Friday, May 24, 2013
Weekly reminder
As of May 21, at least 4,298 people have been killed by gunfire in the US since Newtown, 36 of them in Massachusetts.
Left Side of the Aisle #109 - Part 8
A solution to poverty: a guaranteed income
Long-term unemployment is the worst ever and getting worse. If you're an older worker who has been unemployed for six months, you might as well give up the idea of finding work. Poverty is rising: 13.2% in 2008, 14.3% in 2009, 15.1% in 2010, over 16% - including nearly 20% of children - in 2012. Ultimately, poverty and hunger seem intractable; we seem incapable of getting the poverty rate below 11%.
Here's an idea to deal with that whose time has come.
Again.
MSNBC host Chris Hayes responded to a question from fellow host Melissa Harris-Perry about how we can combat poverty with a sign that read "Just give people money. It actually is that simple."
And yes, it actually is. The idea goes by various names, guaranteed minimum income, guaranteed annual income, universal basic income, but the "guaranteed income" part is the constant. If the problem is that people don't have enough money, then give them money, enough money to keep them out of poverty.
The fact that at first blush the idea seems impossibly radical or even, well, a little weird is a reflection of how far our political debate has fallen. This is a not a new idea; it was widely discussed in the 1960s. In fact, although this is rarely remembered now, in 1970 Richard Nixon proposed a type of guaranteed income for families with children, that he called the Family Assistance Program. It actually passed the House of Representatives. It was limited in that it only applied to families with children and the benefits were not enough to support a family, providing the equivalent of about $15,200 in cash and benefits in 2013 dollars for a family of four with no other income - but it was guaranteed and it did promise a floor below which no family would ever sink.
The plan died in the Senate when Nixon, attempting to placate the right, kept proposing stricter and stricter work requirements as part of the plan, costing support among liberals - sound familiar?
Even after that failure, the idea did not fade away immediately. In 1972, George McGovern proposed as part of his presidential campaign what he called a "demogrant" but became known as the "McGoverngrant." He proposed giving a grant of cash to each individual, making it a true universal guaranteed income not tied to family status. Unfortunately he presented it as a concept rather than an actual program and was never able to put a budget figure on it, which lead to it being mercilessly mocked.
And so here we are, 40 years later, coming back around to the same ideas: If poverty is the problem, money is the answer.
Now, it's not the complete answer, because what it does is to enable people to enter the marketplace to buy the things they need, to not go cold or hungry. It's building that "floor under everyone's needs" that's I describe as a basic part of my political philosophy. But it's not a complete answer because there are some things that are or at least should be part of what I call The Commons, that area of joint right and mutual obligation that should by all that is just lie outside the reach of The Market (pbui): areas like basic human physical needs, like food, like health care, as well as areas of basic human, if you will, psychic needs, like open spaces and the arts. While a guaranteed income, while a certain amount of money, can improve access to areas such as these, it should not be required for it. There should not be a minimum amount of money you need in order to have access to adequate nutrition and health care, to open spaces and the arts.
I'm going to cut myself off here and get back to the basic idea: Can it work? Can ending poverty really be as simple as giving people money?
Yes, it can. Yes, it is. The arguments against it are of two types, one financial, one, well, I'll get to that.
The financial arguments are "Where will the money come from" and "It will cost too much." For the first argument, there are two sources: One, we just print it. Yes, that can lead to inflation, but that just isn't a problem we have now.
The other place where some of the money can and should come is from the rich, whose share of our national income has been rising pretty much consistently for the past more than 40 years. Our work, our productivity increases, over the past decades have been going mostly into making them richer and it's past time we took some of that back.
As for "it will cost too much," those making that claim seem mostly to just multiply the amount per person times the number of people. Which is a terribly flawed method both because it doesn't account for what monies will not be spent in support programs as a result of a guaranteed basic income and because it doesn't allow for the fact that such a guaranteed income would increase family income across the board, so families' federal income taxes would also increase, meaning that a significant portion of what went out would wind up coming back in.
But still, is there a net cost? Is there a net increase in federal spending? Maybe. I don't know. And I don't care. A program that would end poverty, that would increase bargaining power for workers, that would put an end to state officials determining whether or not a single mother “deserves” help, that would put an end to the drug tests and the other humiliating demands, that by its nature recognizes the value of cooperative, non-labor activities, that is a program with a price surely worth paying.
But that brings up the other objection, one that comes exclusively from the right. It's the harder one to overcome because it's not built either on economic logic or even self-interest, something that has lead some right wingers to embrace the concept of a guaranteed income because it also means smaller government. No, this objection is cultural. It's classism: contempt for the poor.
It's the notion that if you provide poor people with the means to live above poverty, to not be hungry or cold, to not have their children be hungry or cold, they will just lie back and live off other people's work. It was reflected in that long-stale bumper sticker that said "Work harder. People on welfare are depending on you." It was reflected in the statement of my former mother-in-law that people on welfare "are laughing at us." It's the idea that "they" are not like "us." That "they" just "don't want to work." That "they" are lazy, indolent, loafers.
Oh, no, if we were in that position, we wouldn't just sit around. We'd strive for more, for better. We'd work hard to improve ourselves. Not like "them." We're not like "them."
It's bigotry, economic class bigotry, a bigotry that is often founded in racism but extends beyond it.
I admit I don't know how to overcome this, especially given the right wing's failures at reification, at being able to make an emotional connection with those not part of their circle. I guess we just have to keep on keepin' on. The truth is, I don't know what else to do.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States
http://www.remappingdebate.org/article/rise-and-fall-guaranteed-income?page=0,2
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1972/may/04/george-mcgovern-on-taxing-redistributing-income/?pagination=false
http://www.forbes.com/sites/modeledbehavior/2013/05/13/just-give-people-money/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/11/thinking-utopian-how-about-a-universal-basic-income/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/08/08/obama-doesnt-want-to-just-write-welfare-recipients-checks-but-what-if-we-did/
http://www.businessinsider.com/universal-basic-income-2013-5
Long-term unemployment is the worst ever and getting worse. If you're an older worker who has been unemployed for six months, you might as well give up the idea of finding work. Poverty is rising: 13.2% in 2008, 14.3% in 2009, 15.1% in 2010, over 16% - including nearly 20% of children - in 2012. Ultimately, poverty and hunger seem intractable; we seem incapable of getting the poverty rate below 11%.
Here's an idea to deal with that whose time has come.
Again.
MSNBC host Chris Hayes responded to a question from fellow host Melissa Harris-Perry about how we can combat poverty with a sign that read "Just give people money. It actually is that simple."
And yes, it actually is. The idea goes by various names, guaranteed minimum income, guaranteed annual income, universal basic income, but the "guaranteed income" part is the constant. If the problem is that people don't have enough money, then give them money, enough money to keep them out of poverty.
The fact that at first blush the idea seems impossibly radical or even, well, a little weird is a reflection of how far our political debate has fallen. This is a not a new idea; it was widely discussed in the 1960s. In fact, although this is rarely remembered now, in 1970 Richard Nixon proposed a type of guaranteed income for families with children, that he called the Family Assistance Program. It actually passed the House of Representatives. It was limited in that it only applied to families with children and the benefits were not enough to support a family, providing the equivalent of about $15,200 in cash and benefits in 2013 dollars for a family of four with no other income - but it was guaranteed and it did promise a floor below which no family would ever sink.
The plan died in the Senate when Nixon, attempting to placate the right, kept proposing stricter and stricter work requirements as part of the plan, costing support among liberals - sound familiar?Even after that failure, the idea did not fade away immediately. In 1972, George McGovern proposed as part of his presidential campaign what he called a "demogrant" but became known as the "McGoverngrant." He proposed giving a grant of cash to each individual, making it a true universal guaranteed income not tied to family status. Unfortunately he presented it as a concept rather than an actual program and was never able to put a budget figure on it, which lead to it being mercilessly mocked.
And so here we are, 40 years later, coming back around to the same ideas: If poverty is the problem, money is the answer.
Now, it's not the complete answer, because what it does is to enable people to enter the marketplace to buy the things they need, to not go cold or hungry. It's building that "floor under everyone's needs" that's I describe as a basic part of my political philosophy. But it's not a complete answer because there are some things that are or at least should be part of what I call The Commons, that area of joint right and mutual obligation that should by all that is just lie outside the reach of The Market (pbui): areas like basic human physical needs, like food, like health care, as well as areas of basic human, if you will, psychic needs, like open spaces and the arts. While a guaranteed income, while a certain amount of money, can improve access to areas such as these, it should not be required for it. There should not be a minimum amount of money you need in order to have access to adequate nutrition and health care, to open spaces and the arts.
I'm going to cut myself off here and get back to the basic idea: Can it work? Can ending poverty really be as simple as giving people money?
Yes, it can. Yes, it is. The arguments against it are of two types, one financial, one, well, I'll get to that.
The financial arguments are "Where will the money come from" and "It will cost too much." For the first argument, there are two sources: One, we just print it. Yes, that can lead to inflation, but that just isn't a problem we have now.
The other place where some of the money can and should come is from the rich, whose share of our national income has been rising pretty much consistently for the past more than 40 years. Our work, our productivity increases, over the past decades have been going mostly into making them richer and it's past time we took some of that back.As for "it will cost too much," those making that claim seem mostly to just multiply the amount per person times the number of people. Which is a terribly flawed method both because it doesn't account for what monies will not be spent in support programs as a result of a guaranteed basic income and because it doesn't allow for the fact that such a guaranteed income would increase family income across the board, so families' federal income taxes would also increase, meaning that a significant portion of what went out would wind up coming back in.
But still, is there a net cost? Is there a net increase in federal spending? Maybe. I don't know. And I don't care. A program that would end poverty, that would increase bargaining power for workers, that would put an end to state officials determining whether or not a single mother “deserves” help, that would put an end to the drug tests and the other humiliating demands, that by its nature recognizes the value of cooperative, non-labor activities, that is a program with a price surely worth paying.
But that brings up the other objection, one that comes exclusively from the right. It's the harder one to overcome because it's not built either on economic logic or even self-interest, something that has lead some right wingers to embrace the concept of a guaranteed income because it also means smaller government. No, this objection is cultural. It's classism: contempt for the poor.
It's the notion that if you provide poor people with the means to live above poverty, to not be hungry or cold, to not have their children be hungry or cold, they will just lie back and live off other people's work. It was reflected in that long-stale bumper sticker that said "Work harder. People on welfare are depending on you." It was reflected in the statement of my former mother-in-law that people on welfare "are laughing at us." It's the idea that "they" are not like "us." That "they" just "don't want to work." That "they" are lazy, indolent, loafers.
Oh, no, if we were in that position, we wouldn't just sit around. We'd strive for more, for better. We'd work hard to improve ourselves. Not like "them." We're not like "them."
It's bigotry, economic class bigotry, a bigotry that is often founded in racism but extends beyond it.
I admit I don't know how to overcome this, especially given the right wing's failures at reification, at being able to make an emotional connection with those not part of their circle. I guess we just have to keep on keepin' on. The truth is, I don't know what else to do.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States
http://www.remappingdebate.org/article/rise-and-fall-guaranteed-income?page=0,2
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1972/may/04/george-mcgovern-on-taxing-redistributing-income/?pagination=false
http://www.forbes.com/sites/modeledbehavior/2013/05/13/just-give-people-money/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/11/thinking-utopian-how-about-a-universal-basic-income/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/08/08/obama-doesnt-want-to-just-write-welfare-recipients-checks-but-what-if-we-did/
http://www.businessinsider.com/universal-basic-income-2013-5
Left Side of the Aisle #109 - Part 7
Updates: phony IRS "scandal," real snooping on the media scandal
Last week I talked about the phantom "scandal" of the IRS supposedly "targeting" teabagger groups and the real scandal of the White House going after the phone calls of potentially scores of AP reporters. There are updates on both parts.
On the IRS front, contrary to previous reporting and contrary to what I said last week that no group lost its tax-exempt status during this time of closer examination of applications for tax-exempt status, it turns our that there was one group that had its tax-exempt status revoked. It was a liberal group called Emerge America, which works with nine state affiliates that train Democratic women candidates. I doubt that's going to get the right wing outrage machine going.
Meanwhile, on the real scandal front, it's another case of "wait, it can always get worse." The Washington Post has published a story about the Justice Department's monitoring of a Fox News reporter named James Rosen. It was because of yet another whistleblower case, this one that of Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, a State Department contractor, who was charged with violating the 1917 Espionage Act for supposedly leaking some information about North Korea's nuclear program to Rosen.
The DOJ tracked Rosen's comings and goings from the State Department. Agents traced the timing of his calls with a State Department security adviser. They got a search warrant to obtain and read the reporter’s personal emails, which the Department justified by labeling Rosen a "co-conspirator" with Kim because he made an arrangement with Kim about how to get him information. The department also obtained the phone records for at least five different numbers used by Fox News.
It's all part of President Hopey-Changey's obsession with government secrecy. This is getting scary. The only upside is that previous presidents have found themselves in trouble when they went after the press. Hopefully the same will be true here.
Oh, by the way: The Amazing Mr. O has frequently praised the idea of whistleblowing. He even signed the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act. But when the Huffington Post asked several non-profit groups and the White House to name a single whistleblower, a single actual person, Obama had praised, they got zilch.
Sources:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/05/14/irs-tea-party-progressive-groups/2158831/
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-08/irs-denial-of-tax-exemption-to-u-s-political-group-spurs-alarms.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/a-rare-peek-into-a-justice-department-leak-probe/2013/05/19/0bc473de-be5e-11e2-97d4-a479289a31f9_print.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/20/james-rosen-justice-department-co-conspirator-obama_n_3305857.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/21/doj-fox-news-phone-records_n_3315167.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/18/obama-whistleblowers_n_3294417.html
Last week I talked about the phantom "scandal" of the IRS supposedly "targeting" teabagger groups and the real scandal of the White House going after the phone calls of potentially scores of AP reporters. There are updates on both parts.On the IRS front, contrary to previous reporting and contrary to what I said last week that no group lost its tax-exempt status during this time of closer examination of applications for tax-exempt status, it turns our that there was one group that had its tax-exempt status revoked. It was a liberal group called Emerge America, which works with nine state affiliates that train Democratic women candidates. I doubt that's going to get the right wing outrage machine going.
Meanwhile, on the real scandal front, it's another case of "wait, it can always get worse." The Washington Post has published a story about the Justice Department's monitoring of a Fox News reporter named James Rosen. It was because of yet another whistleblower case, this one that of Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, a State Department contractor, who was charged with violating the 1917 Espionage Act for supposedly leaking some information about North Korea's nuclear program to Rosen.
The DOJ tracked Rosen's comings and goings from the State Department. Agents traced the timing of his calls with a State Department security adviser. They got a search warrant to obtain and read the reporter’s personal emails, which the Department justified by labeling Rosen a "co-conspirator" with Kim because he made an arrangement with Kim about how to get him information. The department also obtained the phone records for at least five different numbers used by Fox News.
It's all part of President Hopey-Changey's obsession with government secrecy. This is getting scary. The only upside is that previous presidents have found themselves in trouble when they went after the press. Hopefully the same will be true here.
Oh, by the way: The Amazing Mr. O has frequently praised the idea of whistleblowing. He even signed the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act. But when the Huffington Post asked several non-profit groups and the White House to name a single whistleblower, a single actual person, Obama had praised, they got zilch.
