;)
Sunday
Jul212013
The Commentariat -- July 22, 2013
Igor Volsky of Think Progress: "Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) called on lawmakers across the country, including in his home state of Arizona, to review the Stand Your Ground law that allowed George Zimmerman to walk free in the days after he killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin and conceded that the country still has 'a long way to go' towards achieving full equality for African Americans.... The senator also praised the remarks Obama delivered about the Zimmerman case on Friday...":
John Whitesides of Reuters: "House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner refused on Sunday to say whether a comprehensive immigration overhaul should include a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, declaring that the House debate is 'not about me.' Boehner, appearing on CBS's "Face the Nation," dodged repeated attempts to get him to spell out his personal views on a path to citizenship for up to 11 million illegal immigrants now in the United States...."
Brendan Sasso of the Hill: "The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee is pushing to fast-track legislation that would require police to obtain a warrant before accessing emails and other private online messages. Sen. Patrick Leahy's (D-Vt.) goal is for the Senate to unanimously approve his bill before the August recess, according to one of his committee aides. Any opposition could delay a vote until after Congress returns in the fall." ...
... David Lightman, et al., of McClatchy News: "Congress is growing increasingly wary of controversial National Security Agency domestic surveillance programs, a concern likely to erupt during legislative debate _ and perhaps prod legislative action _ as early as next week." ...
... "Underwear 2." Michael Crowley of Time: "... in remarks at a national security forum on Friday, Transportation Security Administration chief John Pistole illustrated why the federal government is still on high alert. Speaking in unusual detail, Pistole offered specifics about an underwear bomb devised by a master al Qaeda bomb-maker in Yemen meant to be exploded in an airliner over the United States last year. The plot was foiled thanks to a double-agent inside al Qaeda's Yemen branch, in a case that has also become the subject of a controversial Justice Department leak investigation."
David Kocieniewski of the New York Times: "The maneuvering in markets for oil, wheat, cotton, coffee, [aluminum] and more have brought billions in profits to investment banks like Goldman, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley, while forcing consumers to pay more every time they fill up a gas tank, flick on a light switch, open a beer or buy a cellphone. In the last year, federal authorities have accused three banks, including JPMorgan, of rigging electricity prices.... Using special exemptions granted by the Federal Reserve Bank and relaxed regulations approved by Congress, the banks have bought huge swaths of infrastructure used to store commodities and deliver them to consumers -- from pipelines and refineries in Oklahoma, Louisiana and Texas; to fleets of more than 100 double-hulled oil tankers at sea around the globe; to companies that control operations at major ports like Oakland, Calif., and Seattle.... All of this could come to an end if the Federal Reserve Board declines to extend the exemptions that allowed Goldman and Morgan Stanley to make major investments in nonfinancial businesses — although there are indications in Washington that the Fed will let the arrangement stand."
David Leonhardt of the New York Times: "... researchers identified four broad factors that appeared to affect income mobility, including the size and dispersion of the local middle class. All else being equal, upward mobility tended to be higher in metropolitan areas where poor families were more dispersed among mixed-income neighborhoods. Income mobility was also higher in areas with more two-parent households, better elementary schools and high schools, and more civic engagement, including membership in religious and community groups.... In Atlanta, the most common lament seems to be precisely that concentrated poverty, extensive traffic and a weak public-transit system make it difficult to get to the job opportunities."
We should not be judged on how many new laws we create. We ought to be judged on how many laws we repeal. -- John Boehner ...
... ** "Anarchists of the House." Jonathan Chait: "... a regular feature of life in the Republican House: the party leadership draws up a bill that's far too right-wing to ever become law, but it fails in the House because it isn't right-wing enough.... Chaos and dysfunction have set in so deeply that Washington now lurches from crisis to crisis, and once-dull, keep-the-lights-on rituals of government procedure are transformed into white-knuckle dramas that threaten national or even global catastrophe.... The Republican fringe has evolved from being politically shrewd proponents of radical policy changes to a gang of saboteurs who would rather stop government from functioning at all." ...
