Wednesday
Feb192014
The Commentariat -- Feb. 20, 2014
Internal links removed.
It's Li'l Randy's Fault. Devlin Barrett & Siobhan Gorham of the Wall Street Journal: "The government is considering enlarging the National Security Agency's controversial collection of Americans' phone records -- an unintended consequence of lawsuits seeking to stop the surveillance program, according to officials. A number of government lawyers involved in lawsuits over the NSA phone-records program believe federal-court rules on preserving evidence related to lawsuits require the agency to stop routinely destroying older phone records, according to people familiar with the discussions. As a result, the government would expand the database beyond its original intent, at least while the lawsuits are active." CW: Story is firewalled. If you can't get it via the link, cut & paste a phrase or two into a Google search box.
That Was Quick. Ellen Nakashima & Josh Hicks of the Washington Post: "Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on Wednesday ordered the cancellation of a plan by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to develop a national license plate tracking system after privacy advocates raised concern about the initiative. The order came just days after ICE solicited proposals from companies to compile a database of license plate information from commercial and law enforcement tag readers." CW: It seems some "rogue operators" solicited the bids; senior officials claimed they knew nothing about it. Sounds as if the ICE-capades are taking their cues from Chris Christie -- which might not be the best plan. "The fact that the solicitation was posted without knowledge of ICE leadership 'highlights a serious management problem within this DHS component that currently does not have a director nominated by the president,' Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (Miss.), the ranking Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, said in a statement. He added that he hoped officials would consult with the department's privacy and civil liberties officers in the future."
Charles Blow has a very good column on violence in & against the black community.
** The South Will Not Rise Again Any Time Soon. Andreas Cremer of Reuters: "Volkswagen's top labor representative threatened on Wednesday to try to block further investments by the German carmaker in the southern United States if its workers there are not unionized.... Undeterred by last Friday's vote, VW's works council has said it will press on with efforts to set up labor representation at Chattanooga which builds the Passat sedan. CW: So not only was Bob Corker wrong about the impact of unionizing the VW plant, his propaganda was upside-down & backwards. Thanks, lamebrained Corkerbots, you not only hurt yourselves; you hurt a good part of the country. ...
... Laura Clawson of Daily Kos notes that "The mayor of Lansing, Michigan, has invited Volkswagen to consider locating a plant there." ...
... Charles Pierce on the VW vote: "Ultimately, it is always our fault." ...
... Aveva Shen of Think Progress: "Clothing retailer Gap, Inc. announced Wednesday that it will raise its hourly minimum wage to $10, a change that will affect 65,000 U.S. employees. GAP employees who are now earning the minimum wage will make $9.00 in June of 2014 and $10 in June of 2015. GAP, which also owns Banana Republic, Old Navy, Priperlime, Athleta, and Intermix, operates in more than 50 countries and employees 135,000 people around the world.... In a release, the company argues that increasing the minimum wage will help retain 'attract and retain great talent' and improve customers' experience." ...
... Renee Dudley of Bloomberg News: "Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT), the largest private employer in the U.S., said it's looking at supporting an increase in the federal minimum wage, breaking with business and industry groups that oppose such a measure. Wal-Mart is weighing the impact of additional payroll costs against possibly attracting more consumer dollars to its stores, David Tovar, a company spokesman, said today in a telephone interview." ...
... Never Mind. We Still Want Taxpayers to Help Feed & House Our Underpaid Employees. Emily Peck & Emily Cohn of the Huffington Post: "Walmart is denying a Bloomberg report that said the nation's largest private employer is considering supporting an increase in the minimum wage. 'We are not at all considering this,' Walmart spokesman David Tovar told The Huffington Post Wednesday afternoon, just after Bloomberg published the story.... According to Tovar, the retail giant has decided to stay neutral in the current debate over whether to raise the national minimum wage...." ...
... Lydia DePillis of the Washington Post explains why it would be good business for WalMart to back the minimum wage hike. ...
