Tag: Open Thread

Aug 17 2013

Punting the Pundits

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

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

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

New York Times Editorial Board: GPS Tracking and Secret Policies

This week brought fresh revelations about the National Security Agency’s sloppy and invasive collection of phone data on Americans and others, as reported first by The Washington Post. In another realm of surveillance – the government’s broad use of location tracking devices – the Justice Department was in federal court on Thursday defending its refusal to release memos containing information about its policies governing the use of GPS and other potentially invasive technologies. [..]

The public has a right to know the government’s policies on these matters. There is very good reason to be concerned about the government’s interpretation of its police powers, especially given the Obama administration’s insensitivity to privacy in its mass collection of phone data in the national security sphere.

Jay Rosen: When You’re in a Fourth Estate Situation

As things stand today, the Fourth Estate is a state of mind. Some in the press have it, some don’t. Some who have it are part of the institutional press. Some, like Ladar Levison and Edward Snowden, are not.

“I think if the American public knew what our government was doing, they wouldn’t be allowed to do it anymore.”

Those are the poignant words of Ladar Levison, founder of Lavabit, a secure email service that he voluntarily shut down when faced with some sort of demand from the U.S. government to reveal user information. The precise nature of that demand he cannot talk about for fear of being thrown in jail, perhaps the best example we now have for how the surveillance state undoes the First Amendment. But we know that Lavabit was used by Edward Snowden to communicate with the outside world when he was stuck in the Moscow airport. So use your imagination!

Robert Reich: Why Congress’s Gridlock Doesn’t Paralyze Government but Gridlocks Democracy

Congress began its summer recess last week and won’t reconvene until after Labor Day. You’d be forgiven for not noticing a difference. With just 15 bills signed into law so far this year, the 113th Congress is on pace to be the most unproductive since at least the 1940s.

But just because the legislature has ceased to function doesn’t mean our government has. Political decision making has moved to peripheral public entities, where power is exercised less transparently and accountability to voters is less direct. What we’re losing in the process isn’t government – it’s democracy.

Ralph Nader: Time to Stop Undermining Homeownership

Here’s a startling fact — more than 10 million Americans have been evicted from their homes since 2007. That’s nearly the entire population of the state of Michigan. Just imagine if the people of an entire state were rendered homeless overnight — it would be quite a calamity. The news media would no doubt cover it 24/7, millions of dollars would be raised in aid, and thousands would volunteer to help shelter the displaced. Any companies responsible for such a massive displacement of people would be vilified — think of the public relations lashing BP received after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. While the housing crisis does not spur the same emotional response from the media and the general population as say, a natural disaster or a terrorist attack; perhaps it should. The housing crisis was not an inevitable glitch in the system, but rather a long-foreseen consequence of an industry running rampant in the name of profit.

The housing crisis is a multi-faceted issue with many moving parts, but here are some recent developments that warrant discussion.

Amy Goodman: Stop-and-Frisk: The World According to Questlove

Hip-hop hit a milestone this week, turning 40 years old. The same week, Federal District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin, in a 195-page ruling, declared the New York Police Department’s practice of stop-and-frisk unconstitutional. Hip-hop and stop-and-frisk are central aspects of the lives of millions of people, especially black and Latino youths.

Ahmir Thompson was just 2 years old when hip-hop got its start in 1973, but already had shown his talent for music. Thompson is now known professionally as Questlove, an accomplished musician and producer, music director and drummer for the Grammy Award-winning hip-hop band The Roots, which is the house band on the NBC show “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.” He and The Roots soon will move with Fallon to the even more popular “The Tonight Show.” Despite his success, Questlove confronts racism in his daily life. But he has built a platform, a following, which he uses to challenge the status quo, like stop-and-frisk.

David Sirota: A Civics Lesson From America’s Education Debate

Paradoxes come in all different forms, but here’s one that perfectly fits this Gilded Age: The most significant lesson from the ongoing debate about American education has little to do with schools and everything to do with money. This lesson comes from a series of recent scandals that expose the financial motives of the leaders of the so-called education “reform” movement-the one that is trying to privatize public schools.

