Tag: Open Thread

Unions such as the Service Employees and National Nurses United are investing in smart, grassroots projects in the states – seeking to build on the protest and politics model developed in Wisconsin,wheremass protests against anti-labor initiatives signaled an opening for labor togo on the offensive. At the same time, key unions such asthe Firefighters have signaled that, because of their disappointment with Republicans and Democrats at the federal level, they will be putting all their political money into state and local races and related projects.

Now, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is stepping up with a plan for unions to declare “independence” and back candidates – no matter what their party affiliation – who are committed to support workers and their unions.

Trumka, who was in Wisconsin early and has visited most of the states where battles over labor rights and cuts in public services are playing out, has made no secret of his interest in building on the energy of the new state-based movements.

It is with this in mind that he is now talking about changing the way labor practices politics. And that’s a very good thing.

Peter Hart: NYT’s Sorkin Hasn’t Heard of the People’s Budget

New York Times business reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin wrote a piece on Sunday (5/15/11) that tried to advance the argument that $250,000 actually isn’t that much money to make in a year. The complaint is that politicians who advocate raising tax rates on income above $250,000 have chosen an arbitrary dividing line–above it you’re rich, and you’ll be taxed accordingly.

Articles like this are annoying for obvious reasons–we’re being asked to listen to wealthy people complain that they’re not that wealthy, once you factor in the private school tuition and a hefty mortgage. But they often mislead in other areas–especially when it comes to how much wealthy people pay in taxes. Ross Sorkin mentions a Manhattan father of two with a household income of $262,000 who sees his tax bill potentially going up, and he says, “I don’t understand why people like us are lumped in with millionaires and billionaires.”

As Dean Baker points out, anyone who understands marginal tax rates should know that someone making slightly more than $250,000 would pay a higher rate only on that income above that amount–which, in this case, would amount to a few hundreds dollars at most in extra taxes.

Shahid Buttar: Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Fire: Why the FBI Needs New Leadership

The last ten years have witnessed an assault on the constitutional rights of law-abiding Americans, led largely by the FBI. Appointed mere days before the 9/11 attacks, Director Robert S. Mueller III has guided the bureau through the resurrection of many long discredited practices from its COINTELPRO era. Yet, the Obama administration has proposed extending Mueller’s term as FBI director. Congress should reject the proposal and insist on a nominee from outside the bureau to restore accountability, law and order. Just ask Nick Merrill in New York, Joe Iosbaker in Chicago or Ahmadullah Niazi in Los Angeles: three law-abiding Americans whose constitutional rights are among the casualties of the last decade.

The last time Congress extended the term of FBI director was in 1972, to keep J. Edgar Hoover in office. Years later, when the Church and Pike committees finally exposed the notorious counterintelligence program (aka COINTELPRO), Congress discovered that Hoover presided over severe abuses for decades.

Rania Khalek: This Is What A Police State Looks Like

The late Chalmers Johnson often reminded us that “A nation can be one or the other, a democracy or an imperialist, but it can’t be both. If it sticks to imperialism, it will, like the old Roman Republic, on which so much of our system was modeled, lose its democracy to a domestic dictatorship.” His warning rings more true by the day, as Americans watch the erosion of their civil liberties accelerate in conjunction with the expansion of the US Empire.

When viewed through the lens of Johnson’s profound insights, the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Kentucky v. King makes perfect sense. On May 13, in a lopsided 8-1 ruling, the Court upheld the warrantless search of a Kentucky man’s apartment after police smelled marijuana and feared those inside were destroying evidence, essentially granting police officers increased power to enter the homes of citizens without a warrant.

Under the Fourth Amendment, police are barred from entering a home without first obtaining a warrant, which can only be issued by a judge upon probable cause. The only exception is when the circumstances qualify as “exigent,” meaning there is imminent risk of death or serious injury, danger that evidence will be immediately destroyed, or that a suspect will escape. However, exigent circumstances cannot be created by the police.

