Tag: TMC Politics

Jan 06 2015

Punting the Pundits

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

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

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Trevor Timm: The greatest trick Obama ever pulled was convincing the world America isn’t still at war

The holiday headlines blared without a hint of distrust: “End of War” and “Mission Ends” and “U.S. formally ends the war in Afghanistan”, as the US government and Nato celebrated the alleged end of the longest war in American history. Great news! Except, that is, when you read past the first paragraph: “the fighting is as intense as it has ever been since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001,” according to the Wall Street Journal. And about 10,000 troops will remain there for the foreseeable future (more than we had a year after the Afghan war started). Oh, and they’ll continue to engage in combat regularly. But other than that, yeah, the war is definitely over.

This is the new reality of war: As long as the White House doesn’t admit the United States is at war, we’re all supposed to pretend as if that’s true. This ruse is not just the work of the president. Members of Congress, who return to work this week, are just as guilty as Barack Obama in letting the public think we’re Definitely Not at War, from Afghanistan and Somalia to the new war with Isis in Iraq and Syria and beyond.

Llewellyn Hinkes-Jones: Stop Subsidizing Big Pharma

Robert J. Beall, the president and chief executive of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, called his recent decision to sell the royalty rights to his organization’s research a “game changer.” Indeed: Deals like this, in which an investment company paid the foundation $3.3 billion for its future royalties from several cystic fibrosis drugs it helped finance, could revolutionize the way medical research is funded. Rather than the staid model of government-funded institutions handing out grants to academic research facilities, a new breed of “venture philanthropies” like the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation could corral private investment into developing lifesaving drugs quickly and cheaply.

The problem is that venture philanthropy is, essentially, another term for privatizing scientific research. Instead of decisions about the fate of scientific funding being made by publicly oriented institutions, those decisions are being put in the hands of anonymous philanthropists and ostensibly benevolent nonprofits.

David Cay Johnson: Inequality damages marriage

Wedded bliss is becoming an elite privilege

Add marriage to the growing list of victims of government policies that favor the rich at the expense of everyone else. Marriage is becoming less common down the income ladder and more common and durable among the prosperous, analysis of marriage, divorce and other records shows.

Social conservatives say marriage makes for economically sound families, but the empirical evidence shows that, on the contrary, steady incomes and jobs make for sound marriages. Job stability benefits both employers through greater productivity and families through more cohesion.

Marriage inequality also affects children. Prosperous parents lavish investments of time and money for enrichment classes and social activities on their offspring, while poor parents struggle just to pay the rent at the expense of interacting with their children as budgets for preschoolers and child-development programs take hit after hit.

Eugene Robinson: Time for the GOP to Pitch In

With Republican majorities in both houses, the new Congress should begin by focusing on traditional GOP priorities: improving the nation’s sagging infrastructure, reforming an unwieldy tax code and finding ways to boost middle-class opportunity.

When pigs fly, you say? Skepticism is definitely in order. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner have a fundamental choice to make. They can acknowledge the obvious areas of common ground they share with President Obama-thus showing that the Republican Party can participate responsibly in government-or they can throw temper tantrums. [..]

It is perhaps inevitable that the GOP will use its control of Congress to highlight the party’s pet issues-advocacy for the Keystone XL pipeline, for example, and opposition to the Affordable Care Act. Every once in a while, Republicans may even muster the needed 60 votes in the Senate-and force Obama to use his veto. But then what? Passing a bunch of bills that have no chance of ever becoming law is not the best advertisement for effectiveness.

McConnell told the Post he wants voters to see his party as a “responsible, right-of-center, governing majority.” Well, two obvious things such a majority should be doing right now are celebrating the economic recovery and looking for ways to ensure that more of its benefits reach the middle class.

Joe Nocera: The Moral of the Kulluk

The cover story of The New York Times Magazine on Sunday, “The Wreck of the Kulluk,” by McKenzie Funk, is one of those articles that you can’t put down even though you know how it turns out. The Kulluk was an offshore exploratory drilling rig, owned by Royal Dutch Shell, which, in December 2012, ran aground in some of the most inhospitable waters in the world. [..]

As regular readers know, I am hardly opposed to drilling for oil or gas. Yet this particular high-risk venture seems both foolish and unnecessary. For one thing, the world is awash in oil, thanks to a slowdown in demand and increase in supply because of the fracking revolution. For another, the price of oil is so low as to make new, expensive exploration in the Arctic unprofitable.

Most of all, though, we’re just not ready to drill for this oil. As LeVine put it, “I don’t believe we have the technological capability to extract these resources safely.” To me, that is the real moral of the story of the Kulluk.

Adam Lee: If peace on earth is our goal, atheism might be the means to that end

The quiet truth behind the inescapable headlines about man’s inhumanity to man is that the world is actually becoming a more peaceful place. Deaths from war and conflict have been declining for decades – and, if current trends continue, we can make them rarer still.

What mysterious force is sowing peace among humankind? One possible reason is that there are more atheists and nonbelievers than ever before. [..]

Of course, not every atheist is peaceful and not every religious person is violent. Avowedly pacifist faiths like the Quakers or Unitarian Universalists have played an important role in peace movements and, in the other direction, there are lamentably prominent atheists like Sam Harris or the late Christopher Hitchens who’ve been entirely too cavalier about imperialism and military aggression. But in general, the trend is that, as the world becomes less religious, we can expect it to become even more peaceful.

Jan 05 2015

Punting the Pundits

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

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

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Dean Baker: Don’t believe what you hear about the U.S. economy

The latest numbers, when put in context, hardly impress

The end of the year produced a number of media celebrations for the United States’ economic comeback. News stories endlessly touted the 5.0 percent GDP growth number for the third quarter, contrasting it with weak growth in Europe, slowing growth in China and a recession in Japan. Reporters also touted the 321,000 jobs gained in November – the strongest such growth in almost three years. In addition, the month’s 0.4-percent rise in the average hourly wage was taken as evidence that workers were now sharing in the benefits of growth. [..]

Real, sustained real wage growth requires much more tightening of the labor market. Even if the economy were to sustain a pace of 300,000 new jobs a month (it won’t), the labor market still would not have made up the ground lost in the recession by the end of 2015. Most American workers are still far from feeling confident that they can ask for a pay raise or find another job that will pay them more.

These circumstances should be front and center as the Federal Reserve Board sets economic policy in 2015. There will be growing pressure on the Fed to raise interest rates as the financial industry starts warning about incipient inflation. Everyone should realize the purpose of higher interest rates is to slow the economy and keep people from getting jobs. That is not a policy that is in most people’s interests.

Robert Kuttner: Austerity Killing You? How About a Trade Deal?

