Tag: Opinion

Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Elijah Cummings, who co-chair an initiative called the Middle Class Prosperity Project, are holding a forum this afternoon (Thursday, April 2) at the University of Massachusetts in Boston on “Tackling the Student Debt Crisis” (more info here).

If the word “crisis” seems dramatic to you, you haven’t been paying attention. The Federal Reserve recently released new data on student debt, and it shows that the situation is even worse than many people realized. There’s a lot of new information available, but here are four things every American needs to know:

1. Student debt is soaring in this country.

2. The debt burden is disproportionately falling on younger Americans.

3. An alarming number of student loans are delinquent.

4. Student debt is ruining credit scores — and keeping young people out of the consumer economy.

Excessive consumer debt is another economic problem, of course. But these figures are an indication that student debt is keeping young Americans from forming households and purchasing homes, from buying cars, and presumably from other types of purchases as well.

If large numbers of young people are prevented from fully participating in the consumer economy — if they’re not able to buy things — that doesn’t just harm them personally. It hurts the entire economy — which means it affects almost everyone.

Robert Reich: The Rise of the Working Poor and the Non-Working Rich

Many believe that poor people deserve to be poor because they’re lazy. As Speaker John Boehner has said, the poor have a notion that “I really don’t have to work. I don’t really want to do this. I think I’d rather just sit around.”

In reality, a large and growing share of the nation’s poor work full time — sometimes sixty or more hours a week — yet still don’t earn enough to lift themselves and their families out of poverty.

It’s also commonly believed, especially among Republicans, that the rich deserve their wealth because they work harder than others.

In reality, a large and growing portion of the super-rich have never broken a sweat. Their wealth has been handed to them.

The rise of these two groups — the working poor and non-working rich — is relatively new. Both are challenging the core American assumptions that people are paid what they’re worth, and work is justly rewarded.

Why are these two groups growing?

Jared Bernstein: March Jobs Report: First Impressions

Payrolls rose only 126,000 last month in a surprisingly downbeat reading on the state of the labor market. Unemployment remained unchanged at 5.5%, but the closely watched labor force rate fell a tenth in another sign of weakness.

Contributing to the disappointing report, job gains for the prior two months were marked down by a total of 69,000. Thus, the average monthly gain over the first quarter of the year fell slightly below 200,000, as shown below.

Average weekly hours ticked down slighty as well in March, the first such decline in over a year. [..]

Has the job market really downshifted, or is this month a temporary blip? While there’s evidence for both sides of that argument, I’d give more weight to the 260K bars in the above figure than the lower first bar. The underlying trend, both for overall GDP growth and for job gains has been steady and moderate, productivity certainly hasn’t accelerated (which would suggest employers could meet demands with fewer workers), and the unemployment rate has generally fallen for good reasons — more jobseekers finding work — than for bad ones — more jobseekers giving up the search and leaving the labor market.

Jason W. Murphy: Big oil is pressuring scientists not to link fracking to earthquakes in Oklahoma

For some time now, scientists have wondered whether fracking-related activities, such as wastewater injection, might be the source of increased seismic activity in Oklahoma. In May of last year, the Oklahoma Geological Survey, an affiliate entity of the University of Oklahoma, released a statement in conjunction with the United States Geological Survey, saying that wastewater injection was a “likely contributing factor the increase in earthquakes”.

Not long after this statement, David Boren, president of the university, summoned the Oklahoma Geological Survey’s lead seismologist Austin Holland, who was also one of the authors of the statement, to a meeting with Harold Hamm, CEO of Continental Resources, one of Oklahoma’s largest oil and gas exploration and production companies. Boren facilitated the meeting despite the fact that he also serves as a member of the Continental Resources board of directors.

In July 2014, Continental Resources released a presentation

positing an alternative theory for the seismic swarms and downplaying the influence of induced seismicity. One can only imagine the pressure this meeting must have brought upon Holland and his team of scientists.

That’s why state policy makers like myself are concerned that industry pressure conveyed through the highest levels of academia could compromise the deliberative and fact-based response by which state officials are attempting to put an end to the seismic swarms.

Reform the earned income tax credit but not at the expense of struggling families

The number of informal businesses in the United States is growing robustly, but the average size of these enterprises is shrinking fast, my analysis of official government data from 1988 to 2012 shows.

Given the millions of people who have lost a job, cannot find work or kept working but at reduced pay, it’s not surprising that many of them are starting small businesses to make ends meet. If you cannot get a job, make one for yourself – sell homemade goods, wash windows, edit articles.

