Tag: Open Thread

The video of the UC Davis police officer pepper-spraying Occupy Davis protesters not only shows a trampling of First Amendment rights

As we grapple with this vandalism of the First Amendment, we should ask ourselves this: What if there had been no cameras on hand? What if we had only the word of the protesters and their sympathizers that this happened versus the word of authority figures that it did not? Is it so hard to imagine the students’ claims being dismissed, the media attention being a fraction of what it is, the public’s outrage falling along predictable ideological lines and these cops getting a walk?

That’s worth keeping in mind as legislators and law officers around the country move to criminalize the act of videotaping police in the performance of their duties.

David Sirota: Cities, the new hydrofracking victims

Despite devastating health risks, both parties are pushing to allow more drilling near urban areas

On the relatively rare occasions that city folk and suburbanites previously had to think about oil and gas drilling, many probably conjured images of grasshopper-esque rigs dotting remote landscapes like Wyoming’s mountain range, Alaska’s tundra or Oklahoma’s wind-swept plains. Most probably didn’t equate drilling with the bright lights of their big city, but they should have because urban America is fast becoming ground zero for the same fights over energy that have long threatened the great wide open.

With our nation’s still unquenchable (and still highly subsidized) thirst for fossil fuels, the false comfort of NIMBY-ism and the fairy-tale notions of “safety in numbers” is quickly vanishing in our cities, as controversial oil and gas exploration projects creep into metropolitan areas. Incredibly, this geographic trend is accelerating just as new drilling techniques are evoking serious concerns about excessive air pollution and about adverse effects on limited water supplies – problems that have plagued rural energy-producing regions for decades, but are sure to be even worse as they hit densely populated areas.

Mark LeVine: Not exactly deja vu all over again

As protesters continue to occupy Tahrir square, and the military continues the crackdown with impunity, divisions erupt.

As Egypt prepares for elections, Tahrir Square is a similacrum of its old self.

The world’s largest experiment in the effects of long term exposure to toxic tear gas seems, for the moment, to be winding down, as Egyptians prepare to vote for the first post-Mubarak cabinet. The SCAF and its political allies and bedfellows clearly hope that, as the smoke clears, enough Egyptians outside of Tahrir and other centres of protest will ignore the often grotesque violence visited on pro-democracy protesters and vote in a government that will reinforce – or at least not challenge – the decades-old patrimonial system.

That is surely what is behind this cruel experiment, with the Brotherhood leadership deciding it’s better to be an observer rather than a test subject.

But in the square, the effects of constant tear gas exposure on test subjects can now be documented, and while it’s produced a lot of injuries, strange flus and sheer exhaustion, it has only hardened attitudes against the SCAF and increasingly towards any political group that is perceived as having sold out the protesters.

Eugene Robinson: Romney Still Waiting for GOP Love

Moderator Wolf Blitzer opened Tuesday’s Republican debate by introducing himself and adding, for some reason, “Yes, that’s my real name.” A few moments later, the party’s most plausible nominee for president said the following: “I’m Mitt Romney, and yes, Wolf, that’s also my first name.”

But it’s not. Mitt is the candidate’s middle name. His first name is Willard.

And people wonder why this guy has an authenticity problem?

The debate, held at Washington’s historic DAR Constitution Hall, was focused on foreign policy. The subject matter seemed to offer Newt Gingrich, a former speaker of the House, the opportunity to highlight his experience and perhaps begin consolidating his sudden front-runner status. But if he expected to dance rings around the others in the minefields of international politics, he was mistaken.

Michael Winship: DC as ATM: Newt, the Ultimate Beltway Swindler

You maybe should think twice when even Jack Abramoff thinks you’re beneath contempt. Not that Newt Gingrich cares.

Abramoff, America’s favorite convicted influence peddler, told NBC’s David Gregory that presidential candidate and former Speaker of the House Gingrich is one of those “people who came to Washington, who had public service, and they cash in on it. They use their public service and access to make money.”

