Tag: Open Thread

The August employment report, released on Friday, is bleak on all counts, but at least it leaves no doubt that the United States is in the grip of a severe and worsening jobs crisis. That should lend a sense of urgency to the speech on jobs that President Obama plans to deliver this week.

The August employment report, released on Friday, is bleak on all counts, but at least it leaves no doubt that the United States is in the grip of a severe and worsening jobs crisis. That should lend a sense of urgency to the speech on jobs that President Obama plans to deliver this week.

Michele Chen: Labor Day Showdown: Can Advocates Stop ‘NAFTA of the Pacific’?

This Labor Day, the Pacific Rim will wash into the Midwest’s flagship city, and activists will confront the tides of global commerce with a demand for global economic justice.

At trade talks in Chicago, the Obama administration will work with other officials to develop a trade agreement that will incorporate Vietnam, Brunei, Singapore, Malaysia, New Zealand, Australia, Chile and Peru. Labor, environmental and human rights groups will gather in the city to warn that the structure, and guiding ideology, of the emerging trade deal could expand a model of free-marketeering that has displaced masses of workers across the globe and granted multinationals unprecedented powers to flout national and international laws.

Maureen Dowd: One and Done?

ONE day during the 2008 campaign, as Barack Obama read the foreboding news of the mounting economic and military catastrophes that W. was bequeathing his successor, he dryly remarked to aides: “Maybe I should throw the game.”

On the razor’s edge of another recession; blocked at every turn by Republicans determined to slice him up at any cost; starting an unexpectedly daunting re-election bid; and puzzling over how to make a prime-time speech about infrastructure and payroll taxes soar, maybe President Obama is wishing that he had thrown the game.

The leader who was once a luminescent, inspirational force is now just a guy in a really bad spot.

Mark Weisbot: Is This Minustah’s ‘Abu Ghraib Moment’ in Haiti?

Shock video of UN soldiers apparently raping a Haitian teenager raises questions about why these ‘peacekeepers’ are there at all

The video is profoundly disturbing. It shows four men, identified as Uruguayan troops from the UN mission in Haiti (Minustah), seemingly in the act of raping an 18-year-old Haitian youth. Two have the victim pinned down on a mattress, with his hands twisted high up his back so that he cannot move. Perhaps the most unnerving part of the video is the constant chorus of laughter from the alleged perpetrators; to them, apparently, it’s just a drunken party.

ABC News reports that a Uruguayan navy lieutenant, Nicolas Casariego, has confirmed the authenticity of the video. A medical certificate filed with the court in Port Salut, a southern coastal town where the incident took place, says that the victim was beaten and had injuries consistent with a sexual assault.

The incident is likely to pour more gasoline on the fire of resentment that Haitians have for the UN troops who have occupied their country for more than seven years. There has been a dire pattern of abuses: in December 2007, more than 100 UN soldiers from Sri Lanka were deported under charges of sexual abuse of under-age girls. In 2005, UN troops went on the rampage in Cité Soleil, one of the poorest areas in Port-au-Prince, killing as many as 23 people, including children, according to witnesses. After the raid, the humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders reported: “On that day, we treated 27 people for gunshot wounds. Of them, around 20 were women under the age of 18.”

THE economic crisis in the United States is also a racial crisis. White Americans are hurting, but nonwhite Americans are hurting even more. Yet leaders in both political parties – for different reasons – continue to act as though race were anachronistic and irrelevant in a country where an African-American is the president.

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Both parties should accept that the question of whether policies help narrow the racial divide must be part of the discussion. After all, it was the Republican-led search for racial progress in the 1860s and the Democratic-led fight for civil rights in the 1960s – buttressed, of course, by African-Americans’ own freedom struggle – that allowed the election of a black president in 2008.

Joe Conason: How to Honor the True Spirit of 9/11: First, Ignore Limbaugh

f volunteerism is suddenly unpatriotic and even “socialist,” that will come as a nasty surprise to many of the Republicans and conservatives who always have supported such efforts, notably including both presidents named Bush. And if stepping up to help our neighbors and community on 9/11 would somehow dishonor the Americans killed in those infamous attacks-as feverish critics of President Barack Obama now scream-then what do they think actually happened on that day 10 years ago?