The trends in what government calls sole proprietorships – any unincorporated business that files a Schedule C with the owner’s personal tax return – open a window on how Americans are adapting to an economy that for decades has been glorious for those at the top but hard on the vast majority.

This is a story not of prosperous entrepreneurship but of desperate struggles to swim against powerful economic currents. A much darker story lies hidden in the official numbers, a story of crushing poverty alleviated by a strange amalgam of thieving tax preparers, ignorant parents and Congress’ failure to focus on making government policies work as intended.

In analyzing the official data, I saw hints that many of these informal businesses either are bogus or inflate their profits. It may appear bizarre that anyone would tell the Internal Revenue Service that they made more money than they actually did. But doing so can be lucrative for unscrupulous tax preparers and their poorest clients.

Charles M. Blow: Religious Freedom vs. Individual Equality

Indiana’s governor is now vowing to “clarify” a religious freedom law he recently signed in that state, because of what he calls a “perception problem” about whether the legislation would allow open discrimination against people whose sexual identities defy the heteronormative construct.

In truth, there is no perception problem. There was a detection problem: People detected precisely what the bill was designed to do, and they objected. And, possibly more important than individuals’ objections, were the objections of big business like Apple and Angie’s List.

Rather than simply protecting the free exercise of religion, the bill provides the possibility that religion could be used as a basis of discrimination against some customers. [..]

Too many people in this country continue to have an unhealthy obsession with what other people do in their bedrooms rather than focusing on what they do – or don’t do – in their own.

Mind your own faith and your own business and allow other people to define their own relationships with a god, if he or she believes and chooses such a spiritual communion.

Michelangelo Signorile: A Spellbinding Week: What Are the Gains and Losses for LGBT Rights, and What Battles Lie Ahead?

It’s been an extraordinary week for LGBT people in America, as we saw a battle play out in the media that made all of us who support equality — lesbian, transgender, gay, bisexual, and straight — feel proud. Major celebrities, media personalities, prominent politicians, and huge corporations — even some on Fox News — were standing up against bigots and speaking out for equality. It was exciting, even dazzling. [..]

Yeah, we won a major media battle and got amazing support. We should thank people like lesbian longtime journalist Kerry Eleveld and others for lighting a firecracker under HRC with much-needed, intense criticism in recent weeks for its lack of a strategy. It was wonderful, too, to see allies support us, exciting to behold. And hopefully we learned a lot about holding our enemies’ — and gay groups’ — feet to the fire. But in larger frame, LGBT citizens lost protection from discrimination. So, yes, be proud of our work this week. But there’s so much more to do. Don’t think our opponents aren’t already regrouping and calibrating their next attack, moving on to other states. We cannot fool ourselves, dazzled by the events, into thinking that because we won a media battle, we have won the war.

Jessica Valenti: It isn’t justice for Purvi Patel to serve 20 years in prison for an abortion

Abortion is illegal in the United States. So is having a stillbirth – not officially, perhaps, but thanks to a case in Indiana, we’re halfway there. On Monday, Purvi Patel, a 33 year old woman who says that she had a miscarriage, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for neglect of a dependent and feticide. She is the first woman in the United States to ever be sentenced for such a crime. [..]

We may never know what really happened in Patel’s case. She has repeatedly said that she had a miscarriage which, if true, means that the state is sending a woman to jail for not having a healthy pregnancy outcome. But even if Patel did procure and take drugs to end her pregnancy, are we really prepared to send women to jail for decades if they have abortions? Even illegal ones?

When women are desperate to end their pregnancies, they will. The answer to this shouldn’t be punitive, but supportive: women need better access to education, affordable contraception and abortion without harassment or delay.

Patel’s case opens the door for any woman who expresses doubt about her pregnancy to be charged if she miscarries or has a stillbirth. It’s a terrifying thought, but one that is already impacting real women: the anti-choice movement is now sending women to jail for what happens during their pregnancies. So tell me again how abortion is totally legal. Or tell Purvi Patel.

The tech industry, hovering constantly one buzzword away from self-parody, is a hostile environment for mockery. So why are tech companies such zealous April Fools participants, second only perhaps to my cousin, who once pranked my grandmother by snail mail because she’d been warned not to believe anything he said on the phone on 1 April?

