Hullabaloo

Thursday, June 11, 2015

 
Oh, another social conservative child molester ...

by digby

It appears their numbers are vast, especially if you include all the Catholic priests:

John Perry, a prolific author who co-wrote two books with former Arkansas governor and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and co-wrote one with Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore, was accused of child molestation in two separate lawsuits, BuzzFeed News has found. 

A 2012 police investigation of Perry’s alleged offenses found that “the allegations of sexual battery were sustained” but that the statute of limitations had expired.

Perry co-wrote Do the Right Thing: Inside the Movement That’s Bringing Common Sense Back to America about Huckabee’s 2008 presidential campaign. He also did research and writing for Huckabee’s 2007 book Character Is the Issue, a memoir of his early time as governor. Perry also co-wrote So Help Me God, Moore’s autobiographical account of fighting to keep a monument to the Ten Commandments at Alabama’s Supreme Court.

Those books are just a few of the titles produced with Perry’s help: He wrote For Faith & Family: Changing America by Strengthening the Family with Richard Land, the president of Southern Evangelical Seminary, a book with former Southern Baptist Convention president James T. Draper, as well as a book with Frank Page, the president and CEO of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee. Perry even co-authored The Vow, the book made into a feature film starring Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum. Perry also lists writing two books for prominent pastor John F. MacArthur on his website.

In a sworn affidavit submitted during divorce proceedings, Perry’s ex-wife attests that she “filed for divorce as a result of Mr. Perry’s inappropriate marital conduct, to which he admitted to in his Response to Interrogatories numbers 1 and 2.” Throughout the court documents, “inappropriate marital conduct” appears to be a euphemism for the alleged molestation.

As someone pointed out to me at dinner last night, Democrats have sex scandals too. But they are vanilla compared to these guys. Extra-marital affairs sure. But they are usually consensual adult stuff, not this coercive, abusive behavior. But then what would you expect with these repressive cultures? It's creepy.

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digby 6/11/2015 04:30:00 PM

 
QOTD: A Russian Oligarch

by digby

Via Jonathan Schwarz at The Intercept:

When Putin became president, I was for a long time in a state of profound naiveté. Well, I went to him … I told him: “Listen, Volodya, what happened: we destroyed the entire political space. Devoured, not destroyed, but devoured it. We absolutely dominated … Look, I’ll suggest that we can not have effective political system, if there’s a tough competition. So I suggest we create an artificial two-party system. So, let’s say, the left and right. A Socially Oriented party and neo-conservatives liberal party. Choose any. And I’ll make another batch. At the same time, my own heart is closer to neoconservatives, and I think so, you [Putin] are socially oriented. ” I earnestly believed then that he understood it. But I think that even then he looked at me like I was crazy.

Wherever do they come up with these ideas ....?

Read the whole thing for context. It's the darkest of comedy...


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digby 6/11/2015 03:00:00 PM

 
Rand Paul, racial healer

by digby

Rand Paul has a long history of close relationships with neo-confederates and racists (One of whom is his own father) but he's been reaching out to the black community in recent times trying to create an image of someone who really cares. I think that's nice.

But what do you suppose are the libertarian solutions to the ongoing, structural, institutional racism that has permeated our culture since its inception and which remains the fetid, infectious boil on the American body politic? Well ...

“We lower the taxes on the business people so they hire more people.”

There is literally no problem on earth that lowering taxes on business people will not solve.

Oh, and by the way, the criminal justice reform he and the Koch brothers are touting? Uh, not quite what it seems, I'm sorry to say:

Charles Koch, the company's chairman and CEO, has said he became interested in criminal-justice reform after a grand jury's 1995 indictment of a Koch refinery in Texas for 97 felony violations of environmental law. The company spent six years fighting the charges and eventually settled with the government for $10 million.

Sure, they may end up helping some poor people, especially African Americans, who are caught in the maw of our unjust prison industrial complex. As I said earlier, at this point, that may be the best we can hope for. But let's not kid ourselves about what they really care about.


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digby 6/11/2015 01:30:00 PM

 
Supporting NAFTA Was the Kiss of Death for Democrats — Why Dems Should Think Twice About Voting for TPP

by Gaius Publius

Ross Perot describes the "giant sucking sound going south." Notice how right he is about all the other evils he describes — how public officials "cash out," for example, or the simple logic of dumping your domestic work force if all you care about is "making money." Notice also that the questioner is a pro–trade agreement shill.

I'm not sure how the coming vote on Fast Track and TPP in the House will go (my latest update is here, but times are fast a-changing.). I'm hearing about the possibility of money changing hands on the Republican side (Bob Ney speculated about that in an on-air conversation with Thom Hartmann, and the sums he mentioned were huge). And I'm hearing about extraordinary pressure being put on Democrats by party leaders. So we'll see.

Two things I do know. First, if Democrats push Fast Track and TPP over the finish line, it could be a bloodbath at election time. (That's a warning for Republicans as well.) And second, if Democrats push Fast Track and TPP over the finish line, it should be a bloodbath at election time.

I will say, speaking for myself only, that every Democrat who votes for Fast Track needs to be made a lobbyist at the first opportunity. Some deeds are so bad, will do such damage, that they should never be rewarded with a return to elected office. If Fast Track passes, then TPP will almost certainly pass, the Trans-Atlantic version, TTIP (or as some call it, TAFTA) will pass, and TISA, the horrible "service sector" agreement will also pass.

These agreements will not only remake the world economy, as NAFTA did, but on a much larger scale — they will also neuter the sovereignty of every nation that signs them. Which of your elected representatives would you like to reward after saying yes to that? How about ... none of them?

Starting with Ron Wyden, who greased the skids in the Senate, and people like House member Jim Costa (click to help tell him how you feel about his TPP support).


Supporting NAFTA Was the Kiss of Death for Democrats

Sarah Anderson of the Institute for Policy Studies has taken a look at the NAFTA vote, one very similar to the current Fast Track and TPP vote, in that Democrats were heavily lobbied by their leaders to say yes, despite widespread understanding that NAFTA would be a job-killer. Remember, the NAFTA vote came not long after a presidential campaign in which Ross Perot talked about that "giant sucking sound going south," the sound of jobs moving to Mexico. (Feel free to remind yourself about that moment by watching the short video at the top.)

Sarah Anderson, writing on the consequences to Democrats of their NAFTA votes, opens with a bit of context and a question:

Supporting NAFTA Was the Kiss of Death for Democrats --Why Dems Should Think Twice About Voting for TPP

As President Obama twists arms to pass “fast track,” a look back at the Democrats who helped Clinton win the bloody trade battle of 1993.

It’s serious flashback time for those involved in the 1993 debate over the North America Free Trade Agreement. With the “fast track” trade vote expected as early as this Thursday, a Democratic president is once again twisting arms and dangling rewards in a desperate effort to muster votes for a corporate-driven trade deal. And just like in 1993, the vote will be one of those rare bipartisan moments in Washington. The word is only about a dozen members remain on the fence, most of them Democrats. The president is reportedly putting the tightest screws on members of the Congressional Black Caucus. After the NAFTA wheeling and dealing began in earnest back in 1993, it didn’t take long to push enough Dems off the fence. All these years later, NAFTA remains the basic blueprint for every U.S. trade deal.

