;)
Thursday
Oct092014
The Commentariat -- Oct. 10, 2014
Internal links, document text & defunct video removed.
Alan Cowell of the New York Times: "... the Norwegian Nobel Committee on Friday awarded the 2014 peace prize to Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan and Kailash Satyarthi of India, joining a teenage Pakistani known around the world with a 60-year-old Indian veteran of campaigns on behalf of children. The awards, announced in Oslo by Thorbjorn Jagland, the committee's chairman, were in acknowledgment of their work in helping to promote universal schooling and in protecting children worldwide from abuse and exploitation."
** Rebecca Traister of the New Republic: "... if there was anything fresh and important about those ridiculous 'Say Yes to the Candidate' spots [which ran in the Commentariat last week], it was that they marked one of the first instances in which conservatives have in any way embraced the idea that women now treat government as a stand-in for husbands.... In 2012, unmarried women made up 23 percent of the electorate; they voted for Barack Obama over Mitt Romney by a whopping 67 to 31 percent.... This is the new political reality: Women without husbands decide elections. And it's not surprising that they gravitate toward Democrats, who have more reliably fought for the social supports and rights that make unmarried life possible, over Republicans, who have reliably derided them as man-hating government mooches.... What too often goes unacknowledged is that women aren't the only Americans who have relied on the government as a partner. Rather, it's a model of support and dependence that has bolstered the fortunes of American men throughout the nation's history." Read the whole post.
Joe Klein of Time listens to neighbors talking politics conspiracy theories. The people Klein visited were not drooling morons; they just believed what they read in Breitbart or heard on Fox. "These are stories that stick in the mind and rot the body politic. They are a dominant political currency, and not just in the South." CW: If those executives & producers who want to make the Sunday morning "news" shows "edgy" had the slightest interest in educating their viewers, they would run a segment at the end of every show debunking "The Week's Most Ridiculous Conspiracy Theory." Chris Wallace, I'm talking to you, too. Many of their viewers would be shocked to discover the outlandish stories they accepted as factual were instead "ridiculous conspiracy theories." ...
... Should we be surprised regular people believe wingnut conspiracy stories when they hear some of the same nonsense from Members of Congress? ...
... Steve Benen: Rep. Tom Cotton (RTP-Ark.), Rep. Duncan Hunter (RTP-Calif.), Sen. Rand Paul (RTP-Kentucky) & other "members of Congress have repeated truly bizarre ideas from the fringe about the Boston Marathon bombing, the deadly 2012 attack in Benghazi, the imaginary IRS 'scandal,' and a parade of related stories. In each case, there are fact-checkers who issue warnings such as, 'As lawmakers, they need to be careful about making inflammatory statements based on such flimsy evidence,' but for much of the right, it just doesn't matter." ...
... Frank Rich: "It'll be interesting to watch that number between now and Election Day as the president's political nemeses do everything they can to spread panic about Ebola and attach that panic to Obama. The right-wing Washington site Daily Caller has already dubbed him 'President Ebola.' Mike Huckabee has found a link to Benghazi. Rand Paul has accused the president of pursuing a 'politically correct' Ebola policy -- presumably because Paul believes an African-American president would rather let an epidemic destroy America than offend anyone in his ancestral continent. All this fire is coming from self-styled Reagan Republicans. Let us not forget that Reagan legacy in reacting to a spiraling health crisis. The first cases of the AIDS epidemic in America were reported in 1981; he didn't give a serious address about the disease until 1987, after thousands of Americans had died. Pat Buchanan, Reagan's communications director, called AIDS 'nature's revenge on gay men.' There's political correctness for you." ...
... Jonathan Cohn: "... you can't truly wipe out the Ebola threat, even for Americans, without controlling it overseas. As long as it's un-contained, it will continue to make its way to other countries -- carried by people over land, sea, or air -- because the world is simply too interconnected to shut down borders completely. Meanwhile, the damage to social and economic fabric of Africa could be devastating, in ways that would hurt the U.S. over the long run." ...
... John Cassidy of the New Yorker: "In this country, Ebola isn't yet a huge public-health threat. But it's fast becoming a political nightmare.... As public unease mounts, the Republicans are positioning themselves as Ebola hawks, and the Democrats risk being caricatured as doves. If you turn on right-wing talk radio, you will hear Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and others excoriating the White House for failing to seal America's borders -- a charge they are already linking to the debate about immigration reform. During the past few days, a number of G.O.P. presidential hopefuls have also weighed in." Read Cassidy's lede graf. I'll bet those guys are white. ...