This year’s tech industry April Fools’ pranks started sliding out a day in advance. Maybe companies couldn’t bear to keep their jokes under wraps, or maybe they thought they’d sucker more people with a 31 March-dated press release. How else do you explain that, one day before 1 April, we already had Google Panda (a huggable version of Siri), the Samsung Galaxy BLADE edge (which turns your phone into a cleaver), and PACMaps, which merges PacMan with Google Maps. As usual, tech companies are falling all over each other to roll out a gag product, though this is the first time I’ve noticed them being so eager that they bring them out a day early. As usual the offerings are mildly funny, mildly annoying and only barely distinguishable from actual real-life products offered for sale. [..]

Behind the light-heartedness of today’s jokes is a tiny blip of menace: today’s satire is often tomorrow’s reality. On April Fools’ Day we look disconcertingly into our secret cravings and into the future of consumerism, and what we see isn’t all that implausible. No wonder nobody laughs all that hard.

Michelle Goldberg: Indiana Just Sentenced a Woman Convicted of Feticide to Twenty Years in Prison

Indiana’s law allowing discrimination against gay people is not the only reason that the state deserves our opprobrium. It’s also about to become the first state to imprison a woman for what it says is the death of a baby born after an attempted abortion.

On Monday, 33-year-old Purvi Patel, an unmarried woman from a conservative Hindu family who bought abortion drugs online, was sentenced to twenty years in prison for the crimes of feticide and neglect of a dependent. It was not the first time that feticide laws, passed under the guise of protecting pregnant women from attack, have been turned against pregnant women themselves. Indiana, after all, was also the state that jailed Bei Bei Shuai, an immigrant who tried to commit suicide by poisoning herself while pregnant, and whose baby later died. But the Patel case is still a disturbing landmark. “Yes, the feticide laws in other states have been used to arrest and sometimes punish the pregnant women herself,” says Lynn Paltrow, executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, which advised Patel’s defense. “This is the first time it’s being used to punish what they say is an attempted self-abortion.” [..]

Indiana strengthened its feticide law in 2009, after a pregnant woman who was shot during a bank robbery lost the twins she was carrying. Under the statute, feticide applies in cases where a “person…knowingly or intentionally terminates a human pregnancy with an intention other than to produce a live birth or to remove a dead fetus.” There is an exemption for legal abortion, but no explicit one for self-abortion. Reproductive rights activists like Paltrow have long contended that such laws, championed by conservatives, are a sneaky way of eroding abortion rights, and the Patel case shows that they are right. We’ve reached a point where desperate women who end their pregnancies before viability are going to prison.

Linda Greenhouse: The Supreme Court’s Death Trap

You wouldn’t know it from the death penalty proceeding about to take place in the Boston Marathon case, or from Utah’s reauthorization of the firing squad, or the spate of botched lethal injections, but capital punishment in the United States is becoming vestigial.

The number of death sentences imposed last year, 72, was the lowest in 40 years. The number of executions, 35, was the lowest since 1994, less than half the modern peak of 98, reached in 1999. Seven states, the fewest in 25 years, carried out executions.

California has the country’s biggest death row, with more than 700 inmates. Many more of them die of natural causes – two since mid-March – than by execution. Last July, a federal district judge, Cormac J. Carney, concluding that California’s death penalty had become “dysfunctional,” “random” and devoid of “penological purpose,” declared it unconstitutional (pdf); the state is appealing.

In 2008, two years before he retired, Justice John Paul Stevens renounced the death penalty. His nuanced opinion (pdf) in Baze v. Rees (pdf) rewards rereading. No current justice has taken up the call. I’m not so naïve as to predict that a majority of the Supreme Court will declare the death penalty unconstitutional anytime soon. But the voice of even one member of the court could set a clarifying marker to which others would have to respond. And it just might over time point the way to freeing the court – and the rest of us – from the machinery of death.

Elise Czajkowski: Can Trevor Noah fill Jon Stewart’s big shoes for ‘Indecision 2016’?

This morning, Comedy Central officially announced 31-year-old South African comedian Trevor Noah as the third host of its flagship late-night show, The Daily Show. Noah has been slowly working his way up the ladder of US comedy over the last few years, with his own Showtime special and appearances on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and The Late Show with David Letterman. When he joined The Daily Show back in December as an international correspondent, it seemed like a forward-thinking move on the part of the network. But it’s a big jump to take over from Jon Stewart, whose wry voice has become a pillar of American satire. [..]

Noah’s presence should an international flavour to the show, hopefully breaking it out of its obsession with the 24-hour news channels and petty Washington bickering. It was Stewart who swung the show sharply towards politics when he took over in 1999; there’s no reason that Noah couldn’t change the direction once again.

