;)
The Commentariat -- April 15, 2014
Internal links removed.
** Tax Day. Andrew Sorkin of the New York Times: "In recognition of Uncle Sam's payday, it's only proper to take note of some of the most egregious corporate tax loopholes and some unexpected beneficiaries." ...
... Susan Page of USA Today: "The Internal Revenue Service is prepared to rewrite a proposed rule regulating the political activities of non-profit groups to address complaints from the right and left that it goes too far, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said Monday. 'In all likelihood we will re-propose a redefined rule and ask for more public comment,' Koskinen told USA TODAY's Capital Download. It's a process he predicts will take 'until the end of the year and beyond' to complete. The proposed regulation of groups known as 501(c)(4)s drew a record 150,000 comments before the deadline in late February." With video. ...
... Benjamin Soskis of the New Yorker on paying taxes v. giving voluntarily. ...
... CW: Let me ask you this: what community-spirited citizen wants to see children go hungry or want for other necessities? My guess: hardly any. So if volunteerism worked to resolve our most pressing social problems, it would end (or nearly end) child poverty in the U.S., right? Certainly we would not have the situation Matt Bruenig outlines in the linked story below. ...
... Writing on the single-mother/child-poverty myth, Matt Bruenig of Demos finds that high rates of child poverty in every family type are U.S. policy.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has a file on the long, despicable career of Frazier Glenn Miller a/k/a Cross, the Kansas shooter. Thanks to James S. for the link. ...
... Tina Moore, et al., of the New York Daily News elaborate. ...
... More on the shooting from Laura Bauer, et al., of the Kansas City Star. ...
... Ian Lovett of the New York Times: "Although the shooting suspect, Frazier Glenn Miller, was a known racist and anti-Semite with ties to the Ku Klux Klan, the victims who were gunned down on Sunday were all Christians, devoted to their families, to their churches and to serving their Kansas City communities." ...
... CW: When he was a student at Duke 33 years ago Robert Satloff interviewed Miller, who was then the head of the North Carolina KKK. The worst part of Satloff's account for me is not Miller, but this:
[After the interview,] we drove straight into town to talk to locals and find out what they thought of the Klan living right next door. Sgt. Randy Cooke of the nearby Benson police department summed up what we heard about Glenn Miller: 'I'd call him the good-neighborly type,' he said.
... It's all too easy to dismiss Miller/Cross as some rare, aberrant monster without confronting the truth that millions of Americans view his ilk as "the good-neighborly type."
Marc Fisher of the Washington Post: "The Social Security Administration announced Monday that it will immediately cease efforts to collect on taxpayers' debts to the government that are more than 10 years old. The action comes after The Washington Post reported that the government was seizing state and federal tax refunds that were on their way to about 400,000 Americans who had relatives who owed money to Social Security. In many cases, the people whose refunds were intercepted had never heard of any debt, and the debts dated as far back as the middle of the past century."
Greg Sargent: "Jeb Bush's comments about immigration ... have produced a seminal moment in this debate, because they lay bare the fundamental difference between the two parties...: Most Democratic lawmakers want the 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country to become a part of American society, while most Republican lawmakers want them to (at best) remain in the shadows of illegality or (at worst) leave." ...
... Nate Silver: "Like Bush, many Republicans are moderate on immigration." Via Paul Waldman.
Philip Bump of the Atlantic: "The Congressional Budget Office has reduced its estimate for how much Obamacare will cost and increased its estimate of how many people will be covered.... One of the interesting developments in Obamacare enrollment spotted by researchers from RAND is that the number of people covered by employers has increased — the opposite of what was expected to happen.... The CBO also [found that] ... 'the ACA’s overall effect would be to reduce federal deficits.'" ...
... "The Right's New Scam: Feigning Anger on Behalf of People They Encouraged to Skip Obamacare." Brian Beutler of the New Republic: "... now that [ACA] enrollment is closed, [Republicans wa]re clamoring to flood the existing insurance markets with high-cost beneficiaries and send premiums skyward. Failing that, they want the people who didn't enroll -- including those who didn't enroll on the advice of ACA opponents -- to be angry at Obamacare for leaving them out in the cold."