... Bryce Covert of Think Progress on "what really happens when you raise the minimum wage."
CW: If you need any more evidence that Bob Corker is a jerk, Gail Collins obliges. Although Corker says he wants to approve the U.N. treaty to protect the disabled -- which is, um, based on U.S. law -- he keeps thinking of Rick Santorum-type excuses to vote against its ratification.
Alexander Burns & Ken Vogel of Politico: "A group of major GOP donors, led by New York billionaire Paul Singer, is quietly expanding its political footprint ahead of the midterm elections in an increasingly assertive effort to shape the direction of the Republican Party."
Edward Wyatt of the New York Times: "The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission will propose new rules to encourage equal access to the web, by pushing Internet providers to keep their pipelines free and open. The proposal on so-called net neutrality, to be introduced by Tom Wheeler, the chairman of the commission, will prohibit broadband companies from blocking any sites or services from consumers. It will also aim to prevent Internet service providers from charging content companies for access to a faster, express lane on the web." ...
... Steve Benen has more.
Dana Milbank: "The federal court hasn't yet acted on the NSA lawsuit filed last week by Sen. Rand Paul and former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, but lawyers who should be on the same side in this case have been squabbling outside the courtroom." ...
... CW: I am pretty sure now that Li'l Randy's "real father" is Larry. The proof is in the coifs.
Linda Greenhouse on the Supreme Court as a political institution.
Deena Winter of Nebraska Watchdog: "A Nebraska judge has declared unconstitutional a 2012 law that gave the governor and state environmental regulators the authority to approve oil pipeline routes, throwing yet another obstacle in the path of the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline."
Richard Perez-Pena of the New York Times: "... a federal lawsuit filed by seven former employees against Harris and its parent company, Premier Education Group, which owns more than two dozen trade schools and community colleges operating under several names in 10 states..., contends that while charging more than $10,000 for programs lasting less than a year, school officials routinely misled students about their career prospects, and falsified records to enroll them and keep them enrolled, so that government grant and loan dollars would keep flowing."
Beyond the Beltway
Patrick Marley, et al., of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: "Included in more than 27,000 pages of emails and other documents unsealed Wednesday are the closest links yet between Gov. Scott Walker and a secret email system used in his office when he was Milwaukee County executive." ...
... Ed Kilgore: "... by the time Scott Walker became county executive and was looking for higher office, the pitfalls involved in letting your publicly paid staff do campaign work were extremely well known. Whether they show criminal activity by Walker or not, those thousands of emails are embarrassing, and a living warning to potential supporters of a Walker presidential run that he may not run the tightest ship." ...
... CW: Seems illegal to me. Walker's aides went to jail for campaigning on the job; the smoking gun in the e-mails is that Walker was aware county workers were campaigning for him on the county's dime. If it's unlawful for them to do it, it's unlawful for him to aid & abet them, especially when the effort was made to directly benefit him. ...
... Evan McMorris-Santoro of BuzzFeed: "The deputy chief of staff to then-County Executive Scott Walker praised a racist email forwarded to her in 2010 that joked welfare recipients are 'mixed in color, unemployed, lazy, can't speak English and have no frigging clue who the r [sic] daddies are.' Kelly Rindfleisch, Walker's then-deputy chief of staff in 2010, wrote that the email was 'hilarious' and 'so true.' The email was sent to Rindfleisch from someone outside Walker's staff. Another email sent to Rindfleisch from Walker’s then chief of staff, Thomas Nardelli, detailed a 'nightmare,' in which a person wakes up black, gay, Jewish, and handicapped." ...
... Cameron Joseph of the Hill: "The release Wednesday of 27,000 emails from a convicted former aide and hundreds of other legal documents related to that criminal probe are raising new questions for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. Democrats are seeking to use the documents to tarnish Walker's reputation, pointing to evidence they say shows Walker encouraged coordination between campaign and official staff, which could violate campaign finance laws. The goal is to damage Walker's reputation and ability to help the national party, and to tie Walker to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie." CW: You don't have to be a genius to make the connection all by yourself. ...
