Tag: Opinion

Republicans in both Houses of Congress are becoming more and more flagrant in their strategy of holding the governing process hostage for far-right demands not shared by most voters. And the pity is that the strategy is mostly working.

The more that the Obama Administration tries to meet the Republicans half way, the more extreme and implacable their demands become. [..]

Obama’s term still has more than three and a half years to run and Democrats still have a 55-45 majority in the Senate, but the Republicans are treating him like the lamest of lame ducks. It should be clear by now — meeting these people halfway only whets their appetite.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: Will Bankers at JPMorgan Chase Finally Pay for Their Misdeeds?

Will California Attorney General Kamala Harris hang tough in her new lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase, the first to target individual bankers accused of defrauding the public? If so, it would be the first time in five years that executives at a major bank have personally paid a price for their misdeeds. [..]

And if this is merely another publicity stunt, she needs to know that a choreographed cave-in will be very poorly received by her constituents.

Harris therefore deserves strong expressions of support, along with statements that citizens expect her to see this action through — at least far enough to ensure that the malefactors involved pay some personal penalty for their misdeeds.

Mary Bottari: Ghost in the Machine: Pete Peterson Haunts College Campuses

An odd couple made an appearance on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus recently: Tea Party Senator Ron Johnson and Madison’s progressive Congressman Mark Pocan. The two were invited to participate in a conversation about the national debt hosted by a local student organization and a bevy of national groups, including  the Comeback America Initiative, the Concord Coalition, the Can Kicks Back, and The Campaign to Fix the Debt. On the agenda: debt, deficits, and the economy. [..]

But the most telling sentence of the meeting was one of the first. The student sponsors thanked Mark Graul and Stephanie Kundert of Arena Strategy (a local PR firm) for their help in setting up the event.

No one in the room appeared to catch the fact that they all were participating in an elaborate public relations ruse, set up by well-known Wisconsin spinmeister (Graul) whose claim to fame is a racist attack ad on a sitting judge, and orchestrated by a Wall Street billionaire whose name was never mentioned in the two-hour “teach-in.”

Take a bow, Pete Peterson — $500 million can buy you a lot of good feelings and positive press.

Richard Reeves: We Are Family

In sifting through the election returns of last year, some of the clueless Republicans and conservatives did get some clues. Losing focused their minds for a bit.

Last week, one of the stars of the “soft” right, David Brooks of The New York Times, wrote a wake-up column with implications for readers who not only do not much like dark-skinned immigration, but are also hostile to such kindling issues as gay marriage and abortion. They seem incapable of understanding, once more, that these are family issues. Gays and women who choose abortion are our relatives. They are in our families. We love them-even Republican senators with gay children love them-and we don’t like seeing them pushed around by our government. The Republicans like to talk about “family values,” but they certainly don’t appreciate some of them.

E. J. Dionne, Jr.: ‘Slow-Motion Mass Murders’

Public officials are very selective about when violence and death matter.

Massacres and terrorist incidents cannot be ignored, but the day-to-day toll from gun violence is often swept aside. Politicians who tout themselves as advocates of law and order don’t want to be unmasked as caring even more about their ratings from gun lobbyists.

And opponents of the most moderate gun reforms engage in a shameless game of bait-and-switch. Because measures such as background checks would not stop every murder, they’re declared useless even though they’d still save lives. Then the gun lobby turns around and opposes other measures, such as a ban on high-capacity magazines, which could prevent some of the killings that background checks might not.

Yesterday, for the first time in human history, concentrations of carbon dioxide, the primary global warming pollutant, hit 400 parts per million in our planet’s atmosphere. This number is a reminder that for the last 150 years — and especially over the last several decades — we have been recklessly polluting the protective sheath of atmosphere that surrounds the Earth and protects the conditions that have fostered the flourishing of our civilization. We are altering the composition of our atmosphere at an unprecedented rate. Indeed, every single day we pour an additional 90 million tons of global warming pollution into the sky as if it were an open sewer. As the distinguished climate scientist Jim Hansen has calculated, the accumulated manmade global warming pollution in the atmosphere now traps enough extra heat energy each day to equal the energy that would be released by 400,000 Hiroshima-scale atomic bombs exploding every single day. It’s a big planet — but that is a LOT of energy. And it is having a destructive effect.

