Left Side of the Aisle #103 - Part 3

What's good about 7.6% unemployment?

One of the reasons I wanted to do the Outrage of the Week now is because I wanted to talk some about the economy, which I haven't done in a while.

Of course, one of the big bits of economic news over the past couple of weeks was the unemployment figures, as it always is when the monthly figures come out. According to the Labor Department, the unemployment rate in March was only 7.6% - that's a full 0.1% drop from February. If you think you detect some sarcasm there, I'd only say what do you mean "some?"

It's amazing to me, it's intolerable to me, that this is supposed to be acceptable, that we're supposed to go "isn't this just great news, aren't things just fine." We're all supposed to play Pollyanna's "glad game" and go "We're glad that it's not 10% like it was in the summer of 2010!" Which, yes, is something to be glad about, it's good that unemployment has come down a couple of percentage points, but it's rather like being glad you have skin cancer because it's not lung cancer or being glad  you have six months to live because at least it's not three months.

Well, yeah, but at least we can be glad unemployment is creeping down, right? At least it didn't go up!

Except it probably should have. There were a measly 88,000 new jobs created in March, considerably less than half the 190,000 predicted, when it takes about 150,000 a month just to absorb new workers entering the job market. So why did the rate go down? Because nearly 500,000 workers left the labor force. Now, some of those people were new retirees and some may have been people returning to school, but the fact is a lot of them, quite possibly most of them, are people who had been out of work so long that they just gave up looking because work had been so hard to find - and who, quite possibly, found themselves, whether or not they were aware of it, targets of the unemployment discrimination I mentioned a couple of minutes ago.

As a result of the growing number of discouraged workers, the labor participation rate, the percentage of the civilian working-age population that is in the labor force, that is, either working or looking for work, dropped to its lowest level in over 30 years.

But don't worry, it's all good, nothing to see here, move along, don't worry be happy and even the dismal number of new jobs doesn't faze the happy-talkers, as we have Rachel Maddow merrily chirping that such numbers always get revised. Which is true - and sometimes they get revised downward.

So look, 7.6% unemployment. It could be worse, it has been worse and not that long ago. But that doesn't mean it's good. It doesn't mean things are going well, it doesn't mean "prosperity is right around the corner" - especially not when first-time unemployment claims for the week ending March 30 went up 28,000, much more than expected.

So to sum up that rant: 7.6% unemployment. It's been worse. But the idea that this is some kind of new normal, the unemployment of 7-something percent is a level we're supposed to take for granted, to be satisfied with, is obscene.

And it's not going to get a whole lot better any time soon: The Federal Reserve predicts that the unemployment rate will stay above 6.5% for at least two more years. They predict unemployment will still be nearly 7.5% at the end of this year and no less than 6.7% to 7% at the end of 2014.

The jobs simply aren't there. Corporations simply are not hiring. Oh, they're posting the jobs: Job postings went up 11% last year to the highest rate in 5 years. But they're not filling the jobs. They're not hiring. It's not because they can't, it's not because they can't afford it. Corporate profits are at an all-time high and are going up at nearly 20% per year. Those profits represent the largest share of total national income in over 60 years while the portion that's going to salaries and wages is at its lowest level in nearly 50 years. Wages now account for the smallest portion of the Gross Domestic Product since the end of World War 2, which is when they started keeping records. That's nearly 70 years.

And even as corporate profits rise, corporate taxes drop: The tax burden, if you can call it that, on corporations is now equivalent to just 1.5% of the GDP. Another way to measure that is to note that in 1952, the corporate income tax accounted for about one third of of all federal tax revenue. Now it's less than 9 percent.

The fact is, we are hurting and we continue to hurt. And it's not just the unemployed, of course, it's also the employed - or at least those of us who are not part of the elite.

We often hear about income inequality in the US, but not a lot of us know just how extreme it is. Let me show you something.

A couple of years ago, researchers at Duke University and the Harvard Business School did a survey of Americans in which they asked people what they thought was the distribution of wealth among people in the US. The the middle bar in the chart to the left. It indicates that people think that the richest 20% of the population owns about 55% of the wealth. Something notable about the results is that people across all three of the survey's income categories (less than $50,000 per year, $50,000-$100,000 per year, and over $100,000 per year) were very similar in their estimates.

The researchers also asked those same people what they thought would be the best, the fairest, distribution of wealth.The bottom bar in the graph shows what they said. It's much more equitable than what they think the actual distribution is; the wealthiest fifth get about a third of the total wealth, with the poorest fifth holding about 10 percent of the total. Again, all three income groups offered much the same answer: Although there was some variation across income groups, with the portion the wealthiest should have rising with income, the differences were just not that large, with the proposed portion for the richest ranging only from 30 to 40 percent.

The top bar is the actual distribution.

The richest fifth of our population possesses nearly 85% of our total national wealth. Note that the bottom two categories, the bottom two-fifths of the population, barely register on that graph.

This is not new. This has been going on for decades, going on since the 1970s. The average American worker, the average American family, has lost ground since the late 1970s. The average American family is worse off that it was 35 years ago. Thirty-five years of work has gotten you precisely nowhere.

And not only has it been getting worse, it's even accelerating. During the Clinton-era economic recovery, 45% of the gain in national income went to the richest 1% of the population.

During the Bush-era recovery, 63% of the gain in national income went to the richest 1% of the population.

During the Obama-era recovery, an eye-popping 121% of the gain in national income went to the richest 1% of the population.

How is that even possible? It comes from research done by University of California economist Emmanuel Saez, who found that not only did all of the income gains from 2009 to 2011 go to the top 1%, the incomes of the bottom 99% fell by 0.4%. It's no longer even that the top 20% are gaining or the top 10% or even the top 5%, it's the top 1% who are sucking up all the gains and leaving the rest of us further and further behind.

That is the economic reality we are facing. And what the politicos and pundits across both parties are proposing to do about it is exactly the wrong thing. I'll talk about that next week.

Sources:
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.a.htm
http://jobsanger.blogspot.com/2013/04/unemployment-rate-drops-but-its-not.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bhyKS_SWPM&feature=youtube_gdata
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-jobs-gain-in-march-lowest-in-10-months-2013-04-05
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-gongloff/labor-force-participation-rate_b_1865027.html
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5063
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/20/unemployment-fed-forecast_n_2916986.html
http://www.ydr.com/business/ci_22986440/us-companies-post-more-job-but-fill-them
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/03/04/1665281/corporate-profits-worker-income/
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/12/03/1270541/corporate-profits-wages-record/
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/12/10/1308981/chart-corporate-profits-skyrocket-while-corporate-taxes-plummet/
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/mar/06/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20130306
http://www.epi.org/publication/economy-built-profits-not-prosperity/
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/02/yes-virginia-the-rich-continue-to-get-richer-the-1-got-121-of-income-gains-since-2009.html
http://www.scribd.com/doc/125269359/Getting-Richer-Edmund-Saez

Left Side of the Aisle #103 - Part 2

Outrage of the Week: legal discrimination

What do the following things have in common: having gone through a bankruptcy, your political views, favoritism, nepotism, your appearance, your credit history, your weight, being sick, and having been unemployed. What do they have in common?

The answer is, they are all perfectly legal ways to discriminate against you in employment.

Let me run through these quickly: The Bankruptcy Code says you can't be fired or discriminated against in your job because of a bankruptcy. But there's nothing to say they can't refuse to hire you in the first place because of one.

Some states have laws prohibiting discrimination based upon political affiliation, that is, what your politics are or what political party you join. Others don't. But in most cases you can be fired if you express any of those opinions, if you say go to a demonstration or even, maybe, write a letter-to-the-editor. It comes as a surprise to most people to learn that the only workers who have guaranteed First Amendment rights are employees of the federal government.

Flat-out favoritism at work is legal. Now, if you're a member of a protected class specified in civil rights laws, and you're being discriminated against for that reason, that's illegal. But if it's because you're you, it's legal. So if a potential employer says "I won't hire you because you're black," that's illegal. Bit if they say "It's not because you're black, I just don't like you," that's legal.

On the same basis and related to that, in the private sector nepotism is also legal. Not so much in the public sector, but in the private sector, it's entirely legal for employers to favor family members and friends. Again, if you're a member of a protected class, you may have protection. Otherwise, otherwise.