... Mark Landler of the New York Times: "With major battles looming in the fall over the federal budget and the debt ceiling, President Obama is trying to regain the initiative, embarking on a campaign-style tour of the Midwest this week to lay out his agenda for reinvigorating the nation's economy, administration officials said Sunday."
The Wrong Guy Retired
** John Paul Stevens, in the New York Review of Books, lays out the many ways the Supreme Court's Shelby County decision is in error. Here's one biggie: "Not only is Congress better able to evaluate the issue than the Court, but it is also the branch of government designated by the Fifteenth Amendment to make decisions of this kind." Stevens' conclusion is a powerful rebuke:
This case is about power in several respects. It is about the power of our people to govern themselves, and the power of this Court to pronounce the law. Today's opinion aggrandizes the latter, with the predictable consequence of diminishing the former. We have no power to decide this case. And even if we did, we have no power under the Constitution to invalidate this democratically adopted legislation. The Court's errors on both points spring forth from the same diseased root: an exalted conception of the role of this institution in America.*
* Ironically, the justice who actually wrote Stevens' powerful conclusion was none other than Antonin Scalia. Only he wrote it in his dissent in the DOMA case, which overturned the odious Defense of Marriage Act. ...
... BUT. Still Crazy, Scalia Blames Activist Judges for the Holocaust. Bob Ward of the Aspen Times: "U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia used the twin terrors of Nazi Germany and radical Islam to warn a Snowmass Village audience Saturday about the dangers of judicial activism....Scalia received a standing ovation." CW: you have to jump through some hoops to gain access to the story.
Andrew Puzder, CEO of CKE (Carl Jr.'s & Hardee's), in a Wall Street Journal op-ed: "I am concerned that the ACA could actually cause the number of our covered employees to decrease, particularly in the first year. The penalty for declining coverage will be low compared with the cost of coverage; and employees will know that if they happen to get sick, they can get insurance after that. So the economically rational decision for young people, like our crew employees, is to pay the penalty and forego the insurance." CW: Hmm, this sounds right. If I find out differently, I'll let you know. ...
... I'm skeptical because it's usually a mistake to believe anything published in a right-wing opinion forum. To wit, David Weigel of Slate: "The [conservative] Illinois Review makes a find that's been bouncing around conservative social media all day. 'Nine years ago,' argue the authors, 'then-State Sen. Barack Obama actually co-sponsored a bill that strengthened Illinois' 1961 "stand your ground" law.' If true, this would render hypocritical or null so much of the presidential palaver about the NRA-supported gun law. Wouldn't it? ... No: 'Stand your ground' is substantively different than what Obama backed in Illinois. He backed a tweak to the 'castle doctrine,'" which applies only to home or property invasion.
Sticking by Their Four-Pinocchio Whopper. Despite the fact that both Dean Baker & Paul Krugman have pointed out that the Washington Post's lede editorial claims that unfunded state & local pension plans are nearly quadruple what they actually are, the Post has not appended a correction. Krugman writes, "I'll be curious to see how the paper's correction policy works here." Apparently, not at all. Glenn Kessler, the WashPo fact-checker, should check his paper's opinion editors. ...
... The WashPo's War on Public Pensions? Doug Milhous of Balloon Juice points out that a couple of weeks ago WashPo editorial writer Charles Lane exaggerated Detroit's unpaid pension indebtedness by a factor of (nearly) two in assessing why the city went bankrupt. CW: So far the Post editors are exaggerating unfunded pension liabilities exponentially with each new editorial. Shall we look for a factor of 16 next time? ...
... Steven Yaccino & Michael Cooper of the New York Times: "Kevyn D. Orr, [Detroit's] emergency manager, has called for 'significant cuts' to the pensions of current retirees. His plan is being fought vigorously by unions that point out that pensions are protected by Michigan's Constitution, which calls them a contractual obligation that 'shall not be diminished or impaired.'"
... Paul Krugman: "... the deficit scolds have a new case to misinterpret" -- Detroit. ...