Europe is right on the edge of another downward lurch into prolonged deflation. GDP growth is hovering right around zero. Germany, as an export powerhouse, continues to thrive, but at the expense of the rest of the continent — victims of German-imposed budget austerity demands. The euro, which keeps sinking against the U.S. dollar, is now trading at just $1.20, its lowest level in four and a half years. [..]

So what does Europe have left? It is a mark of the delusion of Europe’s leaders that the EU is putting its chips on a trade deal with the U.S. — the so-called Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. TTIP is not really a trade deal at all but a series of measures intended to promote further deregulation of economic, financial, health, labor, safety, privacy, and environmental protections on both sides of the Atlantic. TTIP was designed by corporations to weaken labor and government — and would do just about nothing to get Europe out of its austerity trap.

Steven W. Thrasher: America’s War Machine sells fear and loathing beyond Ferguson. Black and brown people pay the price

The War Machine is the violent nexus of military and economic forces that grinds us up to perpetuate itself. With politicians of all stripes in its pockets and buoyed by lobbyists, the War Machine is beyond the reach of civil government and easily tramples individual souls, especially when they inhabit bodies of color. War is a big, multi-trillion-dollar business, requiring the sales, construction and operation of guns, drones, missiles, governmental armies, private armies, public prisons, private prisons and the like.

While the War Machine has been operated most obviously overseas in places like the Middle East, and domestically behind bars, it is now increasingly clear that the War Machine is also operating on America’s streets.

The War Machine has always made for strange bedfellows. Even as the conflict in Afghanistan, America’s longest foreign war, ostensibly ends, America’s largest police department and its union are in sometimes open conflict against their civilian commander, supported by a right wing that normally hates public unions.

Jared Bernstein: Ed Kleinbard Calls Out ‘Dynamic Scoring’

There are many strong, substantive reasons to be worried about the use of “dynamic scoring” by the new Republican Congress. As Ed Kleinbard tells it in Saturday’s NYT, the new majority is instructing the official scorekeepers of the revenue implications of tax changes to employ models that incorporate macroeconomic feedback.

As I argued here, such a move engenders at least two big concerns. First, there’s the uncertainty of the estimates, providing a plum opportunity for cherry picking: [..]

Or, as Ed puts it, dynamic scoring provides us with “…greater exposure to the risk of a political thumb on the scale.”

The second problem, well covered by Ed, is that the R’s obviously hope that dynamic scoring will provide them the cover they need to cut taxes in ways that the current scoring approach will not (though I should note here that David Wessel disagrees – he doesn’t think these scores will differ enough from current methods to provide such cover; I’m with Ed on this). That leads to larger budget deficits and since tax increases are off the table with this crowd, that means greater pressure on the spending side of the budget.

Norman Solomon: Why Jeffrey Sterling Deserves Support as a CIA Whistleblower

The trial of former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, set to begin in mid-January, is shaping up as a major battle in the U.S. government’s siege against whistleblowing. With its use of the Espionage Act to intimidate and prosecute people for leaks in “national security” realms, the Obama administration is determined to keep hiding important facts that the public has a vital right to know.

After fleeting coverage of Sterling’s indictment four years ago, news media have done little to illuminate his case — while occasionally reporting on the refusal of New York Times reporter James Risen to testify about whether Sterling was a source for his 2006 book “State of War.”

Risen’s unwavering stand for the confidentiality of sources is admirable. At the same time, Sterling — who faces 10 felony counts that include seven under the Espionage Act — is no less deserving of support.

Revelations from brave whistleblowers are essential for the informed consent of the governed. With its hostilities, the Obama Justice Department is waging legalistic war on our democratic rights to know substantially more about government actions than official stories. That’s why the imminent courtroom clash in the case of “United States of America v. Jeffrey Alexander Sterling” is so important.

Les Keopold: The Eight Ugly Scars of Runaway Inequality

America is the richest country in all of history. We have the largest economy and the largest number of millionaires and billionaires. At the same time, however, we lead the developed world in economic inequality. In 1965, CEOs received $20 for every dollar earned by the average worker. Today the gap is $354 to $1.  [..]

These are more than cold statistics. They also tell the story of a nation in serious trouble. Runaway equality is lacerating the fabric of our society. [..]

The powerful will never be persuaded by intellectual arguments from even the very best economists. Instead, history shows it will take countervailing power and a virtual uprising by the rest of us. For a short time, Occupy Wall Street focused the national debate on economic inequality. It will take a massive new movement for economic justice with staying power to remove the ugly scars of runaway inequality.

In this new year, let’s hope we gain the courage to build it.

Jan 04 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 on Sunday’s “This Week” are: Sen.-elect Ben Sasse (R-NE); Sen.-elect Thom Tillis (R-NC); and Rep.-elect Mia Love (R-UT).

The roundfable guests are: Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren; television and radio host Tavis Smiley; The Washington Post political reporter Robert Costa; and CNN Contributor Margaret Hoover.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Schieffer’s guests are: Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY); Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD); former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA); and Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE).

His panel guests are: David Ignatius, The Washington Post; Gwen Ifill, PBS; Susan Page, USA Today; and Dan Balz, The Washington Post.

Meet the Press with Chuck Todd: This Sunday’s MTP guests are: Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY); Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN); Washington, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser; DC Metropolitan Police Department Chief of Police Cathy Lanier; Kaya Henderson, the Chancellor of DC Public Schools; retired Gen. Daniel Bolger and Sarah Chayes, senior associate in the Democracy and Rule of Law Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The panel guests are: Buzzfeed News‘ John Stanton; Yahoo‘s Matt Bai; New York Times‘ Helene Cooper and NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell.

State of the Union: CNN has not revealed who will be hosting this week’s program. The announced guests are: soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY); Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY); Rep.-elect Debbie Dingell (D-MI.); and Rep.-elect Barbara Comstock (R-VA).

Jan 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

New York Times Editorial Baord: Betting on Default

Imagine a lender demanding that you miss a payment. That is the situation described in a recent article in The Wall Street Journal. In 2013, GSO Capital Partners, the debt-investing arm of the private equity firm the Blackstone Group, refused to renew a $122.3 million loan to the Spanish gambling company Codere unless it delayed paying interest on other existing debt. Why? It turns out that GSO had placed a bet that Codere’s existing debt would not be paid on time. When, lo and behold, the payment was late, GSO collected on its bet. [..]

The Dodd-Frank financial reform law was supposed to curb speculation in swaps. But as The Journal has reported, hedge funds are increasingly using swaps to wager on whether weak firms will live or die. RadioShack, the troubled consumer electronics retailer, is one of several prominent examples. In December, RadioShack’s total debt came to about $1.4 billion, but swaps outstanding on the performance of the debt totaled $23.5 billion. Similarly, J.C. Penney, the ailing department store chain, had total debt of some $8.7 billion, but swaps outstanding on the debt totaled $19.3 billion. [..]