... Tom Dart & Lauren Gambino of the Guardian: "The faltering response to a Liberian's Ebola diagnosis in Texas contrasted starkly to the mobilization after the mere suspicion of the disease in a local law enforcement officer. Some wonder whether it was no coincidence."
Rolling Stone publishes "55 figures that prove President Obama has accomplished more than you may realize."
David Rohde & Warren Strobel of the Atlantic write a mostly-negative assessment of President Obama's foreign policy decisions & his decision-making process. CW: But when I read between the lines, & when I consider the probable consequences of the alternatives, Obama's strategies & processes seem pretty sound.
Adam Gopnik of the New Yorker on the imagery of terrorism. "Murder as a publicity stunt is not a new development; it is exactly what terrorism is. But these images [of masked jihadists beheading American & British men] have somehow broken new terror territory. It is hard to believe that, without them, we would now be bombing Iraq and Syria and trying to eliminate ISIS.... If there is one worst moral casualty of the past decade and a half, it surely lies there: Americans have gone from being the hardest of peoples to panic to among the most easily panicked people on the planet. In New Hampshire, the Granite State with the defiant license plate, security fears are dominating the senatorial campaign. New Hampshire voters -- including, it seems, New Hampshire mothers, for whom Islamist terrorism seems less of a danger than lightning at picnics, to say nothing of drunk drivers and proliferating guns -- are panicked enough to think of voting for a 'security' Republican."
Panetta Is "Rewriting History." Michael Hirsh in Politico: "Tommy Vietor, the former spokesman for Obama's National Security Council, says that based on 'talking to my friends back at the White House ... they are going out of their way to avoid a messy public fight' [with Leon Panetta.] But Vietor adds: 'Secretary Panetta was very clear back in 2011 that he wouldn't allow troops to remain in Iraq without the necessary protections from the Iraqi government, and I think it's reasonable for the White House to remind people of those statements.'... On Tuesday, Panetta told NBC's Andrea Mitchell that had the administration armed the fractious Free Syrian Army, as he'd advocated, then 'we would at least be in a better position to have in the rebel operation a group that we would have worked with, known, helped arm....' But several administration officials remember that Panetta was as concerned about arms falling into the hands of radical Islamists as the president was."
Jonathan Chait: "The Congressional Budget Office announced [Wednesday] that the federal budget deficit for fiscal year 2014 came in at $495 billion, almost $200 billion below the previous figure.... Within minutes, Washington's debt-scold community sprang into action to guard against complacency." Now they're focusing on projected increases in deficits several years hence. "Where were the debt scolds when the short-term deficit was high and the business and political communities were freaking out? Their belief in patience and the long view might have helped the political system avoid its disastrous turn toward austerity. Instead they fomented panic.... Their misplaced priorities helped doom millions of Americans to years of suffering." ...
... Paul Krugman is subtle, whacking the Washington Post's deficit-hawk-in-chief/editorial page editor Fred Hiatt in a link, without naming him. Sadly, this won't translate to the print edition. "Deficit scolds actually love big budget deficits, and hate it when those deficits get smaller. Why? Because fears of a fiscal crisis -- fears that they feed assiduously -- are their best hope of getting what they really want: big cuts in social programs." (CW: I linked the Hiatt column a few days ago, as an example of die-hard hawkdom.)
Aaron Kessler of the New York Times: "Ben S. Bernanke ... took the stand [Thursday] in the lawsuit over terms of the 2008 bailout of the insurance giant American International Group. Mr. Bernanke gave terse and clipped responses to questions.... Mr. Bernanke did not agree with the notion -- a central part of the lawsuit -- that A.I.G. got a raw deal from the Federal Reserve, or that it could have gotten a better deal elsewhere. 'It was evident from the fact that the board took the Fed's offer that they didn't have a better offer,' he said, referring to the vote by A.I.G.'s board approving the government's loan, and its terms." ...
... Jon Stewart explains the case. Thanks to Victoria D. for the link:
Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post on one effort to help poor, working families: get businesses to buy in by providing counselling for employees in trouble -- counselling that helps them find actual solutions to their difficulties. Rampell reports both the upside -- remarkably low worker turnover -- & downside -- the companies are relying on taxpayer-funded services to help their employees. "'There has been this Wal-Mart mentality," [the program's creator Randy] Osmun says, of cutting wages, reducing taxes that fund social spending, and prioritizing profitability today without thinking about the future. 'Twenty years later we've seen a complete destruction of our school system, huge rates of incarceration and poverty, and now employers are saying, "I can't hire good people." You can't hire good people because you have devastated the community.'" ...
