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Schieffer’s guests are: Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC); Sen. Dick Durban (D-IL); and former Secretary of State James Baker.

His panel guests are: Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal; Mark Leibovich, New York Times Magazine; CBS News Political Director John Dickerson;, former Obama adviser Stephanie Cutter; and Republican strategist Phil Musser.

Meet the Press with Chuck Todd: The guests on “MTP” are; Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI); former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates; Leonard Marshall, former NFL Player; and DeMaurice Smith, Executive Director, NFL Players Association.

The panel guests are: Savannah Guthrie, Co-Anchor, TODAY; Mark Halperin, Bloomberg Politics; Jim Cramer, CNBC’s Mad Money; and Kathleen Parker, Washington Post.  

State of the Union: Dana Bash is this week’s host. Her guest are Sen. John McCain (R-AZ); Mike Huckabee; Rachel Nichols and NFL Hall of Famer Lynn Swann.

Her panel guests are Dan Balz, Kevin Madden and Donna Brazile.

Jan 31 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: The government loves the policy ‘technology for me but not for thee’

Three seemingly unrelated events explain a lot about the federal government’s complicated and hypocritical reaction to the proliferation of drones and other technology – technology they love to use to track millions of citizens but to which they don’t want citizens to have access.

First, a drunk intelligence agency employee crashed a two-foot toy drone into the White House lawn at 3am earlier this week, while the Federal Aviation Administration banned drones from flying over the Super Bowl on Sunday in Arizona. Then, police started loudly complaining about a traffic app called Waze that also alerts travelers about the location of police cars operating speed traps.

It may be hard to remember now, but the number one privacy issue in America before Edward Snowden came along was invasive police drones, which sparked broad left-right coalitions in state governments across the country. The NSA’s repeated invasions of Americans’ privacy replaced drones on the front pages, but that hasn’t stopped law enforcement from trying to acquire the technology or the federal government from trying to warn of the vast dangers of civilians doing the same thing.

Eugene Robinson: The Boehner-Bibi Backfire

The political ramifications are clear: House Speaker John Boehner and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a colossal mistake by conspiring behind President Obama’s back, and the move has ricocheted on both of them.

The big, scary issue underlying the contretemps-how to deal with Iran’s nuclear program-is a more complicated story. I believe strongly that Obama’s approach, which requires the patience to give negotiations a chance, is the right one. To the extent that a case can be made for a more bellicose approach, Boehner and Netanyahu have undermined it.

First, the politics. Why on earth would anyone think it was a good idea to arrange for Netanyahu to speak to a joint session of Congress without telling Obama or anyone in his administration about the invitation?

Jim Hightower: A Whining Wall Street Banker Pleads for Pity

J.P. Morgan was recently socked in the wallet by financial regulators who levied yet another multibillion-dollar fine against the Wall Street baron for massive illegalities.

Well, not a fine against John Pierpont Morgan, the man. This 19th-century robber baron was born to a great banking fortune and, by hook and crook, leveraged it to become the “King of American Finance.” During the Gilded Age, Morgan cornered the U.S. financial markets, gained monopoly ownership of railroads, amassed a vast supply of the nation’s gold and used his investment power to create U.S. Steel and take control of that market. [..]

Moving the clock forward, we come to JPMorgan Chase, today’s financial powerhouse bearing J.P.’s name. The bank also inherited his pattern of committing multiple illegalities-and walking away scot-free.

Oh, sure, the bank was hit with big fines, but not a single one of the top bankers who committed gross wrongdoings were charged or even fired-much less sent to jail.

Jared Bernstein: The 529 Microcosm: A Revealing Political Train Wreck with Regard to an Inefficient Tax Break

This little train wreck over the White House’s proposal and then retraction of a plan to cut back on a wasteful yet beloved tax benefit is highly instructive. It’s a clear example of how much hot air there is in these fiscal debates, where policy makers and pundits scold everyone within earshot of the need for “fiscal responsibility,” then punt when they’ve got a chance to actually… you know… do something responsible.

The benefit in question is the 529 college savings plan, a tax break that allows people to save as much as they want without paying tax on either accruals or withdrawals (the accounts must be used to pay for college). It turns out that 70 percent of the benefits of 529s go to the top five percent of households — those with incomes above $200,000. The problem with that, as higher education scholar Sandy Baum recently noted, is that “[529s] primarily provide a subsidy to people who would save in other forms anyway.”

So the WH, to their credit, proposed to tax withdrawals from the plans (accruals would remain untaxed) while significantly boosting better targeted measures to help lower-income households afford college (the 529 change was to be grandfathered in, i.e., applied solely to new plans).

