Wednesday
Apr232014
The Commentariat -- April 24, 2014
Internal links removed.
Gail Collins: "A century or so ago, when Americans were trying to imagine the year 2000, the talk was about ending social ills.... In 1964 at the [World's F]air, everyone was thinking about building stuff.... And what about our visions of the future now? Imagining things 50 years in the future, our novelists and scriptwriters generally see things getting worse -- civilizations crash, zombies arrive, the environment implodes."
Net Neutrality, R.I.P. Edward Wyatt of the New York Times: "The principle that all Internet content should be treated equally as it flows through cables and pipes to consumers looks all but dead. Companies like Disney, Google or Netflix will be allowed to pay Internet service providers like Comcast and Verizon for special, faster lanes to send video and other content to their customers under new rules to be proposed by the Federal Communications Commission, the agency said on Wednesday. The proposed rules are a turnaround for the agency.... The proposal comes three months after a federal appeals courtstruck down, for the second time, agency rules intended to guarantee a free and open Internet."
Sabrina Tavernise of the New York Times: "The Food and Drug Administration will propose sweeping new rules on Thursday that for the first time would extend its regulatory authority from cigarettes to electronic cigarettes, popular nicotine delivery devices that have grown into a multibillion-dollar business with virtually no federal oversight or protections for American consumers."
Jeff Goodell in Rolling Stone: President Obama is finally moving on climate change abatement. Plus: "Although no final decision has been made, two high-level sources in the Obama administration told me recently that the president has all but decided to deny the permit for the [Keystone XL] pipeline -- a dramatic move that would light up Democratic voters and donors while further provoking the wrath of Big Oil."
Fox, Henhouse. Carol Leonnig of the Washington Post: "The top watchdog for the Department of Homeland Security altered and delayed investigations at the request of senior administration officials, compromising his independent role as an inspector general, according to a new report from a Senate oversight panel. Charles K. Edwards, who served as acting DHS inspector general from 2011 through 2013, routinely shared drinks and dinner with department leaders and gave them inside information about the timing and findings of investigations, according to the report from an oversight panel of the Homeland Security and Government Operations Committee. A year-long bipartisan investigation by the panel also found that Edwards improperly relied on the advice of top political advisers to then-Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and acquiesced to their suggestions about the wording and timing of three separate reports."
Yo, Darrell. Maybe an Actual IRS Scandal. Jim Puzzanghera of the Los Angeles Times: "The IRS handed out a total of nearly $1.1 million in bonuses in a 27-month period to more than 1,146 employees who had been disciplined for failing to pay taxes, according to an inspector general's report.... The IRS' contract with the National Treasury Employees Union states that disciplinary action or investigations do not preclude an employee from receiving a bonus or other performance award unless it would damage the integrity of the agency.... The IRS issued a statement saying that it already was making changes to its bonus policy.... As of the end of the 2011 fiscal year, federal employees and retirees combined owed $3.5 billion in delinquent taxes, according to the IRS." (That's employees or retires of all federal agencies, not just the IRS.) ...
... CW: Worth bearing in mind is that the inspector general who oversaw this report is Russell George, the same Dubya appointee who invented the Picking-on-the-Tea-Party "scandal."
David Savage of the Los Angeles Times: "Victims of child pornography whose images of sexual abuse have circulated on the Internet may claim damages from every person caught with illegal images, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday. But justices rejected the idea that a single person who possesses such images may be assessed the full amount due to the victim, setting aside a $3.4-million verdict against a Texas man in a favor of a woman whose childhood rape was photographed and widely circulated on the Internet."
Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post: "The Navy has reassigned a former commander of the Blue Angels, its acrobatic fighter squadron, and is investigating allegations that the elite team of pilots was a hotbed of hazing, sexual harassment and other forms of discrimination, documents show."
Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post: "Obama's visit to the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, or Mirikan, aimed to highlight both Japan's technological prowess and the renewal of a 10-year scientific collaboration agreement between the two countries. While the event had plenty of examples of how the two countries are working together -- including a pre-recorded message from the International Space Station's Japanese commander and two American flight engineers serving alongside him -- the real stars of the show were a couple of robots":
... Dana Milbank: "Nothing is wrong with an American president spreading goodwill and eating good sushi, but the photo-op nature of the trip risks contributing to a perception that Obama's Asian policy, and his foreign policy in general, is similarly itinerant. He's seeing the sights, getting some good pics and moving along -- more tourist than architect of world affairs." ...