... CW: Of course the government could take this program a step further & force companies to alleviate some of these problems by providing workers not just with flex time to deal with some of their problems but also with, you know, a living wage that would reduce or eliminate their needs for much of the taxpayer-funded aid. Oh wait, Republicans....
... Decades ago, when I was a low-wage worker with a family to support, I marvelled at how executives were able to come & go to take care of routine personal business, while I had to practically pretend I didn't have children who needed my attention & sometimes created emergencies. I solved my problem by getting promoted into more flexible, better-paying salaried positions. Not every worker can make that happen. Every worker, however, should be treated with the dignity to which executives treat themselves. (Rebecca Traister's piece, linked above, is relevant here.)
John Peter of USA Today: Jerry "Angelo, who was general manager of the Chicago Bears from 2001 to 2011..., said teams did not discipline players in 'hundreds and hundreds' of domestic violence incidents during his 30 years in the league, and said he now regrets his role in the failure to take action.... The Bears released a statement later Thursday denying any knowledge of Angelo's assertions. 'We were surprised by Jerry's comments and do not know what he is referring to,' the statement read." CW: It's hard to justify watching NFL games or otherwise supporting pro-ball teams, not so much because of Angelo's statement but because of the Bears' response.
Nicholas Kristof, who was the 4th man in the "Politically Incorrect" on-air "debate" about Islam: "Let's not feed Islamophobic bigotry by highlighting only the horrors while neglecting the diversity of a religion with 1.6 billion adherents -- including many who are champions of tolerance, modernity and human rights. The great divide is not between faiths, but one between intolerant zealots of any tradition and the large numbers of decent, peaceful believers likewise found in each tradition." Kristof cites some of the poll results on Muslim beliefs by country, linked Sunday in the Commentariat. ...
... It Depends on What the Meaning of "Most" Is. Hemant Mehta in Patheos: "Yes, most Muslims around the world condemn violence in defense of their faith. But when you exclude those who didn't respond to the question, we're still talking about 21% of Muslims worldwide and 13% in the U.S. who believe suicide bombing is rarely, sometimes, or often justified. That's hundreds of millions of people who do not unequivocally condemn faith-based violence.
November Elections
Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "With four weeks to go before the midterm elections, Republicans have made questions of how safe we are -- from disease, terrorism or something unspoken and perhaps more ominous -- central in their attacks against Democrats. Their message is decidedly grim: PresidentObama and the Democratic Party run a government that is so fundamentally broken it cannot offer its people the most basic protection from harm."
Kansas. David McCabe of the Hill: "Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said [Greg Orman,] the independent challenger to Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), would not be welcome to caucus with Senate Republicans if the GOP takes over the upper chamber's majority. 'It is an impossibility. It is not possible,' Priebus told Kansas City's 41 Action News." (No link.) CW: Apparently Prince Rebus is unaware he is not a U.S. senator & has nothing to say about how the Senate conducts its business. If Orman wins, Senate Republicans will court him.
North Carolina. E. J. Dionne: "In the struggle for control of the Senate, the reaction against reaction has allowed Sen. Kay Hagan, so far at least, to defy the punditocracy. Once seen as one of this year's most vulnerable Democratic incumbents, Hagan has been maintaining a small but steady lead over state House Speaker Thom Tillis. Tillis's problem is the sharp right turn in the governance of one of the South's traditionally moderate states, which he helped engineer along with Gov. Pat McCrory."
Oregon. Laura Gunderson of the Oregonian: "Less than 24 hours after news broke of a secret marriage, Oregon first lady Cylvia Hayes tearfully apologized to Oregonians and to her fiancé, Gov. John Kitzhaber, for accepting $5,000 to illegally marry an 18-year-old Ethiopian in need of a green card." Kitzhaber, a Democrat, is running for re-election. The latest poll, which is several weeks old, has Kitzhaber up 12 against his Republican challenger Dennis Richardson.
