The Commentariat -- Jan. 19, 2015
Photo, defunct video removed.
You are reminding the nation that it is a crime for people to live in this rich nation and receive starvation wages. -- Martin Luther King, Jr., Memphis, 1968
President Obama on the Martin Luther King, Jr., Day of Service:
... Steve Mufson of the Washington Post: "On this Martin Luther King Jr. Day, nearly 47 years after the assassination of the civil rights leader, the nation and the president are still struggling with issues of race and discrimination, issues Obama has never denied but has long sought to de-emphasize.... Though Obama's views have evolved on issues such as gay marriage and national security during his six years in office, his views on race have remained remarkably consistent, and recent events appear to have affirmed rather than altered those views." ...
Steve Zeitchik of the Los Angeles Times on a house in Selma. The Times labels this piece a "great read." It is.
Peter Holley & Dan Lemothe of the Washington Post: "Multiple gunshots were fired outside Vice President Joe Biden's home in Delaware and a vehicle fled the area Saturday night, Secret Service officials said. The vice president and his family were not at home when the shooting occurred, authorities said." ...
Gregory Wallace of CNN highlights proposals to help the middle class which President Obama will lay out in his State of the Union speech Tuesday. ...
... Matt O'Brien of the Washington Post does the same, calling Obama proposals, "Piketty with an American accent." CW: (That would be "PEEK-ə-tee," not "PICK-ə-tee.") Piketty concentrates on wealth inequality, while most of the President's proposals address income inequality. One of Obama's proposals, to "take away a long-standing feature of the tax code that allows people to pass along appreciated assets to their heirs while limiting any tax bill" does work to reduce wealth inequality. And would take direct aim at the Mittster & his brood. ...
... Vicki Needham of the Hill: "Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and presidential hopeful, said President Barack Obama's plan to raise taxes on the wealthiest taxpayers and the largest financial firms 'moves us in the right direction.' Sanders said that the plan comes 'at a time of obscene levels of income and wealth inequality.'" ...
... Paul Waldman: "Even President Obama's most fervent opponents must acknowledge that he's getting quite good at putting them on the defensive.... He seems to come up with a new idea every couple of weeks to drive [Republicans] up a wall.... They are barely mentioning the proposals for middle-class tax breaks which are supposed to be the whole purpose of this initiative; instead, all their focus is on the increases America's noble job creators would have to endure in order to pay for it."
... John Nichols of the Nation: ".... At a point when there is broadening recognition of the social and economic perils posed by income inequality, the president is talking about taking simple steps in the right direction. Congress is unlikely go along with him, but the American people will... To get a sense of how modest the Obama proposal is, consider this: the capital gains tax rate increase he proposes will only return the rate to what it was when Ronald Reagan was president. So Obama is only undoing the damage done; he is not going anywhere near the robust rates seen under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford." ...
... Paul Krugman: "We're living in a political era in which facts don't matter.... On issues that range from monetary policy to the control of infectious disease, a big chunk of America's body politic holds views that are completely at odds with, and completely unmovable by, actual experience.... These people ... [are] red-faced angry, with special rage directed at know-it-alls who snootily point out that the facts don't support their position.... It strikes me that the immovable position in each of these cases is bound up with rejecting any role for government that serves the public interest." ...
... Lawrence Summers in the Washington Post: Dear Middle Class: The One-Percenters at Davos don't care about you. "If the United States had the same income distribution it had in 1979, the bottom 80 percent of the population would have $1 trillion -- or $11,000 per family -- more. The top 1 percent would have $1 trillion -- or $750,000 -- less. There is little prospect for maintaining international integration and cooperation if it continues to be seen as leading to local disintegration while benefiting a mobile global elite." ...
... This Oxfam report (pdf), which contributor safari cites, provides more data supporting some of Summers' points: "Global wealth is increasingly being concentrated in the hands of a small wealthy elite.These wealthy individuals have generated and sustained their vast riches through their interests and activities in a few important economic sectors, including finance and pharmaceuticals/healthcare. Companies from these sectors spend millions of dollars every year on lobbying to create a policy environment that protects and enhances their interests further. The most prolific lobbying activities in the US are on budget and tax issues; public resources that should be directed to benefit the whole population, rather than reflect the interests of powerful lobbyists." ...