Let me skip over NAFTA’s failure to deliver on promises for workers, the environment, human rights, etc. These have all been extensively documented over the years by the Institute for Policy Studies, and many others across the continent. President Obama acknowledged its flaws himself when he made a campaign trail promise to renegotiate the deal. Instead, let’s take a look at what individual members got by helping to ram the pact through Congress. Did their support for the big business lobby’s dream deal ensure a glittering political career?

She then discusses House Speaker Tom Foley:

Starting at the top: Democratic House Speaker Tom Foley sided with the White House and against most of the House Democrats, including Majority Leader Richard Gephardt. In his 30-year political career, that controversial move stood out enough for the New York Times to mention it in Foley’s obituary. A year after the NAFTA vote, the obit noted, “Mr. Foley became the first speaker since the Civil War to be defeated for re-election in his own district.”

Ouch. While Foley’s defeat can’t be attributed to a single factor, his decision to side with the corporate lobby on NAFTA certainly didn’t prevent his electoral humiliation either.

What about all the Clinton White House promises of special safeguards that would shield members from disastrous consequences for their constituents?

In a detailed 2001 report following up on the NAFTA deals, Public Citizen concluded that “systematically, the White House promises of special safeguards for U.S. farm commodities, bridges and more remained unfulfilled. Exceptions were several meaningless promises, such as photographs with the president, and one campaign fund-raising event.”

"Photographs with the president." Sounds like those rides on Air Force One that Obama is offering, as he flies to Germany to meet with the G7:

Inside US Trade: Four House Dems Supporting TPA To Accompany Obama On G7 Trip

Four House Democrats who have publicly announced or signaled their support for a pending Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) bill will travel with President Obama on Air Force One to attend the G7 summit taking place June 7-8 in Germany, according to a White House official. ...

They are Reps. Jim Himes (D-CT), Gerry Connolly (D-VA), Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) and Mike Quigley (D-IL), the official said.

Apparently Himes was included as a reward for a very recent switch:

Of that group, Himes was the most recent member to announce his support for the TPA bill, having done so on June 3.

I hope those plane rides are worth those House seats; some TPP Democrats will lose theirs — just as many NAFTA Democrats lost back in that day. Anderson again:

One of these unfulfilled promises targeted textile and apparel state members. ...

Rep. Clete Donald Johnson, Jr. was one of the targets of that empty promise. After voting for NAFTA, the Georgia Democrat got demolished in 1994, losing by a margin of more than 30 percent. A few years later, Clinton offered Johnson a consolation prize: a post as chief U.S. trade negotiator for textiles, a sector in rapid decline due to low-wage foreign competition.

Anderson mentions others, such as Rep. Bill Sarpalius of Texas, Rep. David Price of North Carolina, and Rep. Lewis Payne Jr of Virginia. These men and more believed the President's empty promises of protection, voted with the money that wanted NAFTA to pass, and then were cast out of office.

Consider also the list of trade-deal betrayals compiled by Public Citizen, Broken Promises, Lost Elections (pdf):

“Members of Congress should know better than to trust an exiting president’s promises of political cover or to rely on vote-yes-now-goodies-later deals for voting ‘yes’ on such a controversial, career-defining issue as Fast Track,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. “Our research of scores of deals over the past 20 years shows no matter who the president or congressional leadership is, almost all of the promises made in the heat of a trade vote go unfulfilled, and representatives who vote ‘yes’ are repeatedly left in political peril.”

If you remember the broken promises of the 2008 campaign, you know how cheap a president's words are. Office-holders, trust the president to "have our back" at your peril.


Who Will Be Cast Out of Office This Time?

Non-Beltway and non-lobbyist people — i.e., voters — are putting pressure on the members of both parties not to pass the Fast Track bill. And members are feeling the heat. The popular resistance is so great that the AFL-CIO. for example, appears to have stopped all political contributions to office-holders and candidates until after the Fast Track vote, something that some money-fueled Democrats are complaining about.

Roll Call:

Democrats Frustrated by Unions’ Cash Freeze Over ‘Fast Track’

One of Democrats’ best team players on the campaign finance front is playing hardball this cycle, withholding campaign cash over a package of trade bills being debated in Congress.

The AFL-CIO, along with some public sector unions, announced a campaign finance freeze in March. Unions hoped the threat of withholding contributions would scare Democratic lawmakers out of supporting President Barack Obama’s Trade Promotion Authority, or “fast track,” to negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership — a trade agreement labor groups say would hurt manufacturing jobs in the U.S.

But instead, the freeze is frustrating and alienating plenty of House Democrats, many of whom say they are being punished even though they have been critical of the issue.

You can read further if you like, but the rest of the article seems like a "placed piece" attempting to shame unions into opening up their purses. I'd read it only of you want to see what "placed pieces" sound like.

Who will be cast out of office this time? If I'm a member of Congress and considering a Yes vote, I'd have to wonder if the answer is ... me.

And if I'm a voter in a district with a Yes or Undecided member of Congress, I'd want to make sure I tell that member ... it will be you if I can help it. House phone numbers here. Feel free to speak bluntly. It's a blunt bill.

And we could use a few more of these as well:

How would you like to see three or four of these billboards up along the 99 between Fresno and Merced? Contribute here to help make that happen. But please do it soon, before the House votes.

Otherwise, we'll have to put them up as punishment.

(A version of this piece appeared at Down With Tyranny. GP article archive here.)

GP



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Gaius Publius 6/11/2015 12:00:00 PM

 

How many are there?

by digby

I'm so glad that racism doesn't exist anymore and we can put that ugliness behind us. Here's a nice Texas teacher:

“I’m going to just go ahead and say it ... the blacks are the ones causing the problems and this ‘racial tension.’ I guess that’s what happens when you flunk out of school and have no education. I’m sure their parents are just as guilty for not knowing what their kids were doing; or knew it and didn’t care. I’m almost to the point of wanting them all segregated on one side of town so they can hurt each other and leave the innocent people alone. Maybe the 50s and 60s were really on to something. Now, let the bashing of my true and honest opinion begin....GO! #imnotracist #imsickofthemcausingtrouble #itwasatagedcommunity,” 

Just so you know, these are her true and honest opinions and she's not a racist. So that's good.

And anyway:

Fitzgibbons insisted the post “was not directed at any one person or group.”
“It was not an educational post; it was a personal experience post,” Fitzgibbons said, adding she has a personal connection to the McKinney situation, but declined to elaborate.
She added: “I apologized to the appropriate people,” declining to identify those people.
With the post deleted and her apology made, the teacher said she hopes the issue is resolved.

Case closed.

This is just some random woman and there are always people who say stupid things. But come on. She's just not that unusual. After all, somebody's listening to this guy.


Update:

Poor thing. I think she needs an exorcism. It sounds like she's apologising for being possessed by a demon that led her to say racist things she doesn't believe. (Her name is "Emotions")

I think we've all lost our tempers at times. But most of us don't spout off about wanting to return to Jim Crow when it happens.

I wouldn't want her teaching my kids, that's for sure. Who knows when that devil "Emotion" might take over and make her do bad things again?