... CW: Here's Why. Edward-Isaac Dovere of Politico: "President Barack Obama's in Asia this week pushing a deal that almost none of his allies at home want. On the Hill, most of the pushback is coming from the president's fellow Democrats, who say it undercuts the economic fairness argument that's a central focus of his midterm strategy. Despite Obama's support for the agreement, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi have made clear they don't have much interest in the Tran-Pacific Partnership or broader fast-track trade authority passing before November -- if then."
Revenge of the Sun God. Carter Eskew, one of the WashPo editorial page's pseudo-Democrats, makes a good point in spite of himself: the Koch brothers' self-serving, extensive campaign against solar energy could backfire on the Koch's GOP handmaidens -- especially in the South, Ma & Pa like their solar panels, & the GOP-Koch team is trying to kill them.
Senate Races
Daniel Strauss of TPM: "Like clockwork, the consistently wrong Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol quickly moved to 'unskew' a set of new polls showing Democrats in surprisingly good shape in a handful of Senate races where Republicans have long been regarded as the favorites." ...
... Jon Terbush of the Week: "The Republican National Committee's response: 'Desperate after losing Nate Silver, The New York Times published a poll taken from people they found outside the DSCC who confidently predicted they'd keep the Senate.'" ...
... Brian Beutler of the New Republic: "... conservatives rushed straight to the internals to discredit the poll in almost exactly the same way they unskewed the 2012 polls to show Romney doing much better than he actually was." ...
... CW: Nonetheless, it's not time to breath a sigh of relief. As Beutler points out, "polling this far out probably doesn't tell us anything terribly useful."
Jame Hohmann of Politico: "U.S. Chamber of Commerce polling, conducted by Fabrizio, Lee & Associates last Wednesday and Thursday, shows the Colorado Senate race is a dead heat with the climate favorable for the GOP. The internal survey, obtained exclusively by Politico, has Republican Rep. Cory Gardner up by 2 points among likely voters, 44 percent to 42 percent, over Democratic Sen. Mark Udall. Libertarian Party candidate Gaylon Kent pulls 7 percent. This is within the 4-point margin of error."
Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "Black voters ... will play a huge role in determining whether the president's party can stop Republicans from taking the Senate" in 2014.
Presidential Race
David Corn of Mother Jones: Rand Paul's presidential ambitions have made him a Reagan fan (to a fault, of course). It wasn't always thus. He used to say "Jimmy Carter had a better record on fiscal discipline than Reagan." ...
... Brooks Jackson of FactCheck.org: "Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul claimed that 20 million jobs were created after President Ronald Reagan's dramatic tax cuts in the 1980s, and that this was the 'last time' such job growth took place. Paul is wrong on both counts."
Beyond the Beltway
Jim Galloway of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "Gov. Nathan Deal signed legislation today that would vastly expand where Georgians can legally carry firearms, a proposal that has drawn heaps of praise and scorn from outside groups.... House Bill 60, which passed in the final hours of this year's legislative session, allows Georgians to legally carry firearms in a wide range of new places, including schools, bars, churches and government buildings. A recent analysis also said it could let felons use the state's 'stand your ground' rules to claim self-defense if they feel threatened." ...
... CW: Seems like an excellent law. However, HB 60 is not the top news in today's AJC. No, it's about a deadly shooting in an Cobb County mall: "Danny Wray Brown ... pulled out a gun and began shooting Monday afternoon at the Cobb County mall. 'He just let go and started shooting," [Devin] Cummings[, a man who tried to help the victim,] said. One shot hit a car and one hit the Macy's building, Cummings said. But at least one shot struck Violet Lambert, killing her.... Within hours of the shooting outside the mall, Brown was found dead in his home of a self-inflicted gunshot, police said." ...
... Niraj Chokshi of the Washington Post has more on what the bill sanctions. It's pretty horrible. Here are a couple of the brilliant provisions: "Firearms dealers no longer need to maintain records of sales and purchases.... The fingerprinting requirement for licenses is now removed.... No one is allowed to maintain a database of information on license holders that spans multiple jurisdictions."
