The Commentariat -- March 14, 2014

Michael Shear of the New York Times: "President Obama said Thursday that deportations of illegal immigrants should be more humane, and to make that happen, he has ordered a review of his administration's enforcement efforts. Mr. Obama revealed the effort in an Oval Office meeting with Hispanic lawmakers on Thursday afternoon, telling them that he had 'deep concern about the pain too many families feel from the separation that comes from our broken immigration system,' according to a White House statement. Representative Luis V. Gutiérrez, Democrat of Illinois, said afterward that it was 'clear that the pleas from the community got through to the president.'"

Paul Kane of the Washington Post: "Senate negotiators struck a bipartisan deal Thursday that would renew federal unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless allowing for retroactive payments to go to more than 2 million Americans whose benefits expired in late December. Ten senators, evenly divided among Democrats and Republicans, announced the pact and set up a timeline in which the legislation could pass the Senate in late March. Its outcome in the House remains up in the air, however." ...

... Paul Krugman: "... it's happening again. Suddenly, it seems as if all the serious people are telling each other that despite high unemployment there's hardly any 'slack' in labor markets — as evidenced by a supposed surge in wages -- and that the Federal Reserve needs to start raising interest rates very soon to head off the danger of inflation.... Although the current monetary debate isn't as openly political as the previous fiscal debate, it's hard to escape the suspicion that class interests are playing a role."

Walter Hamilton of the Los Angeles Times in McClatchy: "There are more millionaires in the United States than ever before. The number of households with net worth of $1 million or more, excluding their homes, is at a record 9.63 million, according to a new report. That eclipses the old mark of 9.2 million in 2007 before the global financial crisis, according to the Spectrem Group research firm. The tally of millionaires slipped to 6.7 million in 2008 as the financial crisis struck. The study reinforces other data showing that the wealthy are doing well compared to many other segments of society."

Justin Sink of the Hill: "President Obama ordered the Labor Department on Thursday to 'modernize' regulations to allow millions more workers to be paid overtime. The regulations being changed govern which types of employees qualify for the 'white collar' exemption that allows employers to avoid paying overtime at a time-and-a-half rate":

"New Rules for For-Profit Schools." Maya Rhodan of Time: "On Friday, the Department of Education released new regulations that will cap loan payments for graduates of so-called 'gainful employment programs,' offered both at for-profit schools and community colleges, to 20% of discretionary income and 8% of total income. The institutions must stick to the caps and keep loan default rates under 30% in order to continue receiving federal financial aid. Though some of these job-training institutions properly prepare students for the work force, the majority of for-profit schools designed to propel students straight into careers do not.... For profit institutions can receive up to 90 percent of their revenue from taxpayer money."

The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. -- Archilochus, c.a. 7th century, B.C.E.

The op-ed columnists at the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal are probably the most hedgehoglike people. They don't permit a lot of complexity in their thinking. They pull threads together from very weak evidence and draw grand conclusions based on them. They're ironically very predictable from week to week. If you know the subject that Thomas Friedman or whatever is writing about, you don't have to read the column. You can kind of auto-script it, basically. -- Nate Silver

The world is divided into two sorts of people: those who think the world is divided into two sorts of people and those who don't. -- Robert Benchley, 1920s

Jonathan Chait notes that Democrats & Republicans now agree about the politics of ObamaCare. ...

... Nagging Moms:

Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times: "The Senate on Thursday voted overwhelmingly to confirm President Obama's nominee [Caroline Krass] to become the C.I.A.'s top lawyer, as senior lawmakers escalated pressure on the agency's director to make public a voluminous report on the C.I.A.'s defunct detention and interrogation program."

Ewen MacAskill of the Guardian: "Russia's foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, and the US secretary of state, John Kerry, are to meet in London on Friday for talks on Ukraine before Sunday's planned referendum in Crimea. The two will meet at the US ambassador's residence in central London as Kerry attempts to head off a vote that could lead to Crimea -- now under the control of Russian troops -- deciding to become part of Russia." ...

... Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post: "A proposed U.S. aid package for Ukraine's fledgling pro-Western government stalled Thursday amid festering Republican Party feuds over foreign policy. Tensions erupted on the Senate floor late in the day after the chamber did not advance the measure, with Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) berating the dozen or so of his Republican colleagues who, for various reasons, objected to the legislation.... A House version of the package passed last week." ...

... Somini Sengupta of the New York Times: "Ukraine's interim prime minister, seeking to rally support for a Security Council resolution criticizing the Russian takeover of Crimea, took pains on Thursday to say that his country wanted a peaceful resolution to the crisis."

... Steven Myers & Alison Smale of the New York Times: "With a referendum on secession looming in Crimea, Russia massed troops and armored vehicles in at least three regions along Ukraine's eastern border on Thursday, alarming the interim Ukraine government about a possible invasion and significantly escalating tensions in the crisis between the Kremlin and the West. The announcement of the troop buildup by Russia's Defense Ministry was met with an unusually sharp rebuke from Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany...."