As newly resigned International Monetary Fund head Dominique Strauss-Kahn (aka DSK) hunkers down in his jail cell, IMF news has fallen into two categories. The first involves salacious details of his alleged attempted rape, and the second, questions about whether his absence will keep the IMF from its main focus of constructing pro-bank bailout packages for Greece, Portugal and other struggling European countries. Both categories miss the devastation the IMF causes, regardless of who heads it.

Meanwhile, the global economic assault caused by the misguided IMF and EU notion that public spending cuts and national infrastructure fire sales should be enacted to make up for bank rampages marches on. Rather than clamping down on banks and working on debt reduction strategies, bailout loans remain designed to keep banks solvent, investors shielded from loss, and outside buyers interested.

Medea Benjamin and Charles Davis: Obama Should Follow His Own Advice on the ‘Moral Force’ of Non-Violence

Given that President Obama daily authorizes the firing of hellfire missiles and the dropping of cluster bombs in places such as Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, it was awful odd seeing him wax eloquent this week about the “moral force of non-violence” in places like Egypt and Tunisia. But there he was, the commander-in-chief of the largest empire in history, praising the power of peaceful protest in countries with repressive leaders backed by his own administration.

Were we unfamiliar with his actual policies – – more than doubling the troops in Afghanistan, dramatically escalating a deadly drone war in Pakistan and unilaterally bombing for peace in Libya  — it might have been inspiring to hear a major head of state reject violence as a means to political ends. Instead, we almost choked on the hypocrisy.

David Sirota: Turning the Camera on the Police

What’s good for the police apparently isn’t good for the people — or so the law enforcement community would have us believe when it comes to surveillance.

That’s a concise summary of a new trend reported by National Public Radio last week — the trend whereby law enforcement officials have been trying to prevent civilians from using cellphone cameras in public places as a means of deterring police brutality.

Oddly, the effort — which employs both forcible arrests of videographers and legal proceedings against them — comes at a time when the American Civil Liberties Union reports that “an increasing number of American cities and towns are investing millions of taxpayer dollars in surveillance camera systems.”

Peter Tatchell: One Year in Jail, Bradley Manning is a Hero

Blowing the whistle on war crimes is no crime.

On 26 May, Private Bradley Manning will have been held in US military detention without trial for one year. He faces a battery of charges, including “aiding the enemy” – a crime punishable by execution under US law.What was Manning’s crime? As well as allegedly releasing classified diplomatic cables that exposed the hypocrisy of top US officials, it is alleged that he blew the whistle on war crimes and cover-ups by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan. If this is true, the man is a hero. He is a defender of democracy and human rights. His actions are based on the principle that citizens have a right to know what the government is doing in their name.

Manning should not be in prison. The charges against him should be dropped. Instead, the US should put on trial those who killed innocent civilians and those who protected them.

Harvey Wasserman: Fukushima’s Apocalyptic Threat Demands Immediate Global Action

Fukushima may be in an apocalyptic downward spiral.

Forget the corporate-induced media coma that says otherwise…or nothing at all.

Lethal radiation is spewing unabated. Emission levels could seriously escalate. There is no end in sight. The potential is many times worse than Chernobyl.

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A group of Democratic representatives has joined consumer groups in calling on the President to make a “recess appointment” of Elizabeth Warren, so she can get to work running the new bureau charged with protecting bank customers from deceptive, dishonest, and unfair bank practices.

That should be a no-brainer: A Warren appointment would be a policy win and a political win. Republicans have purchased first-class tickets on the Crazy Train by vowing to block any appointment to that position, even one that shares their radical anti-regulation ideology. The President can show he means business by acting decisively to fill this important and urgently-needed position.

Eugene Robinson: Newt Gingrich’s meltdown on the launch pad

“I want to make sure every House Republican is protected from some kind of dishonest Democratic ad. So let me say on the record, any ad which quotes what I said on Sunday is a falsehood, because I have publicly said those words were inaccurate and unfortunate.”

A grateful nation thanks you, Newt Gingrich. The presidential campaign is just starting, and already you’ve given us a passage that will live in infamy – forever – in the annals of American political speech. Your delightful quotation shall be filed under “fiascos” and flagged with a cross-reference to “utter nonsense.” I can’t remember when we’ve heard a politician plead so desperately to take back something he said. Then again, naked desperation is clearly in order. The favorite parlor game in Washington this week has been trying to remember a more disastrous campaign launch than the one Gingrich is having. Many candidates have stumbled coming out of the gate, but few have taken off like a shot in the wrong direction.