Now, more than ever before, we are reaping the consequences of our recklessness. From Superstorm Sandy, which crippled New York City and large areas of New Jersey, to a drought that parched more than half of our nation; from a flood that inundated large swaths of Australia to rising seas affecting millions around the world, the reality of the climate crisis is upon us.

David Sirota: The Military’s 40-Year Experiment

Few probably recall the name Dwight Elliott Stone. But even if that name has faded from the national memory, the man remains historically significant. That’s because on June 30, 1973, the 24-year-old plumber’s apprentice became the last American forced into the armed services before the military draft expired.

Though next month’s 40-year anniversary of the end of conscription will likely be as forgotten as Stone, it shouldn’t be. In operations across the globe, the all-volunteer military has been employed by policymakers to birth what Gen. George Casey recently called the “era of persistent conflict.” Four decades later, we therefore have an obligation to ask: How much of the public’s complicity in that epochal shift is a result of the end of the draft?

Eugene Robinson: Looks Like a Witch Hunt

Those who are trying to make the Benghazi tragedy into a scandal for the Obama administration really ought to decide what story line they want to sell.

Actually, by “those” I mean Republicans and by “the Obama administration” I mean Hillary Clinton. The only coherent purpose I can discern in all of this is to sully Clinton’s record as secretary of state in case she runs for president in 2016.

That’s not a particularly noble way to use the deaths of four American public servants, but at least it’s understandable. Attempts to concoct some kind of sinister Whitewater-style conspiracy, however, don’t even begin to make sense.

Ralph Nader: Seeking Sustainability

Sustainability,” the late Ray Anderson–founder and chairman of Interface Inc. –once told theNew York Times, “doesn’t cost, it pays.” After his “conversion experience” on the harmful effects his modular carpet business had on the environment, Anderson redirected his corporate philosophy to focus on the noble goal of absolute sustainability. Through his efforts, the company’s industrial processes were improved to start making peace with the planet–all while continuing to run a profitable business. His dedication to a sustainable society is one that, ideally, all CEOs should share, but most do not.

There’s little to debate about the enormous impact our commercial culture has had on our planet and its costly toll on the environment. But there is much to debate about how our culture of excess consumerism and materialism can be transitioned into one of more efficient restraint and responsibility.

What do words mean in a post-9/11 world? Apart from the now clichéd Orwellian twists that turn brutal torture into mere enhanced interrogation, the devil is in the details. Robert MacLean is a former air marshal fired for an act of whistleblowing.  He has continued to fight over seven long years for what once would have passed as simple justice: getting his job back. His is an all-too-twenty-first-century story of the extraordinary lengths to which the U.S. government is willing to go to thwart whistleblowers.

First, the government retroactively classified a previously unclassified text message to justify firing MacLean. Then it invoked arcane civil service procedures, including an “interlocutory appeal” to thwart him and, in the process, enjoyed the approval of various courts and bureaucratic boards apparently willing to stamp as “legal” anything the government could make up in its own interest.

Katrina vanden Heuvel: The Problem in New York Politics Is Big Money, Not Small Parties

Rahm Emanuel was right: A crisis is a terrible thing to waste. Following the arrest of a leading state senator last month, which confirmed every New Yorker’s worst suspicions about the depths of our state’s corruption problem, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has a rare opportunity to push common sense reforms to get money out of our politics. But, instead, he’s seized the moment to push a “reform” that would leave our state’s politics even more dominated by the wealthy and well-connected.

As I noted last month, Cuomo has endorsed a legal change that would hamstring New York State’s third parties, including the Working Families Party, a savvy and steadfast counterweight against the power of big business and its backers in both parties. The WFP has been able to maximize its leverage here because, unlike most states, New York allows fusion voting: third parties can endorse a worthy candidate who’s also running on the Democratic or Republican Party ballot line, and place that candidate on their own line as well. Or, if neither candidate deserves their support, third parties can run their own candidate against them. Strategically deploying that option has helped the WFP become a force to be reckoned with.