The next crisis will differ from the last crisis in its origins and effects. But it is probably safe to assume that sooner or later, poorly regulated credit derivatives will again play a role in damaging the economy.

Edward D. Kleinbeard: A Republican Ruse to Make Tax Cuts Look Good

As Republicans take control of Congress this month, at the top of their to-do list is changing how the government measures the impact of tax cuts on federal revenue: namely, to switch from so-called static scoring to “dynamic” scoring. While seemingly arcane, the change could have significant, negative consequences for enacting sustainable, long-term fiscal policies.

Whenever new tax legislation is proposed, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office “scores” it, to estimate whether the bill would raise more or less revenue than existing law would. [..]

The Republicans’ interest in dynamic scoring is not the result of a million-economist march on Washington; it comes from political factions convinced that tax cuts are the panacea for all economic ills. They will use dynamic scoring to justify a tax cut that, under conventional scorekeeping, loses revenue.

When revenues do in fact decline and deficits rise, those same proponents will push for steep cuts in government insurance or investment programs, because they will claim that the models demand it. That is what lies inside the Trojan horse of dynamic scoring.

Amy Goodman: Climate Deniers, Like Big Tobacco, Thrive Behind a Smoke Screen of Doubt

It has been just over 50 years since U.S. Surgeon General Luther Terry released the groundbreaking report, “Smoking and Health.” The report concluded, “Cigarette smoking is a health hazard of sufficient importance in the United States to warrant appropriate remedial action.” The tobacco industry intensified its campaign to defend smoking, funding bogus groups and junk science. Now, a similar war on the truth is being waged by the fossil-fuel industry to deny the science of climate change.

“Doubt is our product,” states a 1969 memo from the tobacco giant Brown and Williamson, “since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the mind of the general public.” Brown and Williamson was a member of “Big Tobacco,” along with Philip Morris USA, R.J. Reynolds, Lorillard Tobacco Company, U.S. Tobacco, Liggett Group, and American Tobacco. In 1994, the CEOs of these seven companies lied before Congress, claiming that nicotine was not addictive-even though secret research conducted by their corporations proved they knew otherwise. The image of the seven executives with their right hands in the air, swearing an oath to tell the truth, became an iconic image of a deceitful, deadly industry.

Joe Conason: GOP, Stop Making Excuses for Scalise

The unsavory story of Rep. Steve Scalise, Louisiana Republican and House majority whip, should serve as a clear warning to the leaders of the Republican Party. They need to ask why their message attracts some of the most despicable elements in American society-and why they can’t effectively reject those extremists.

Despite many fervent vows of “outreach” and “inclusion” by top Republicans, they keep making the wrong choices. Both House Speaker John Boehner and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy have expressed their confidence in Scalise despite his “mistake.” And the excuses they now offer on behalf of the man chosen for the third-highest position in their congressional caucus are rapidly eroding.

Michael Brenner: Know When to Fold ‘Em

Barack Obama reportedly takes pride in his skill as a card player. Poker is the prime game of politics and politicians. The president’s record suggests that he is something less than its master. The list of those who have fleeced him is a long and varied one. It includes: the Republican Congressional leadership (habitually); the Wall Street barons; Big Pharma; the Intelligence chiefs; Robert Gates; David Petraeus; Leon Panetta; Bibi Netanyahu (numerous occasions); King Abdullah (Saudi Arabia); Hamid Karzai; General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi; Recep Tayyip Erdogan; and Bashar Assad. Indeed, there is only one group of players whom he beats regularly — the “liberals” whose gambling instincts have been honed in endless games of rainy-day Scrabble.

So, some advice on how to raise his game is in order. The popular country-and-western ballad The Gambler can serve as a rich source of pithy poker axioms. [..]

Barack Obama reportedly takes pride in his skill as a card player. Poker is the prime game of politics and politicians. The president’s record suggests that he is something less than its master. The list of those who have fleeced him is a long and varied one. It includes: the Republican Congressional leadership (habitually); the Wall Street barons; Big Pharma; the Intelligence chiefs; Robert Gates; David Petraeus; Leon Panetta; Bibi Netanyahu (numerous occasions); King Abdullah (Saudi Arabia); Hamid Karzai; General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi; Recep Tayyip Erdogan; and Bashar Assad. Indeed, there is only one group of players whom he beats regularly — the “liberals” whose gambling instincts have been honed in endless games of rainy-day Scrabble.

So, some advice on how to raise his game is in order. The popular country-and-western ballad The Gambler can serve as a rich source of pithy poker axioms.

Jan 01 2015

Punting the Pundits

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

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

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Christian Christiansen: 2014 exposed the US myth of equality under the law

The description of the United States as the world’s policeman has always been laced with a heavy dose of irony and sarcasm. In democratic societies, the police are meant to uphold the law, but the U.S. has shown time and again that international legal conventions are not things to which the U.S. considers itself bound. From rejecting membership in the International Criminal Court to the invasion and occupation of Iraq to drone assassinations, the U.S. treats international legal frameworks like so many flies to be swatted away. This glaring double standard underlies much of the global animosity toward the U.S. in the post-9/11 era; while U.S. citizens accused of or subjected to criminal activity at home are entitled to their day in court, the rest of the world’s citizens are subject to U.S. power with little to no recourse to justice. In other words, the U.S. is a nation that respects the rule of law – but only within its own borders.

But 2014 has been a year in which the mythology of domestic U.S. legal egalitarianism – reinforced by the mantra of blind justice and a near religious reverence of the U.S. Constitution – was exposed as a pretense. As abroad, so at home: Some people are more equal than others. [..]

2014 will be remembered for how the differences between international and domestic victims of U.S. power and between U.S. injustice abroad and at home became blurred. The U.S. has made much over the years of its “moral authority” on the international stage, but this year highlighted that, even at home, this authority is built on quicksand.

Peter van Buren: Did You Know We Won the Afghan War This Weekend?

Winning wars used to be much cooler.

But hey, did you know we won the war in Afghanistan this weekend? Or, at least we ended the war in Afghanistan this weekend? It is true. America’s longest war, clocking in at more than 13 years, (fun fact: the U.S. involvement in WWII, when we defeated the Nazis and the Japanese, only lasted three and a half years), is over.[..]

The Taliban have obviously not heard all the good news out of Hawaii. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid characterized a hand-over event in Kabul as a “defeat ceremony” and added “We will fight until there is not one foreign soldier on Afghan soil and we have established an Islamic state.”

