;)
Tuesday
May212013
The Commentariat -- May 22, 2013
Scott Shane of the New York Times: "...lost in the contentious debate over the legality, morality and effectiveness of [drones] is the fact that the number of strikes has actually been in decline. Strikes in Pakistan peaked in 2010 and have fallen sharply since then; their pace in Yemen has slowed to half of last year’s rate; and no strike has been reported in Somalia for more than a year."
Most homebuilders would be against [requiring safe structures in new homes] because we think the market ought to drive what people are putting in the houses, not the government. -- Mike Gilles, a former president of the Oklahoma State Home Builders Association (Gilles puts storm shelters in the luxury homes he builds)
Might as well just sit back. If it gets you, it gets you. If not, another day. -- Leon Harjo, a Moore, Oklahoma, resident ...
... ** John Schwartz of the New York Times: "... no local ordinance or building code requires [storms cellars or safe rooms], either in houses, schools or businesses, and only about 10 percent of homes in Moore have them. Nor does the rest of Oklahoma, one of the states in the storm belt called Tornado Alley, require them -- despite the annual onslaught of deadly and destructive twisters like the one on Monday.... Schwartz attributes the lacks of such codes to "cost & Plains culture." The cost for homes, BTW, is in the neighborhood of $4,000.
I have not done anything wrong. I have not broken any laws. I have not violated any IRS rules or regulations and I have not provided false information to this or any other committee. -- Lois Lerner, to the House Oversight & Government Reform Committee
Lauren French & Kelsey Snell of Politico: "Lois Lerner, the director of the scandal-plagued IRS division that oversees nonprofit groups, struck a defiant tone in her first public appearance since the agency acknowledged that it wrongly targeted conservative groups applying for a tax exemption.... For now, Lerner is refusing to answer additional questions from the committee by invoking her Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate herself.... Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin told the panel that although he was aware the IRS was being investigated, he knew nothing about the results of that review and didn't interfere with the probe in any way." ...
... The Washington Post is liveblogging the hearing. ...
... CW: I often disagree with Dan Balz of the Washington Post because he tends to take the "fastidious whiner" approach to controversies. But I think he's right today: "... the White House has added to the confusion by changing its story of who knew what and when. By happenstance or design, officials are employing an approach that former White House press secretary Mike McCurry once classically described as 'telling the truth slowly.' ... If White House officials hoped the IRS controversy would quickly go away, they have acted in a way designed to produce just the opposite." ...
... BUT Jeff Toobin, in the New Yorker: "It was immediately clear that neither President Obama nor anyone in the White House ordered the alleged I.R.S. misconduct. So the question became what the White House 'knew' about the wrongdoing.... Shouldn't [White House counsel Kathryn] Ruemmler et al. have told the President about the audit? Actually, that would have been just about the worst thing they could have done.... By not telling the President, Ruemmler made sure that Obama could not be accused of influencing the audit." ...
... CW: nevertheless, Ruemmler told the President's chief of staff Denis McDonough & other White House officials about the investigation, & isn't it reasonable to suspect that any one of them might have clued in Obama? Not that it matters, because it doesn't unless it turns out the President sent the Cincinnati office a big gift basket with a "keep up the good work" card. ...
... Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: Lois Lerner, "the Internal Revenue Service official who tried to temper efforts to target conservative groups and then made the issue public, will plead her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and decline to testify at a House hearing on Wednesday." ...
... Bernie Becker of the Hill: "Former Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Doug Shulman told Congress Tuesday that he only learned the full extent of the agency's targeting of conservative groups after he left his post and did not know why employees initially implemented the policy. Shulman said IRS staffers should have more quickly alerted their superiors about the higher scrutiny given to Tea Party groups seeking tax-exempt status -- a feeling shared by the acting commissioner, Steven Miller. The two officials faced tough questions about the IRS scandal before the Senate Finance Committee...." ...
... Old News. Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post: "An Internal Revenue Service review of the agency's approach of scrutinizing conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status questioned the now-controversial policy a year ago, according to House Oversight and Government Reform Committee spokesman Ali Ahmad." ...
