Tag: Open Thread

Nov 21 2014

The Breakfast Club (Anything Goes)

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover  we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

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This Day in History

Thomas Edison says he’s invented the phonograph; Gap revealed on Nixon White House tape; Final victim dies in America’s anthrax scare; Jonathan Pollard arrested; ‘Anything Goes’ opens on Broadway.

Breakfast Tunes

Nov 21 2014

On This Day In History November 21

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

November 21 is the 325th day of the year (326th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 40 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1934, Ella Fitzgerald wins Amateur Night at Harlem’s Apollo Theater. A young and gangly would-be dancer took to the stage of Harlem’s Apollo Theater to participate in a harrowing tradition known as Amateur Night. Finding herself onstage as a result of pure chance after her name was drawn out of a hat, the aspiring dancer spontaneously decided to turn singer instead-a change of heart that would prove momentous not only for herself personally, but also for the future course of American popular music. The performer in question was a teenaged Ella Fitzgerald, whose decision to sing rather than dance on this day in 1934 set her on a course toward becoming a musical legend. It also led her to victory at Amateur Night at the Apollo, a weekly event that was then just a little more than a year old but still thrives today

Ella Jane Fitzgerald (April 25, 1917 – June 15, 1996), also known as the “First Lady of Song” and “Lady Ella,” was an American jazz and song vocalist. With a vocal range spanning three octaves (Db3 to Db6), she was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing and intonation, and a “horn-like” improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing.

She is considered to be a notable interpreter of the Great American Songbook. Over a recording career that lasted 59 years, she was the winner of 14 Grammy Awards and was awarded the National Medal of Art by Ronald Reagan and the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George H. W. Bush.

Nov 20 2014

Punting the Pundits

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

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

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Sen. Elizabeth Warren: Enough Is Enough: The President’s Latest Wall Street Nominee

I believe President Obama deserves deference in picking his team, and I’ve generally tried to give him that. But enough is enough.

Last Wednesday, President Obama announced his nomination of Antonio Weiss to serve as Under Secretary for Domestic Finance at the Treasury Department. This is a position that oversees Dodd-Frank implementation and a wide range of banking and economic policymaking issues, including consumer protection.

So who is Antonio Weiss? He’s the head of global investment banking for the financial giant Lazard. He has spent the last 20 years of his career at Lazard — most of it advising on international mergers and acquisitions. [..]

I have voted against only one of President Obama’s nominees: Michael Froman, a Citigroup alumnus who is currently storming the halls of Congress as U.S. Trade Representative pushing trade deals that threaten to undermine financial regulation, workers’ rights, and environmental protections. Enough is enough.

It’s time for the Obama administration to loosen the hold that Wall Street banks have over economic policy making. Sure, big banks are important, but running this economy for American families is a lot more important.

Trevor Timm: The good news about the ‘death’ of NSA reform: surveillance supporters may have dug their own grave

Snowden haters may have blocked the USA Freedom Act, but the clock is ticking before the law that justifies vacuuming your phone records blows up in the face of newly conservative Washington

Late Tuesday, after a brief debate marked by shameless fearmongering that reeked of some of even George W Bush’s worst moments, the US Congress failed at its most promising chance to pass at least some surveillance reform sparked by Edward Snowden’s revelations. The Senate Republicans, for the month they’re still in the minority, managed to block a vote on the USA Freedom Act, the modest National Security Agency oversight bill that’s been in the works for over a year.

But the Republicans – and NSA supporters everywhere – may have made a mistake that will come back to haunt them. They killed a measure that many reformers were holding their nose while supporting, and six month from now – by the middle of 2015 – they may have several even bigger fights on their hands. [..]

The failure of the USA Freedom Act, no matter how incomplete the bill was, certainly isn’t something to celebrate. But now we will see multiple courts potentially ruling NSA surveillance unconstitutional. Now we will have a chance to force the government into potentially gutting key provisions of the Bush-era Patriot Act, all while ubiquitous encryption becomes ever more prevalent in the communications devices we use – so maybe soon we don’t have to rely on Congress and the courts to be the masters of our own privacy.

William Greider: Should We Impeach Chief Justice John Roberts?