Very few states or municipalities have laws against appearance discrimination, that is, discriminating on the basis of what you look like. There are no federal laws against it. So it's not illegal for someone to discriminate against you because they don't like your looks or the style of clothes you wear or the color of your hair or whatever.

In most states, an employer can refuse to hire you if you have a low credit score. Some states have passed laws against using credit history as the basis for employment decisions. Most have not.

Weight discrimination is mostly legal. That is, discriminating against you in hiring and promotion based on the size of your waistline is legal. A very few states and municipalities have limitations on such discrimination; otherwise, unless you weight relates to a serious medical condition or a disability, you're screwed.

Related to that, unless you live in Connecticut or one of just four cities - Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, or Washington, DC - you have no legally guaranteed paid sick time. Live anywhere else, and unless your sickness is among narrowly-defined set of serious medical condition or relates to a disability, you have no protection. Take a day off to go to the doctor and you can get fired. Legally.

By the way, not long ago the Philadelphia city council passed a bill for guaranteed sick time but the city's mayor, the appropriately-named Micheal Nutter, vetoed it.

Finally, New Jersey, Oregon, and the District of Columbia have passed laws barring unemployment discrimination. Everywhere else in the country, it is entirely legal and in fact common practice to refuse to hire someone precisely because they do not have a job. That may sound insane, but it's legal. And outrageous.

Sources:
http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2012/11/19/8-ways-employers-can-discriminate-against-workers-legally/
http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2013/03/14/fired-missing-work-doctors-note/
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/heardinthehall/Pressure-Applied-To-Overturn-Sick-Leave-Veto.html

Left Side of the Aisle #103 - Part 1

Good news: Medical marijuana advances

Good news was in rather short supply this week, but there was this: Maryland has passed a medical marijuana bill. Gov. Martin O'Malley, who supported the measure, will of course sign it.

The drug would be administered by medical staff and obtained at academic centers that are also supposed to study the effects of the program. The O'Malley administration called this a "yellow light" approach as compared to states that have allowed private dispensaries to open. Because of the time it'll take to set up the program, actual distribution of marijuana will probably not start until 2016.

Maryland will thus join 18 other states - Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawai'i, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington - plus the District of Columbia in allowing medical marijuana.

In addition, several states have decriminalized possession of small amounts of marijuana, with penalties generally not exceeding a $100 fine. On top of that, three states  - Alaska, Colorado, and Washington - have gone further, legalizing possession of small amounts by adults.

Finally on this, a Pew Research Center poll released April 4 shows a majority of Americans supporting legalization of marijuana, with 52 percent in favor and just 45 percent against. Fully 72 percent said that the cost of the drug war is not worth it.

The results mark the first time in Pew's polling that a majority has supported legalization. Back in 1969, support was at only 12%. Ten years ago it was still only about a third and just three years ago it was at 41 percent, so support has grown 11 percentage points in three years and is now a majority. And I think that's good news.

Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/08/maryland-medical-marijuana_n_3037963.html
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/politics/blog/bal-medical-marijuana-approved-20130408,0,4666673.story
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/04/marijuana-legalization-poll-2013_n_3015813.html

Left Side of the Aisle #103

Left Side of the Aisle
for the week of April 11-17, 2013

This week:

Good news: Medical marijuana advances
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/08/maryland-medical-marijuana_n_3037963.html
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/politics/blog/bal-medical-marijuana-approved-20130408,0,4666673.story
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/04/marijuana-legalization-poll-2013_n_3015813.html

Outrage of the Week: legal discrimination
http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2012/11/19/8-ways-employers-can-discriminate-against-workers-legally/
http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2013/03/14/fired-missing-work-doctors-note/
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/heardinthehall/Pressure-Applied-To-Overturn-Sick-Leave-Veto.html

Economy: What's good about 7.6% unemployment?
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.a.htm
http://jobsanger.blogspot.com/2013/04/unemployment-rate-drops-but-its-not.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bhyKS_SWPM&feature=youtube_gdata
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-jobs-gain-in-march-lowest-in-10-months-2013-04-05
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-gongloff/labor-force-participation-rate_b_1865027.html
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5063
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/20/unemployment-fed-forecast_n_2916986.html
http://www.ydr.com/business/ci_22986440/us-companies-post-more-job-but-fill-them
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/03/04/1665281/corporate-profits-worker-income/
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/12/03/1270541/corporate-profits-wages-record/
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/12/10/1308981/chart-corporate-profits-skyrocket-while-corporate-taxes-plummet/
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/mar/06/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20130306
http://www.epi.org/publication/economy-built-profits-not-prosperity/
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/02/yes-virginia-the-rich-continue-to-get-richer-the-1-got-121-of-income-gains-since-2009.html
http://www.scribd.com/doc/125269359/Getting-Richer-Edmund-Saez

RIP: Annette and Margaret
http://abcnews.go.com/International/margaret-thatcher-britains-iron-lady-dead-87/story
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/entertainment/2013/04/annette-funicello-beloved-mouseketeer-dies-at-70/

Keystone XL and Arkansas
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/31/exxon-pipeline-spill-idUSL2N0CN00D20130331
http://grist.org/article/tar-sands-oil-spills-in-arkansas-and-minnesota/
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/28/us-usa-derailment-oilspill-idUSBRE92R02V20130328
http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20130405/exxon-oil-spill-could-be-40-larger-company-estimates-epa-figures-show
http://grist.org/slideshow/crude-awakening-exxons-arkansas-oil-spill-aint-pretty-slideshow/
http://grist.org/climate-energy/arkansas-town-in-lockdown-after-oil-spill-nightmare/
http://grist.org/news/good-news-arkansas-tar-sands-oil-isnt-oil-oil/
http://www.salon.com/2013/04/04/6_things_you_need_to_know_about_the_arkansas_oil_spill_partner/

Clown Award: Rep. Louie Gohmert
http://www.salon.com/2013/04/02/rep_louie_gohmert_we_cant_restrict_high_capacity_magazines_because_gay_marriage_leads_to_bestiality/

Guns
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/10/us/politics/illinois-voters-to-pick-successor-for-jacksons-house-seat.html
http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/19381361-418/democrat-robin-kelly-steamrolls-convicted-felon-in-special-election-vows-to-take-on-the-nra.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/20/colo-governor-to-sign-lan_n_2914925.html
http://www.salon.com/2013/04/02/connecticut_passes_strict_gun_laws_after_newtown_ap/?source=newsletter
http://www.salon.com/2013/04/04/connecticut_governor_to_sign_gun_control_bill_into_law/?source=newsletter
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/04/maryland-gun-control-bill_n_3018087.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/assault-weapons-ban-likely-wont-be-included-in-senate-gun-bill/2013/03/19/86c2de14-90bd-11e2-bdea-e32ad90da239_story.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/10/us-usa-guns-idUSBRE93800G20130410
http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/national_world&id=9059140
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/28/obama-gun-violence_n_2972318.html
http://www.salon.com/2013/04/02/is_the_nra_winning/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/31/nra-gun-show-loophole_n_2593937.html?ref=topbar
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/04/10/a-big-big-step-forward-on-gun-control/
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/04/the-note-a-real-deal-emerges-on-gun-control/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/senate-aides-bipartisan-deal-reached-on-gun-background-checks/2013/04/10/fa4fe9a6-a1db-11e2-be47-b44febada3a8_story.html
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/04/gun-background-checks-senate.php
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/18/ucf-evacuated_n_2899913.html
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2012/12/gun_death_tally_every_american_gun_death_since_newtown_sandy_hook_shooting.html

Left Side of the Aisle #102 - Part 8

Update #2: Keystone XL pipeline

For our second update, I have several times talked about the Keystone XL pipeline, which if completed will carry polluting tar sands from Canada to Texas to be refined and exported.

The State Department, which was involved because the project crossed a national border, green-lighted the project, saying the environmental impact would be minor.

Now it turns out that the report’s authors were not Department staff but outside contractors with ties to the oil industry and the one that produced the bulk of the report, Environmental Resources Management, has ties to tar sands extraction companies. Fox and henhouse, anyone?

What's more, in 2002 that same outfit, Environmental Resources Management, declared that the then-proposed BP Caspian pipeline was both environmentally and economically sound, just as it has now said about Keystone XL - and that earlier pipeline not only failed to deliver on promised jobs, it has been the site of explosions and oil spills.

Time to drop the farce about, and the hammer on, the Keystone XL pipeline.

