;)
Tuesday
Jul032012
Independence Day
Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post: "... how is our foundational assertion of equality faring on this July Fourth? As to social parity, it has seldom looked more robust. As to economic equality and the political equality with which it is inextricably intertwined, the picture is bleak." ...
... In celebration of Independence Day, the New York Times features an op-ed by pop philosopher Kurt Andersen whose thesis today is -- "What has happened politically, economically, culturally and socially since the sea change of the late '60s isn’t contradictory or incongruous. It&'s all of a piece. For hippies and bohemians as for businesspeople and investors, extreme individualism has been triumphant. Selfishness won." I would give this the "I Thought of It When I Was Drunk{ prize, tho Andersen claims he came up with it during a panel discussion. Unfortunately, I think a lot of people will figure this is some totally awesome commentary, man. ...
... Erik Loomis in AlterNet: "We are recreating the Gilded Age, the period ... when corporations ruled this nation, buying politicians, using violence against unions, and engaging in open corruption. During the Gilded Age, many Americans lived in stark poverty, in crowded tenement housing, without safe workplaces, and lacked any safety net to help lift them out of hard times.... Republicans [are] more committed than ever to repealing every economic gain the working-class has achieved in the last century and the Democrats seemingly unable to resist...." Loomis lists eight ways corporations, politicians and courts are trying to recreate the Gilded Age. ...
... Exhibit 1. Debtors' Prisons Come to Our Dickensian Wonderland. Ethan Bronner of the New York Times: communities are using fines as a primary source of revenue, & assigning for-profit, private probation companies to collect the fines. When poor people can't afford to pay, they go to jail even though it is unconstitutional to imprison people for inability to pay fines. "Richard Garrett [of Childersburg, Alabama] has spent a total of 24 months in jail and owes $10,000, all for traffic and license violations that began a decade ago."
Exhibit 2: N. C. Aizenman & Sandhya Somashekhar of the Washington Post: "A growing number of Republican state leaders are revolting against the major Medicaid expansion called for under President Obama's health-care overhaul, threatening to undermine one of the law's most fundamental goals: insuring millions of poor Americans. The Supreme Court opened the door Thursday when it announced that although the rest of the law is constitutional, the federal government cannot punish states that refuse to adopt the measure’s more generous eligibility rules for Medicaid." CW: Yo, Marvin Schwalb -- gotcha beat in our "Worst Governors" contest today. ...
... Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic: "That didn't take long. Republican lawmakers from across the country are saying no to the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of Medicaid -- even though it means turning down a sweetheart deal from the federal government that would create jobs in their states and, more important, provide millions of low-income Americans with health insurance.... They really think this is a bad idea to be opposed at all costs -- which says something about their fanatical devotion to anti-government philosophy, their cold indifference to their most vulnerable constituents, or some combination of the two." ...
... David Dayen of Firedoglake: "I don't know why ... anyone would believe that logic will rule the day, and red state governors will go against their entire ideological worldview and spend taxpayer dollars -- however small -- to cover poor people, in many states largely people of color."
Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: neither party wants to talk about healthcare reform. ...
... New York Times Editors: "It's past time for the White House and the Obama campaign to ... begin" aggressively defending the Affordable Care Act. Thanks to Victoria D. for the link. CW: Reality Chex readers & I have been saying this for some time. I'm glad we've got a chorus at the New York Times. Maybe Obama will listen now. That appalling, deceitful hit job by David Brooks yesterday should be inspiration enough. (See my NYTX column on Brooks to get a glimmer of just how deceitful it was.) ...
... ** Jonathan Chait of New York: people like David Brooks really need to quit pretending Republicans will spend a nickel insuring the poor & the sick.
David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times: "Even as they promised to hand authority to elected leaders, Egypt's ruling generals were planning with one of the nation’s top judges to preserve their political power and block the rise of the Islamists, the judge said."
Tales from the Court
Paul Campos, in Salon, on the ACA decision: "My source insists that 'most of the material in the first three quarters of the joint dissent was drafted in Chief Justice Roberts' chambers in April and May.' Only the last portion of what eventually became the joint dissent was drafted without any participation by the chief justice. This source insists that the claim that the joint dissent was drafted from scratch in June is flatly untrue." ...