Republicans like to talk about impeaching President Obama, but there is a far more deserving candidate for impeachment-Chief Justice John Roberts of the Supreme Court. While the Republicans in Congress have blocked Democrats from enacting much of substance, the GOP majority in control of the Court has been effectively legislating on its own, following an agenda neatly aligned with their conservative party. Step by step, the five right-wing justices are transforming the terms of the American political system-including the Constitution.

They empowered “dark money” in politics and produced the $4 billion by-election of 2014. They assigned spiritual values to soulless corporations who thus gained First Amendment protection of free speech and religion. The justices effectively gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965, even as they allowed state governments to create new obstacles for minority voting. The High Court made it okay to take guns to church and more difficult to keep guns from dangerous people. It rendered a series of decisions that collectively shifted political power from the many to the few.

This power grab by the unelected-and supposedly non-partisan-justices has already produced a historic rewrite of America democracy. But it was done by blatantly usurping the decision-making authority that belongs to the elected government in Congress and the executive branch. The Republican justices are not finished with their undeclared revolution. They will continue unless and until people rise up and stop them.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: Guess Who Doesn’t Want Social Security’s Offices Closed — and Who Does

Some surprising new polling results underscore the unpopularity — and long-term destructiveness — of Congress’ ongoing attacks on the Social Security system.

The new Republican Congress is expected to force additional office closures and impose additional cuts on the Social Security Administration’s budget, even as a poll released this week by Social Security Works shows that the public overwhelmingly opposes the flimsy rationale for those cuts.

We’re told that automation can pick up the slack as more offices are shuttered and more workers are laid off. But the polling shows that Americans overwhelmingly prefer human assistance to the Internet or email, which means they won’t be happy with the change. [..]

The survey also shows that most people prefer to talk to a human being, either by phone or in person, when interacting with the Social Security system. Only 11 percent want to use the Internet or email to request a new Social Security card, for example. Unfortunately, an unpublicized Social Security Administration plan would force them to do exactly that — and upcoming GOP cuts could accelerate that effort.

In an exclusive look at some of the raw polling data, a surprising fact came to light: Voters under 30 dislike the idea of using web-based services much more than older voters do. Only 3 percent would prefer to order new Social Security cards via Internet or email, far less than the 11 percent figure for voters overall. Only 4 percent want to apply for retirement benefits via the Internet or email, as opposed to 13 percent overall.

Vi Waln: The Keystone XL’s Senate failure isn’t the end of the pipeline as an act of war

My Lakota people are still prepared to protect our clean water. This remains a death project

My Lakota people have a phrase – Mni Wiconi – which means “water of life”. Water is also Pejuta – our primary medicine. It is an extremely sacred element without which we cannot live, yet many people take it for granted. They do not realize: when our drinking-water sources are gone or contaminated, humanity will perish.

Water is also present in every single Lakota ceremony at which I pray – it is essential to our ceremonial way of life. Like our ancestors who sacrificed their very lives for our survival, many of us pray for the descendants who will soon stand in our place, and one of our most important prayers is for our descendants to always have an abundance of clean drinking water.

But TransCanada’s Keystone XL oil pipeline (KXL), which the company has proposed building directly over the Ogallala Aquifer, is still an immediate threat to all of us who drink water from that underground reservoir.

Kaci Hickox: Stop calling me ‘the Ebola nurse’

I never had Ebola, and politicians who lie do nothing to protect your health

I never had Ebola, so please stop calling me “the Ebola Nurse” – now!

This is what did happen: I was quarantined against my will by overzealous politicians after I volunteered to go and treat people affected by Ebola in west Africa. My liberty, my interests and consequently my civil rights were ignored because some ambitious governors saw an opportunity to use an age-old political tactic: fear. Christie and my governor in Maine, Paul LePage, decided to disregard medical science and the constitution in hopes of advancing their careers. They bet that, by multiplying the existing fear and misinformation about Ebola – a disease most Americans know little about – they could ultimately manipulate everyone and proclaim themselves the protectors of the people by “protecting” the public from a disease that hasn’t killed a single American. Politicians who tell lies such as “she is obviously ill” and mistreat citizens by telling them to “sit down and shut up” will hopefully never make it to the White House. [..]

want to live in a country that understands Ebola. I want to live in a world that cares about those dying from this terrible disease in West Africa. Nobody should’ve had to watch me ride my bicycle out in the open as politicians fed the public false fears and misinformation. I want to live in an America that reaches out to aid workers as they return from West Africa and says, “We loved and stood by you when you were fighting this disease. We will love and stand by you now.”