Ed Pilkington of the Guardian: "The US came under sharp criticism at the UN human rights committee in Geneva on Thursday for a long list of human rights abuses that included everything from detention without charge at Guantánamo, drone strikes and NSA surveillance, to the death penalty, rampant gun violence and endemic racial inequality. At the start of a two-day grilling of the US delegation, the committee's 18 experts made clear their deep concerns about the US record across a raft of human rights issues. Many related to faultlines as old as America itself, such as guns and race." ...

... ** Charlie Savage of the New York Times: " The Obama administration declared Thursday that a global Bill of Rights-style treaty imposes no human rights obligations on American military and intelligence forces when they operate abroad, rejecting an interpretation by the United Nations and the top State Department lawyer during President Obama's first term."

Mario Trujillo of the Hill: "A second batch of 4,000 pages of records from former President Clinton's White House are slated to be released Friday. The records ranging from the 2000 presidential recount in Florida to documents related to terrorism in the decade before 9/11 will be available online at the Clinton Presidential Library at 1 p.m."

Congressional Races

** Frank Rich: "The Democrats are in deep trouble this fall, but not because of any reading of the tea leaves in this single district [Florida's 13th], and not because the entire country hates Obamacare. The fundamentals are far more basic." And other stuff. ...

... Michael Tomasky of the Daily Beast: "Geoff Garin, the pollster who did [Alex] Sink's polling in the race. Garin argues in a memo he released the day of the voting that 'the issue ultimately provided more of a lift than a drag to her campaign.' He followed up by telling me yesterday: 'She would have done worse if she'd neglected to hit back and engage the issue.' There's a lesson in there for Democrats as they march toward November." ...

... Driftglass feels responsible for Reagan. CW: As many of you know, I am totally with his thinking here.

Steve Peoples of the AP: "Former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown has begun seeking campaign staff while aggressively courting New Hampshire's political elite, marking what local Republicans consider serious steps toward launching a Senate campaign against Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen.... In the meantime, Brown continues his role as a paid contributor for Fox News...."

Beyond the Beltway

 Adding Insult to Cold-Blooded Murder. Tamara Lush of the AP: "A former police officer accused of killing a man in a movie theater during a dispute over texting had used his own phone to send a message to his son moments before the incident, according to documents released Thursday by Florida prosecutors." ...

... CW: If there was any sort of person whom I thought could be trusted to carry a firearm into a movie theater, it would be a kindly old retired police captain who had taught gun safety classes. This case is refutation of the NRA's argument that we're all a lot safer when "responsible" gun owners can carry their loaded weapons into public places, the better to protect us from the occasional mass murderer.

Salvador Rizzo of the Star-Ledger: "Angry protesters turned up at Gov. Chris Christie's town hall today, shouting criticisms about the governor's handling of the George Washington Bridge scandal and Hurricane Sandy relief funding. Amid the heckling, six people, including four Rowan University students, were escorted out by State Police.... Protesters kept piping up until the end of the event, police kept removing them, and the governor scolded them for interrupting while he answered other people's questions."

News Ledes

Los Angeles Times: "While the search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has expanded westward amid concerns of foul play, a satellite company confirmed that signals from the plane were registered by its network. British satellite telecommunications company Inmarsat said Friday that signals from the Boeing 777 were 'routine' and 'automated.'" ...

... Reuters: "Military radar data suggests a Malaysia Airlines jetliner missing for nearly a week was deliberately flown hundreds of miles off course, heightening suspicions of foul play among investigators, sources told Reuters on Friday. Analysis of the Malaysia data suggests the plane, with 239 people on board, diverted from its intended northeast route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and flew west instead, using airline flight corridors normally employed for routes to the Middle East and Europe, said sources familiar with investigations...."

Comments

[safari]

There's goes Obama again, with his Socialist redistribution schemes again. How dare he fight for expanding the regulations on overtime pay! Can't he see that this is just taking more money away from the job creators?! Those lazy bums should just go out and get a jo.....

Yeah it's going to be difficult to spin this idea (how did take until 2014 to get this idea on the table?) as being a bad policy for the common man. But undoubetly fresh web will be spun...

[Marie Burns]

A note on the fox & the hedgehog: the fragment/proverb by Archilochus is almost certainly based on a fairly universal ancient story which Aesop recorded as "The Fox & the Cat":

"A Fox was boasting to a Cat of its clever devices for escaping its enemies. 'I have a whole bag of tricks,' he said, 'which contains a hundred ways of escaping my enemies.'