Stewart hasn’t officially announced his leaving date, confirming that it will be sometime in 2015. Noah’s tour schedule has him booked at shows in the UK as late as 22 October, which means he’s probably not to take over the chair until late in the year. Between then and now, he’s got a lot of studying to do.

It is rare that a week goes by when we don’t hear a story warning us that robots are going to be taking our jobs. (For example, here , here, here .) This is bizarre, even as measured by a standard of economic reporting that allowed an $8 trillion housing bubble to grow largely unnoticed.

The basic point is a simple one: there is no real evidence that robots are displacing workers on any substantial scale. The other part of the story that makes the robot discussion so annoying is that the Federal Reserve Board is actively debating policy that has the explicit purpose of taking away people’s jobs and almost no one seems to care. [..]

The robots may not be likely to take our jobs, but there is a real risk that the Federal Reserve Board will. There is a regular drum beat in the business press about the need for the Fed to start raising interest rates. In fact the Fed itself is telling us to expect higher rates, the question is how much higher and how fast we get there.

David Sirota: The SEC Illustrates the Danger of Regulatory Capture

The phrase “regulatory capture” shrouds a serious problem in vaguely academic jargon, making it seem like unimportant esoterica rather than anything noteworthy. But the phenomenon that the euphemism represents is, indeed, significant: When a government agency is effectively captured by-and subservient to-the industry that agency is supposed to be objectively regulating, it is a big deal.

A perfect example of regulatory capture came earlier this month from the Securities and Exchange Commission-the law enforcement agency that is supposed to be overseeing the financial industry.

As part of that responsibility, the agency’s top financial examiner, Andrew Bowden, warned last year of rampant fraud, corruption and abuse in the private equity industry, which today manages tens of billions of dollars of public pension money for states and cities across the country. [..]

That, unto itself, doesn’t sound like regulatory capture-in fact, it sounds like quite the opposite. But that’s just the prelude to the real story.

Robert Reich: The Rise of the Working Poor and the Non-Working Rich

Many believe that poor people deserve to be poor because they’re lazy. As Speaker John Boehner has said, the poor have a notion that “I really don’t have to work. I don’t really want to do this. I think I’d rather just sit around.”

In reality, a large and growing share of the nation’s poor work full time — sometimes sixty or more hours a week — yet still don’t earn enough to lift themselves and their families out of poverty.

It’s also commonly believed, especially among Republicans, that the rich deserve their wealth because they work harder than others.

In reality, a large and growing portion of the super-rich have never broken a sweat. Their wealth has been handed to them.

The rise of these two groups — the working poor and non-working rich — is relatively new. Both are challenging the core American assumptions that people are paid what they’re worth, and work is justly rewarded.

Why are these two groups growing?

Mike Lux: The Angst Of The Rich And Powerful

There have been a couple of recent articles that relate to money and politics that, while infuriating on many levels, have also struck me as very funny.

One of them came out last week, a broadside no doubt planted by a Wall Street lobbyist intending to frighten Democratic party leaders into trying to shut up Elizabeth Warren (good luck with that!), Sherrod Brown, and other populists who challenge banking malfeasance. It is a classic story about today’s bizarro world of big money dominated politics: [.]]

The Wall Street lobby is the richest and most powerful constituency in DC, and they have been pretty successful over the last couple of decades at getting their way on policy and shutting up politicians who take them on. This kind of ham-handed threat might have worked in the past, but we are living in a new era where the progressive movement, in combination with leaders like Warren and Brown, isn’t backing down. It is worth noting this article, though, and keeping it in your favorite clips file: this kind of moment is one to be savored. There will be more to come as the challenges to the Wall Street establishment keep growing.

The public doesn’t need a middleman for sharing-economy services, but it does need to make sure they are regulated

So-called “sharing economy” companies such as Uber, Airbnb and Task Rabbit are posing policy headaches for governments around the world. Their argument that they should be exempt from existing regulations because their services are ordered over the web does not make much sense, but it provides an adequate fig leaf for politicians seeking campaign contributions from these highly capitalized newcomers.

For those who have missed the hype, “sharing economy” refers to a wide variety of companies that use the web to connect consumers and providers. While there is not reliable data on its size, in part because it is not well defined, Airbnb now boasts far more room listing that Hilton or Marriot, and Uber has quickly grown to be the largest taxi service in the world.

Part of the response to the innovations associated with these sharing economy companies should be to modernize regulations. It is reasonable to regulate taxi services in ways that ensure that cars are safe and drivers are competent and responsible. It is also reasonable to regulate rented rooms to ensure they are not fire traps. Similarly, both should be regulated in ways that ensure access to the handicapped and prevents discrimination. In addition, employees in these companies should be covered by workers compensation and protected by minimum wage and overtime rules.