... Matea Gold of the Los Angeles Times, via the Chicago Tribune: "Crossroads GPS, the behemoth conservative advocacy group behind some of the most robust attacks against President Obama's administration, said Monday that it believes it is among the organizations subjected to special scrutiny by the Internal Revenue Service. The statement by the group comes as campaign finance reform advocates and congressional Democrats have claimed that the IRS failed to examine the activities of Crossroads and other major political players...." CW: Good. And I hope there's a provision in the IRS practices & procedures manual for applying thumbscrews to Karl Rove. If there isn't, there should be. ...
... David Grant of the Christian Science Monitor: gee, maybe this whole IRS brouhaha is Congress's fault for writing such an ambiguous law, then letting the IRS interpret it -- for 50 years. ...
... The Starr Chamber II. As contributor MAG noted, Bill Keller is advancing the bright idea of a Ken Starr investigation of the IRS. I was hoping Keller had suggested Starr investigate Benghazi, which would put him back in the familiar Clinton territory he so enjoyed. Maybe he could have finally nailed Hillary on Whitewater. Unless it turns out Lois Lerner was auditing Steven Miller's privates, IRS-gate would be no fun for Ken.
We have got to get past [unfounded accusations about Benghazi] and figure out what are we going to do going forward. Some of the accusations, I mean you wouldn't believe some of this stuff. It's just -- I mean, you've got to be on Mars to come up with some of this stuff. -- Unnamed Senior House GOP Aide ...
... CW: it isn't just staffers whose eyes are beginning to glaze over. As Ben Ambruster of Think Progress points out, Senators Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) & Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) & Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.) have all backed away from endorsing the Big All-Benghazi-All-the-Time Show. ...
... It Was All Petraeus's Fault, II. Scott Wilson & Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post: "at [an] informal session with [Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger (Md.),] House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that the ranking Democrat asked David H. Petraeus, who was CIA director at the time, to ensure that committee members did not inadvertently disclose classified information when talking to the news media about the attack.... What Petraeus decided to do with that request is the pivotal moment in the controversy over the administration's Benghazi talking points. It was from his initial input that all else flowed, resulting in 48 hours of intensive editing that congressional Republicans cite as evidence of a White House coverup.... Petraeus's early role and ambitions in going well beyond the committee's request, apparently to produce a set of talking points favorable to his image and his agency. The information Petraeus ordered up when he returned to his Langley office that morning included far more than the minimalist version that Ruppersberger had requested."
New York Times Editors: "With the decision to label a Fox News television reporter [Jay Rosen] a possible 'co-conspirator' in a criminal investigation of a news leak, the Obama administration has moved beyond protecting government secrets to threatening the fundamental freedoms of the press to gather news."
McCain & Collins Are Sick of Tailgunner Ted & Li'l Randy. Lori Montgomery of the Washington Post: "Long-simmering divisions among Republicans burst into public view Tuesday evening, when GOP moderates challenged tea-party conservatives on the Senate floor over their refusal to proceed to formal negotiations with Democrats over the federal budget." ...
... Dave Weigel of Slate: "What Ted Cruz and Rand Paul and Mike Lee want -- and have wanted -- is a guarantee that a debt limit increase cannot be included in the budget agreement that comes out of the House and Senate conference. It only takes 51 votes to pass a budget. Cruz, on the floor, has asked the Senate to preserve the 'traditional 60-vote threshold' for raising the debt limit. This is a strange definition of 'tradition.'" ...
... Steve Benen has more: "Between 1939 and 2010, the debt ceiling was raised 89 times. How many of those increases were subjected to the '60-vote threshold'? Zero. Even earlier this year, a debt-ceiling increase was approved with 52 votes, not 60. It's possible Cruz doesn't understand what 'traditional' means.... What Cruz wants isn't traditional; it's unprecedented.... And as of yesterday, even some Senate Republicans are getting tired of this nonsense."
David Nakamura of the Washington Post: " Senate committee approved a sweeping immigration reform bill Tuesday that would provide a path to citizenship for up to 11 million illegal immigrants, setting the stage for the full Senate to consider the landmark legislation next month. After five days of debate over dozens of amendments, the Judiciary Committee voted 13 to 5 in support of the bill, with three Republicans joining the committee's 10 Democrats. The legislation emerged with its core provisions largely intact, including new visa programs for high-tech and low-skilled workers and new investments in strengthening border control." ...
... Alexander Bolton of the Hill: "Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) on Tuesday said he would not try to block immigration reform from reaching the floor despite the opposition of some conservative leaders. The green light from McConnell is a promising development...." ...