CW: Why you should support every Democratic candidate for Senate, even if you think s/he's a jerk: Jonathan Chait: Suppose Republicans do gain control of the Senate, as the odds now suggest. "It may seem implausible that Republicans would simply refuse to allow Obama to appoint any justice [at all].... But such a confrontation is not only a logical outcome but the most logical outcome. Voting to flip the Supreme Court would be, if not a political death warrant for a Republican Senator, then certainly taking one's political life into one's own hands." So Mark Pryor? Yay! Mary Landrieu? You go, girl!
Coral Davenport of the New York Times: "The United States needs to enact a major climate change law, such as a tax on carbon pollution, by the end of this decade to stave off the most catastrophic impacts of global warming, according to the authors of a report released this week by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But aggressive efforts to tackle climate change have repeatedly collided with political reality in Washington, where some Republicans question the underlying science of global warming and lawmakers' ties to the fossil fuel industry have made them resistant to change. The rise of the Tea Party in recent years has also made a tax increase unlikely." ...
... CW: When they're not killing Americans who need health care or killing people in unnecessary wars, Republicans are killing the whole planet. There is nothing good to say about the GOP. Nothing.
The League of Greedy Bastards. Joe Nocera: "CEO pay goes up, up and away!"
Lucy Nicholson of Reuters: "Google Inc updated its terms of service on Monday, informing users that their incoming and outgoing emails are automatically analyzed by software to create targeted ads. The revisions more explicitly spell out the manner in which Google software scans users' emails, both when messages are stored on Google's servers and when they are in transit, a controversial practice that has been at the heart of litigation."
Paul Farhi of the Washington Post: "The Washington Post won two Pulitzer Prizes on Monday, including the prestigious public-service medal for a series of stories that exposed the National Security Agency's massive global surveillance programs. A team of 28 Post journalists, led by reporter Barton Gellman, shared the public-service award with the British-based Guardian newspaper, which also reported extensively about the NSA's secret programs. Gellman and Glenn Greenwald, then the Guardian's lead reporter on the NSA pieces, based their articles on classified documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the former government contractor who has fled to exile in Russia, lending a controversial edge to this year's awards." The AP has the complete list of winners here.
Crazier & Crazier
Everything Is a Conspiracy. Sahil Kapur of Think Progress: "Call them the shoe truthers. Some conservative media figures are openly wondering if Hillary Clinton staged an incident during a speech in Las Vegas on Thursday in which a woman in the audience threw a shoe at her.... The reported thrower, Alison Michelle Ernst, was booked by the authorities. A blog post published Monday at the website of Fox News commentator Bernard Goldberg speculated that Clinton probably 'calculated it beforehand,' as is 'almost always true' with things that happen to her.... Rush Limbaugh entertained the same idea...." ...
... CW: Apparently Hillary also controls the feds, who have brought criminal charges against Ernst (see today's Ledes). That is one powerful woman.
We Block Equal Pay Laws Because We Favor Women's Rights. Caitlan MacNeal of TPM: "Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) on Sunday insisted that even though Republican Senators blocked the Democrats' equal pay bill last week, her party is fighting for women's rights.... 'It is Republicans that have led the fight for women's equality. Go back through history, and look at who was the first woman to ever vote, elected to office, go to Congress, four out of five governors.' ... Blackburn voted against the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in 2009." ...
... As Salvatore Aversa points out here, Blackburn has argued that women don't want equal pay laws. Because freeeedom.
Beyond the Beltway
Catherine Thompson of TPM: "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) on Monday addressed the conflict between the federal authorities and anti-government activists over a Nevada cattle rancher's self-proclaimed right to graze his animals.... 'Well, it's not over,' Reid told Las Vegas TV station KRNV. 'We can't have an American people that violate the law and then just walk away from it. So it's not over.'" ...
