Tag: Opinion

It’s been six years since Wall Street’s recklessness and criminal fraud caused trillions of dollars in economic damage and nearly shattered the global economy. The 2008 financial crisis opened millions of Americans’ eyes to the widespread corruption and mismanagement in the financial industry, and built public support for stronger bank oversight. Initial steps were taken in that direction, primarily in the Dodd/Frank financial reform bill, and more remains to be done.

But today Wall Street is on the offensive. Banks are expanding their political influence, fighting to roll back the measures already in place and working to block further reforms. In our money-driven political system, they have plenty of ammunition with which to wage their battle. [..]

This week its allies were trying to kill a Dodd/Frank provision designed to reduce the need for future big-bank bailouts. Negotiators seeking to avert a government shutdown had inserted a provision into the compromise agreement that would once again allow the country’s too-big-to-fail banks to gamble on derivatives — the exotic financial instruments that helped precipitate the last crisis — with funds that are insured by taxpayers.

Bill Boyarsky: We Have to Change the Way We Report on Rape

One of the important questions raised by Rolling Stone’s University of Virginia rape story is how journalists write about the victims. [..]

One day, we may know more about what happened at the University of Virginia. Investigations, lawsuits and persistent journalists will probably make sure of that.

But what won’t be settled is how journalists should approach rape victims and write about them as we enter a time when their stories are no longer automatically dismissed.

These are ordinary people who normally are not in the news and who may never have encountered a reporter. A practiced reporter knows how to get them to talk, how to use the tricks of the journalism trade.

Smile. Look understanding. Be friendly. Or, if you sense weakness, be intimidating. Explain to them that they’ll help others by telling their stories. Or that it’s their chance to get their side out to a skeptical world, to clear their name. Appeal to their vanity, to their desire for even a brief whirl at celebrity.

But what we don’t do is warn these innocents of how dangerous it can be to talk to us.

Sandeep Jauhar: Don’t Homogenize Health Care

IN American medicine today, “variation” has become a dirty word. Variation in the treatment of a medical condition is associated with wastefulness, lack of evidence and even capricious care. To minimize variation, insurers and medical specialty societies have banded together to produce a dizzying array of treatment guidelines for everything from asthma to diabetes, from urinary incontinence to gout. [..]

But the effort to homogenize health care presumes that we always know which treatments are best and should be applied uniformly. Unfortunately, this is not the case. The evidence for most treatments in medicine remains weak. In the absence of good evidence recommending one treatment over another, trying to stamp out variation in care is irrational.

Even in my field, cardiology, a paragon of evidence-based medicine, most treatment recommendations are based on expert opinions, not randomized controlled trials. Rarely is there one best option.

As I write, New York City is witnessing its fifth day of demonstrations after a Staten Island grand jury’s decision not to indict a police officer in the Eric Garner killing. Those demonstrations followed on the protests across the country over the police shootings of Akai Gurley, a 28-year-old father of two who was slain while walking with his girlfriend in Brooklyn, Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy shot by a rookie Cleveland police officer while playing with a toy gun, and, most famously, the Ferguson, Missouri, police killing of Michael Brown. Conservatives joined liberals in denouncing the grand jury’s outrageous decision in the Garner case. Demonstrations have spread across the country as people of all races have taken up Garner’s plea: “I can’t breathe.” [..]

The deaths of Garner, Brown and others at the hands of police are not the only cause sparking mass protests. The day after the Garner demonstrations started, low-wage workers walked off their jobs in more than 190 cities, demanding a living wage and the right to organize. They, too, chanted, “I can’t breathe.” Workers from fast food-restaurants such as McDonald’s were joined by those from low-wage retail and convenience stores and airline service jobs. In Washington, federal contract workers joined the march, calling on the president to issue procurement regulations that would reward good employers that pay a living wage with benefits and allow workers to organize and bargain collectively.

Kristen Breitweiser: 3 Thoughts on Torture Following the Release of the SSCI Report on Torture 2014

First, there is much talk about the impact that the release of this report will have on our allies, interests, and agents here and overseas. Secretary of State John Kerry, Republicans, and various intelligence officials have all registered their concern: this will inflame, incite, and encourage attacks against Americans and our allies.

Does anyone really think ISIS, al Qaeda, etc. are actually paying such close attention?