We can define compassion, instead of being ruled by fear and fear-mongers.

Nov 20 2014

On This Day In History November 20

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

November 20 is the 324th day of the year (325th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 41 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1945, Twenty-four high-ranking Nazis go on trial in Nuremberg, Germany, for atrocities committed during World War II.

The Nuremberg Trials were conducted by an international tribunal made up of representatives from the United States, the Soviet Union, France, and Great Britain. It was the first trial of its kind in history, and the defendants faced charges ranging from crimes against peace, to crimes of war, to crimes against humanity. Lord Justice Geoffrey Lawrence, the British member, presided over the proceedings, which lasted 10 months and consisted of 216 court sessions.

Origin

British War Cabinet documents, released on 2 January 2006, have shown that as early as December 1944, the Cabinet had discussed their policy for the punishment of the leading Nazis if captured. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had then advocated a policy of summary execution in some circumstances, with the use of an Act of Attainder to circumvent legal obstacles, being dissuaded from this only by talks with US leaders later in the war. In late 1943, during the Tripartite Dinner Meeting at the Tehran Conference, the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, proposed executing 50,000-100,000 German staff officers. US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, joked that perhaps 49,000 would do. Churchill denounced the idea of “the cold blooded execution of soldiers who fought for their country.” However, he also stated that war criminals must pay for their crimes and that in accordance with the Moscow Document which he himself had written, they should be tried at the places where the crimes were committed. Churchill was vigorously opposed to executions “for political purposes.” According to the minutes of a Roosevelt-Stalin meeting during the Yalta Conference, on February 4, 1945, at the Livadia Palace, President Roosevelt “said that he had been very much struck by the extent of German destruction in the Crimea and therefore he was more bloodthirsty in regard to the Germans than he had been a year ago, and he hoped that Marshal Stalin would again propose a toast to the execution of 50,000 officers of the German Army.”

US Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., suggested a plan for the total denazification of Germany; this was known as the Morgenthau Plan. The plan advocated the forced de-industrialisation of Germany. Roosevelt initially supported this plan, and managed to convince Churchill to support it in a less drastic form. Later, details were leaked to the public, generating widespread protest. Roosevelt, aware of strong public disapproval, abandoned the plan, but did not adopt an alternate position on the matter. The demise of the Morgenthau Plan created the need for an alternative method of dealing with the Nazi leadership. The plan for the “Trial of European War Criminals” was drafted by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson and the War Department. Following Roosevelt’s death in April 1945, the new president, Harry S. Truman, gave strong approval for a judicial process. After a series of negotiations between Britain, the US, Soviet Union and France, details of the trial were worked out. The trials were set to commence on 20 November 1945, in the Bavarian city of Nuremberg.

Nov 19 2014

Punting the Pundits

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

Wednesday is Ladies’ Day

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

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Kristina vanden Heuvel: When Mega Corporations Get Mega Tax Breaks, We All Pay

Is corporate CEO pay really out of control? Well, consider Fleecing Uncle Sam, a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies and the Center for Effective Government. Of the 100 highest-paid CEOs in the US, the study finds, twenty-nine of them received more compensation than their companies paid in federal income tax.

Take American Airlines, for example. CEO W. Douglas Parker took home $17.7 million in total compensation in 2013, while his company received a $22 million tax refund. It makes you wonder. After all, American didn’t have a lot of income on which to pay taxes-the company’s pre-tax income in 2013 was negative $2 billion-so is AA sending us a message that tax avoidance, and not air transport, is their real business? Parker certainly piloted his company to be more success at the former than he did the latter.

Scott Klinger, Director of Revenue and Spending Policies at the Center for Effective Government, co-authored of the report. “Our corporate tax system is so broken,” he says, “that large, profitable firms can get away without paying their fair share and instead funnel massive funds into the pockets of top executives.”