... In case you forgot what this was all about, Charles Pierce has a good summary. Here's part of it: "Pretty soon, there was an armed standoff as men with guns assembled around the ranch. The BLM people wisely backed off, and there was a great cock-a-doodle-do'ing all over the right, because Cliven Bundy's inalienable right to get something for nothing from the rest of us had been upheld with Second Amendment enthusiasm. Bear in mind that Bundy's entire position is that he can not pay his bills, and that he can ignore a federal judge, because he feels the federal government is illegitimate." ...
... AND here's more on the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity's support for Bundy's sedition. ...
I believe this is a sovereign state of Nevada, I abide by all of Nevada state laws. But I don’t recognize the United States government as even existing. -- Cliven Bundy, said cattle rancher
... Matt Ford of the Atlantic: Bundy & his militia buddies are also violating the Nevada constitution, written before the Bundy family arrived in Nevada, which specifies the people of Nevada owe "paramount allegiance" to the U.S.:
... whensoever any portion of the States, or people thereof attempt to secede from the Federal Union, or forcibly resist the Execution of its laws, the Federal Government may, by warrant of the Constitution, employ armed force in compelling obedience to its Authority. -- Article 1, Section 2, Nevada Constitition
... CW: As far as I can tell, there's big contingent of wingers, aided & abetted by the billionaire Kochs & Fox "News" hosts like Sean Hannity, not to mention a few GOP lawmakers, who paradoxically equate "patriotism" with rejecting the very existence of the United States.
Zack Ford of Think Progress: "This weekend, the Nevada Republican Party voted to strip opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion from its party platform. Previously, the platform had included the beliefs that marriage should be 'between a man and a woman' and described the party as pro-life/against abortion, but this year, the both planks were left out entirely. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, this was an attempt to make the party more inclusive."
News Ledes
Boston Globe: The Boston Marathon finish line has been evacuated after suspicious packages were discovered. ...
... Washington Post: "Boston and its surroundings braced for an emotional week that begins Tuesday with a large ceremony honoring the victims, first responders, medical personnel and others affected by [last years Boston Marathon bomb] attack. It will be a chance to mourn the dead and remember the bloodshed, but also to proclaim that what is perhaps the world's most famous footrace will continue for a 118th year, and to marvel at the way events have brought this community together."
Los Angeles Times: "President Obama on Tuesday commuted the sentence of a drug convict, correcting a mistake that had extended his prison time by more than three years and could not be fixed by the courts."
Even in Canada. AP: "Five people were killed and the son of a police officer is in custody after multiple stabbings at a house party attended by university students near the University of Calgary, the police chief said, calling it the worst mass murder in Calgary's history."
CNN: "A new video shows what looks like the largest and most dangerous gathering of al Qaeda in years. And the CIA and the Pentagon either didn't know about it or couldn't get a drone there in time to strike." With video.
Detroit Free Press: "Two members of General Motors' senior leadership team are leaving the company three months after a transition to a new CEO and amid a crisis over the automaker's failure to fix an ignition switch defect."
AP: "Federal authorities have lodged two criminal charges against a Phoenix woman accused of throwing a shoe at Hillary Rodham Clinton while she gave a convention speech at a Las Vegas Strip resort."
New York Times: "After days of failing to enforce its own ultimatums, the Ukrainian government on Tuesday began what the president called a military operation to confront pro-Russian militants in the east of the country." ...
... Washington Post: "... Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warned that Ukraine was descending into civil war." ...
... Update: "The Ukrainian government said its forces had repelled an assault by pro-Russian militiamen at a military airfield, hours after announcing the start of a staged counteroffensive Tuesday to reclaim control of the eastern part of the country."
BBC News: "Italy's former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi must do one year's community service over tax fraud, a Milan court has ruled. He was convicted of tax fraud last year in connection with TV rights purchased by his firm Mediaset in the 1990s. The alternative to community service had been house arrest. It is not yet clear what form his community service will take."