Mark Weisbrot: Destroying the Greek economy in order to save it

European authorities are using dirty tactics to bring Greece to heel

There is a tense standoff right now between the Greek government and the so-called troika – the European Commission, the European Central Bank (ECB), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). ECB President Mario Draghi went so far this week as to deny that his institution is trying to blackmail the Greek government.

But blackmail is actually an understatement of what the troika is doing to Greece. It has become increasingly clear that they are trying to harm the Greek economy in order to increase pressure on the new Greek government to agree to their demands. [..]

The amounts of money involved are quite trivial for the ECB. The government has to come up with approximately 2 billion euros of debt payments in April. The ECB has recently shelled out 26.3 billion euros to buy eurozone governments’ bonds as part of its 850 billion euro quantitative-easing program over the next year and a half. The ECB’s excuses for causing this cash crunch in Greece ring hollow. For example, it argues that banks under the previous government didn’t have to have the limit that the ECB is imposing on banks now, because the prior government had committed to a reform program that would fix its finances. But so has this one.

It could hardly be more obvious that this is not about money or fiscal sustainability, but about politics. This is a government that European authorities didn’t want, and they wish to show who is boss. And they really don’t want this government to succeed, which would encourage Spanish voters to opt for a democratic alternative – Podemos – later this year.

Robert Kuttner: 5 Radical Ideas Hillary Should Support

The repositioning of candidate Clinton has already begun. One of the fascinating indicators is a report of a commission on inclusive prosperity organized and released in January by the Center for American Progress. The report, co-authored by Larry Summers (!), sounds more like something Larry Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute or Paul Krugman or Joseph Stiglitz might have written.

Among other things, the report calls for much more public investment, more help for trade union organizing, full employment, disdain for fiscal austerity, taxation of the rich, and lots of other good stuff usually associated with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.  [..]

So while it’s good that Clinton is positioning herself as more of a progressive, I think she needs to be even more radical, both to generate real enthusiasm and to address America’s real problems.

Robert Naiman: Schumer’s Choice: To Succeed Reid, He Must Back Iran Deal

Democratic Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has announced that he will not run for re-election. Reid has endorsed Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) to succeed him as Democratic leader.

But in order to succeed Reid as Senate Democratic leader, Schumer is going to have to pay a price: he’s going to have to back President Obama’s multilateral diplomacy with Iran, which Bloomberg reports could produce a “framework agreement” this weekend. Some of Senator Schumer’s New York constituents might not like that, but as the soldiers say, they’ll just have to “embrace the suck.” Senate Republicans may think it’s ok for them to try to undermine a diplomatic agreement. But the prospective leader of Senate Democrats isn’t allowed to do that. [..]

Schumer will have to make a choice. If he maintains his support for the Corker bill, he would help kill the talks. But then he would never be the leader of Senate Democrats. If he wants to be leader of Senate Democrats, Schumer will have to support President Obama on Iran diplomacy.

Religious freedom in the United States is protected by the Constitution. It’s strange to have to state the obvious, but the Indiana legislature and Governor Mike Pence seem to need a refresher on basic civics. On 26 March, Pence signed SB 101 into law, a bill which supposedly protects religious freedom, though in this instance, that freedom largely applies to business owners who want the right to refuse service to customers they disapprove of. As with the Supreme Court decision on Hobby Lobby, the state of Indiana is giving businesses the same rights as people. Mitt Romney would be so proud of what he hath wrought. [..]

Of course, Indiana is not alone in drafting such legislation. There are 19 other states with similar laws on the books. The ongoing fight for marriage equality and feminism are probably to blame. There are pesky people all across the country simply wanting the freedom to live their lives; they clearly must be stopped.

But let’s talk about what’s really going on here. Indiana is not protecting religious freedom. They are protecting a very specific brand of zealotry. They are protecting bigotry. Though they won’t admit it, SB 101 is a knee jerk response to marriage equality becoming law in Indiana in late 2014. In some ways, the passage of this law offers comfort. Small-minded people are more plainly revealing themselves for who and what they are.

Steven W. Thrasher: Uganda faced a backlash for its homophobic legislation. Will California?

After years of efforts by American evangelical missionaries in collusion with pandering local politicians, Uganda passed a law in 2014 which made homosexual acts punishable by life in prison (an improvement on its 2013 “kill the gays” legislation). But though Uganda’s high court later overturned the law on a technicality, America quickly cut aid to the nation and calls for a trade boycott in Britain were swift, before the law was considered again.