... Mark Tushet of Balkinization: "The evidence that the initial conference vote was 5-4 to strike down the ACA is pretty strong. Not only is there the internal stylistic evidence, but there were rumors before the decision to that effect. Within a couple of weeks of the arguments, I heard a rumor, sourced to a law clerk, that the Court had voted to strike the ACA down.... Several weeks later I heard that ... the Medicaid expansion was going to invalidated. And, on June 2, Ranesh Ponuru stated that he had heard from inside the Court that the initial vote was 5-4, but that the Chief Justice had gotten 'squishy.' ...
... Orin Kerr of the Volokh Conspiracy has the text of what Ponuru said on June 2:
... there's an initial vote the same week, on the Friday of the oral arguments. And my understanding is that there was a 5-4 vote to strike down the mandate and maybe some related provisions but not the entire act. Since then, interestingly, there seem to have been some second thoughts. Not on the part of Justice Kennedy, but on the part of Chief Justice Roberts, who seems to be going a little bit wobbly. So right now, I would say, [the outcome of the case] is a little bit up in the air….
... John Fund of the National Review: "The week before the Supreme Court announced its decision, the White House was clearly hinting to many in the media and on Capitol Hill that they expected a 5-4 opinion that would hinge on the taxing-power issue.... I've learned from my own sources that after voting to invalidate the mandate, the chief did express some skepticism aboutjoining the four conservatives in throwing out the whole law. At the justices' conference, there was discussion about accepting the Obama administration's argument, which was that, if the individual mandate was removed, the provisions governing community rating and guaranteed issue of insurance would have to go too but that the rest of the law might stand. The chief justice was equivocal, though, in his views on that point."
Local News
David Firestone of the New York Times: "Gov. Rick Snyder [R] of Michigan surprised his fellow party members in the legislature today by vetoing three bills. One would have required an identification card to get an absentee ballot. Another would have limited third-party registration drives by requiring groups like the League of Women Voters to get mandatory training by the state. (The league should probably be training the state.) The third would require voters to check a box on their ballot affirming that they are citizens."
News Ledes
President Obama spoke at a naturalization ceremony for active duty service members:
Hallelujah, There Is a God (Particle)! New York Times: "Physicists working at CERN's Large Hadron Collider said Wednesday that they had discovered a new subatomic particle that looks for all the world like the Higgs boson, a potential key to understanding why elementary particles have mass and indeed to the existence of diversity and life in the universe.... The discovery could lead to a new understanding of how the universe began."
Washington Post: "Pakistan agreed Tuesday to reopen its border crossings to U.S. and NATO military transit after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton apologized for a deadly U.S. airstrike last year."
Guardian: "Talks have begun in Istanbul between Iranian scientists and their counterparts from six major powers in an attempt to resolve an impasse over Iran's nuclear aspirations, as both Tehran and Washington raised the military stakes in a perilous standoff in the Gulf."
New York Times: "An Afghan soldier opened fire on NATO soldiers, wounding five of them before fleeing, in the latest in a spate of attacks by Afghan soldiers and police on their coalition allies, Western and Afghan officials said Wednesday."
AP: "A JetBlue Airways pilot who left the cockpit during a flight and screamed about religion and terrorists has been found not guilty by reason of insanity, though a federal judge ordered he be sent to a mental health facility for further examination. The judge issued the ruling during a bench trial Tuesday in Amarillo for Clayton F. Osbon, noting he suffered from a 'severe mental disease or defect.' Osbon's attorney, Dean Roper, declined to comment."
Vive Le Socialisme! Reuters: "France's new Socialist government announced a raft of tax rises worth 7.2 billions euros on Wednesday, including heavy one-off levies on wealthy households and big corporations, to plug a revenue shortfall this year from feeble economic growth."
AP: "Hundreds of thousands from the Midwest to the Mid-Atlantic were preparing to spend the Fourth of July like America's founders did in 1776, without the conveniences of electricity and air conditioning."