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digby 6/11/2015 10:30:00 AM

 
BIllionaire cage match: 27 Yankees vs the Cubs

by digby

I wrote about the battle of the billionaires (also known as American democracy) at Salon today:

There has been a long running joke in political circles that we should just force politicians to wear the logos of their donors and favored lobbyists the way NASCAR drivers wears logos on their jumpsuit. It would make it much easier for voters to identify to whom our elected representatives really answer. Right now they just wear an American flag pin and that doesn’t really tell us much.

As I wrote the other day, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot we can do about this. Billionaires are perfectly happy to “own” politicians these days. If they ever had any shame about openly offering huge sums of money to anyone who will advance their agenda, paying lip service at best to the idea of democracy, they have managed to overcome it.

(Ironically, the group which filed the lawsuit challenging the democratic concept of “one person, one vote,” which was just accepted by the Supreme Court, is financed by right-wing millionaires through the old-fashioned tax-deductible “charitable trust” model, so perhaps these ostentatious billionaires aren’t quite ready to take full ownership of the franchise just yet.)

Since this insane income inequality is increasingly seen as almost supernatural, a condition ordained by the “invisible hand” of God, and to such a degree that many liberals have come to the conclusion that the only way to advance a liberal agenda is to find our own liberal billionaires. And that leads to certain awkward alliances, like this one, via Think Progress:

Usually the news that a major Republican donor will be dropping hundreds of millions of dollars on a campaign to influence voters on energy and climate change would make environmentalists worried. But not when that donor is spending $175 million to get Republicans to talk about clean energy and the solutions to the climate crisis.

Entrepreneur Jay Faison founded the ClearPath Foundation in December of last year in part to restore Republicans’ environmental legacy. Tuesday he announced that he will be investing $175 million on a public education campaign that will include a social media and online advertising to get Republicans to talk about market-based solutions to climate change. That includes $40 million through the 2016 cycle, and another $10 million as a seed fund for a political advocacy group. The foundation invested between $1 and $9 million in a few solar energy projects.

It is very hard to argue with that, and the environmental groups don’t even try. There is no greater challenge on the planet than the climate crisis and it would be foolhardy to turn away from any possible assistance in getting that done. The Sierra Club’s national campaign director Debbie Sease told Think Progress, ”it may or may not be enough, but it’s a really good thing. If you look at the scale of what we need to do on climate, you can’t do it with one party, you need Republicans too. It would be naive of me to think it’s the one thing that’ll turn it around, but it’s a start.”

Unfortunately, the right is antediluvian on this issue, so his “starting point” is trying to get the Republican rank-and-file to admit that the problem even exists and that science isn’t trying to yank their Bibles from their cold, dead hands. This man has his work cut out for him. And, at the end of the day, he will be trying to bring Republicans over to the cause while at the same time promoting conservative “solutions,” to be named later. And, let’s just say those don’t have the greatest track record when it comes to dealing with massive global crises.

Read on. There's more. It's depressing. But we've got to stay reality based amirite?
digby 6/11/2015 09:30:00 AM

 

The Walmart of states

by Tom Sullivan

A Montana man committed suicide last weekend after murdering his family. His wife was "mocking" him, he told a friend. Police described the survivalist as “a Constitutionalist who didn’t believe in government.” They're like oxymorons who don't believe in contradiction that way.

Speaking of not believing in government, Rick Perry, the returning presidential contestant and former Texas governor, boasts how the job-creating, Texas economic "miracle" is a model for how to run the country. (It was the same with another former Texas governor-president. What happened with that?)

The Washington Post's Harold Meyerson finds the Texas miracle less than miraculous. By two measures of job quality, "Texas rates dead last." Texans have the highest percentage of people without health insurance in the country. What's more, Meyerson writes:

The second measure of job quality is the share of people qualifying for government poverty programs who are nonetheless employed. In April, the University of California Center for Labor Research and Education released a study quantifying the number of Americans receiving Medicaid, food stamps, welfare, children’s health insurance coverage or the earned-income tax credit who have an employed family member. Low-paid work has become so prevalent, the study showed, that the yearly tab of federal dollars going to working families was $128 billion. The state with the highest share of funds going to such families was Texas.

By this measure, Texas is the Walmart of states — something else Texans who don't believe in government can be proud of. After all, Walmart is a BIG box store.

The 49 other states are subsidizing Perry's "so-called Texas miracle," Meyerson writes. "Texas’s use of federal dollars to keep its workers afloat is only deepened by its favor-the-rich-and-soak-the-poor tax policies."

Should he succeed in taking his model national, Rick Perry's Texas-sized plan for America, I guess, is to recruit enough "downline" countries to do for America what America is already doing for Texas.

I wonder, does Perry also sell Amway?

Undercover Blue 6/11/2015 06:00:00 AM

Wednesday, June 10, 2015

 
Headline 'O the Day

by digby

I just ....whatever.

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digby 6/10/2015 06:00:00 PM

 
The lady leadership problem

by digby

If the press really wonder what might be fueling some of this reported angst among Hillary Clinton's supporters, they might want to take a look at this and ask if they aren't simply afraid that the country is going to make their decision based on this rather than a serious problem with her policies and philosophy:

Last year, when Glassdoor released its annual ranking of employees’ highest rated CEOs based on their feedback during the year, just two women appeared among the top 50 (actually 51 due to an error), with one, Yahoo!’s Marissa Mayer, nearly dead last.

This year, however, women have completely disappeared. Among the 50 CEOs that garner the highest praise from their employees, the faces are all male.

There are, of course, few female CEOs who might end up on the list to begin with. Among companies in the S&P 500 index, just 23, or 4.6 percent, have a woman in the top position. Those ranks aren’t likely to swell anytime soon: women make up just 25 percent of executive and senior officers at these companies and those that are in the highest ranks are stuck in jobs unlikely to lead to the corner office.

But even women who do make it into leadership have to deal with the fact that Americans still like to see a man in charge. Both men and women say they prefer men as a senior executives at Fortune 500 companies. When asked, more Americans say they’d prefer to work for a man than for a woman.

Women also face a backlash when they try to act like bosses. They are penalized at work both personally and financially when they act assertively. Female leaders are more likely to be called abrasive, aggressive, strident, and emotional. Women are also more likely than men to get negative feedback on their work performance.

If she loses it could be because of any number of things, many of which will obviously be of her own doing or because of the obvious superiority of the man who beat her. But you can't blame some women supporters for worrying that it doesn't matter what she says or does --- that this fundamental attitude about female leadership still guides the thinking of many people in our society.

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digby 6/10/2015 04:30:00 PM

 
Who cares what they think?

by digby

In January and June 2002, Republicans were more sensitive to security from terrorism than to protecting civil liberties. By September 2002, they shifted toward prioritizing civil liberties and have done so since. They have become even more likely to say civil liberties should be respected with Obama in office than they were when George W. Bush was still president.

Democrats have always given greater weight to protecting civil liberties, but in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 they showed a closer divide on whether civil liberties or security from terrorism should be the higher priority. Like Republicans, Democrats became more sensitive to protecting civil liberties over time. However, the current results suggest a dip in the percentage favoring the protection of civil liberties, perhaps relating to having a Democratic president -- one who called on Congress to pass the USA Freedom Act -- overseeing the federal government.

Natch.