... Enter right, Bill Keller, warning that New York City could become the next Detroit -- "The issue [for NYC] is the same one that helped send Detroit toward bankruptcy last week and has put other American cities on the disabled list: the immense pile of promises made over the decades to the city's employees -- the teachers and cops and firefighters and bus drivers and sanitation workers and maintenance crews who labor to keep the city, physically and socially, in working order."
Li'l Randy's Top White Supremacist Aide Quits. Justin Sink of the Hill: "An aide to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) who has come under fire for statements about the Civil War has resigned. Jack Hunter, who previously worked as a shock jock known as the 'Southern Avenger' and said Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth's heart was 'in the right place,' said he did not want to be a distraction for the senator, who is openly considering a White House run in 2016." ...
... Maybe because Hunter's attempts to get his "former self" deleted from the record wasn't working out. Lorraine Wilke of Addicting Information: "According to Chris Haire, his former editor at the Charleston City Paper, Hunter recently got in touch to ask (beg?) that Haire remove columns he'd written which 'no longer reflected his current worldview.' Haire didn't take kindly to the request: 'While I told him that I would have removed one or two posts -- it's not uncommon for writers to hastily pen a column they later regret -- I found the breadth of the request to be excessive, and to be honest, quite cowardly.'"
John Hooper of the Guardian: "On 15 June, the pope appointed Monsignor Battista Ricca, an Italian cleric and former Vatican diplomat, to be 'prelate' of the [Vatican] bank.... As such, Ricca is entitled to attend meetings of both the bodies that oversee the scandal-ridden IOR's operations -- its board and a five-strong commission of cardinals.... According to the latest edition of the weekly news magazine L'Espresso, Ricca has a past punctuated with scandal. Its report, which the pope's spokesman branded as 'not trustworthy', claimed Ricca lived more or less openly with a Swiss army officer while at the Holy See's nunciature (embassy) in Uruguay. It said he arrived with his lover and, while running the post between nuncios, provided him with both accommodation and a job."
Local News
Stephanie Condon of CBS News: "Gov. Rick Snyder, R-Mich., said Sunday on 'Face the Nation' that granting Detroit a government bailout would be the wrong way to help the bankrupt city."
David Chen of the New York Times: "Fed up with what he views as a pattern of obstructionist behavior, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has taken the rare step of filing a lawsuit against the city comptroller, John C. Liu, for rejecting two municipal contracts.... The lawsuit ... is the latest and perhaps most pronounced skirmish between Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Liu, a Democrat who is now running for mayor."
News Ledes
AP: "A federal judge has temporarily blocked a new North Dakota law that bans abortion when a fetal heartbeat is detected -- as early as six weeks into pregnancy. U.S. District Judge Daniel Hovland in Bismarck granted a temporary injunction Monday that blocks the law from taking effect on Aug. 1."
Washington Post: "Seventy-one detainees at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay will get parole-board-style hearings at the Navy base in Cuba, the Pentagon said Sunday, though it did not say when the panels will meet, whether the media can watch and which of the long-held inmates will go first. The disclosure followed a flurry of e-mails after 10 p.m. Friday from Pentagon bureaucrats notifying attorneys for some of the 71 inmates that the government was preparing to hold the hearings, which were ordered by President Obama two years ago."
Guardian: "The Duchess of Cambridge has been admitted to the private Lindo wing at St Mary's hospital in London in preparation for the birth of her first child. In a brief statement released at 7.30am, Kensington Palace said: 'Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cambridge has been admitted this morning to St Mary's hospital, Paddington, London, in the early stages of labour.'" ...
Update: It's a Boy! Full Kensington Palace statement, via the Guardian:
Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Cambridge was safely delivered of a son at 4.24pm.
The baby weighs 8lbs 6oz.
The Duke of Cambridge was present for the birth.
The Queen, The Duke of Edinburgh, The Prince of Wales, The Duchess of Cornwall, Prince Harry and members of both families have been informed and are delighted with the news.
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'Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cambridge has been admitted this morning to St Mary's hospital, Paddington, London, in the early stages of labour.'
Thank goodness it wasn't in the early stages of Tory. There may be hope for the UK yet.