Amanda Marcotte: Satanists elegantly humiliate Christians into ending public school proselytization

Hail Satan! Or Satanists, at least, who have done a bang-up job in exposing the bad faith that was behind the choice of a Florida public school system to use school grounds for attempts to recruit kids into the Christian religion. The Orange County school district was allowing religious groups to distribute Bibles on school grounds, a policy they justified by suggesting that they had not ulterior motive but were just being free and open and all that jazz. So folks decided to test how far they were willing to take it. An atheist group was allowed to distribute pamphlets criticizing religion. (A criticism of the pamphlet itself should be read before fully supporting this move.) And then the Satanists got involved, and that might be the last straw for the Christians who were oh-so-innocently offering a free forum for totally free and non-judgmental discourse about faith that totally wasn’t pushing a Christian agenda.

So now they’re looking to reverse the policy: [..]

So if Christians are doing it, it’s fine. If Satanists or atheists do it, suddenly it’s “out of hand” and they are taking “advantage of the open forum”. Except it’s not an open forum, obviously. An actual open forum is open to all viewpoints. This was a closed forum, and this was easily demonstrated by the fact that the forum closed the second that viewpoints that are critical of Christianity were introduced.

Jessica Valenti: Suggestion: If You Can’t Talk About Rape Without Blaming Victims, Don’t Talk About It

Rape apologists are neither edgy nor new. Why are they given such prominent platforms?

How we think about rape matters. It determines how we talk about rape, it determines how the media writes about rape and, ultimately, it determines what we as a society do about rape.

And right now, we are not doing enough. [..]

So you might think that someone given a platform at the New York Times, like  Yale law professor Jed Rubenfeld was in Sunday’s paper, might have done more than simply note that women are attacked “in appalling numbers” and colleges mishandle rape cases.

Instead, what followed that barest of acknowledgements of the epidemic of rape – on the front cover of the Times’ Sunday Review section, ostensibly some lingering bastion of “thought leadership” – was misinformation, cherry-picked research and a series of inflammatory, baseless arguments.

Joanna Rothkopf: Wrong, NRA-Right-to-Carry Laws Actually Increase Gun Violence

New study definitely debunks gun nuts’ crazy theory that more guns make us safer.

A new study from researchers at Stanford University debunks the oft-cited fact that  more guns leads to less crime. In fact, the researchers found, the opposite is the case: right-to-carry laws are associated with higher rates of aggravated assault, rape, robbery and murder.

The results of the study are imperfect. Lead author of the study and Stanford law professor  John J. Donohue III said, “Trying to estimate the impact of right-to-carry laws has been a vexing task over the last two decades.” While they specifically found that right-to-carry laws had yielded 8 percent more instances of aggravated assault, that number isn’t set in stone because of a number of confounding factors (such as various drug epidemics). Regardless, Donohue says that 8 percent is a low guess-the reality could be much higher.

Still, the study’s findings are significant in that it pokes a hole in the gun lobby’s main argument.

Amy B. Dean: The labor movement helps Ferguson heal

By highlighting racial injustice, the AFL-CIO is leading an effort to address tensions in working-class America

Given organized labor’s mixed record on race, it may seem hard to imagine that unions can play a vital role in bridging racial divides in working-class America. But some labor activists are insisting that they cannot do anything less.

In 2008 the president of the AFL-CIO, Richard Trumka, openly criticized union members who were hesitant to vote for then-candidate Barack Obama because of his race. Trumka has since made addressing racial injustice a priority for the country’s largest labor federation. It is not surprising, then, that he has now waded into the crisis in Ferguson, Missouri, pledging the AFL-CIO’s support to help address the ongoing turmoil sparked by the Aug. 9 shooting of African-American teen Michael Brown by white police officer Darren Wilson. [..]

Such outspoken stances reflect an increasingly important reality: Few institutions in American life bring together as much diversity under one roof as organized labor, and even fewer have the political heft to influence our public policy discussions. This gives labor leaders and grass-roots union activists a unique platform from which they can speak about how our country’s racial divisions might be overcome.

Jill Lawrence: The Democratic comeback plan

Shower money and energy on the states to advance policy and nurture tomorrow’s big names

There’s no getting over a heartache until you plunge yourself into something (or someone) fresh and consuming. That’s what Democrats should do in the wake of their miserable midterm elections. Specifically, party activists and donors should direct their cash and attentions to state legislatures and state ballot initiatives. It’s the smart move both psychologically and politically.