Sources:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/05/14/irs-tea-party-progressive-groups/2158831/
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-08/irs-denial-of-tax-exemption-to-u-s-political-group-spurs-alarms.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/a-rare-peek-into-a-justice-department-leak-probe/2013/05/19/0bc473de-be5e-11e2-97d4-a479289a31f9_print.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/20/james-rosen-justice-department-co-conspirator-obama_n_3305857.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/21/doj-fox-news-phone-records_n_3315167.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/18/obama-whistleblowers_n_3294417.html
Left Side of the Aisle #109 - Part 6
The Oklahoma tornado and global warming
The other thing I wanted to talk about in the wake of the Oklahoma tornado is the connection, if any, to global warming. Certainly, that has come up, as it inevitably will in the wake of any major weather event.
And the fact is, the evidence not only that global warming is real but that the effects are being seen already just keeps growing. For one example, according to a study by the UK's national weather service, known as The Met, which was published in March, human-driven global warming was one of the causes of East Africa's drought in 2011, making global warming one of the causes of a famine that killed tens of thousands.
Here's another: One prediction of the impacts of global warming is the spread of disease and we may already be seeing that here in the US, where there has been an 850% increase in the incidence of "valley fever" since 1998, with California and Arizona the worst hit. Valley fever is a painful, debilitating, and sometimes deadly disease contracted by breathing in fungus-laden spores from dust disturbed by wind or activity. A warming, drier, climate creates more dust more easily spread, carrying a fungus that is sensitive to environmental changes - and thus you have a spreading disease.
So back to Oklahoma and the tornado. Did global warming cause this tornado? No one can say. It's not scientifically possible to ascribe any individual weather event to climate change. That is, you can't say that if human-driven climate change wasn't happening, that such-and-such a storm or whatever would not have happened. You can, however, talk about likelihoods.
Climatologists are already predicting more extreme weather as a result of climate change. One example is hurricanes: The prediction is for fewer but more severe storms over time. The actual science involved is of course complex, but the logic is pretty straightforward: Heat is energy. A warmer climate means more heat and therefore more energy in the atmosphere and the oceans. Hurricanes draw much of their energy from the warm water over which they form, which is why they form in the tropics, where the water is warmest. Warmer air can hold more moisture than cooler air. Add that up and you have more energetic storms that can hold more moisture before releasing it, totaling hurricanes with more wind and more rain.
A similar prediction holds for blizzards and that does appear to be happening: the intensity of blizzards appears to be on the rise.
Tornadoes, however, are a different animal. There's a lot about tornadoes that meteorologists and climatologists still don't understand. But something that is known is that there are two main ingredients for making a tornado. One is an energy-building mix of heat and humidity. That will become more likely in a warming world. The other, however, is lateral wind shear; that's what creates the twisting air currents that are a tornado. And some researchers think that a warming climate is actually less favorable for lateral wind shear, which could actually reduce the number of tornadoes by making it harder for them to form. On the other hand, it could also mean that those tornadoes that do form will be of the most intense sorts.
As one researcher noted, if one factor for tornadoes is more likely and the other is a wild card, it's still more likely than not that the combination of the two will result in more tornadoes - but the bottom line is that it's still too early to tell.
So should we expect more hurricanes as the result of global warming? Yes. Should we expect more blizzards? Yes. Should we expect more droughts? Yes. Should we expect the spread of diseases such as valley fever? Yes.
Should we expect more tornadoes? We don't know yet.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/15/somalia-famine-climate-change_n_2883088.html
http://www.salon.com/2013/05/13/is_climate_change_fueling_an_epidemic_partner/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/21/oklahoma-tornado-climate-change_n_3310413.html?ref=topbar
The other thing I wanted to talk about in the wake of the Oklahoma tornado is the connection, if any, to global warming. Certainly, that has come up, as it inevitably will in the wake of any major weather event.And the fact is, the evidence not only that global warming is real but that the effects are being seen already just keeps growing. For one example, according to a study by the UK's national weather service, known as The Met, which was published in March, human-driven global warming was one of the causes of East Africa's drought in 2011, making global warming one of the causes of a famine that killed tens of thousands.
Here's another: One prediction of the impacts of global warming is the spread of disease and we may already be seeing that here in the US, where there has been an 850% increase in the incidence of "valley fever" since 1998, with California and Arizona the worst hit. Valley fever is a painful, debilitating, and sometimes deadly disease contracted by breathing in fungus-laden spores from dust disturbed by wind or activity. A warming, drier, climate creates more dust more easily spread, carrying a fungus that is sensitive to environmental changes - and thus you have a spreading disease.
So back to Oklahoma and the tornado. Did global warming cause this tornado? No one can say. It's not scientifically possible to ascribe any individual weather event to climate change. That is, you can't say that if human-driven climate change wasn't happening, that such-and-such a storm or whatever would not have happened. You can, however, talk about likelihoods.
Climatologists are already predicting more extreme weather as a result of climate change. One example is hurricanes: The prediction is for fewer but more severe storms over time. The actual science involved is of course complex, but the logic is pretty straightforward: Heat is energy. A warmer climate means more heat and therefore more energy in the atmosphere and the oceans. Hurricanes draw much of their energy from the warm water over which they form, which is why they form in the tropics, where the water is warmest. Warmer air can hold more moisture than cooler air. Add that up and you have more energetic storms that can hold more moisture before releasing it, totaling hurricanes with more wind and more rain.
A similar prediction holds for blizzards and that does appear to be happening: the intensity of blizzards appears to be on the rise.
Tornadoes, however, are a different animal. There's a lot about tornadoes that meteorologists and climatologists still don't understand. But something that is known is that there are two main ingredients for making a tornado. One is an energy-building mix of heat and humidity. That will become more likely in a warming world. The other, however, is lateral wind shear; that's what creates the twisting air currents that are a tornado. And some researchers think that a warming climate is actually less favorable for lateral wind shear, which could actually reduce the number of tornadoes by making it harder for them to form. On the other hand, it could also mean that those tornadoes that do form will be of the most intense sorts.
As one researcher noted, if one factor for tornadoes is more likely and the other is a wild card, it's still more likely than not that the combination of the two will result in more tornadoes - but the bottom line is that it's still too early to tell.
So should we expect more hurricanes as the result of global warming? Yes. Should we expect more blizzards? Yes. Should we expect more droughts? Yes. Should we expect the spread of diseases such as valley fever? Yes.
Should we expect more tornadoes? We don't know yet.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/15/somalia-famine-climate-change_n_2883088.html
http://www.salon.com/2013/05/13/is_climate_change_fueling_an_epidemic_partner/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/21/oklahoma-tornado-climate-change_n_3310413.html?ref=topbar
Left Side of the Aisle #109 - Part 5
The psychological shortcomings of the right wing
You know about the EF4 tornado that struck in Oklahoma on May 20, a massive storm that killed at least two dozen people and leveled a section of the town of Moore, a suburb of Oklahoma City.
There are two things this raises that I wanted to address here.
The first is that this tragedy, as such tragedies often do, brought out the best in some among us. We've heard the stories of the help, the assistance, the donations, the surprise rescues, the grateful reunions with people or pets feared lost.
But such events sometimes also help to bring out or at least shine a light on the worst in some among us. And for an example of that, we need look no further than Oklahoma's joined-at-the-hip right wing bozo boy senators, James Inhofe and Tom Coburn.
These two have repeatedly tried to deny disaster relief aid to others. For example, in 2011 both of them opposed legislation that would have granted necessary funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which administers federal disaster relief. Coburn called the funding "unconscionable."
Last year, they both supported slashing disaster relief to victims of Hurricane Sandy because it included, Coburn claimed, "wasteful spending" such as a provision for "future disaster mitigation activities and studies" - that is, looking to make it less likely such levels of destruction would happen again. That, to Coburn, was "wasteful."
But when it comes to Oklahoma, when it comes to their interests, oh, well, that's totally different. They've been more than willing to ask for and take whatever federal disaster aid they can get. In January of 2007, Coburn wanted speedy disaster relief aid after Oklahoma faced a major ice storm. In 2008, Inhofe got emergency relief from the Department of Housing and Urban Development in response to the impact of some severe weather. Just last month, Obama signed a disaster declaration for the state following severe snowstorms.
In fact, despite ranking just 20th among states in area and 28th in population, Oklahoma ranks third in the number of federal disaster relief declarations, behind just Texas (second biggest, second most populous) and California (third biggest, most populous).
Now they not only want federal disaster relief in the wake of the tornado, they want it paid for by "offsets" from - that is, cuts in - other federal programs. So not only do they want the relief that they would deny to others, they want to pay for their relief by taking funds from other programs, monies that might benefit other people.
Now, of course the people of Oklahoma should get the aid. Of course they should. That's not the issue here. The issue is the selfish parochialism shown by Coburn and Inhofe in asking.
Which raises the thing I really wanted to bring up: We'd usually call this hypocrisy. But is it really hypocrisy or is it a psychological failing? Are right-wingers just psychologically limited, the poor dears?
I think I've mentioned in the past - I'm way too lazy to actually find out for sure - but I think I've mentioned in the past that I believe a real difference between the left and the right, and this goes right to the notion of psychological differences that lead to political and social differences, that lead you to be on the left of the right, a real difference between the left and the right revolves around reification, which is the ability to perceive something abstract as real.
An example I can use to illustrate the idea was found in healthcare debate, when people talked about 50 million or more people lacking any sort of health insurance. By the way, I'm not going to get into the important difference between having health insurance and having access to adequate health care, the latter of which is what's important and where Obamacare still fails for tens of millions, that's for another time.
The point is, for the right wing that figure of 50 million-plus is just that: a figure, a statistic. For the left, it's more than 50 million actual people just one serious illness away from - if they're lucky - bankruptcy. It's not just a number. It's real people feeling real effects. That's reification and it's an ability the right wing seems to lack.
The result is that right wingers can care about, feel sympathy and compassion for, people somehow close to them, people with who they identify directly, the idea of "me and mine." So when people from Delaware to New Jersey to New York to Connecticut get smashed by Hurricane Sandy, it's something "out there," the casualties and property damage just numbers. But when it's Oklahoma, then for Coburn and Inhofe it becomes "hey, wait, that's my state, that's my home, that's my people, those are places I've been, I might have met some of these people." In short, to them it's real, the effects are real, in a way the people and communities left in Sandy's wake would never be.
I think that difference explains a lot of things in disputes between left and right. And if you want to conclude from that that I think that those on the left are on the whole more psychologically evolved than those on the right, you go right ahead.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/21/mary-fallin-oklahoma-tornado_n_3311789.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/21/oklahoma-tornado-aftermath-moore_n_3311361.html
http://www.boston.com/news/weather/2013/05/21/medical-examiner-dead-oklahoma-twister/ZG76wWq1hwWeY0AmgSWmlI/story.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/20/oklahoma-senators-disaster-relief_n_3309234.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_area
You know about the EF4 tornado that struck in Oklahoma on May 20, a massive storm that killed at least two dozen people and leveled a section of the town of Moore, a suburb of Oklahoma City.There are two things this raises that I wanted to address here.
The first is that this tragedy, as such tragedies often do, brought out the best in some among us. We've heard the stories of the help, the assistance, the donations, the surprise rescues, the grateful reunions with people or pets feared lost.
But such events sometimes also help to bring out or at least shine a light on the worst in some among us. And for an example of that, we need look no further than Oklahoma's joined-at-the-hip right wing bozo boy senators, James Inhofe and Tom Coburn.
These two have repeatedly tried to deny disaster relief aid to others. For example, in 2011 both of them opposed legislation that would have granted necessary funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which administers federal disaster relief. Coburn called the funding "unconscionable."
Last year, they both supported slashing disaster relief to victims of Hurricane Sandy because it included, Coburn claimed, "wasteful spending" such as a provision for "future disaster mitigation activities and studies" - that is, looking to make it less likely such levels of destruction would happen again. That, to Coburn, was "wasteful."
But when it comes to Oklahoma, when it comes to their interests, oh, well, that's totally different. They've been more than willing to ask for and take whatever federal disaster aid they can get. In January of 2007, Coburn wanted speedy disaster relief aid after Oklahoma faced a major ice storm. In 2008, Inhofe got emergency relief from the Department of Housing and Urban Development in response to the impact of some severe weather. Just last month, Obama signed a disaster declaration for the state following severe snowstorms.
In fact, despite ranking just 20th among states in area and 28th in population, Oklahoma ranks third in the number of federal disaster relief declarations, behind just Texas (second biggest, second most populous) and California (third biggest, most populous).
Now they not only want federal disaster relief in the wake of the tornado, they want it paid for by "offsets" from - that is, cuts in - other federal programs. So not only do they want the relief that they would deny to others, they want to pay for their relief by taking funds from other programs, monies that might benefit other people.
Now, of course the people of Oklahoma should get the aid. Of course they should. That's not the issue here. The issue is the selfish parochialism shown by Coburn and Inhofe in asking.
Which raises the thing I really wanted to bring up: We'd usually call this hypocrisy. But is it really hypocrisy or is it a psychological failing? Are right-wingers just psychologically limited, the poor dears?I think I've mentioned in the past - I'm way too lazy to actually find out for sure - but I think I've mentioned in the past that I believe a real difference between the left and the right, and this goes right to the notion of psychological differences that lead to political and social differences, that lead you to be on the left of the right, a real difference between the left and the right revolves around reification, which is the ability to perceive something abstract as real.
An example I can use to illustrate the idea was found in healthcare debate, when people talked about 50 million or more people lacking any sort of health insurance. By the way, I'm not going to get into the important difference between having health insurance and having access to adequate health care, the latter of which is what's important and where Obamacare still fails for tens of millions, that's for another time.
The point is, for the right wing that figure of 50 million-plus is just that: a figure, a statistic. For the left, it's more than 50 million actual people just one serious illness away from - if they're lucky - bankruptcy. It's not just a number. It's real people feeling real effects. That's reification and it's an ability the right wing seems to lack.
The result is that right wingers can care about, feel sympathy and compassion for, people somehow close to them, people with who they identify directly, the idea of "me and mine." So when people from Delaware to New Jersey to New York to Connecticut get smashed by Hurricane Sandy, it's something "out there," the casualties and property damage just numbers. But when it's Oklahoma, then for Coburn and Inhofe it becomes "hey, wait, that's my state, that's my home, that's my people, those are places I've been, I might have met some of these people." In short, to them it's real, the effects are real, in a way the people and communities left in Sandy's wake would never be.
I think that difference explains a lot of things in disputes between left and right. And if you want to conclude from that that I think that those on the left are on the whole more psychologically evolved than those on the right, you go right ahead.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/21/mary-fallin-oklahoma-tornado_n_3311789.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/21/oklahoma-tornado-aftermath-moore_n_3311361.html
http://www.boston.com/news/weather/2013/05/21/medical-examiner-dead-oklahoma-twister/ZG76wWq1hwWeY0AmgSWmlI/story.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/20/oklahoma-senators-disaster-relief_n_3309234.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_area
Left Side of the Aisle #109 - Part 4
Outrage of the Week: Teenage girl charged with sex crime for dating another teenage girl
Now for our other regular feature, the Outrage of the Week. This one is also from Florida. It's not exactly late-breaking news, but I just heard about it because the family involved took it public last week.
Kaitlyn Hunt was an 18-year-old high school senior at Sebastian River High School in Sebastian River, Florida. She was highly respected, with good grades and participation in cheerleading, basketball, and chorus. She was even voted the student with “most school spirit.”
That is, until cops showed up at her family's home on February 16, handcuffed her, and arrested her on two felony counts of "lewd and lascivious battery on a child."
Her actual crime? She had a relationship with another girl, a 15-year-old teammate on the school's girls' basketball team. They started dating last fall. And the younger girl's parents just couldn't handle it. So they are, it appears, out to destroy Kaitlyn for "turning their daughter gay."
Kaitlyn's mother wrote in an statement that the other parents "never came to us as parents, never tried to speak to us and tell us they had a problem with the girls dating." Instead, they had her arrested as an accused sex criminal.