Despite such gloom, it is obvious that America’s accomplishments in Afghanistan rank alongside its accomplishments in Iraq.

Patrise Cullors: Black Lives Depend on a Free and Open Internet

The Internet is the most democratic communication platform in history, largely because we’ve had network neutrality rules that make sure all web traffic is treated equally, and no voices are discriminated against. Because of network neutrality rules, activists can turn to the Internet to bypass the discrimination of mainstream cable, broadcast and print outlets as we organize for change. It is because of net neutrality rules that the Internet is the only communication channel left where Black voices can speak and be heard, produce and consume, on our own terms.

But, right now, Black online voices are threatened. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is drafting and preparing to vote on new rules that will either preserve the level online playing field we’ve enjoyed for the last several decades, or destroy it.  

The FCC can take a clear path to prevent discrimination online. The agency can reclassify broadband as a common carrier service under Title II of the Communications Act. Reclassifying the Internet with strong, bright line net neutrality rules can guarantee every Internet user’s right to connect with any person or website, on any device or cell phone, without discrimination, censorship or other interference.  

Jeb Lund: If you’re a politician and your chummy past with neo-Nazis resurfaces, don’t worry. Ask Ron Paul

I’m not a fan of hot takes, but this time I’m putting my foot down. Nazis are bad.

But apparently some kids missed the public service announcements about it. Louisiana Representative Steve Scalise, the House GOP Whip and third-highest ranking member of the House GOP leadership tried to “groove” on Nazism in 2002, appearing at a convention of the European-American Unity and Rights Organization (EURO), which was founded by Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard and neo-Nazi David Duke.

Thankfully, now that his appearance has been unearthed, the Scalise spin machine is on it: “Throughout his career in public service, Mr Scalise has spoken to hundreds of different groups with a broad range of viewpoints,” said Scalise spokesperson Moira Bagley. Ahh, yes, and there’s the expected out – he was there, but he only exhaled.

She went on: “In every case, he was building support for his policies, not the other way around.”[..]

After all, it’s probably not hard to turn a neo-Nazi into a potential Republican voter by telling him that a corporatized, authoritarian, nationalistic, militaristic party is the only thing standing between him and effete, war-losing, left-wing elites who are trying to destroy the homeland via a fifth-column of non-native minorities, college professors, “homosexuals” and other cultural degenerates.

Hell, I’m not even mad about Scalise. I’m just disappointed.

Reditt Hudson: Police officers who violate citizens’ rights must be punished. Accountability is the only way forward

There is one criminal justice system for citizens – especially black and brown ones – and another for police in the United State.

As a former cop, when I watch the video of Eric Garner being choked out, of him having his face smashed into the concrete as he told the officers that were on top of him he couldn’t breathe, there is no mistaking the truth: the only person whose life was at risk during that encounter was Eric Garner’s.

I’ve been shot at while enforcing the law in my state, and I have friends that remain with the department I worked for that have risked their lives as well; we all have tremendous respect for the job. But we all know – either from personal experience or the experience of someone close to us – that there are officers that will violate citizens’ human rights and civil liberties with impunity and who are comfortable in the knowledge that the system will protect and cover for their actions. And while the race of the officer abusing his or her authority may vary, the race of those whose rights and bodies are abused almost never does.

These inequities have led, inexorably, to the current national crisis in police-community relations – and the best way forward is to make sure we severely punish officers that violate the rights of the citizens they serve. They must be held accountable for their actions. There is one criminal justice system for citizens – especially black and brown ones – and another for police in the United State.

As a former cop, when I watch the video of Eric Garner being choked out, of him having his face smashed into the concrete as he told the officers that were on top of him he couldn’t breathe, there is no mistaking the truth: the only person whose life was at risk during that encounter was Eric Garner’s.

I’ve been shot at while enforcing the law in my state, and I have friends that remain with the department I worked for that have risked their lives as well; we all have tremendous respect for the job. But we all know – either from personal experience or the experience of someone close to us – that there are officers that will violate citizens’ human rights and civil liberties with impunity and who are comfortable in the knowledge that the system will protect and cover for their actions. And while the race of the officer abusing his or her authority may vary, the race of those whose rights and bodies are abused almost never does.

These inequities have led, inexorably, to the current national crisis in police-community relations – and the best way forward is to make sure we severely punish officers that violate the rights of the citizens they serve. They must be held accountable for their actions. There is one criminal justice system for citizens – especially black and brown ones – and another for police in the United State.

As a former cop, when I watch the video of Eric Garner being choked out, of him having his face smashed into the concrete as he told the officers that were on top of him he couldn’t breathe, there is no mistaking the truth: the only person whose life was at risk during that encounter was Eric Garner’s.

I’ve been shot at while enforcing the law in my state, and I have friends that remain with the department I worked for that have risked their lives as well; we all have tremendous respect for the job. But we all know – either from personal experience or the experience of someone close to us – that there are officers that will violate citizens’ human rights and civil liberties with impunity and who are comfortable in the knowledge that the system will protect and cover for their actions. And while the race of the officer abusing his or her authority may vary, the race of those whose rights and bodies are abused almost never does.

These inequities have led, inexorably, to the current national crisis in police-community relations – and the best way forward is to make sure we severely punish officers that violate the rights of the citizens they serve. They must be held accountable for their actions.

Dec 31 2014

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: When New York City Police Walk Off the Job

Many members of the New York Police Department are furious at Mayor Bill de Blasio and, by extension, the city that elected him. They have expressed this anger with a solidarity tantrum, repeatedly turning their backs to show their collective contempt. But now they seem to have taken their bitterness to a new and dangerous level – by walking off the job. [..]

And for what? [..]

The list of grievances adds up to very little, unless you look at it through the magnifying lens of resentment fomented by union bosses and right-wing commentators. The falling murder rate, the increased resources for the department, the end of quota-based policing, which the police union despised, the mayor’s commitment to “broken-windows” policing – none of that matters, because many cops have latched on to the narrative that they are hated, with the mayor orchestrating the hate. [..]

Mr. de Blasio has a responsibility to lead the city out of this impasse, and to his credit has avoided inflaming the situation with hasty or hostile words. But it’s the Police Department that needs to police itself. Rank-and-file officers deserve a department they can be proud of, not the insular, defiant, toxically politicized constituency that Mr. Lynch seems to want to lead.

Sen. Bernie Sanders: Fight for Our Progressive Vision

As I look ahead to this coming year, a number of thoughts come to mind.

First and foremost, against an enormous amount of corporate media noise and distraction, it is imperative that we not lose sight of what is most important and the vision that we stand for. We have got to stay focused on those issues that impact the lives of tens of millions of Americans who struggle every day to keep their heads above water economically, and who worry deeply about the kind of future their kids will have.