Aug 17 2013

On This Day In History August 17

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.

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

August 17 is the 229th day of the year (230th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 136 days remaining until the end of the year.

The Dakota War of 1862 (also known as the Sioux Uprising, Sioux Outbreak of 1862, the Dakota Conflict, the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 or Little Crow’s War) was an armed conflict between the United States and several bands of the eastern Sioux or Dakota which began on August 17, 1862, along the Minnesota River in southwest Minnesota. It ended with a mass execution of 38 Dakota men on December 26, 1862, in Mankato, Minnesota.

Throughout the late 1850s, treaty violations by the United States and late or unfair annuity payments by Indian agents caused increasing hunger and hardship among the Dakota. Traders with the Dakota previously had demanded that the government give the annuity payments directly to them (introducing the possibility of unfair dealing between the agents and the traders to the exclusion of the Dakota). In mid-1862 the Dakota demanded the annuities directly from their agent, Thomas J. Galbraith. The traders refused to provide any more supplies on credit under those conditions, and negotiations reached an impasse.

On August 17, 1862, four Dakota killed five American settlers while on a hunting expedition. That night a council of Dakota decided to attack settlements throughout the Minnesota River valley to try to drive whites out of the area. There has never been an official report on the number of settlers killed, but estimates range from 400 to 800. It is said that until the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the civilian wartime toll from the Dakota conflict was the highest in U.S. history (excluding those of the Civil War).

Over the next several months, continued battles between the Dakota against settlers and later, the United States Army, ended with the surrender of most of the Dakota bands. By late December 1862, soldiers had taken captive more than a thousand Dakota, who were interned in jails in Minnesota. After trials and sentencing, 38 Dakota were hanged on December 26, 1862, in the largest one-day execution in American history. In April 1863 the rest of the Dakota were expelled from Minnesota to Nebraska and South Dakota. The United States Congress abolished their reservations.

Aug 16 2013

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

Paul Krugman: Moment of Truthiness

We all know how democracy is supposed to work. Politicians are supposed to campaign on the issues, and an informed public is supposed to cast its votes based on those issues, with some allowance for the politicians’ perceived character and competence.

We also all know that the reality falls far short of the ideal. Voters are often misinformed, and politicians aren’t reliably truthful. Still, we like to imagine that voters generally get it right in the end, and that politicians are eventually held accountable for what they do.

But is even this modified, more realistic vision of democracy in action still relevant? Or has our political system been so degraded by misinformation and disinformation that it can no longer function?

New York Times Editorial Board: No Banker Left Behind

The Detroit bankruptcy case has been cast as a contest between bondholders and pensioners that can be resolved only by shared sacrifice.

In principle, we have no problem with that, though in practice, the pensioners’ fair share will have to take into account their extreme vulnerability: Public pensions are not federally insured and many municipal retirees do not receive Social Security.

What we do have a problem with is shared sacrifice that does not seem to apply to the big banks that abetted Detroit’s descent into bankruptcy.

John R. MacArthur: Sophistry Bestrides ‘Free-Trade’ Axis

The day before Detroit declared bankruptcy, I found The New York Times’s Thomas Friedman up to his old tricks, extolling the North American Free Trade Agreement and “free trade” in general in a column so foolish and mendacious that his editors would have been well advised to spike it.

There’s no coincidence, I’m sure, that Detroit – the symbol and former center of American industrial power – officially threw in the towel so close to publication of Friedman’s claptrap. But the timing is worth noting as President Obama is now about to give away big chunks of the remaining U.S. manufacturing base to Japan and Vietnam, among other Pacific Rim countries, through a proposed free-trade agreement called the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Richard (RJ) Escow: The ‘Bankization’ of America

The share of our national income which goes to corporate profit is the highest it’s been since they started tracking it in 1929, while the share going to people — as salary and wages — is the lowest. And the percentage of that corporate profit which goes to Wall Street is also the highest on record.