The latest outbreak of phony outrage began when the president, following a tradition established by George W. Bush, announced that he and the first lady will mark the upcoming anniversary as a “National Day of Service and Remembrance” and urged Americans to “come together, in their communities and neighborhoods, to honor the victims of 9/11 and to reaffirm the strength of our nation with acts of service and charity.”

To Rush Limbaugh and assorted lesser cogs in the right-wing noise machine, that was a deeply controversial statement and an attempt to “politicize” the event-as if the White House had ordered everybody to put on blue caps, join a local Obama for America chapter and then build a solar house for the poor.

Eugene Robinson: Always Some Bushie There to Remind Us

Thank you, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, for emerging from your secure, undisclosed locations to remind us how we got into this mess: It didn’t happen by accident.

The important thing isn’t what Bush says in his interview with National Geographic or what scores Cheney tries to settle in his memoir. What matters is that as they return to the public eye, they highlight their record of wrongheaded policy choices that helped bring the nation to a sour, penurious state.

David Sirota: The Lesson of the Chinese Invasion

Many economic Nostradamuses have long predicted that the epitaph on America’s tombstone will ultimately read, “Made in China.” But casual observers probably didn’t think the funeral procession would happen this fast. In the last year, though, most have wised up. Thanks to a spate of mind-blowing headlines, we are learning that the Chinese invasion isn’t just a distant possibility-it’s happening right now.

First, in February, ABC News reported that almost every Americana-themed trinket sold in the Smithsonian Institute is made in China. Then news hit that San Francisco is importing its new bay bridge from China. Then came the New York Times dispatch about the Big Apple awarding Chinese state-subsidized firms huge taxpayer-funded contracts to “renovate the subway system, refurbish the Alexander Hamilton Bridge over the Harlem River and build a new Metro-North train platform near Yankee Stadium.”

Derek Lazzaro: American Officials Enjoy Lives Without Shame

Once upon a time, there was a specific word to describe the misdeed of an officeholder or custodian of trust who had betrayed his or her duties: malfeasance.

That word, originating from ancient Latin, can be translated into modern English to mean a “bad doing.”

If you believe the old tales, malfeasance once was an offense that carried stiff penalties: public humiliation, social ostracism, and civil or criminal sanctions.

And in traditional cultures with shame, a disgraced official would resign-or worse.

No longer, it seems.

ARGENTINA may seem like one of the last countries on earth to offer lessons for dealing with economic malaise. Once the eighth-largest economy in the world, it steadily slid through the 20th century, thanks to decades of repressive dictatorships and inconsistent market experiments. This ended ignominiously in 2001, when it defaulted on $100 billion in sovereign debt, plunging over half its 35 million people into poverty.

That, at least, is the Argentina people know. Since then, it has performed an economic U-turn – an achievement largely unnoticed outside Latin America, but one that President Obama and Congress should look to for inspiration.

Robert Kuttner: Feeble President, Feeble Plans

Obama’s jobs plan: Go work for free!

On Wednesday, I posted an item titled “How Not to Solve the Jobs Problem.” The case in point is President Barack Obama’s embrace of a state program called Georgia Works, which tries to turn unemployment insurance into a kind of sing-for-your-supper “workfare” program.

Jobless workers in Georgia drawing unemployment compensation are encouraged to go work for private employers-for free-in exchange for some kind of training. They get a small onetime stipend of $240 as an inducement. The premise is that working for free will help them get a foot in the door and maybe get hired (if the employer hires). According to Georgia’s own statistics, however, only about 15 percent do.

This pitifully inadequate program is very likely to be part of Obama’s forthcoming jobs speech.

But let’s drill deeper. Why is the administration embracing such a right-wing and futile program? Obviously, the problem in Georgia is the unemployment rate, of 10.1 percent, not the fact that unemployed workers lack a few weeks’ training for low-wage jobs.

Mark Engler: Is “Free Trade” Obama’s Jobs Plan?

After a slight scheduling kerfuffle, President Obama is now set to give a major speech on jobs before a joint session of Congress next Thursday, September 8. Commentators have speculated that Obama could “go big” in his proposals to fight unemployment, and there are some solid suggestions on the table for how the government could help put Americans back to work. These include major investment in public infrastructure and changing the tax structure in order to reward businesses for creating U.S. jobs, rather than off-shoring their production abroad.