Joe Conason: End Poverty? Reduce Inequality? What Republicans Must Do First

The latest fad among would-be Republican presidential contenders is to proclaim their deep commitment to fighting poverty and inequality-which sounds as plausible as a promise by McDonald’s to abolish greasy food.

Decades of abuse of the nation’s poor and working families, which reached a crescendo in Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” campaign in 2012, hasn’t left much space for Republicans to follow the public morality of Pope Francis. Yet for the moment at least, they seem to think that they must.

They also seem to believe that reminiscing about bread-bag overshoes, like Senator Joni Ernst, or jeering the wealth of the Clintons, like RNC chair Reince Priebus, will somehow transform them into Franciscan populists. But such delusional ploys only make them look ridiculous.

So in the gracious spirit of the pontiff, who told us that even atheists can be saved, let’s help our Republican brothers and sisters.

Jan 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

New York Times Editorial Board: Washington and Havana Break the Ice

A couple of years after America’s attempted invasion of Cuba in 1961, the disastrous intervention known as the Bay of Pigs, an envoy President John F. Kennedy secretly dispatched to Havana posed an odd question to the Cuban leader, Fidel Castro.

“Do you know how porcupines make love?” James Donovan asked, to make a point about how hard it would be to establish a trustful relationship between Washington and Havana. “Very carefully.”

More than a half century later, as American and Cuban officials faced each other last week for historic talks to begin normalizing relations, it was evident that trust remains in short supply. But this first step in the present détente bodes well for a process that will require patience and deft managing of expectations in both countries.

Paul Krugman: Europe’s Greek Test

In the five years (!) that have passed since the euro crisis began, clear thinking has been in notably short supply. But that fuzziness must now end. Recent events in Greece pose a fundamental challenge for Europe: Can it get past the myths and the moralizing, and deal with reality in a way that respects the Continent’s core values? If not, the whole European project – the attempt to build peace and democracy through shared prosperity – will suffer a terrible, perhaps mortal blow.

First, about those myths: Many people seem to believe that the loans Athens has received since the crisis broke have been subsidizing Greek spending.

The truth, however, is that the great bulk of the money lent to Greece (pdf) has been used simply to pay interest and principal on debt. In fact, for the past two years, more than all of the money going to Greece has been recycled in this way: the Greek government is taking in more revenue than it spends on things other than interest, and handing the extra funds over to its creditors.

Linda Sarsour: Republicans need to learn that Muslim and American are not mutually exclusive

Texas legislator Molly White joined some more famous conservatives in the ‘Super Bowl of Bigotry’ this week, vying for the title of Biggest Islamophobe

In many parts of the United States, if you want to win an election, you need talking points full of misinformation and bigotry towards Muslims to scare the wits out of non-Muslim Americans in to voting for you (and others to fund your campaign). Events in the Middle East simply provide more fuel to an already-raging fire, and convince officials elected to serve all of their constituents that their inappropriate and bigoted comments will not only go unchallenged but will be applauded. [..]

Meanwhile, American Muslims continue to build civic and electoral power. From serving on state party committees in California to founding the first-ever Muslim Democratic Club in New York City (dedicated to electing Muslims on all levels of government across the nation, which I co-founded and of which I am currently the president), American Muslims are an emerging political bloc. We are not waiting for validation from bigoted politicians or to pass tests of our allegiance from the likes of White – and we will respond to bigotry, regardless of party affiliation. As the 2016 elections quickly approach, we as voters expect real debates on issues impacting all Americans: the economy, education, healthcare and national security. It is our responsibility to keep elected officials and candidates accountable to all the people they serve; that is how we pledge our allegiance.

Ladar Levison: Prosecutors used the same legal strategy against Barrett Brown as they did me. Are you next?

FBI agents and the state’s lawyers misrepresented events to create a false narrative, and the judges in both our cases bought it

When it happened to me, I dismissed it as an anomaly. The government – while trying to access the private emails of my company’s 410,000 users – made material misrepresentations to the courts in a coordinated campaign to portray me as obstinate and uncooperative. Their intent? To manipulate a judge into accepting an unconstitutional legal theory. It cost me my business.

Barrett Brown, whose investigative journalism frequently embarrassed the DOJ and FBI, wasn’t quite so lucky. Last week, he was sentenced to five years in prison, followed by another two years of supervised release. He was also ordered to pay $890K in restitution. That was the penalty for pleading guilty to three charges: “accessory after the fact”, a charge he faced for attempting to negotiate redactions in the stolen data, “obstructing justice” because he moved his laptop from a table to a cabinet, and “threatening a federal agent” in a video posted on the internet. The justification provided for his harsh sentence was a “trafficking in stolen authentication features” charge, for sharing a hyperlink to a public website, that the prosecution dropped before his plea. ]..]