Yes. We make no apologies in stating that the great moral, economic and political issue of our time is the growing level of income and wealth inequality in our nation. It is a disgrace to everything this country is supposed to stand for when the top one-tenth of 1 percent owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent, and when one family (the Waltons) owns more wealth than the bottom 40 percent. No. The economy is not sustainable when the middle class continues to disappear and when 95 percent of all new income generated since the Wall Street crash goes to the top 1 percent. In order to create a vibrant economy, working families need disposable income. That is often not the case today.

Joan Walsh: New York’s epic white backlash: How a horrid 1960s relic is still with us today

I grew up in New York in the 1960s and 70s saying a prayer whenever I heard a siren – a prayer for whomever the siren wailed, and a prayer for the men behind the siren, the policemen and firemen risking their lives every day, my uncles (and later cousins) among them. That’s what my mother taught me. I still find myself doing it sometimes. [..]

Now I live in New York again, for the first time since the 1970s, and again New York is in turmoil over the police –  not just over the killings of Garner and other unarmed black men, but over the murders of two police officers, Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, in Brooklyn on Dec. 20.  White New Yorkers fear a return to the bad old days of riots, escalating crime and attacks on police. In the 1970s, 46 officers were killed in the line of duty, according to the New York Times, and 41 more in the 1980s. Before these latest murders, the last police killing was in 2011.

Black New Yorkers say the bad old days – of police abuse – never ended. The loudest voices are on the extremes, shouting down those who are trying to find common ground.

David Dayen: 2015′s biggest days for politics: Salon’s handy calendar for the next year

Want to know which critical deadlines Republicans will sneakily try to exploit? Bookmark this timeline as a guide

The conventional wisdom is that the 114th Congress will feature mostly angry white men in suits yelling about something or other, without the normal output from a legislative branch, like “legislation.” The passage of the CRomnibus should put that theory to rest. Republicans were able to slide dozens of policy riders into a must-pass bill, with Democrats and the White House agreeing to the changes amid the risk of a government shutdown. GOP legislators are salivating at the prospect of running this movie over and over again in the final two years of the Obama presidency.

Fortunately for the Republicans, they will have quite a few opportunities to test this model, in their first year of total congressional control since 2006. The 2015 calendar is littered with a series of critical deadlines, which Republicans will surely try to exploit. You can pretty much throw out the rest of the year and just tune in to Congress around these deadline dates, most likely the only times when anything of import will actually happen. Here’s your congressional calendar for the next year:

Dec 30 2014

The End of the Grimm Affair

Finally accepting his untenable position to remain in office, tough guy, Representative Michael Grimm (R-NY11) has decided to resign his House seat sparing the people of Staten Island and Brooklyn the embarrassment of having a convicted felon representing them. Mr. Grimm spoke yesterday with House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) who obviously laid out the grim options (pardon the pun).

House rules dictate that a member convicted of a crime for which a prison sentence of two years or more may be imposed should not participate in committee meetings or vote on the floor until winning re-election. The stricture could have left Mr. Grimm’s 11th district effectively disenfranchised until 2016.

After sources leaked the news of the resignation to The New York Daily News early Monday, Mr. Grimm released a statement at midnight that he had changed his mind and would not stay in Congress, stating that he would resign on January 5th.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo will set a date for a special election.

The judge should throw the book at him for deceiving the voters and using his office as a bargaining chip for a lighter sentence, as expalained by Blake Zeff at Salon:

It will take some time, specifically until the announcement of his criminal sentence, to fully appreciate the snow job Michael Grimm just pulled on Staten Island voters. But we already know plenty enough to call it a criminal’s virtuoso parting heist.

Grimm, you’ll recall, ran for reelection last month as a two-term GOP incumbent in socially conservative Staten Island, with a 20-count indictment on his back. The charges, largely misunderstood by the voters (and media, for that matter), essentially amounted to this: He ran a restaurant some years back, and in an effort to skirt payroll taxes, paid workers under the table and submitted a fake payroll to the feds. He was then caught lying about it when a “real” payroll was discovered by prosecutors in his computer records.

This last part is important because it tells you what Grimm knew: he had lied to federal officers (a crime that never gets ignored), and they had the goods on him. In other words, he was very likely going to prison – and he knew it. [..]

The congressman was clearly never going to serve out his term, nor would he take his case to trial, as he had assured voters.

But he had a very good reason to convince voters otherwise.

If you’re headed to prison but want to cop a deal with the feds, you need a chip you can bargain in exchange for a lighter sentence. And for a politician, there are few chips more valuable than a seat you can resign. If Grimm lost his race last November, he’d have been a disgraced former congressman with no seat to give up and, likely, real prison time. If he won, he’d have the golden House seat to drop in exchange for – he hoped – leniency.

It is the NYT article best sums up the end of this sad affair:

Whoever takes Mr. Grimm’s seat will be unlikely to match his track record as a source of national fascination, or satire. A tough-talking politician with a clenched jaw and an intense stare, a fondness for dark-tailored suits and Brooklyn wine bars, Mr. Grimm brought with him a reputation for controversy, including the time – back in his law enforcement days – when he reportedly waved a gun around a Queens nightclub. He carried himself with a bravado that was on display until the end.

Mr. Grimm knew this was coming when he was indicted for tax evasion last April. Instead of admitting it then and withdrawing from the race, he decided to arrogantly stand his ground and lie about his guilt, bringing unwanted attention to Staten Island and, now, costing NY tax payers millions for a special election. Never mind the money that his supporters donated to his campaign, they should have seen the handwriting on the wall. The IRS and FBI do not bring these charges unless they can win. Remember Al Capone?

But too many Staten Island voters still love the tough guy image and swagger, hopefully this time they will make a better choice.

Dec 30 2014

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: Police Respect Squandered in Attacks on de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio has spent weeks expressing his respect and admiration for the New York Police Department, while calling for unity in these difficult days, but the message doesn’t seem to be sinking in. [..]

The New York Police Department is going through a terrible time, and the assassinations of those officers only underscore the dreadful dangers that rank-and-file cops face every day. And, in truth, there is some thanklessness to being a cop. Officers often feel beleaguered, jerked around by supervisors and politicians, obligated to follow rules and policies that can be misguided, held responsible for their mistakes in ways that the public is not, exposed to frequent ridicule and hostility from the people they are sworn to serve. It has always been that way with cops.

But none of those grievances can justify the snarling sense of victimhood that seems to be motivating the anti-de Blasio campaign – the belief that the department is never wrong, that it never needs redirection or reform, only reverence. This is the view peddled by union officials like Patrick Lynch, the president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association – that cops are an ethically impeccable force with their own priorities and codes of behavior, accountable only to themselves, and whose reflexive defiance in the face of valid criticism is somehow normal.