So will the State of California face the threat of similar federal sanctions for its own proposed “kill the gays” referendum?

In attempting to put the Sodomite Suppression Act (pdf) – which allows “any person who willingly touches another person of the same gender for purposes of sexual gratification” to “be put to death by bullets to the head or by any other convenient method” – on the ballot in California, attorney Matt McLaughlin has made it clear that too many people in the United States are no better than those in Uganda who earned our country’s opprobrium.

Alison Rose Levy: Oregonians Are ‘Mad as Hell’ About Trade Deals That Threaten Their Food Supply

In the 1976 film “Network,” a news anchor, played by the late actor Peter Finch, urges his television audience to open their windows and shout the infamous phrase, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!”

According to people I’ve talked to on the ground in Oregon, that may be something close to what many residents there are feeling right now. But instead of shouting out the window, Oregonians are petitioning and phoning their senator, Ron Wyden, to ask him to oppose granting so-called fast track authority to President Obama. [..]

Fast track-expected to be introduced in the Senate when Congress returns on April 11-is legislation that would give Obama the ability to sign international trade agreements without public or congressional disclosure and without giving lawmakers the ability to debate or amend the agreements. If fast track passes, the passage of the two trade agreements is widely regarded as a done deal.

All of this troubles Oregonians concerned about food, health and the environment because Wyden is being heavily wooed by the finance committee chairman, Senator Orrin G. Hatch, R-Utah, to co-sponsor the fast track bill. According to Lori Wallach, director of Global Trade Watch, the bill can be sold as bipartisan if Wyden supports it, a point that the president is likely to use as leverage to sway recalcitrant House Democrats.

One obstacle to this well-orchestrated attempt to bypass democracy is Wyden’s own constituency.

Thor Benson: Why Wikimedia Just Might Win Its Lawsuit Over NSA Surveillance

The National Security Agency and the Department of Justice are being sued by Wikimedia, the nonprofit organization that runs Wikipedia-the online encyclopedia whose articles can be written or edited by anyone.

Wikimedia claims that the U.S. government’s mass surveillance programs are threatening its ability to spread free, open and honest information and that the way the NSA collects data violates the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution. The organization is being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and is joined in the suit by eight other plaintiffs, including the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International USA and The Nation.

The suit is specifically challenging the NSA’s use of “upstream surveillance,” which taps directly into the Internet’s backbone-the network of cables and routers that makes the Web possible-and intercepts all the traffic that goes across it.

A proper budget is a moral document, which well expresses the values and aspirations of a civil society.

As such, the measure of any budget is its combination of fiscal and social responsibility.

By this measure, there was only one proper budget proposal floated in the current Congress. And it did not get very far.

Only ninety-six House Democrats voted Wednesday for the People’s Budget, as it was proposed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus. The budget was opposed by 330 House members, including eighty-six shame-on-them Democrats and 244 Republicans.

The record of Wednesday’s roll call is worth reviewing, especially because it identifies the Democrats who got this most important vote wrong.

Of course, no one expected the People’s Budget to be enacted. But that is not a poor reflection on the CPC plan, which better met the tests of fiscal and social responsible than any of the other official or alternative proposals that are currently in play. It is a reflection on this Congress, which cannot get anything right, and on a political process that is now so flawed-because of gerrymandering, big money and failed media-that the United States ends up with, well, this Congress.

Despite the fact that if it was not expected to prevail, the People’s Budget was serious.

Amy Goodman: The Costs of War, the Price of Peace

What price would you pay not to kill another human being? At what point would you commit the offenses allegedly perpetrated by Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was charged Wednesday with desertion and “misbehavior before an enemy?”

Bowe Bergdahl was a private when he left his post in Afghanistan, under circumstances that are still unknown to the public, and was captured by the Taliban. They imprisoned him for five years, until he was released in a controversial prisoner swap negotiated by the Obama administration. Five Taliban members who were held for years at Guantanamo Bay were released to house arrest in Qatar in exchange for Bergdahl. He now faces a court-martial and potentially life in prison. Meanwhile, the architects of the disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan remain untried, while a new report asserts that up to 1.3 million people have been killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan in the first 10 years of the so-called war on terror.

The report is called “Body Count” and is published in the U.S. by Physicians for Social Responsibility. “It has been politically important to downplay Allied forces’ responsibility for the massive carnage and destruction in the region,” writes San Francisco doctor Robert M. Gould in the report’s foreword. He told me: “We need to take full responsibility for the true cost of war as we are preparing to continue our involvement in Afghanistan and deepen our involvement in Syria and Iraq. There’s great anger throughout the region about our involvement and the underplaying here of what the true costs are in terms of death and destruction.”