If so, then we have a question for Secretary of State Kerry and all the others: Why haven’t you considered the potential impact of a completely different kind of message — the kind of message that would be sent by actually holding accountable all those named in this Torture Report? [..]

If we as a nation do not demand accountability for the truth revealed in this report, then how can we ever make sure that such immoral, illegal, evil acts (or worse) will not be repeated in the future? Accountability sets a strong and undeniable deterrence factor. You commit torture, you go to jail. You go rogue, you go to jail. Simple as that. No gray area. No legalese. No exoneration. No pardon. J A I L.

Thirteen long years later, it’s time we find our moral compass and our conscience again. Because the United States of America–is and should always be a nation of laws.

Lauren Carasik: No guarantee the US won’t torture again

Washington’s reckoning begins, not ends, with release of Senate report

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s release on Tuesday of its much-anticipated torture report, which chronicles the Central Intelligence Agency’s “Rendition, Detention and Interrogation” program in the aftermath of 9/11, has unleashed a cascade of recriminations that threatens to eclipse the committee’s stark findings.  The portion of the report that was released – the 480-page executive summary – paints a haunting picture of brutality that shocks the conscience, and demolishes the myth that torture was effective, limited in scope and only perpetrated by a few rogue actors. Instead, the report reveals the brutal, systematic and sanctioned nature of the program.   [..]

The report failed to provide an overarching analysis of how U.S. policy became so unmoored from its moral groundings and to erode impunity that has shielded both the U.S. operatives who tortured people and their superiors. Its narrow focus on the CIA’s misdeeds did, however, insulate many of the nation’s political leaders, including some who did not relinquish their roles in the previous administration, whose consciences should be heavy. While the report’s findings constitute clear violations of domestic and international law, the committee did not analyze the program’s legality. Given these failings, the report should signal the beginning, not the end, of Washington’s reckoning.

Even today’s partial release – the full 6,000-page report, which cost taxpayers $40 million and took nearly six years to complete, is still classified – was hamstrung by months of negotiations between the CIA, President Barack Obama’s administration and the committee, headed by Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. Feinstein has been under intense pressure to release the report, especially since the impending Republican control of the Senate and the Intelligence Committee left the report’s future disclosure in doubt.

John Nichols: Why Dick Cheney Is Wrong About the CIA Torture Memos

The Senate Intelligence Committee had to release details on its multi-year investigation into how, under George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, the Central Intelligence Agency employed tactics that the world understands as torture. A decision to sit on the findings of what the 500-plus-page summary of the report begins by describing as a “brutal” and “flawed” program that was “in violation of U.S. law, treaty obligations, and our values” would have put senators who are elected to serve and advance the public interest at odds with a basic American premise: the idea that a government acting in the name of the American people must regularly seek and obtain their informed consent. [..]

With Cheney taking the lead, the former administration aggressively and repeatedly rejected the principles of transparency and accountability that are essential to maintaining not just national honor but meaningful democracy. And the assault continues, as Cheney, in particular, maintains the pattern of denial and defense that characterized his tenure as the most powerful-and secretive-vice president in American history

Spreading bad policing models to Latin America can only exacerbate inequality and state violence

When a young activist named Diego Ibáñez, a native of Bolivia, sprayed New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton with fake blood at a Times Square rally on Nov. 24, it wasn’t just about the deaths of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner on Staten Island in New York.

Ibáñez was drawing attention to the export of violent police practices from New York to Latin America by consulting firms that employ Bratton and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Through their alliance with criminologist George Kelling of the conservative think tank the Manhattan Institute, Bratton and Giuliani have been preaching the broken-windows policing gospel to mayors and police departments in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela. [..]

But in reality broken-windows policing, which does nothing to address the causes of crime, such as systemic poverty, is primarily designed to allow promising downtown spaces to gentrify for economic development and turns peripheral areas, where poverty is concentrated, into mini police states where all residents are potential suspects.

Robert Kuttner: Still an American Dilemma

What happens to a dream deferred?

Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?

That was the poet Langston Hughes, in 1951. In that year, more than half a century ago, the most basic dreams of African Americans were deferred. Segregation was mandatory in the old South. Discrimination was legal everywhere in America, whether in housing, education, or employment. Blacks were not just separated, but isolated, marginalized, restricted to the worst jobs and most dilapidated neighborhoods, the most dismal schools.