Al Jazeera: "Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, sees no reason why Yasser Arafat's body should not be exhumed following an Al Jazeera report that he may have died of poisoning, his spokesman said on Wednesday.... A nine-month investigation by Al Jazeera found that Arafat's final belongings -- his clothes, his toothbrush, even his iconic kaffiyeh -- contained elevated levels of polonium, a rare, highly radioactive element."
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Reader Comments (14)
About Lonesome Rhodes: that's who he was. White trash.
A version of my NYTimes post on yesterday's Brooks column that was buried in the early morning Pacific Time wasteland:
Though that late night effort might best stay buried, I thought the larger point I tried to make is worth repeating: while everything you said in your column, Marie, is absolutely correct, while Brooks does little or nothing to get his facts straight and while his argument reminds me of some of the scurrilous debate tricks I once took pride in using in high school, what it is at heart is deliberate obfuscation. As full of holes as it is, Brooks can't possibly take his own reasoning seriously; he has to know argument from the professional Right--that is, from him--is either smokescreen or sleight of hand. Dazzle or blind 'em. It doesn't matter as long as they're not looking when you pick their pocket.
In this instance, his column of the Right's answer to our health insurance crisis reminded me of the old Vanguard satellite program.
Because the 50's International Geophysical Year (IGY) satellite program did not wish to orbit the first earth satellite with a military launch vehicle for fear their peaceful initiative would be tainted by cold war chest pounding, they futzed around developing a new, complex vehicle that kept falling out of the sky or blowing up spectacularly on the pad. Finally out of desperation and embarrassment at Sputnik's sudden, startling success, Eisenhower okayed the Explorer launch, powered by something we knew would work even though its provenance was clearly military (and I would add developed by a centralized federal government initiative, the kind of concerted application of national resources that Brooks decries as inefficient and ineffective).
The point? We know what works. Beyond dispute, a single payer system or some variation thereof is by far the most efficient and cost effective way to deliver health care to all. The experience of at least a dozen countries proves it. But the prophets of profit, not of peace, don't want to us to use it. Instead they want us to continue to fiddle around as long as they can keep their health care cash cow alive. Repealing the ACA, which placed that cow on necessary life support, would simply initiate another round of pointless, expensive and, as you point out, empty experimentation, while serving fewer and fewer people...but it would keep the money flowing to the top for as long as possible.
That is, after all, the purpose of Republicanism in 2012, isn't it?
And a happy 4th to all of you who value Reality Chex as much as I do, where genuine Independence of mind and spirit is celebrated year 'round and good humor and laughter abound.
The 'Independence' game plays well with us. We are all free from each other, have no collective responsibility, are actually 50 or 310 million different nations, except of course for the things we personally want. Then don't mess with my Medicare. Pathetic. A Pew Global Attitudes Project asks to choose 'Freedom to pursue life's goals without state interference' vs. 'State guarantees nobody is in need'. In US, 34% choose the latter, in U.K. 55%, Germany 62%, France 63% and Spain 67%. Obviously if you are poor there is an advantage to living in a more secular country.
Anyway, I plan on spending Independence Day as a true American. I am going shopping.
Marie,
Your most recent David Brooks column was particularly good. I never read him anymore, trying to avoid some indigestion. But your comments always provide an appropriate remedy. Thanks.
Although Kurt Anderson contends our current obsession with individualism (hence most of our woes) began somehow in the sixties with the hippies, the real beginning - as we all know - was in 1987. In that seminal year, Gordon Gekko proclaimed: "Greed is good."
Okay, maybe our current problems go back further and deeper. And though Anderson's analysis is facile at best, he did remind me of what life was like in the fifties and sixties. Yes people grumbled and complained about taxes but as far as I can recall no one accused the Federal government of "stealing" their money, something you hear routinely from the right-wingers now. To me, this attitude symbolizes the whole conservative movement. It expresses the thought that the individual is only grudgingly - very grudgingly - supporting our country and America is on notice not to make the smallest mistake or that support will be withdrawn. You see a similar attitude with the renewed "states rights" movement, where even Supreme Court justices repeatedly emphasize the "sovereign" status of the states. A large segment of our fellow citizens pays lip-service to America as a united country, but they don't seem to truly believe in it anymore.