Sources:
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/26/states_keystone_report_authors_also_okayed_explosive_caspian_pipeline/

Left Side of the Aisle #102 - Part 7

Update #1: More transparency reports

I'll finish off this week's show with a couple of very quick updates.

First, a couple of weeks ago I gave Google a Hero Award - yes, I know Google has been evil in any number of ways, but I gave it a Hero Award for doing the right thing and becoming the first technology company to report on the number of requests it had received from law enforcement to provide customer information.

Now, both Twitter and Microsoft have followed with their own first what Microsoft is calling "transparency reports." Microsoft says it will update the report every six months.

Hopefully, other companies will follow the path being laid out so people can know just how widespread these demands for our personal information really are.

Sources:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/03/us-law-enforcement-gets-most-customer-data-from-microsoft/

Left Side of the Aisle #102 - Part 6

Outrage of the Week: Wal-Mart will brook no opposition

I had a hard time choosing an outrage this week.

That's because I wanted to - and I may still at some point in the future - but I wanted to talk about CVS and how it's telling its employees - excuse me, its "colleagues" (because, doncha know, we're all equal here) - it's telling its underlings who use the corporate health insurance plan to go to their doctor and have them determine their height, weight, body fat, blood pressure, and other health indicators, then to allow that personal data to go not only to the insurance company but also to yet another company, one that manages benefits for CVS. Let that sort of personal data get spread around even more widely.

Workers who don't take part in this "voluntary" “wellness review” will have to pay an annual $600 penalty.

To paraphrase Arthur Dent, this is obviously some meaning of the word "voluntary" of which I was previously unaware.

What really got me beyond the nonsense about "colleagues" and "voluntary" was that the company brazenly lied about the policy, claiming it's "common." A corporate flunky referred to a study that said that nearly 80% of large employers offered a health assessment and 3/4 of those who do so, offer positive incentives for completion. But a Kaiser study found that while a lot of employers may offer health assessments under their insurance plans, only 18% of employers actually asked their workers to take such an assessment, with only half of those - that is, 9% of the total - penalizing employees who didn't complete it. Nine percent does not constitute "common." CVS lied.

Despite that, which I still may talk about more in the future because of its relation to privacy its connection to Obamacare and yes there is one, my Outrage of the Week is that Wal-Mart has sued a grocery workers union and others, including individuals, who have protested at its Florida stores. That is, Wal-Mart is suing them for protesting the corporation's underpaying, cheating, and exploiting its employees. That, the company says, is "trespassing" and it must, it just must, "protect our customers and associates from further disruptive tactics associated with their continued, illegal trespassing."

Wal-Mart does not have union-represented workers in its US stores, it is and has been throughout its history one of the most bitterly anti-union companies going, it has a corporate policy of paying its workers as little as it can get away with, and none of you should shop there until it changes.

What it's trying to do now is to use the threat of legal action to force its critics just shut up and go away. Those critics include the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, a group of present and former Wal-Mart employees called OUR-Walmart, the group Central Florida Jobs With Justice, and specified individuals associated with those groups. This has nothing to do with "protecting" customers and even less than nothing to do with "protecting" employees. The only thing they are interested in protecting is corporate profits. Period.

Among the horrendous deeds of which protestors are accused in the suit are projecting a video on the side of a store, entering a store to confront a manager, using bullhorns, and - I swear I'm not making this up - carrying signs on sticks.

This suit seems to me to be a variation of what came to be called a SLAPP, or Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. It's a lawsuit that is intended to censor, intimidate, and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defense until they abandon their opposition. That is, the suers - in this case, Wal-Mart - don't really expect to win the suit. What they want to do is to drain their opponents either financially, emotionally, or better yet both, so the opponents are exhausted and just give up.

They were popular among corporations from the 70s to the 90s, particularly when they were leveled against individuals or "kitchen table" groups that were using regulatory proceedings and hearings to oppose some plan of some corporation. The price for dropping such suits - which were patently frivolous, as they often claimed that by criticizing the company's proposal you were by definition "defaming it" and "causing it to suffer financial loss" - the price for dropping the suits was usually dropping out of the regulatory process and letting the company's proposal proceed unopposed. These suits lost a lot of their luster when their targets who were in a position to fight them began to file what became known as SLAPP-backs, where the roles were switched and the corporation went from plaintiff to defendant.

Still, they do continue to happen, and while this is not a typical example, as it does not demand damages - at least not now - it does seem to me to have the same goal: Force your opponents to just shut up and go away.

By the way, I keep wondering why this suit was filed in Florida. Wal-Mart stores across the country have been targeted. Why Florida? Do they think the courts are more sympathetic to the company there? I don't know. I wonder, but I don't know.

I do know this: Don't shop at Wal-Mart.

Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/20/cvs-workers-insurance_n_2915006.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Dent
http://ehbs.kff.org/pdf/2012/8346.pdf
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/25/us-walmart-trespass-lawsuit-idUSBRE92O0W820130325
http://www.presstv.ir/usdetail/295341.html
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2013-03-26/news/os-walmart-sues-orange-protesters-20130326_1_wal-mart-workers-wal-mart-employees-wal-mart-stores
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/29/walmart-ceo-pay_n_2978180.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_public_participation
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/SLAPP
http://www.anti-slapp.org/
http://www.anti-slapp.org/recent/in-a-new-aisle-energy-drinks-sidestep-some-rules/

Left Side of the Aisle #102 - Part 5

Clown Award: Georgia GOP chair Sue Everhart

From the news about same-marriage, we slide smoothly into the Clown Award, given for meritorious stupidity. Because this week the big red nose goes to someone else the Bible-thumpers haven't lost: Sue Everhart, the chair of the Georgia GOP.

Late last week Ms. Everhart said in an interview that straight people might enter into fraudulent gay marriages to obtain benefits.

Suppose, she said, you have a job with great benefits. You're straight and you have a straight friend. What, she said, and this is a quote,

what would prohibit you from saying that you’re gay, and y’all get married and still live as separate, but you get all the benefits? I just see so much abuse in this it’s unreal. There is no way that this is about equality. To me, it’s all about a free ride.

Now, of course it's theoretically possible that such a scenario could happen, but it could also happen with a man and a woman for exactly the same reason. And there isn't any evidence of any relevant amount of fraud in either case.

By the real reason she is our winner this week is that in the same interview, further demonstrating her remarkable intellect and wide-ranging worldly knowledge, Everhart also said she could not understand how two gay people could ever have sex. "If it was natural, they would have the equipment to have a sexual relationship."

Ms. Everhart ... get out of the house on occasion. Read a book. Something. Ask your kids, they can probably explain it to you.

What a clown.

Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/01/sue-everhart-gay-marriage_n_2991860.html

Left Side of the Aisle #102 - Part 4

Good news #4: Same-sex marriage continues to gain

While we're on the topic of good news, there is more good news coming out on the issue of same-sex marriage.

I'm not going to spend any significant time talking about the oral arguments before the Supreme Court on PropHate and the Defense of Marriage Act; I'm sure you've heard all about that. I will note that most observers seem to think that the indications are that same-sex marriage proponents will prevail on both issues by a vote of 5-4, with swing vote Anthony Kennedy appearing to lean that way.

But making predictions of Supreme Court decisions based on oral arguments is a long way from an exact science and it's best to not get our hopes up but wait for the decisions, which are expected to come in June.

I did, however, want to mention one argument Justice Sam Alito made, which struck me as jaw-dropping. Between this and his dissent in the drug-sniffig dog case, I think he's getting a little loopy, Anyway, quoting him,

You want us to step in and render a decision based on an assessment of the effects of this institution which is newer than cell phones or the Internet. On a question like that, of such fundamental importance, why should it not be left for the people, either acting through initiatives and referendums or through their elected public officials?

Well, first, Sammy, because human rights are not a popularity contest and do not rise or fall based on majority support. Second, the institution at issue here is marriage, which is rather older than cell phones or the internet, and the question is if same-sex couples can be barred from that institution. It's not a matter of "marriage" here and "same-sex marriage" over there as if it was some separate, independent institution and your apparent notion that it should or can be treated as one displays, I say either fundamental ignorance or fundamental bigotry and perhaps both.

But moving away from Johnny Roberts and the Supremes for now, there is the news that Sen. Mark Kirk has become the second Republican senator to support recognizing same-sex marriage, becoming the 50th member of the US Senate to do so. It also appears that Sen. Lisa Murkowski will at least fairly soon become the third GOPper to embrace reality.