For many, the racism just sagged, like a heavy load. It destroyed hope that hard work would be rewarded. The deferred dreams of that era seldom produced explosions, because the state had a very efficient system of terror. Blacks who resisted were likely to be lynched, jailed, or otherwise destroyed. [..]

We have gone utterly backwards since the 1960s, a time when the Justice Department and the courts vigorously interceded to protect the right to vote. Now, the right to vote is being taken away and rightwing courts are tying the Justice Department’s hands.

We need a broad movement once again, to force government’s hand. As Dr. King appreciated in the last year of his life, it needs to be a movement for economic justice as well as civil rights, a multi-racial movement. Only when there is common appreciation that whites and blacks are common victims of an economic system that delivers all the gains to the top do we have a prayer of mobilizing the whole nation to demand action.

Dean Baker: Benefits of Obamacare: More People Are Able to Work Less

There continues to be enormous confusion over Obamacare. Contrary to claims about the American people being stupid, the confusion is starting at the top. Last week U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-New York), the third-ranking Democrat in the U.S. Senate, complained that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) would only help a relatively small number of people, most of whom don’t even vote. For this reason he argued that the Democrats made a mistake in pushing through the ACA and should have instead focused on the economy. [..]

The ACA is far from perfect. It would have been much better to have a universal Medicare system, or at least have a public option, but it was a huge step forward not only because it insured millions of previously uninsured people but, even more importantly, because it freed tens of millions of workers from dependence on their employers for insurance. This is especially important for workers who have serious health conditions or have family members with serious health conditions.

It is striking that Sen. Schumer seems so ill-informed about the impact of the ACA. It is important that the rest of the public know more about the ACA than Schumer, both so that they can take advantage of its benefits and so that they can work to improve it.

Robert Reich: Wall Street’s Democrats

In Washington’s coming budget battles, sacred cows like the tax deductions for home mortgage interest and charitable donations are likely to be on the table along with potential cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

But no one on Capitol Hill believes Wall Street’s beloved carried-interest tax loophole will be touched.

Don’t blame the newly elected Republican Congress.

Democrats didn’t repeal the loophole when they ran both houses of Congress from January 2009 to January 2011. And the reason they didn’t has a direct bearing on the future of the party. [..]

Senator Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), one of those who argued against closing it, said the U.S. “shouldn’t do anything” to “make it easier for capital and ideas to flow to London or anywhere else.” As if Wall Street needed an $11 billion annual bribe to stay put.

To find the real reason Democrats didn’t close the loophole, follow the money. Wall Street is one of the Democratic party’s biggest contributors.

The Obama administration is negotiating a huge trade deal. The President promises CEOs he will go against his own party to push its passage. To get this done the corporations are pushing Congress to pass something called Fast Track – a process that essentially pre-approves trade agreements before Congress even reads the agreements for the first time.

President Obama visited the quarterly meeting of the Business Roundtable Wednesday and told the business leaders he will push Congress to pass the massive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The path to passage for TPP is Congress approving the Fast Track process ahead of time, and the President is working to get Fast Track approved over Democratic objections.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: The Unseen Heart of the Violence: Eric Garner at the Terminal Point

Death, like life, occurs within an interconnected web of forces. Eric Garner died at a specific place and time, but he was drawn there by those larger unseen forces. So was the officer who took his life.

One of them never left.

The neighborhood where Eric Garner died was near the terminal point for the Staten Island Ferry, which leaves lower Manhattan from a newly-built building on Whitehall Street.

The Whitehall building is a few minutes’ walk from Wall Street, and it shows. Commuters leaving at the end of a downtown workday enter a gleaming and futuristic edifice of steel and glass, a 21st landmark which evokes the preceding century’s enduring faith in the future. [..]

The terminal station on Staten Island is considerably more modest. A small building stands alone against the dock, wedged between a large parking lot and inland waters which are often covered with small whitecaps. The address is 1 Bay Street. The spot where Eric Garner died is just a few minutes’ walk from the ferry terminus, at 202 Bay Street.

Pilgrims would feel less welcome there.

Jim Hightower: Operation Endless War: How Long Must US Troops Stay in Afghanistan?