... David Nakamura of the Washington Post: "Most U.S. high-tech companies would not be required to offer jobs to Americans before they are able to hire foreign workers under a compromise worked out Tuesday by Senate negotiators on an immigration reform bill. The Senate Judiciary Committee approved the deal, which came as an amendment to the immigration legislation, to satisfy concerns from Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), whose support is seen as crucial to building strong bipartisan momentum for the overall proposal." ...
... Jennifer Martinez of the Hill: "Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) withdrew a controversial amendment to the immigration bill on Tuesday that would allow American citizens in same-sex marriages to sponsor green cards for their foreign partners. Leahy said he chose to withdraw the amendment 'with a heavy heart' because Republicans have said they would oppose the sweeping immigration bill if it was included." CW: "controversial" only to lunkheads.
Tabassum Zakaria & Mark Hosenball of Reuters: "President Barack Obama's administration has decided to give the Pentagon control of some drone operations against terrorism suspects overseas that are currently run by the CIA, several U.S. government sources said on Monday. Obama has pledged more transparency on controversial counterterrorism programs, and giving the Pentagon the responsibility for part of the drone program could open it to greater congressional oversight."
David Jackson of USA Today: "President Obama has formally appointed the 10 members of a special commission designed to look for improvements in U.S. election systems. The assignment of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration is to 'identify non-partisan ways to shorten lines at polling places, promote the efficient conduct of elections, and provide better access to the polls for all voters,' said a White House statement. The bipartisan co-chairs are Robert Bauer and Benjamin Ginsberg, attorneys who worked for the Obama and Mitt Romney campaigns during last year's presidential election." CW: Hmmm. Ben Ginsberg strikes me as a guy who does not play well with others. I'm not sure this commission will be as effective as the Catfood Commission, which couldn't even agree to produce a report.
Nelson Schwartz of the New York Times: "Facing down blistering criticism on Capitol Hill that Apple sidestepped billions of dollars in taxes, the company's chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, carefully defended Apple's record Tuesday, rejecting any suggestion of misconduct but avoiding clashes with skeptical legislators." ...
... Contributor P. D. Pepe has what is probably a more true-to-life account of the hearing in today's Comments. ...
... When "Overseas" Means "A New York Bank." David Kocieniewski of the New York Times: "Multinationals based in the United States now hold more than $1.6 trillion in cash classified as 'permanently invested overseas.' These funds will face the 35 percent federal corporate tax only if it is returned to the country. In the convoluted world of corporate tax accounting however, simple concepts like 'overseas' and 'returned to the country' are not as simple as they appear. Apple's $102 billion in offshore profits is actually managed by one of its wholly owned subsidiaries in Reno, Nev., according to the Senate report on the company's tax avoidance. The money is tracked by Apple company bookkeepers in Austin, Tex. What's more, the funds are held in bank accounts in New York."
... Tax Avoidance Copycats? Floyd Norris of the New York Times: "Tuesday’s hearing could have the exact opposite effect from the one that Senator [Carl] Levin [D-Mich.] intended. It is not hard to imagine other chief executives reading news reports and asking their chief financial officers why they never thought of that. That could lead to even more companies finding ways to avoid American income taxes." ...
... ** John Cassidy of the New Yorker: "Partly as a result of their evasive tactics, big businesses now shoulder a lot less of the tax burden than they used to do. In the years after the Second World War, the corporate income tax accounted for about a third of over-all tax revenues. Today, its share is less than nine per cent.... Sixty years ago, individual and payroll taxes accounted for about half of over-all tax revenues; today, they account for more than eighty per cent."
Oh, Great. Gitmo is getting a $200 million renovation. And I doubt there will be an HGTV special about it, even if it becomes the plush resort Orrin Hatch claims it is.
Shahank Bengali of the Los Angeles Times: "The Army suspended the commander of its main basic training camp Tuesday for alleged adultery, the latest in a string of military officers accused of sexual misconduct. Brig. Gen. Bryan T. Roberts, a 29-year Army veteran, was suspended from his post at Ft. Jackson, S.C., while the military investigates allegations of 'adultery and a physical altercation,' officials said.... Adultery is a crime under military law and, if proven, could end his Army career." ...
... CW: The story doesn't detail the allegations about the "physical altercation," so maybe it was -- if true -- suspension-worthy, but adultery should never be a criminal offense. (And, no, I don't favor adultery.)