The rub, of course, is what people define as an encroachment on civil liberties:

Some congressional critics of government anti-terrorism methods, most notably Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, argue that the government has too many powers in this area that violate citizens' rights. The majority of Americans, 55%, disagree, saying they do not believe such government programs violate their civil liberties. But that leaves a sizable minority of 41% who do feel the government is violating their civil liberties. Gallup asked this question for the first time in the June 2-7 poll, so it is not possible to know whether these views differ from those in the past.

They broke it all down demographically and by ideological and partisan affiliation and nobody, not even self-identified liberals, said they thought that what the government is doing violates their civil liberties (although they were more likely than any other category to say that it is.) Non-whites agreed although we don't have the breakdown of who that might be. Muslims might have a different opinion.

So, this is the problem. A majority of Americans don't think that the government should violate individuals' civil liberties for anti-terrorism purposes. But they clearly don't understand what their civil liberties are and certainly not when they've been violated. It sounds as though they tend to count on their political leaders to police this and since the national security state pretty much controls both parties, they don't actually do that. When the government passes some tepid reform like the USA Freedom Act they assume that whatever was wrong is now right and it's all good. And slowly but surely those civil liberties erode without anyone realizing it until it's too late.


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digby 6/10/2015 03:00:00 PM

 
Ben Carson wants to expand insider threat monitoring

by digby

He may not know that's what he is proposing, however:

Republican presidential contender Ben Carson said Wednesday that if elected next year he might implement a “covert division” of government workers who spy on their coworkers to improve government efficiency.

The pediatric neurosurgeon-turned-candidate told a crowd of Iowa Republicans he is “thinking very seriously” about adding “a covert division of people who look like the people in this room, who monitor what government people do.”

Carson suggested people would work harder if they suspected their coworkers of monitoring their work. “And we make it possible to fire government people!” he said to loud cheers.

Conservatives often criticize government employees as bureaucrats who live off public money and aren’t accountable to taxpayers. Still, Carson’s suggestion that such workers should spy on each other is the latest in a string of unusual — and often bizarre — ideas he’s floated that win cheers from far-right crowds and raised eyebrows from everyone else.

I have to defend Carson a little bit here. The government is already doing this, although the alleged purpose is for fellow employees to monitor anyone they suspect of being disloyal rather than inept. It could easily be re-tasked.

Here is the brochure they use at the Defense Department:

 "It is better to have reported overzealously than never to have reported at all."

Here's the FBI's version. Found it through a simple google search:

 If you read the original McClatchy story, you'll see that each federal department --- even the Peace Corps, has implemented this program.

Carson's spokesperson says that he meant to employ a "secret shopper" sort of spy program but this would be much cheaper. (You know how expensive federal contracting can be ...) Of course they'd have to have some whistleblower protections of some sort and that's where it all gets dicey.  But hey, no need to reinvent the wheel, amirite? 

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digby 6/10/2015 01:30:00 PM

 
Corruption

by digby

I don't know what this means except for the fact that it's a little weird that so many people think the federal government is corrupt but fail to see the other side of the corruption. Where do they suppose the money comes from that corrupting the government?

Thirty-eight percent of Americans chose the federal government as the most corrupt institution in American society followed by the news media 17 percent, banks and financial institutions 16 percent, the police 11 percent and organized religions 7 percent. The size and sway of the government would lead many people to think it is ripe for corrupt behavior. Forty-four percent of Republicans think so whereas only 26 percent of Democrats do. Twenty-nine percent of Republicans chose the news media while 25 percent of Democrats picked banks and financial institutions. Surprisingly, the police who have been in the news so much lately got only 11 percent (4 percent Republicans vs. 17 percent Democrats) it appears that Americans still support their local sheriff.
digby 6/10/2015 12:00:00 PM

 
Policing the internet

by digby

Fergawdsakes:

The Justice Department has issued a federal grand jury subpoena to Reason, a prominent libertarian publication, to unmask the identity of commenters who made alleged threats against a federal judge.

In the June 2 subpoena, first published by the blog Popehat on Monday, the Justice Department orders Reason to provide a federal grand jury with “any and all identifying information” on the identities of commenters who mused about shooting federal judges and/or feeding them through a wood chipper.

A May 31 article on Reason’s blog about the prosecution of Silk Road founder Ross “Dread Pirate Roberts” Ulbricht spurred the anonymous commenters’ vitriol. Ulbricht pleaded for leniency, but a federal judge sentenced Ulbricht to life in prison without parole for setting up the illicit online drug market.

“It’s judges like these that should be taken out back and shot,” one Reason commenter wrote.

“It’s judges like these that will be taken out back and shot,” another responded.

“Why waste ammunition? Wood chippers get the message across clearly,” a third wrote. “Especially if you feed them in feet first.”

Another comment suggested shooting such judges on courthouse steps instead.

If they're going to start monitoring anonymous comment sections for hyperbolic speech we're going to see a huge uptick in employment because it will take millions of man hours to wade through all the swill on every web site on the internet. Perhaps they could start on the right wing websites where they commonly talk about killing anyone with whom they have a beef.

You have to love the idea that somebody in the FBI (or the NSA?) was reading blog posts at Reason and decided to police the comment section. Jesus H. Christ.

*And no I don't think making idle threats about killing judges is acceptable behavior. But then most of the stuff I read in comment sections is unacceptable behavior.

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digby 6/10/2015 10:30:00 AM

 
Chris Christie: president of the 6th grade

by digby

I wrote about the New Jersey Governor for Salon this morning.  He ain't done yet:

Christie didn’t have a lot to say about foreign policy on his trip but he hasn’t been shy about telling Americans why he thinks he is the guy who can straighten out all these thorny global problems: He doesn’t take any crap from kindergarten teachers and he won’t take any from tinhorn dictators either. This report from last fall describes how Christie sees himself on the world stage:

According to an audio recording of the event, he said Mr. Putin had taken the measure of Mr. Obama. “I don’t believe, given who I am, that he would make the same judgment,” Mr. Christie said. “Let’s leave it at that."

People at the event were described as finding his foreign policy commentary “uncomfortable to watch.” Imagine that. Brian Beutler at the New Republic wryly observed that it was easy to imagine a President Christie on a long overseas trip “stepping on rakes” everywhere he goes because unlike all the other clumsy and cloddish GOP Governors abroad, his entire appeal, such as it is, is based upon his in-your-face bullying. It’s pretty much all he has to offer and there’s every chance that he’d destroy relationships left and right. But as Beutler pointed out, that might be the optimistic view:

[I]t’s equally possible Christie knows Putin wouldn’t be rattled by a humiliating, Jersey-style tongue-lash—and believes that only actual force, rather than just forceful words, would give Putin pause.

Apparently, Beutler was right. In New Hampshire this week, he made that explicit talking about how he would deal with China:

Christie called for a “military approach” to China’s advances to “let them know there are limits to what they’re allowed to do.”

“That is an issue that we can handle militarily by going out there and making sure that we show them that we don’t respect their claims to these artificial islands in the South China Sea that they’re building that they’re saying are theirs that are hundreds and hundreds of miles from the coast of China and are clearly in international waters,” Christie said adding: “We need to send that signal to the Chinese very clearly that we do not acknowledge nor will we respect their claims to those areas.”

Read on.