We’re becoming a financialized economy. Never before has the manipulation of money counted for so much and the real-world economy of people and consumer goods counted for so little.

And none of it is an accident.

Robert Naiman: Amend or Repeal the Espionage Act To Protect Journalists and Whistle-blowers

Isn’t it high time to amend or repeal the Espionage Act of 1917 so that it can’t be used to charge whistle-blowers or journalists with “aiding the enemy”?

Note that this demand is completely separable from saying that there should be no consequences for whistle-blowers who leak classified information to the media or journalists who publish classified information that is leaked to them. If I say that I am against the death penalty, it does not mean that I am against consequences for people who are found guilty of committing murder. It means that I don’t think that execution by the state should be one of those consequences. If I say that I am against the use of incarceration to punish nonviolent drug offenses, it does not mean that I am against consequences for people who are found guilty of nonviolent drug offenses. It means that I don’t think that incarceration should be one of those consequences. If I say that I am against a war – or killing Iranian civilians by cutting off their access to essential medicines, in blatant violation of international humanitarian law – to prevent Iran from “acquiring a nuclear weapons capability,” [sic] it does not mean that I think that efforts by Iran to pursue a “nuclear weapons capability” should face no consequences. The question is not whether the conduct being sanctioned should face no sanction. The question is whether “the punishment fits the crime.”

Robert C. Koehler: Stopped and Frisked by an Occupying Army

Stopping crime before it happens is a great idea, but stopping young men for “walking while black” – touted by true believers as the same thing – is a game played by an occupying army.

The tactic is called stop-and-frisk. As practiced by many police departments, including New York’s, it amounts to blatant racial profiling. Stop-and-frisk makes it impossible for young men of color to lead normal lives, to walk outside without fear of preemptive police harassment. The long-term hatred and tension it engenders does far more harm to a community than all the questionable good that proponents ascribe to it. Security based on racism is a sham.

Aug 16 2013

On This Day In History August 7

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.

August 16 is the 228th day of the year (229th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 137 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1896, Gold discovered in the Yukon.

While salmon fishing near the Klondike River in Canada’s Yukon Territory on this day in 1896, George Carmack reportedly spots nuggets of gold in a creek bed. His lucky discovery sparks the last great gold rush in the American West.

Hoping to cash in on reported gold strikes in Alaska, Carmack had traveled there from California in 1881. After running into a dead end, he headed north into the isolated Yukon Territory, just across the Canadian border. In 1896, another prospector, Robert Henderson, told Carmack of finding gold in a tributary of the Klondike River. Carmack headed to the region with two Native American companions, known as Skookum Jim and Tagish Charlie. On August 16, while camping near Rabbit Creek, Carmack reportedly spotted a nugget of gold jutting out from the creek bank. His two companions later agreed that Skookum Jim–Carmack’s brother-in-law–actually made the discovery.

Aug 15 2013

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

Robert Reich: The Real Price of Congress’s Gridlock

CONGRESS began its summer recess last week and won’t reconvene until after Labor Day. You’d be forgiven for not noticing a difference. With just 15 bills signed into law so far this year, the 113th Congress is on pace to be the most unproductive since at least the 1940s.

But just because the legislature has ceased to function doesn’t mean our government has. Political decision making has moved to peripheral public entities, where power is exercised less transparently and accountability to voters is less direct. What we’re losing in the process isn’t government – it’s democracy.

Eugene Robinson: What NSA Reforms?

President Obama’s message about the government’s massive electronic surveillance programs came through loud and clear: Get over it.

The president used more soothing words in his pre-vacation news conference Friday, but that was the gist. With perhaps the application of a fig leaf here and a sheen of legalistic mumbo jumbo there, the snooping will continue.

Unless, of course, we demand that it end.

The modest reforms Obama proposed do not begin to address the fundamental question of whether we want the National Security Agency to log all of our phone calls and read at least some of our emails, relying on secret judicial orders from a secret court for permission. The president indicated he is willing to discuss how all this is done-but not whether.