Obviously Democrats can’t ignore the 2016 House, Senate, gubernatorial and presidential elections. But party movers and shakers must also understand the potential payoff of a forceful presence well below those levels. There’s a diminishing bench of prospects for the higher offices that needs to be rebuilt from the ground up and a policy agenda that is making more progress through direct, state-specific appeals to voters than in Congress. Think of the possibilities: Minimum wage hikes today, Medicaid expansion tomorrow? [..]

The urgency for Democrats can’t be overstated. They need to start now if they want to have solid candidates and policies on state ballots in 2016, when they may be able to capitalize on the high turnout and friendlier electorate of a presidential year. If any further incentive is needed, how about the prospect of a second round of Republican-dominated redistricting after the 2020 census? The last remapping locked in today’s House GOP majority. It’s up to Democrats to unlock it and in the process show the country that they are a capable, competitive party.

Nov 19 2014

On This Day In History November 19

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

November 19 is the 323rd day of the year (324th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 42 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln delivers Gettysburg Address.

On November 19, 1863, at the dedication of a military cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, during the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln delivers one of the most memorable speeches in American history. In just 272 words, Lincoln brilliantly and movingly reminded a war-weary public why the Union had to fight, and win, the Civil War.

The Battle of Gettysburg, fought some four months earlier, was the single bloodiest battle of the Civil War. Over the course of three days, more than 45,000 men were killed, injured, captured or went missing.  The battle also proved to be the turning point of the war: General Robert E. Lee’s defeat and retreat from Gettysburg marked the last Confederate invasion of Northern territory and the beginning of the Southern army’s ultimate decline.

Charged by Pennsylvania’s governor, Andrew Curtin, to care for the Gettysburg dead, an attorney named David Wills bought 17 acres of pasture to turn into a cemetery for the more than 7,500 who fell in battle. Wills invited Edward Everett, one of the most famous orators of the day, to deliver a speech at the cemetery’s dedication. Almost as an afterthought, Wills also sent a letter to Lincoln-just two weeks before the ceremony-requesting “a few appropriate remarks” to consecrate the grounds.

Text of Gettysburg Address

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us-that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion-that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain-that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom-and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Nov 18 2014

Punting the Pundits

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

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

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Trevor Timm: If you thought the Isis war couldn’t get any worse, just wait for more of the CIA

Even America’s top spies know that arming rebels is ‘doomed to failure’ – but that can’t stop Obama’s gun-running operation

As the war against the Islamic State in Syria has fallen into even more chaos – partially due to the United States government’s increasing involvement there – the White House’s bright new idea seems to be to ramping up the involvement of the intelligence agency that is notorious for making bad situations worse. As the Washington Post reported late Friday, “The Obama administration has been weighing plans to escalate the CIA’s role in arming and training fighters in Syria, a move aimed at accelerating covert U.S. support to moderate rebel factions while the Pentagon is preparing to establish its own training bases.”

Put aside for a minute that the Central Intelligence Agency has been secretly arming Syrian rebels with automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, ammunition and antitank weapons since at least 2012 – and with almost nothing to show for it. Somehow the Post neglected to cite a front-page New York Times article from just one month ago alerting the public to the existence of a still-classified internal CIA study admitting that arming rebels with weapons has rarely – if ever – worked: [..]

The Times cited the most well-known of CIA failures, including the botched Bay of Pigs invasion and the arming of the Nicaraguan contra rebels that led to the disastrous Iran-Contra scandal. Even the agency’s most successful mission – slowly bleeding out the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s by arming the mujahideen – paved the way for the worst terrorist attack on the US in its history.

Dean Baker: The Problem of ‘Stupid’ in Economics

M.I.T. Professor Jonathan Gruber has inadvertently become a YouTube celebrity as a result of a video of him referring to the public as “stupid.” The immediate point of reference was the complexity of the design of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which Gruber was describing as being necessary politically in order to deceive the public. With the right-wing now in a state of near frenzy after the Republican election victories, the Gruber comment was fresh meat in their attack on the ACA.

Apart from merits of the ACA, there is something grating about seeing a prominent economist refer to the American public as “stupid.” After all, the country and the world have suffered enormously over the last seven years because the leading lights of the economic profession were almost completely oblivious to the largest asset bubble in the history of the world. [..]