Barrett Brown and I don’t have a lot in common: I’m a clean-cut, successful American entrepreneur, and, at the time of his arrest, Barrett was eking out an existence as an independent journalist while attempting to cope with a series of personal problems. We were both singled out by the government for what they thought we could – and would – tell them about other people. When we resisted, they twisted our words, our actions and the law. The result has been a set of disturbing court decisions that may give the government the ability to selectively prosecute anyone they wish. This time it was a journalist. Next time it could be you.

Andrew Bacevich: Save Us From Washington’s Visionaries

En route back to Washington at the tail end of his most recent overseas trip, John Kerry, America’s peripatetic secretary of state, stopped off in France “to share a hug with all of Paris.” Whether Paris reciprocated the secretary’s embrace went unrecorded.

Despite the requisite reference to General Pershing (“Lafayette, we are here!”) and flying James Taylor in from the 1960s to assure Parisians that “You’ve Got a Friend,” in the annals of American diplomacy Kerry’s hug will likely rank with President Eisenhower’s award of the Legion of Merit to Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza for “exceptionally meritorious conduct” and Jimmy Carter’s acknowledgment of the “admiration and love” said to define the relationship between the Iranian people and their Shah.  In short, it was a moment best forgotten.

Alas, this vapid, profoundly silly event is all too emblematic of statecraft in the Obama era.  Seldom have well-credentialed and well-meaning people worked so hard to produce so little of substance.

Steven W. Thrasher: Legal same sex marriage is coming to Alabama – it’s just a question of when

In a state where interracial marriage remained unconstitutional until the year 2000, is there hope for same sex couples who want to wed right now?

“Honestly, I thought it was a hoax,” Kacie Reeves of Jasper, Alabama said of when she heard that a federal judge ruled that same sex marriages would be allowed in her home state. She and her fiancée, Brittany Rush, had long planned a wedding for friends and family in May – after which they planned to “take a vacation and drive to some other state where we could make it legal.” [..]

The brides-to-be still have good reasons to be skeptical about getting legally wed at home. Shortly after the jubilant news, a 14-day stay was put in effect. Then, in a letter to Alabama governor Robert Bentley, Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore wrote that nothing “grants the federal government the authority to redefine the institution of marriage” and vowed to “stop judicial tyranny and any unlawful opinions issued without constitutional authority.”

Judge Moore is as wrong about same sex marriage as he was about refusing to remove a 2.6 ton statue of the 10 Commandments from government property (which saw him removed from the bench more than a decade ago): the federal ruling indeed applies to all Alabama officials. But while a ruling in favor of same sex marriage by the Supreme Court this spring could potentially create a right to it in all 50 states, will that stop Alabama’s legal obfuscation and insurrection on marriage equality, given its history?

Jan 30 2015

Keystone XL Pipeline Gets Senate OK

This afternoon the Senate passed a bill that approves the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. The bill passes after several marathons session that saw many amendments to improve the safety of the pipeline, which will originate in Canada, carrying the dirtiest oil extracted from the Alberta Canada tar sands. The bill passed by 62 – 36 with nine Democrats joining the unanimous Republican caucus. The bill already has passed the House by 266 to 153, with 28 Democrats voting with the Republican majority. The bill now moves to conference committee to rectify minor differences between the two bills. It will then be sent to President Barack Obama, who has said that he would veto the bill. Republicans have not been able to muster the votes in either the House or the Senate needed to overcome a presidential veto.

According to the State Department impact study, the pipeline would only create about 35 permanent jobs,  despite the oft repeated, and usually unchallenged, GOP and industry lie that it would create thousands of jobs. One popular blogger tweeted that more Senators voted for the bill than the number of jobs it would create.

Besides the impact on climate change that would be caused by refining and using this oil, the oil if spilled is nearly impossible to clean up from the soil and riverbeds, not to mention extremely expensive. The route that the pipeline would take across the US could have a severe impact on the water supply in the Midwest if there was a leak.

As MSNBC host Rachel Maddow pointed out pipelines leak

and blow up

There is also a need for inspectors

The environment does not need another pipeline, nor do we.

Jan 29 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: Will the Obama administration finally bring the CIA’s torturers to justice?

The woman who will probably be the nation’s top lawyer opened the door to prosecuting the men and women responsible for the CIA’s torture program on Wednesday. And whether the President who nominated her likes it or not, she should act on it as soon as she’s in office.

President Obama’s nominee for attorney general, Loretta Lynch, in her first Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday, admitted that certain actions taken by the CIA constituted torture and were illegal. In an exchange with Senator Patrick Leahy in which he asked her if waterboarding was torture, she responded:

   Lynch: “Waterboarding is torture, Senator.”

   Leahy: “And thus illegal?”

   Lynch: “And thus illegal.”