Unlike Anderson, I am not sure where this mindset came from. It just seems that almost everything that was considered fringy and extreme in the sixties - from the John Birch Society to the various "militias" to xenophobia and racism - is now accepted, at least in many quarters.
On this 4th of July it is sad to think that the wonderful idea of America is starting to unravel. I'm hoping this is a temporary phase people will look back on years from now and wonder, "What were they thinking?"
Have a happy Fourth, everyone.
Marie, just a quick mash note to thank you for everything you do. RealityChex is my first news fix every morning.
Also, I'm reading "Econned" by Yves Smith. Her thesis is that the combined effort by Paul Samuelson and others to make economics "scientific" is the underlying flaw that will continue to push those in the discipline to make bad predictions that are based more on Platonic ideals than evidence gleaned from real life. She states that because economic hypotheses cannot be tested and so invalidated in a controlled setting the way, say, physics hypotheses can, economics should be considered a social rather than a pure science.
I always have found it difficult to believe that smart people, much less Nobel laureates, could possibly believe in the Efficient Markets Theory (no transaction fees; everyone involved in any trade has perfect information and makes sound decisions). Joseph Stiglitz's thesis about information asymmetry, with all due respect to the estimable Mr. Stiglitz, could have been formulated by any twelve-year-old who has just been convinced by a smarter 13-year old to trade baseball cards portraying Roger Maris and Willie Mays for one featuring Gene Stevens (I was a very bad trader). Daniel Kahneman's work in behavioral economics shows how irrational our decision making can be, how people often risk much not to lose a little but will not risk a little to win much.
Anyway, well after the age of 50 I began to be fascinated by economics. I will never know enough to opine with conviction, but as Potter Stewart probably meant to say about supply side economics, "I know crap when I see it."
I don't think this got posted on your site but I picked this article up from Greg Sargent's "The Plum Line":
"The Terrifying Texas GOP Platform" by John T. Harvey, Forbes http://www.forbes.com/sites/johntharvey/2012/07/01/texas-gop-platform/2/
A fact-based debunking of policies recommended by Texas Republicans that shows how truly out of touch with the 21st century they are.
Re: Victoria D.; Nice conceit, Conservatives are in fact "Hippies gone bad.". I'm too young to be a real hippie, 16 in '68, but I did have older brothers and sisters who danced to the music and loved the ones they were with. It was a time of exploding personal freedoms but what the right wingers forget it was also a time of sharing;(don't bogard that joint, my friend.) Now days personal freedom is all about NOT sharing if you you get my drift.
Re: Sky high on the Fourth of July; my father's work would take him down South and he would bring home all the fireworks a boy could ask for. The dog hid in the basement for days. Here's to the freedom of cherry bombs and M-80s . Independent Day fireworks; symbolic of the Republic, blazing across the skies, glorious for a brief moment, then dimmed to black. Happy Fourth.
@Marvin Schwalb: Indeed. As Richard Ford said (in my contorted transcription) in his 1995 novel "Independence Day," sterility is "finally the end of the line for independence," the result of "cutting yourself off from liaisons with other people, from attachments, affinities, affiliations...." And yet the Right (see yesterday's Brooks) ballyhoos the explosion of creativity that is supposed to follow naturally from the isolated and ignorant, competing. Would it were so...It's not, but it does make us, individual by individual, too weak to stand against today's corporate masters, and those masters and their propagandists know it.
So I'm feeling a bit like one of those annoying pop-up ads that intrude on the actual business at hand every now and then. I wish I could participate more often, but time and circumstances simply don't permit; however, today's a holiday, so it seems like a perfect excuse to surface and wish everyone a happy Fourth.
There are three people I particularly want to reference: first, Marie, who has given us all this wonderful salon and created a community where intelligent, thoughtful, and -- above all -- civil people can come to discuss current affairs and, in no small part because of the civility of the discussions, learn from one another. Although I don't often contribute, I'm here every day, reading, learning and enjoying. So thank you, first to Marie, and then to all the wonderful members of the community.