Stephanie Strom of the New York Times: "Going further than any state so far, Vermont on Wednesday passed a law requiring the labeling of foods that contain genetically engineered ingredients."
CW: If you think Vermont is all healthy living punctuated by occasional dips into Cherry Garcia, it ain't. The state also has permissive gun laws. According to Wikipedia, "The state of Vermont neither issues nor requires a permit to carry a weapon on one's person, openly or concealed. The term 'Vermont Carry' is widely used by gun rights advocates to refer to this permissive stance on gun control...."
Ben Strauss of the New York Times: "A National Labor Relations Board official took a historic step last month in ruling that Northwestern's scholarship football players should be considered employees of the university and therefore had the right to unionize like other workers. And then, almost immediately, Northwestern began a wide-ranging campaign to defeat a unionization vote, which is scheduled for Friday."
Catherine Thompson of TPM: "Now that he's won a confrontation with the Bureau of Land Management over grazing his cattle on federal land, Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy has time to hold court on everything from abortion to the current state of 'the Negro.' ... 'They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I've often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn't get no more freedom. They got less freedom.'... The Times reached out to spokespeople for Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Dean Heller (R-NV), who have spoken in support of Bundy, and for Texas Attorney Gen. Greg Abbott (R)." Funny thing, they all distanced themselves from Bundy. ...
... Here's the Times story, by Adam Nagourney. ...
... CW: BUT what will Sean Hannity do? See Infotainment.
News Ledes
... New York Times The Lede: "Separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine released the American journalist Simon Ostrovsky on Thursday, three days after he was taken prisoner in the town of Slovyansk while filming a video report for Vice News. The Brooklyn-based news organization confirmed his release in a statement, which was followed by a tweet from the correspondent."
Guardian: Ukrainian troops are moving against pro-Russian separatists. The Guardian's liveblog is here. ...
... New York Times Update: "Russia announced on Thursday that it was immediately starting military drills involving its army and air force along the border with Ukraine, harshly criticizing the government there for moving against pro-Russian forces occupying various government buildings in a show of force that left a still-undetermined number of people killed and wounded." ...
Washington Post: "Three American medical staff members died when an Afghan security official opened fire Thursday at an American-run Christian hospital in Kabul in the latest violence targeting foreigners in Afghanistan."
Guardian: "Pupils at the elite Southbank International School in London were victims of serial paedophile teacher William Vahey, the school has confirmed. The scale of the abuse is expected to be revealed later on Thursday in a letter to parents.... Vahey, a 64-year-old American who taught at Southbank between 2009 and 2013, killed himself after being found with 90 images of boys. The FBI believe the children were drugged with sleeping pills and molested in assaults dating back to 2008."
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Reader Comments (17)
The new Georgia firearms law is indeed horrifying. I will never set foot in Georgia, which kills my dream of seeing Savannah. The people there seem crazy, and the climate dangerous. No thanks
The airport provisions of the Georgia law are so disturbing that my wife and I are considering changing our vacation flight northward so we won't have a layover in Atlanta. Scary place, Georgia, maybe scarier than Florida ....
David Wainwright
Deland FL
Re: Georgia. How about those of us who have to live in this asylum where the inmates have taken over? It seems that only deranged people can get elected to the Legislature.
There was already a gunfight outside a bar in Cobb County even before this insane law.
This brief essay by a retired prof is a little off topic, but provides a nice reminder that all is not always doom and gloom:
http://theava.com/archives/30913
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/elizabeth-warren-teacher-0514
Charles Pierce has a long profile of Elizabeth Warren, which is well worth your time.
Whyte,
Thanks for the post. It's a timely reminder of an era when everything seemed up for grabs and the possibility of change was not restricted to dreams and fiction.
My freshman year in college was only a few years removed from anti-war riots and building sit-ins (along with goose stepping phalanxes of tactical police marching in to take over, brandishing tear gas and clubs). There were still seniors on campus that year (the SDS was still a presence) who were part of all that. I watched from the sidelines as a high school student. It was epic. Never seen anything like it and nothing since.
It's a reminder that we, as a nation, made some great strides in those years. But this week was a countering reminder that other students, snarling and repulsed by any who questioned authority, who sat in their rooms during those days of riotous upheaval, with their crew cuts and bow ties, reading the National Review and complaining to each other about commies on campus and pre-marital sex, are today trying to frog march us back in time, back-filling the footprints of those strides, past the sixties, into the fifties, when their kind (white, arrogant, affluent, Christian, conservative) ruled with an iron fist.