South Dakota. Alexandra Jaffe of the Hill: "... while former Sen. Larry Pressler [S.D.], who served nearly a quarter century in Congress as a Republican, won't say who he'd caucus with, he told The Hill Wednesday that, if elected, he'd be a 'friend of Obama' in the Senate. 'I don't regret those votes, 'cause on that day, that's how I felt,' he said of voting for Obama twice, a detail used by Republicans as evidence Pressler is now a closet Democrat.... A poll out this week showed him surging in the race -- despite only having raised about $107,000 through the second quarter of the year, and having spent even less -- narrowing Republican Mike Rounds' lead to just three points. He's more competitive in the four-way race than Democrat Rick Weiland, and in a head-to-head matchup with Rounds, Pressler leads him by 15 points."
** Texas. Phil Helsel of NBC News: "A federal judge has struck down a Texas voter ID law, saying the requirement that all voters show photo identification before casting a ballot amounted to a 'poll tax' designed to suppress voter turnout among minorities. U.S. District Court Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos wrote in an opinion released Thursday evening that 'There has been a clear and disturbing pattern of discrimination in the name of combatting voter fraud in Texas,' and that the state hadn't demonstrated that such fraud was widespread. Gonzales said the evidence showed the proponents of the law 'were motivated, at the very least in part, because of and not merely in spite of the voter ID law's detrimental effects on the African-American and Hispanic electorate.'... Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott's office said it will immediately appeal Thursday's ruling." Abbott, a Republican, is running for governor. Ramos is an Obama appointee.
... CW: This opinion -- which is here -- makes the kind of bold statement that do a number of the pro-marriage equality opinions, written -- as some pundits have pointed out -- for the history books. In fact, Ramos writes extensive of Texas's long history of minority disenfranchisement & voter suppression. Here's a highlight: "In every redistricting cycle since 1970, Texas has been found to have violated the VRA with racially gerrymandered districts." She also recounts the high -- and costly -- hurdles some plaintiffs have had to jump to maintain or reinstate their voting rights. This is an opinion that will make you mad at the Texas GOP all over again.
** Wisconsin. Patrick Marley of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "On a 6-3 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked Wisconsin's voter ID law late Thursday, a month after a panel of appeals judges said it could go into place and less than four weeks before the Nov. 4 election. Gov. Scott Walker and his fellow Republicans approved the law in 2011, but it was quickly blocked by a series of court decisions in four lawsuits. Last month, a three-judge panel of the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago ruled the law could go into place for the upcoming election.... The panel followed that decision up with its final ruling Monday that upheld the voter ID law in its entirety. But the U.S. Supreme Court's ... hold on the law will remain in place until the nation's highest court decides whether to take the case..." ...
... The order is here. Justices Alito, Scalia & Thomas dissented, natch. ...
... In today's Comments, Nadd2 has some tips for Wisconsin voters & GOTV enthusiasts.
... Jessica VanEgeren of the (Madison) Capital Times: "Poverty-wage work is widespread in Wisconsin, particularly in food, retail, residential and in-home health care sectors, with roughly 700,000 workers earning less than a living wage in 2013, according to a report released Thursday by the Madison-based Center on Wisconsin Strategy and the Economic Policy Institute. The 'Raise the Floor' report based the number of Wisconsin workers who are not earning enough to support their families on the federal poverty benchmark for a family of four, or $11.36 an hour. Given that figure, 700,000, or one out of four, Wisconsin workers are employed but living in poverty. Wisconsin's minimum wage is much lower at $7.25 an hour." ...
... Scott Walker Is Fine with That. Wisconsin Gazette: "The Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development determined this week that $7.25 an hour is a fair wage for minimum-wage workers. The department denied complaints from more than 100 Wisconsin workers. In a statement released this week, Wisconsin Jobs Now said, '... The law in Wisconsin is very clear: "every wage paid by any employer to any employee shall not be less than a living wage." ... The fact that Governor Walker thinks that $290 a week is what it costs to cover the basics of life in Wisconsin is beyond comprehension. This decision makes it unequivocally clear that Scott Walker is more than out of touch: he is brutally neglectful of a huge percentage of his constituents." ...
... CW: So starvation wages are against Wisconsin law? Don't worry about that, people. I'm sure Scotty & his gang in the state legislature can soon repair the situation: they'll repeal the law.
Beyond the Beltway
Alan Blinder of the New York Times: "Two months after a police officer's killing of an unarmed black teenager set off weeks of racial conflict in a St. Louis suburb, tense clashes emerged [in St. Louis] late Thursday after the Wednesday shooting death of a black teenager by a white police officer."