Second, JGG: about those hippies.... You may not be old enough (although I find that arguable -- some hippies were awfully young!) but I definitely am: I was 22 in 1968, with two children, a 4-year-old and a 3-year-old, as a result of which my brilliant career as an opera diva was over before it began...but that's another screed. In any case, you have absolutely nailed it when you talk about sharing. We hippies were all about "peace, love and brotherhood," which still, as far as I can tell, doesn't include selfishness and me-first-ism. We were into communes and co-ops and everybody for each other, and I have no idea how we ended up with Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein and Jeffrey Immelt and all the other banksters and Corporate Evil Officers who blight the landscape today. As for politicians, well, there've always been whores. The Boomers I know aren't like that -- even my one self-confessed Tea Partier friend is kind and generous and, as far as I can tell, walks her Christian talk. So, having not read Sullivan but having read your brief take on his article, I'm with you.
Finally, Jack Mahoney: I took a look at the book you're reading, and it seems like a worthwhile read. Problem is, of course, that my queue of books on economics is overlong already! If I may return the favor, I'm in the middle of a book recommended by a dear friend whom I greatly respect, especially when it comes to economics and finance, which I feel confident in recommending. It's called "Sacred Economics" by Charles Eisenstein. The author says himself that he may be naively utopian, and I tend to agree at least somewhat, but so far it's an interesting take on our current situation with a promise of a workable solution that doesn't require massive government involvement. This seems very like Bill McKibben's latest version of sustainable living: going local. (And isn't this simply recycled Voltaire?) We as individuals can't really make a dent in Walmart's hegemony, but communities, large, small and in between, might make a difference. Perhaps this could be at least a part of the next iteration of Occupy.
Think of it as "Hippie, Recycled."
Meanwhile, everyone have a safe and happy Fourth!
I second, third and tenth the salvos to Marie for her continuing journalistic excellence and truthtelling in Reality Chex each and every day. This is truly a labor of love. As are her comments in NYTX. I must admit, however, that because I have such antipathy for David Brooks, I did not read his frivolous op-ed, but enjoyed (as always) Marie's takedown.
As a longtime reader and fan of Marie's, I am excited to watch the evolution of our present high-level group of commenters. It has not always been thus. In fact, there were times Marie considered shutting down comments! I am so glad she did not! All of you who comment regularly (or not), are bright, thoughtful, original writers. And very rarely do I see a split infinitive or pronoun/verb in what I read. My mother would approve. I especially want to thank Akhilleus for his wide-ranging, brilliant, usually scatological comments. They make my day!
And, yes, happy 4th of July, as much as I can manage. I did not hang out my Peace Flag this year, because some neighbors thought I was dissing them. They would be right. But that was not the main reason. Anyway, I am getting off my soapbox and going all good neighborly this year. Like everybody else in Depoe Bay, I will NOT be watching fireworks--because, this being Oregon, they have been cancelled by the Oregon Department of Wildlife. The excessive noise disturbs nesting birds in the cliffs above the ocean, and some abandon their nests--thus leaving them open to predators. So, in spite of the iffy weather, I am happy to be living in Oregon--where the environment has a very loud voice.
And dear Kate, just popped in at the end of a long sweltering day in New England, ––we Wisconsinites, having cold winter chills in our DNA, do not take to heat well––to tell you I just saw the documentary, "How to Die in Oregon, and how I envy you living in a state that has that die with dignity law. The film is superb.
Since we are giving shout-outs to our marvelous Marie, may I join in the chorus of appreciative readers and like Jack, it's the first thing I go to every morning. Reality Chex, Total with blueberries and a cup of coffee start my day; thank you so very much.
Add my voice to those signing Marie's praises. My breakfast reading as well, and PD I have whole oasts yogurt nuts and whatever fresh fruit is in season (preserved garden fruit in the winter).
So glad to be back online and catch up after the storm Friday night here in the mid-Atlantic. First I've ever heard of a "Deracho". Nasty. I've never seen anything like it. Trees down everywhere you look. I'll have all next years firewood in before its over. Fortunately little structural damage in my area but we were 4 days w/o power.
Anyway, Happy Liberty (!) Day Marie and everyone.
When will be the Liberty Day when we celebrate our throwing off of the shackles of domination by the kings and queens of Wall Street hedge funds and the big 6 banks?