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digby 6/10/2015 09:00:00 AM

 

Oh, Lawdy-Lawd, he's desp'at!

by Tom Sullivan

This Tweet went by the other day and I just had to go back and find it:

wow. Gov Walker wants taxpayers to pay HALF of construction costs for Milwaukee Buck's nice new arena; http://t.co/UHnd0FdsK4

— Eric Boehlert (@EricBoehlert) June 8, 2015

Comparisons have been made and disputed between Walker's diversion of state funds to the arena and his cuts in state education funding. And yes, team owners have conned Democrats too. But the specifics of the Wisconsin deal are not what interests me this morning.

These deals always remind me of the Blazing Saddles scene in which Sheriff Bart puts his own gun to his head and threatens to shoot himself. Except with sports arena deals it is owners threatening to shoot their teams, "Build us a new stadium or your team gets it!" Flustered officials blurt out, "Hold it, men. He's not bluffing." Then they ante up taxpayer dollars. We pay them to make money.

We regularly decry corporate capitalism's race to the bottom. But the phrasing assumes there is a bottom. I'm not so sure. Considering offshoring, tax incentives, and tax repatriation legislation, you have to wonder just what level of taxation — including none — would rent-seeking, modern corporations accept without whining, without looking for even more ways to squeeze blood from a stone or more work from workers for even less?

There is a runaway, kudzu-ish element to corporate capitalism, but there is a Tom Sawyer-ish feature as well. Public corporations won’t be satisfied until We the People are paying them for making a profit — the way Tom Sawyer tricked friends into paying for the privilege of whitewashing Aunt Polly’s fence. These sports arena deals remind us that when an Obama tells business owners, you didn't build that, he's right.

Pretty soon working people will be paying the elite in brass door knockers (or their equivalent) for building it for them.

Undercover Blue 6/10/2015 06:00:00 AM

Tuesday, June 09, 2015

 

Only One Voter at Santorum Event.  Not a Failure for the Billionaire Message 

by Spocko

Today Politico ran a story "One voter shows up at Santorum event in Iowa"

It's a sad story, if you look at it with the premise that a candidate is trying to get enough votes to be president.  But that's so 2000 and late thinking.

If your goal is to talk about the GOP horse race, and who will eventually win, it can show how badly the campaign is run or how unpopular the candidate is. 

But this GOP Presidential race is different. Last Friday Sam Seder and Charlie Pierce explained why. They talked about how every GOP candidate now has a "Pet Politician," and because of that they will stay in the race for a lot longer than before.  (Link to Majority Report Audio)

Being the first in your yacht club to have a presidential candidate shows human votes are not as important as in the past. It's about pushing the Billionaire Message. Some billionaires even have more than one PP! ("Collect all 12! Show 'em to your friends!)

Today it's really about the candidate satisfying their lead billionaire. 

So the question is, does this current story satisfy Foster Friess? He's the billionaire paying for Sanatorum

 (Aside, Friess made his billions in mutual funds, but it always amuses me to think he made his money from an ice cream stand.)   

You can often tell what message the billionaire wants to hear. The tip off is when the candidate continues to go on about something that there really isn't a huge voting constituency for. ("Estate taxes about 10 million must to be removed!")

The campaign consultants come in and try to figure out, "How can I appeal to the buyer (Friess) and the voter?" In the past there might have been more of an overlap, but now they can mostly focus on the buyer. Sure, throw a few bones to the voters, but that's just to keep the candidate relevant. 

Charlie and Sam joked that the candidate knows they will be a loser, but they run for the potential cushy jobs and future speaking fees. (Which, btw, is just another form of dark money used by the corporations/rich individuals to pay off past work and lay the groundwork for future influence.) 

The interesting stuff about the candidates the media covers are where they are different, the novel things they say. (Product differentiation!) 

But conservative billionaires often have the same views on things: No regulation, no taxes and the upward flow of money--to them.

What Pisses off the Lead Billionaire?

I don't know if we can do anything about "billionaire messages" beyond pointing them out. But one thing Sam and Charlie brought up was what happens when  candidates start using a populist type messages, thinking that they are supposed to get votes.

This pisses the billionaires off. I like things that piss off billionaires. It brought me great joy to make Rupert Murdoch sputter. 

But why bother? Because the Billionaire Message is usually bad for the majority of Americans. Also, since it is consistent to conservative candidates, you can hit more than one elephant with the same stone. (Metaphor only, please don't throw stones at elephants.)

So the key would be to find when a regular America voter message conflicts with a billionaire message.  Everyone gives lip service to caring about the voter, but they keep coming down on the side of the billionaire, which is often not the side of the people. 

I ask myself: "What idea or comment would lead Scott Walker into the Koch Brother's woodshed?" Is it also something that the America public likes? How do we help the media ask candidates questions that push the hot buttons of billionaires? 

Example: If your lead billionaire expects candidates to think of Israel first at all times, what question would you ask the candidate that normal America would expect, but a Presidential Pet would be forced to answer differently to please the billionaire?   The questions vary but all would make Americans happy but the billionaires' blood boil. 

When we hit upon these questions, we keep bringing it up. When the lead billionaire sees the offending quote in his ironed newspaper he gives the "Ned Beatty Network speech" to the candidate. The candidate will atone. You will know because if they slip and say something for the people later they will "walk the comments back" and "clarify" their intention. 

Again, you ask, "Why push the split on the GOP voters with the billionaires?" Because, voters actually like the results of the regulations the billionaires hate. 

Everyone wants safe air, food and water. When we don't get them, we go to the government for help, or to lawyers to force people to act or the offender to pay.

People like services that their taxes give them.

We love our first responders, working infrastructure, and plowed streets. 

He hate it when people trick us, take our money and kick us out of our houses because of their lies.

We want to see rich crooks go to jail. When we see that someone has a different justice system than the rest of us there is great anger. 

All of these attacks on the billionaires' standard message sets the stage for someone who DOES side with the people. Someone who does need votes, and not just money. 

That is real differentiation that even a few in the media might notice.    

Spocko 6/09/2015 07:30:00 PM

 
Guardian vs Warrior

by digby

Here's a very interesting article by a police scholar about what happened in McKinney:

An officer in McKinney, Texas, dashes down a sidewalk, losing his flashlight as he runs past a teenage videographer toward an emergency. Seconds later, the teen with the camera walks up to another officer, one who is standing with a group of kids. “I’m just saying,” the officer is saying in a calm, corrective tone that parents and school teachers everywhere will recognize. “Don’t take off running when the cops get here.”

He thanks the videographer for returning the flashlight, then listens for a few seconds as the kids around him try to explain who was and was not involved in a prior incident. “Okay, guys, I appreciate that,” the as-yet-unidentified officer says. He responds to their concerns—that the police had detained the wrong people—by saying, “Okay, that’s what I’m saying. They’re free to go.” While not casual, the officer is composed. His tone is friendly and professional as he engages with the kids.

Seconds later, another officer, Corporal Eric Casebolt, is shown interacting with some of the same kids. His angry tone and aggressive attitude stand in marked contrast to the first officer in the video. “Get on the ground,” he commands sharply while pulling on a young man’s wrist in a way that looks like he’s trying to force the man to the ground with a painful joint manipulation (technically a supinating wrist lock or, for martial arts enthusiasts, kote gaeshi).