And here's some news: Bill O'Reilly, who previously had said at various times that same-sex marriage would lead to people marrying "a turtle," "a goat," "a duck," or "a dolphin," said last week that he doesn't "feel strongly about it one way or the other" and that "the compelling argument" is on the side of marriage-equality proponents and that all opponents had been able to do is "thump the Bible," which, he said, is not a basis for enact public policy.

Hey, if they've lost Bill O'Reilly....

On the other hand, someone they have not lost is Alan Keyes, the former diplomat, perennial candidate, and all-around flake who argued the other day that gay marriage “is the archetype of all crimes against humanity." Worse than racism, worse than slavery, worse than war crimes, worse than war, worse than genocide. Same-sex marriage is the archetype of all crimes against humanity.

In fact, if you do not oppose same-sex marriage, quoting, "you are abandoning your obligation as a human being.” It's unclear whether he meant that gays and lesbians are obligated as human beings to declare they cannot marry or if he meant they're not human beings. For him, either one is possible.

But finally, one more quote, this from Pastor Calvin Butts of the Abyssinian Baptist Church this past Sunday, referring to same-sex marriage:

Well, it’s something that we don’t believe in, in terms of what we have learned from the Bible. But in terms of men and women having their rights as citizens and human beings, we certainly affirm that. You should have every right as a citizen of this nation and every right as a human being to enjoy the freedom that God has given you. The choice is yours. And I should not stand in the way of you making that choice.

So for all of you wingnuts and Bible-thumpers out there: What is so hard to understand about that?

Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/02/mark-kirk-gay-marriage_n_2999668.html
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Decoder/2013/0330/Gay-marriage-opinion-shift-conservative-lawmakers-pundits-left-scrambling/%28page%29/2
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/26/supreme-court-proposition-8_n_2950615.html
http://mediamatters.org/research/2009/05/12/oreillys-ark-gay-marriage-could-lead-to-goat-du/150069
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/27/bill-oreilly-gay-marriage-thump-bible_n_2962110.html
http://www.salon.com/2013/04/02/alan_keyes_gay_marriage_is_the_archetype_of_all_crimes_against_humanity/
http://www.salon.com/2013/04/02/baptist_pastor_calvin_butts_marriage_equality_is_the_freedom_god_has_given_you/

Left Side of the Aisle #102 - Part 3

Good news #3: SCOTUS says "Down, boy!"

Another bit of good news comes from - gasp - the Supreme Court, which has - double-gasp - placed a limit on the search powers of police.

Just last week, in a 5-4 split, the Court ruled that police cannot bring drug-sniffing police dogs onto a suspect's property to look for evidence without first getting a search warrant. It involved the case of a Florida man who was arrested for marijuana trafficking after police, acting on a tip, brought a drug-sniffing dog to his front door. The dog smelled weed, the cops used that to get a warrant, and the bust followed. In its decision, the Court held that police had engaged in a trespass and an unconstitutional warrantless search and so the conviction must be tossed out.

What was interesting is that the 5-4 split was not the usual one: The majority consisted of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan - no surprises so far - Clarence Thomas, and Antonin Scalia. The four dissenters were John Roberts, Stephen Breyer, Anthony Kennedy, and Sam Alito.

In his opinion, writing for the majority, Scalia declared that a person has the Fourth Amendment right to be free from the government's gaze inside their home and in area surrounding it, which is called the curtilage.

In a truly weird dissent, see if you follow this, Sam Alito said that if it's not a trespass for a mail carrier to come on a porch for a brief period, then it's not a trespass for cops to do the same to collect evidence against an occupant - the difference in both intent and the desire or willingness of the occupant to have them there being, apparently, irrelevant. He then griped that according to the majority, the police officer in this case committed a trespass because he was accompanied during his "otherwise lawful visit" by his drug-sniffing dog. "Where," he wrote, "is the authority evidencing such a rule?"

Um, Sam? Maybe the Fourth Amendment? I assume you've heard of it.

The Court has already approved the use of drug-sniffing dogs in previous cases, including routine traffic stops. The difference for the majority in this case is that the dog was used at a home, described by Elena Kagen in a concurring opinion as "the most private and inviolate (or so we expect) of all the places and things the Fourth Amendment protects."

One quick footnote to this is that Kagen referred to a drug-sniffing dog as "a specialized device for discovering objects not in plain view (or plain smell)." That is an awareness that I wish would penetrate the skulls of the other members of the Court. It seems to me that that acknowledgement, particularly the use of the word "device," in and of itself marks the use of drug-sniffing dogs without a warrant as unconstitutional -  unless we are to argue, as it seems some are, that our privacy extends only so far as our most advanced technologies or "devices" cannot penetrate.

Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/26/drug-sniffing-dogs-unconstitutional-search_n_2956079.html

Left Side of the Aisle #102 - Part 2

Good news #2: UN treaty on arms sales

Another bit of good news, and something I doubt you heard about: On April 2, the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly approved the first international treaty to regulate the international arms trade, now etimated at $60 billion a year and rising rapidly.

The vote was 154-3, with 23 abstentions.

It will go into effect 90 days after 50 countries ratify it. It prohibits countries that ratify it from exporting conventional weapons if they violate arms embargoes, or if they promote acts of genocide, crimes against humanity, or war crimes, or if the exporting country believes they would be used in attacks against civilians or schools and hospitals. Exporters must also evaluate whether the weapons would be used by terrorists or organized crime and must take steps to prevent the weapons from being diverted to the black market.

The treaty covers a wide variety of military equipment from tanks, artillery systems, aircraft, warships, right down through helicopters and missiles to small arms and light weapons.

It comes as the result of more than ten years of effort and the vote produced loud cheers in the General Assembly chamber when it was posted.

The only "no" votes were cast by Iran, North Korea and Syria.

The US, which is the world's largest arms exporter, with about 30% of the world market, voted yes. Russia, which is the world's second largest arms exporter, with about 26% of the market, abstained. So did China, which, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, now ranks number five on the list of arms exporters.

Germany and France, the second- and third-largest arms exporters, voted yes, as did the UK, which has dropped to sixth place behind China. India, Indonesia, and many Arabs states abstained.

What impact the treaty will actually have remains to be seen, of course. A lot of good words and even good intentions across history have melted under the pressure of expediency, and this could prove to be just another case. A lot will depend on which countries ratify it and which ones don't and how strictly those countries implement it.

Which brings up the question of what are the chances for ratification here. I don't really need to go into that, do I? Treaties require the approval of 2/3 of the Senate and they can't muster a 3/5 vote to move ordinary legislation.

Oh, and here's a big surprise: Even though this refers only to international trade, has no bearing on domestic law, and so has no impact on the Second Amendment and in no way relates to gun sales or ownership domestically, the NRA and the gun manufacturers fought against it. As a result, in one of the amendments to the Senate Budget last month, Senators, ever eager to lick the jack boots of the gun lobby, voted 53-46 to stop the US from joining the treaty.

In other words, the US helped negotiate the thing, helped to push the thing, was praised for its work on the thing, voted for the thing, but no way is going to ratify the thing. Because pleasing the Nutzoid Rabbit-brains of America is more important than keeping missiles and guns out of the hands of terrorists and war criminals.

So we have to celebrate the treaty for what it is: a first step, a small step, a baby step, a declaration of principles in an area when many don't have any. In the words of Anthony Cordesman, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, it is

a noble gesture that may over time acquire the kind of precedence or enforcement that would give it meaning.

And then, after the immediate celebration, we have to ask ourselves how we can morally tolerate being the world's biggest dealer in death.

Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/02/un-adopts-arms-treaty-global-weapons-trade_n_2999505.html
http://www.salon.com/2013/04/02/u_n_adopts_arms_treaty/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/18/worlds-top-5-arms-exporters_n_2899052.html

Left Side of the Aisle #102 - Part 1

Good news #1: Not-so-secret drones

I've talked some about the White House drone program, and how it is so wrapped up in secrecy that it's hard to know just what's going on and how that's just how President Hopey-Changey likes it.

Well, now, not quite so much.

About two weeks ago, a federal appeals court in Washington, DC, ruled that the CIA, which until now has been running the targeted killing program on behalf of Obama, can no longer refuse to respond to Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, requests on secrecy grounds.