Dennis Kucinich: US Actions, Not Obama’s Words Tell Story of US Middle East Policy

We all want to be supportive of our President as he attempts to broaden America’s positive role in the Middle East and North Africa. But it is important to critically analyze what the President does, not what he says, when it comes to U.S. policy abroad. When the President says ‘[i]t will be the policy of the United States to promote reform across the region, and to support transitions to democracy,’ we must look more carefully at how this policy has been implemented as well as the implications of the actions that have already been taken.

President Obama violated the Constitution by pursuing war against Libya without a Constitutionally-required authorization for the use of military force or declaration of war from Congress. His actions, and now his policy recitations, set the stage for more interventions, presumably in Syria and Iran. His recounting of the reasons for U.S. intervention in Libya is at odds with the facts. There was no clear evidence of an impending massacre in Libya. There was menacing rhetoric and a violent government put-down of an armed insurrection which may have been joined by some with legitimate non-violent aspirations. No one can justify the actions of any parties to this conflict. In any case, discretion requires leaders to move with the utmost care in developing military responses to rhetoric and similar care to intervention in a civil war.

Dean Baker: Can the Greek People Teach the ECB Economics?

If the European Central Bank does not ease up on its austerity policies, it may push the heavily indebted countries into a downward economic spiral.

There is an old maxim that in any bureaucracy people will always rise to the level of their incompetence. This certainly seems to be the case with the European Central Bank (ECB). After totally ignoring the build-up of dangerous housing bubbles in most euro zone countries, as well as the imbalances that supported these bubbles, the ECB now seems intent on punishing the people in many of these countries for its mistakes.

This is the likely result of the policies that it is now pursuing, whether or not this is the intention. The insistence that the heavily indebted countries in the euro zone – Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain – pay off their debt in full will inevitably lead to years of high unemployment in these countries and trillions of dollars of lost output throughout the euro zone as a whole. The budget cuts demanded of these countries will force large reductions in pensions and other social supports at a time when macroeconomic policies ensure that few jobs are available.

Joe Conason: The Gingrich Style

It is hard to see why anyone was surprised by Newt Gingrich’s self-ignited implosion in the earliest hours of his presidential candidacy. The career of the former House speaker and Georgia congressman is practically bursting with proof that he suffers from chronic paranoid hysteria-a condition that has done more to advance than diminish his status among conservatives.

They loved him until he aimed his vitriol against one of their own, House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, deriding the Wisconsin Republican’s plan to gut Medicare as “right-wing social engineering.”

Inundated by denunciations from every quarter of his party and movement, Gingrich swiftly backtracked and apologized and tried to blame the media. But his former fans are perhaps beginning to realize what most Americans understood about him years ago-that he is wholly untrustworthy and unfit for leadership.

At the outbreak of the First World War Lawrence was a university post-graduate researcher who had for years travelled extensively within the Ottoman Empire provinces of the Levant (Transjordan  and Palestine) and Mesopotamia (Syria and Iraq) under his own name. As such he became known to the Turkish Interior Ministry authorities and their German technical advisors. Lawrence came into contact with the Ottoman-German technical advisers, travelling over the German-designed, built, and financed railways during the course of his researches.

Even if Lawrence had not volunteered, the British would probably have recruited him for his first-hand knowledge of Syria, the Levant, and Mesopotamia. He was eventually posted to Cairo on the Intelligence Staff of the GOC Middle East.

Contrary to later myth, it was neither Lawrence nor the Army that conceived a campaign of internal insurgency against the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East, but rather the Arab Bureau of Britain’s Foreign Office. The Arab Bureau had long felt it likely that a campaign instigated and financed by outside powers, supporting the breakaway-minded tribes and regional challengers to the Turkish government’s centralised rule of their empire, would pay great dividends in the diversion of effort that would be needed to meet such a challenge. The Arab Bureau had recognised the strategic value of what is today called the “asymmetry” of such conflict. The Ottoman authorities would have to devote from a hundred to a thousand times the resources to contain the threat of such an internal rebellion compared to the Allies’ cost of sponsoring it.