Newt, he continued, is “engaged in the exact kind of corruption that America disdains. The very things that anger the Tea Party movement and the Occupy Wall Street movement and everybody who is not in a movement and watches Washington and says why are these guys getting all this money, why do they go become so rich, why do they have these advantages?”

Why indeed? Granted, Abramoff’s in the middle of his promotion tour of confession and attempted redemption, a pot obscenely eager to call his kettle and former mentor black — especially if it sells books. But Casino Jack does have a point.

Most political analysis of America’s awful economy focuses on whether it will doom President Obama’s reelection or cause Congress to turn toward one party or the other. These are important questions, but we should really be looking at the deeper problems with which whoever wins in 2012 will have to deal.

Not to depress you, but our economic troubles are likely to continue for many years – a decade or more. At the current rate of job growth (averaging 90,000 new jobs per month over the last six months), 14 million Americans will remain permanently unemployed. The consensus estimate is that at least 90,000 new jobs are needed just to keep up with the growth of the labor force. Even if we get back to a normal rate of 200,000 new jobs per month, unemployment will stay high for at least ten years. Years of high unemployment will likely result in a vicious cycle, as relatively lower spending by the middle-class further slows job growth.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: From Alexandria To Zuccotti Park: They’ve Been Destroying Books For 2,000 Years

Fahrenheit 451: The temperature at which book paper catches fire and burns.

They’re back.

But then, they’ve never gone away. The Book Killers have always been with us. Before recorded history they were with us, murdering the scholars and storytellers and mystics of every tribe they ever conquered.

They were there when Great Library burned in Alexandria 2,000 years ago. They destroyed the library known as the House of Wisdom when the Mongol Empire invaded Baghdad in 1258. They say the invaders took the books from every ruined library in Baghdad and piled them into the Tigris River, to serve as a bridge for their soldiers and chariots.

They say the river ran black with ink for years.

In 2003 the United States invaded Iraq with an indifference, incompetence, and arrogance that led to anarchy in the streets. There was widespread rioting, vandalism, and looting of priceless ancient antiquities and manuscripts. The National Library burned, and the flames lit the skies for miles around.

Seven centuries later, the great library of Baghdad died again.

Michelle Chen: Washington’s Debt Panic and the Real Social Debt in America

In the wake of the Congressional super committee’s collapse, we finally have consensus on both sides of the aisle: the lawmakers orchestrating the partisan drama are, behind the scenes, happy to collaborate on destroying economic security for all but the wealthiest Americans.

Though the debt hysteria made good political theater, the main immediate impact on the budget is simply to prolong the sense of doom hovering over struggling households. The budget problem those families face isn’t some theoretical future debt crisis but the possibility of losing unemployment checks when a year-end legislative deadline hits.

Coleen Rowley: Celebrating Spiritual Death On Black Friday

How many remember that this “Black Friday” marks the 10th anniversary of George Bush’s famous presidential advisory just after 9/11 for citizens to do their patriotic duty by pushing their worries aside and going shopping? The idea of asking the American people to make sacrifices in the face of the coming “War on Terror” was too ’70s, too Jimmy Carter. [..]

By incessantly pushing on the emotional hot-buttons of fear, hate, greed, false pride and blind loyalty (in that order), warmongers and flim-flam men have, since time immemorial, sought to bring out the worst in human beings. Up to now the propaganda has worked, persuading most Americans to accept with minimal visible coercion the enormous corruption and cruelty at the heart of the corporate-military-industrial-congressional-media complex.

Robert Naiman: Saving lives – and billions – in Afghanistan

The Merkley amendment to withdraw troops will save American lives and money – and it’s in line with public opinion.

Washington, DC – If Senator Jeff Merkley’s “expedite the drawdown from Afghanistan” amendment to the National Defense Authorisation Act makes a strong showing, it could tip the Obama administration towards a faster drawdown.

That would likely save hundreds of US and Afghan lives – not to mention all the people who wouldn’t be physically and psychologically maimed – and could easily save the US hundreds of billions of dollars, at a time when the alleged need for fiscal austerity is being touted as a reason to cut Social Security benefits and raise the Medicare retirement age.