John Nichols: Next Fed Head Should Meet the Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren Standard

No presidential appointment, no Senate confirmation, matters more than the one that will soon come for the post of chairman of the Federal Reserve.

If ever there was a time to ask for more-and better-this is it.

Yet, for the most part, official Washington is on autopilot, preparing for the replacement of outgoing Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke with another predictable insider-perhaps even a choice the ultimate predictable insider: former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers.

President Obama, who says he will make his selection this fall, has defended Summers. A number of prominent Democratic senators have suggested that the president consider a more appealing prospect: Janet Yellen, the vice chair of the board of governors of the Fed.

But not everyone is satisfied with predictable prospects, or politics as usual.

Senators Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, and Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, keep making the right demands and asking the right questions.

Robert Fisk: Endless War on Terror Far From Noble Cause

It was George W. Bush who reacted to the 9/11 attacks as a manifestation of Evil, imposing upon the United States the duty to extirpate the Foul Fiend and his offspring Terror, so as to restore Virtue by means of global war.

This was completely familiar moral territory to 21st century Americans, who had never in 150 years fought a war that was not described in the language of religion. From 1861 forward, Americans were trampling out the vintage of the Lord’s wrath, answering the call of His trumpet that would never sound retreat, calling Americans to die to make men free. A noble task, if by now become a hollow one.

Robert Sheer: Restore Honor and Pardon Edward Snowden

How do you justify criminally charging a government contractor for revealing an alarming truth that the public has every right to know? That is the contradiction raised by President Obama now that he has, in effect, acknowledged that Edward Snowden was an indispensable whistle-blower who significantly raised public awareness about a government threat to our freedom.

Unfortunately, the president didn’t have the grace and courage to concede that precise point and remains committed to imprisoning Snowden instead of thanking him for serving the public interest. But Julian Assange, no stranger to unrequited integrity, nailed it. “Today, the president of the United States validated Edward Snowden’s role as a whistleblower by announcing plans to reform America’s global surveillance program,” the WikiLeaks founder said in a statement posted Saturday, the day after Obama’s remarks.

Jim Hightower: Corporate Greed Is Making Us Sick

Low-wage workers in the restaurant industry are particularly vulnerable and, since they handle food, particularly threatening. Nearly 80 percent of America’s food service workers receive no paid sick leave, and researchers have found that about half of them go to work ill because they fear losing their jobs if they don’t. As a result, a study by the Centers for Disease Control finds that ill workers are causing up to 80 percent of America’s stomach flu outbreaks, which is one reason CDC has declared our country’s lack of paid sick leave to be a major public health threat.

You’d think the industry itself would be horrified enough by this endangerment of its customers that it would take the obvious curative step of providing the leave. But au contraire, amigos, such huge and hugely profitable chains as McDonald’s, Red Lobster and Taco Bell not only fail to provide such commonsense care for their employees, but also have lobbied furiously against city and state efforts to require paid sick days.

Aug 15 2013

On This Day In History August 15

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.

August 15 is the 227th day of the year (228th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 138 days remaining until the end of the year.

While there were many significant events that happened on August 15, the most delightful and happily remember is Woodstock. Not many of my Baby Boomer generation remember that today Emperor Hirohito announced the unconditional surrender of Japan or that East Germany began the building of the Berlin Wall or that Malcolm slain Macbeth, it was peace, love and Rock N’ Roll in the mud with a lack of sanitary facilities but lots of music from some of the best at the Woodstock Festivalduring the weekend of August 15 to 18, 1969. The site was a dairy farm in West Lake, NY near the town of Bethel in Sullivan County, some 43 miles southwest from the actual town of Woodstock in Ulster County. During that rainy weekend some 500,000 concert goers became a pivotal moment in the history of Rock and Roll.

Peace, Drugs and Rock N’Roll. Rock On.