Then the other girl's parents tried to have Kaitlyn expelled. Despite the school administration's refusal and a judge's order allowing Kaitlyn to remain in school so long as the girls had no contact, the 15-year-old's parents successfully petitioned the school board to have Kaitlyn kicked out of school some weeks prior to graduation.
And now, the state attorney's office is pressuring Kaitlyn to take a plea deal which includes two years' house arrest and a year of probation, which not only would put her life on hold for a couple of years, it would remain on her adult record as a conviction and so greatly limit her career choices. In other words, the other girl's parents may not succeed in destroying Kaitlyn's life, but they may well succeed in severely damaging it.
Those parents are bigots, the school board that expelled Kaitlyn is made up of buffoons, the state attorney's office is populated with twits, dolts, and jackasses, and the whole thing is an outrage.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/19/kaitlyn-hunt-florida-teen-felony-same-sex_n_3302713.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular
http://www.examiner.com/article/support-of-teen-facing-criminal-charges-for-gay-relationship-crashes-change-org
Now for our other regular feature, the Outrage of the Week. This one is also from Florida. It's not exactly late-breaking news, but I just heard about it because the family involved took it public last week.Kaitlyn Hunt was an 18-year-old high school senior at Sebastian River High School in Sebastian River, Florida. She was highly respected, with good grades and participation in cheerleading, basketball, and chorus. She was even voted the student with “most school spirit.”
That is, until cops showed up at her family's home on February 16, handcuffed her, and arrested her on two felony counts of "lewd and lascivious battery on a child."
Her actual crime? She had a relationship with another girl, a 15-year-old teammate on the school's girls' basketball team. They started dating last fall. And the younger girl's parents just couldn't handle it. So they are, it appears, out to destroy Kaitlyn for "turning their daughter gay."
Kaitlyn's mother wrote in an statement that the other parents "never came to us as parents, never tried to speak to us and tell us they had a problem with the girls dating." Instead, they had her arrested as an accused sex criminal.Then the other girl's parents tried to have Kaitlyn expelled. Despite the school administration's refusal and a judge's order allowing Kaitlyn to remain in school so long as the girls had no contact, the 15-year-old's parents successfully petitioned the school board to have Kaitlyn kicked out of school some weeks prior to graduation.
And now, the state attorney's office is pressuring Kaitlyn to take a plea deal which includes two years' house arrest and a year of probation, which not only would put her life on hold for a couple of years, it would remain on her adult record as a conviction and so greatly limit her career choices. In other words, the other girl's parents may not succeed in destroying Kaitlyn's life, but they may well succeed in severely damaging it.
Those parents are bigots, the school board that expelled Kaitlyn is made up of buffoons, the state attorney's office is populated with twits, dolts, and jackasses, and the whole thing is an outrage.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/19/kaitlyn-hunt-florida-teen-felony-same-sex_n_3302713.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular
http://www.examiner.com/article/support-of-teen-facing-criminal-charges-for-gay-relationship-crashes-change-org
Left Side of the Aisle #109 - Part 3
Clown Award: Florida risks car crashes to raise bucks
The Clown Award, given as always for acts of meritorious stupidity. This week, the big red nose goes to the state of Florida.
WTSP-TV in Tampa Bay, Florida, has uncovered a systematic statewide scam to shorten yellow lights for the specific purpose of collecting more money in traffic tickets for running red lights. In some places, the money from such tickets has more than doubled.
The station's investigating team discovered that back in 2011 the Florida Department of Transportation quietly changed the state's policy on yellow intervals, reducing the minimum to a point below federal recommendations. The rule change was followed by engineers, both from the state and localities, collaborating to shorten the length of yellow lights at key intersections, specifically those with red light cameras.
Red light cameras generated more than $100 million in revenue last year in approximately 70 Florida communities, with over half of the revenue going to the state. The rest is divided among cities, counties, and the camera companies. In 2013, the cameras are on pace to generate $120 million in revenue.
What makes the Clown Award especially appropriate is that this not only crummy, it's stupid because shortening yellow light times makes traffic less safe. A US Department Of Transportation study concluded that "a one-second increase in yellow time results in a 40 percent decrease in severe red-light related crashes" - which also, of course, means shortening yellow times increases red-light related crashes. But apparently that doesn't matter as long as Gov. Voldemort gets his money. Indeed, the term "blood money" seems quite apt here.
Sources:
http://autos.aol.com/article/florida-yellow-lights-tickets-red/
http://www.wtsp.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=316418
http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/intersection/redlight/outreach/marketing/rlr_pps022509/long/
The Clown Award, given as always for acts of meritorious stupidity. This week, the big red nose goes to the state of Florida.WTSP-TV in Tampa Bay, Florida, has uncovered a systematic statewide scam to shorten yellow lights for the specific purpose of collecting more money in traffic tickets for running red lights. In some places, the money from such tickets has more than doubled.
The station's investigating team discovered that back in 2011 the Florida Department of Transportation quietly changed the state's policy on yellow intervals, reducing the minimum to a point below federal recommendations. The rule change was followed by engineers, both from the state and localities, collaborating to shorten the length of yellow lights at key intersections, specifically those with red light cameras.
Red light cameras generated more than $100 million in revenue last year in approximately 70 Florida communities, with over half of the revenue going to the state. The rest is divided among cities, counties, and the camera companies. In 2013, the cameras are on pace to generate $120 million in revenue.What makes the Clown Award especially appropriate is that this not only crummy, it's stupid because shortening yellow light times makes traffic less safe. A US Department Of Transportation study concluded that "a one-second increase in yellow time results in a 40 percent decrease in severe red-light related crashes" - which also, of course, means shortening yellow times increases red-light related crashes. But apparently that doesn't matter as long as Gov. Voldemort gets his money. Indeed, the term "blood money" seems quite apt here.
Sources:
http://autos.aol.com/article/florida-yellow-lights-tickets-red/
http://www.wtsp.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=316418
http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/intersection/redlight/outreach/marketing/rlr_pps022509/long/
Left Side of the Aisle #109 - Part 2
Good news 2: same-sex marriage advances
Bill Clinton, the man who signed the Defense of Marriage Act and has since changed his mind, is let's say trying to make up for lost time. He has urged the Illinois state House of Representatives to pass the same-sex marriage bill already passed by the state Senate three months ago.
The bill has been held up by opposition from conservative groups and some black churches, but supporters are now claiming they have the votes in the House to pass it before the May 31 deadline. Gov. Pat Quinn supports the measure, so passing the House would mean that Illinois shortly would become the 13th state to approve same-sex marriage.
Meanwhile, on the international side, on May 18 French President Francois Hollande signed a law authorizing marriage and adoption by same-sex couples. France is the most populous country to have legal same-sex marriages, and the 14th country worldwide. The first marriages could take place within days.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/21/bill-clinton-gay-marriage_n_3313404.html
http://www.windycitymediagroup.com/lgbt/Advocates-votes-are-there-for-marriage-bill-/42849.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/18/french-president-signs-ga_0_n_3298916.html
Bill Clinton, the man who signed the Defense of Marriage Act and has since changed his mind, is let's say trying to make up for lost time. He has urged the Illinois state House of Representatives to pass the same-sex marriage bill already passed by the state Senate three months ago.The bill has been held up by opposition from conservative groups and some black churches, but supporters are now claiming they have the votes in the House to pass it before the May 31 deadline. Gov. Pat Quinn supports the measure, so passing the House would mean that Illinois shortly would become the 13th state to approve same-sex marriage.
Meanwhile, on the international side, on May 18 French President Francois Hollande signed a law authorizing marriage and adoption by same-sex couples. France is the most populous country to have legal same-sex marriages, and the 14th country worldwide. The first marriages could take place within days.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/21/bill-clinton-gay-marriage_n_3313404.html
http://www.windycitymediagroup.com/lgbt/Advocates-votes-are-there-for-marriage-bill-/42849.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/18/french-president-signs-ga_0_n_3298916.html
Left Side of the Aisle #109 - Part 1
Good news 1: Arizona abortion law blocked
Arizona had passed a law barring abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy absent a medical emergency. On May 21, a panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the law, saying it violated a woman's constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy before the point that a fetus is able to survive outside the womb, generally considered to be the 24th week of the pregnancy.
The state had tried to weasel out of the ruling by claiming this wasn't a law but a medical regulation, but the Court wasn't having it.
Nine other states have enacted similar bans starting at 20 weeks or even earlier. Several of those bans had previously been placed on hold or struck down by other courts.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/21/arizona-abortion-ban_n_3314121.html
Arizona had passed a law barring abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy absent a medical emergency. On May 21, a panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the law, saying it violated a woman's constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy before the point that a fetus is able to survive outside the womb, generally considered to be the 24th week of the pregnancy.
The state had tried to weasel out of the ruling by claiming this wasn't a law but a medical regulation, but the Court wasn't having it.
Nine other states have enacted similar bans starting at 20 weeks or even earlier. Several of those bans had previously been placed on hold or struck down by other courts.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/21/arizona-abortion-ban_n_3314121.html
Left Side of the Aisle #109
Left Side of the Aisle
for the week of May 23-29, 2013
This week:
Good news 1: Arizona abortion law blocked
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/21/arizona-abortion-ban_n_3314121.html
Good news 2: same-sex marriage advances
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/21/bill-clinton-gay-marriage_n_3313404.html
http://www.windycitymediagroup.com/lgbt/Advocates-votes-are-there-for-marriage-bill-/42849.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/18/french-president-signs-ga_0_n_3298916.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular
Clown Award: Florida risks car crashes to raise bucks
http://autos.aol.com/article/florida-yellow-lights-tickets-red/
http://www.wtsp.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=316418
http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/intersection/redlight/outreach/marketing/rlr_pps022509/long/
Outrage of the Week: Teenage girl charged with sex crime for dating another teenage girl
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/19/kaitlyn-hunt-florida-teen-felony-same-sex_n_3302713.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular
http://www.examiner.com/article/support-of-teen-facing-criminal-charges-for-gay-relationship-crashes-change-org
The psychological shortcomings of the right wing
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/21/mary-fallin-oklahoma-tornado_n_3311789.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/21/oklahoma-tornado-aftermath-moore_n_3311361.html
http://www.boston.com/news/weather/2013/05/21/medical-examiner-dead-oklahoma-twister/ZG76wWq1hwWeY0AmgSWmlI/story.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/20/oklahoma-senators-disaster-relief_n_3309234.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_area
The Oklahoma tornado and global warming
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/15/somalia-famine-climate-change_n_2883088.html
http://www.salon.com/2013/05/13/is_climate_change_fueling_an_epidemic_partner/?source=newsletter
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/21/oklahoma-tornado-climate-change_n_3310413.html?ref=topbar
Updates: phony IRS "scandal," real snooping on the media scandal
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/05/14/irs-tea-party-progressive-groups/2158831/
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-08/irs-denial-of-tax-exemption-to-u-s-political-group-spurs-alarms.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/a-rare-peek-into-a-justice-department-leak-probe/2013/05/19/0bc473de-be5e-11e2-97d4-a479289a31f9_print.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/20/james-rosen-justice-department-co-conspirator-obama_n_3305857.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/21/doj-fox-news-phone-records_n_3315167.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/18/obama-whistleblowers_n_3294417.html
A solution to poverty: a guaranteed income
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States
http://www.remappingdebate.org/article/rise-and-fall-guaranteed-income?page=0,2
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1972/may/04/george-mcgovern-on-taxing-redistributing-income/?pagination=false
http://www.forbes.com/sites/modeledbehavior/2013/05/13/just-give-people-money/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/11/thinking-utopian-how-about-a-universal-basic-income/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/08/08/obama-doesnt-want-to-just-write-welfare-recipients-checks-but-what-if-we-did/
http://www.businessinsider.com/universal-basic-income-2013-5
Friday, May 17, 2013
Weekly reminder
As of May 14, at least 4,094 people had been killed in the US by gunfire since Newtown, 32 of them in Massachusetts.
Left Side of the Aisle #108 - Part 6
The real Obama scandal: government secrecy and surveillance
It is finally, it is at last, it is in fact long past time that we stopped believing the boldfaced lie that President Hopey-Changey has any commitment at all to the "transparency" in government that he promised. He came into office promising the most transparent administration ever only to prove himself more committed to government secrecy and domestic spying than anyone who preceded him.
For example, I've talked before about his unprecedented war on whistleblowers, prosecuting more of them under the 1917 Espionage Act than all previous presidents combined. That includes the persecution of Bradley Manning, the American hero who dared to tell the public the truth about Iraq and other parts of US foreign policy. He was held in solitary confinement for month after month - which is considered torture by international standards - in an attempt to break him and make him give false testimony against Julian Assange so that the White House could destroy WikiLeaks. When that failed, he is now in what increasingly looks like a kangaroo military court. The government is building a wall of secrecy around the trial, with secret witnesses testifying in disguise in secret locations, secret "dry runs" of future court proceedings, something even the prosecutors say is unprecedented, and the petty refusal of the government to release transcripts of the public parts of the proceedings, making accurate reporting difficult.
Now, just recently, we have scandal on scandal on scandal, or at least the appearance of them. I have to say, to be fair, and of course I am always scrupulously fair, some of them bother me a lot less than others.
For one, all the frothing about the "scrubbing of the talking points" in the wake of the attack on the consulate in Benghazi really fails to impress me. For one thing, the deaths of US diplomats is hardly unprecedented. Between January of 2002 and September of 2008, 60 US diplomats were killed, including 12 in Karachi in 2002 and 16 in Yemen in 2008, none of which, to my memory, produced the wailing and rending of garments and gnashing of teeth seen in this case. What's more, the memo itself was little more than typical political CYA and the "scrubbing" amounted to the State Department and the CIA each trying to preemptively blame the other for any screw-ups that might emerge later on.
It's clear the administration was, as the term of art goes, "less than forthcoming" about Benghazi and there are questions about the routine level of security available at the consulate, so there are legitimate concerns that can be raised - but this memo ain't one of them.
Another one, frankly, is the business about the IRS supposedly "targeting" teabagger groups. A few days ago, I would have condemned the IRS using political standards as strongly as anyone else, but the fact is, the more I learn about this, the less of an OMIGOD! it becomes.
First, these were not criminal investigations, they were investigations of eligibility for 501(c)3 and 501(c)4 tax-exempt status. Obtaining and maintaining that status requires that the primary focus of the organization is social welfare. Only limited political activity is allowed.
Second, there was no "targeting" of teabagger groups. The idea was that a group with "Tea Party" or "Patriot" in its name should get a closer look because that raised a reasonable possibility that they may well be engaged in political advocacy rather than social welfare and so be ineligible for 501(c)3 or (c)4 status.
Third, "tea party" and "patriot" were not the only triggers for closer examination. CBS News reports that according to Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt organizations, only about 300 of the 3400 applications for 501(c)3 or (c)4 status in 2012 were given extra attention and only a quarter of those involved "tea party" or "patriot."
Finally, if this was an attempt "to punish political enemies," is was a damned inefficient one: Lerner says that 150 of those cases have been closed and while some groups withdrew their application, no group had its tax-exempt status revoked.
In reality, the whole thing was an attempt by the IRS to find a way to deal with the soaring number of applications. The method they chose - or, more accurately, this part of the method they chose - was surely not the best. Scratch that, it was stupid. But to turn it into some conspiracy (directed by who?) to attack political opponents is total nonsense.
A buzzword of fairly recent vintage is "optics," the idea that what something is, is less important than what one side or another can make it appear to be. This is definitely a case of that.
Which brings us to the third scandal of recent weeks, and this is the real one.