Everyone knows the Hippocratic Oath: “First, do no harm.” It’s a great motto to try to live by. But, unfortunately, in this life on Earth, “do no harm” isn’t always on the menu at the restaurant. Sometimes, you’re already doing harm, and there’s no feasible immediate path to zero harm. Sometimes the best you can do in the short run is to reduce the harm as much as possible. And if that’s the best you can do, then that is what you must do. It’s not politically feasible, unfortunately, to end the war tomorrow.

But we could take a big bite out of it in the next week. And that would save many lives and real money.

Ron Paul, the libertarian congressman from Texas, now seems to have an outside chance of winning the Iowa caucus vote. Not the presidential nomination. It seems highly unlikely that the Republicans are going to give the nod to a guy who disapproves of the Patriot Act and marriage licenses. But, still, he’s definitely having a moment.

And, therefore, I feel obliged to add him to our survey of presidential candidate book reports.

Just say a prayer Rick Santorum doesn’t take off next.

John Nichols: ‘Dear Jenny: I Fired Your Mom and Put You to Work to Help You “Rise.” Love, Newt’

The picture is of elementary-school age girl mopping the hall in front of a row of lockers.

“Dear Jenny,” reads the accompanying text, “I fired your Mom and put you to work to help you ‘rise.’ Love, Newt.”

A postscript adds: “Hope you don’t miss your house, food and health care too much. You’ll thank me in 30 years, if you survive. Promise!”

The new ad campaign from the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees goes to the heart of the matter. Former House Speaker and-at least for this week-Republican presidential front-runner Newt Gingrich really does want to fire school janitors and hire kids to mop the halls, clean the restrooms and fix the boilers. Gingrich claims this switch-up will help elementary and high-school age children “begin the process of rising.”

The real point of the proposal is to destroy public-sector unions. And he is willing to end collective bargaining rights obtained during the New Deal era and in the years since, as well as child labor laws passed during the Progressive Era of a century ago, in order to achieve a political end.

New York Times Editorial: Legal Education Reform

American legal education is in crisis. The economic downturn has left many recent law graduates saddled with crushing student loans and bleak job prospects. The law schools have been targets of lawsuits by students and scrutiny from the United States Senate for alleged false advertising about potential jobs. Yet, at the same time, more and more Americans find that they cannot afford any kind of legal help.

Addressing these issues requires changing legal education and how the profession sees its responsibility to serve the public interest as well as clients. Some schools are moving in promising directions. The majority are still stuck in an outdated instructional and business model.

The problems are not new. In 2007, a report by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching explained that law schools have contributed heavily to this crisis by giving “only casual attention to teaching students how to use legal thinking in the complexity of actual law practice.”

Robert Naiman: Dancing on the Supercommittee’s Grave, Singing Hallelujah

The spectacle of Democrats and Republicans arguing about who is to “blame” for the “failure” of the “supercommittee” is certainly tempting for many partisans, but any progressives who participate in the spectacle risk attacking their own interests to the degree that they promote the implicit assumption that the public interest would have been better served if the supercommittee had reached a deal.

We shouldn’t be arguing about who is to “blame” for this development. We should be arguing about who should be awarded credit for this best of all plausible outcomes.

We should, to borrow a phrase from Monty Python, be dancing on the supercommittee’s grave, singing hallelujah.

Ray McGovern: Ask the Candidates Real Questions – Like These

Ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern says it’s time for citizens to put politicians on the spot with some more pointed questions

Pity the pundits. It must be hard to pretend to be a journalist and live in constant fear of being one question or comment away from joining the jobless.

This Thanksgiving holiday weekend we can be thankful for the obscene transparency of the “mainstream” pundits’ efforts to avoid at all cost offending the corporations that own and use them.

Rather, media personalities who wish to be around for a while must do what they can to promote the notion of American exceptionalism and the need to sacrifice at home in order to defend and expand the Empire – “so that we don’t have to fight them here.”