Aug 15 2013

Around the Blogosphere

photo Winter_solstice.gifThe main purpose our blogging is to communicate our ideas, opinions, and stories both fact and fiction. The best part about the the blogs is information that we might not find in our local news, even if we read it online. Sharing that information is important, especially if it educates, sparks conversation and new ideas. We have all found places that are our favorites that we read everyday, not everyone’s are the same. The Internet is a vast place. Unlike “Punting the Pundits which focuses on opinion pieces mostly from the mainstream media and the larger news web sites, “Around the Blogosphere” will focus more on the medium to smaller blogs and articles written by some of the anonymous and not so anonymous writers and links to some of the smaller pieces that don’t make it to “Pundits” by Krugman, Baker, etc.

We encourage you to share your finds with us. It is important that we all stay as well informed as we can.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

This is an Open Thread.

It has been a busy week, with not enough time to cover the other important news, events and just some “stuff”.

First some the election news.

Newark Mayor Cory Booker won the Democratic nomination to fill the Senate vacancy in New Jersey that was left with the death of Sen. Frank Lautenberg. He beat Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver, Reps. Rush Holt and Frank Pallone.  But, hey, what’s another corporate “bright shiny object” in the Senate. He will face Republican Steve Lonegan in a special election on October 16.

In the New York City mayoral primaries, the focus has been on the Democrats. Anthony Weiner’s lack of self control and awareness has him sinking in the polls giving liberal Bill De Blasio, the current Public Advocate, a chance to shine and shine he did. De Balsio has taken the lead from City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. according to Tuesday’s Quinnapiac poll:

Among likely Democratic voters, de Blasio took 30 percent of the vote, followed by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn at 24 percent, former comptroller Bill Thompson at 22 percent, former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) at 10 percent, comptroller John Liu at 6 percent and former council member Sal Albanese at 1 percent. Another 7 percent was undecided.

De Blasio also held the lead in three potential runoff scenarios, beating Quinn by 54 percent to 38 percent, Thompson by 50 percent to 40 percent, and Weiner by a whopping 72 percent to 22 percent.

De Blasio’s opposition to Stop n’ Frisk and message that appeals to the middle and working classes have started to resonate.

In the race for NYC’s Comptroller, former governor Eliot Spitzer has a 19 point lead over his opponent Manhattan Borough President Scott Springer. Wall Steet is not happy. Good. They should be afraid. Eliot with subpoena power may be an awesome sight.

The three Republican candidates, John Catsimatidis, George McDonald and Joseph Lhota, met for a debate last night. Essentially their message was: “Good job, Bloomie” and promised more of the same. Not exactly a winning message, guys.

Any way, the NYC primary day is September 10, then the real fun begins.

On to the blogs.

From Firedoglake:

TBogg says his “farewell” to his blog at FDL, at last.

Over at Corrente:

Lambert‘s Obamacare Cluster F**k continues:

This from lambert will either make you sick or raise your blood pressure to stroke levels:

Then he asks this question:

From transcriber:

At naked capitalism:

From Marcy Wheeler at emptywheel:

From our friends at Voices on the Square:

Electronic Frontier Foundation:

I knew there was another reason I admired Bette Midler other than her singing:






h/t Atrios at Eschaton

The woman rocks in more ways than you’d expect.

Aug 14 2013

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”.

Wednesday is Ladies’ Day.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Katrina vanden Heuvel: A populist insurgency in New York City

For the most part, Americans outside of New York have heard only one story about New York City’s mayoral race – the bizarre public self- immolation of former representative Anthony Weiner. But obscured beneath the flood lights of the Weiner farce is a populist insurgency that exemplifies the coming struggle to define the Democratic Party in the wake of President Obama. [..]

In the post-collapse, post-Occupy, post-Obama world, Democrats are headed into a fierce battle over the direction of the party. Obama forged his new majority largely on anti-war, socially liberal causes – aided by Republican reaction in contrast. But the Democratic Party’s consensus around social issues and diversity has masked a growing divide on economic issues between the Wall Street wing of the party and a populist wing that is beginning to stir. The mayor’s race in New York City is an early entry in this debate about the future of the party and the country. May it not be obscured by Weiner’s spectacular flameout.