There is some truth to Gruber’s comment in that most people are ill-informed about major public policy issues, including health insurance. This is in large part due to the fact that, unlike Gruber, most people have day jobs. They put in their shift at work and then often have child care and other family responsibilities. Most of them probably don’t have much time to read the Congressional Budget Office’s latest report on the health care system.

But even worse, when people do take the time to get informed, the media let them down badly. Stories even in the best of outlets, like the New York Times and National Public Radio, often present information in ways that are misleading and often meaningless to nearly all readers.

Les Leopold: We Are the Most Unequal Society in the Developed World… And We Don’t Know It

The American people have spoken. But what did we really say about inequality?

At first glance, it seems that extreme inequality mattered little to the majority of voters who put pro-business candidates into office. After all, the Republicans, along with far too many Democrats, are certain to cater to their Wall Street/CEO donors. Do Americans really want an ever rising gap between the super-rich and the rest of us? [..]

Americans are virtually blind to the growing gap between CEO pay and the pay of the average worker. As the chart below shows that gap has increased dramatically. In 1965, for every dollar earned by the average worker, CEOs earned 20 dollars. By 2012, that gap mushroomed to 354 to one.

Zoë Carpenter: Senate Democrats Are About to Do Something Truly Stupid

In a cockeyed attempt to save one of their own, Senate Democrats are poised to do something truly stupid. Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu, after failing to win enough votes to avoid a runoff in her Senate race, is centering her prolonged bid for re-election on a bill to fast-track the Keystone XL pipeline. Democrats have long blocked such legislation in the Senate, but all of a sudden they’ve decided to bring it up for a vote, likely before Thanksgiving.

The decision is both hypocritical and irrational. Landrieu’s victory or loss will not alter the balance of the Senate. More importantly, there is no evidence to suggest that passing a pro-KXL bill will improve Landrieu’s chances in the runoff, where she faces Representative Bill Cassidy, a Republican who is just as pro-Keystone as she is. (He sponsored the House version of Landrieu’s bill, and the lower chamber is scheduled to vote Friday.) Landrieu’s entire re-election campaign centered on her being big oil’s best friend; voters know that already, and it wasn’t enough.

Joe Conason: Immigration, Impeachment and Insanity on the Republican Right

Obstructing, denouncing and demonizing Barack Obama are so central to the existence of the Republican Party today that its leaders simply ignore the real purposes of the president’s proposed immigration orders. So someone should point out that his imminent decision will advance priorities to which the Republican right offers routine lip service: promoting family values, assisting law enforcement, ensuring efficient government and guarding national security.

Much of the argument for immigration reform-and, in particular, the president’s proposed executive orders-revolves around the imperative of compassion for immigrant families. That is a powerful claim-or should be, at least, for the self-styled Christians of the Republican right. If they aren’t moved by empathy for struggling, aspiring, hardworking people, however, then maybe they should consider the practicalities.

America is not going to deport millions upon millions of Latino immigrants and their families to satisfy tea party prejudices, even if that were possible. Attempting to do so would be a gigantic waste of taxpayers’ money, an unwelcome burden on thousands of major employers and an inhumane disgrace with international consequences, none of them good. It might or might not be “legal,” but it would surely be stupid.

Dave Zirin: New NBA Union Chief Michele Roberts Slams the League’s Old Labor Practices

The labor movement slogans that have guided generations include “an injury to one is an injury to all” and “solidarity forever.” But my favorite-because it speaks most directly to strategy-is, “The best way to avoid a strike is to prepare for one.” In other words, bosses will only back down and blink if they survey your side and think that they can lose.

That is why anyone who cares about the rights of labor on the highest possible public platform has to be inspired by the recent comments of new NBA Players Association Executive Director Michele Roberts. In an interview with Pablo Torre of ESPN the Magazine, Roberts took a step back from the decades of established labor practices that have governed sports and basically said, “This is bullshit.” [..]

Make no mistake what this is about. The league is about to be engorged by television revenue, $24 billion over six years, as live sports has become the tent pole of commercial television in our live streaming and DVR’d universe. Roberts is sending a shot across the bow that the owners will not be the primary beneficiaries of this broadcast bonanza and they will no longer, as she put it, “control the narrative.”

Nov 18 2014

The Breakfast Club (It’s All Been a Pack of Lies)

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover  we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

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This Day in History

Cult leader Jim Jones and hundreds of followers die in mass murder-suicide in South America; Massachusetts high court rules gay couples can marry; Disney’s ‘Steamboat Willie’ premieres in New York.