Share Article
Reader Comments (13)
Especially appropriate for tax day 2014: The NYTimes piece on how the middle class is being priced out the the housing market.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/04/15/business/more-renters-find-30-affordability-ratio-unattainable.html
My short comment:
When year after year you move more wealth into the hands of the few and less into the pockets of the many, this, too, is perfectly predictable...
And yes, the student loan scam is just another way the banksters have been successfully mining the middle for the last three decades. First, identify, invent or create for the masses a necessary good (in this case, education); then by cutting government revenue and services make sure they can't pay for it without becoming a debt slave.
We hear the howls from the Right about all those who don't pay income tax (without even a whisper about the reason, that they don't make enough money to qualify). Think we'll soon hear the same howls about all those middle class folks who can't afford a place to live? After all, many in the middle class are avowed Republicans, but each day there are more signs the R's economic and tax policies are beginning to eat their own flesh and blood.
If there's a difference between being short-sighted and blind to the future, the R's certainly can't seem to see it. Must be another of those qualifications for membership.
What's the matter with Florida? Carl Hiassen in "The National Memo."
http://www.nationalmemo.com/first-harm-bank-account/
Giving to Democrats also pays well, it appears. Every time an issue like this surfaces, it seems the great state of Florida is in the mix!
I'm sure that I am not alone in my tepid view of Hilary Clinton, which is completely separate and apart from her snake oil spousal baggage. Having said that, her election must be goal #2 and I will work for that end. The #1 goal, of course, is to retain the Democratic majority in the Senate, however tenuous the power of the majority. The age of the current Justices could be a boon to a Democratic President and Senate. There is no question that the country is completely and utterly f-ed otherwise. I'm sadly confident that much of the populace doesn't get that and is just happy if Survivor doesn't get cancelled.
The shootings in Kansas and the pending range war in Nevada may seem disconnected, a random act of terror and hatred perpetrated by an unhinged racist loon on one hand and a government hating, gun toting loon on the other.
But they're not. They're very much connected.
And not in any loop-de-loop, circuitous manner requiring a Where's Waldo search up and down Byzantine back alleys of America's dark side. We can find direct, verifiable, concrete connections coming straight to and from members of congress, right-wing media (Fox, Breitbart, Beck, Limbaugh, Mitt Romney's ClearChannel), and string pulling Machiavellis like the Kochs. Straight line winds emanating from the various centers of conservative influence and power.
We're not talking bug-eyed secessionists handing out misspelled screeds churned out with hand operated mimeographs or plotting in homemade bunkers or in the parking lot of the local hangout for haters and cranks.
We're talking people who appear on national TV every week wearing shirts and ties, with $200 haircuts and $1,000 suits. People from think tanks and foundations all with the words "freedom" or "patriot" or "heritage" in their titles. People from major corporate news organizations. People who talk about "nullifaction" and "state's rights" and the "dangers of Big Government".
These are the people who provide comfort, support, even funding to those the other kind who used to lurk in the shadows and talk about assassinations and bombings and killing innocents to put the exclamation to their warped sense of victimization, because, as always, FREEDOM. But these people are not in the shadows anymore. They have been empowered and emboldened and their rage is fueled by screamers on 24/7 right-wing cable channels and radio stations.
And, as Charlie Pierce mentioned recently, these are the people who will get others killed by their cynical playing up of stories like this idiot in Nevada calling for a range war against the government.
Guys like the Kansas shooter and this self-styled range war cowboy are in the most violent part of conservative vanguard, but they're all marching in the same direction and no one--no one--on that side has the sense, the gumption or the moral strength to say "Stop this madness". Rather, they say, "Go git 'em Earl, we're right on your side boy. Git them government murderers."
The NRA, Fox, Heritage, Americans for Prosperity, Focus on the Family, Teabaggers, they all support and condone treason, terror, and murder. They all have blood on their hands. They're all in it together. Maybe not as a functioning conspiracy where the leaders of these groups gathered together to plot it out, but they all back each other up and feed off each others' worst and most reprehensible actions and words. And it doesn't have to be just the ones with the guns. Words do matter. Martin Luther King never went armed anywhere. And words instigating horror are just as powerful.