Only a few months ago, President Barack Obama announced the good news that our combat role in Afghanistan – the longest war in U.S. history – would finally end by New Year’s Day.

Put away that champagne.

A flock of screeching war hawks brought heavy political pressure on Obama to reverse himself. So our troops will stay in that war-ravaged, corrupt, bankrupted, ethnically divided country for at least another year or two.

Amazingly, the hawks argued that Obama shouldn’t “rush” the timeline for training Afghan security forces to defend their own country.

Rush? Hello: IT’S BEEN 13 YEARS!

“Operation Enduring Freedom,” as the government originally dubbed this mess of a military mission, should be renamed “Operation Endless War.”

Glen Sherer: Our Rivers in Trouble

Granville Beach was a secluded swimming hole on a snaky bend of the White River, the ideal place to meet Vermont neighbors on a hot summer day before 2011’s Hurricane Irene. Now, the sandy shore, deep waters overhung with box elders, streamside wildflowers, and the lively buzz of riparian birds and dragonflies are gone. [..]

America’s rivers are changing, and not for the good. Their flows are being altered by global warming’s wildly erratic precipitation shifts: torrential rains, floods and drought.

As climate models predicted decades ago, places that once got lots of rain, now often get more. Since the 1950’s, Northeastern downpours have grown 74 percent heavier. They’re 45 percent heavier in the Midwest, 26 percent heavier in the Southeast, and 21 percent on the Great Plains. Likewise, places that got less rain in past, now see intensifying drought. [..]

This isn’t only a U.S. problem. In 1990 and again in 2012, the primitive Kogi tribe of Colombia, South America broke a centuries-long silence with modern humanity to serve us a warning. Keen observers of nature’s interconnectedness, the Kogi warned that global warming is destroying the earth’s rivers, the web of life, and the Great Earth Mother.

I can’t breathe.

Those were Eric Garner’s last words, and today they apply to me. The decision by a Staten Island grand jury to not indict the police officer who killed him takes my breath away.

In the depressing reality series that should be called “No Country for Black Men,” this sick plot twist was shocking beyond belief. There should have been an indictment in the Ferguson case, in my view, but at least the events that led to Michael Brown’s killing were in dispute. Garner’s homicide was captured on video. We saw him being choked, heard him plead of his distress, watched as no attempt was made to revive him and his life slipped away.

This time, there were literally millions of eyewitnesses. Somebody tell me, just theoretically, how many does it take? Is there any number that would suffice? Or is this whole “equal justice under the law” thing just a cruel joke?

Dave Zirin: Jameis Winston’s Peculiar Kind of Privilege

There are only two conclusions one can draw about Florida State football star quarterback Jameis Winston. Either he is a remarkable athlete who has little comprehension of the world beyond the huddle and hired the most callous attorneys on the planet to beat a sexual assault charge. Or he is a remarkable athlete who carries a deeply embittered streak of misogyny. Jameis Winston is currently facing a Florida State code of conduct hearing over charges of sexual assault. These same allegations were deemed to be without merit by the state’s attorney, although the initial investigation by Tallahassee police was so shady it was worthy of its own New York Times exposé.

Yet whether Winston is guilty or innocent, nothing excuses the testimony-published in USA Today-that the quarterback submitted to the code of conduct hearing this week. In his own defense, the Heisman winner writes, “The only thing as vicious as rape is falsely accusing someone of rape.” Read Daniel Roberts for a searing statistical breakdown for how gobsmackingly ridiculous such a statement actually is. The chances of being falsely accused of rape are about as likely as being struck by lightning: one in 2 million. Meanwhile, 25 percent of women on campus say they have survived a sexual assault. Also, as Roberts writes, many high-profile athletes have survived and even thrived after sexual assault accusations and convictions. Meanwhile, actual survivors of sexual assault are often treated like they deserve any pain that lingers.

David Sirota: A Multi-Billion Dollar Secret

If you are a public school teacher in Kentucky, the state has a message for you: You have no right to know the details of the investments being made with your retirement savings. That was the crux of the declaration issued by state officials to a high school history teacher when he asked to see the terms of the agreements between the Kentucky Teachers’ Retirement System and the Wall Street firms that are managing the system’s money on behalf of him, his colleagues and thousands of retirees.

