The Commentariat -- April 21, 2014
Internal links removed.
Steven Erlanger of the New York Times interviews economist Thomas Piketty: Piketty's "book punctures earlier assumptions about the benevolence of advanced capitalism and forecasts sharply increasing inequality of wealth in industrialized countries, with deep and deleterious impact on democratic values of justice and fairness." ...
... Piketty & Hitler. Chrystia Freeland, in Politico Magazine, on why Piketty's thesis is such a threat to plutocrats. ...
... Alexander Burns & Alex Byers of Politico: Napster billionaire Sean Parker gears up his political operation. CW: If you don't see the connection between Parker & the reviews & commentary on Piketty's work, you aren't paying attention. ...
... Ben Mauk of the New Yorker: "Today, the Ludlow massacre [of April 20, 1914]..., remains one of the bloodiest episodes in the history of American industrial enterprise.... The struggle that Ludlow embodied and that, historically, unions have taken up -- is a contemporary one, even if unions are no longer playing as public a role."
... Paul Krugman: "Whatever their motives, sadomonetarists have already done a lot of damage. In Sweden they have extracted defeat from the jaws of victory, turning an economic success story into a tale of stagnation and deflation as far as the eye can see. And they could do much more damage in the future. Financial markets have been fairly calm lately -- no big banking crises, no imminent threats of euro breakup. But it would be wrong and dangerous to assume that recovery is assured: bad policies could all too easily undermine our still-sluggish economic progress. So when serious-sounding men in dark suits tell you that it's time to stop all this easy money and raise rates, beware: Look at what such people have done to Sweden."
Walter Hamilton of the Los Angeles Times: "For seven years through 2012, the number of Californians aged 50 to 64 who live in their parents' homes swelled 67.6% to about 194,000, according to the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and the Insight Center for Community Economic Development. The jump is almost exclusively the result of financial hardship caused by the recession rather than for other reasons, such as the need to care for aging parents, said Steven P. Wallace, a UCLA professor of public health who crunched the data.
Jamelle Bouie of Slate: "The right has always been against race-conscious remedies to racial discrimination, touting 'colorblindness' as the 'constitutional' approach to making policy. But it's only been in the last five years -- since the election of Barack Obama -- that it's scored significant victories.... Circumstances change and ideologies shift, but the message from conservatives stays the same: What happens on the ground doesn't matter; equality under the law is sufficient for civil rights.... But if you see racism as a force to fight -- if, in other words, you think the facts matter -- then you'll reject this 'colorblindness' for what it is: a reactionary excuse for doing nothing." ...
... CW: Stephen Colbert epitomizes this view with his "Colbert Report" character who "doesn't see color," and only surmises he is white because he "is told" that's so. ...
... Digby, in Salon: "... to constantly bring up the fact that Democrats can't win if they don't have the votes of racial minorities and young people[, as Republicans do,] implies that there's something not quite legitimate about it."
** Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post: "President Obama departs Tuesday for a week-long, four-nation tour of Asia, where he and his top aides will be less focused on any big policy announcements than on reassuring jittery allies that America remains committed to bolstering its security and economic ties to the region. The trip -- rescheduled from October, when Obama canceled his plans because of the government shutdown -- includes two of the countries on his original itinerary, Malaysia and the Philippines, as well as Japan and South Korea."
The Village Idiots Are Still Idiots
Forget Marxism. Ross Douthat: "... what's felt to be evaporating could turn out to be cultural identity -- family and faith, sovereignty and community -- much more than economic security." CW: Also, doesn't know "data" is plural. ...
... Steve M.: "Yes! Of course! We need a whole lot more of Jesus and a lot less rock 'n' ro-- er, progressive taxation.... The way Douthat sees it -- if I correctly understand a Scott Winship post he cites approvingly -- people are getting way too much in Social Security and Medicare and employer-provided health care to be suffering from any sort of real increase in equality." ...
... Mark Sumner of Daily Kos: "Ross Douthat is really determined to prove that he can write just damn anything and still get paid.... Douthat writes a whole column in which seeing all the wealth go to the 1% is perfectly fine so long as the 99% aren't starving so badly that they are rioting in the streets, and the real threat is that people might attack those institutions that keep people living under the rule of the 1%. Because, you know, that might lead to instability."
... Via Ben Armbruster of Think Progress. AND, playing right along, Chuck Todd remains firmly Tuck Chodd.
CW: ALSO, I'm not sure Nino understands much about how a representative democracy is supposed to work. You know, where citizens try to effect policy change through nonviolent means like voting, protesting, etc. CBS DC: "Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia told a crowd of law school students that if taxes in the U.S. become too high then people 'should revolt.'"