Several of them sit on the Supreme Court, smirking very likely, and thinking "Who's the revolutionary now, you hippie bastards."
But the strides we've made are ineradicable. Right-wing revanchists can slow things down and attempt to extract punishment for being so unceremoniously discommoded (shiving the voting rights act, killing affirmative action, etc.), but what was begun in the sixties (really, in many ways, the thirties), will continue. They can't turn back history. They can only try to pretend that it never happened.
Good luck with that.
There's a great book waiting to be written of the effects of technology on the electoral process specifically and democracy generally. I know there have been plenty of articles and essays on these topics, but I think we're nearly ready for something with a historical perspective as well.
I'm thinking of this as Li'l Randy gets ready to pretend that he didn't say what he said about Reagan, despite the video evidence to the contrary. On the other side, we can see how unscrupulous assholes (Breitbartians) use technology to forward completely false premises which are then beaten back by more technology.
The Obama campaign became the first group to efficiently marshal economic support using online resources, and the use of software to quickly collect and collate data and polling information created a knowledge and prediction gap in the last election cycle, demonstrating the difference between technologically based rationality and magically based wishful thinking.
These days, every time the right tries to whip up a controversy or let fly with mean spirited bombardments (Hillary Clinton tearing up after a 2008 primary as evidence of her too-soft-to-lead nature), someone (Jon Stewart, in this case) uses the technology at his disposal to quickly and mercilessly hoist the would be provocateurs on their own tearful petards, showing clips of GOP tough boys crying their eyes out. Poor dears.
It's a hard new world for politicians who used be able to deny, deny, deny, that they ever did X or said Y. E-mail trails have brought down quite a few. It's all out there somewhere. Chris Christie will find that out soon enough.
Hell, technology is what allows all of us to come to visit Chez Burns on a regular basis to identify and solve all the world's problems.
In a way, democracy has always relied on technology. Printed broadsides informed American colonists of such things as the Stamp Act and other outrages leading to revolution, and I doubt the barons and earls at Runnymede had a way to disseminate word of the Magna Carta as quickly as Americans were able to read, word for word, what was said and done in Philadelphia in the interests of their separation from Britain and the constitution of a new nation.
Today, we get that information on a nearly instantaneous basis. If we're pissed because we have to wait a few hours to read Supreme Court opinions, we're still light years ahead of where we were at the beginning of the last century.
Hey, it could be a great book.
But don't ask Li'l Randy his opinion. Or Mitch, or Issa, or Boehner, or Ryan, or Romney. They'll be too busy trying to spin them even as video is being posted on Youtube.
Poor dears.
The more things change...
On the Pennsylvania Fries Tax Rebellion of 1798-1800 via Wikipedia: The final paragraph about Great Men using the ignorant for their purposes seems especially apropos today. Would that Good Ole Boy Cliven and his buddies weren't quite so willing to ply their ignorance in the service of others....but there's precedent aplenty in our ragged history.
Opposition to a federal tax levied to pay for the Quasi-War with the French led to this, one of three, tax rebellions early in our history.
"Opposition to the tax spread to other parts of Pennsylvania. In Penn, the appointed assessor resigned under public threats; the assessors in Hamilton and Northampton also begged to resign, but were refused as nobody else could be found to take their places.
Federal warrants were issued, and the U.S. Marshal began arresting people for tax resistance in Northampton. Arrests were made without much incident until the marshal reached Macungie, then known as Millerstown, where a crowd formed to protect a man from arrest. Failing to make that arrest, the marshal made a few others and returned to Bethlehem with his prisoners.
Two separate groups of rebels independently vowed to liberate the prisoners, and marched on Bethlehem. The militia prevailed and Fries and other leaders were arrested.
Thirty men went on trial in Federal court. Fries and two others were tried for treason and, with Federalists stirring up a frenzy, were sentenced to be hanged. President John Adams pardoned Fries and others convicted of treason. Adams was prompted by the narrower constitutional definition of treason, (my note: which by the way was a critical issue in the later trial of Aaron Burr), and he later added that the rebels were "as ignorant of our language as they were of our laws" and were being used by "great men" in the opposition party. He issued a general amnesty for everyone involved on May 21, 1800."