When that proves ineffective, he grabs the back of the young man’s head and shoves him down. “I told you to stay,” he yells, pointing a large metal flashlight at someone off camera. “Get your asses down on the ground.” Like the first officer, he lectures some of the kids about running from the police, but he takes a very different approach. “Don’t make me fucking run around here with thirty pounds of god-damned gear on in the sun because you want to screw around out here.” He is anything but composed, calm or professional.

The two officers in this brief video represent two different policing styles, two different mindsets that officers use as they interact with civilians: the Guardian and the Warrior. As a former police officer and current policing scholar, I know that an officer’s mindset has tremendous impact on police/civilian encounters. I’ve described the Guardian and Warrior mindsets at some length here and here; for now, suffice to say that the right mindset can de-escalate tense situations, induce compliance, and increase community trust over the long-term. The kids interacting with the first officer were excited, but not upset; they remained cooperative. Had they gone home at that moment, they’d have a story for their friends and family, but it would be a story that happened to have the police in it rather than being a story about the police.

The wrong mindset, on the other hand, can exacerbate a tense encounter, produce resistance, and lead to entirely avoidable violence. It can, and has, caused longterm damage to police/community relations. We shouldn’t be surprised that the kids Corporal Casebolt was yelling at weren’t eager to do what he was ordering them to do—no one likes being cursed at and disrespected in front of their peers, and people of all ages, especially teenagers, resent being treated unjustly. That resentment can lead to resistance, and Police Warriors—taught to exercise unquestioned command over a scene—overcome resistance by using force.

I think everyone got so caught up in the story of military gear appearing on the streets of America that our discussion of the militarization of police got short changed. This is the big problem that stems from militarization --- bad training and bad attitudes.

If you live in a big city you see police in action all the time. I certainly do. And most of the time it's a respectful, often even friendly interaction. But it's not uncommon to see this aggressive, hostile belligerent approach and it always seems to come out of nowhere. This author says that there should be some training for police on the scene to intervene and give cops who've become too wound up some space to calm down and get their act together but it's rare. I've never seen that, actually. What I've observed is that the wound up cop is left to do his thing while other cops ignore it. In McKinney it did look as though a couple of officers intervened a little bit when their colleague pulled a gun, but it was brief and mostly worked because they took up the chase leaving our amped up officer to go back to assaulting the girl in the bikini.

There are people who are thinking about this stuff and over time this really could change. But the police have to take it seriously and the communities have to back their attempts to change. from what I've seen of this white community and the toxic swill that's been spewed on facebook and blog comment sections, I'm not holding out a lot of hope for that.

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digby 6/09/2015 05:30:00 PM

 
Seriously, What is Wrong With This Country?

by tristero

Rick Santorum held a campaign rally and someone actually showed up. This is a very strange country.



tristero 6/09/2015 04:30:00 PM

 
Untidy remembrances

by digby

Donald Rumsfeld said something. It wasn't earth shattering:

[T]he idea that we could fashion a democracy in Iraq seemed to me unrealistic. I was concerned about it when I first heard those words ... I'm not one who thinks that our particular template of democracy is appropriate for other countries at every moment of their histories.

That wasn't what he said at the time but he really wasn't one of those starry-eyed neocons who talked about turning Iraq into a Jeffersonian democracy. He was always one of those Kissinger Realist types who just wanted to topple Iraq because it had been determined that we needed to topple someone and everything had been set up to topple Saddam. He was always more of a "shock and awe" guy than a "birth-pangs of democracy" guy like Wolfowitz.

But seeing him in the news made me nostalgic for the good old days. Remember this?

Kathryn Jean Lopez: You’ve taken a little criticism already from the likes of Maureen Dowd (do they give medals for that yet?) for being a little too Rumsfeld-friendly (I believe I’ve seen the words “hero worship)? How do you plead?

Midge Decter: I certainly and happily plead guilty to the idea behind Maureen Dowd’s column, absurd though her general posture is. (I have said that had she known what a great favor she was doing me by telling other Rumsfeld admirers about the book as she did, she would surely never have done it. Too bad for her.)

Lopez: How noteworthy is it that Rumsfeld was a high-school wrestler? Decter: He was not only a high-school wrestler, but a college and navy wrestler as well–and a champion at all three levels. Now, I myself happen to know very little about wrestling: I must confess, for one thing, never in a long life to have seen a single wrestling match. Several of Rumsfeld’s friends, however–as I report in the book–find it very significant about him, in that wrestling is a sport in which, relying only on yourself, you can be either the lone winner or the lone loser. “In wrestling,” as one of them put it, “there is no such thing as second-place money.”

Lopez: Did I read right? There was a day when Donald Rumsfeld was not a good speaker?

Decter: When he decided to run for Congress, his only support at first was from his high-school friends and classmates. And that is the story: He was at first not a very good speaker, and in what has in hindsight to be viewed as predictable fashion, he set about to remedy the situation, by hiring a speech teacher and making his friends listen to him and offer their criticisms.

Lopez: In 1963, as a young congressman, Rumsfeld, you write, “criticized the State Department for the way it had recently been engaging in friendly relations with the Soviet Union’s Nikita Khrushchev and Hungary’s Janos Kadar.” Does Rumsfeld hostility toward Foggy Bottom have a long history?

Decter: He was certainly a Cold Warrior, and Cold Warriors were opposed to the policy that later came to be called dÈtente with the Soviet Union. At the time, any such hostility would not have been directed only at Foggy Bottom, of course, but at the then growing number of advocates of warmer relations with the Soviets. By the way, he would not agree to the idea that he even now feels any hostility to the State Department. The most you can get him to say is that the people in Foggy Bottom have their role and the people in the Defense Department have theirs. He is someone who does not gossip, no matter how much one urges him to (the most disparagement of anyone I was ever able to get out of him was a mention of how Nixon’s inmost circle of friends made him feel “uncomfortable”).

Lopez: What do the secretary and his wife make of his “Rumstud” status?

Decter: His wife, Joyce, and his children mainly seem to be amused by the “Rumstud” phenomenon. As for the secretary’s feeling about it, how could he (or any man) be as indifferent to it as he often pretended to be? Lopez: What does it say about our culture today–and about American women (of all ages!) that Rumsfeld’s become a sex symbol?

Decter: What Rumsfeld’s having become an American sex symbol seems to say about American culture today is that the assault on men leveled by the women’s movement, having poisoned the normally delicate relations between men and women and thereby left a generation of younger women with a load of anxiety they are only now beginning to throw off, is happily almost over. It’s hard to overestimate the significance of the term “stud” being applied to a man who has reached the age of 70 and will not too long from now be celebrating his 50th wedding anniversary.

And it wasn't just the wingnutty neoconservatives who loved Rummy, remember? The press treated his press conferences as if they were watching a Richard Pryor stand-up.

God, that was a weird time.


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digby 6/09/2015 03:30:00 PM

 
The 64 billion dollar question

by digby

I wrote about the billionaire donor problem for Salon today:

It seems as though every few months I come across another article trying to explain why the Citizens United ruling, while disturbing in many ways, is not the reason for the explosion of the Super PAC or the recent surge of wealthy billionaires involving themselves directly in political campaigns. The most recent comes from free speech advocate Wendy Kaminer in the Boston Globe, who writes:

Super PACs are not dependent on corporate funding. They’re primarily funded by super-rich individuals, whose right to devote unlimited amounts of their own money on independent expenditures (those not involving direct contributions to candidates) was confirmed by the Court in 1976, in Buckley v. Valeo. As the Brennan Center, a fierce critic of the Citizens United ruling, has acknowledged, “the singular focus on the decision’s empowerment of for-profit corporations to spend in (and perhaps dominate) our elections may be misplaced.”