The Associated Press was just informed by the Justice Department that it had secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for AP. For the months of April and May of 2012, it got lists of all outgoing calls for both the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, for the general AP office numbers in New York, Washington, DC, and Hartford, Connecticut, and for the main number for the AP in the House of Representatives press gallery. In all, it covered 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists, including general office ones that might be used by any of about 100 reporters and an office-wide shared fax line.
AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt called it a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into how news organizations gather the news that went far beyond anything that could be justified by any specific investigation.
He was hardly alone: The ACLU, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the New York Times' Editorial Page Editor, the Washington Post's Executive Editor, and a number of other journalists all used terms like "unacceptable abuse of power," "a terrible blow against the freedom of the press," "outrageous," and "shocking." Even Democratic stalwart Sen. Pat Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said: "I am very troubled by these allegations and want to hear the government's explanation." Even some GOPpers got in on it: Rep. Darrell Issa and Sen. Rand Paul both criticized the intrusion into the press. Lo, and the word "Nixonian" was heard in the land.
The government wouldn't say why it wanted the records, but the belief is that it was another whistleblower case, this one looking for the source of an AP story from May 7, 2012, which revealed some details of a CIA operation in Yemen that stopped an al-Qaida plot to detonate a bomb on an airplane bound for the US - a story which, by the way, the AP obtained and then held off from publishing at the request of the White House until the day before the administration itself was going to release it. Put more directly, it grew out of this White House's continuing drive to achieve complete control over what the public does and doesn't know about what the administration is doing and when it knows it. I wonder how long it will be before they finally just cut to the chase and propose a Ministry of Truth.
The thing is, the Obama gang can't even be trusted to obey their own rules. The Department of Justice has its own regulations about obtaining the telephone records of journalists, which require that "all reasonable attempts should be made to obtain information from alternative sources" and that "negotiations with the media shall be pursued in all cases in which a subpoena to a member of the news media is contemplated." What's more, a subpoena to the media must be "as narrowly drawn as possible" and "should be directed at relevant information regarding a limited subject matter and should cover a reasonably limited time period." None of that happened.
But that didn't matter to Eric Holder, the man who leaped to launch an investigation into the "inappropriate" behavior of the IRS in thinking that politically-oriented right-wing groups might actually be politically-oriented. In this case, he insisted that he knew everything was on the up and up and did it at the same press conference where he did his Sgt. Schultz impression and claimed that he had recused himself from the investigation and had chosen to "not be fully informed."
They can't even be trusted to obey their own rules. Not when their secrecy fetish is involved. And the other thing is, you have to bear in mind that the flip side of government secrecy is always, always, government knowledge: us knowing less and less about them and them knowing more and more about us.
You want to know how bad it's getting? I'll give you an idea.
In response to a Freedom of Information Act filing, the ACLU just this month obtained documents on FBI and Justice Department policies which show that the feds believe they can read your emails without a warrant - and were advising agents of that over two years after a federal court ruled that the Fourth Amendment requires warrants for all emails because their contents are just as private as our letters or phone calls.
But simply ignoring the courts is just a holding action. According to documents obtained in April by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, or EPIC, the Obama administration has authorized a new government program involving the interception of internet communications, part of which involves promising telcoms that the government will not prosecute them if they violate US wiretapping laws by illegally handing over the information the feds want without the legally-required warrants. That is, rather than even worrying about warrants one way or another, the government will simply "ask" for the information, the companies will hand it over - illegally - and the feds won't prosecute. How much more blatantly corrupt can it be?
And the surveillance authorization here - the legal basis for which is classified, of course - is quite broad, covering all "critical infrastructure sectors" including the military, energy, healthcare, and finance.
If you think I'm being paranoid, just remember that like the bumper sticker says, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. The extent of government intrusion into what we would like to think remains our private - or at least our not overtly-public - lives has become astonishing:
Tim Clemente, a former FBI counterterrorism agent, has twice asserted on CNN in recent weeks that "no digital communication is secure," by which he means not only that the government can actively monitor any of our digital communications, including phone calls, emails, online chats, and all the rest, but that all such communications are automatically recorded and stored and available to the government after the fact.
If that sounds incredible, bear in mind it's not the first indication. Columnist Glenn Greenwald points to some: In 2007, former AT&T engineer Mark Klein revealed that AT&T and other telecoms had built a special network that allowed the National Security Agency, the NSA, full and unlimited access to the phone calls and emails of all of their customers.
In 2008, two NSA employees claimed to have witnessed and even participated in the interception of hundreds of personal, intimate calls from American service members and aid workers and that NSA employees routinely intercepted calls of individuals with no connection to terrorism.
In 2009, government intelligence officials told the New York Times that the NSA had been engaged in what they called significant and systemic “overcollection” of domestic communications of Americans.
In 2010, the Washington Post reported that the NSA was intercepting and storing 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls, and other types of communications every day.
In 2012, NSA official-turned-whistleblower William Binney estimated that the agency has assembled 20 trillion records of phone calls, emails, and other forms of data from Americans, including copies of almost all of the emails sent and received from most people living in the United States. Also in 2012, Sens. Ron Wyden and Mark Udall said Americans would be "stunned" to learn what the administration thought it had the legal power to do under the Patriot Act.
Remember I said earlier about same-sex marriage that on that one, we're winning? Well, I have to say that on this one, we're losing. Badly. And we're running out of time.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/18/bradley-manning-trial-lawsuit_n_3109822.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/09/hawking-israel-manning-transparency-fcc
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57584051/irs-targeted-tea-party-groups-earlier-than-2012/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/05/14/holder-has-ordered-irs-investigation/?wpisrc=al_national
http://crooksandliars.com/nicole-belle/tea-party-complaints-irs-audits-just-
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/govt-obtains-wide-ap-phone-records-probe
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/13/ap-phone-records-government-intrusion-unprecedented_n_3268569.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/14/justice-department-ap-phone-records-whistleblowers
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/13/journalists-ap-government-phone-records_n_3269001.html?ref=topbar
http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/05/14/attorney-general-eric-holders-contemptible-defense-of-the-dojs-seizure-of-ap-phone-records/
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/04/25-7
http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/05/08/aclu-obtains-documents-showing-fbi-doesnt-always-get-warrants-before-reading-emails/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/04/telephone-calls-recorded-fbi-boston
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1305/01/ebo.01.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/07/AR2007110700006.html
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/10/new-nsa-whistleblowers
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/us/16nsa.html?pagewanted=all
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control/print/
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/20/whistleblower_the_nsa_is_lying_us
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/16/us/politics/democratic-senators-warn-about-use-of-patriot-act.html
It is finally, it is at last, it is in fact long past time that we stopped believing the boldfaced lie that President Hopey-Changey has any commitment at all to the "transparency" in government that he promised. He came into office promising the most transparent administration ever only to prove himself more committed to government secrecy and domestic spying than anyone who preceded him.
For example, I've talked before about his unprecedented war on whistleblowers, prosecuting more of them under the 1917 Espionage Act than all previous presidents combined. That includes the persecution of Bradley Manning, the American hero who dared to tell the public the truth about Iraq and other parts of US foreign policy. He was held in solitary confinement for month after month - which is considered torture by international standards - in an attempt to break him and make him give false testimony against Julian Assange so that the White House could destroy WikiLeaks. When that failed, he is now in what increasingly looks like a kangaroo military court. The government is building a wall of secrecy around the trial, with secret witnesses testifying in disguise in secret locations, secret "dry runs" of future court proceedings, something even the prosecutors say is unprecedented, and the petty refusal of the government to release transcripts of the public parts of the proceedings, making accurate reporting difficult.Now, just recently, we have scandal on scandal on scandal, or at least the appearance of them. I have to say, to be fair, and of course I am always scrupulously fair, some of them bother me a lot less than others.
For one, all the frothing about the "scrubbing of the talking points" in the wake of the attack on the consulate in Benghazi really fails to impress me. For one thing, the deaths of US diplomats is hardly unprecedented. Between January of 2002 and September of 2008, 60 US diplomats were killed, including 12 in Karachi in 2002 and 16 in Yemen in 2008, none of which, to my memory, produced the wailing and rending of garments and gnashing of teeth seen in this case. What's more, the memo itself was little more than typical political CYA and the "scrubbing" amounted to the State Department and the CIA each trying to preemptively blame the other for any screw-ups that might emerge later on.It's clear the administration was, as the term of art goes, "less than forthcoming" about Benghazi and there are questions about the routine level of security available at the consulate, so there are legitimate concerns that can be raised - but this memo ain't one of them.
Another one, frankly, is the business about the IRS supposedly "targeting" teabagger groups. A few days ago, I would have condemned the IRS using political standards as strongly as anyone else, but the fact is, the more I learn about this, the less of an OMIGOD! it becomes.
First, these were not criminal investigations, they were investigations of eligibility for 501(c)3 and 501(c)4 tax-exempt status. Obtaining and maintaining that status requires that the primary focus of the organization is social welfare. Only limited political activity is allowed.
Second, there was no "targeting" of teabagger groups. The idea was that a group with "Tea Party" or "Patriot" in its name should get a closer look because that raised a reasonable possibility that they may well be engaged in political advocacy rather than social welfare and so be ineligible for 501(c)3 or (c)4 status.
Third, "tea party" and "patriot" were not the only triggers for closer examination. CBS News reports that according to Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt organizations, only about 300 of the 3400 applications for 501(c)3 or (c)4 status in 2012 were given extra attention and only a quarter of those involved "tea party" or "patriot."
Finally, if this was an attempt "to punish political enemies," is was a damned inefficient one: Lerner says that 150 of those cases have been closed and while some groups withdrew their application, no group had its tax-exempt status revoked.
In reality, the whole thing was an attempt by the IRS to find a way to deal with the soaring number of applications. The method they chose - or, more accurately, this part of the method they chose - was surely not the best. Scratch that, it was stupid. But to turn it into some conspiracy (directed by who?) to attack political opponents is total nonsense.
A buzzword of fairly recent vintage is "optics," the idea that what something is, is less important than what one side or another can make it appear to be. This is definitely a case of that.
Which brings us to the third scandal of recent weeks, and this is the real one.
The Associated Press was just informed by the Justice Department that it had secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for AP. For the months of April and May of 2012, it got lists of all outgoing calls for both the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, for the general AP office numbers in New York, Washington, DC, and Hartford, Connecticut, and for the main number for the AP in the House of Representatives press gallery. In all, it covered 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists, including general office ones that might be used by any of about 100 reporters and an office-wide shared fax line.AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt called it a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into how news organizations gather the news that went far beyond anything that could be justified by any specific investigation.
He was hardly alone: The ACLU, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the New York Times' Editorial Page Editor, the Washington Post's Executive Editor, and a number of other journalists all used terms like "unacceptable abuse of power," "a terrible blow against the freedom of the press," "outrageous," and "shocking." Even Democratic stalwart Sen. Pat Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said: "I am very troubled by these allegations and want to hear the government's explanation." Even some GOPpers got in on it: Rep. Darrell Issa and Sen. Rand Paul both criticized the intrusion into the press. Lo, and the word "Nixonian" was heard in the land.
The government wouldn't say why it wanted the records, but the belief is that it was another whistleblower case, this one looking for the source of an AP story from May 7, 2012, which revealed some details of a CIA operation in Yemen that stopped an al-Qaida plot to detonate a bomb on an airplane bound for the US - a story which, by the way, the AP obtained and then held off from publishing at the request of the White House until the day before the administration itself was going to release it. Put more directly, it grew out of this White House's continuing drive to achieve complete control over what the public does and doesn't know about what the administration is doing and when it knows it. I wonder how long it will be before they finally just cut to the chase and propose a Ministry of Truth.
The thing is, the Obama gang can't even be trusted to obey their own rules. The Department of Justice has its own regulations about obtaining the telephone records of journalists, which require that "all reasonable attempts should be made to obtain information from alternative sources" and that "negotiations with the media shall be pursued in all cases in which a subpoena to a member of the news media is contemplated." What's more, a subpoena to the media must be "as narrowly drawn as possible" and "should be directed at relevant information regarding a limited subject matter and should cover a reasonably limited time period." None of that happened.
But that didn't matter to Eric Holder, the man who leaped to launch an investigation into the "inappropriate" behavior of the IRS in thinking that politically-oriented right-wing groups might actually be politically-oriented. In this case, he insisted that he knew everything was on the up and up and did it at the same press conference where he did his Sgt. Schultz impression and claimed that he had recused himself from the investigation and had chosen to "not be fully informed."
They can't even be trusted to obey their own rules. Not when their secrecy fetish is involved. And the other thing is, you have to bear in mind that the flip side of government secrecy is always, always, government knowledge: us knowing less and less about them and them knowing more and more about us.
You want to know how bad it's getting? I'll give you an idea.
In response to a Freedom of Information Act filing, the ACLU just this month obtained documents on FBI and Justice Department policies which show that the feds believe they can read your emails without a warrant - and were advising agents of that over two years after a federal court ruled that the Fourth Amendment requires warrants for all emails because their contents are just as private as our letters or phone calls.But simply ignoring the courts is just a holding action. According to documents obtained in April by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, or EPIC, the Obama administration has authorized a new government program involving the interception of internet communications, part of which involves promising telcoms that the government will not prosecute them if they violate US wiretapping laws by illegally handing over the information the feds want without the legally-required warrants. That is, rather than even worrying about warrants one way or another, the government will simply "ask" for the information, the companies will hand it over - illegally - and the feds won't prosecute. How much more blatantly corrupt can it be?
And the surveillance authorization here - the legal basis for which is classified, of course - is quite broad, covering all "critical infrastructure sectors" including the military, energy, healthcare, and finance.
If you think I'm being paranoid, just remember that like the bumper sticker says, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. The extent of government intrusion into what we would like to think remains our private - or at least our not overtly-public - lives has become astonishing:
Tim Clemente, a former FBI counterterrorism agent, has twice asserted on CNN in recent weeks that "no digital communication is secure," by which he means not only that the government can actively monitor any of our digital communications, including phone calls, emails, online chats, and all the rest, but that all such communications are automatically recorded and stored and available to the government after the fact.
If that sounds incredible, bear in mind it's not the first indication. Columnist Glenn Greenwald points to some: In 2007, former AT&T engineer Mark Klein revealed that AT&T and other telecoms had built a special network that allowed the National Security Agency, the NSA, full and unlimited access to the phone calls and emails of all of their customers.In 2008, two NSA employees claimed to have witnessed and even participated in the interception of hundreds of personal, intimate calls from American service members and aid workers and that NSA employees routinely intercepted calls of individuals with no connection to terrorism.
In 2009, government intelligence officials told the New York Times that the NSA had been engaged in what they called significant and systemic “overcollection” of domestic communications of Americans.
In 2010, the Washington Post reported that the NSA was intercepting and storing 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls, and other types of communications every day.
In 2012, NSA official-turned-whistleblower William Binney estimated that the agency has assembled 20 trillion records of phone calls, emails, and other forms of data from Americans, including copies of almost all of the emails sent and received from most people living in the United States. Also in 2012, Sens. Ron Wyden and Mark Udall said Americans would be "stunned" to learn what the administration thought it had the legal power to do under the Patriot Act.