While Paul Krugman's column is excellent, his comment that "decline happens" is not quite accurate. Robert Reich's blog post notes that municipal boundaries have isolated Detroit City from the more affluent areas of greater Detroit, and thrown it into a sink or swim scenario. http://robertreich.org/post/55976062830 To Reich, this is a metaphor for the nation. He writes: "In an era of widening inequality, this is how wealthier Americans are quietly writing off the poor."
Also, I didn't realize until recently that huge swaths of public workers don't participate in Social Security. http://wikipension.com/index.php?title=Public_employees_and_Social_Security
So if the Detroit pension system isn't bailed out, what are the retired fire fighters and police officers (and their families) to do?
Krugman is right when he says it's time to "have a serious discussion about our obligations, as a nation, to those of our fellow citizens who have the bad luck of finding themselves living and working in the wrong place at the wrong time " - and that goes behind Detroit.
@Janice. Good points. From CNN Money: "When employees of a bankrupt business lose their promised pensions, a federal agency called the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., or PBGC, provides a minimal level of benefits to the retirees. But municipal workers, which include police officers, firemen and sanitation workers, do not have a similar pension safety net in case of bankruptcy.
"Making matters worse, many retired police and firefighters rely exclusively on their pension checks since they did not pay into Social Security, said Don Taylor, president of the Retired Detroit Police and Firefighters Association." (Emphasis added.)
Let's remember, too, that the pensioners are not being greedy. They made a deal to accept lower pay than they might have got in the private sector in exchange for guaranteed retirement incomes. The Times story ledes with a 73-year-old retiree who receives $1,900/month after working for the City of Detroit for 22 years. That's less than $23K/year.
Marie
@CW: I'm surely glad that Eisenhower decided that the military had to pay into Social Security. Later, we paid into Medicare as well. It worked out for the best, although there was grumbling when the policy was first instituted.
I'm one of those greedy geezers the right hates. Military retirement, 100% veterans' disability, Social Security, Medicare, and Tricare. I don't feel the slightest bit guilty. I started paying into SS when I was 16. I served 22 years in the Army. I believe I earned all of it.
The Dark Lord shrieks again.
So Nino is warning against activist judges? Did anyone have a mirror handy out there in Snowmass? Oh, wait, I forgot. Vampires can't see their own reflections. Just as well. Scalia would have to resign immediately if he could see himself in light of all the activist decisions he's fomented or been party to.
Nino rails against judges who make policy decisions? How 'bout installing as president, by fiat, a candidate who lost the election? How about stopping a legal recount, squashing a state's right to do that to ensure that your guy could be sent to the White House? How about overturning decades of settled law to help your party win elections (Citizens United and the Voting Rights Act evisceration)? How about the consistent overturning of laws to cement the rights of corporations (after all, they're people too, my friend) at the expense of average Americans? This isn't policy making by lifetime appointees?
As for Scalia's chronic whining concerning his fealty to "originalism" (sounds like something dreamed up by a reactionary high school student whose underwear had been soaked in starch), I have only one thing to say, something that completely disembowels originalism:
United States Constitution, Article 5.
If Scalia is the originalist he claims to be he must disavow the dozen amendments to the Constitution (and, by extension, all other amendments) made during the lifetime of the guys who wrote it.
Let's take a practical look at what the cult of constitutional originalism does for us. Last week I read a most interesting article in the NYRB which reviewed a book published by a Georgetown constitutional scholar Louis Micheal Seidman. Seidman's proposition is to get rid of the Constitution altogether. Sounds nuts? Maybe, but here's part of his rationale:
From a Seidman NYTimes op-ed from earlier this year.
"Imagine that after careful study a government official — say, the president or one of the party leaders in Congress — reaches a considered judgment that a particular course of action is best for the country. Suddenly, someone bursts into the room with new information: a group of white propertied men who have been dead for two centuries, knew nothing of our present situation, acted illegally under existing law and thought it was fine to own slaves might have disagreed with this course of action. Is it even remotely rational that the official should change his or her mind because of this divination?"