The denial was the latest case of public officials blocking the release of information about how billions of dollars of public employees’ retirement nest eggs are being invested. Though some of the fine print of the investments has occasionally leaked, the agreements are tightly held in most states and cities. Critics say such secrecy prevents lawmakers and the public from evaluating the propriety of the increasing fees being paid to private financial firms for pension management services.

Nicholas Tampio: David Coleman’s plan to ruin education

In the summer of 2008, David Coleman changed the course of American education. For decades, reformers had argued that the country needed a national standards-based model of education to ensure economic prosperity. He helped make that a reality by convincing Bill Gates to support the Common Core State Standards initiative, to the tune of over $200 million.

In part because of his experience supervising the writing of the standards, Coleman became the head of the College Board, where his philosophy of education will further shape how U.S. high schools prepare students for college.

He has expressed this vision in an essay published by the College Board, “Cultivating Wonder.” With this document and the early results of the Common Core, it’s easy to see where his grand plans fall short. [..]

A recurrent defense of the Common Core is that the standards are good but the implementation has been bad. Even if Coleman’s educational vision is perfectly actualized, it is still profoundly flawed. Under Common Core, from the time they enter kindergarten to the time they graduate from high school, students will have few opportunities to ask their own questions or come up with their own ideas. It’s time for Americans to find alternatives to Coleman’s educational vision.

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From my training in law school to my years as a prosecutor, I was taught that Lady Justice draped a blindfold across her eyes because she was a stalwart of equality, remaining impartial in all situations, and judging facts instead of people. I was encouraged to remember this, to practice this, to swallow it whole, and repeat it. As a concept, it was lofty and idealistic. It was noble. The idea that justice was literally blind.

Then came Wednesday’s instant replay of injustice in Staten Island, after a grand jury — the second in less than 10 days — returned a “no true bill” against a white police officer who killed an unarmed black individual. But, unlike Ferguson, this time it was all on tape. And whether you wear a blue uniform or a black robe, make no mistake: this was vile, plain and simple.  [..]

But that’s not the vile part. The vile part is how this case and the Ferguson case were completely mismanaged for the purposes of (not) returning a grand jury indictment.

A grand jury is not responsible for finding guilt or innocence. More importantly, a prosecutor is not responsible for proving someone is guilty before a grand jury. The sole function of a grand jury is very limited and minimal. Is there enough evidence to at least justify an arrest in this case? A “yes” answer does not mean you think the person is guilty. A grand juror can believe a defendant is not guilty of a crime yet still return an indictment. Doing so only means that that there is enough evidence (probable cause) to let both sides have their day in court, to let them argue in front of a judge and jury, with lawyers representing each side, with the right to cross-examine witnesses and tell both sides of the story. In other words, an indictment simply lets justice run its due course.

Jessica Valento: #CrimingWhileWhite is exactly what’s wrong with white privilege

In the wake of protests in Ferguson, Missouri following both the killing of Michael Brown and the grand jury’s refusal to indict the police officer who did it, and the killing of 12 year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Ohio, and the appalling lack of charges in Eric Garner’s homicide at the hands of a New York City police officer, many white people have been asking how, exactly, they can help.

It’s a vital question, and I get it: I want to help, too. I’m just not so sure #CrimingWhileWhite is the best way to do it.

This latest viral hashtag started on Wednesday night after the Garner decision came down and, using it, white people have detailed crimes they’ve committed without much trouble (let alone violence) from authorities. The hashtag is meant to be a glimpse into the incredible world of white privilege, where you can shoplift and get away with it, dine and dash with impunity, tell a cop to fuck off or even have one [drive you to the ATM for bail money https://twitter.com/Dr24hours/… on the way to jail.

John Nichols: Bernie Sanders’s Bold Economic Agenda Seeks to Transform Politics

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders will “make a decision within the first few months of 2015” on whether to bid for the presidency of the United States. It is not certain that he will run. And, if the independent senator from Vermont does decide to run, he says he has yet to determine precisely how he might do so: as a challenger to presumed front-runner Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination or as an insurgent independent taking on both major parties. Sanders has in recent months spent a good deal of time in the first caucus state of Iowa and the first primary state of New Hampshire, and he acknowledges that this has stoked speculation that he is likely to go the Democratic route. He also declares, “I will not play the role of a spoiler”-tipping a fall 2016 race to a right-wing Republican. Yet, the senator expresses deep frustration with the failure of the Democratic Party to adopt positions that are sufficiently progressive and populist to build a movement to change the debate and the direction of the country.