It’s not normal. Not for a professional class of highly trained civil servants, which New York’s Finest profess to be. The police can rightly expect, even insist upon, the respect of the public. But respect is a finite resource. It cannot be wasted. Sometimes it has to be renewed.

Peter Dreier: Focus on the NRA, Not Mayor de Blasio, for Deaths of NYC Cops

In an interview Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani urged current Mayor Bill de Blasio to apologize to the New York Police Department for “[giving] the police the impression that he’s on the other side” – in other words, that he’s siding with the protesters over law enforcement during recent protests over the deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of police officers.   Patrick Lynch, the president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, has been grabbing headlines by blaming de Blasio for creating an anti-police atmosphere that may have encouraged Brinsley to target the two police officers, gunned down while they sat in their squad car outside a Brooklyn housing project. Some NYPD officers even turned their backs on de Blasio during  Ramos’ funeral on Saturday. [..]

If Giuliani and Lynch want to point the finger of blame for policies that put police in harm’s way, they should focus on the NRA, not de Blasio.  For decades, the NRA has fought every effort to get Congress and states to adopt reasonable laws that would make it much less likely that people like Brinsley would be able to obtain a gun.  The NRA even  defends the right of Americans to carry concealed weapons in bars, churches, schools, universities, and elsewhere.  This poses a huge threat to police and civilians alike. [..]

Every American grieves for the families and friends of the two police officers killed in New York City on December 20.  But until we tame the power of the NRA, we can expect more killings like this – a part of the deadly daily diet of murders throughout America committed by angry gun-toting people whose “freedom” to own weapons of mass destruction the NRA defends.

David Cay Johnston: The success of Obamanomics

What’s not to like about the economic record of this president?

By a host of measures, the U.S. economy has done exceptionally well under President Barack Obama. So why does he receive such poor approval ratings, especially from the most prosperous and economically conservative Americans? [..]

So what’s not to like about the economic record of this president?

What most people know is that they are working hard and getting nowhere and that even if they perform well, their jobs can evaporate in an instant.

Median household income was $59,139 last year, about $4,500 below 2007 but up all of $189 from 2012. As I showed in a previous column, the median wage last year was at its lowest level since 1998, and the average wage remains below its 2007 peak.

Therein lies a key to understanding dissatisfaction with Obama’s economic policies.  While about 10 million jobs have been added since the low point a year into his first term, wages have stagnated. [..]

Had congressional Republicans cooperated with the president, our economy would be larger by 3 percent, or about $529 billion, the St. Louis Federal Reserve and other researchers estimate. Unrealized economic output is a terrible waste, especially when it results from petty political animus.

Now that the economy is expanding at the fastest rate we’ve seen in more than a decade, public perception about Obama’s economic policies is beginning to improve. But whatever Americans ultimately conclude about Obama, they should view his economic policies in a light that balances his broad successes and failures with the declared determination of Republican congressional leaders to oppose Obama’s policies at all costs.

David Dayen: The Super Bowl doesn’t need terrorism insurance. Here’s why

In its final week, the 113th US Congress managed to pass a spending bill loaded with policy giveaways to special interests, and a year-long extension of mostly corporate tax breaks.

But they couldn’t finish off the lobbyist Triple Crown. There was one task Congress couldn’t tackle: approve an extension of the Terrorist Risk Insurance Act, known as TRIA. The bill provides lucrative government bailout protection for the insurance industry in case of a terrorist attack like 9/11 or, as Hollywood has feared, retribution for American entertainment choices by North Korea. [..]

But perhaps the expiration of TRIA can shed some light on its necessity.

Supporters claim new real estate development will collapse without affordable terrorism coverage; let’s see if that’s the case. They argue that the economy will suffer; we can certainly find out. They claim that no other solution but a government guarantee exists; we can test that theory.

In fact, we already have some evidence that the industry caterwauling is overblown: the NFL has said they will not need to cancel the Super Bowl in the wake of the failure to pass TRIA, despite news reports to that effect.

Congress rarely gets the chance to run a natural experiment on whether the policies they enact make sense in the real world. The bungling of TRIA provides that opportunity. It’s up to them whether or not they seize it.

John Nichols: Bill de Blasio Is Not the First New York City Mayor to Clash With Police Unions

The leaflet was meant to highlight anger on the part of police officers with the mayor of New York. It encouraged officers to fill their names in on a document that read, “I, . . ., a New York City police officer, want all of my family and brother officers who read this to know [that] in the event of my death [the mayor and his police commissioner should] be denied attendance of any memorial service in my honor as their attendance would only bring disgrace to my memory.”

That’s how deep the divisions ran.

Yes, “ran.”

The leaflet mentioned above was distributed in 1997. The mayor in question was Rudolph Giuliani, and The New York Times reported on rank-and-file members of the powerful Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association urging fellow officers to sign the documents. Though the union did not officially sanction the jab at the mayor, its circulation among officers “demonstrates the depths of their discontent,” reported the Times in an article on a contract dispute in which Giuliani was taking a hard line against pay increases. [..]

In his eulogy for Officer Ramos, Mayor de Blasio preached a gospel of reconciliation that sought to reduce the current animosity, describing how police officers “help make a place that otherwise would be torn with strife a place of peace.” The mayoral olive branch was not accepted Saturday, just as previous efforts by previous mayors to ease tensions with the PBA have hit rough spots. This is a part of the story of big-city policing and politics. But it is not the whole story. The whole story tells us that it is possible for a strong mayor to get through hard times that include clashes with a strong police union, to propose and implement reforms that the mayor, many police officers and most citizens know to be necessary, and to survive politically. This is the historical reality, as opposed to the media-frenzy spin of the moment. And it is this reality that Mayor de Blasio would do well to keep in mind through the weeks and months to come.

Eugene Robinson: Economic Facts Get in the Way of Presidential Ambitions

Uh-oh. Now that the economy is doing well, what are Republicans-especially those running for president-going to complain about? And what are Democrats willing to celebrate?

Last week’s announcement that the economy grew at a 5 percent rate in the third quarter of 2014-following 4.6 percent second-quarter growth-was the clearest and least debatable indication to date that sustained recovery is no longer a promise, it’s a fact. [..]

GOP candidates face a dilemma. To win in the primaries, where the influence of the far-right activist base is magnified, it may be necessary to continue the give-no-quarter attacks on Obama’s record, regardless of what the facts might say. But in the general election, against a capable Democratic candidate-someone like Hillary Clinton, if she decides to run-pretending that up is down won’t cut it. [..]