From a global perspective looking back a few decades, it is hard to believe that major powers like China and Russia were fiercely competing with each other for improved relations with the U.S., and that we were able to play one off against the other to advance America’s interests.

They are now laughing at us – smiling at how far we have outreached ourselves in our attempts to project power and corner the world market.

President Obama’s Thanksgiving proclamation for 2011 reprises the boilerplate language employed in his previous seasonal statements. His messages have been a bit more historically and anthropologically detailed than those of his immediate predecessors – for instance, this year’s proclamation makes reference to how the feast of 1621 “honored the Wampanoag for generously extending their knowledge of local game and agriculture to the Pilgrims, and today we renew our gratitude to all American Indians and Alaska natives.”

Obama’s 2011 proclamation is even more religious in tone than Obama’s earlier ones – abandoning his previous bows to universalism in favor of more references to God and grace.

With each passing year, Obama’s proclamations become more generic. They are no more poetic, no more adventurous, than those issued by George W. Bush.

For Americans who think that Obama ought to use the bully pulpit more ably than his immediate predecessor, and than those Republicans who are campaigning so ardently to replace him, this is disappointing.

Michelle Chen: Washington’s Debt Panic and the Real Social Debt in America

In the wake of the Congressional Supercommittee’s collapse, we finally have consensus on both sides of the aisle: the lawmakers orchestrating the partisan drama are, behind the scenes, happy to collaborate on destroying economic security for all but the wealthiest Americans.

Though the debt hysteria made good political theater, the main immediate impact on the budget is simply to prolong the sense of doom hovering over struggling households. The budget problem those families face isn’t some theoretical future debt crisis but the possibility of losing unemployment checks when a year-end legislative deadline hits.

Federally funded unemployment benefits, which conservatives dismiss as a fluffy cushion for shiftless poor, have been a lifeline for some 17 million Americans in the past three years. In addition to helping individual households pay their bills, the benefits have had a ripple effect on cities and towns battered by an anemic job market,  “contributing nearly $180 billion in hard cash to those communities struggling with severe unemployment,” according to a report issued in October by the National Employment Law Project.

Robert Sheer: Thanks for What?

I love Thanksgiving for its illusion of abundance. It brings back early childhood memories of the one day each year during the Depression when the food on my family’s table was not the leftover produce that my Uncle Leon could no longer sell at his stall, or the nearly spoiled organ meats that our local butcher offered at a steep discount.

But Thanksgiving day was quite the opposite, and while I obviously can’t recall what was served in 1936, the year I was born, the holiday was soon seared into my childhood memory as the day when the good times looked upon us in the form of charity gift baskets from philanthropists of various religious and political orders, much like the needy will be served today in volunteer kitchens across America and just as soon will be forgotten.

Joe Conason: Realism and Compassion: Unacceptable in Today’s GOP

Tasteless and questionable as it was for CNN to “co-sponsor” a Republican presidential debate with a pair of right-wing Washington think-tanks, at least the branding was accurate. There among the honored interlocutors were the authors of dismal failure and national disgrace in the Bush era, such as Paul Wolfowitz and David Addington, whose presence helpfully reminds us that to elect a Republican risks a presidency that will make the same gross moral and strategic errors, or worse. Listening to them talk about Iran, a nation that unlike Iraq or the Taliban is a real military power, it was clear that we will certainly edge closer to another war with almost any Republican in power.

What the debate also revealed again is that a Republican who dares to utter a few words of compassion or realism is likely to prove unacceptable to the base of that party.

E.J. Dionne, Jr.: Obama’s Catholic Friends and Enemies

Any time the Obama administration touches issues related to the Roman Catholic Church, it seems to get itself caught in a rhetorical and moral crossfire that leaves all involved wounded and angry. This is what’s happening in the battle over how contraception should be covered under the new health care law.

Partly because it mishandled the issue at the outset, the Obama team seems destined either to leave supporters in the reproductive rights community irate, or to put the president’s Catholic sympathizers in a much weakened position.