But we all know how often this shit happens. Practically every day some jamoke fingerwags a good idea to death with complaints of "unconstitutional".
Maybe this is why Scalia loves originalism so much. It gives one of the stalwarts of the Party of No that many more reasons to nix anything conservatives disagree with and to insinuate his own far-right policies under cover of originalism.
I couldn't get into the NYRB site and since I can't send you all a fax of that article, here's the original op-ed. I thought it was a cute but unworkable idea when I first read it. It sounds, today like it deserves some serious consideration.
Seidman's Times piece
Originalism my ass.
Barbarossa,
You did earn it. We all did. They aren't "entitlements" or hand-outs, they're earned benefits. How about we dismantle all the trillions in unearned corporate entitlements that truly are handouts? We could all have garages with elevators.
As the French say, "Fuck the begrudgers".
Poor little Georgie Zimmerman.
Those mean old police won't give him his gun back. What to do? A gun group in Ohio is outraged that George has no way to easily murder other unarmed teenagers who are not breaking the law, so they're passing the hat to re-arm Georgie.
After all, what if he's out driving around and sees another teenager in a hoodie, becomes afraid for his life and wants to put a bullet or three in the kid's chest? Shit! That ain't no way to treat a vigilante whose only crime was to get rid of one more pesky black kid.
Oh, and by the by, reading a Fareed Zakaria article in a recent Time magazine dealing with big data, I spotted another mention of the uptick in gun violence within two weeks of gun shows. I realize the NRA and gun lovers like to decry this data as being unfair to them but there's no arguing with facts. In Richmond, VA, between 2002 and 2005, according to the ATF, police recovered 400 guns purchased at local gun shows that were later connected to criminal activity. And that's just one place. AND it doesn't account for gun shows where unlicensed sellers plied their wares.
And on a final gun happy note, I also read recently that during the NRA's inaugural Gun Appreciation Day (because guns and gun owners just don't get enough publicity) earlier this year, an event designed to give the finger to parents of the children in Newtown, CT and those horrified by the killings of babies, and one designed to give the lie to problems stemming from incompetent gun owners, people were shot at three separate locations while celebrating responsible gun ownership.
So hey, why not buy George Zimmerman another gun. Hell, give him three or four. Maybe those guns will end up connected to more criminal activity.
Poor George. A nice new Glock will give him something to do with all his free time.
As usual, can't improve on Akhilleus, but did think last night when I read the CW's warning about the many hoops that one would have to negotiate to get to the Scalia story: no more hoops or twistings, turnings or outright mobius-like contortions of logic than one would have to undergo to be as activist a judge as Scalia is and still call himself an "originalist."
Argument based on appeals to authority are too often little more (and often less) than just another way to blame daddy (or mother) for one's own sins, a support predictably clutched by those who preach most loudly about personal responsibility--but don't have the moral courage to discover it in themselves or to practice it on their own. In other words, Scalia, like so many on the Right, are moral cowards.
Listening to McCain's logical comments spewing from his mouth, I think it's about time them Tea Baggers give him a little scrotal medicine so he remembers which team he's on. He's sounding often like a librul demcrat comin' afer our gunz!
Thought it was time to catch up with Charlie Pierce after his weekend off, and midway down his first post of the day re the Gobshites: Boehner on the Bob Shieffer show discussing what he is/does/believes/whatever re immigration reform (none of what he said made any sense to me, but Charlie nailed it:
"Translation from the original weaselspeak: "The metal detector I've been using to find where Cantor buried the tobacco tin containing my balls has gone on the fritz."
Read more: Sunday Talk Shows On Immigration - What Are The Gobshites Saying These Days?
I betcha Nate Silver leaving the NYT for ESPN (hello, Keith Olbermann) has lit up the Grey Lady's phone bank. Without Silver, their 2012 campaign coverage would have truly been unexceptional.
In the way of apology:
Did I say "Scalia....are moral cowards?" Must have been referring to his evident multiple personality disorder. Like any Righty, I have it on good authority I couldn't have simply made a mistake.