Remember I said earlier about same-sex marriage that on that one, we're winning? Well, I have to say that on this one, we're losing. Badly. And we're running out of time.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/18/bradley-manning-trial-lawsuit_n_3109822.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/09/hawking-israel-manning-transparency-fcc
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57584051/irs-targeted-tea-party-groups-earlier-than-2012/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/05/14/holder-has-ordered-irs-investigation/?wpisrc=al_national
http://crooksandliars.com/nicole-belle/tea-party-complaints-irs-audits-just-
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/govt-obtains-wide-ap-phone-records-probe
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/13/ap-phone-records-government-intrusion-unprecedented_n_3268569.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/14/justice-department-ap-phone-records-whistleblowers
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/13/journalists-ap-government-phone-records_n_3269001.html?ref=topbar
http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/05/14/attorney-general-eric-holders-contemptible-defense-of-the-dojs-seizure-of-ap-phone-records/
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/04/25-7
http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/05/08/aclu-obtains-documents-showing-fbi-doesnt-always-get-warrants-before-reading-emails/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/04/telephone-calls-recorded-fbi-boston
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1305/01/ebo.01.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/07/AR2007110700006.html
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/10/new-nsa-whistleblowers
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/us/16nsa.html?pagewanted=all
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control/print/
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/20/whistleblower_the_nsa_is_lying_us
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/16/us/politics/democratic-senators-warn-about-use-of-patriot-act.html
Left Side of the Aisle #108 - Part 5
Outrage of the Week: elevating corporations in new trade deal
From the ridiculous to the outrageous. If you needed any more evidence that there is a need for dramatic, dare I say revolutionary, changes in our social and economic system, this should do it: It's the Outrage of the Week.
On May 13, President Hopey-Changey and British Prime Minister David Cameron pledged to achieve a new, broad trade agreement between the US and the European Union. But since tariffs between the two are already low or nonexistent, what is the point?
The point, my friends, is what are called regulatory issues and who gets to decide what the standards are for everything from environmental protection to food safety to worker protection and back again. And the "who" is just who you might expect.
The Amazing Mr. O and Cameron are pushing for what's called "investor-state resolution" to be included in any new pact. Currently, trade between the US and the EU is governed by the rules of the World Trade Organization, or WTO. Under those rules, if a corporation feels it has been wronged by some aspect of a nation's trade policies, it has to persuade a national government to take its case to the WTO court. Under investor-state resolution, that's not necessary and corporations are given the political power to sue governments directly. If the court - composed of supposed trade experts - finds the government policy in question violates some trade agreement, it can impose financial penalties and other sanctions.
Put more bluntly, investor-state resolution provides corporations a forum in which they can attack and try to roll back whatever nation's food safety rules or environmental laws or banking regulations or whatever are the strongest at a given moment on the grounds that they create "unfair barriers to trade" - and do it before a panel of people whose interest is in trade, not in food safety or the environment or consumer protection or whatever.
This is not the first time the US has done this; similar provisions have been included in bilateral pacts since the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, in 1994. But including it in a trade agreement with the EU is unprecedented and gives the lie to the claimed purpose of investor-state resolution, which is to protect companies from dictators or weak court systems in developing countries. Instead, it reveals the real purpose: to formally place corporations on the same legal level as national governments.
Keep reminding yourself: These people are not on your side. And it is an outrage.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/13/obama-cameron-trade-corporations_n_3269002.html?utm_hp_ref=world&ir=World
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/04/eu-trade-deal_n_2994410.html
From the ridiculous to the outrageous. If you needed any more evidence that there is a need for dramatic, dare I say revolutionary, changes in our social and economic system, this should do it: It's the Outrage of the Week.On May 13, President Hopey-Changey and British Prime Minister David Cameron pledged to achieve a new, broad trade agreement between the US and the European Union. But since tariffs between the two are already low or nonexistent, what is the point?
The point, my friends, is what are called regulatory issues and who gets to decide what the standards are for everything from environmental protection to food safety to worker protection and back again. And the "who" is just who you might expect.
The Amazing Mr. O and Cameron are pushing for what's called "investor-state resolution" to be included in any new pact. Currently, trade between the US and the EU is governed by the rules of the World Trade Organization, or WTO. Under those rules, if a corporation feels it has been wronged by some aspect of a nation's trade policies, it has to persuade a national government to take its case to the WTO court. Under investor-state resolution, that's not necessary and corporations are given the political power to sue governments directly. If the court - composed of supposed trade experts - finds the government policy in question violates some trade agreement, it can impose financial penalties and other sanctions.
Put more bluntly, investor-state resolution provides corporations a forum in which they can attack and try to roll back whatever nation's food safety rules or environmental laws or banking regulations or whatever are the strongest at a given moment on the grounds that they create "unfair barriers to trade" - and do it before a panel of people whose interest is in trade, not in food safety or the environment or consumer protection or whatever.
This is not the first time the US has done this; similar provisions have been included in bilateral pacts since the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, in 1994. But including it in a trade agreement with the EU is unprecedented and gives the lie to the claimed purpose of investor-state resolution, which is to protect companies from dictators or weak court systems in developing countries. Instead, it reveals the real purpose: to formally place corporations on the same legal level as national governments.
Keep reminding yourself: These people are not on your side. And it is an outrage.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/13/obama-cameron-trade-corporations_n_3269002.html?utm_hp_ref=world&ir=World
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/04/eu-trade-deal_n_2994410.html
Left Side of the Aisle #108 - Part 4
Clown Award: US Customs Dept.
Time for our regular feature, the Clown Award, given as always for acts of meritorious stupidity.
The winner of the big red nose this week is that ever-reliable source of bitterly amusing inanity, the DHS, the Department for the Protection of the Fatherland, in this case in the form of Customs agents, part of our front-line troops in the battle to preserve and protect our forever-endangered levels of paranoia.
Hussain Al-Khawahir is a 33-year-old Saudi Arabian man who was arrested at Detroit Metropolitan Airport on May 11. According to reports, agents at Customs became suspicious when it appeared that a couple of pages - pages 33 and 34, to be specific - were missing from his passport. Okay, fair enough. So they searched his luggage.
And then they found it, the item, the thing, the reason for his arrest: He was trying to bring into a US a pressure cooker! And then, they claimed, he "changed his story" about why he had it.
First, the agents claimed, Al-Khawahir said he bought it for his nephew, who attends the University of Toledo in Ohio because he couldn't buy them in the US. Then, later, he said he brought the pressure cooker because the one his nephew purchased was "cheap" and had broken the first time he used it. Omigosh! The blatant contradictions! Caught in a lie! And let's not forget, it was a pressure cooker!
Let's also not forget that he doesn't speak a word of English and was questioned by Customs via an interpreter. So the questions went from English to Arabic and the answers from Arabic to back to English. It is so terribly unreasonable of me to suspect that something might have been literally lost in translation and Al-Khawahir's first statement was actually that his son had been unable to buy a "decent" one in the US or that he can't get one "like this" in the US? Or are we supposed to think, as Customs apparently does, that international terrorists are so stupid that they are trying to smuggle pressure cookers into the US because they actually don't know you can buy them here?
The clownishness of the DHS here is matched by the clownishness of the media: Most every story I saw on this - and I looked at several - wrote as if it really is a crime to bring a pressure cooker into the US and every single one of them just had to mention the Boston Marathon bombing. Because, after all, pressure cooker!
This is insane. I mean it. Really. The day before Al-Khawahir was arrested on I'm still not sure just what charge, a young Saudi Arabian student living in Michigan told a Saudi newspaper that cops issued him with a warning after he was seen outside carrying a pressure cooker full of rice to a friend’s house for dinner.
Apparently, a neighbor saw a "suspicious" man carrying a pressure cooker and called police. Cops came to his house, questioned him about his education in the US, the date of his arrival, and his activities outside the university. They also examined the pressure cooker and then told him "to be careful while handling such items in public." Maybe they should have remembered Richard Reid and Umar Abdulmutallab and warned him to be careful about appearing in public wearing shoes - or underwear.
The Saudi Arabian embassy in Washington, DC, reports that a number of Saudi students in the US had their homes raided in the aftermath of the Boston bombing. Nothing was found.
Meanwhile, Hussain Al-Khawahir remains in prison until a preliminary hearing on May 28.
Clowns. We are governed by clowns.
Sources:
http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2013/05/saudi_who_tried_to_bring_press.html
http://www.metro.us/newyork/news/national/2013/05/10/michigan-cops-warned-saudi-student-not-to-carry-pressure-cooker-around-claim/
http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/saudi-arabia/saudi-with-pressure-cooker-questioned-by-us-police-1.1181604
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Reid_%28shoe_bomber%29
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umar_Farouk_Abdulmutallab
Time for our regular feature, the Clown Award, given as always for acts of meritorious stupidity.The winner of the big red nose this week is that ever-reliable source of bitterly amusing inanity, the DHS, the Department for the Protection of the Fatherland, in this case in the form of Customs agents, part of our front-line troops in the battle to preserve and protect our forever-endangered levels of paranoia.
Hussain Al-Khawahir is a 33-year-old Saudi Arabian man who was arrested at Detroit Metropolitan Airport on May 11. According to reports, agents at Customs became suspicious when it appeared that a couple of pages - pages 33 and 34, to be specific - were missing from his passport. Okay, fair enough. So they searched his luggage.
And then they found it, the item, the thing, the reason for his arrest: He was trying to bring into a US a pressure cooker! And then, they claimed, he "changed his story" about why he had it.
First, the agents claimed, Al-Khawahir said he bought it for his nephew, who attends the University of Toledo in Ohio because he couldn't buy them in the US. Then, later, he said he brought the pressure cooker because the one his nephew purchased was "cheap" and had broken the first time he used it. Omigosh! The blatant contradictions! Caught in a lie! And let's not forget, it was a pressure cooker!
Let's also not forget that he doesn't speak a word of English and was questioned by Customs via an interpreter. So the questions went from English to Arabic and the answers from Arabic to back to English. It is so terribly unreasonable of me to suspect that something might have been literally lost in translation and Al-Khawahir's first statement was actually that his son had been unable to buy a "decent" one in the US or that he can't get one "like this" in the US? Or are we supposed to think, as Customs apparently does, that international terrorists are so stupid that they are trying to smuggle pressure cookers into the US because they actually don't know you can buy them here?
The clownishness of the DHS here is matched by the clownishness of the media: Most every story I saw on this - and I looked at several - wrote as if it really is a crime to bring a pressure cooker into the US and every single one of them just had to mention the Boston Marathon bombing. Because, after all, pressure cooker!
This is insane. I mean it. Really. The day before Al-Khawahir was arrested on I'm still not sure just what charge, a young Saudi Arabian student living in Michigan told a Saudi newspaper that cops issued him with a warning after he was seen outside carrying a pressure cooker full of rice to a friend’s house for dinner.
Apparently, a neighbor saw a "suspicious" man carrying a pressure cooker and called police. Cops came to his house, questioned him about his education in the US, the date of his arrival, and his activities outside the university. They also examined the pressure cooker and then told him "to be careful while handling such items in public." Maybe they should have remembered Richard Reid and Umar Abdulmutallab and warned him to be careful about appearing in public wearing shoes - or underwear.
The Saudi Arabian embassy in Washington, DC, reports that a number of Saudi students in the US had their homes raided in the aftermath of the Boston bombing. Nothing was found.
Meanwhile, Hussain Al-Khawahir remains in prison until a preliminary hearing on May 28.
Clowns. We are governed by clowns.
Sources:
http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2013/05/saudi_who_tried_to_bring_press.html
http://www.metro.us/newyork/news/national/2013/05/10/michigan-cops-warned-saudi-student-not-to-carry-pressure-cooker-around-claim/
http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/saudi-arabia/saudi-with-pressure-cooker-questioned-by-us-police-1.1181604
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Reid_%28shoe_bomber%29
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umar_Farouk_Abdulmutallab
Left Side of the Aisle #108 - Part 3
RIP: Ray Harryhausen, Joyce Brothers
We're going to go from the good news to the bad news. We have two RIPs this week.
The first is to Ray Harryhausen, the master of stop-motion animation, who died last week in London. He was 92.
You may not have heard his name, but you very likely know his work. Often working alone or with a small crew, he created and photographed many of the most memorable fantasy-adventure creatures in movie history: the dinosaur in “The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms,” shown in the picture shortly before it destroyed Palisades Amusement Park (which I note fore the benefit of anyone for who that may ring a bell), the skeleton warriors in “Jason and the Argonauts,” the pterodactyl in “One Million Years B.C.,” the alien beast in "20 Million Miles to Earth," and many more dating all the way back to "Mighty Joe Young." He developed a way, which he called Dynamation, for his models to appear to interact directly with the actors.
George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Peter Jackson - all cite his films as antecedents for their work. I just remember the fun of watching his movies.
RIP, Ray Harryhausen.
Our other RIP this week is for Dr. Joyce Brothers, "the mother of media psychology," who turned a victory on the television game show "The $64,000 Question" into a decades-long career popularizing psychology through radio, TV, and a syndicated newspaper column. She was 85.
I remember encountering Dr. Joyce through the TV when I was quite young. She had a 5-minute show that was tagged onto something or another and she would answer a mailed-in viewer question while sitting stiffly and properly behind a desk, square-shouldered and facing the camera directly. I thought she was a little creepy.
But I grew up and she thawed out and I came to respect what appeared to be her determination to remain open-minded.
And another part of my childhood slips away. RIP, Joyce Brothers.
Sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/08/movies/ray-harryhausen-cinematic-special-effects-innovator-dies-at-92.html
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/united-states/130513/psychologist-dr-joyce-brothers-dies-at-85
We're going to go from the good news to the bad news. We have two RIPs this week.The first is to Ray Harryhausen, the master of stop-motion animation, who died last week in London. He was 92.
You may not have heard his name, but you very likely know his work. Often working alone or with a small crew, he created and photographed many of the most memorable fantasy-adventure creatures in movie history: the dinosaur in “The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms,” shown in the picture shortly before it destroyed Palisades Amusement Park (which I note fore the benefit of anyone for who that may ring a bell), the skeleton warriors in “Jason and the Argonauts,” the pterodactyl in “One Million Years B.C.,” the alien beast in "20 Million Miles to Earth," and many more dating all the way back to "Mighty Joe Young." He developed a way, which he called Dynamation, for his models to appear to interact directly with the actors.George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Peter Jackson - all cite his films as antecedents for their work. I just remember the fun of watching his movies.
RIP, Ray Harryhausen.
Our other RIP this week is for Dr. Joyce Brothers, "the mother of media psychology," who turned a victory on the television game show "The $64,000 Question" into a decades-long career popularizing psychology through radio, TV, and a syndicated newspaper column. She was 85.I remember encountering Dr. Joyce through the TV when I was quite young. She had a 5-minute show that was tagged onto something or another and she would answer a mailed-in viewer question while sitting stiffly and properly behind a desk, square-shouldered and facing the camera directly. I thought she was a little creepy.
But I grew up and she thawed out and I came to respect what appeared to be her determination to remain open-minded.
And another part of my childhood slips away. RIP, Joyce Brothers.
Sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/08/movies/ray-harryhausen-cinematic-special-effects-innovator-dies-at-92.html
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/united-states/130513/psychologist-dr-joyce-brothers-dies-at-85
Left Side of the Aisle #108 - Part 2
Good news: "death with dignity" in VT
And in another bit of good news - probably actually a bit more controversial these days than even same-sex marriage, but which I think is good news - on May 13 the Vermont legislature gave final passage to what is usually called a "death with dignity" bill and sometimes an "assisted suicide" bill. The governor has promised to sign it.
The new law allows doctors to help terminally ill patients die by prescribing lethal doses of medications to patients with no more than six months to live. The rules are rather strict: The patient must specifically request it, of course, in fact they must do so on three separate occasions. They must also get a second medical opinion confirming the prognosis, be offered a psychiatric examination, and wait 17 days to fill the prescription.
Vermont is the fourth state with such a "death with dignity" procedure; a court order in Montana and ballot initiatives in Washington and Oregon had previously legalized the practice in those places.
A big concern of opponents is the idea that people may end their lives unnecessarily, that maybe they would outlive the prognosis or, worse, had been misdiagnosed. But the experience of Washington state helps to allay those fears: Since assisted suicide was legalized there in 2010, only 255 people have received a lethal prescription, some of who chose not to full it. For them, the fact that they had the prescription and could fill it if they so chose gave them enough comfort, enough of a sense of control, so that they never felt to necessity of doing so. So the prospect of this as a lightly or easily-chosen option seem rather far-fetched.