The ACLU had filed an FOIA request in January 2010, over three years ago, seeking to learn

when, where, and against whom drone strikes can be authorized, and how and whether the U.S. ensures compliance with international law restricting extrajudicial killings.

The CIA responded with a so-called “Glomar” response - a “neither confirm nor deny” response - arguing that it couldn't release any documents because even acknowledging such documents exist (and therefore acknowledging the existence of the program) would harm national security.

Initially, a district court agreed - and when the ACLU appealed, the White House continued to make that argument even after Obama's nominee to lead the CIA, John Brennan, spent hours before the Senate Intelligence Committee praising the CIA's targeted killing program and discussing how he would oversee it!

But the Appeals Court has overruled that lower-court decision, taking the astonishingly reasonable real-world attitude that the CIA cannot deny the existence of a targeted killing program that has been the subject of mainstream political discourse, Senate hearings, filibusters, and even remarks from Obama himself.

The drone program has already killed more than 4,000 people - nearly the number of US troops killed in the Iraq War - in an unknown number of countries. Quoting the ACLU,

The public surely has a right to know who the government is killing, and why, and in which countries, and on whose orders.

Now, it will be harder for The Amazing Mr. O. - who wanted, bizarrely, the courts to have to act as if no one knew what everyone knew - to hide behind a veil of secrecy. At least on this. And that is good news.

Sources:
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/15/federal_court_cia_cant_ignore_foias_on_drones/
http://www.aclu.org/national-security/dc-appeals-court-rejects-cias-secrecy-claims-aclus-targeted-killing-foia-lawsuit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/14/cia-aclu-drone-secrecy

Left Side of the Aisle #102

Left Side of the Aisle
for the week of April 4-10, 2013

Good news #1: Not-so-secret drones
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/15/federal_court_cia_cant_ignore_foias_on_drones/?source=newsletter
http://www.aclu.org/national-security/dc-appeals-court-rejects-cias-secrecy-claims-aclus-targeted-killing-foia-lawsuit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/14/cia-aclu-drone-secrecy

Good news #2: UN treaty on arms sales
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/02/un-adopts-arms-treaty-global-weapons-trade_n_2999505.html
http://www.salon.com/2013/04/02/u_n_adopts_arms_treaty/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/18/worlds-top-5-arms-exporters_n_2899052.html

Good news #3: SCOTUS says "Down, boy!"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/26/drug-sniffing-dogs-unconstitutional-search_n_2956079.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

Good news#4: Same-sex marriage continues to gain
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/02/mark-kirk-gay-marriage_n_2999668.html
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Decoder/2013/0330/Gay-marriage-opinion-shift-conservative-lawmakers-pundits-left-scrambling/%28page%29/2
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/26/supreme-court-proposition-8_n_2950615.html
http://mediamatters.org/research/2009/05/12/oreillys-ark-gay-marriage-could-lead-to-goat-du/150069
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/27/bill-oreilly-gay-marriage-thump-bible_n_2962110.html
http://www.salon.com/2013/04/02/alan_keyes_gay_marriage_is_the_archetype_of_all_crimes_against_humanity/
http://www.salon.com/2013/04/02/baptist_pastor_calvin_butts_marriage_equality_is_the_freedom_god_has_given_you/

Clown Award: Georgia GOP chair Sue Everhart
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/01/sue-everhart-gay-marriage_n_2991860.html

Outrage of the Week: Wal-mart will brook no opposition
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/20/cvs-workers-insurance_n_2915006.html
http://ehbs.kff.org/pdf/2012/8346.pdf
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/25/us-walmart-trespass-lawsuit-idUSBRE92O0W820130325
http://www.presstv.ir/usdetail/295341.html
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2013-03-26/news/os-walmart-sues-orange-protesters-20130326_1_wal-mart-workers-wal-mart-employees-wal-mart-stores
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_public_participation
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/SLAPP
http://www.anti-slapp.org/
http://www.anti-slapp.org/recent/in-a-new-aisle-energy-drinks-sidestep-some-rules/

Update #1: More transparency reports
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/03/us-law-enforcement-gets-most-customer-data-from-microsoft/

Update #2: Keystone XL pipeline
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/26/states_keystone_report_authors_also_okayed_explosive_caspian_pipeline/?source=newsletter

Left Side of the Aisle #101 - Part 4

Iraq at 10

I kept trying to prepare something, to write something, about the 10th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War. But I couldn't find the words. I couldn't find the words to express the sorrow and the anger, I couldn't find the words to express the memories of shame and frustration that we couldn't stop it, that we saw it coming, we watched it come and despite all our efforts, despite the efforts of tens of millions of people here and scores of people around that world, we were like King Canute trying to hold back the tide in the face of a megalomaniac White House and a Congress whose members stuffed their consciences under a pile of their campaign contributions and preferred passively imposing the risks and pain of war on others rather than accepting the merely political risks of casting which might have been an unpopular vote.

In recognition of the anniversary, we have seen a number of mea culpas from media figures shuffling their feet and going "gee whiz," trying with varying degrees of embarrassment to explain away what they now admit to have been their disastrously wrong endorsement of the war, often falling back on the line of "golly gee whillikers, everyone though Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction."

No, not everyone thought that. So as part of my own observance of the 10th anniversary and on my own behalf, I will note that in September 2002, I was writing to my Senators, telling them to resist demands for authority to attack Iraq. In that letter, I told about a silly joke that made the rounds when I was in college which “proved” not only that Alexander the Great had an infinite number of arms and legs but that he never existed in the first place. The first statement in this “proof” was that “All horses are black - proved by blatant assertion.” Of course, it later turned out that this was an important link in the chain of “logic” and by accepting it the listener had unwittingly helped the storyteller reach the obviously ridiculous conclusion.

It was, as I said, a silly, harmless joke - but it does, as I said at the time, point up the real-world dangers of accepting things “proved by blatant assertion.” Among which, I said, was the claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, citing the work of former Iraq arms inspector Scott Ritter and then-head Iraq arms inspector Hans Blix.

And then, on March 6, 2003, just two weeks before the war started, I wrote an unpublished op-ed which began this way:

"Before we go to war on Iraq, there’s a question about its weapons of mass destruction that needs to be answered: What weapons of mass destruction?

"Seriously. What weapons? Where? Months of effort, hundreds of inspections at hundreds of sites" - because, remember, by this time the inspectors had been back in Iraq for several months, but all those inspections - "have turned up, for all practical purposes, zilch. For months, the administration insisted it knew from intelligence reports exactly where those weapons were, what they were, and in what quantities. So where are they?"

So no, not everyone thought Saddam had WMDs. The ones who did were the ones who wanted to fool themselves for their own purposes and those in the public who were misinformed and malinformed by the pandering pundits eager to get a "good boy" pat on the head from members of the media and political elite.

Oh, and those who were lied to. As we all were. Lied to. Persistently. Consistently. Insistently. The whole justification, every part of the justification, every part of the sales pitch for war on Iraq was a lie. It was all proof by blatant assertion.

They knew. They knew it was all lies. By the spring of 2003, they knew that their main sources - Ahmed Chalabi, “Curveball,” and Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi - were all known or suspected to be liars by US intelligence. They knew that when they sent Colin Powell to the UN it was with fabricated data and assumptions presented as irrefutable fact, as they took every “maybe” and “possibly” in intelligence reports and presented them to the public as “certainly” and “unquestionably.” They knew it was lies.

They knew it had nothing to do with any "threat" for Iraq, because there wasn't one. They knew it had nothing to do with WMDs, which weren't there. They knew it had nothing to do with terrorism because bin Laden hated Saddam as much as they did. And they knew it had nothing to do with "liberating" Iraq but did have to do with the interest that dare not speak its name: oil, as we now know from former Bush speechwriter David Frum, who just wrote in Newsweek of "The Big" Dick Cheney spending, quoting him, "long hours together, contemplating the possibilities of a Western-oriented Iraq: an additional source of oil, an alternative to U.S. dependency on an unstable-looking Saudi Arabia."

So they got their war. And it was a complete disaster. Nearly 4500 US soldiers killed. At least 32,000 wounded. Nearly a trillion dollars spent. And we don't know how many Iraqis were killed; the lowest estimate, using the strictest definition of war-caused death and the surest verification, is 112,000. Other estimates, using standard methodologies and a broader definition of war-caused death, run to nearly 1.5 million. What we do know is that there are now at least tens of thousands of people in Iraq who have been blinded or maimed or crippled because of the war.