Robert Reich; Sexual Assaults and Nuclear Missiles: What’s the Matter With the Military?

After years of repeated reports of sexual assaults — and years of promises to prevent them, and then years of studies and commissions to find the best way of doing so — a Defense Department study released Tuesday estimates that some 26,000 people in the military were sexually assaulted in the last fiscal year, up from about 19,000 the year before.

Moreover, it turns out the Air Force lieutenant colonel in charge of preventing sexual assault has been arrested for … sexual assault. According to the police report, a drunken Lt. Col. Jeff Krusinski allegedly approached a woman in a parking lot in Arlington, Va., Sunday night, and grabbed her breasts and buttocks.

Why has it been so difficult for the Air Force or the Defense Department to remedy this problem?

Les Leopold: The Rich Have Gained $5.6 Trillion in the ‘Recovery,’ While the Rest of Us Have Lost $669 Billion

Oh, are we getting ripped off. And now we’ve got the data to prove it. From 2009 to 2011, the richest 8 million families (the top 7 percent) on average saw their wealth rise from $1.7 million to $2.5 million each. Meanwhile the rest of us — the bottom 93 percent (that’s 111 million families) — suffered on average a decline of $6,000 each.

Do the math and you’ll discover that the top 7 percent gained a whopping $5.6 trillion in net worth (assets minus liabilities) while the rest of lost $669 billion. Their wealth went up by 28 percent while ours went down by 4 percent.

It’s as if the entire economic recovery is going into the pockets of the rich. And that’s no accident. Here’s why.

The bond-rating agency Moody’s made itself famous for giving subprime mortgage backed securities triple-A ratings at the peak of the housing bubble. This made it easy for investment banks like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to sell these securities all around the world. And it allowed the housing bubble to grow ever bigger and more dangerous. And we know where that has left us.

Well, Moody’s is back. They announced plans to change the way they treat pension obligations in assessing state and local government debt.

Instead of accepting projections of pension fund returns based on the assets they hold, Moody’s wants to use a risk-free discount rate to assess pension fund liabilities. This will make public pensions seem much worse funded than the current method.

Jim Hightower: Corporate Cowards Divert Shareholder Funds into “Dark Money”

If corporations are people, as the Supreme Court pretends, they certainly are loudmouths, constantly telling us how great they are and spreading their names everywhere.

Amazingly, though, these corporate creatures have suddenly turned demure, insisting that they don’t want to draw any attention to themselves. That’s because, in this case, corporations are not selling, they’re buying – specifically, trying to buy public office for their pet political candidates by funneling millions of corporate dollars through such front groups as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In turn, the fronts use the money to air nasty attack ads that smear the opponents of the pro-corporate candidates.

Mike Lux: Federal Government Nation’s Biggest Creator of Low-Wage Jobs: Time for Obama to Act

There was a moving and powerful event this morning at Union Station in D.C. where low-wage workers for federal contractors, leaders of the faith community, and members of Congress all did a little preaching to President Obama. Their message could not have been clearer: It is time to finally to do something real to help low wage workers step out of poverty and into the middle class. [..]

Fast-food workers in New York City, Chicago, and other cities; Wal-Mart workers all over the country have as well; truck drivers that take goods in and out of our nation’s ports; and workers at companies who contract with the federal government: They are all organizing. To hear these workers’ stories about the terrible pay, lack of benefits, and the way they are treated by abusive employers inspires me to keep fighting on their behalf every day, but it also makes me wonder: Where is Barack Obama? Didn’t he get his start in politics fighting for these kinds of workers? Hasn’t he talked repeatedly about how he is going to fight for them? Hasn’t he quoted the scripture of his faith about looking out for the least of these and being our brothers and sisters’ keeper?

Ray Barrett; The War on Terror Is Over…But Osama Bin Laden Won.

High in the mountains of Afghanistan many moons before 9/11, Osama Bin Laden told the British journalist Robert Fisk exactly what he sought to achieve through his murderous crusade against Uncle Sam.