At that point in the Foreign Office’s thinking they were not considering the region as candidate territories for incorporation in the British Empire, but only as an extension of the range of British Imperial influence, and the weakening and destruction of a German ally, the Ottoman Empire.

During the war, Lawrence fought with Arab irregular troops under the command of Emir Faisal, a son of Sherif Hussein of Mecca, in extended guerrilla operations against the armed forces of the Ottoman Empire. He persuaded the Arabs not to make a frontal assault on the Ottoman stronghold in Medina but allowed the Turkish army to tie up troops in the city garrison. The Arabs were then free to direct most of their attention to the Turks’ weak point, the Hejaz railway that supplied the garrison. This vastly expanded the battlefield and tied up even more Ottoman troops, who were then forced to protect the railway and repair the constant damage.

The capture of Aqaba

In 1917, Lawrence arranged a joint action with the Arab irregulars and forces under Auda Abu Tayi (until then in the employ of the Ottomans) against the strategically located but lightly defended town of Aqaba. On 6 July, after a surprise overland attack, Aqaba fell to Lawrence and the Arab forces. After Aqaba, Lawrence was promoted to major. Fortunately for Lawrence, the new commander-in-chief of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, General Sir Edmund Allenby, agreed to his strategy for the revolt, stating after the war:

   “I gave him a free hand. His cooperation was marked by the utmost loyalty, and I never had anything but praise for his work, which, indeed, was invaluable throughout the campaign.”

Lawrence now held a powerful position, as an adviser to Faisal and a person who had Allenby’s confidence.

The Fall of Damascus

The following year, Lawrence was involved in the capture of Damascus in the final weeks of the war and was promoted to lieutenant-colonel in 1918. In newly liberated Damascus-which he had envisioned as the capital of an Arab state-Lawrence was instrumental in establishing a provisional Arab government under Faisal. Faisal’s rule as king, however, came to an abrupt end in 1920, after the battle of Maysaloun, when the French Forces of General Gouraud under the command of General Mariano Goybet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M… entered Damascus, breaking Lawrence’s dream of an independent Arabia.

As was his habit when traveling before the war, Lawrence adopted many local customs and traditions (many photographs show him in the desert wearing white Arab dishdasha and riding camels).

During the closing years of the war he sought, with mixed success, to convince his superiors in the British government that Arab independence was in their interests. The secret Sykes-Picot Agreement between France and Britain contradicted the promises of independence he had made to the Arabs and frustrated his work.

In 1918 he co-operated with war correspondent Lowell Thomas for a short period. During this time Thomas and his cameraman Harry Chase shot a great deal of film and many photographs, which Thomas used in a highly lucrative film that toured the world after the war.

Seven Pillars of Wisdom

Lawrence’s major work is Seven Pillars of Wisdom, an account of his war experiences. In 1919 he had been elected to a seven-year research fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford, providing him with support while he worked on the book. In addition to being a memoir of his experiences during the war, certain parts also serve as essays on military strategy, Arabian culture and geography, and other topics. Lawrence re-wrote Seven Pillars of Wisdom three times; once “blind” after he lost the manuscript while changing trains at Reading railway station.

The list of his alleged “embellishments” in Seven Pillars is long, though many such allegations have been disproved with time, most definitively in Jeremy Wilson‘s authorised biography. However Lawrence’s own notebooks refute his claim to have crossed the Sinai Peninsula from Aqaba to the Suez Canal in just 49 hours without any sleep. In reality this famous camel ride lasted for more than 70 hours and was interrupted by two long breaks for sleeping which Lawrence omitted when he wrote his book.

Lawrence acknowledged having been helped in the editing of the book by George Bernard Shaw. In the preface to Seven Pillars, Lawrence offered his “thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Bernard Shaw for countless suggestions of great value and diversity: and for all the present semicolons.”