Local News
Seema Mehta & Laura J. Nelson of the Los Angeles Times: "Wendy Greuel called Eric Garcetti early Wednesday morning to concede the mayoral election, a Greuel campaign source told the Times, ending a two-year campaign to determine Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's successor and the new political leader of Los Angeles. Garcetti will be the first elected Jewish mayor of the city. At 42, he will also be the youngest in more than a century. He is scheduled to take office July 1."
Michael Barbaro of the New York Times: "After a rocky re-emergence into public life over the past few weeks, marked by circuslike scenes of tabloid photographers chasing him onto the subway, [former Congressman Anthony] Weiner opted to declare his candidacy [for mayor of New York City] from the safe remove of a video":
Fernanda Santos of the New York Times: "A federal appellate panel struck down Arizona's abortion law on Tuesday, saying it was unconstitutional 'under a long line of invariant Supreme Court precedents' that guarantee a woman's right to end a pregnancy any time before a fetus is deemed viable outside her womb -- generally at 24 weeks."
News Lede
Boston Globe: "A Chechen man with ties to Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was shot and killed by an FBI agent in Orlando early today when the man attacked the agent, the FBI said in a statement. The FBI identified the person shot and killed as Ibragim Todashev, 26. According to the FBI and local news accounts, the shooting took place in an apartment building on Peregrine Avenue while Todashev was being questioned about the bombings and Tamerlan Tsarnaev." ...
... Update: the Orlando Sentinel's report is here.
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Reader Comments (6)
If the people of Oklahoma don't want storm shelters in their homes and want to continue living in tornado alley, then the federal government should not give a penny of aid to help them when the inevitable happens. At the same time, there should be no federal aid for housing that doesn't meet codes. If they want to throw caution into the wind, let them, but on their own dime. Then let's see what the market drives there.
"... we think the market ought to drive what people are putting in the houses, not the government. -- Mike Gilles"
I think the building codes drive what homebuilders put into houses. Without the codes many of us would be living in firetraps, cesspools, drinking contaminated water, with unreliable and dangerous electricity, and no legal recourse.
"Plains culture" used to involve having a root cellar. I've never lived on the Plains, so maybe that's a misimpression I got from movies/books.
In some/many states, codes require roof loads to hold up against a hypothetical "once in a hundred years" storm, wind and snow. If I lived in Oklahoma, I'd like to see codes that reflect the fact that they get these storms EVERY YEAR.
Why would a builder, who would make a bit more on each home sale, oppose the addition of a safety feature in a location where the threat and the vulnerability are common and well-defined? Only if adding that feature would make his homes less competitive on price. But if the code required all new homes to have safe rooms, that reluctance would theoretically go away.
One of the many reasons we have codes is to standardize the market cost of mitigating risk. Why does OK think that's a bad idea?
Re: Oklahoma? Sure is weirder than Kansas, Toto. " despite the annual onslaught of deadly and destructive twisters like the one on Monday.... Schwartz attributes the lacks of such codes to "cost & Plains culture." The cost for homes, BTW, is in the neighborhood of $4,000." Haven't any of these people seen "The Wizard of OZ" ?
Costs? On one paw you have the continued costs of medical emergencies, search and rescue, and lives lost, on the other paw you have a one time cost of a storm shelter. I take Marie's number, four grand, as the cost for a single home shelter. Which paw would you choose, Toto?
Plains culture? What, plain dumb? "Tornado Alley", catchy, why do they call it that? Maybe to help out the name should be changed to "Your house gets flattened every ten years by God freeway".
Here in earthquake land building codes add at least five percent to the cost of foundation engineering, framing and earthquake strappings. Guys make livings off of retros, tying old houses to their foundations. Sure, comes a "eight" on the scale close by and everything is coming apart at the seams but the codes might save lives because the house did not fall down.
I'm sure there are reasons to live in the Sooner State, if I lived there I'd sooner have a shelter than culture.
I'll bet dollars to doughnuts the good contractors have shelters on their properties.
Now about this pair of red high heeled shoes...
I won't add my amazement to the lack of building codes except to say the irony of this situation is beyond belief just as Dorothy discovered in that land of Oz so long ago.