Sanders explained in an interview with The Nation that he is convinced, after visiting not just Iowa and New Hampshire but Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Carolina, Mississippi, California and other states, that “there is a real hunger in grassroots America for a fight against the greed of the billionaire class, which is wrecking havoc on our economic and political system.”

Zoë Carpenter: Can the Military Fix Its Sexual-Assault Problem on Its Own?

After an Army drill sergeant was accused of raping or assaulting a dozen female soldiers while deployed in Afghanistan and in a bathroom at Missouri’s Fort Leonard Wood, it seemed like the military justice system worked the way it was supposed to. The accused, Angel Sanchez, was tried at a court-martial. In September, he was convicted on multiple counts, sentenced to twenty years confinement and given a dishonorable discharge.

But testimony from two of Sanchez’s victims suggested that despite two decades of promises to enforce a “zero tolerance” policy toward sexual assault, the military is still hostile to service members who report sex crimes. One private testified that a high-ranking officer told her company that no one would graduate “if any more sexual assault cases” were reported. Another victim said a Lieutenant Colonel told her and other trainees “not to make any more allegations.” As a result, she said, “I have issues of trusting those who are in charge of me.”

The question of whether the military is doing enough to stamp out not only sex crimes but also retaliation against those who report them was raised again Thursday by the release of a 136-page report by the Department of Defense. The Pentagon estimates that 19,000 service members were assaulted this year, down from 26,000 in 2012. Only one in four of those crimes were reported, though more victims came forward to report assaults than in previous years. About two-thirds said that after reporting crimes against them, they were retaliated against by their superiors or peers.

California raised taxes, Kansas cut them. California did better

Ever since economist Arthur Laffer drew his namesake curve on a napkin for two officials in President Richard Nixon’s administration four decades ago, we have been told that cutting tax rates spurs jobs and higher pay, while hiking taxes does the opposite.

Now, thanks to recent tax cuts in Kansas and tax hikes in California, we have real-world tests of this idea. So far, the results do not support Laffer’s insistence that lower tax rates always result in more and better-paying jobs. In fact, Kansas’ tax cuts produced much slower job and wage growth than in California.

The empirical evidence that the Laffer curve is not what its promoter insists joins other real-world experience undermining the widely held belief that minimum wage increases reduce employment and income.

Steven W. Thrasher: The Eric Garner decision confirms a holiday of horrors. ‘Tis the season for more protest, not less

Pretending that we should keep calm and carry on – that we even can – is a bigger fantasy than Santa Claus

On Wednesday evening in New York City, as dusk fell into night, another grand jury failed to indict another police officer for killing another unarmed black man in America – this one a bona-fide homicide caught on camera. On Wednesday night in New York City, we protest. And then they planned in this same town – on this, the same night in America when the law continued to allow cops to kill black men – to light the most famous Christmas tree in the country. [..]

And, yes, the protesters should be peaceful – but we need to be disruptive. Because the same structural racism exists in New York City that does in Ferguson, as it does everywhere in the United States. As President Obama said on Wednesday night: “This is an American problem.” And no holiday lights should be lit while the light of justice is snuffed out for so many.

Of course nobody wants to watch a mirror image of the violence that erupted in Ferguson fewer than 10 days ago. But the Rockefeller Center tree lighting makes for a primetime-TV image of this country, next to New York’s protest, which is sadly like the surrealism of the Obama-next-to-protests split- and the irony of the Season’s Greetings-banner-over-the-riot-gear-cops photo. It’s a diptych of injustice on steroids.

Seums Milne: Cuba’s extraordinary global medical record shames the US blockade

From Ebola to earthquakes, Havana’s doctors have saved millions. Obama must lift this embargo

Four months into the internationally declared Ebola emergency that has devastated west Africa, ]leads the world in direct medical support http://www.theguardian.com/wor… to fight the epidemic. The US and Britain have sent thousands of troops and, along with other countries, promised aid – most of which has yet to materialise. But, as the World Health Organisation has insisted, what’s most urgently needed are health workers. The Caribbean island, with a population of just 11m and official per capita income of $6,000 (£3,824), answered that call before it was made. It was first on the Ebola frontline and has sent the largest contingent of doctors and nurses – 256 are already in the field, with another 200 volunteers on their way. [..]