Katrina vanden Heuvel: Tell the Election Success Stories, Too

“I had a college degree, a decade of experience, and the only job I could get was making $8 an hour at the local convenience store in my neighborhood,” Maine state Representative Diane Russell (D) said in January, recalling her unlikely path to public office. “I have no business being in politics. I was not groomed for this. But thanks to public financing, I have a voice. And thanks to public financing, a gal who takes cash for the convenience store for selling sandwiches can actually talk about the stories that she’s learned from behind the counter.” Russell was speaking at an event on the fifth anniversary of the Citizens United ruling that set off an avalanche of money in politics. After her state’s “clean elections” system propelled Russell into office in 2008, she quickly became a force in Maine politics. Her progressive record of defending voting rights and workers, for example, led The Nation to recognize her as its “Most Valuable State Representative” in 2011. [..]

These stories are undeniably important, as are the long-term battles to overturn the Citizens United decision, pass a constitutional amendment on campaign finance reform and eliminate the corrosive influence of money in politics. But there is another story being written that deserves our attention, too, in which progressive activists and lawmakers are working to make our elections more democratic-a story less about containing the influence of billionaires and corporations than empowering small donors and unlikely candidates-candidates like Diane Russell.

Alastair Cooke: Why the Conflicts in Tikrit and Yemen Signal a New Middle Eastern War

With the Iranian involvement against the Islamic State in the assault on Tikrit, and the Saudi invasion of Yemen to stem the tide of Iranian influence, we have entered a new Middle Eastern war.

Tikrit has become something of an augury and symbol of ISIS’ prospective fate. The suggestion in much of the commentaries is that the Iranian-directed offensive in Tikrit has stalled. Indeed one can detect a certain pleasurable rubbing of hands at the very prospect of an Iranian setback.

“If this leads to the Iranians forced to concede defeat, that would be a satisfactory outcome,” one U.S. defense official told the The Daily Beast. An ISIS victory, then, is “satisfactory” to the U.S.? [..]

If Tikrit was the precursor, then the fall of Aden was the trigger.

“The Saudi default position on Yemen,” Simon Henderson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy writes, “can be best described as paranoia.” And thus we have a new Middle Eastern war — one which will complicate the region greatly.

“It’s simple math,” is the refrain often uttered by those seeking to explain why cutting, not expanding, Social Security is the choice to make. A variation of that phrase, “arithmetical realities of an aging society,” appeared in Fred Hiatt’s recent opinion piece (“Never-Compromise Wins Again,” Washington Post, 3/23/15). The math is simple, but Mr. Hiatt gets it wrong. [..]

The appropriate measure to assess affordability, one that takes into account productivity, is the percentage of our Gross Domestic Product–the total value of all goods and services–represented by Social Security. Currently, Social Security represents about five percent of GDP. In the future, at its most expensive, it will represent about 6.2 percent. Many other industrialized countries spend a much higher percentage of their GDP on their counterpart programs right now than we will at Social Security’s most expensive. Compared to that 6.2 percent of GDP, for example, Austria today spends 11.9 percent, Germany, 10.7 percent, and Japan, 9.8 percent.

The question of whether Social Security should be expanded, fully funded at its current level of scheduled benefits, or scaled back is not one of math or demographics, but one of values- how we choose to spend our combined wealth. Confusing this question is some other wrong math.

Richard (RJ) Escow: Hillary’s Challengers – and the Anti-Wall Street Wave

Former governor Martin O’Malley and former senator Jim Webb spoke at a firefighters’ union event earlier this month. Both are the subject of renewed press interest as they contemplate entering the presidential race. Sen. Bernie Sanders has been publicly weighing a run. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is being encouraged to enter the race.

All four have criticized Wall Street’s unethical practices and undue political influence. Leading contender Hillary Clinton, by contrast, has not.

Should that worry Democrats? [..]

The Clinton team might prefer to see this challenge go away, but that’s not likely to happen. That means she has a choice: she can offer her own strategy for reining in Wall Street, or run the risk of allowing others to define her position on this issue – in ways that could harm both her prospects and her party’s.