The coverage in the Times on the Apple hearings missed the best part. Although they mentioned Rand Paul's input they presented it as a normal exchange and interestingly presented Levin's and McCain's presentation as testy and angry. What I watched was just the opposite: Levin and McCain both put forth their concerns and the reason for the hearing which was to understand the off-shore tax practices that Apple had manufactured. Next Randy, in his best argumentative tone of voice, went to town castigating the chairmen for holding this hearing, ("This is a sideshow) for VILIFYING Apple––how dare they bring such a fine upstanding company to task, we have too high a tax on corporations, blah, blah, blah. When he finished there was stunned silence for about two minutes, then very quietly and firmly Levin explained that no one was vilifying anyone, and explained
once again the reasons for the hearing. McCain, his mouth set tightly, said that he had served with Carl Levin for many years and never once did he ever see or hear Levin vilify anyone. The Grrrrrr in his tone was audible. After the two law professors gave their testimony and it was time for Rand to question he repeated what he had said previously using the word VILIFY once again. At this point one of the lawyers came back strongly with the fact that no one was vilifying Apple and he was probably thinking, you dumb schmuck, were you not listening to anything that was said? I was dumbfounded at Rand's inability to conduct himself civilly and marveled at McCain's resistance not to get out of his chair and smack Rand over the head.
In the end the consensus was we need to change our tax code and everybody still loves Apple even though they do all those gimmicky tax evasions. Handshakes all around, but Rand's middle finger was still stuck in his rear.
@PD Pepe: thanks for the illuminating reading of the hearing.
Marie
PD,
Rand Paul's incivility, his typically insulting, whining tone is all of a piece with a very large strain running through the various strata of wingnut geologic formations. Most of these formations are comprised of pyrite, sandstone, mudstone, and silt, but they all have a particularly noxious lode of acidic hate burning through them, infecting the groundwater and pushing up to the surface. Paul is no less immune to its effects, he just has a bigger pulpit from which to spew. That, and he's also an asshole.
But this hatred has bubbled up in dramatic form since the 2008 election of Barack Obama. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, at the end of the Bush Debacle, during which the "patriots" and anti-government types were relatively quiet (what with all the very fun torture and killing of dirty mooslims going on) there were fewer than 150 "largely inactive" anti-government groups on the radar.
After the election of a black Democrat, the number of those groups, bolstered by right-wing hysteria and tales of the Muslim Kenyan usurper coming to take their guns and install some weird combination of sharia law and socialism, "patriot" groups surged from 149 in 2008 to 1,274 by the beginning of 2012. This is over 400 more groups than the previous high water mark for government hating patriot groups during its heyday in 1996, the era of Ruby Ridge, Waco, and Oklahoma City.
The number of average run of the mill hate groups is at an all time high as well, over 1,000.
So it's not a real surprise that this sense of victimization fomented by this mindset and the aggressive nature of their strident rhetoric should have filtered into congress.
But it's prevalence is also seen in casual remarks like those of that idiot builder in Oklahoma who whines that the government should not be telling builders what to put into the homes they build. Well, Einstein, in case you've been putting homes made of Lincoln Logs, Legos, and duct tape, building codes, as Patrick notes, inform you pretty much everything required to build safe, healthy domiciles, from plumbing regulations to electrical, to framing; from foundation to roof.
He's just another idiot who doesn't realize that government regulations, created in response to unbridled greed, sleazy business practices and incompetence over the years, allows him to drive a safe car, drink clean water, breathe (largely) clean air, have police and fire protection, a military, a public school system, and a host of other necessities and conveniences.
But this pinhead, having been indoctrinated by all the "patriot" rhetoric, can only whine about what he sees as the "government" trying to take over and tell him what to do.
The vast majority of these people will never make a bomb or plan an assassination of public figures, but with so many more of this type around now, and getting plenty of encouragement from GOP "leaders" who routinely show their disdain and hatred of government and government agencies, and who applaud those they see as giving the government the finger, there may very likely be a few more Timothy McVeighs in training somewhere out there.
At the very least, this mindset of "patriots" against everyone who doesn't agree with their hate-filled, fear-fueled ideology, vastly impacts the ability of US citizens to work together to address the very real problems we all face, not just nutjob conspiracy theories. Tax hatred of the Rand Pauls is just one other outflow of that hate strain bubbling up from the many right-wing geologic formations.
They're like poisonous mud pots defacing landscape and making all passage unsafe.