Sources:
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/05/14/2006491/vermont-lawmakers-approve-bill-allowing-doctors-to-help-terminally-ill-patients-die/
And in another bit of good news - probably actually a bit more controversial these days than even same-sex marriage, but which I think is good news - on May 13 the Vermont legislature gave final passage to what is usually called a "death with dignity" bill and sometimes an "assisted suicide" bill. The governor has promised to sign it.
The new law allows doctors to help terminally ill patients die by prescribing lethal doses of medications to patients with no more than six months to live. The rules are rather strict: The patient must specifically request it, of course, in fact they must do so on three separate occasions. They must also get a second medical opinion confirming the prognosis, be offered a psychiatric examination, and wait 17 days to fill the prescription.
Vermont is the fourth state with such a "death with dignity" procedure; a court order in Montana and ballot initiatives in Washington and Oregon had previously legalized the practice in those places.
A big concern of opponents is the idea that people may end their lives unnecessarily, that maybe they would outlive the prognosis or, worse, had been misdiagnosed. But the experience of Washington state helps to allay those fears: Since assisted suicide was legalized there in 2010, only 255 people have received a lethal prescription, some of who chose not to full it. For them, the fact that they had the prescription and could fill it if they so chose gave them enough comfort, enough of a sense of control, so that they never felt to necessity of doing so. So the prospect of this as a lightly or easily-chosen option seem rather far-fetched.
Sources:
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/05/14/2006491/vermont-lawmakers-approve-bill-allowing-doctors-to-help-terminally-ill-patients-die/
Left Side of the Aisle #108 - Part 1
Good news: same-sex marriage in three more states
On May 2, Gov. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island took to the steps of the State House and said "I am proud to say that now, at long last, you are free to marry the person you love." He then signed into law the state's recognition of same-sex marriage. With the addition of Rhode Island, there were 10 states and the District of Columbia where same-sex couples can get married.
Five days later, on May 7, Delaware became the 11th state to legalize same-sex marriage. Gov. Jack Markell signed the legislation into law immediately after its passage by the legislature, telling the assembled crowd, “I do not intend to make any of you wait one minute longer.”
And exactly a week after that, on May 14, Gov. Mark Dayton of Minnesota signed a measure passed the day before by the state legislature, making Minnesota the 12th state - and the third in less than two weeks - to recognize same-sex marriage. It was also the first state in Midwest to do so by legislative vote.
In response to the victory, the mayor of St. Paul ordered a downtown bridge decorated with rainbow-striped gay pride flags and temporarily renamed it the "Freedom to Marry Bridge." He also proclaimed "Freedom to Marry Week."
Meanwhile, Minnesota's most famous opponent of same-sex marriage, Rep. Michele Bonkersmann, ambassador to Earth from the Ori, claimed the vote "denies religious liberty to people who believe in traditional marriage." Which only goes to prove that for people like her, "religious liberty" means the ability to force everyone else to believe the way you do.
Believe this people, this is one - and it may be the only one - but on this one, we are winning.
Oh, a footnote to the Minnesota vote: Brian Brown, president of the anti-gay hate group the National Organization for Marriage was left spluttering that you'd better get an anti-same-sex marriage provision into your state constitution because if you don't, "the powerful and wealthy gay marriage lobby will target your state for their next campaign."
Remarking on the "wealthy gays" is a rather odd comment, coming as it does from a man who is paid $508,000 a year in salary and benefits for his politicking. Then again, recognizing how odd it is would require a certain level of self-reflection, so there's little chance of that.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/02/rhode-island-gay-marriage-approved_n_3203618.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/07/delaware-gay-marriage-law-_n_3232771.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/13/minnesota-senate-gay-marriage_n_3266722.html
http://pamshouseblend.firedoglake.com/2013/05/11/noms-brian-brown-gets-500000-paycheck-complains-about-wealthy-gays/
On May 2, Gov. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island took to the steps of the State House and said "I am proud to say that now, at long last, you are free to marry the person you love." He then signed into law the state's recognition of same-sex marriage. With the addition of Rhode Island, there were 10 states and the District of Columbia where same-sex couples can get married.Five days later, on May 7, Delaware became the 11th state to legalize same-sex marriage. Gov. Jack Markell signed the legislation into law immediately after its passage by the legislature, telling the assembled crowd, “I do not intend to make any of you wait one minute longer.”
And exactly a week after that, on May 14, Gov. Mark Dayton of Minnesota signed a measure passed the day before by the state legislature, making Minnesota the 12th state - and the third in less than two weeks - to recognize same-sex marriage. It was also the first state in Midwest to do so by legislative vote.
In response to the victory, the mayor of St. Paul ordered a downtown bridge decorated with rainbow-striped gay pride flags and temporarily renamed it the "Freedom to Marry Bridge." He also proclaimed "Freedom to Marry Week."
Meanwhile, Minnesota's most famous opponent of same-sex marriage, Rep. Michele Bonkersmann, ambassador to Earth from the Ori, claimed the vote "denies religious liberty to people who believe in traditional marriage." Which only goes to prove that for people like her, "religious liberty" means the ability to force everyone else to believe the way you do.
Believe this people, this is one - and it may be the only one - but on this one, we are winning.
Oh, a footnote to the Minnesota vote: Brian Brown, president of the anti-gay hate group the National Organization for Marriage was left spluttering that you'd better get an anti-same-sex marriage provision into your state constitution because if you don't, "the powerful and wealthy gay marriage lobby will target your state for their next campaign."
Remarking on the "wealthy gays" is a rather odd comment, coming as it does from a man who is paid $508,000 a year in salary and benefits for his politicking. Then again, recognizing how odd it is would require a certain level of self-reflection, so there's little chance of that.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/02/rhode-island-gay-marriage-approved_n_3203618.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/07/delaware-gay-marriage-law-_n_3232771.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/13/minnesota-senate-gay-marriage_n_3266722.html
http://pamshouseblend.firedoglake.com/2013/05/11/noms-brian-brown-gets-500000-paycheck-complains-about-wealthy-gays/
Left Side of the Aisle #108
Left Side of the Aisle
for the week of May 16-22, 2013
This week:
Good news: same-sex marriage in three more states
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/02/rhode-island-gay-marriage-approved_n_3203618.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/07/delaware-gay-marriage-law-_n_3232771.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/13/minnesota-senate-gay-marriage_n_3266722.html
http://pamshouseblend.firedoglake.com/2013/05/11/noms-brian-brown-gets-500000-paycheck-complains-about-wealthy-gays/
Good news: "death with dignity" in VT
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/05/14/2006491/vermont-lawmakers-approve-bill-allowing-doctors-to-help-terminally-ill-patients-die/
RIP: Ray Harryhausen, Joyce Brothers
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/08/movies/ray-harryhausen-cinematic-special-effects-innovator-dies-at-92.html
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/united-states/130513/psychologist-dr-joyce-brothers-dies-at-85
Clown Award: US Customs Dept.
http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2013/05/saudi_who_tried_to_bring_press.html
http://www.metro.us/newyork/news/national/2013/05/10/michigan-cops-warned-saudi-student-not-to-carry-pressure-cooker-around-claim/
http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/saudi-arabia/saudi-with-pressure-cooker-questioned-by-us-police-1.1181604
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Reid_%28shoe_bomber%29
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umar_Farouk_Abdulmutallab
Outrage of the Week: elevating corporations in new trade deal
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/13/obama-cameron-trade-corporations_n_3269002.html?utm_hp_ref=world&ir=World
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/04/eu-trade-deal_n_2994410.html
The real Obama scandal: government secrecy and surveillance
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/18/bradley-manning-trial-lawsuit_n_3109822.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/09/hawking-israel-manning-transparency-fcc
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57584051/irs-targeted-tea-party-groups-earlier-than-2012/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/05/14/holder-has-ordered-irs-investigation/?wpisrc=al_national
http://crooksandliars.com/nicole-belle/tea-party-complaints-irs-audits-just-
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/govt-obtains-wide-ap-phone-records-probe
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/13/ap-phone-records-government-intrusion-unprecedented_n_3268569.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/14/justice-department-ap-phone-records-whistleblowers
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/13/journalists-ap-government-phone-records_n_3269001.html?ref=topbar
http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/05/14/attorney-general-eric-holders-contemptible-defense-of-the-dojs-seizure-of-ap-phone-records/
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/04/25-7
http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/05/08/aclu-obtains-documents-showing-fbi-doesnt-always-get-warrants-before-reading-emails/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/04/telephone-calls-recorded-fbi-boston
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1305/01/ebo.01.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/07/AR2007110700006.html
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/10/new-nsa-whistleblowers
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/us/16nsa.html?pagewanted=all
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control/print/
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/20/whistleblower_the_nsa_is_lying_us
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/16/us/politics/democratic-senators-warn-about-use-of-patriot-act.html
Thursday, May 09, 2013
Left Side of the Aisle #107 - Part 6
Outrage of the Week: death penalty proposed in Massachusetts
I'm going to start with some good news: On May 2, Maryland became the sixth state in six years to abolish the death penalty. The other five were Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico, and New York. Eighteen states and the District of Columbia now ban the death penalty and, according to Ben Jealous of the NAACP, repeal advocates are within striking distance of a ban in four more states: Delaware, Colorado, New Hampshire, and Kansas.
Even in the states that retain the death penalty, many are using it sparingly. Last year, 77 people were sentenced to death in the entire country; that's the second-lowest number since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976. State governments are gradually coming to realize that the death penalty is too expensive, too likely to be biased, and the risk of executing an innocent person - considering that since 1989, 18 people on death row have been positively exonerated by DNA evidence - is just too great.
Unhappily, one state is insisting on going the other way. Florida is considering ways to speed up executions, to make it easier to kill people by limiting appeals and shortening time frames. It's already unusually easy to convict someone of a capital crime in Florida, and now the state wants to make sure that the convicted get as few chances as possible to change anyone's mind.
But the outrage I wanted to address here is not in Florida or in Texas, which remains the death penalty capital of America. No, it's here at home.
There is a bill in the Massachusetts state House of Representatives, with a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee set for July 9, to reinstate the death penalty in Massachusetts.
Why?
Now, I freely admit that this bill has little chance of passing: An attempt to attach it as an amendment to a spending bill got rejected by 119-38 in favor of a substitute calling for a study of the issue, which is a standard means in the state legislature of effectively tabling a bill. But that doesn't change the fact that it's being pushed and doesn't answer the question why?
This was not even an emotional response to the Boston Marathon bombings; the bill's chief sponsor, James Miceli, introduced it a couple of days before that attack. And the main argument for it was that it would be a “gold standard” for capital punishment cases since it aimed to provide safeguards against wrongful convictions, including using verifiable scientific evidence such as DNA testing, and was limited to certain specific cases.
But that only raises yet again, the question of why? If your death penalty bill is so narrowly and carefully tailored that in practice it would hardly ever be applied, what is the point?
Has there been some big surge in murders in Massachusetts? Hardly; in fact the murder rate in Massachusetts has been consistently below the national average and is little changed from 15 years ago. So again, why? What is the point?
The point, to answer my own question, is to have a death penalty. Any death penalty. Even if it's one that might be applied once in 50 years. It doesn't matter. They don't care. Just have a death penalty. Miceli himself said he would favor a broader capital punishment bill but pushed this one because he thinks it has a better chance of passing.
They just want to see blood. They want to have dreams of flesh sizzling in an electric chair, the gagging and choking of the gas chamber, the jerking and twitching of the lethal drug cocktail. They just want to have officially-sanctioned death.
They want to bring back this symbol of savagery, this badge of barbarism, to a state that got rid of it nearly thirty years ago. The good news is that it is very unlikely they will succeed. The outrage is that they are even trying.
Sources:
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-03-15/local/37737059_1_death-penalty-capital-punishment-repeal-bill
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-05-02/local/38969834_1_penalty-capital-punishment-new-law
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/05/06/florida-tries-to-speed-up-executions-as-maryland-other-states-repeal-death/
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/04/florida-passes-law-speed-executions
http://www.boston.com/politicalintelligence/2013/04/23/lawmakers-citing-marathon-bombings-propose-restoring-death-penalty-massachusetts/HCroqiN6xqRHwxl289zQmO/story.html
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/regionals/north/2013/05/04/area-lawmakers-remain-divided-over-restoring-death-penalty-massachusetts/RfBVecgQaDpUZfd66EaXPP/story.html
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/murder-rates-nationally-and-state
I'm going to start with some good news: On May 2, Maryland became the sixth state in six years to abolish the death penalty. The other five were Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico, and New York. Eighteen states and the District of Columbia now ban the death penalty and, according to Ben Jealous of the NAACP, repeal advocates are within striking distance of a ban in four more states: Delaware, Colorado, New Hampshire, and Kansas.Even in the states that retain the death penalty, many are using it sparingly. Last year, 77 people were sentenced to death in the entire country; that's the second-lowest number since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976. State governments are gradually coming to realize that the death penalty is too expensive, too likely to be biased, and the risk of executing an innocent person - considering that since 1989, 18 people on death row have been positively exonerated by DNA evidence - is just too great.
Unhappily, one state is insisting on going the other way. Florida is considering ways to speed up executions, to make it easier to kill people by limiting appeals and shortening time frames. It's already unusually easy to convict someone of a capital crime in Florida, and now the state wants to make sure that the convicted get as few chances as possible to change anyone's mind.
But the outrage I wanted to address here is not in Florida or in Texas, which remains the death penalty capital of America. No, it's here at home.
There is a bill in the Massachusetts state House of Representatives, with a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee set for July 9, to reinstate the death penalty in Massachusetts.
Why?
Now, I freely admit that this bill has little chance of passing: An attempt to attach it as an amendment to a spending bill got rejected by 119-38 in favor of a substitute calling for a study of the issue, which is a standard means in the state legislature of effectively tabling a bill. But that doesn't change the fact that it's being pushed and doesn't answer the question why?This was not even an emotional response to the Boston Marathon bombings; the bill's chief sponsor, James Miceli, introduced it a couple of days before that attack. And the main argument for it was that it would be a “gold standard” for capital punishment cases since it aimed to provide safeguards against wrongful convictions, including using verifiable scientific evidence such as DNA testing, and was limited to certain specific cases.
But that only raises yet again, the question of why? If your death penalty bill is so narrowly and carefully tailored that in practice it would hardly ever be applied, what is the point?
Has there been some big surge in murders in Massachusetts? Hardly; in fact the murder rate in Massachusetts has been consistently below the national average and is little changed from 15 years ago. So again, why? What is the point?
The point, to answer my own question, is to have a death penalty. Any death penalty. Even if it's one that might be applied once in 50 years. It doesn't matter. They don't care. Just have a death penalty. Miceli himself said he would favor a broader capital punishment bill but pushed this one because he thinks it has a better chance of passing.
They just want to see blood. They want to have dreams of flesh sizzling in an electric chair, the gagging and choking of the gas chamber, the jerking and twitching of the lethal drug cocktail. They just want to have officially-sanctioned death.
They want to bring back this symbol of savagery, this badge of barbarism, to a state that got rid of it nearly thirty years ago. The good news is that it is very unlikely they will succeed. The outrage is that they are even trying.