Charlie Pierce also mentions Helen Chenoweth. You may recall her as the whacko bird member of congress from Idaho, friend to militias, survivalists, end-timers, and government haters everywhere. After the Oklahoma City bombing, she lectured congress on not taking time to understand the patriotism and sincerity of the militia movements in this country, you know, getting to know them and understand their biggest sads. Which is all of a piece with conservatives lecturing us about all the "kindly slave owners" back when buying and selling human beings was the right's favorite hobby (see one of yesterday's rants for that reference). And don't forget. This was years ago. Chenoweth and her militia buddies were already in full flower in the 90's and they've had several decades to cultivate the hate even further. Plus now they have the benefit of 24 hour right-wing news operations to weaponize their delusions.
These things are connected. Contrary to what the NRA and Republicans and Fox and the think tanks and even the mainstream media want you to believe, people who talk about range wars, militia types who murder innocent people because they believe them to be "the Other", Fox hosts who play this up and pour kerosene on these brush fires, and talk radio charlatans who further fan the flames. They all contribute to the tsunami of hatred, paranoia, dysfunction, ignorance, racism, violence, and chaos.
And at this point, I need to amend Charlie's earlier warning about how these people are going to get someone killed.
They already have. The question is how many more will have to die needlessly so the GOP can stay in power, so the Fox idiots can up their ratings, so the Kochs can pry more land from the government for their own personal profit, so the militias and haters and racists and scofflaws can continue to ply their nihilist avocations?
It's not a rhetorical question.
Marie and Diane,
Full agreement on upcoming votes (ie, any and all votes in for the foreseeable future).
I have no patience anymore (not that I ever had scads of it) for ideological purity and waiting for the perfect candidate. Like Vladimir and Estragon, we'll be waiting until we decide that suicide is a reasonable option.
Vote for the person with the D after their name. Even if you have to hold your breath. Sure, you may end up voting for a Max Baucus who may occasionally vote with the dark side, but Diane is correct. We will be totally fucked if the troglodytes seize control of both houses. It wouldn't matter if we had a combination of George Washington, FDR, and Mother Theresa in the White House. With a congress locked in the embrace of nihilism and the Kochs, demise is imminent.
I don't get the feeling that many people out there realize how much a battle for survival this will be. More wars, no taxes on the rich, fewer rights, no gun controls--none, worse education (if that's possible), no immigration reform, no new Supremes who can't pass muster with the Orcs, and the only thing standing between us and the complete imposition of a state religion (guess which one) will be a Democratic presidential veto. And on override will take care of that.
Elections really, really, really fucking matter.
No staying home and no Waiting for Godot.
@Ak
"Words do matter. Martin Luther King never went armed anywhere."
I'm no historian so correct me if I'm wrong but I recall that MLK had actually applied for a concealed weapon permit given that his life was constantly threatened but of course the gun loving Alabamans denied the permit because he was the wrong skin color. So the institutionalized racism that was threatening to kill him simultaneously denied his individual 'right' to bear an arm for protection.
For example, from Adam Winkler in the Atlantic Sept. 2011
"Civil-rights activists, even those committed to nonviolent resistance, had long appreciated the value of guns for self-protection. Martin Luther King Jr. applied for a permit to carry a concealed firearm in 1956, after his house was bombed. His application was denied, but from then on, armed supporters guarded his home. One adviser, Glenn Smiley, described the King home as “an arsenal.” William Worthy, a black reporter who covered the civil-rights movement, almost sat on a loaded gun in a living-room armchair during a visit to King’s parsonage."
On another note, I was also taken aback by Charles Pierce's stand that one day these people will get someone killed. Fox has been grandstanding for the extreme conservatives since the sad day in October 1996 when Fox "News" changed the media landscape forever. The crazy shit that has come out of that black box is at times shocking in its absurdity and much of it is spoken in code words as the Conservative movement has so strategically engrained into their political strategy, particularly since the Radical Rove Revolution.