Likewise, Elizabeth Warren charges that the administration’s coziness with Wall Street helps ensure that the deck remains stacked against the middle class. Warren says she isn’t running for president but wants to influence the debate. She has. Clinton’s speeches have begun sounding more populist, in spite of her long-standing Wall Street ties.

You know the old saying about how there’s no arguing with success? Our politicians are about to prove it wrong.

Dec 29 2014

The Christmas News Dump

The exceedingly long Christmas weekend had some notably sad and tragic news that dominated news cycle. Here are a couple of the important stories that were buried.

Cuomo, Christie Veto Bill To Reform Port Authority

By Dave Klepper and Michael Cantalini, Huffington Post

The governors of New York and New Jersey jointly vetoed legislation Saturday aimed at overhauling the Port Authority and proposed instead a series of reforms they said would go further in bringing accountability to the agency.

The bill was designed to clean up an agency long known for dysfunction and scandals, including most recently the lane closures at the George Washington Bridge that ensnarled New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s administration. It had the unanimous support of the New York and New Jersey legislatures.

The bill would have overhauled the troubled agency by requiring an independent annual audit, creating an inspector general’s office, restricting lobbying and creating a whistleblower protection program. It also would have required Port Authority board members to swear they’ll act in good faith. [..]

“It’s really just an awful thing for them to do. Neither of them can ever stand up and say they’re for effective reform,” said former New York Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, a Democrat, who had predicted the veto. “In a competition between effective reform and power, power won. Reform ends on Christmas, but scandals go on forever.”

New Jersey Sen. Loretta Weinberg said the decision was a “cop-out,” and Assemblyman John Wisniewski said he’s disappointed the bill didn’t become law.

“I find it very disappointing that both governors together decided to turn their backs on their respective legislators,” Weinberg said. [..]

In place of the legislation, Cuomo and Christie on Saturday recommended reforms and said they would ask authority board members for their resignations. They called for a single chief executive officer to oversee the authority in place of an executive director and deputy executive director under the current system.

Weinberg said those reforms would have been possible under the legislation, too.

“There is nothing in this legislation that prevents them from moving ahead with those reforms,” she said.

And for some unknown reason, neither state legislature will move to over ride the vetoes of Criminal One and Criminal Two. A bill, btw, that was passed nearly unanimously by both bodies. It’s too hard

Next up.

NSA Drops Christmas Eve Surprise

By Murtaza Hussain, The Intercept

The National Security Agency on Christmas Eve day released twelve years of internal oversight reports documenting abusive and improper practices by agency employees. The heavily redacted reports to the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board found that NSA employees repeatedly engaged in unauthorized surveillance of communications by American citizens, failed to follow legal guidelines regarding the retention of private information, and shared data with unauthorized recipients. [..]

The reports, released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by the American Civil Liberties Union, offer few revelations, but contain accounts of internal behavior embarrassing to the agency. In one instance an NSA employee “searched her spouse’s personal telephone directory without his knowledge to obtain names and telephone numbers for targeting”, a practice which previous reports have indicated was common enough to warrant the name “LOVEINT”.

Don’t start banging you head on the desk just yet

After Scrutiny, C.I.A. Mandate Is Untouched

Mark Mazzetti, New York Times

Senator Angus King, a member of the Intelligence Committee, said that Hollywood depictions of torture have distorted the public’s view of its efficacy.

“Every week, Jack Bauer saves civilization by torturing someone, and it works,” said Mr. King, the independent from Maine, referring to the lead character of the television show “24.”

Mr. King said that he was initially skeptical about the need to release the torture report, but when he spent five straight evenings reading it in a secure room on Capitol Hill he decided that the C.I.A. abuses needed a public airing.

“It went from interest, to a sick feeling, to disgust, and finally to anger,” he said.

But the Obama administration has made clear that it has no plans to make anyone legally accountable for the practices described by the C.I.A. as enhanced interrogation techniques and the Intelligence Committee as torture. The American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch sent a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. this week asking him to appoint a special prosecutor to examine the report’s allegations, but the request will almost certainly be rejected.

And while Senator King called the Intelligence Committee’s report “Church Committee II,” he, like many other Democrats on the Intelligence Committee, remains a broad supporter of the C.I.A.’s paramilitary mission that Mr. Obama has embraced during his time in the White House. [..]

And as America’s spying apparatus has grown larger, richer and more powerful than during any other time in its history, it has become ever harder for those keeping watch over it.

“We are 15 people overseeing a $50 billion enterprise,” said Senator King, speaking of his fellow members on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

“I can’t tell you I know with certainty every intelligence program this enterprise is engaged in.”

Almost done

Off duty, black cops in New York feel threat from fellow police

By Michelle Conlin, Reuters

From the dingy donut shops of Manhattan to the cloistered police watering holes in Brooklyn, a number of black NYPD officers say they have experienced the same racial profiling that cost Eric Garner his life. [..]

What’s emerging now is that, within the thin blue line of the NYPD, there is another divide – between black and white officers.

Reuters interviewed 25 African American male officers on the NYPD, 15 of whom are retired and 10 of whom are still serving. All but one said that, when off duty and out of uniform, they had been victims of racial profiling, which refers to using race or ethnicity as grounds for suspecting someone of having committed a crime.

The officers said this included being pulled over for no reason, having their heads slammed against their cars, getting guns brandished in their faces, being thrown into prison vans and experiencing stop and frisks while shopping. The majority of the officers said they had been pulled over multiple times while driving. Five had had guns pulled on them. [..]

The black officers interviewed said they had been racially profiled by white officers exclusively, and about one third said they made some form of complaint to a supervisor.

All but one said their supervisors either dismissed the complaints or retaliated against them by denying them overtime, choice assignments, or promotions. The remaining officers who made no complaints said they refrained from doing so either because they feared retribution or because they saw racial profiling as part of the system.

Last, a little reminder of just how bad the nation’s largest police department really is.

Nine terrifying facts about America’s biggest police force

Tana Ganeva and Laura Gottesdiener, Alternet

The NYPD has expanded into a massive global anti-terror operation with military capabilities

The NYPD is the biggest police force in the country, with over 34,000 uniformed officers patrolling New York’s streets, and 51,000 employees overall – more than the FBI. It has a proposed budget of $4.6 billion for 2013, a figure that represents almost 15 percent of the entire city’s budget (pdf).

NYC’s population is a little over 8 million. That means that there are 4.18 police officers per 1,000 people. By comparison, Los Angeles, the second largest city in the U.S. with 3.8 million people, has only 9,895 officers-a ratio of 2.6 police per 1,000 people.