Earl Otari Hutchinson: Stephen A. Smith’s GOP Delusion Is Nothing New

ESPN host Stephen A. Smith has gotten quite a reputation for being a controversial tell-it-like-he-sees-it guy. That’s fine in sports punditry. He’s an ex-jock, and in that world pretty much any inanity will fly. But when Smith pursed his lips and ventured outside sportsdom to quip that blacks should vote GOP at least one election go round he proved once again that sports and entertainment personalities that venture opinions about politics more often than not embarrass themselves. If we want to be more charitable, the best that can be said is that Smith is just the latest in a long line to peddle the delusion that the GOP can change its ways and become an open-arms party for blacks. Those who routinely peddle that are usually a handful of GOP would-be presidential contenders such as Rand Paul, an infinitesimal and politically inconsequential handful of GOP elected officials, and an always dependable core of conservative media and think tank contracted black conservatives.

Before, during and after every national election, they kick into high gear and contend that getting more blacks to jump political ship will be a major seismic jolt to the Democrats and be a start toward breaking the lock that the Democrats have on the black vote. Smith, as with the rest that spout this fantasy, grab a headline or two, and get plenty of airtime on conservative talk radio and TV.

Rene Denfeld: Why we execute people is the big question, not how

“There’s no nice way to kill someone,” a man facing execution once told me, raising heavy eyes.

From my work as a licensed death penalty investigator, I know this too, which is why Utah’s decision to reinstate the firing squad for executions doesn’t trouble me the way it might trouble others.

Attorneys hire me to find out the truth. I’m the one who ferrets out long-lost witnesses, digs into dusty basements to unearth ancient records, and finds the evidence that exonerates, or – more often – explains.

I love my job, because I am the one person who gets to understand why.

Why do people do such terrible things to each other? Why is our country so enthralled with murder that we bookend one death with another?

The political arm of the national fraternity system-known as the Fraternity & Sorority Political Action Committee (FratPAC)-is getting involved in the campus rape debate. Sadly, it seems they want to make it as hard as possible for schools to discipline students who sexually abuse or harass each other. [..]

The sentiment may sound fair-minded; it’s anything but. FratPAC is singling out sexual assault as the only crime they want universities to handle in this way. Underage drinking, drug dealing, burglary, assault-all of these actions break both school rules and the law, but FratPAC is not asking universities to wait for the criminal courts to adjudicate these crimes before punishing the students for breaking their corresponding school rules. In the situation they’re proposing, a school could punish a student for stealing from another student without waiting for the courts to adjudicate the matter; but if a student rapes another student, the school couldn’t act.

Joan Walsh: GOP innovation paralysis: How Jeb Bush sucks the oxygen out of Republican “reform”

While some governors practice genuine policy innovation, Bush’s fundraising juggernaut keeps them on the sidelines

I feel for Ohio Gov. John Kasich. He can’t get traction as a potential 2016 GOP presidential nominee with anyone so far – except political journalists. He sits around 1 percent in polls (that bother to mention him) and yet he’s been the focus of two long, laudatory profiles, touting his potential presidential appeal, in the last 18 months.

The New York Times’s Trip Gabriel found Kasich to be a maverick who “defies GOP with defense of safety net.” Now Yahoo Politics’s Andrew Romano asks if he could be “the GOP’s secret weapon in 2016?” He answers, archly, “John Kasich thinks so,” but the sympathetic profile suggests Romano agrees. Kasich seems eternally poised on the brink of defining a new way for the GOP – Compassionate Conservatism 2.0 – but is stymied by his inability to a) raise big money and b) get taken seriously (beyond Ohio and the national media), at least partly because he seems a tiny bit loopy and c) get past the boys of the Bush dynasty. [..]

The moderate establishment wing of the GOP, by contrast, seems content to let Jeb Bush be its standard bearer, charged with figuring out how much to cave to his party’s far-right base during the primaries, while trusting him to course correct in time for the general election. The campaign is unlikely to feature a genuine debate about a GOP economic growth agenda – a debate that a Kasich candidacy might catalyze. That’s a loss not just for Kasich, if indeed he skips a run, but for the country.

Julia Harumi Mass: FBI Ordered to Disclose its Surveillance Tactics on Communities

On Monday, a federal district court in San Francisco issued an important ruling for government transparency and accountability. Judge Richard Seeborg disallowed the FBI’s attempt to use a “law enforcement exemption” in the Freedom of Information Act to shield from public disclosure details of the agency’s surveillance programs. [..]

This ruling well upholds the purpose of the Freedom of Information Act and its limited law enforcement exemption. As the FBI has expanded its activities to include generalized monitoring and surveillance, unconnected to any suspected criminal activity, it is critical that records related to those broad surveillance programs be available for public scrutiny.