Sources:
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-03-15/local/37737059_1_death-penalty-capital-punishment-repeal-bill
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-05-02/local/38969834_1_penalty-capital-punishment-new-law
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/05/06/florida-tries-to-speed-up-executions-as-maryland-other-states-repeal-death/
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/04/florida-passes-law-speed-executions
http://www.boston.com/politicalintelligence/2013/04/23/lawmakers-citing-marathon-bombings-propose-restoring-death-penalty-massachusetts/HCroqiN6xqRHwxl289zQmO/story.html
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/regionals/north/2013/05/04/area-lawmakers-remain-divided-over-restoring-death-penalty-massachusetts/RfBVecgQaDpUZfd66EaXPP/story.html
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/murder-rates-nationally-and-state
Left Side of the Aisle #107 - Part 4
Clown Award: Penny Nance of CWA
Now for the Clown Award, given as always for acts of meritorious stupidity.
This week, winner of big red nose is Penny Nance, the CEO of Concerned Women for America.
Speaking on - where else - Fox News last week, she attacked Anthony Foxx, who is the mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina and Obama's pick to head the Department of Transportation. Why? Well, he issued a proclamation making May 2 a “National Day of Prayer” in line with a Congressional resolution.
Wait - that can't be it. No, his crime was that he also issued a proclamation making May 2 a “Day of Reason,” supporting a movement that advocates Jefferson's "wall of separation" between church and state. And reason is the one thing Nance and the rest of her clown car compatriots can't tolerate.
After claiming that "the Doctrine of Original Sin" has "3,000 years of empirical evidence to back it up," she went on to say that "the Age of Enlightenment and Reason gave way to moral relativism. And moral relativism is what led us all the way down the dark path to the Holocaust."
You heard it right: According to Penny Nance, enlightenment and reason head a "dark path" that leads to the Holocaust.
I wonder if she thinks that the cameras and microphones picking up her words in that TV studio were prayed into existence. She is such a clown, perhaps she does.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/02/fox-news-penny-nance-holocaust-reason_n_3202343.html?ir=Politics&ref=topbar
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/05/01/4015442/foxx-proclaims-day-of-reason-day.html
Now for the Clown Award, given as always for acts of meritorious stupidity.This week, winner of big red nose is Penny Nance, the CEO of Concerned Women for America.
Speaking on - where else - Fox News last week, she attacked Anthony Foxx, who is the mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina and Obama's pick to head the Department of Transportation. Why? Well, he issued a proclamation making May 2 a “National Day of Prayer” in line with a Congressional resolution.
Wait - that can't be it. No, his crime was that he also issued a proclamation making May 2 a “Day of Reason,” supporting a movement that advocates Jefferson's "wall of separation" between church and state. And reason is the one thing Nance and the rest of her clown car compatriots can't tolerate.
After claiming that "the Doctrine of Original Sin" has "3,000 years of empirical evidence to back it up," she went on to say that "the Age of Enlightenment and Reason gave way to moral relativism. And moral relativism is what led us all the way down the dark path to the Holocaust."
You heard it right: According to Penny Nance, enlightenment and reason head a "dark path" that leads to the Holocaust.
I wonder if she thinks that the cameras and microphones picking up her words in that TV studio were prayed into existence. She is such a clown, perhaps she does.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/02/fox-news-penny-nance-holocaust-reason_n_3202343.html?ir=Politics&ref=topbar
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/05/01/4015442/foxx-proclaims-day-of-reason-day.html
Left Side of the Aisle #107 - Part 3
An introduction to a "steady-state economy"
There's an odd thing about that suit against the EPA's authority to regulated greenhouse gases; odd, that is, if you have a functioning grasp of logic and a basic sense of morality. It's that the drive by those industries to prevent regulation of greenhouse gases may appear to make selfish sense in the short run, it is of course profoundly stupid and destructive in the long run. Now it's possible that the folks involved are thinking that their wealth will protect them from the effects of climate change and by the time it really starts to bite, well, they'll be dead so what do they care.
But going on the assumption that while they might not care about what sort of future most of us will face they might still care about the future their own children and grandchildren will face, a perhaps more likely notion is found in the comment - I don't remember the originator - the comment that "It's hard to make someone see the truth when their livelihood depends on them not seeing it."
Last week I mentioned the criticism of Matt Yglesias over his comments about the factory collapse in Bangladesh - the death total is over 500 now, by the way - but I said that what his comments really showed was the grip the concept of "The Market" had on his thinking. That kind of thinking, one that has as its root the idea that "The Market" is the source of all economic wisdom, is the same thinking that these captains of industry are expressing in the suit against the EPA. In that case, it works to their selfish advantage, obviously, but - here's an important point - that doesn't mean they don't believe it. It doesn't mean that they don't actually believe that "letting 'The Market' work" without hindrances like government regulation is the best way to go.
And it's not just them, the commitment to the idea of "The Market" pervades our society, it surrounds us, it's part of our shared social experience, it's an assumption that we all have absorbed to some degree or another. It is a basic part of our culture, and the real distinction across most of our entire political spectrum is whether or not there needs to be some regulation of "The Market" to smooth its rough edges and if so, how much. The idea of "The Market" is sacrosanct.
And it is true that it has produced for us here in the US abundance for - in comparison to what's been seen in societies over the long run of history - a large portion of the population.
But right there is where it starts to get sticky. For one thing, that abundance has been based to a significant degree on economic domination and exploitation of other nations, other cultures, other peoples. In less polite times we used more direct but more emotionally-charged terms like colonialism and imperialism. But even if you feel those terms are overdrawn, the indisputable fact remains that our abundance has been to a fair degree built on others' lack of abundance.
Related to that is the fact that while "The Market" has produced opulence for some of us and abundance for many, it has not provided sufficiency for all. Let me expand on that to make it clear: "The Market" has produced sufficient for all - there is more than enough to go around - but it has not provided sufficiency for all; there always have been, are, and will be those left behind and out despite their best efforts. And that will remain true despite our best efforts to change it so long as we continue to let the idea of "The Market" determine the limits of our concepts.
Because "The Market" can't provide sufficiency for all. By its very nature it can't. "The Market" by its nature requires that a few have a lot, others can have some, and still others must little or nothing. It can't function any other way.
Which means that of necessity "The Market" runs smack into a moral wall. And now, it's coming up against physical walls: Our economic system depends on growth, on there always being more stuff, on people buying more stuff and wanting still more stuff. But that means using up resources, it means depletion of food stocks, degrading the environment, it means global warming. And the bigger it gets, the more it grows, the faster those problems grow and the faster those ultimate physical limits approach. The bottom line, which is a particularly appropriate expression in this context, is that "The Market" not only requires large and growing inequality, it simply is not sustainable in long term.
So I want to raise an alternative, an alternative that's often called a "no-growth economy," but which I prefer to call a "steady-state economy." It's an economy where growth, where improvement, is reflected in things which the Gross Domestic Product does not measure. I intend to get into the shortcomings of the GDP as a measure of our condition next week, but for now I'll just say that the problem is the the GDP measures economic activity - all economic activity, whether it improves our lives or not. If a corporation produces and dumps toxic wastes, that adds to the GDP. The money we have to spend to clean up their waste adds to the GDP. If you get sick from exposure to that waste and have to go to the hospital, that adds to the GDP. It's all the same to the GDP.
A steady-state economy would measure things differently. I'm going to give you a simple, even a grossly oversimplified, example just to give an idea. Suppose you have a job working five days a week, a full-time job that provides for you and your family. Congratulations, I'm happy for you. But you're offered a raise which you can take one of two ways: You can continue to work five days and get paid more, or you can have your same income and benefits but only work four days.
The first way increases the GDP: You can get more stuff, more money is flowing through the economy. Your gain is in stuff. The second way you can't get more stuff - but you get more time to do whatever it is you want to do apart from work. Your gain is in time - which is not reflected in the GDP.
Again, that's a very oversimplified example, but it's just to make the point that there are ways to measure gains that do not involve getting more stuff. And to say that it's possible to build an economy that is sustainable into the future by bearing that fact in mind.
There's an odd thing about that suit against the EPA's authority to regulated greenhouse gases; odd, that is, if you have a functioning grasp of logic and a basic sense of morality. It's that the drive by those industries to prevent regulation of greenhouse gases may appear to make selfish sense in the short run, it is of course profoundly stupid and destructive in the long run. Now it's possible that the folks involved are thinking that their wealth will protect them from the effects of climate change and by the time it really starts to bite, well, they'll be dead so what do they care.But going on the assumption that while they might not care about what sort of future most of us will face they might still care about the future their own children and grandchildren will face, a perhaps more likely notion is found in the comment - I don't remember the originator - the comment that "It's hard to make someone see the truth when their livelihood depends on them not seeing it."
Last week I mentioned the criticism of Matt Yglesias over his comments about the factory collapse in Bangladesh - the death total is over 500 now, by the way - but I said that what his comments really showed was the grip the concept of "The Market" had on his thinking. That kind of thinking, one that has as its root the idea that "The Market" is the source of all economic wisdom, is the same thinking that these captains of industry are expressing in the suit against the EPA. In that case, it works to their selfish advantage, obviously, but - here's an important point - that doesn't mean they don't believe it. It doesn't mean that they don't actually believe that "letting 'The Market' work" without hindrances like government regulation is the best way to go.
And it's not just them, the commitment to the idea of "The Market" pervades our society, it surrounds us, it's part of our shared social experience, it's an assumption that we all have absorbed to some degree or another. It is a basic part of our culture, and the real distinction across most of our entire political spectrum is whether or not there needs to be some regulation of "The Market" to smooth its rough edges and if so, how much. The idea of "The Market" is sacrosanct.
And it is true that it has produced for us here in the US abundance for - in comparison to what's been seen in societies over the long run of history - a large portion of the population.
But right there is where it starts to get sticky. For one thing, that abundance has been based to a significant degree on economic domination and exploitation of other nations, other cultures, other peoples. In less polite times we used more direct but more emotionally-charged terms like colonialism and imperialism. But even if you feel those terms are overdrawn, the indisputable fact remains that our abundance has been to a fair degree built on others' lack of abundance.
Related to that is the fact that while "The Market" has produced opulence for some of us and abundance for many, it has not provided sufficiency for all. Let me expand on that to make it clear: "The Market" has produced sufficient for all - there is more than enough to go around - but it has not provided sufficiency for all; there always have been, are, and will be those left behind and out despite their best efforts. And that will remain true despite our best efforts to change it so long as we continue to let the idea of "The Market" determine the limits of our concepts.
Because "The Market" can't provide sufficiency for all. By its very nature it can't. "The Market" by its nature requires that a few have a lot, others can have some, and still others must little or nothing. It can't function any other way.
Which means that of necessity "The Market" runs smack into a moral wall. And now, it's coming up against physical walls: Our economic system depends on growth, on there always being more stuff, on people buying more stuff and wanting still more stuff. But that means using up resources, it means depletion of food stocks, degrading the environment, it means global warming. And the bigger it gets, the more it grows, the faster those problems grow and the faster those ultimate physical limits approach. The bottom line, which is a particularly appropriate expression in this context, is that "The Market" not only requires large and growing inequality, it simply is not sustainable in long term.
So I want to raise an alternative, an alternative that's often called a "no-growth economy," but which I prefer to call a "steady-state economy." It's an economy where growth, where improvement, is reflected in things which the Gross Domestic Product does not measure. I intend to get into the shortcomings of the GDP as a measure of our condition next week, but for now I'll just say that the problem is the the GDP measures economic activity - all economic activity, whether it improves our lives or not. If a corporation produces and dumps toxic wastes, that adds to the GDP. The money we have to spend to clean up their waste adds to the GDP. If you get sick from exposure to that waste and have to go to the hospital, that adds to the GDP. It's all the same to the GDP.
A steady-state economy would measure things differently. I'm going to give you a simple, even a grossly oversimplified, example just to give an idea. Suppose you have a job working five days a week, a full-time job that provides for you and your family. Congratulations, I'm happy for you. But you're offered a raise which you can take one of two ways: You can continue to work five days and get paid more, or you can have your same income and benefits but only work four days.
The first way increases the GDP: You can get more stuff, more money is flowing through the economy. Your gain is in stuff. The second way you can't get more stuff - but you get more time to do whatever it is you want to do apart from work. Your gain is in time - which is not reflected in the GDP.
Again, that's a very oversimplified example, but it's just to make the point that there are ways to measure gains that do not involve getting more stuff. And to say that it's possible to build an economy that is sustainable into the future by bearing that fact in mind.
Left Side of the Aisle #107 - Part 2
Global warming: recent news
The other day, I had a neighbor tell me that he hasn't gone ice fishing in three years - because there just isn't enough ice and when there is, it's not thick enough to be safe. Which reminded me that we haven't covered global warming for a time, so I thought I'd catch us up on a few things.
First, last month we got more evidence that glaciers are shrinking all over the world.
The Quelccaya Ice Cap, over 18,000 feet up in the Peruvian Andres, is the largest tropical glacier in the world. About 25 years ago, researchers discovered long-dead plants near a lake formed from meltwater from the glacier. Chemical analysis showed that these plants lived about 4,700 years ago, meaning that the ice cap had shrunk to its smallest in nearly five thousand years - because the only way those plants could have preserved that long was by being frozen in the glacier. Otherwise, they would have decayed to dust.
Fast forward from 25 years ago to the present: In the April issue of the peer-reviewed magazine Science, those same researchers report having found at the glacier remains of plants that lived 6,300 years ago - which means that the Quelccaya Ice Cap has lost 1600 years of ice in just 25 years.
It's not the only example. Across the world, glaciers are melting at a rate not seen since the last ice age. In the short term, it might seem like a good thing: For communities that depend on annual glacial runoff for fresh water, it increases local water supply. But in the longer run, it spells disaster for those same communities as their source of fresh water dries up.
Second and also last month, the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, which is part of NOAA, issued its latest Ecosystem Advisory on sea surface temperatures in the Northeast Shelf Large Marine Ecosystem. That's the region of the Atlantic Ocean which extends from Cape Hatteras to the Gulf of Maine and from the shoreline outward to the edge of the continental shelf.
I love this: The Christian Science Monitor headlined its article with "Waters off Northeast US coast unusually warm, says NOAA." The advisory actually said that during the second half of 2012 those temperatures were the highest recorded in 150 years. "Unusually warm," indeed. The advisory also noted that population centers of seven key fishery species are shifting in response to the changing temperatures.
The report notes that the ultimate effect on the Northeast Shelf ecosystem is unknown - but what is known is that the ecosystem is changing and while the report, with the usual scientific caution, does not say this, I will: That change is being driven by global warming.
Finally and most recently, a new study out of NASA in the first week of May says that climate change will increase the risk of extreme rainfall in the tropics as well as extended drought in the world's temperate zones. It's what one climatologist called "the worst of all possible worlds" with already wet areas getting wetter and already dry areas getting drier.
The study examined computer simulations from 14 different climate models to reach its conclusion about the effect of every degree of global warming on rainfall patterns. It found that for every 1 degree Fahrenheit increase in global average temperature due to climate change, heavy rainfall will increase globally by nearly four percent while the length of time a region goes without rain could increase globally by over two and a-half percent. The study essentially confirmed a long-standing prediction of global warming science that warming would lead to more severe weather, but it was the first to quantify the effects on rainfall in various regions.
The impact of the increased rainfall will be mitigated somewhat by the fact that a lot of the increased rain will occur over the oceans. But the increased and lengthened droughts will mostly affect the temperate zones, which is where most of the population of the Earth lives, setting up a future not only of increased crop failures with attendant food shortages and soaring prices but increased competition for water supplies.
To top all this off, at the same time that all this is being learned, a collection of industry groups (including the American Chemistry Council, the American Petroleum Institute, and the National Association of Manufacturers), a bunch of polluters including an association of electric utilities, and - get this one - the Energy-Intensive Manufacturers Working Group on Greenhouse Gas Regulation, have joined with some other "I love me some fossil-fuel" types and assorted anti-government twits to petition the Supreme Court to overturn a lower court decision allowing the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases.