But the island is still suffocated by the US trade embargo that has kept it in an economic and political vice for more than half a century. If Barack Obama wants to do something worthwhile in his final years as president he could use Cuba’s role in the Ebola crisis as an opening to start to lift that blockade and wind down the US destabilisation war.

Jessica Valentii: If we truly valued motherhood, we would actually do something to help pregnant women

We’ve all heard the platitudes: Motherhood is the most important job in the world. If mothers made a parenting salary – we’re chefs, chauffeurs, housekeepers and office managers! – we’d be bazillionaires.

Come on. We’re not even willing to let a pregnant woman hold on to a job.

On Wednesday, the US supreme court will hear arguments in a case to decide whether the Pregnancy Discrimination Act requires employers to provide accommodations for pregnant workers. The case stems from former UPS worker Peggy Young, who was put on unpaid leave after her doctor recommended she not lift packages heavier than 20 pounds.

All the Hallmark-card sentiment in the world doesn’t change the reality that whether you’re in the highest court in all the land or at the neighborhood playground, pregnant women get treated like second-class citizens and mothers are expected to “do it all” with little more than a condescending pat on the head.

Glenn Reynolds, aka “Instapundit”, is one of the biggest voices out there trying to integrate “men’s rights activism” with mainstream conservatism. Not that mainstream conservatives have any love for feminism, of course, but the MRA hyper-focus on blaming all the world’s ills on the fact that women won’t meekly submit to male authority as MRAs want them to is a bit much even for some of the biggest anti-choice misogynists on the Republican side of the aisle. But Reynolds keeps pushing and his latest entry, for USA Today, is about accusing feminists, in collusion with Obama, of stealing good jobs from working class men. [..]

The entire piece is a breathtaking work of bad faith, but this might be the worst of it. If anyone in this equation was against government spending to create jobs, it wasn’t the feminists. It was conservatives like Reynolds. Reynolds hates the stimulus package he pretends to defend against the evil, man-hating, job-stealing feminists. But he will pretend to support it in order to attack feminists for mounting a basic criticism of it.

Lindsay Abrams: U.N. climate talks open with a terrifying reminder: We’ve already blown through two-thirds of our carbon budget

As global climate talks kicked off Monday in Lima, Peru, Rajendra Pachauri, the chair of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, stepped forward to remind delegates of just how much is at stake in the negotiations. The world, Pachauri warned, has already used nearly two-thirds, or 65 percent, of its carbon budget, the approximate amount of greenhouse gases we can emit into the atmosphere if we want to maintain a reasonable chance of remaining below 2 degrees Celsius of warming.

We don’t have much left to work with. And crucially, given the way we’re growing, we’re running short on time: [..]

But it’s worth remembering, now more than ever, that it’s going to take “substantial and sustained” reductions in emissions, on a global level, to keep things from getting much hotter – and to lessen our odds of climate catastrophe:

Falguni A. Sheth: White supremacy lives on: Ferguson decision confirms absence of legal and moral justice

With “no indictment” announced against Darren Wilson, a perverted natural order of things was affirmed. Here’s why

For days, large swaths of the U.S. and the globe waited to hear whether the grand jury would indict Office Darren Wilson. For a week, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon had declared a state of emergency, calling out the National Guard to “maintain peace and protect those exercising their right to free speech.” Today, he repeated the same message.

“Together we are all focused to make sure that the necessary resources are at hand to protect lives, to protect business and to protect free speech.” [..]

The natural order, for Gov. Nixon, is one in which police violence will continue to be seen as “stopping criminals,” and preserving “freedom” for the whites of Ferguson. In the meantime, the black citizens of Ferguson and their supporters across the globe will ascribe an enormous, though rather different, symbolism to the verdict: No indictment confirms the continued absence of legal and, indeed, moral justice.