What has the NYPD been doing with all that cash and manpower? In addition to ticketing minorities for standing outside of their homes, spying on Muslims who live in New Jersey, abusing protesters, and gunning down black teens over weed, the NYPD has expanded into a massive global anti-terror operation with surveillance and military capabilities unparalleled in the history of US law enforcement.

In an email published by WikiLeaks, an FBI official joked about how shocked Americans would be if they knew how egregiously the NYPD is stomping all over their civil liberties. But what we already know is bad enough. Here’s a round-up of what the department has been up to lately.

This lawlessness by NYPD has cost the tax payers of NYC nearly $1 billion in settlement over and above the bloated budget. Needless to say, the NYPD has gotten on my last nerve.

OK, start banging but please put a pillow on the desk.

Dec 29 2014

The NYPD Gets on My Last Nerve

First let me say this: Supporting the police while calling for reform and justice are not mutually exclusive. Lives matter, all of them. This is not a zero sum game. That said, some of the members of the NYC Police Department and the bigots that support the institutionalized racism of the agency have gotten on my last nerve.

The vast majority of police officers are good people, just as the vast majority of people who are protesting in the streets across this country are good people. But some of the leadership, politicians and talking heads in the mainstream media need to shut up and listen. The people of this country deserve to be heard. The heads of the police unions in NYC seem to have forgotten that they are the employees of the people of NYC. Mayor Bill de Blasio, who was elected by 74% of those who voted in November, is their boss. He was elected to reform an increasing out of control and militarized police department. He’s doing a good job. You can tell by the squealing of the racists who can’t see beyond their own hatred of people who just want to live in peace, make a decent living and raise their children in a safe city. People should not have to fear the police.

For the last 20 years under two Republican corporate administrations, the NYPD was expanded and given unprecedented powers. The commissioners that were appointed by Mayors Rudolph Guiliani and Michael Bloomberg, that includes the current commissioner William Bratton, ran the department like it was an army and felt that they were not accountable to its citizens. The policies of “Broken Glass” and its offshoot “Stop and Frisk” were inherently racist and have led to the feeling of distrust in the minority communities of the city. It has led to the abuse and deaths of mostly young men of color and, now, two good men, NYC police officers, have been assassinated by a deranged man seeking vengeance. The union heads, especially NYC Police Benevolence Association President Patrick Lynch, decided to make the death of Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Lui a political football for their hurt feelings.

What is Lynch so fired up about? He is vilifying Mayor De Blasio because the mayor, as the parent of mixed race children, spoke the truth about what every parent of a child of color must tell them about the police:

“This is profoundly personal to me,” de Blasio said. “I was at the White House the other day, and the president of the United States turned to me, and he met Dante a few months ago, and he said that Dante reminded him of what he looked like as a teenager. And he said, ‘I know you see this crisis through a very personal lens.’ And I said to him, I did.”

De Blasio went on to note that he and his wife, Chirlane McCray, who is black, “have had to talk to Dante for years about the dangers that he may face.”

The mayor described his son as “a good young man, [a] law-abiding young man who would never think to do anything wrong” — but he noted that “because of a history that still hangs over us, the dangers he may face, we’ve had to literally train him, as families have all over this city for decades, in how to take special care in any encounter he has with the police officers who are there to protect him.” [..]

he mayor described “that painful sense of contradiction that our young people see first, that our police are here to protect us, and we honor that, and at the same time, there’s a history we have to overcome.”

“For so many of our young people, there’s a fear,” de Blasio said. “And for so many of our families, there’s a fear.”

It has been bad enough that since the mayor made that statement that Mr. Lynch went tirade in an attempt to make the police the victims and not the innocent people they have abused and killed. He and other members of the NYPD have only exposed their racism.

Besides the incredibly insulting act of turning their backs on Mayor de Blasio as he was leaving Woodhull Hospital after the deaths of the two officers, what got me really angry with these bigots were two incidents that showed just how completely ignorant some of the police really are. The first was this stupid and, very likely expensive stunt by an anonymous “group of current and retired NYC Police Officers, Detectives, and Supervisors”

Friday morning, a small plane flew over New York City with a banner attached that read: “De Blasio, Our Backs Have Turned to You.” The sign, a reference to some NYPD officers protesting against Mayor de Blasio following the shooting deaths of Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos last weekend, was the work of a “large and unified group of current and retired NYC Police Officers, Detectives, & Supervisors,” according to blogger and former cop John Cardillo. [..]

Ashley Chalmers, the owner of the plane, told the New York Daily News that the people who rented it “wish to remain anonymous,” though Cardillo said he was contacted by the NYPD group on Friday and asked to release a statement.

Stay classy, guys, exposing, not only your bigotry, but the need to learn to write a sentence.

Then while attending the funeral of Police Officer Rafael Ramos, some of the police officers decided it was the place to throw a temper tantrum insulting the memory of a fallen officer and his grieving family:

Thousands of police officers from across the nation packed a church and spilled onto streets Saturday to honor Officer Rafael Ramos as a devoted family man, aspiring chaplain and hero, though an air of unrest surrounding his ambush shooting was not completely pushed aside.

While mourners inside the church applauded politely as Mayor Bill de Blasio spoke, hundreds of officers outside turned their backs on him to protest what they see as his support for demonstrators angry over killings by police.

The rush of officers far and wide to New York for Ramos’ funeral reminded some of the bond after the Sept. 11 attacks and Superstorm Sandy. Vice President Joe Biden promised that the “incredibly diverse city can and will show the nation how to bridge any divide.”

Still, tensions were evident when officers turned away from giant screens showing de Blasio, who has been harshly criticized by New York Police Department union officials as a contributor to a climate of mistrust that preceded the killings of Ramos and his partner, Wenjian Liu.

All this poutrage by Mr. Lynch, former Mayor Guiliani and company directed at Mayor de Blasio is because he spoke to the terrible fact that police departments throughout this country treat people of color differently and minority children, especially the boys, must be given “the talk.

“If you are stopped by a cop, do what he says, even if he’s harassing you, even if you didn’t do anything wrong. Let him arrest you, memorize his badge number, and call me as soon as you get to the precinct. Keep your hands where he can see them. Do not reach for your wallet. Do not grab your phone. Do not raise your voice. Do not talk back. Do you understand me?”

The mayor gave the talk to his biracial teenage son so this wouldn’t happen to him.

And as John Cole at Balloon Juice noted

And let’s remember what is so particularly ugly about this- this is motivated as much by the desire to not reform and to maintain the current institutional racism as it is the current contract talks and union elections. Fuck Patrick Lynch and his goons.

If some members of the NYPD don’t like the reforms that Mayor de Blasio was elected to enact, they can go find other jobs. There are plenty of qualified people, who are working two and three underpaying jobs,  to replace them. Either that or learn to listen.

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