Unfortunately, Obama is also likely to advance some bad ideas. In his pledge to “to find bipartisan solutions” to the country’s economic problems, the president will almost certainly push several neoliberal “free trade” agreements. Specifically, he is expected to reassert his support for previously stalled trade pacts with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea.

Wendel Potter: Rick Perry’s Texas Health Care Hoax

In his quest to win the Republican presidential nomination, Texas Gov. Rick Perry is perpetuating a convincing hoax: that implementing Texas-style tort reform would go a long way toward curing what ails the U.S. health care system.

Like his fellow GOP contenders, Perry consistently denounces “Obamacare” as “a budget-busting, government takeover of healthcare” and “the greatest intrusion on individual freedom in a generation.” He promises to repeal the law if elected.

Unlike those in the “repeal-and-replace” wing of the Republican Party, however, Perry has emerged as leader of the “repeal-and-let-the-states-figure-it-out” wing that believes the federal government has no legitimate role in fixing America’s health care system.

Racism in the application of capital punishment has been well documented in the civilian justice system since the Supreme Court reinstated the penalty in 1976. Now comes evidence that racial disparity is even greater in death penalty cases in the military system.

Minority service members are more than twice as likely as whites – after accounting for the crimes’ circumstances and the victims’ race – to be sentenced to death, according to a forthcoming study co-written by David Baldus, an eminent death-penalty scholar, who died in June.

The analysis is so disturbing because the military has made sustained, often successful efforts to rid its ranks of discrimination. But even with this record, its failure to apply the death penalty fairly is more proof that capital punishment cannot be free of racism’s taint. It is capricious, barbaric and discriminatory, and should be abolished.

Glenn Greenwald: A Tweet That Explains Everything

In connection with this matter, I was literally awake all night overseeing (with complete uselessness) the successful birth of six puppies — an amazing and moving experience that I hope never to repeat again for as long as I live — and was therefore not planning on writing today as a result of the ensuing exhaustion.  But then I saw the Tweet That Explains Everything.  A momentous controversy erupted earlier this afternoon when President Obama announced that he wanted to deliver a speech about jobs to a joint session of Congress next Thursday at 9:00 p.m., which happens to be the same date and time of a planned GOP presidential debate, prompting House Speaker John Boehner to respond that he would convene a joint session on Wednesday — the day before — but not on Thursday.

The profound issues raised by this conflict prompted an orgy of probing analysis and vibrant debate among political journalists, party spokespeople and various partisan loyalists over who was being dishonest and Outrageous (indeed, so weighty and consequential is this showdown that it even subordinated the day’s prior top news story involving the scheduling snafus of Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann in Iowa).  Thankfully, we have a free and adversarial watchdog media in this nation to sort out the competing claims and to keep the citizenry informed and focused with respect to the Wednesday/Thursday conflict, which is what produced this aforementioned Tweet:

@ChuckTodd

Going on #hardball now to talk about the day of Washington gamesmanship re: speech to Congress

Ari Berman: The GOP War on Voting

In a campaign supported by the Koch brothers, Republicans are working to prevent millions of Democrats from voting next year

As the nation gears up for the 2012 presidential election, Republican officials have launched an unprecedented, centrally coordinated campaign to suppress the elements of the Democratic vote that elected Barack Obama in 2008. Just as Dixiecrats once used poll taxes and literacy tests to bar black Southerners from voting, a new crop of GOP governors and state legislators has passed a series of seemingly disconnected measures that could prevent millions of students, minorities, immigrants, ex-convicts and the elderly from casting ballots. “What has happened this year is the most significant setback to voting rights in this country in a century,” says Judith Browne-Dianis, who monitors barriers to voting as co-director of the Advancement Project, a civil rights organization based in Washington, D.C.

Amanda Marcotte: Rick Perry’s Demeaning Abortion Doctrine

The Texas governor’s real anti-abortion agenda – enforcing sexual abstinence – not only insults women; it doesn’t work

Rick Perry’s chances at passing himself off as a reasonable Republican were diminished considerably yet again this week, when the Centre for Reproductive Rights secured a victory against a draconian anti-abortion regulation Perry rushed through the legislature in May, claiming while doing so that it was an emergency measure. When US district judge Sam Sparks rejected the law and blocked enforcement, he created an occasion for the national media to look more closely at Perry’s record on women’s rights. What they’ll find is that Perry goes far beyond the usual anti-abortion platitudes: he not only bears a zealous hatred of abortion rights, but also a hostility to contraception and sex education.