The first public edition was published in 1926 as a high-priced private subscription edition, printed in London by Roy Manning Pike and Herbert John Hodgson, with illustrations by Eric Kennington, Augustus John, Paul Nash, Blair Hughes-Stanton and his wife Gertrude Hermes. Lawrence was afraid that the public would think that he would make a substantial income from the book, and he stated that it was written as a result of his war service. He vowed not to take any money from it, and indeed he did not, as the sale price was one third of the production costs. This left Lawrence in substantial debt.

Death

At the age of 46, two months after leaving the service, Lawrence was fatally injured in an accident on his Brough Superior SS100 motorcycle in Dorset, close to his cottage, Clouds Hill, near Wareham. A dip in the road obstructed his view of two boys on their bicycles; he swerved to avoid them, lost control and was thrown over the handlebars. He died six days later on 19 May 1935. The spot is marked by a small memorial at the side of the road.

The circumstances of Lawrence’s death had far-reaching consequences. One of the doctors attending him was the neurosurgeon Hugh Cairns. He was profoundly affected by the incident, and consequently began a long study of what he saw as the unnecessary loss of life by motorcycle dispatch riders through head injuries. His research led to the use of crash helmets by both military and civilian motorcyclists.

Moreton Estate, which borders Bovington Camp, was owned by family cousins, the Frampton family. Lawrence had rented and later bought Clouds Hill from the Framptons. He had been a frequent visitor to their home, Okers Wood House, and had for years corresponded with Louisa Frampton. On Lawrence’s death, his mother arranged with the Framptons for him to be buried in their family plot at Moreton Church. His coffin was transported on the Frampton estate’s bier. Mourners included Winston and Clementine Churchill and Lawrence’s youngest brother, Arnold.

A bust of Lawrence was placed in the crypt at St Paul’s Cathedral and a stone effigy by Eric Kennington remains in the Anglo-Saxon church of St Martin, Wareham

Should the legal arguments over Obama’s health care law force us to reconsider the role of the courts?

It’s hard, nowadays, to begrudge anyone his or her constitutional nihilism. Even before oral arguments started last week over the constitutionality of President Obama’s health care reform law at the federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., some conservatives were complaining that the result was preordained because the three-judge panel consisted of two Obama appointees and a Clinton appointee. And if liberals want to get a head start on their own freak-outs over the lawsuits, they might well note that the just-announced panel for the June 1 hearings on the Affordable Care Act at the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati include a George W. Bush appointee, a Reagan appointee, and a Carter appointee.

So we can already start writing that 2-1 decision.

Amanda Marcotte: 5 Surprising Things About Sex Women Might Be Scared to Tell Men

Many ballsy women are afraid to say ‘Please do this’ or ‘Don’t do that’ in bed. Here’s what some women are really thinking.

Our sexist culture unleashes many forms of toxic socialization on its inhabitants, but few lessons seem to take as well as teaching girls from the cradle to coddle the male ego, not just with flattery but with a deep unwillingness to speak truths that could cause men to feel uncomfortable or imperfect. And nowhere is this less true than in the sack. Many a woman who feels herself a ballsy broad in her daily life finds herself in bed, afraid to say “Please do this” or “Don’t do that” for fear of confronting a man looking shocked, upset, or disappointed-which can push a button installed in us as little girls labeled Failure As A Woman.

We know we should get over it already. We know we should speak up and take our lumps and men who can’t handle it are bad lovers we should be dumping anyway. It’s not like we’re not trying. The female half of the human race spends an ungodly amount of time and money trying to unlearn passivity and replace it with a dose of speaking up for themselves.

In the meantime, however, there’s a number of things women are thinking about sex that tend to go unsaid, but you men should probably know them anyway.

Robert Reich: The Battle is Squared, and Why We Need Budget Jujitsu

Technically, the federal government has now reached the limit of its capacity to borrow money.

Raising the debt ceiling used to be a technical adjustment, made almost automatically. Now it’s a political football.

Democrats should never have agreed to linking it to an agreement on the long-term budget deficit.