Given her comments, Lynch should immediately appoint a special prosecutor to seek charges against the CIA for waterboarding three detainees (and likely many more) as soon as she’s confirmed. Since there is no statute of limitations on torture, and the UN Convention Against Torture – ratified by the Senate and signed by President Reagan – requires that the United States prosecute violators, this should be an open and shut case for Lynch.

Daphne Eviatar: Senators Question Federal Court Terror Trials While Effective Prosecutions Continue Apace in NYC

As Republicans questioned U.S. Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch at her confirmation hearing in Washington on Wednesday for supporting trials of suspected terrorists in federal court, the trial of alleged al-Qaeda leader Khalid al-Fawwaz proceeded apace in New York City, with an FBI informant providing critical evidence linking the defendant to the al-Qaeda conspiracy. [..]

Given how smoothly this and the other trials have gone in downtown Manhattan, and the absence of any disruption in New York or elsewhere because of them, it’s hard to believe some senators are still complaining about these cases, claiming the government should instead send them to military commissions at Guantanamo Bay. Meanwhile, due in large part to those complaints, the five alleged September 11 co-conspirators remain stuck in lengthy pretrial hearings at Guantanamo. More than 13 years after the attacks and despite more than a decade in U.S. custody, they are still nowhere near being brought to justice.

Since 9/11, nearly 500 individuals have been prosecuted on terrorism-related charges in U.S. federal courts. Only eight have been prosecuted in the Guantanamo Bay military commissions. Three of those convictions have been overturned.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: Anti-Koch: The Fight for Green Energy Is a Fight for the 99 Percent

The fact that this even needs to be said demonstrates that there’s been a breakdown in the democratic process, but we’ll say it anyway: Our number-one priority should be protecting the planet for future generations. That said, green energy makes sense even if we base our thinking on economic considerations alone.

Energy policies can roughly be divided into two kinds: those which benefit society as a whole, and those which only benefit the very few — the Koch brothers and their ilk.

Guess which kind the GOP supports? Republicans are blocking pro-growth, job-creating green energy investments while pushing a pipeline that would enrich the few at the expense of the many — with potentially disastrous environmental consequences.

If you want to know why, follow the money.

Dave Johnson: Let’s Take Apart the Corporate Case for Fast Track Trade Authority

U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Michael Froman appeared before Congress Tuesday to make the corporate argument for “fast track” trade promotion authority. The USTR and President Obama are pushing fast-track pre-approval for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and other big “trade” agreements they are working on. The Chamber of Commerce, Business Roundtable and other corporate groups and lobbyists are also pushing hard for Congress to pass fast track.

The promoters of fast track say we need it to push “trade” agreements through Congress to expand trade and increase exports. “What we’re going to do through this trade agreement is open up markets,” Froman told Congress Tuesday, “and then level the playing field so we can protect workers, protect American jobs and then ensure a fair and level playing field by raising labor and environmental standards, raising intellectual property rights, standards and enforcement, making sure that we’re putting disciplines on state-owned enterprises that pose a real threat to workers.”

These corporate arguments (you can see them in this Chamber of Commerce slide show “Ten Reasons Why America Needs Trade Promotion Authority”) just make me more skeptical of what they are selling. Here’s why.

John Nichols: If Elections Matter for Greece, Why Not America?

Elections are supposed to have consequences. When countries establish electoral processes that are sufficiently free and functional to ascertain the clear will of the people-and when those votes are cast and counted in an election that draws a solid majority of eligible voters to the polls-that will should be expressed as something more than a New York Times headline or a Fox News alert. It should be expressed in leadership, law and governance.

That governance should be sufficient to address poverty, tame inequality and conquer injustice. And if outside forces thwart those initiatives, that government should challenge them on behalf of the common good. After all, if meaningful economic and social change cannot by achieved (or at the very least demanded) with a stroke of the ballot pen, then what is the point of an election?

Media Benjamin: Take Cuba Off the Terrorist List

The new U.S.-Cuba talks are a refreshing burst of sunshine in the 54-year dismal relationship between neighbors separated by a mere 90 miles. The nations negotiated a successful swap of prisoners. The onerous travel restrictions the U.S. government placed on just visiting the island are starting to crumble. Embassies in Washington and Havana will soon be opened. Rules designed to ease trade are being written. But despite this long-awaited meltdown of U.S. policies that added to the island’s economic woes but never succeeded in tumbling Cuba’s communist government, a portion of the Cold War edifice remains intact: Cuba is still on the U.S. state sponsors of terrorism list. [..]

Most people around the world would find it very strange that Cuba would be on a “terrorist list,” as it is most known worldwide for exporting doctors, musicians, teachers, artists, and dancers — not terrorists.

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