Yet, it is hard to imagine that even had the grand jury indicted, that their decision would have much of an effect on the institutional, deeply embedded problem of state-endorsed, police-led racial violence in Ferguson, St. Louis or anywhere else in the U.S.

Jessica Valenti: If tech companies wanted to end online harassment, they could do it tomorrow

If someone posted a death threat to your Facebook page, you’d likely be afraid. If the person posting was your husband – a man you had a restraining order against, a man who wrote that he was “not going to rest until [your] body [was] a mess, soaked in blood and dying from all the little cuts” – then you’d be terrified. It’s hard to imagine any other reasonable reaction.

Yet that’s just what Anthony Elonis wants you to believe: That his violent Facebook posts – including one about masturbating on his dead wife’s body – were not meant as threats. So on Monday, in Elonis v United States, the US supreme court will start to hear arguments in a case that will determine whether threats on social media will be considered protected speech.

If the court rules for Elonis, those who are harassed and threatened online every day – women, people of color, rape victims and young bullied teens – will have even less protection than they do now. Which is to say: not damn much.

The American people must make a fundamental decision. Do we continue the 40-year decline of our middle class and the growing gap between the very rich and everyone else, or do we fight for a progressive economic agenda that creates jobs, raises wages, protects the environment and provides health care for all? Are we prepared to take on the enormous economic and political power of the billionaire class, or do we continue to slide into economic and political oligarchy? These are the most important questions of our time, and how we answer them will determine the future of our country.

The long-term deterioration of the middle class, accelerated by the Wall Street crash of 2008, has not been pretty. Today, we have more wealth and income inequality than any major country on earth. We have one of the highest childhood poverty rates and we are the only country in the industrialized world which does not guarantee health care for all. We once led the world in terms of the percentage of our people who graduated college, but we are now in 12th place. Our infrastructure, once the envy of the world, is collapsing.

Dean Baker: The Paid Vacation Route to Full Employment

The economics profession has hit a roadblock in terms of being able to design policies that can help the economy. On the one hand we have many prominent economists, like Paul Krugman and Larry Summers, who say the problem is that we don’t have enough demand to get us back to full employment. There is a simple remedy in this story; get the government to spend more money on items like infrastructure, education, and clean energy. [..]

The other side of the professional divide in economics doesn’t have much to offer on full employment because they say we are already there. The argument goes that people have dropped out of the labor force because they would rather not work at the wage their skills command in the market. In this story, we may want to find ways to educate or train people so they have more skills, but unemployment is not really a problem in today’s economy.

The notion that seven million people (the drop in population adjusted employment since the start of the recession) just decided they don’t feel like working, doesn’t pass the laugh test outside of economic departments and corporate boardrooms. This leaves us stuck with a policy prescription — more stimulus — that has zero political prospect any time in the foreseeable future.

Richard Brodsky: Shut It Down: Boehner as Moderate

It’s a sign of how far right the Republican Party has moved that John Boehner is the standard bearer for moderate Republicans. But there’s a new meaning to the word “moderate” that illuminates the new political reality for the GOP and for the country. [..]

Boehner is making no secret of his willingness to throw his weight around to stop what he believes are self-destructive political tactics. His Tea Party wing doesn’t disagree with his policies, they’re infuriated by what looks like civil conversations with Obama and reluctance to use his new majority to slowly redefine the Federal government. Now, if you believe that American liberty and economic prosperity are endangered solely by the Federal government it’s foolish to do anything but shut it down, no matter how unpopular that may be with swing voters. After all you don’t get revolutions by increment, you have to change the paradigm. But the political cost of a shutdown has Wall Street and big donors scared. They’re banking on Boehner to keep tactics out of the headlines.

Dave Johnson: Is the Democratic Party Relevant Anymore?

Many Democrats examining what happened in the 2014 midterms are asking, “What did the voters want?” But the right question is why only 36.4 percent of potential voters bothered to register and vote? Obviously Democrats did not give those voters a good enough reason to take the trouble. Is the Democratic Party relevant anymore? [..]

Democrats were considered the majority party from the time of Roosevelt’s New Deal until the 1980s. All they had to do to win was to get a high-enough voter turnout. Democratic operations were more about getting out the vote (GOTV) than giving people reasons to vote for Democrats instead of Republicans. They just assumed most people agreed with them — because most people agreed with them. But that time has passed.