Laurel Andrews of the Alaska Dispatch News: "Prosecutors won't proceed with charges in a brawl that involved several members of the Palin family, Anchorage police said Thursday.... Five police officers wrote up police reports on the scene. More than 15 witnesses were interviewed.... Overall, the accounts in the police report seemed to confirm, in broad terms, initial witness reports that surfaced before the police report's release. At least two fights appear to have broken out during the party, according to witness statements: a fight involving Track and Todd Palin, and one involving Bristol Palin. Seven witnesses verified Klingenmeyer's account of being punched in the face repeatedly by Bristol Palin." ...
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Reader Comments (12)
Westby was magnificent, a real breath of fresh air. But, as Marie notes, she's a "white lady" attorney. The scenario would not have ended so well had she been a black male attorney, even one from a top tier law school. There might have been two arrests in that case,
even though the cops were black.
Comedian Lewis Black is the ACLU's ambassador for voting rights. To celebrate the Supreme Court's order blocking the Wisconsin voter ID laws it is fitting to watch the following clip from the Lawrence O'Donnell show:
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/restrict-voting-rights-not-lewis-blacks-watch
here's another idiot, I don't care how much $$he has, he is a moron.
Microsoft CEO Apologizes for Comments on Women
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2014/10/09/us/ap-us-microsoft-ceo-women-need-not-ask-for-raise.html?ref=news
“NEW YORK — Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella apologized Thursday night and said he was wrong for saying that women don't need to ask for a raise and should just trust the system to pay them well.
…He had been asked to give his advice to women who are uncomfortable requesting a raise. His response: "It's not really about asking for the raise, but knowing and having faith that the system will actually give you the right raises as you go along." Not asking for raise, he added, is "good karma" that would help a boss realize that the employee could be trusted and should have more responsibility.
But his comments caused an uproar online, …”
What a guy!
I’d call him names, and swear, but AK does it so much better.
mae finch
Rachel had a funny bit on Larry Pressler last night. Seems when he was in a congressional hearing he exited the wrong door and ended up in a broom closet. Embarrassed, he stayed in the closet for fifteen minutes and when he came out waved toward the door as though he had been talking to someone. Twitters all round as he finally left by the proper door.
Ah, come on Mae––go ahead, swear and call names–––makes you feel a whole lot better, believe me.
I monitored the SC until 7 pm CDT last night for a decision on Wisconsin's voter ID law, with a combination of hope and dread. This morning my email contained the fantastic news that for once the SC displayed some common sense by staying the appellate court's ruling that the state could implement voter ID a few weeks before the election, after voting had begun.
Relief and joy! I hope and plan that Burke supporters will, like me, be redoubling their efforts to GOTV. I have been leaving no votes on the table for the past few weeks--wearing my Mary Burke button and talking to everyone who comments on it, canvassing, calling....
If every Burke voter would talk to two acquaintances who are likely to blow off a midterm election and get them to vote for her, she would blow Walker out of office.
Do you have friends or relatives in Wisconsin? Remind them to vote--and that they don't need ID if they are already registered. They can register at the polls with proof of address. And if they cannot get to the polls on Nov 4, they should plan to vote the week before, because there is no early voting after Friday 10/31.
Re; "That scared me and I'm fearless. "If there is one worst moral casualty of the past decade and a half, it surely lies there: Americans have gone from being the hardest of peoples to panic to among the most easily panicked people on the planet." Adam Gopnik of the New Yorker. Ignorance is what makes you scared. Remember as a kid? Thunder isn't what will kill you, lightening will. Today? So much thunder, so little lightening.
Last night Jon Stewart, in a lengthy piece, completely eviscerated Hank Greenberg and his contemptible lawsuit on behalf of AIG shareholders claiming that the government did not pay enough for the privilege of bailing out the bankrupt company. It was a thing to behold:
http://thedailyshow.cc.com/
P.S. Stewart was so right to stay put at Comedy Central. He could never have made the same impact at Meet the Press. Being a very smart guy, he probably never seriously considered the offer.
One of the best "put downs" I've come across: Jerry Coyne takes apart John Gray's piece on Richard Dawkins. If you read this be sure and link onto "The Monk's Tale."