Lindsey Bever: James Risen’s risk of prison means journalism is being criminalised

That a New York Times national security reporter may be jailed for refusing to name a source is a total affront to press freedom

Committing an act of journalism could soon become an imprisonable offence.

New York Times reporter James Risen has been ordered to testify in the criminal trial of former Central Intelligence Agency official Jeffrey Sterling, who has been indicted under the Espionage Act of 1917 – for leaking classified information to Risen for publication in his book, State of War. Last month, the US court of appeals for the fourth circuit in Richmond, Virginia, ruled that Risen could not claim a reporter’s privilege under the first amendment to win exemption from being compelled to testify. [..]

We take too much in our democracy for granted – for journalists cannot successfully hold government accountable in a society that does not recognise a reporter’s right to exercise discretion with his sources and the information they provide. This administration has an atrocious record for prosecuting whistleblowers. Can it really get away with jailing the reporters who talk to them, too?

Jennifer Hoelzer: If Obama wanted an ‘open debate’ on NSA spying, why thwart one for so long?

The president asks us to trust him on government surveillance, yet his administration constantly denigrates critics as unpatriotic

Tim Cushing made one of my favorite points of (last) week in his Tuesday post “Former NSA boss calls Snowden’s supporters internet shut-ins; equates transparency activists with al-Qaida“, when he explained that “some of the most ardent defenders of our nation’s surveillance programs” – much like proponents of overreaching cyber-legislation, like Sopa – have a habit of “belittling” their opponents as a loose confederation of basement-dwelling loners. I think it’s worth pointing out that General Hayden’s actual rhetoric is even more inflammatory than Cushing’s. Not only did the former NSA director call us “nihilists, anarchists, activists, Lulzsec, Anonymous, twentysomethings who haven’t talked to the opposite sex in five or six years”, he equates transparency groups like the ACLU with al-Qaida.

I appreciated this post for two reasons. [..]

But my main reason for singling out Tim’s post this week is that Hayden’s remark goes to the heart of what I continue to find most offensive about the administration’s handling of the NSA surveillance programs, which is their repeated insinuation that anyone who raises concerns about national security programs doesn’t care about national security.

Moira Herbst: Larry Summers’ record should rule him out of the Fed chairmanship

Why would we want a key advocate of the banking deregulation that brought us the great recession to head the Federal Reserve?

As a general rule in life – and certainly, in applying for a job – your record counts. If you’ve had a history of alienating people, being consistently wrong on the biggest issues in your field and screwing up – say, by helping set the stage (pdf) for the worst recession since the Great Depression – it’s time to look for a new career.

But that’s not, apparently, how life works out for Larry Summers, the fervent champion of deregulation and paid Wall Street consultant confirmed in last week’s presidential press conference to be a leading contender as Obama’s pick for the next chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Rebecca Hellmich: Who Dies in Yemen Drone Strikes?

A headline is sometimes worth a thousand words, and this was definitely the case after a deadly drone strike occurred in Yemen last week.

“Drone Strike Kills Six Suspected Militants in Yemen,” a Reuters headline (8/7/13) declared.  “More Suspected Al-Qaeda Militants Killed as Drone Strikes Intensify in Yemen,” a CNN.com headline  (8/8/13) offered. Whatever the language, one message was clear: “Suspected terrorists” or “militants” had been killed.

But with several drone strikes over the past week in Yemen, how can anyone actually know who is being killed?

The deceptive way the Obama administration defines “militants” has already been well – established – as the New York Times (5/29/12) put it, the White House policy “in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants.”

Deborah Burger: Let’s Talk about a Real Healthcare System (And, No, I Don’t Mean “Obamacare”)

Let’s talk about healthcare. I don’t mean debating the Affordable Care Act. I mean healthcare, as in: If everyone needs healthcare, guarantee that everybody gets it.

I know, when it comes to healthcare, it’s easy to get into a debate for or against Obamacare. But we nurses see the world through a different lens: our patients.