... Melissa Hayes of the Bergen Record: "A former top official appointed to the Port Authority by Governor Christie withheld the name of a Republican state senator and ally to the governor when he first turned over materials to a legislative investigative committee. David Wildstein, who resigned from his position as director of interstate capital projects at the Port Authority, blacked out a text message mentioning state Sen. Kevin O'Toole, R-Cedar Grove." ...
... Linh Tat of the Record: "The borough [of Fort Lee] has provided more than 2,200 pages of public records related to the George Washington Bridge lane closures to Governor Christie's attorney.... The borough denied three of [the attorney]'s four requests in his OPRA letter because they were too broad.... However, the borough complied with a fourth request for all documents that Fort Lee has supplied to the media since Sept. 1 regarding the same matters, according to Grant."
Benjamin Weiser of the New York Times: "New York State has agreed to sweeping changes that will curtail the widespread use of solitary confinement to punish prison infractions...."
American Civil War, Ctd. Craig Schneider of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "The state of Georgia has released a new specialty license tag that features the Confederate battle flag, inflaming civil rights advocates and renewing a debate on what images should appear on state-issued materials."
Congressional Race
"Vote for the Crook. It's Important." Lauren McGaughy of the Times-Picayune: "Former Gov. Edwin Edwards has not yet decided whether he will make a run for Louisiana's 6th District seat, contrary to a report in Bloomberg on Wednesday (Feb. 19) confirming the 86-year-old's run for Congress." Edwards, a 4-term governor of Louisiana, served 8 years of a 10-year federal sentence for corruption. He says he's the only hope for Democrats in the 6th District. Probably true, which is pretty pathetic. ...
... Ed Kilgore agrees that Edwards is the Democrats' "only hope." He notes that the district has a Cook rating of R+19.
News Ledes
New York Times: David Ranta, "who was framed by a rogue detective [Louis Scarcella] and served 23 years in prison for a murder he did not commit will receive $6.4 million from the City of New York in a settlement that came before a civil rights lawsuit was even filed...."
New York Times: "Ukraine's descent into a spiral of violence accelerated on Thursday as protesters and riot police officers used firearms in a clash apparently intended to reclaim areas of Independence Square, the symbolic central plaza in the capital that had been retaken by police two days before.The fighting shattered a truce declared just hours earlier." ...
... Update: "Security forces fired on masses of antigovernment demonstrators in Kiev on Thursday in a drastic escalation of the three-month-old crisis that left dozens dead and Ukraine reeling from the most lethal day of violence since Soviet times."
CNN: " An 84-year-old nun was sentenced to 35 months in prison Tuesday for breaking into a nuclear facility, her lawyer said. In May, a federal jury in Knoxville, Tennessee, found Sister Megan Rice; Greg Boertje-Obed, 57; and Michael Walli, 63, guilty of destroying U.S. government property and causing more than $1,000 in damage to federal property."
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Reader Comments (8)
Re: a conversation in the Comments section on how U.S. presidents choose ambassadors, @PD Pepe wrote, in part, "I bet the one in Venezuela is having a few problems, especially if he doesn't speak the language." Then she checked to see who the U.S. ambassador to Venezuela was. Oh, we don't have one, she learned.
Her comment got me to wondering who the U.S. ambassadors to Iraq & Afghanistan were before we unofficially went to war with those countries. Oh, we didn't have an Iraqi ambassador. And we didn't have an ambassador to Afghanistan.
Of course we had Dick Cheney.
Marie
Re Christopher Christie and Scott Walker: Ding Dong--the witches (crooks) are (almost) dead.
Couldn't happen to "nicer" guyz. Whatta buncha crooks the Repubs have in Camp Crap!. Too bad voters are so stupid. Otherwise, we might have a Democratic sweep in 2014 (and 2016). Even a good turnout for the Green Party! No way is this going to happen, she said tearfully. The Tea Party is alive, well and excessively hopeful-- which means they will come out in droves from under their moldy, bigoted, festering rocks. The good news is that this might benefit the underdog Dems!~ Let us hope!