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119774/john-grays-richard-hawkins-takedown-ignores-appetite-wonder
Next to Paul Krugman's column in the NYT print edition this morning was the following Op-Ed: "Don't Soak the Rich" by Edward Kleinbard
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/10/opinion/dont-soak-the-rich.html
Two things I noticed. First, his solution appears to include a magic asterisk: "The better response to income disparity, then, is not to tax the rich more, but to boost revenue over all so that government can invest more, and offer higher quality social insurance programs." Where will the revenue boost come from? He puts Germany up as a model of a less progressive tax system but doesn't go into details. He also doesn't point out that German workers have significant labor protections that US workers do not have. Sure, if you increase workers' pay to something liveable, yes, you can probably get more tax money out of them.
The second thing I noticed is his sleight-of-hand happy face he puts on CEO pay while saying that lower-income people get a fair share of government investment: "A chief executive who earns 200 times as much as her typical employee does not get 200 times the benefit from our investments in highways."
According the the AFL-CIO, the average CEO of an S&P 500 company made 354 times the pay of the average worker in 2012. In Germany, the average CEO makes 147 times what the average worker makes.
Also, I couldn't find the percentage of S&P 500 CEOs that are female, but 4.6% of Fortune 500 companies are female.
And this thing made it into print.
@NiskyGuy: Thanks for reading what I refused to. Let's just take that one point:
"A chief executive who earns 200 times as much as her typical employee does not get 200 times the benefit from our investments in highways."
Bullshit. A CEO who earns 400 times as much as her average employee gets much more use out of our highways than does the employee. How does that lamebrain Kleinbard think employees get to work? By levitating? I imagine the average working person who cannot or does not avail himself of public transportation puts a lot more miles on his car for work-related activities: going to & from work, picking up the kids at daycare, shopping for work clothing, going out to lunch, etc., than for personal business & pleasure. And guess who's paying for buildings & maintaining those roads that serve the CEO? Oh, the employees, via the gas taxes they pay.
In addition, if that CEO's company makes a product that requires parts manufactured by others, & after production must be distributed, then she is using the highways to bring her the parts & transport her end products. Here, unfortunately for the hapless CEO, she has to pay gas taxes, too. Tough. (She probably gets a huge write-off, which her employees don't get for ordinary travel to & from work.)
Our highways are built for commerce; the interstate highway system was built with the "excuse" of moving the military, but nobody thought then or thinks now that those highways are just sitting there waiting to move military personnel & equipment.
The purpose of taxation isn't to make sure everybody gets back what she pays in, which Kleinbard's example suggests should be the ideal. I don't have any kids in school, yet I pay school taxes. My school taxes are higher than the taxes of the average parent with schoolkids, too. And those damned kids -- the people who actually get the benefit of the schools -- don't pay a penny. Oh, totally unfair. I want my money back. Make the kids work as janitors & stuff, a la Newt Gingrich's brilliant suggestion. If they want an education, those little bastards should pay for it.
The entire principle of taxation is to redistribute wealth, not just from rich to poor but from all of us to where our brilliant legislators at all levels think the money should be used for the highest public benefit: schools or highways or medical research or parks or police or libraries or regulators. Whatever.
That the NYT chose to publish that crap is on a par with the WashPo choosing to publish an opinion piece suggesting Allen West would make an excellent director of the Secret Service. It's all well & good to run op-eds that express contrarian opinions, but those opinions should be based on intellectually coherent principles & factually accurate data. From your description, Kleinbard's piece is not.
Marie
@Marie: Yes to everything you say. I wonder how the writer, a professor of law and business at USC, got his job with reasoning like this. Pointing out that Germany's tax system is more regressive than ours so it will work here too, while ignoring structures that make that possible, is the kind of selective choosing that I can't stand.
"Conservatives" want to take us back to the good old days but won't say which decade was the good old days because they only want the parts that benefited them.
To me, Kleinbard is saying something akin to: "Everyone should live in Houston because I visited there one April and it was very nice."
Victoria,
I am delighted that the court has shot down voter ID (at least for now) in WI and, in fact, hope voter ID never shows its ugly face ever again in any American election. But I've got one bone to pick with the ACLU ad although it is probably just a result of a 'timing issue' and the ad was produced before the law was changed. You're my expert....do you agree that WI did a pretty good job of solving the 'poll tax' problem when applying for a state issued photo ID and the citizen does not have the needed documents? I have read that WI will search other states's databases for birth records, school records and even baptismal records at no charge and accept those results as proof of citizenship.
Ultimately, I fear we will have voter ID, but thought Wisconsin's (court-ordered) policy change was a decent solution to the onerous 'poll tax'.