And what have we gotten for all that pain, all that suffering, all that loss?

Is Iraq a democracy? No. In practice, PM Nouri al-Maliki is consolidating his personal power on the road toward a dictatorship.

Is Iraq peaceful? No. Bloody sectarian violence unleashed by our invasion continues. The car bomb in this photo went off outside the fortified so-called "Green Zone" in Baghdad on March 19. It was one of 12 bombs that went off in the city that day, killing 56 and wounding more than 200. Another eight bombs were detonated in other places, bringing the death toll to at least 65. Another attack earlier this month in Baghdad killed 30.

Unemployment is officially 10% - but some estimates say it's as high as 35%. Many still lack basic services such as water and electricity and corruption is rampant. A 2011 poll of Iraqi men under 30 by the Babil Centre for Human Rights and Civil Development found that 89% of them wanted to leave the country.

As for us? We got, for an abbreviated list, acceptance of torture, we got warrantless surveillance, we got the Patriot Act, more properly called the Traitor Act for its impact on our privacy and liberties, we got vastly expanded government secrecy and vastly expanded goverment ability to poke, prod, and pry into our private lives.

And what is worst, what is the absolute worst about all this? We have learned nothing. Nothing! Even now the war drums are beating about Iran. Even now the "threat" of Iran is being hyped with breathless references to some supposed nuclear weapons program. Even now we have President Hopey-Changey declaring that Iran is about a year away from developing a nuclear weapon. And just like 10 years ago, it's all proof by blatant assertion. There is no evidence that Iran is actually pursuing a nuclear weapon. Regular inspections have failed to turn up any evidence of that. The most recent National Intelligence Estimate says that there is no evidence Iran has made a decision to pursue building a nuke.

Despite that, when inspections reveal that Iran has converted some of its enriched uranium into a form that can't be used for weapons but only for research, this is not taken as any suggestion that Iran is not trying to build a nuke, but rather that, in the words of the March 11 issue of "Time," that "Iran itself has slowed down its efforts." In other words, it's taken to mean that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons, it's just doing it more slowly. Proof by blatant assertion, embraced by a complicit, complacent media.

It's 2013 and it's 2003 all over again.

[A PS: Before anyone gives me grief about it, I know that the photo of the demonstration does not come from before the war started; in fact it's from 2005. But I was pressed for time and couldn't find a good shot of a pre-war demo that would look good on TV. Live with it.]

Sources:
http://news.firedoglake.com/2013/03/25/bill-keller-new-york-times-published-bad-unsourced-unskeptical-stories-in-run-up-to-iraq-war/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/18/david-frum-iraq-war-oil
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/17/dick-cheney-ahmed-chalabi_n_2897357.html
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2013/03/18/the-speechwriter-inside-the-bush-administration-during-the-iraq-war.html
http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/
http://costofwar.com/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/16/iraq-war-anniversary-10-years-legacy_n_2890583.html?ref=topbar
http://my.firedoglake.com/efbeall/2013/03/17/the-iraq-anniversary-and-the-washington-post/
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/belief/baghdad-bombings-iraq-war-sunni-shia?google_editors_picks=true
http://reliefweb.int/report/iraq/violent-decade-shatters-dreams-iraqi-youth
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/19/iraq-attacks-baghdad-bombings_n_2905264.html
http://www.juancole.com/2013/03/teens-drowning-hopelessness.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/14/obama-iran-over-year-away-from-nuclear-bomb_n_2877890.html
http://www.fair.org/blog/2013/03/08/times-ticking-clock-on-war-with-iran/

Left Side of the Aisle #101 - Part 3

Clown Award: Plymouth County Sheriff Joe McDonald

The Clown Award, given for meritorious stupidity. This week the big red nose goes to our own Plymouth County Sheriff Joe McDonald.

So Sheriff Joe attended a GOPper St. Patrick’s Day breakfast in Scituate a week or so ago and told a supposed joke about Barack Obama getting assassinated. I assume you heard about this, but if you didn't, it involves him asking previous presidents for advice. Washington tells him, "never tell a lie." Jefferson says "respect the Constitution." Lincoln says "go to the theater."

The joke, if you can call it that, is utterly tasteless, especially at a time when gun violence is an issue before the nation. At the dinner it got, thankfully, only "scattered" laughter, according to reports, the audience apparently having better taste than McDonald did.

Instead of laughter, what McDonald did get - and which he apparently did not expect - was serious pushback from the blogosphere after the site Blue Mass Group posted an account. Now, you might think that the response of a reasonable person at this point would be to say something like "Well, okay, yeah, maybe it was kinda tasteless. It was only meant as a joke, I didn't mean to offend anyone. Sorry." And then move on.

But not our Joe, oh no, instead he went on about how the joke is 160 years old and was originally told about Andrew Johnson and has been applied to a number of presidents since.

And how is that supposed to make a difference? What, is this joke supposed to be like wine, getting better with age? Racist jokes, ethnic jokes, rape jokes, they've all been around that long and longer. Does make them okay? Hey, there were minstrel shows 160 years ago - maybe we should bring those back!

Now, obviously this joke isn't nearly as bad as those and I'm not saying it is. But the point remains that just because something has been said before doesn't make it any less tasteless - and I am amazed and rather appalled that he just doesn't seem to understand that.

In fact, not only doesn't he get it, he turned it into an opportunity to rant about "the transparent hypocrisy of the left" and to liken his critics to Nazis, saying "this is America in 2013, not Germany in 1936."

He even, to show how buffoonish the thing got, referred to some blog posts and said he had to "worry about being charged with treason." As the result of what, some comment on a blog? I can't figure out which is more absurd: the possibility that he takes such a notion seriously or the possibility that he expects the rest of us to.

One other thing: He referred to another joke he told which he said didn't get anyone upset. It was how Obama told the new pope that he was glad he, that is, Obama, didn't get elected because it would have been a step down from Messiah. Now, I can give you two reasons why that didn't upset people: One, it's funnier. Two, it's not about killing someone. Why is that so hard to understand?

Now, the truth is, McDonald was right about one thing: This so-called joke has been told by both sides about recent presidents of both parties - and not just presidents, as Hillary Clinton was also a butt of the joke. But that doesn't change the fact that joking about assassination, especially at a time when, again, gun violence is on people's minds, is utterly and thoroughly tasteless and the fact that Joe McDonald can't seem to recognize that but instead rants about "hypocrisy" and "Nazis" marks him as a total clown.

Sources:
http://bluemassgroup.com/2013/03/gop-breakfast-disaster/
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2013/03/19/local-sheriff-recycles-a-terrible-presidential-assassination-joke/
http://www.wickedlocal.com/carver/news/x1433799469/Plymouth-Countys-Sheriff-Joe-McDonald-fielding-calls-for-resignation?zc_p=1#axzz2OcRVqt4a

Left Side of the Aisle #101 - Part 2

Congressional Progressive Caucus budget

For at least the third year in a row, the Congressional Progressive Caucus produced a proposed federal budget. For the third year in a row, it was one that reduced the deficit as much as or even more than either the GOPper one or the official Dem one and did so without going after Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or any other domestic program; indeed it improved them.

And for the third time in a row, despite or in fact because of its merits, it went down to crushing defeat, this time by a vote of 84-327. Every GOPper and a majority of Dems voted against it.

So what was in this budget that didn't even deserve to get a majority of the Democrats in the House? Well, it was called the "Back to Work" budget and it focused on economic growth. It proposed $2.1 trillion stimulus and investment package over the next three years, with $700 million in stimulus coming in the first year. The package included $425 billion for infrastructure construction and repair, $340 billion in middle-class tax cuts, a $450 billion public-works program, and $179 billion in state and local aid to relieve the pressure on local budgets.

What would it accomplish? According to analysis, it would create nearly 7 million additional jobs and expand the economy by nearly 6%. It would expand programs on education, clean energy, and jobs, it would improve health care programs, all while protecting not only the Big Three - Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid - but also other programs for the poor and the environment.

How would it pay for this? Largely by raising taxes on the rich (to levels still below that of the Reagan years) and cutting unnecessary military spending. In other words, it would stimulate the economy and cut the deficit by $4.4 trillion by implementing a series of measures on both spending and taxes whose support among the American public ranges from mere majorities to overwhelming.

So of course it was dead on arrival.