Deja damn vu!
@Barbarossa: In hindsight (always 20/20) I would have reframed my post above to say something like "the politicians in charge" rather than "the people" of Georgia seem crazy.
My deepest apology. You seem anything but crazy, and I am a big fan of your posts. There are doubtless many sane people in your state, and hopefully they will vote some of the crazies out, and soon.
In fact, even many of the pols are probably sane - just bought and paid for by the gun lobby.
Victoria,
"In fact, even many of the pols are probably sane - just bought and paid for by the gun lobby."
Quite so. Which makes them greedy and craven rather than insane.
An enormous improvement it ain't.
Ken,
Democracy is a messy thing, in'it?
Messy is tough enough to deal with, but worse when you toss in ignoramuses.
And speaking of ignoramuses, Marie wonders what Sean Hannity will do now that his new boyfriend and 'bagger hero, Cliven ("Nee-groes was better off as slaves") Bundy has proven to be very likely even stupider than any of the Fries tax rebels.
I have the answer!
Sean Hannity responds to news of Cliven Bundy's latest idiocy
@Akhilleus: I can hear the children screaming in terror now. If only the adults who watch Fox "News" were as smart as the little tykes.
Marie
But seriously folks....
Some Republicans, especially those who have been vocal in their support for Latest Conservative Idiot, Cliven Bundy, and his racist, scofflaw ways, should be worried.
But they're probably not.
Republicans seem to get away with this stuff way too easily. The ones who have not, at least vocally and in public, raced to Bundy's banner of insurrection, are thanking their lucky stars that they decided not to jump on this particular secessionist, racist bandwagon, and probably think "Well, that's that" and think they can now move on to the next outrage.
But the party should be at least a teensy bit concerned, doncha think?
Bundy is not an aberration. He is not just Weirdo of the Week. He is an exemplar of the kind of people who vote Republican. And there have to be millions more like him. I wish that weren't true, but there's no getting around it. Millions.
Of course, the MSM (the ones who aren't Fox) are looking at Bundy with mild interest but most of them are treating him as an individual case rather than a symptom of the rotten core of the GOP.
That's okay. Eventually they'll collapse in a heap of racists, misogynists, royalist oligarchists, states' rights secessionists, and teabagging morons.
But until then, they're causing a lot of damage. And the more they allow pigs like Cliven Bundy to spout off without anything more than perfunctory statements, unless they come out and say, forthrightly, that they and their party don't want to anything to do with people like this, they will be known as the Party of Racist Pigs.
But then again, that's what they are, aren't they? I realize it's unfair to cast all Republicans as Bundy clones, but as long as they tolerate such nonsense, how different are they, really?
When someone says “Let me tell you one more thing about the Negro…” three things become palpably obvious.
One. He (it’s usually a he) is the titular head of a nest of not-to-bright persons who listen to him and nod knowingly at his perceived wisdom.
Two. He (it’s usually a he) is white and in his sixth or seventh decade, and has been speaking like an oracle for the ages since he turned 50 and/or his daddy died.
Three. He (it’s usually a he) is dumb as a stump.
Re: Georgia. Here's a conspiracy theory. Michael Bloomberg's administration found that a great many guns coming into NYC came from Georgia. It would seem that criminal enterprises looking for a ready source of firepower should love this law. I wonder if drug cartel money had anything to do with getting this law passed. Run those guns down I-75 to Miami and by boat to Mexico.
Just sayin'.
Previous conversation here re: manliness must have reached the ears of The Donald who today by a tweet criticized the way Obama walks off a plane and misspelled hopping hoping no one would notice. Poor duckie, this crazy somabitch fancies himself someone who has the "god-given right" to talk smack about how someone. much less a president, walks off a plane? REally? Good grief! Luckily, we get to hear Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons do their "Walk Like A Man" and that soothes our urge to ruffle the hair of Donald and stick a stick in his dick-like tweets. (please notice I couldn't stop at dick––it's that generous nature of mine that always takes over).
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/04/23/1294078/-Donald-Trump-Complains-About-How-The-President-Walks?detail=email
PD,
You did right.
Besides, a stick would be far too large.
It would have to be a twig.
A very small twig.