  “I pray to God that he will permit us to turn the United States into a shadow of itself,” he said. [..]

With the al-Qaeda leader dead, the “War on Terror” morphed into a global “drone war”, and home-grown terrorism now the dominant US national security threat, history can begin to evaluate Bin Laden and his more esoteric aims. Thus, when it comes to the United States, were his prayers answered? Did he enjoy a measure of success in his quest to debase the nation?

Investigators are blaming ammonium nitrate for the massive explosion that devastated most of the town of West, Texas, on April 17. The chemical, which was stored in large amounts at the West Fertilizer Co., is used to make fertilizer. It’s also used by coal companies to blow up mountains.

Ammonium nitrate poses a threat to human and environmental health not only when it catalyzes fatally in a dangerous stockpile but also when particles of the stuff shatter into the air and seep into groundwater from strip mining, say residents of mining communities. Opponents of so-called “mountaintop removal” are in DC this week, taking that message to the Obama administration in a week of action culminating May 8 with a delivery of toxic water to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Amanda Marcotte: Time To Demand All Birth Control Pills Be Sold Over-The-Counter

In all the fussing over the sales of emergency contraception over the counter, it’s easy to forget that there’s another contraception drug out there that should be available over the counter (OTC) but isn’t: the ordinary, everyday birth control pill. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) thinks birth control pills should be sold OTC. Most other countries sell birth control pills OTC.  And now, as Think Progress reports, nearly two-thirds of American women say they want the pill sold OTC, and about 30 percent of the respondents who aren’t currently on the pill would consider going on it if this option was available.

So why can’t we have this, when the public and the medical establishment both think it’s a great idea? Part of it is no doubt the politics of it. As the furor over emergency contraception-which you only take in emergencies (and don’t need if you’re consistent with your birth control pills)-demonstrates, the idea of women being able to prevent pregnancy easily sets off all sorts of irrational reactions in this country. You should have to struggle for it to prove you deserve to be not-pregnant, because… mmmph that’s why. The religious right already believes that contraception is “too” easy to get, which is why they’ve been attacking it with so much vigor lately. Trying to make birth control pills available OTC would set off a political firestorm that would make the emergency contraception wars look like mere skirmishes.

Ann Neumann: Guantánamo Is Not an Anomaly – Prisoners in the US Are Force-Fed Every Day

I know a hunger-striking prisoner who hasn’t eaten solid food in more than five years. He is being force-fed by the medical staff where he’s incarcerated. Starving himself, he told me during one of our biweekly phone calls last year, is the only way he has to exercise his first amendment rights and to protest his conviction. Not eating is his only available free speech act. [..]

But William Coleman is not at Guantánamo. He’s in Connecticut. The prison medical staff force-feeding him are on contract from the University of Connecticut, not the U.S. Navy. Guantánamo is not an anomaly. Prisoners – who are on U.S. soil and not an inaccessible island military base – are routinely and systematically force-fed every day.

The accounts of force-feeding coming out of Guantánamo, including Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel’s “Gitmo is Killing Me” in The New York Times two weeks ago, are consistent with how Coleman has described the process to me – and to the Supreme Court of Connecticut.

Kathleen Shuler: Cadmium, Mercury and Phthalates-Oh My!

Over 5000 children’s products contain toxic chemicals linked to cancer, hormone disruption and reproductive problems, including the toxic metals, cadmium, mercury and antimony, as well as phthalates and solvents. A new report by the Washington Toxics Coalition and Safer States reveals the results of manufacturer reporting to the Washington State Department of Ecology.

Makers of kids’ products reported using 41 of the 66 chemicals identified by WA Ecology as a concern for children’s health. Major manufacturers who reported using the chemicals in their products include Walmart, Gap, Gymboree, Hallmark, H & M and others. They use these chemicals in an array of kids’ products, including clothing, footwear, toys, games, jewelry, accessories, baby products, furniture, bedding, arts and crafts supplies and personal care products. Besides exposing kids in the products themselves, some of these chemicals, for example toxic flame retardants, build up in the environment and in the food we eat.