But now that the debt ceiling is in play, there’s no end to what the radical right will demand. John Boehner is already using the classic “they’re making me” move, seemingly helpless in the face of Tea Party storm troopers who refuse to raise the ceiling unless they get their way. Their way is reactionary and regressive – eviscerating Medicare, cutting Medicaid and programs for the poor, slashing education and infrastructure, and using most of the savings to reduce taxes on the rich.

Paul Krugman: Remain Calm: Money Madness Does Not Have to Be Contagious

I’ve been fond of quoting the late economist Charles Kindleberger, my old teacher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who used to say that anyone who spends too much time thinking about international money goes mad.

But I’m thinking that we need to expand the proposition: it seems that almost everyone who weighs in on monetary matters of any kind goes crazy.

Those who expected more traction on the United States’ economy from the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing program are disappointed, but the proper reaction is, “Meh.” Just not a big deal. Similarly for the depreciation of the dollar from its crisis peak to more or less where it was in early 2008 (which has some people hysterical).

John Nichols: From GOP ‘Golden Boy’ To Also-Ran: Paul Ryan’s Big Bad Bummer of a Week

House Budget Committee chairman  Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, has turned so “toxic” he can’t get away from the protests that began when he came home last month to try to sell his plan to gut Medicare and Medicaid.

And it is starting to cost him politically.

The former “golden boy” of national Republican politics has tarnished his brand to such an extent that, on Tuesday, he had to relinquish his long-cherished dream of running for the U.S. Senate to replace Democratic Senator Herb Kohl.

Kohl is stepping down in 2012 but, after a brief flirtation with the prospect, Ryan signaled that he will skip the contest — effectively giving up on any chance of becoming a senator in the foreseeable future.

Instead, Ryan says, he will focus on trying to revive his budget plan, which after earning an endorsement from House Republicans has stalled in the face of broad national opposition to his proposal to end Medicare and Medicaid as they are known and use the federal money to bail out for-profit insurance companies.

Dean Baker: The Good News and the Bad News in the Social Security Trustees’ Report

There was both good news and bad news in the Social Security trustees’ report released last week. The bad news is that the program is projected to cost somewhat more in the latest report than in the 2010 report.

As a result, its projected 75-year shortfall was increased by 0.3 percentage points of covered payroll from 1.92 percent to 2.22 percent. The year when it was first projected to face a shortfall was moved up a year from 2037 to 2036.

This bad news about the program is also the good news. The main reason that the program’s finances deteriorated between the 2010 report and the 2011 report is that in the 2011 report the trustees assumed that we would enjoy substantially longer life expectancies than they did in the 2010 report.

Jeremy Scahill Erik Prince, You’re No Indiana Jones

When Erik Prince, founder of the infamous mercenary company Blackwater, claimed in early 2010 he was leaving the soldier of fortune business, he said he’d decided to pursue a less dangerous and controversial line of work. “I’m going to teach high school,” he said, straight-faced, in an interview with Vanity Fair. “History and economics. I may even coach wrestling. Hey, Indiana Jones taught school, too.” It was an interesting comment. As fans of Indiana Jones will recall, the whip-wielding archaeologist was indeed a professor. But what he did on the side-traveling the globe in search of potentially history-altering artifacts-was his real passion. In one confrontation with his arch-nemesis, archaeologist René Emile Belloq, who is working for the Nazis, Jones threatens to blow up the Ark of the Covenant with an RPG. “You’re going to give mercenaries a bad name,” Belloq tells him.

Erik Prince did leave the US, but he isn’t teaching high school and is certainly not out of the mercenary business. In fact, far from emerging as a neo-Indiana Jones, the antithesis of a mercenary, Prince is more like Belloq, offering his services to the highest bidder. Over the weekend, The New York Times revealed that Prince was leading an effort to build an army of mercenaries, 800 strong-including scores from Colombia-in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. They would be trained by US, European and South African Special Forces veterans. Prince’s new company, Reflex Responses, also known as R2, was bankrolled to the tune of $529 million from “the oil-soaked sheikdom,” according to the Times, adding that Prince was “hired by the crown prince of Abu Dhabi” Sheik Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan. Erik Prince is not mentioned by name in corporate documents outlining the deal, but is instead referred to as “Kingfish.”