... CW: I keep wondering what Summers' angle is. He's a Wall-Streeter through-&-through, yet now he's speaking up against wealth inequality & dissing Davos. Summers was once a honcho at Bilderberg; maybe this is a big-boys' frat thing. I really don't know. But I'm pretty sure there's something in it for Larry.
Juan Williams of the Hill: "Sen. Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) strategy for defeating Democrats in the final two years of the Obama administration is clear: divide and conquer.... If significant numbers of Senate Democrats are willing to join with Republicans to force presidential vetoes, McConnell wins. He gains the power to paint himself as the good guy working across political lines. And he will smear the remaining Democrats as members of an out-of-the-mainstream party in the grips of leftist ideologues -- Obama, [Harry] Reid, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and possibly Hillary Clinton."
Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "... the Supreme Court on Tuesday will turn its attention to judicial elections. Such contests already sometimes resemble regular political campaigns, awash in money and negative advertising. And judges already routinely hear cases involving lawyers and litigants who have contributed to their campaigns. But 30 of the 39 states with judicial elections have tried to draw the line by forbidding judicial candidates to personally ask for money, saying that such solicitations threaten the integrity of the judiciary and public confidence in the judicial system. Tuesday's case is a First Amendment challenge to the solicitation bans, which have been struck down by four federal appeals courts. But most of the American legal establishment supports them. The American Bar Association and a group representing the chief justices of every state have filed briefs urging the Supreme Court to uphold the bans."
David Savage of the Los Angeles Times: "... after the justices agreed Friday to take up the issue [of gay marriage] again, Kennedy and the other justices must reconcile what they left unresolved two years ago. Is marriage for gays and lesbians a matter of equal rights and individual liberty guaranteed by the Constitution? Or is it a matter left to the states?... If this year's decision on gay marriage turned only on court precedents and legal logic, it would look to be a toss-up." However, the Supremes' agreement to take up the issue after denying states' appeals to the Court last fall suggests it is a decision already-made & waiting for an opinion to justify gay marriage. CW: Read the whole column.
David Sanger & Martin Fackler of the New York Times: "The trail that led American officials to blame North Korea for the destructive cyberattack on Sony Pictures Entertainment in November winds back to 2010, when the National Security Agency scrambled to break into the computer systems of a country considered one of the most impenetrable targets on earth.... The evidence gathered by the 'early warning radar' of software painstakingly hidden to monitor North Korea's activities proved critical in persuading President Obama to accuse the government of Kim Jong-un of ordering the Sony attack, according to the officials and experts...."
Kevin Sieff of the Washington Post: "The U.S. military sent about 3,000 troops to West Africa to build [Ebola treatment] centers ... in recent months.... But as the outbreak fades in Liberia, it has become clear that the disease had already drastically subsided before the first American centers were completed. Several of the U.S.-built units haven't seen a single patient infected with Ebola.... Although future flare-ups of the disease are possible, the near-empty Ebola centers tell the story of an aggressive American military and civilian response that occurred too late to help the bulk of the more than 8,300 Liberians who became infected. Last week, even as international aid organizations built yet more Ebola centers, there was an average of less than one new case reported in Liberia per day." CW: Sounds like good news to me.
Your Friendly Muslim Neighbors May Be Terrorists! Peter Schroeder of the Hill: Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said he was not aware of any specific [terrorist "sleeper cells" in the U.S.], but noted that the recent attacks elsewhere in the Western world make it a safe assumption. Johnson is chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee."
God News, Monday Edition. Kyle Balluck of the Hill: "Pope Francis is planning to address a joint session of Congress and visit the White House during a trip to Washington, D.C. in September, one of the archbishops organizing the pontiff's trip said."
David Carr of the New York Times on "why the Oscars' omission of 'Selma' matters."
Presidential Race 2016
Jake Miller of CBS News: In a new CBS poll asking Republican respondents about possible presidential contenders, only Sarah Palin has worse numbers than Chris Christie.
** Alec MacGillis, in the New Yorker, on Jeb Bush's school-privatization experiment. The kids is not learning much, but Jeb's friends & other opportunists are making fistfuls of dollars.
Caroline Bankoff of New York: "During a Sunday Meet the Press appearance, [Sen. Lindsey] Graham [R-S.C.] said that he has already registered 'testing-the-waters committee" with the IRS. "I don't know where this will go, but I'm definitely going to look at [a run for president],' he explained."