The US economy is suffering from a nasty case of austerity.

Only 165,000 new jobs were created in April – far fewer than is needed to address existing unemployment and to create positions for the millions of Americans who are entering the workforce. [..]

“This is a classic ‘hold-steady’ report – enough job growth to keep the unemployment rate stable but not much more,” Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, says of the latest news from the US Department of Labor. “In good times, this would be fine, but at a time like this, it represents an ongoing disaster.”

Why are things so slow?

In a word: austerity.

E. J. Dionne: Obama’s Wake-Up Call

President Obama got roughed up by the pundit class last week. The question is what lessons he draws from the going-over. Here’s one he should take: The nation’s political conversation has grown stale and many Americans have lost the sense of what he is doing to improve their lives.

You can argue that this perception isn’t fair. The Affordable Care Act, if it’s implemented well, will improve a lot of lives. The economy is adding jobs, not shedding them. The deficit is coming down. Two front-burner initiatives, immigration reform and broader background checks-yes, they’ll be voted on again-really do matter.

But the fact is that the talk in Washington has been dominated by the same stuff we obsessed over in 2010, 2011 and 2012: a monotonous, uninspiring, insider clash over budgets. Even in that context, we barely discuss what government can do that would be helpful (except to air travelers).

Eugene Robinson: Burning Questions About Intervention in Syria

For all the armchair generals advocating U.S. military intervention in Syria, I have a few questions: [..]

Isn’t it the case that Syria presents no good options, only bad ones? Isn’t it unclear whether U.S. intervention can even alleviate the Syrian people’s pain, much less advance U.S. interests? And although doing nothing seems like a bad alternative, doesn’t the only other choice presently available-doing something for the sake of doing something-look worse?

Last question: We have been at war in Afghanistan for a dozen years and in Iraq for a decade. Have we learned nothing at all?

Betsey Stevenson & Justin Wolfers: Reinhart-Rogoff’s Lesson for Economists

What lesson can economists draw from the ruckus over a flaw found in an influential study by two Harvard University scholars? Our suggestion: Do a better job of checking one another’s work. [..]

Many observers have concluded that the error went undetected for so long because the research never underwent peer review, a traditional stop on the way to the coveted goal of publication in a prestigious journal. But peer review isn’t a line-by-line error check. It involves a few academics making a holistic judgment as to whether new research increases our understanding of the world.

There’s only one reliable way to verify empirical findings: Try to replicate them. In the narrowest terms, this can mean taking the author’s data and checking their spreadsheets, as economists Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash and Robert Pollin did in their critique of Reinhart and Rogoff. At a broader level, replication can mean collecting new data, assessing their reliability and using them to subject a finding to fresh scrutiny.

The press strained to find some good news in the government’s April employment report. Superficially, things appeared a little better. The official unemployment rate dropped to 7.5 percent, and the number of long-term unemployed people declined by about 258,000. The government revised upwards the number of new jobs created, to 138,000 in March, plus 165,000 in April.

The stock market loved the news: Just enough job growth to keep the economy officially out of recession. But a sufficiently sluggish economy that the Federal Reserve will keep interest rates low, and workers will have little bargaining power.

Take a deeper look at the figures behind the April report and consider the coming impact of budget cuts, and the picture is still bleak for the vast majority of Americans. The job growth is not sufficient to materially improve the condition of most working (and out-of-work) Americans.

Mijin Cha: Big Oil’s (Taxpayer Subsidized) Big Profits

Here’s an example of how government subsidies distort market economics: Gas prices are down nearly 35 cents from last year, yet this has had virtually no impact on this year’s first quarter profits of the big oil companies.

On top of the decline in gas prices, several of the top five oil companies — BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell — have had significant spills in the last quarter. A ruptured Chevron pipeline spilled thousands of gallons of oil into a Utah waterway. Shell’s oil pipeline spilled tens of thousands of gallons of oil in Texas. Exxon’s tar sand pipeline spilled up to 126,000 gallons of oil in Arkansas. All of these spills occurred just in the first quarter. Yet, these spills haven’t eaten into the companies’ profits, indicating that fines or cleanup costs aren’t anticipated to have an impact on the earnings potential.