Good healthcare is a fundamental resource that keeps America’s big engine running. Every day, as we do our best to care for our patients, nurses see people with chronic disease like asthma or diabetes who can’t afford insurance costs or medication. Maybe they’re absent from work, tired, and distracted from trying to manage their health on a shoestring. They run the risk of hospitalization. They struggle for a distant unreachable shore hoping something will help. They can’t get ahead because their health keeps dragging them down.

Aug 14 2013

On This Day In History August 14

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.

August 14 is the 226th day of the year (227th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 139 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law.

On this day in 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs into law the Social Security Act. Press photographers snapped pictures as FDR, flanked by ranking members of Congress, signed into law the historic act, which guaranteed an income for the unemployed and retirees. FDR commended Congress for what he considered to be a “patriotic” act.

U.S. Social Security is a social insurance program that is funded through dedicated payroll taxes called Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA). Tax deposits are formally entrusted to the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund, the Federal Disability Insurance Trust Fund, the Federal Hospital Insurance Trust Fund, or the Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Fund.

The main part of the program is sometimes abbreviated OASDI (Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance) or RSDI (Retirement, Survivors, and Disability Insurance). When initially signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935 as part of his New Deal, the term Social Security covered unemployment insurance as well. The term, in everyday speech, is used to refer only to the benefits for retirement, disability, survivorship, and death, which are the four main benefits provided by traditional private-sector pension plans. In 2004 the U.S. Social Security system paid out almost $500 billion in benefits.

By dollars paid, the U.S. Social Security program is the largest government program in the world and the single greatest expenditure in the federal budget, with 20.8% for social security, compared to 20.5% for discretionary defense and 20.1% for Medicare/Medicaid. Social Security is currently the largest social insurance program in the U.S., constituting 37% of government expenditure and 7% of the gross domestic product and is currently estimated to keep roughly 40% of all Americans age 65 or older out of poverty. The Social Security Administration is headquartered in Woodlawn, Maryland, just to the west of Baltimore.

Social Security privatization became a major political issue for more than three decades during the presidencies of Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush.

Aug 13 2013

Punting the Pundits

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

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

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

New York Times Editorial Board: Racial Discrimination in Stop-and-Frisk

Judge Shira Scheindlin of Federal District Court in New York upheld the bedrock principle of individual liberty on Monday when she ruled that the tactics underlying New York City’s stop-and-frisk program violated the constitutional rights of minority citizens. She found that the city had been “deliberately indifferent” to police officers illegally detaining and frisking minority residents on the streets over many years. [..]

Mayor Bloomberg, who has steadfastly supported this corrosive and socially damaging program, seemed unchanged on Monday. He arrogantly dismissed the suit and this ruling as the work of “one small group of advocates – and one judge,” repudiating the outrage about stop-and-frisk that has been growing in the city for years.

He has promised to appeal, but, fortunately, he will be leaving City Hall soon. His successor should retract the appeal and begin the process of bringing New York City’s police practices in line with the Constitution.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: What Should We Think About the Arrests at JPMorgan Chase?

Four years after Wall Street’s malfeasance dealt a telling blow the economy, and long after tens of billions of dollars have been paid out for banker fraud, reports say that we’re about to see the first arrests of Wall Street bank employees. What’s more, the suspects work at JPMorgan Chase — a bank which, ironically enough, politicians and pundits insisted was the “good bank” after the financial crisis hit in 2008.

In fact, Chase CEO Jamie Dimon spent years speaking out forcefully against additional bank regulation. (Lately, not so much…)

Financial cases can seem complicated. What should we think about these recent announcements in the “London Whale” case?

Trevor Timm: Edward Snowden is a patriot

Does President Barack Obama think we’re stupid?

That’s the only conclusion possible after watching Friday’s bravura performance in which the president announced a set of proposals meant to bring more transparency to the National Security Agency – and claimed he would have done it anyway, even if Edward Snowden had never decided to leak thousands of highly sensitive documents to The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald.