Why? Well, why wouldn't it be? The fact that it works, the numbers work, and it's based on policies that the public supports don't count for anything when all the "serious" people, all the pundits and politicos, insist that you just have to go after the dreaded "entitlements" monster.

Don't confuse them with facts and certainly don't expect anything to penetrate their insular alternative to reality. Anything that doesn't attack Social Security and the rest, anything that doesn't involve embracing right-wing talking points about how all our economic problems are the fault of poverty pimps and greedy geezers, anything that dares to suggest that maybe the rich should be paying taxes at the same rate they paid 30 years ago (which is a lower rate than they paid 40 years ago), anything that fails to express the required level of panic about "the deficit crisis," is in their minds by definition "unserious," not worthy of consideration.

"Well," all the media mainstays snipe, "of course it wasn't serious: Everyone knew it wasn't going to pass."

Yes, that's true. It's equally true that everyone knew that Paul Rantin's budget had zero chance, but that didn't stop you first from breathlessly reporting its imminent arrival, then drooling over it with loving strokes and lengthy coverage once it came out. The blunt fact is, there were two main differences between those two budgets: One was a real budget that would have worked and would have improved the lives of millions; the other was a minimally-altered rehash of discredited nonsense that would not have worked and would have improved the lives only of the privileged rich. The other difference was that precisely for that reason, the first budget stood outside what the pundits and politicos have decided is the acceptable range of debate and the latter is inside that same range - again, precisely for that reason: The second budget favors the rich over the poor and the needless over the needy and undercuts the Big Three. That is why the second budget got all that coverage and the first one didn't: It fit the acceptable, the "serious" mold, and reality be damned.

Don't believe me about the coverage? Go to Google news or any other decent news aggregator and do a search. You'll find that links to the Congressional Progressive Caucus budget are, almost without exception, to sources like "The Nation," "In These Times," ThinkProgress, Huffington Post, and similar more or less admittedly liberal outfits. Do the same for Paul Rantin's so-called budget and it's full of links to the New York Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times, the major networks, and so on.

The difference between these budgets and their respective coverage comes down to the difference between the rich and the poor, between the powerful and the powerless.

It's not so much that we have government of, by, and for the rich as it is a case of that the rich get to set the rules: They get to define the terms used in the debate, to define the limits of debate, terms and limits which are then faithfully accepted by their media lackeys and political puppets so that the alternatives of which the public is aware are limited to those acceptable to the rich, the powerful, the elite. They don't need to have a plutocracy. They know that this way, they may lose a few skirmishes, but the trend is all in their favor, as our history of the past 40 or 50 years clearly demonstrates. They don't need to rule openly, in fact they prefer not to. They prefer to sit back, to be the man behind the curtain who we are never supposed to see.

An unhappy footnote to this: Rep. Raul Grijalva, author of the Progressive Caucus budget, called the vote "a good showing," adding "every time we present it, we gain another ten votes." Terrific. At that rate, it will take 14 years to get a majority.

Sources:
http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-back-to-work-budget-didnt-pass.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/03/14/house-progressives-have-the-best-answer-to-paul-ryan/?tid=pm_business_pop
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/us-budget_b_2897688.html
http://blog.ourfuture.org/20130315/back-to-work-budget-vs-ryanrepublican-budget-which-reflects-polls-and-election-results
http://www.epi.org/files/2013/EPI-Back-To-Work-Budget-FY2014.pdf
http://taxfoundation.org/article/us-federal-individual-income-tax-rates-history-1913-2013-nominal-and-inflation-adjusted-brackets
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/cepr-blog/the-congressional-progressive-caucus-budget-a-serious-budget-that-the-serious-people-wont-take-seriously
http://www.epi.org/publication/back-to-work-budget-analysis-congressional-progressive/
http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/uploads/Back%20to%20Work%20Budget%20-%20Executive%20Summary.pdf
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/03/14/back_to_work_budget_congressional_progressive_caucus_unveils_left_wing_budget.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutocracy
http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/house/289325-house-rejects-dem-budget-plans-gop-slams-obamas-missing-budget

Left Side of the Aisle #101 - Part 1

More good news on same-sex marriage

A bit of good news to start the day. Last week, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper signed into law a measure recognizing civil unions for same sex couples in the state. The law takes effect May 1.

In 2006, Colorado became one of the states stampeded by bigotry and fear into adopting an amendment to the state constitution defining marriage as one man and one woman, so the legislature could not adopt a same-sex marriage bill. But there was nothing to prevent the establishment of civil unions that are virtually the same in all respects except for the title.

Colorado thus will join eight states that have civil unions or similar laws; a few more have some form of domestic partnership which provides at least some of the same benefits as a marriage or a civil union. Nine states and the District of Columbia allow gay marriage, a number that may increase by two this year.

This of course takes place in the atmosphere of the Supreme Court's consideration of California's Proposition 8, or Prop Hate as it came to be known, and about DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act. Oral arguments took place Tuesday and Wednesday in the face of increasing expressions of public support for same-sex marriage that are threatening to go beyond an outpouring and into a deluge.

In addition to such high-profile voices as Rob Portman and Hillary Clinton, there are lower-profile but still politically-significant voices coming around, including current Sens. Claire McCaskill, Mark Warner, Jay Rockefeller, and Tim Johnson, as well as former senators Bill Bradley, Tom Daschle, Christopher Dodd, and Alan Simpson. The latter four submitted a friend-of-the-court brief in support of same-sex marriage. Significantly, those four, along with Warner and Rockefeller, all voted for DOMA when it was before the Senate in 1996.

Meanwhile, the American Academy of Pediatrics has declared support for marriage equality for all consenting adults as, it said, a way of providing long-term security and benefits for their children. It also endorsed full adoption and foster care rights for all parents, regardless of sexual orientation.

And the American Sociological Association has declared that children in same-sex households do just as well as those in opposite-sex ones, thus rejecting one of the arguments used against same-sex marriages. In the course of that, it specifically and by name repudiated a junk science effort published last year which claimed - falsely - to have proved that an opposite-sex couple is the gold standard for child welfare.

By the way, the AMA endorsed same-sex marriage over 18 months ago, saying such a ban is “discriminatory” and leads to disparities in health care that hurt both families and children.

Standing against this tide, we have people like retiring Sen. Saxby Chambliss, who expressed his staunch opposition to same-sex marriage last week, saying, quoting, "I’m not gay. So I’m not going to marry one." That's a statement which I doubt is going to leave too many broken hearts in its wake.

Now, there is no particular reason to think the members of the reactionary wing of the Supreme Court will remove their ideological blinders long enough to take any more note of changing public opinion than they have of precedent of precedent in previous decisions, but on the other hand it has long been said that the members of the Court read the polls  and it's certainly possible to wonder how many of them are prepared to leave a legacy of standing on the wrong side of history, to wonder how many want to be remembered by history for being part of the Dred Scott v. Sandford or the Plessy v. Ferguson of this generation.

It will also be interesting to see how Chief Justice John Roberts reacts to the various friend of the court briefs filed by right-wing groups, which generally use a narrow definition of "family" - a man, a woman, and their biological children - and especially to the statement of John Eastman, chairman of the National Organization for Marriage, who said that adopted children are "the second-best option." John Roberts and his wife have two children - both adopted.

Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/21/colorado-civil-unions-to-be-signed-law_n_2926949.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/21/aap-same-sex-marriage_n_2917491.html
http://www.whattoexpect.com/wom/family-life/0321/aap-supports-same-sex-marriage.aspx
http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/03/06/1671581/21-senators-who-voted-for-doma-in-1996-but-later-opposed-it/
http://www.buzzfeed.com/chrisgeidner/law-professors-congress-didnt-have-the-right-to-pass-doma
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-becker/supreme-court-american-sociological-association-gay-parents_b_2783523.html
http://www.back2stonewall.com/2011/06/american-medical-association-endorses.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/14/john-eastman-national-organization-marriage-adoption-second-best_n_2877225.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/21/saxby-chambliss-gay-marriage_n_2923091.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/sepbutequal.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott_v._Sandford

Left Side of the Aisle #101

Left Side of the Aisle
for the week of March 28-April 3, 2013

This week:

More good news on same-sex marriage
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/21/colorado-civil-unions-to-be-signed-law_n_2926949.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/21/aap-same-sex-marriage_n_2917491.html
http://www.whattoexpect.com/wom/family-life/0321/aap-supports-same-sex-marriage.aspx
http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/03/06/1671581/21-senators-who-voted-for-doma-in-1996-but-later-opposed-it/
http://www.buzzfeed.com/chrisgeidner/law-professors-congress-didnt-have-the-right-to-pass-doma
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-becker/supreme-court-american-sociological-association-gay-parents_b_2783523.html
http://www.back2stonewall.com/2011/06/american-medical-association-endorses.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/14/john-eastman-national-organization-marriage-adoption-second-best_n_2877225.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/21/saxby-chambliss-gay-marriage_n_2923091.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

Congressional Progressive Caucus budget
http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-back-to-work-budget-didnt-pass.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/03/14/house-progressives-have-the-best-answer-to-paul-ryan/?tid=pm_business_pop
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/us-budget_b_2897688.html
http://blog.ourfuture.org/20130315/back-to-work-budget-vs-ryanrepublican-budget-which-reflects-polls-and-election-results
http://www.epi.org/files/2013/EPI-Back-To-Work-Budget-FY2014.pdf
http://taxfoundation.org/article/us-federal-individual-income-tax-rates-history-1913-2013-nominal-and-inflation-adjusted-brackets
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/cepr-blog/the-congressional-progressive-caucus-budget-a-serious-budget-that-the-serious-people-wont-take-seriously
http://www.epi.org/publication/back-to-work-budget-analysis-congressional-progressive/
http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/uploads/Back%20to%20Work%20Budget%20-%20Executive%20Summary.pdf
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/03/14/back_to_work_budget_congressional_progressive_caucus_unveils_left_wing_budget.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutocracy
http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/house/289325-house-rejects-dem-budget-plans-gop-slams-obamas-missing-budget

Clown Award: Plymouth County Sheriff Joe McDonald
http://bluemassgroup.com/2013/03/gop-breakfast-disaster/
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2013/03/19/local-sheriff-recycles-a-terrible-presidential-assassination-joke/
http://www.wickedlocal.com/carver/news/x1433799469/Plymouth-Countys-Sheriff-Joe-McDonald-fielding-calls-for-resignation?zc_p=1#axzz2OcRVqt4a

Iraq at 10
http://news.firedoglake.com/2013/03/25/bill-keller-new-york-times-published-bad-unsourced-unskeptical-stories-in-run-up-to-iraq-war/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/18/david-frum-iraq-war-oil
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/17/dick-cheney-ahmed-chalabi_n_2897357.html
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2013/03/18/the-speechwriter-inside-the-bush-administration-during-the-iraq-war.html
http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/
http://costofwar.com/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/16/iraq-war-anniversary-10-years-legacy_n_2890583.html?ref=topbar
http://my.firedoglake.com/efbeall/2013/03/17/the-iraq-anniversary-and-the-washington-post/
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/belief/baghdad-bombings-iraq-war-sunni-shia?google_editors_picks=true
http://reliefweb.int/report/iraq/violent-decade-shatters-dreams-iraqi-youth
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/19/iraq-attacks-baghdad-bombings_n_2905264.html
http://www.juancole.com/2013/03/teens-drowning-hopelessness.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/14/obama-iran-over-year-away-from-nuclear-bomb_n_2877890.html
http://www.fair.org/blog/2013/03/08/times-ticking-clock-on-war-with-iran/

One last time

Okay, I just posted my response to a libertarian. He responded with a new post on his site, addressing - or at least pretending to address - some of what I said.

So one more round. I hope to put an end to this now, because I've been on this merry-go-round many many times before and I'm tired of hearing the same old arguments and the same old talking points and the same old self-centeredness that I heard my gosh 30 or 40 years ago. A whole new generation of libertarians without a single new idea.

Anyway, following is the comment I posted at his site. The quotes from his post are added here for context, so that you should be able to follow the argument without reading his entire post, but the link is above in case you feel you "have to" read the whole thing or think you need additional context. With that and the additional note that, as I expect is obvious, his quotes are the ones in italics, here it is:

Briefly (at least relatively) and as a final word so as not to be a "troll," even though it's not always the commenters who are the trolls:

[H]e assumes that as an advocate of the free-market I’m primarily “afraid of somebody taking [my] stuff.”  ... I’m most decidedly a member of the 99%. 

I never said you were part of the 1%; I never even vaguely hinted at it. What I said was that your primary interest was in protecting your "stuff" and that such protection was what for you defined the concept of justice. Nothing you say here gives me any reason to change that judgment.

I am a WHAM (white heterosexual able-bodied male), and as such do not suffer from some of the disadvantages Lotus cites. True, but beside the point.

Except for some infirmities of advancing age, I am also a WHAM. The relevance of identity has to do with being able to connect on some emotional level, some level of actual awareness, not just philosophically or intellectually, with those who have faced (and still face) challenges which you have (and do) not. (It's called "empathy." Look it up.) I have met and known many libertarians (no exaggeration). I have known many who were, like me, working class. I have known many who could have used some help. But I have never met one who was in the position of actually needing help of a sort that was not immediately and freely available from a friend or a family member; that is, help beyond that available via a phone call or a knock on a door. And I have yet to meet one who can conceive of such need existing. I say it is that failure that defines the libertarian mind.

Do I know how it feels to be a poor black?  No, but Herman Cain does, and I doubt Lotus would listen to him, either.

As for Herman Cain, I have heard him. And I congratulate him on his rags-to-riches story - but it would matter a lot more if he used that story as anything more than a self-promoting rhetorical device, if instead he used it to remind himself and others of the people who grew up around him who worked just as hard and just as long as he did but didn't get nearly as far (or, perhaps, anywhere). Yes, yes, yes, hard work matters in success - but so does luck, and to a far greater extent than most of us are prepared to admit.

If I’ve adequately demonstrated I’m not part of the 1%, then I become one of their stooges....

I said nothing about you being a "stooge." I suggest you stop trying to put words in my mouth; I guarantee you I won't swallow them. I did say that your "principles" consist of "me and mine and I have no obligation of any sort to anyone else." Again, you give me no reason to change my mind about that.

I readily admit that the “‘have to’ thing” is a rhetorical framing device, and an effective one at that. ... If I want to do something, and you’ll shoot me if I do it, you’re using force to stop me.  Lotus never refutes or denies this. ... You can make the case that you have the right to make me do something for my own good, to please God, or to make me do something for somebody else, but in each of these cases, you’re arguing that you have the right to make me.

The “‘have to’ thing” is an "effective" device only because, as I said, it's easy to win an argument when you get to define the meaning of all the terms. Of course I didn't deny that "If I want to do something, and you’ll shoot me if I do it, you’re using force to stop me," because the statement is trivial, the observation banal. You don't respond to my argument, you merely cite it, then ignore it and just repeat your previous claim at greater length. The point, again, is that you allow for no meaning of "have to" other than force. There are no moral "have to"s, no ethical "have to"s, no "I have to do this even though I don't want to because it's just the right thing to do, dammit"s, no social obligations (a word with which, as I said, libertarians seem singularly unfamiliar) of any sort, no demands of conscience to restrict or direct behavior. Is there anything you do because if you didn't, you couldn't live with yourself? Is there anything you refrain from doing for the same reason? Answer "yes" to either of those questions and you are admitting that your limitation of "have to" to "outside force" is wrong. Answer "no" and you brand yourself the "monster" to which you jokingly referred.

I have said before, I say again now: Libertarianism is nothing but an intellectualized justification for selfishness and lack of concern with the welfare of others. One more time, nothing you have written here has given me any reason to alter that judgment.

As a sort of PS, here is a question I hope you will address as part of that upcoming post: I think we agree that society as a whole, acting through government, has a responsibility to protect the "stuff" of the members of that society, that is, to protect them against crime (avoiding for the moment the philosophical argument about how what constitutes "crime" is a creation of that society). Can that same society, as a condition of providing that protection, require anything of those same members? Can it legitimately say they "have to" do something or not do something? (Note that "Yes, it can require them not to commit crimes" is not an answer because that is included in the universal protection already agreed and so is merely a restatement of the original premise.)

To put it differently, I assume you believe in contracts and that it's proper and reasonable for each party to "have to" live up to their part of the bargain. Can society as a whole, as part of the social contract, legitimately tell an individual member that "in exchange for the protections you are given, you must do such-and-so even if you don't want to?" If yes, what is the objection to "have to?" If no, why not? Why can people make demands on society while denying any necessity of offering anything in return?