E. J. Dionne, Jr. Obama’s Paradox Problem

Call it the Party-of-Government Paradox: If the nation’s capital looks dysfunctional, it will come back to hurt President Obama and the Democrats, even if the Republicans are primarily responsible for the dysfunction.

Then there is the Bipartisanship Paradox: No matter how far the president bends over backward to appeal to or appease the Republicans-no matter how nice, conciliatory, friendly or reasonable he tries to be-voters will judge him according to the results. And the evidence since 2009 is that accommodation won’t get Obama much anyway.

This creates the Election Paradox: Up to a point, Republicans in Congress can afford to let their own ratings fall well below the president’s, as long as they drag him further into negative territory. If the president’s ratings are poor next year, Democrats won’t be able to defeat enough Republicans to take back the House and hold the Senate. The GOP can win if the mood is terribly negative toward Washington because voters see Obama as the man in charge.

Michael Deibert: The U.N. in Haiti: Time to Adapt or Time to Go

In the summer of 2009, visiting Haiti for the first time after an absence of three years, I found the country in better shape than at any time since I started visiting there in 1997.

Three years after the inauguration of René Préval as Haiti’s president (after the two-year tenure of an unelected interim government), the population of Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, again felt safe enough to patronize downtown bars and kerosene-lit roadside stands late into the evening, where once armed gangs controlled entire neighborhoods. Billboards that once praised the infallibility of a succession of maximum leaders instead carried messages about the importance of respect between the population and the police, or decrying discrimination against the disabled.

“When one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it,” wrote Joseph Goebbels, Germany’s Reich minister of propaganda, in 1941. Former Vice President Dick Cheney seems to have taken the famous Nazi’s advice in his new book, “In My Time.” Cheney remains staunch in his convictions on issues from the invasion of Iraq to the use of torture. Telling NBC News in an interview that “there are gonna be heads exploding all over Washington” as a result of the revelations in the book, Cheney’s memoir follows one by his colleague and friend Donald Rumsfeld. As each promotes his own version of history, there are people challenging and confronting them.

Maureen Dowd: What Price Life?

So the big, bad storm huffed and puffed and didn’t blow all the houses in.

Reversing Katrina, on the sixth anniversary of that shameful episode in American history, the response to Irene was more powerful than Irene.

And that made some solipsistic Gothamites who missed their subways and restaurants grouchy. There is no greater abuse to New Yorkers than inconvenience.

Once the storm became “Apocalypse Not,” as The New York Post called it, there were those who accused Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey of overreacting to make up for their infamous underreactions to last year’s Christmas blizzard, when Hizzoner was baking in Bermuda and the Guv was playing at Disney World in Florida with his family.

Eugene Robinson: Jobs: Go Big or Go Home

President Obama’s promised jobs plan needs to be unrealistic and unreasonable, at the very least. If he can crank it all the way up to unimaginable, that would be even better.

This is a moment for the president to suppress his reflex for pre-emptive compromise. The unemployment crisis is so deep and self-perpetuating that only a big, surprising, over-the-top jobs initiative could have real impact. Boldness will serve the nation well-and, coincidentally, boost Obama’s re-election prospects.

The political calculus is pretty simple. If voters base their decision on the state of the economy on Election Day, Obama is in trouble. Even the most optimistic scenarios predict that unemployment will still be above 8 percent next fall. These rosy projections envision month after month of painfully slow growth, the kind that is barely discernible. Pessimists see another dip into recession.

Richard Eskow: Eight Reasons Why Raising the Medicare Age Is the Worst Presidential “Bargain” Since 1854

When it comes to the “Grand Bargain” they’re pushing in Washington, the movie posters for The Fly said it best: Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Other people are using our lives as bargaining chips. Whether it’s the so-called Congressional “Super Committee” or the President’s push for that grandé-sized deal, they want to look “grand” while we get stuck with the “bargain.”

The Capital’s misplaced focus on austerity has led to plenty of bad ideas, but one of the worst is raising the Medicare retirement age to 67. It may be the most destructive deal to come out of Washington since the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. It’s unfair, short-sighted, and will actually cost the economy more money than we’re spending today.

No Democratic President would accept an idea like that, right? Right?

Be afraid. Be very afraid.