Suffer the Little Children. At least veteran Village Idiot Cokie Roberts gets something right. Evan McMurry of Mediaite: Cokie spars with Ralph Reed & Franklin Graham over gay adoptions. It was Easter, but the Righteous Men could not come up with coherent responses. Well, maybe this one:
... Aaron Barlow in Salon: "Backseat driving in the clown car: That's what pundits are about, today. In the New York Times, David Brooks tries to turn that around, making out that it is those who disagree with him who have the red noses and squeeze horns. He mounts a defense of Common Core State Standards (CCSS) based on the idea that those he shills for are the wise and considerate and caring -- and that everyone else is either raw material or the lunatic fringe (both left and right)."
William Rhoden, in a New York Times column, remembers Rubin Carter: "Carter offers a reminder that one's deeds on the court or on the field will be quickly forgotten; contributions to society resonate across decades. Carter's name endures not because he had a great left hook but because of the principles he represented until the day he died." See also Sunday's News Ledes.
Noah Shachtman of the Daily Beast: "NSA leaker Edward Snowden instantly regretted asking Russian President Vladimir Putin a softball question on live television about the Kremlin's mass surveillance effort, two sources close to the leaker tell The Daily Beast.... 'He basically viewed the question as his first foray into criticizing Russia. He was genuinely surprised that in reasonable corridors it was seen as the opposite,' added Ben Wizner, the American Civil Liberties Union attorney who serves as one of Snowden's closest advisers.... Even Jesselyn Radack, one of Snowden's American lawyers, instantly acknowledged that the interchange was a misstep."
Beyond the Beltway
Times-Picayune Editors: "Gov. Bobby Jindal [R-La.] remains unmoved by the plight of hundreds of thousands of uninsured Louisiana residents, by pressures on hospitals left to treat those patients in emergency rooms, by the loss of thousands of new health care jobs, by the good that Medicaid coverage has done for poor children here.... [State] Sen. [Ben] Nevers' [D] Senate Bill 96 would put a constitutional amendment on the Nov. 4 ballot.... The amendment would direct Louisiana's Department of Health and Hospitals to file everything necessary by Jan. 1, 2015, to receive the federal funding to provide Medicaid to residents who are at or below 138 percent of the federal poverty rate.... Lawmakers should pass Sen. Nevers' bill...." Via Greg Sargent.
Presidential Race
Katie Glueck of Politico: Rick Perry gets an "extreme makeover." This time around, advisors are working to try to ensure he isn't such a dolt. CW: Good luck with that. ...
... Andy Borowitz: "With an eye toward a Presidential run in 2016, Rick Perry, the Texas governor, is hoping that a two-pronged strategy of wearing glasses and not speaking will make him appear smarter to voters, aides to the Governor confirmed today." ...
... BUT there's this:
... Paul Weber of the AP: "A judge seated a grand jury in Austin [last] week to consider whether [Texas. Gov. Rick] Perry, who is weighing another run for the White House, abused his power when he carried out a threat to veto $7.5 million in state funding for public corruption prosecutors last summer. Aides to Perry say he legally exercised his veto power. Others say Perry was abusing his state office and is finally getting his comeuppance." ...
... Christy Hoppe of the Dallas Morning News: "The grand jury is looking at potentially three state statutes: whether ... [Perry] tried to bribe a public official into stepping down; if he abused his position by misusing public funding 'to obtain a benefit'; or whether -- and prosecutors believe this could be the strongest charge -- he tried to coerce [Travis County D.A. Rosemary] Lehmberg into taking 'a specific performance of [her] official duty."
Michael Barbaro of the New York Times: "But his efforts to capitalize on his résumé and reputation have thrust [Jeb Bush] into situations that may prove challenging to explain should he mount a Republican campaign for the White House." Besides associating himself with a number of shady operations, "At one point, Mr. Bush sat on the boards of six companies, twice as many as leading corporate governance experts recommend given the time and fiduciary responsibilities of such a position."
News Ledes
New York Times: "American drones and Yemeni counterterrorism forces killed more than three dozen militants linked to Al Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen over the weekend in one of the largest such attacks there in months, officials from both countries said Monday. At least three airstrikes were carried out against Qaeda fighters in a convoy and in remote training camps in southern Yemen. They were militants who were planning to attack civilian and military facilities, government officials said in a statement."
Guardian: "Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has accused Ukraine of violating an accord reached in Geneva last week aimed at averting a wider conflict. Lavrov also told a news conference that a deadly gunfight on Sunday near Slavyansk, a Ukrainian city controlled by pro-Russian separatists, showed Kiev did not want to control 'extremists'." ...
... Washington Post: "Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow will intervene if bloodshed continues -- even as Ukrainian officials accuse Russia of stirring it up."
Washington Post: "South Korean President Park Geun-hye castigated the captain and some crew members of a sunken ferry on Monday, saying their actions in abandoning a vessel with hundreds of passengers still aboard were 'tantamount to murder.' Park's comments came in the face of steady criticism about her government's response to the disaster amid a growing sense of fury in South Korea about alleged criminal incompetence aboard the ferry Sewol."