They are arguing, in effect, that the federal government has no lawful authority to regulate greenhouse gases; in other words, that the government has no legal authority actually to do anything about climate change - because that, after all, might hurt their corporate profits and therefore their individual bank accounts and yearly bonuses. And we just can't have that!
Sources:
http://www.care2.com/causes/how-could-1600-years-of-ice-melt-in-just-25-years.html
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2013/04/03/science.1234210
http://www.newsroomamerica.com/story/360943/sea_surface_temperatures_at_highest_level_in_150_years_on_northeast_continental_shelf_.html
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2013/0426/Waters-off-Northeast-US-coast-unusually-warm-says-NOAA
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-nasa-climate-20130504,0,2772152.story
http://www.sciencerecorder.com/news/nasa-global-warming-may-increase-risk-for-extreme-rainfall/
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/wetter-wet.html
http://news.yahoo.com/supreme-court-asked-hear-epa-greenhouse-gas-challenge-004741380.html
The other day, I had a neighbor tell me that he hasn't gone ice fishing in three years - because there just isn't enough ice and when there is, it's not thick enough to be safe. Which reminded me that we haven't covered global warming for a time, so I thought I'd catch us up on a few things.First, last month we got more evidence that glaciers are shrinking all over the world.
The Quelccaya Ice Cap, over 18,000 feet up in the Peruvian Andres, is the largest tropical glacier in the world. About 25 years ago, researchers discovered long-dead plants near a lake formed from meltwater from the glacier. Chemical analysis showed that these plants lived about 4,700 years ago, meaning that the ice cap had shrunk to its smallest in nearly five thousand years - because the only way those plants could have preserved that long was by being frozen in the glacier. Otherwise, they would have decayed to dust.
Fast forward from 25 years ago to the present: In the April issue of the peer-reviewed magazine Science, those same researchers report having found at the glacier remains of plants that lived 6,300 years ago - which means that the Quelccaya Ice Cap has lost 1600 years of ice in just 25 years.
It's not the only example. Across the world, glaciers are melting at a rate not seen since the last ice age. In the short term, it might seem like a good thing: For communities that depend on annual glacial runoff for fresh water, it increases local water supply. But in the longer run, it spells disaster for those same communities as their source of fresh water dries up.
Second and also last month, the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, which is part of NOAA, issued its latest Ecosystem Advisory on sea surface temperatures in the Northeast Shelf Large Marine Ecosystem. That's the region of the Atlantic Ocean which extends from Cape Hatteras to the Gulf of Maine and from the shoreline outward to the edge of the continental shelf.
I love this: The Christian Science Monitor headlined its article with "Waters off Northeast US coast unusually warm, says NOAA." The advisory actually said that during the second half of 2012 those temperatures were the highest recorded in 150 years. "Unusually warm," indeed. The advisory also noted that population centers of seven key fishery species are shifting in response to the changing temperatures.
The report notes that the ultimate effect on the Northeast Shelf ecosystem is unknown - but what is known is that the ecosystem is changing and while the report, with the usual scientific caution, does not say this, I will: That change is being driven by global warming.
Finally and most recently, a new study out of NASA in the first week of May says that climate change will increase the risk of extreme rainfall in the tropics as well as extended drought in the world's temperate zones. It's what one climatologist called "the worst of all possible worlds" with already wet areas getting wetter and already dry areas getting drier.
The study examined computer simulations from 14 different climate models to reach its conclusion about the effect of every degree of global warming on rainfall patterns. It found that for every 1 degree Fahrenheit increase in global average temperature due to climate change, heavy rainfall will increase globally by nearly four percent while the length of time a region goes without rain could increase globally by over two and a-half percent. The study essentially confirmed a long-standing prediction of global warming science that warming would lead to more severe weather, but it was the first to quantify the effects on rainfall in various regions.
The impact of the increased rainfall will be mitigated somewhat by the fact that a lot of the increased rain will occur over the oceans. But the increased and lengthened droughts will mostly affect the temperate zones, which is where most of the population of the Earth lives, setting up a future not only of increased crop failures with attendant food shortages and soaring prices but increased competition for water supplies.
To top all this off, at the same time that all this is being learned, a collection of industry groups (including the American Chemistry Council, the American Petroleum Institute, and the National Association of Manufacturers), a bunch of polluters including an association of electric utilities, and - get this one - the Energy-Intensive Manufacturers Working Group on Greenhouse Gas Regulation, have joined with some other "I love me some fossil-fuel" types and assorted anti-government twits to petition the Supreme Court to overturn a lower court decision allowing the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases.
They are arguing, in effect, that the federal government has no lawful authority to regulate greenhouse gases; in other words, that the government has no legal authority actually to do anything about climate change - because that, after all, might hurt their corporate profits and therefore their individual bank accounts and yearly bonuses. And we just can't have that!
Sources:
http://www.care2.com/causes/how-could-1600-years-of-ice-melt-in-just-25-years.html
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2013/04/03/science.1234210
http://www.newsroomamerica.com/story/360943/sea_surface_temperatures_at_highest_level_in_150_years_on_northeast_continental_shelf_.html
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2013/0426/Waters-off-Northeast-US-coast-unusually-warm-says-NOAA
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-nasa-climate-20130504,0,2772152.story
http://www.sciencerecorder.com/news/nasa-global-warming-may-increase-risk-for-extreme-rainfall/
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/wetter-wet.html
http://news.yahoo.com/supreme-court-asked-hear-epa-greenhouse-gas-challenge-004741380.html
Left Side of the Aisle #107 - Part 1
Hero Award: Connie Picciotto
This week, happily, we can start with a Hero Award, given as the occasion arises to someone who just does the right thing.
In this case, it's being given to someone I just learned about. Her name is Connie Picciotto and she has been maintaining a daily vigil on the sidewalk across from the White House about the threat of nuclear war - and she has been doing it, almost without interruption, for 32 years.
Her story is long and complex, too long and complex to go into here. She has become such a fixture in DC that tour guides point her out. Educators use her protest in lessons about social activism. She was in Michael Moore’s 2004 film “Fahrenheit 9/11.” She even figured in a documentary about protests at the White House.
Not surprisingly, there are many who would dismiss her, saying the threat of nuclear war is gone, over. Those people are wrong. The threat is not got and it does not consist solely in the specters of a nuclear North Korea or a hypothetical nuclear Iran. There are over 18,000 nuclear weapons in the world today, with a combined destructive force of about 120,000 Hiroshimas. Nine nations have nuclear weapons. But virtually all of those weapons are in the hands of just two nations: the US and Russia. And they are at the ready, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year; about 2,000 of them on such high alert that they could be launched in just minutes.
It would take just one large blunder, just one panicky response to a real or even imagined threat, to turn much of the world to ashes. The risk of nuclear war may be less than it once was - but it is not over.
So Connie Picciotto keeps her vigil, keeps talking to whoever will listen. The Serious People, deploying ther phony concern for her welfare as a mask for their cynicism, say she is just another harmless kook, just another crazy crank more in need of intervention by psychiatrists than of reasoned attention to her arguments. And indeed, there are some aspects to her story that give one pause about her mental health.
But ultimately those concerns take nothing away from the importance of the issue she espouses and are useful only to those who want to turn their indifference to the issue into a considered judgment on it.
Those people may not have to play that game much longer: Connie is 77 and her health is starting to decline and Peace House, the activist hub in DC where Connie lives, is having financial troubles and may have to close.
Whatever the future, and whatever her other personal issues may be, one thing is clear: Connie Picciotto, who has spent 32 yesrs in an unrelating effort to remind people of a danger that has not passed, is a hero.
Footnote: On July 28, 2012, three people - Sister Megan Rice, 83, Michael Walli, 64, and Greg Boertje-Obed, 56 - used bolt cutters to cut through fences at the Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility in the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. That's a national security plant involved in the building, maintaining, and taking apart of every nuclear weapon in the US arsenal. They hung up a banner that read “Transform Now Plowshares,” strung up red crime-scene tape, splashed human blood on the walls, and painted the walls with things like “Woe to the empire of blood” and “The fruit of justice is peace."
After refusing to plead guilty to tresspass, with a one-year prison term, they were charged with sabotage and face 20 years in prison in what the trial judge said is a normal part of plea bargaining, otherwise known as "sparing the government the trouble of actually having to prove anything."
Jury selection in the case began on May 6.
Sources:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/feature/wp/2013/05/02/connie-picciotto-has-kept-vigil-near-the-white-house-for-32-years-why-and-at-what-cost/?tid=ts_carousel
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/05/01/terrorism-nuclear-weapons-column/2116263/
http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/news-events/all-stories/nuclear-weapons-state-play#.UYg8AMpsKSq
http://www.occupypeacehouse.org/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/anti-nuclear-weapons-protesters-on-trial-this-week-for-incursion-into-tenn-nuclear-facility/2013/05/06/96cf679e-b685-11e2-b568-6917f6ac6d9d_story.html
http://my.firedoglake.com/davidswanson/2013/04/29/the-revolution-thats-not-being-televised/
This week, happily, we can start with a Hero Award, given as the occasion arises to someone who just does the right thing.In this case, it's being given to someone I just learned about. Her name is Connie Picciotto and she has been maintaining a daily vigil on the sidewalk across from the White House about the threat of nuclear war - and she has been doing it, almost without interruption, for 32 years.
Her story is long and complex, too long and complex to go into here. She has become such a fixture in DC that tour guides point her out. Educators use her protest in lessons about social activism. She was in Michael Moore’s 2004 film “Fahrenheit 9/11.” She even figured in a documentary about protests at the White House.
Not surprisingly, there are many who would dismiss her, saying the threat of nuclear war is gone, over. Those people are wrong. The threat is not got and it does not consist solely in the specters of a nuclear North Korea or a hypothetical nuclear Iran. There are over 18,000 nuclear weapons in the world today, with a combined destructive force of about 120,000 Hiroshimas. Nine nations have nuclear weapons. But virtually all of those weapons are in the hands of just two nations: the US and Russia. And they are at the ready, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year; about 2,000 of them on such high alert that they could be launched in just minutes.
It would take just one large blunder, just one panicky response to a real or even imagined threat, to turn much of the world to ashes. The risk of nuclear war may be less than it once was - but it is not over.
So Connie Picciotto keeps her vigil, keeps talking to whoever will listen. The Serious People, deploying ther phony concern for her welfare as a mask for their cynicism, say she is just another harmless kook, just another crazy crank more in need of intervention by psychiatrists than of reasoned attention to her arguments. And indeed, there are some aspects to her story that give one pause about her mental health.But ultimately those concerns take nothing away from the importance of the issue she espouses and are useful only to those who want to turn their indifference to the issue into a considered judgment on it.
Those people may not have to play that game much longer: Connie is 77 and her health is starting to decline and Peace House, the activist hub in DC where Connie lives, is having financial troubles and may have to close.
Whatever the future, and whatever her other personal issues may be, one thing is clear: Connie Picciotto, who has spent 32 yesrs in an unrelating effort to remind people of a danger that has not passed, is a hero.
Footnote: On July 28, 2012, three people - Sister Megan Rice, 83, Michael Walli, 64, and Greg Boertje-Obed, 56 - used bolt cutters to cut through fences at the Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility in the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. That's a national security plant involved in the building, maintaining, and taking apart of every nuclear weapon in the US arsenal. They hung up a banner that read “Transform Now Plowshares,” strung up red crime-scene tape, splashed human blood on the walls, and painted the walls with things like “Woe to the empire of blood” and “The fruit of justice is peace."
After refusing to plead guilty to tresspass, with a one-year prison term, they were charged with sabotage and face 20 years in prison in what the trial judge said is a normal part of plea bargaining, otherwise known as "sparing the government the trouble of actually having to prove anything."
Jury selection in the case began on May 6.
Sources:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/feature/wp/2013/05/02/connie-picciotto-has-kept-vigil-near-the-white-house-for-32-years-why-and-at-what-cost/?tid=ts_carousel
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/05/01/terrorism-nuclear-weapons-column/2116263/
http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/news-events/all-stories/nuclear-weapons-state-play#.UYg8AMpsKSq
http://www.occupypeacehouse.org/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/anti-nuclear-weapons-protesters-on-trial-this-week-for-incursion-into-tenn-nuclear-facility/2013/05/06/96cf679e-b685-11e2-b568-6917f6ac6d9d_story.html
http://my.firedoglake.com/davidswanson/2013/04/29/the-revolution-thats-not-being-televised/
Left Side of the Aisle #107
Left Side of the Aisle
for the week of May 10-16, 2013
This week:
Hero Award: Connie Picciotto
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/feature/wp/2013/05/02/connie-picciotto-has-kept-vigil-near-the-white-house-for-32-years-why-and-at-what-cost/?tid=ts_carousel
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/05/01/terrorism-nuclear-weapons-column/2116263/
http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/news-events/all-stories/nuclear-weapons-state-play#.UYg8AMpsKSq
http://www.occupypeacehouse.org/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/anti-nuclear-weapons-protesters-on-trial-this-week-for-incursion-into-tenn-nuclear-facility/2013/05/06/96cf679e-b685-11e2-b568-6917f6ac6d9d_story.html
http://my.firedoglake.com/davidswanson/2013/04/29/the-revolution-thats-not-being-televised/
Global warming: recent news
http://www.care2.com/causes/how-could-1600-years-of-ice-melt-in-just-25-years.html
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2013/04/03/science.1234210
http://www.newsroomamerica.com/story/360943/sea_surface_temperatures_at_highest_level_in_150_years_on_northeast_continental_shelf_.html
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2013/0426/Waters-off-Northeast-US-coast-unusually-warm-says-NOAA
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-nasa-climate-20130504,0,2772152.story
http://www.sciencerecorder.com/news/nasa-global-warming-may-increase-risk-for-extreme-rainfall/
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/wetter-wet.html
http://news.yahoo.com/supreme-court-asked-hear-epa-greenhouse-gas-challenge-004741380.html
An introduction to "steady-state economy"
Clown Award: Penny Nance of CWA
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/02/fox-news-penny-nance-holocaust-reason_n_3202343.html?ir=Politics&ref=topbar
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/05/01/4015442/foxx-proclaims-day-of-reason-day.html
Iraq: renewed violence in the land we forgot
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/02/april-deadliest-month-iraq_n_3200317.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/18/iraq-war-costs_n_2885071.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/03/iraq-violence_n_3208161.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/the-civil-war-in-iraq-has-already-begun-politician-claims-conflict-has-started-and-warns-it-will-be-worse-than-syria-8601732.html
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/international-troops-should-be-ready-operationally-to-invade-syria-says-john-mccain/article11595592/
http://www.policymic.com/articles/38993/john-mccain-lindsey-graham-senators-demand-syria-intervention-encouraging-another-stupid-war
http://thehill.com/blogs/defcon-hill/policy-and-strategy/298109-menendez-presses-to-arm-rebels-as-syria-pulls-us-toward-conflict
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505263_162-57583191/sen-corker-on-syria-u.s-will-be-arming-the-rebels-soon/
Outrage of the Week: death penalty proposed in Massachusetts
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-03-15/local/37737059_1_death-penalty-capital-punishment-repeal-bill
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-05-02/local/38969834_1_penalty-capital-punishment-new-law
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/05/06/florida-tries-to-speed-up-executions-as-maryland-other-states-repeal-death/
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/04/florida-passes-law-speed-executions
http://www.boston.com/politicalintelligence/2013/04/23/lawmakers-citing-marathon-bombings-propose-restoring-death-penalty-massachusetts/HCroqiN6xqRHwxl289zQmO/story.html
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/regionals/north/2013/05/04/area-lawmakers-remain-divided-over-restoring-death-penalty-massachusetts/RfBVecgQaDpUZfd66EaXPP/story.html
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/murder-rates-nationally-and-state
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