I’m not suggesting that the great majority of Americans who agree that money has “too much influence” in elections should be relieved that a handful of multibillionaires instead of for-profit corporations exercise that influence. But I am saying the Citizens United decision is not the source of all campaign finance evils.

When Citizens United came down many people believed it would unleash a torrent of corporate money into politics and that hasn’t yet happened. Because of the disclosure rules, corporations that have tried to involve themselves in political campaigns have found that it can hurt the bottom line. This happened to the Minnesota-based Target back in 2010, when their board gave $150,000 to the Republican running for Governor and his anti-LGBT stances prompted a boycott threat. The corporation, which has generous LGBT policies, explained that it wasn’t done as a measure of support for the candidate’s position on social issues but for purely on an economic reasons — but it didn’t matter. The lesson was clear: Corporate support for political candidates could cost a company its customers. (One assumes they realized it was safer to simply pour that money into lobbying as they’ve always done before to get the same results.)

In her Boston Globe piece, Kaminer pretty much throws up her hands and says that there’s nothing new under the sun; the rich will always run the show one way or the other and that’s just the way it is.

She's kind of right unfortunately. I go on to talk about various other theories about what's caused the tsunami of money suddenly coming into elections from these billionaires and there aren't any really good answers. My personal feeling is that these billionaires have just lost all sense of shame or dignity and are now openly demanding to run the world --- they're all a bunch of Auric Goldfingers

Anyway, read on.
digby 6/09/2015 01:32:00 PM

 
The crime in McKinney

by digby

Via Salon, I see that last night on Fox News, Megyn Kelly cleared the whole thing up:

On “The Kelly File” Monday, host Megyn Kelly spent almost half the program trying to justify the decisions made by the police during the incident at a McKinney, Texas pool party on Friday.

Kelly began by talking to “Sean,” a man who was at the pool party with his wife and young children. He said he called police because “the music that the DJ was playing wasn’t appropriate for my son, or even for the teens.”

“Sean” said that situation only got out of hand, however, when the teens at the party began to “attack” residents by calling them “racist.” White residents had complained to the pool security guard that the group of teens — who were attending a combination graduation/birthday party — didn’t look like they lived in the community.

“So the teens who were jumping the fence were calling residents ‘racist,’” Kelly said, speaking for aggrieved white conservatives everywhere who know that there’s no violence more violent than being accused of believing what many white conservatives proudly believe.

I can see what happened. A bunch of black teenagers were playing their dirty black music. And then for no apparent reason, out of the blue, they started calling the white people racists which is tantamount to a lynching. They were asking for it.

When I first wrote about this on Sunday, I entitled the post "he only saw the black kids" and people told me that there weren't any white kids for him to chase. But the fact is that the kid who filmed the whole thing was white and here's what he said:

The footage was taken during a party held at a local pool. Some residents have argued that attendees were being unruly, prompting them to call police for assistance. But according to Brooks, residents wrongfully pushed to escalate authorities’ response.

“Most of the kids weren’t even involved,” he said. “It was a fight between a mom and girl, which had nothing to do with all the other kids that she apparently needed more cops for.”

Casebolt then arrived and started “going crazy” after tripping and dropping his flashlight, Brooks said.

“I was one of the only white people in the area when that was happening,” he explained. “You can see in part of the video where he tells us to sit down, and he kinda like skips over me and tells all my African-American friends to go sit down.”

Last night's Chris Hayes interviewed another participant in the incident, a 14 year old white girl, also handcuffed and manhandled by the police, who said that it was the white residents who started the insults and she and her friends felt they had to step up and defend the other kids. Then a couple of white women got physical and a fight broke out. The cops arrived shortly and just started running around like Starsky and Hutch chasing kids willy nilly, which we all saw on the video.

That interview was extremely interesting because this girl's father came to the scene found his daughter handcuffed and couldn't get any police officer to explain why. He assumed that the police must have had a good reason and blamed his daughter until he got the facts from other adults at the party at which point he realized that his girl had been in the right.

I've been watching this story on cable with horror. To me this is one of the Rodney King incidents where I look at the footage and what I see is very clear: cops acting completely out of control. This is not debatable in my view. Setting aside the assault on the girl in the bikini, which is obviously obscene, the way he screams at those two young boys sitting handcuffed on the grass who are crying and saying "sir we just came for a birthday party" tells you exactly what was going on. This cop demands to be in control at all times and if he isn't he will get violent. And when he pulled a gun in a situation where there were many children, none of them armed and dangerous, there's little doubt about his mindset. His screaming lecture to them about how they didn't jump to when he ordered them to and how they have to obey him no questions asked is just chilling.

Every one of the kids I've seen interviewed are just average American teens. These aren't crips and bloods, hardcore street toughs or even slightly threatening people. They are just kids and it's completely obvious. They didn't know they were endangering their lives by simply being teenagers.

We knew that it was terrifying to have a black teenage son in America. Now we know it's just as terrifying to have a black teenage daughter. That white father had obviously taught his daughter to have integrity and stand up for the underdog and she paid a price for that by being handcuffed by the cops. But black parents cannot afford to teach their children to speak up and speak out. Those kids could very well die because they don't know that what they learn in school about rights and free speech and justice doesn't apply to them. Those two handcuffed young boys who were trying to explain themselves to the police officer certainly know better now. They'll never really feel free again, will they?


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digby 6/09/2015 12:00:00 PM

 
QOTD: Jim Bob Duggar

by digby

Via Huffington Post

One of the reasons more young women are giving birth out of wedlock and more young men are walking away from their paternal obligations is that there is no longer a stigma attached to this behavior, no reason to feel shame. Many of these young women and young men look around and see their friends engaged in the same irresponsible conduct. Their parents and neighbors have become ineffective at attaching some sense of ridicule to this behavior. There was a time when neighbors and communities would frown on out of wedlock births and when public condemnation was enough of a stimulus for one to be careful...

Oh wait, sorry. That was Jeb Bush in his book "Profiles in Character." The chapter is called "The restoration of shame."

Also too, this:

For many, it is more shameful to work than to take public assistance -- that is how backward shame has become!

In the context of present-day society we need to make kids feel shame before their friends rather than their family. The Miami Herald columnist Robert Steinback has a good idea. He suggests dressing these juveniles in frilly pink jumpsuits and making them sweep the streets of their own neighborhoods! Would these kids be so cavalier then?

He'll be running as a compassionate conservative, no doubt.


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digby 6/09/2015 10:30:00 AM

 
Robert Reich on the Estate Tax — "Raise it"

by Gaius Publius

Nice short video in Robert Reich's series "The Big Picture: 10 Ideas to Save the Economy." This one explains the estate tax and argues for its increase.

The film is about two minutes long, and very clear, as are all Reich's films in this series. Enjoy:





Some data from the film:

Today the estate tax reaches only the richest two-tenths of one percent, and applies only to dollars in excess of $10.86 million for married couples or $5.43 million for individuals.