Michael Shank and Matt Southworth: Authorization for Use of Military Force: A Blank Check for War without End

For both fiscal and ethical reasons, it is time Congress cancelled AUMF and reclaimed oversight of US military engagements

A handful of Democratic and Republican senators are considering a rewrite of 60 of the most consequential words to ever pass through Congress. The Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), passed after the attacks of 11 September 2001, and provides the legal cornerstone for the so-called US “war on terror”. Only one brave Congress member opposed it. It allows the US government to wage war at anytime, any place and on anyone deemed a threat to national security – with remarkably little evidence needed.

The consequential nature of these words is self-evident: the AUMF opened the doors to the US wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya; attacks on Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Mali; the new drone bases in Niger and Djibouti; and the killing of American citizens, notably Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old noncombatant son. It is what now emboldens the hawks on the warpath to Syria, Iran and North Korea.

Robert Reich: The Hollowing Out of Government

The West, Texas chemical and fertilizer plant where at least 15 were killed and more than 200 injured a few weeks ago hadn’t been fully inspected by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration since 1985. (A partial inspection in 2011 had resulted in $5,250 in fines.) [..]

In effect, much of our nation’s worker safety laws and rules have been quietly repealed because there aren’t enough inspectors to enforce them. That’s been the Republican strategy in general: When they can’t directly repeal laws they don’t like, they repeal them indirectly by hollowing them out — denying funds to fully implement them, and reducing funds to enforce them.

News reports tell us that more than 500 people have now died and more than 2,500 were injured in Savar, Bangladesh, while the toll in West, Texas stands at 15 dead and over 200 injured. Behind these two disasters is a common thread of greed — and a common need for unionized resistance. [..]

What’s needed is a recognition that every life is worth fighting for, in every field and factory on the planet.  It’s fought with the understanding that better-paid workers buy more goods and raise the global standard of living, no matter where they live.

The stories from Texas and Bangladesh shouldn’t just horrify us. They should galvanize us into action.  They aren’t complete until we choose to live them ourselves. As Mother Jones said, “Mourn the dead, but fight like hell for the living.”

Doug Bandow: Syria: The Only Red Line Should be to Stay Out

The Syrian civil war lurches on, adding new casualties every day. The campaign to push the U.S. into the Syrian civil war also marches on, threatening to add American casualties to the human toll. Possible use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government is another reason to stay out, not to get in.

Washington’s foreign policy should be one of peace. There are tragic times when war becomes necessary, but thankfully not often. Especially for America, which enjoys a privileged international position.

Today the U.S. is without peer. Terrorism is the most serious security threat facing the country, but it is only exacerbated by promiscuous intervention in conflicts not America’s own. Bombing, invading, and occupying other nations creates enemies who want to hurt Americans.

Robert Reich: The Flaccid Jobs Report

We remain in the gravitational pull of the Great Recession. The Labor Department reports that 165,000 new jobs were created in April — below the average gains of 183,000 in the previous three months.

We can’t achieve escape velocity. Since mid-2010, the three-month rolling average of job gains hasn’t dipped below 100,000 but has exceeded 250,000 jobs just twice.

This isn’t enough to ease the backlog of at least 3 million (estimates range up to 8 million) job losses since 2007, just before the Great Recession began. (And as I’ll point out in a moment, 2007 wasn’t exactly jobs nirvana.)

Moreover, most of the new jobs now being created pay less than the ones that were lost.

What’s wrong?

Charles M. Blow: Dear College Graduates…

I’m scheduled to deliver the commencement address Friday at my alma mater, Grambling State University in Louisiana, so I’ve been giving quite a bit of thought to the America into which these students are graduating.

I must admit that finding hopeful, encouraging things to say has been exceedingly difficult, in part because the landscape at the moment – particularly for young adults – is so bleak.

Here are some of the facts that I’m up against rhetorically and that these students will be up against more literally.