CW: As much as I despise Carly Fiorina, Politico's top headline at the moment -- "Who Wants Carly Fiorina?" -- accompanied by a big ole picture of her looking ever-so sad, is pretty damned sexist.
Jamelle Bouie of Slate on Jim Webb, "the white man's Democrat."
Senate Races 2016
Chris Cillizza & Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "The Senate map is the Democrats' friend in the 2016 cycle. They are defending only 10 seats, while Republicans have two dozen to hold. But wait, it gets better. Seven of those 24 Republican seats are in states that President Obama won not once but twice: Florida, Illinois, Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. To win the majority, Democrats need to win five of those seven seats in November 2016. (If Hillary Clinton, or another Democrat, wins the White House in 2016, then Senate Democrats need to win only four of those seven.)"
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd.
Steve M.: "President Obama has proposed a change in the tax code that would lower taxes for the vast majority of Americans." But Fox "News" is calling it a "tax hike." See Krugman, Paul, linked above.
Brian Stelter of CNN: "Fox News took time out of four broadcasts on Saturday to apologize for four separate instances of incorrect information that portrayed Muslims in a negative light."
CW: Thanks for the responses yesterday re: my WashPo "poll analysis" challenge. I feel so much better. What struck me immediately was Taylor's false assumption that only European Muslims would say they approved of the Islamic State -- that other people could not possibly answer yes. The RT story, dated August 18, 2014, on which Taylor relied does not link to or cite the precise question the pollsters posed. If Western Europeans are half as ignorant as Americans, it wouldn't surprise me to find many people of every ethnic & religious persuasion answering in the affirmative. They might think the Islamic State was something like the Palestinian state (or even have the two confused). In any event, Taylor's assumption that only Muslims would approve of an Islamic state is rather stunningly biased against Muslims.
One can't tell from the RT article whether or not the pollsters provided respondents with any sort of description of ISIS to "help" respondents answer the question. If they did, that description would of course skew the responses in some way. As P. D. Pepe pointed out, the survey was conducted & reported by Russian state organs (something Taylor did not make clear in his post). RT is a well-known propaganda machine. It's ironic that our own right-wing propaganda machine, a/k/a Fox "News," would use as its source Russian media. Other contributors noted other methodological problems, both on the pollsters' part & on Taylor's. All in all, a questionable poll, & a really dumb analysis.
Beyond the Beltway
Jesse McKinley of the New York Times: "Flanked by a collection of liberal groups and labor leaders, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Sunday announced a raft of proposals on social issues, among them a plan that would raise the minimum wage to $11.50 an hour in New York City and $10.50 an hour in the rest of the state. If approved by the State Legislature, the proposal would make New York's minimum wage among the highest in the country. But traditional Republican opposition in the State Senate, where that party holds a majority, makes the passage of such legislation far from assured."
American "Justice," Ctd. Silas Allen & Darla Slipke of the Oklahoman: "The police chief [in Sentinel, Oklahoma,] survived being shot in the chest Thursday while responding to a reported bomb threat, and the man who authorities say shot him was allowed to walk free later in the day.... Agents with the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation said the man who shot the chief was released after hours of questioning when they determined they didn't have enough evidence to arrest him. 'Facts surrounding the case lead agents to believe the man was unaware it was officers who made entry,' OSBI wrote in a news release." ...
... Wait, There's More. David Ferguson of the Raw Story: A "neighbor ... described the gunman to the Oklahoman as a 'survivalist' type who mistrusted the government, was openly unfriendly to neighbors and wore a lot of black clothing. A Facebook profile believed to be [the shooter Dallas] Horton's is rife with racially charged images and jabs at black leaders like Rev. Al Sharpton." Oh, here's something else: Police Chief Louis Ross is black. CW: Well, of course there's not enough evidence.
News Ledes
New York Times: "A federal prosecutor who has accused top officials including the president of protecting Iranian suspects in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center, one of Argentina's worst terrorist attacks, has been found dead at his home, the authorities said on Monday. The prosecutor, Alberto Nisman, had been scheduled to testify on Monday at a congressional inquiry about his accusations. News of his mysterious death immediately provoked shock and outrage from the political opposition and leaders of Argentina's Jewish community, one of Latin America's largest, and appeared to put a skulduggerous shadow over his accusations."