A pretty good initiative in Colorado of people on food stamps documenting their struggles. Likely the Republicans will respond complaining about the fact the people have digital cameras (which were given to them for the project)...
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/art/picturing-hunger-in-america/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=pbsofficial&utm_campaign=newshour
Reading Marie's link to the outrageous but entirely predictable lies of conservative hacks like Bob Corker and the subterfuge used by other GOP do nothings to continue doing nothing, one is struck by how completely worthless this bunch is.
No immigration reform, no unions, no minimum wage increase, no healthcare (if they can help it), no extension of unemployment benefits, no choice for women, no action on climate change or any other actual or potential environmental disasters, no marriage equality, no equal pay for women, no protection for consumers against predatory bankers, no guarantee of an ability to vote, no regulations against selling deadly weapons to mentally disabled individuals, no food stamps for the poor, no protection for innocent citizens against stand your ground murderers, no nothing.
"Party of No" doesn't begin to cover it. Their goal is to do nothing. To do it every day, to do it to the best of their very limited abilities, and to get well paid for it.
To paraphrase Winston Churchill, never was so little owed by so many to so few.
Up, up and a way with Republican's new mantra of "Mobility." Sean McCelwee does a bang of job of bursting their bubble of hot air:
"The GOP’s response to widening inequality has long been similar to Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt: “The sooner a man learns he isn't going to be coddled, and he needn't expect a lot of free grub and, uh, all these free classes and flipflop and doodads for his kids unless he earns 'em, why, the sooner he'll get on the job and produce—produce—produce!” But between the fallout over Mitt Romney's "47 percent" remark and a resurgence of progressive populism, Republicans realize they need a new, softer approach. It appears they've finally found one."
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116670/republicans-focus-mobility-over-inequality-has-major-flaw
Marie,
It's no wonder neither Cheney nor Bush had any interest in diplomacy or ambassadors.
The word diplomacy comes from a Latin root meaning an educated person and ambassador from another Latin word meaning "servant", neither qualities ranked very high with those shitheads. Bush will never be counted among the smartest of presidents and Cheney never considered himself a servant of the people.
He served his own interests, always, even over and against the interest of the United States, a primary trait in Republicans (see Cruz, Ted).
I've been wondering about the latest onslaught against raising the minimum wage, the idea that employers will boot half a million workers rather than pay them a little more.
Okay. So who does the work then? How do they get the job done with fewer employees? One would think that business owners, being job creators and all, and smart about maximizing profits, would have already trimmed any fat (Bush's Depression certainly spurred a lot of "fat" trimming).
Plus, it appears that when the minimum wage has been increased in the past, there were no mass layoffs of the kind being predicted. Almost 60% of employees working for corporate behemoths like McDonald's, Burger King, etc. are paid minimum wage. Will they all be fired? Who will flip the burgers?
So that reason is bullshit.
So, what's the next reason? Bank tellers around the country will experience back problems while handing over that extra $50 to $80 a week to minimum wage earners? Social chaos will ensue as poors go wild with all that extra dough? Teabaggers will be outraged that undeserving moochers will now be able to buy new shoes for their kids?
Bullshit excuses are fallin' off the trees.
Just sayin'...
Okay, so here’s what I’ve found running around the internet all day. People who should know better are convinced somehow that a worker’s hourly wage is related to the worker’s hourly productivity. That is, if you raise wages10 percent, you increase productivity 10 percent and, therefore, can lay off 10 percent of your work force and maintain your place in the capitalist firmament. I’ve actually read morons who said it was simple math. Arithmetic, maybe, but still not simple.
So the obvious question, then, if this is true, why can’t you raise the hourly wage 300 or 400 percent, cut your workforce to two or three hardy souls, and lay off all those other slackers?
Sorry, no cites. There are too many of them and it’s too late in the day and I need a drink.