Breakfast Tunes

Nov 18 2014

On This Day In History November 18

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

November 18 is the 322nd day of the year (323rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 43 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1883, the Railraods create the first time zones At exactly noon on this day, American and Canadian railroads begin using four continental time zones to end the confusion of dealing with thousands of local times. The bold move was emblematic of the power shared by the railroad companies.

The need for continental time zones stemmed directly from the problems of moving passengers and freight over the thousands of miles of rail line that covered North America by the 1880s. Since human beings had first begun keeping track of time, they set their clocks to the local movement of the sun. Even as late as the 1880s, most towns in the U.S. had their own local time, generally based on “high noon,” or the time when the sun was at its highest point in the sky. As railroads began to shrink the travel time between cities from days or months to mere hours, however, these local times became a scheduling nightmare. Railroad timetables in major cities listed dozens of different arrival and departure times for the same train, each linked to a different local time zone.

Timekeeping on the American railroads in the mid 19th century was somewhat confused. Each railroad used its own standard time, usually based on the local time of its headquarters or most important terminus, and the railroad’s train schedules were published using its own time. Some major railroad junctions served by several different railroads had a separate clock for each railroad, each showing a different time; the main station in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for example, kept six different times.

Charles F. Dowd proposed a system of one-hour standard time zones for American railroads about 1863, although he published nothing on the matter at that time and did not consult railroad officials until 1869. In 1870, he proposed four ideal time zones (having north-south borders), the first centered on Washington, D.C., but by 1872 the first was centered 75 W of Greenwich, with geographic borders (for example, sections of the Appalachian Mountains). Dowd’s system was never accepted by American railroads. Instead, U.S. and Canadian railroads implemented a version proposed by William F. Allen, the editor of the Traveler’s Official Railway Guide. The borders of its time zones ran through railroad stations, often in major cities. For example, the border between its Eastern and Central time zones ran through Detroit, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, and Charleston. It was inaugurated on Sunday, November 18, 1883, also called “The Day of Two Noons”, when each railroad station clock was reset as standard-time noon was reached within each time zone. The zones were named Intercolonial, Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific. Within one year, 85% of all cities with populations over 10,000, about 200 cities, were using standard time. A notable exception was Detroit (which is about half-way between the meridians of eastern time and central time), which kept local time until 1900, then tried Central Standard Time, local mean time, and Eastern Standard Time before a May 1915 ordinance settled on EST and was ratified by popular vote in August 1916. The confusion of times came to an end when Standard zone time was formally adopted by the U.S. Congress on March 19, 1918, in the Standard Time Act.

Nov 17 2014

Punting the Pundits

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

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

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Steven Rattner: nequality, Unbelievably, Gets Worse

THE Democrats’ drubbing in the midterm elections was unfortunate on many levels, but particularly because the prospect of addressing income inequality grows dimmer, even as the problem worsens.

To only modest notice, during the campaign the Federal Reserve put forth more sobering news about income inequality: Inflation-adjusted earnings of the bottom 90 percent of Americans fell between 2010 and 2013, with those near the bottom dropping the most. Meanwhile, incomes in the top decile rose. [..]

Perhaps income disparity resonated so little with politicians because we are inured to a new Gilded Age.

But we shouldn’t be. Nor should we be inattentive to the often ignored role that government plays in determining income distribution in each country.

Here’s what’s rarely reported:

Before the impact of tax and spending policies is taken into account, income inequality in the United States is no worse than in most developed countries and is even a bit below levels in Britain and, by some measures, Germany.

However, once the effect of government programs is included in the calculations, the United States emerges on top of the inequality heap.

Trevor Timm: First Snowden. Then tracking you on wheels. Now spies on a plane. Yes, surveillance is everywhere

The US government’s secret airborne dragnet is just the latest tool to snoop on your phone. Why aren’t we stopping this?

US government-owned airplanes that can cover most of the continental United States are covertly flying around the country, spying on tens of thousands of innocent people’s cellphones. It sounds like a movie plot, but in a remarkable report published on Thursday, the Wall Street Journal exposed that these spy planes are part of an actual mass surveillance program overseen by the Justice Department (DOJ). And it’s been kept secret from the public for years.