That means if a couple leaves to their heirs $10,860,001, they now pay the estate tax on $1. The current estate tax rate is 40%, so that would be 40 cents.

Yet according to these members of Congress, that's still too much.

Who is behind eliminating the estate tax? The "Eighteen Families" identified here (listed on pdf pages 12 and 13). Among them are these fine people, listed with what they own:

• The Blethen family — Seattle Times
• Cox family — Cox Communication
• DeVos family — Amway
• Dorrance family — Campbell's Soup
• Gallo family — E&J Gallo Winery
• Koch family — Koch Industries; the Republican Party
• Mars family — Mars candy company
• Nordstrom family — Nordstrom department stores
• Walton family — Walmart
• Wegman family — Wegman Food Markets

There are a few others, investors and the like. But these are most of the main ones. Notice how their corporations are the source of their wealth. Put differently, Walmart exists to enrich the Waltons. It only incidentally sells goods from a store to do that.

The House voted in April to eliminate the estate tax. The repeal is not likely to pass in the Senate (so I hear), but anything's possible with so much money floating around, buying the ears of our bipartisan leaders. After all, I'm starting to hear about enormous sums associated with Fast Track "lobbying," sums that could easily kick that ball over the goal post.

Are Democratic senators, especially the thirteen who helped pass Fast Track, ready to be "influenced" again? I guess we'll find out.

GP



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Gaius Publius 6/09/2015 09:00:00 AM

 

Republicans pound sand

by Tom Sullivan

It is unlikely that Eugene Robinson wrote the online headline for his column today: "Republicans might as well pound sand." But that is the gist of it. Their progress in weakening Hillary Clinton so far is "pretty close to zero."

The  Democrats have the most admired woman in the country 17 out of the last 18 years. The Republicans have contenders bent on taking away health care from over 6 million neighbors and throwing the weak to the wolves. Can't imagine why they're having trouble getting traction.

And while Republican presidential hopefuls are still emerging — the party seems to think it is still a couple bozos short of a clown car — Robinson believes Hillary Clinton is hitting all the right notes:

Her fiery speech last week in defense of voting rights was her campaign’s best moment so far. Clinton slammed several of the leading Republican candidates — by name — for their roles in GOP-led efforts to restrict the franchise through voter-ID laws and other means. And she called for automatic voter registration of all citizens upon reaching age 18.

Talk about hitting the right buttons. The big question about Clinton’s candidacy is whether she can inspire the coalition that twice elected President Obama — young people, minorities, women. Voting rights is an issue that reliably sends African Americans to the polls in large numbers. I’ll be surprised if Clinton doesn’t soon have major messages for Latinos on immigration policy and women on issues of reproductive rights.

How cynical, Republicans complain. Translation: How effective.

Meanwhile, says Robinson, the swelling Republican field is fighting over who gets to sit at the "adult table" when it comes time for televised debates. Squeezing them all onto one stage being as impractical as fitting them into that rhetorical car.

The Washington Spectator's John Stoehr argues at Al Jazeera that it is not just stage space Republican candidates are fighting over. Those trying to out-conservative each other to satisfy activist primary voters will find that "the percentage of Republicans who identify as conservative has dropped 15 points since 2012," according to Gallup. "There’s only so much GOP candidates should expect from a quickly contracting base." Stoehr writes:

Meanwhile, the Democrats are enjoying the strong, diverse and growing support of the Obama electorate comprised of nonwhites and white liberals (educated, professionals living in urban centers). Those under 40 will see in Hillary Clinton a major candidate running on a platform of economic populism for the first time in their lives.

As for that, well, watch this space. But the voting rights speech got me where I live. As Michael Douglas once said, I ain't cheap, but I can be had.

Update: Speaking of throwing the weak to the wolves, "If you don’t want to pay for other people’s health insurance, you can’t live in a first world nation."

Undercover Blue 6/09/2015 06:00:00 AM

Monday, June 08, 2015

 
"We tortured some folks"

by digby

... and not just suspected terrorists:

A federal judge in Baton Rouge has called for the unconditional release of Albert Woodfox, the only remaining imprisoned member of the Angola 3.

Woodfox, 68, was placed solitary confinement at Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola and other state facilities for more than 40 years for reasons related to the 1972 murder of prison guard Brent Miller.

U.S. District Judge James Brady issued an order Monday (June 8) afternoon ordering the unconditional release of Woodfox from state custody and barring a third trial in the murder charges.

Woodfox has always maintained his innocence, claiming he was implicated in the murder of the 23-year-old guard to silence his activism as an organizing member of the prison's Black Panther Party chapter.

Tory Pegram, the manager of the International Coalition to Free the Angola 3, said it's unclear if Woodfox will actually be released from custody Monday. His lawyers were en route to Louisiana on a civil case, in which Woodfox is the plaintiff, on Monday when the order was issued.

Aaron Sadler, the communications director for the Louisiana Department of Justice, said Brady's order "arbitrarily sets aside jury decisions" based on "faulty procedural issues."

"With today's order, the Court would see fit to set free a twice-convicted murderer who is awaiting trial again for the brutal slaying of Corrections Officer Brent Miller," Sadler said in an emailed statement.

Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell's office is seeking an emergency stay from the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, he said, "to make sure this murderer stays in prison and remains fully accountable for his actions."

In the 27-page order, Brady said it is more customary to issue "conditional" release based on the outcome of a retrial. He gave five reasons that qualify as "exceptional circumstances," however, for barring a third trial.

"Mr. Woodfox's age and poor health, his limited ability to present a defense at a third trial in light of the unavailability of witnesses, this Court's lack of confidence in the State to provide a fair third trial, the prejudice done onto Mr. Woodfox by spending over forty-years in solitary confinement, and finally the very fact that Mr. Woodfox has already been tried twice and would otherwise face his third trial for a crime that occurred over forty years ago."

Solitary confinement is torture. And if torturing someone for 40 years isn't cruel and unusual punishment I don't know what it could possibly be.

I love Louisiana but its criminal justice system is something out of the third world. I'm just surprised we haven't been rendering terrorists there for "interrogation."

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digby 6/08/2015 05:00:00 PM

 
That's that #Obamacarefix

by digby

The Supreme Court may still find for the plaintiffs in the Obamacare lawsuit and make the absurd argument that it's no big deal because the congress can simply fix one sentence, but if you didn't know it already, this makes it very clear what an idiotic rationale that would be:

At the G7 conference in Germany on Monday, the president said if the justices strip subsidies from millions of Americans, "Congress could fix this whole thing with a one-sentence provision" making clear that Healthcare.gov subsidies are available in all 50 states. Republicans quickly fired off a rebuttal.

"Let's be clear: if the Supreme Court rules against the Administration, Congress will not pass a so called ‘one-sentence’ fake fix," Wyoming Senator John Barrasso, who is leading Republican efforts to craft a contingency plan, said in a statement.

There you have it.

It wouldn't be a fake fix at all, of course. Whatever sabotage the Republicans come up with would be the "fake fix." If the Supremes reject the administration's argument they are basically giving the GOP a cudgel with which to destroy sick people's lives. And they know it.

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digby 6/08/2015 03:30:00 PM