But as has been documented today by RC, racism is alive and well in the US and Fox has been fomenting the flames for about 18 years now. It must be considered that the US has on average 30,000 apparently tolerable and probably preventable deaths due to guns. While many are suicides and some accidents, how many racially-motivated killings egged on by Conservative blowhards hide within that egregious number...?
Safari,
I did know about the concealed carry permit MLK applied for but my larger point is that King rejected the use of any weapons for his cause and stuck to his espousal of non-violence.
Even though it seems he may have owned a gun at one point for protection in his home, words were his weapons of choice, thus my argument that guns never played a role in his ability to cogently argue for his positions.
I suspect all those folks who spend millions encouraging willing idiots to wave and occasionally fire their guns in the name of "rights" and "freedoms" might rapidly change their tune when those same idiots finally discover that in the last thirty years their real enemy has not been the government they elect but an economic oligarchy over which they have less and less control, and that it that oligarchy does have identifiable faces, and that you can shoot them, too.
For yea, verily I say unto thee, four blood moons in a row means some wicked bad shit, a boat load of bunched up panties, and a couple of best sellers.
Well, stuff is happening in the natural world (or universe, as the case may be) which naturally discombobulates the ever living crap out of many influential Christians (one of whom has a book about this latest freakout on the Times best seller list--oh the humanity!) especially those who lost connection with the real world some time around the age of 3.
So here we are again. A lunar eclipse. Four in a short time, actually. And what does it mean?
End of the world, natch. Jesus coming to bite the heads off liberals, praise the lord.
And is this any different from all the other predictions that the world would end in 12 months, 4 days, six hours, 32 minutes and the few seconds it takes to open the Bible to a well-thumbed story featuring misogyny, slavery, seed spilling, rape, murder, or massacre of innocents.
Soitenly not.
Mars exhibits retrograde motion on the twelfth day of the twelfth month?
End of the world.
A preacher in Kansas sees a UFO? Must belong to Jesus.
End of the world.
The Kochs pay their fair share in taxes?
End of the world. (This one might be for real.)
It's Tuesday? A thing happens?
End of the world.
And don't forget....these idiots wield enormous power in the GO fucking P.
Praise the lord, pass the tinfoil, turn around three times, touch the ground and don't step on cracks in the sidewalk. Or you go to hell (aka a coffee shop in Harvard Square).
John Arnold (of pension "peril" fame) funding Head Start? Bezos curing cancer? And somebody thinks this is a good thing?
" But these people are not in the shadows anymore. They have been empowered and emboldened and their rage is fueled by screamers on 24/7 right-wing cable channels and radio stations."
And I despair. And I feel a hatred that I wish I didn't feel. And the frustration coupled with this despair and hatred is eating at me; I need to let go of this to some extent or I'll begin to exhibit wolf like tendencies that will begin to scare neighbors and small children. And yes, let's vote for them with the D after their name no matter who they are because the alternative is dire straits with a bad, bad sting in the background.
"Oh, don't the days seem lank & long
when all goes right and nothing goes wrong,
and ain't your life extremely flat
with nothing whatever to grumble at?
Wishful thinking at best ~~~~~~~~~~~
``
Blood Moon and End Times... what you need to know.
http://www.religionnews.com/2014/04/14/blood-moon-sets-apocalyptic-debate-among-christians/
I'm not sure if this will go through. I think my response to PD and CW didn't make it through the other day. Thanks for taking the time to comment. My immigration thoughts are a work in progress: 1) I don't want to sacrifice electoral gains for Democrats. 2) To CW: I don't see how the rise in US population is sustainable even if you're ok with it. 3) Yes, I'm pissed about the treatment of immigrants as I live with one and have worked together with immigrants for decades. Immigrants are institutionally treated disposably by both business and government and their arrival insures that market forces keep the pittance which is the minimum wage too low for every one. What if shit-work simply had nobody show up to attend to it? The wages would rise. And a lot of immigrants have more character in the pinky finger than "business leaders" have in themselves and their entire extended family put together.