The Journal explained that the US Marshals Service, a sub-agency under DOJ’s control, has a small fleet of Cessna airplanes that are currently armed with high-tech surveillance gear called “dirtboxes” – essentially fake cell towers tricking your phone into connecting to them – that can vacuum the identifying information and location of ten of thousands of phones in a single flight. [..]

You might ask: Why are the US Marshals – the fugitive-chasing agents of Tommy Lee Jones lore – get the authority to launch this type of mass surveillance operation at all? That’s unclear, but thanks to some digging by the surveillance crowd on Twitter shortly after the Journal published its story, we know the marshals are far from the only US agency using dirtboxes.

Sam Pizzigati: Some ‘Old’ News for a Newly Elected Congress

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has just released its latest appraisal of America’s income breakdown. Whatever yardstick you use, the CBO shows, the rich are winning. Big.

How much income do America’s households take in? How much do they have left after taxes? Do federal taxes leave the nation less or more unequal?

Questions don’t get much more basic than these. Or more complicated either.

How, for instance, do we define income? Everyone agrees, of course, that anything anyone collects from a paycheck should count as income. As should any interest collected from a bank account or any profits from the sale of an asset.

But what about the money an employer shells out to cover an employee’s health insurance premiums? Or contributes into an employee’s 401(k)? Should these dollars be counted as income for the employee?

Calculating how much taxes people pay can pose similar puzzlers. How do we treat the taxes corporations pay on their income? Who in the end bears that burden? Shareholders? Consumers?

Paul Krugman: When Government Succeeds

The great American Ebola freakout of 2014 seems to be over. The disease is still ravaging Africa, and as with any epidemic, there’s always a risk of a renewed outbreak. But there haven’t been any new U.S. cases for a while, and popular anxiety is fading fast.

Before we move on, however, let’s try to learn something from the panic.

When the freakout was at its peak, Ebola wasn’t just a disease – it was a political metaphor. It was, specifically, held up by America’s right wing as a symbol of government failure. The usual suspects claimed that the Obama administration was falling down on the job, but more than that, they insisted that conventional policy was incapable of dealing with the situation. Leading Republicans suggested ignoring everything we know about disease control and resorting to extreme measures like travel bans, while mocking claims that health officials knew what they were doing.

Guess what: Those officials actually did know what they were doing. The real lesson of the Ebola story is that sometimes public policy is succeeding even while partisans are screaming about failure. And it’s not the only recent story along those lines.

Will Hutton: Banking is changing, slowly, but its culture is still corrupt

The latest financial scandal indicates how hard it is to stamp out double-dealing when bankers are allowed to live by their own rules

Another week, another financial scandal. Six global banks, including RBS and HSBC, were fined £2.6bn last week for rigging the foreign exchange markets. Since 2008, total fines levied in Europe and the US for banking crimes and misdemeanours now top £100bn, with banks making provision for a further £60bn. British banks alone have set aside an estimated £30bn for fines, provisions and litigation costs.

What has gone wrong with western finance?

The systemic ripping off of customers continued after the financial crisis to constitute what is now the biggest-ever global corporate scandal. Banks worldwide duped clients into buying products that were either not needed or provided no purpose. Worse, they organised financial markets whose purpose was to serve their own interests rather than those they purported to serve. It has proved a hard habit to break.

Robert Kuttner: Notes for Next Time: From Turnoff to Turnout

The voting turnout in this year’s congressional and gubernatorial elections was the lowest since 1942. Much of the story was in young people, poor people, black and Hispanic citizens who tend to support Democrats voting in far lower numbers than in 2008 or 2012. The Democrats just weren’t offering them very much.

But the other part of the Election Day story was older voters and the white working class, especially men, deserting the Democrats in droves — again, because Democrats didn’t seem to be offering much. Republicans, at least, were promising lower taxes.

Turnout on average dropped from 2012 by a staggering 42 percent. But as Sam Wang reported in a post-election piece for the American Prospect, the drop-off was evidently worse for Democrats.

The two parts of this story seem to create an impossible conundrum for Democrats: Do more for minorities and the poor, and you presumably risk driving social conservatives even further into the arms of Republicans. But ignore the needs of those who need more government activism — and the Democratic base fails to turn out.

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