But even as he grudgingly admitted that the timing, at least, of his suggestions was a consequence of Snowden’s actions, the president declared, “I don’t think Mr. Snowden was a patriot.” When you look at what has changed over the past two months, though, it’s hard not to wonder, “What could be more patriotic than what Snowden did?”

Robert Reich: Why the Anger?

The last time America was this bitterly divided was in the 1920s, which was the last time income, wealth, and power were this concentrated.

When average people feel the game is rigged, they get angry. And that anger can easily find its way into deep resentments — of the poor, of blacks, of immigrants, of unions, of the well-educated, of government.

This shouldn’t be surprising. Demagogues throughout history have used anger to target scapegoats — thereby dividing and conquering, and distracting people from the real sources of their frustrations.

Make no mistake: The savage inequality America is experiencing today is deeply dangerous.

William K. Black: Why Are Appraisers Furious at Fraud by Their Peers While Corporate Lawyers Are Complacent?

I have done a series of articles about the efforts of honest appraisers (which began in 2000) and loan brokers to alert the lenders, the markets, and the government to the twin fraud epidemics (appraisals and “liar’s” loans) committed by lenders’ controlling officers that drove the financial crisis.

Honest appraisers could have profited greatly by becoming dishonest appraisers who would be given the lucrative assignments by fraudulent lenders’ controlling officers and their agents. Instead, honest appraisers suffered serious losses of income because they refused to succumb to the extortion efforts of the fraudulent lenders and their agents.[..]

What about corporate lawyers? I get the same answer about heroes when I speak to legal groups made up of professionals who represent corporations. On August 9, 2013 I had an opportunity to test the accuracy of this answer when I participated in a meeting of nearly 20 law professors who teach white-collar crime classes. Some of these professors teach at schools that regularly send their graduates to Wall Street. The hot business in white-collar crime is corporate investigations. I asked my counterparts if they could name a hero among corporate counsel — any counsel who stopped a control fraud at a major firm or who was fired trying to stop the fraud. No one could think of a corporate counsel (in-house or outside counsel) who had done so. As lawyers and teachers of lawyers we must be both horrified and energized (to change how we teach) by that answer. (I hope that there are corporate lawyers who were heroes we have not heard of yet.)

Dean Baker: The Smart Boys: Larry Summers and Jeff Bezos

The news in the last couple of weeks has had endless references to two people who we have been repeatedly told are brilliant: former Treasury Secretary and top Obama advisor Larry Summers and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. The paeans to the genius of both men say a great deal about the quality of public debate in elite circles. [..]

It will be a big step forward when reporters and columnists are able to look at the people they consider brilliant with open eyes and talk about their accomplishments and failures in a serious way. In the recent Summers and Bezos chapters, they have been awed into vapidity.

Gary Younge: America cares for you – until you start asking questions

Manning, Snowden and Trayvon Martin: a series of legal cases is making US citizens re-evaluate what the state is really for

Those who defend this version of the all-powerful, all-caring state have little choice but to demonise those who oppose it. They assume their powers on the basis that they are best qualified to know what’s best for the public, even when the public thinks differently. Those who challenge such hubris are dealt with severely. The enemy in the NSA scandal is not those who are spying on you and lying about it, but the one who tells you about it. The criminal, in the Manning case, is not the soldiers who murder innocent civilians and laugh about it or the politicians who sent them to war but the young man who exposes their crimes.

The state is right to be worried. For while it has aggregated power, it has failed to garner the influence to sustain or justify it. Manning said he hoped by releasing the cables he would spark “worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms”. The leaks informed the Arab spring, revealing the venality of the leaders and the complicity of the US. When Snowden came out as a whistleblower, he said his greatest fear was “that nothing will change”. As Obama moves to modestly reform the NSA, the public he claims to be protecting shows growing support for Snowden. Neither the government nor the judiciary has been able to point to a single credible example of how its secrecy, neglect, deception or persecution in these cases has protected anybody or anything. When they insist such measures are crucial for security, they evidently mean security of the state – not the people who live in it.

Load more