'I have only one,' said the Cat; 'but I can generally manage with that.' Just at that moment they heard the cry of a pack of hounds coming towards them, and the Cat immediately scampered up a tree and hid herself in the boughs. 'This is my plan,' said the Cat. 'What are you going to do?' The Fox thought first of one way, then of another, and while he was debating the hounds came nearer and nearer, and at last the Fox in his confusion was caught up by the hounds and soon killed by the huntsmen. Miss Puss, who had been looking on, said:

"'Better one safe way than a hundred on which you cannot reckon.'"

I think Silver (and Isaiah Berlin) misinterpreted Archilochus's meaning. This is not to suggest that the fable teaches a correct lesson, but it certainly isn't the lesson Silver takes from the proverb. (Berlin, not surprisingly, is more nuanced, but he too see great advantage in the fox's methodology.

Marie

[Patrick]

Driftglass and CW, Reagan enablers?

Reagan wasn't so bad. It's just all those people who brought in with him, by coattail votes and by executive branch appointments, and who actually ran things, who were absolutely horrible.

He was just an amiable dunce who thought simple solutions solved complex problems, even when the outcomes demonstrated otherwise. A fabulist who believed his own fables.

What confuses me still, and did at the time, was how so many Americans thought (and think) he was just dandy. It was when I started to believe that maybe the voting public is really, seriously, delusional.

[Marie Burns]

@Patrick: The trouble with the amiable dunce was that the one big thing he knew was that "government is the problem." When that is what the head of a gigantic government believes, the governed are almost necessarily in trouble. The leader of a nation must assume that his government has the capacity to solve, or at least mitigate, the domestic problems it faces. When you look back on it, you realize that Reagan's first inaugural address (when he made that infamous remark) was an impeachable offense!

Marie

P.S. No, I didn't mean to suggest I was an enabler. I always vote for the lesser of two evils -- not for a vanity or third-party candidate -- at least for major offices. mmb

[Akhilleus]

I don't think Berlin necessarily misinterprets the story of the hedgehog and the fox as much as he uses it as a jumping off spot, a metaphor, for some of the larger issues that consumed his thinking.

His idea of contrasting a person, or people, or system, that "knows" one big thing with a others who know, or who can accommodate many things, allows him to draw a distinction between monism and pluralism. For Berlin, monist systems, which have a primary objective or goal that overrides all else, can easily (almost necessarily) debase other value systems and goals. Pluralist systems, the ones which "know" many things, tend towards tolerance, a progressive view of the world, and moderation, qualities which, in Berlin's mind, are vital for avoiding the potential traps of a monist moral and political system.

This is not to say that people who know one big thing are necessarily wrong or tend toward evil. It's a good for all of us that certain people have been obsessed by their own one big thing throughout history, scientists, artists, writers, inventors, etc.

The problem, for Berlin, comes when political systems are based on one big idea (communism, fascism, Reaganism, eg). There's a reason that neocon godfather, Leo Strauss, whose big idea--power at all costs even if you have to cheat, steal, and lie, the guy who taught the Bushies everything they knew--hated Berlin with a passion.

As Marie points out, Reagan's big idea, that government is bad, has evolved into an alternate universe paradigm that threatens all the benefits of good government along with a healthy skepticism of bad government. Plus, since Reaganism, like most monist systems, not only allows for, but encourages a devaluation of other points of views, it has only increased intolerance in this country. And far from being an amiable dunce, I believe Reagan, and what he wrought, to be responsible for much of what is wrong in this country today. Certainly he surrounded himself with like minded demagogues, ideologues, and apparatchiks, but just because he slept through state dinners doesn't mean he didn't set the table.

In a way, the current political struggle in America today is between a system which strives for pluralism, openness, tolerance, and human rights for all, and a system that's not for any of those things except in the most circumscribed and controlled ways. Berlin, as a boy in Russia, saw first hand how the second kind of system can go very, very wrong.

As for the cat, it's all very nice that he's safe up in the tree, but Aesop leaves out the part where the Athens Fire Department has to come get him down afterwards. Good thing those ancient Greeks weren't monists!

[Akhilleus]

Concerning the Guardian story about criticism by a UN human rights committee directed at the US, can't you just hear the wingnuts screeching already? Fox must be preparing a Nuke the UN special.

As for the idea of a global Bill of Rights, what the hell good is it if we (or, presumably, anyone else) can opt out whenever it's inconvenient? Now that's one big idea wingnuts can support: American Exceptionalism.

Fuckin' pain in the ass human rights...

[James Singer]

A little Mercan political and social humor via Wonkette:

“You see, a lot of people may have misconceptions about the Klan, but those are just sadly outdated stereotypes, say the flyers, which insist the group is nonviolent, definitely not a hate group, and not ‘enemies of the colored and mongrel races’.”

http://wonkette.com/544074/virginia-ku-klux-klan-tired-of-being-so-misunderstood#3wylU8VXPSbyUGfP.99

[Akhilleus]

James,

Are you sure that isn't a Paul Ryan campaign flyer? After all, he did just get back from several trips to the jungles of darkest Afri...er, I mean, American inner cities....know what I mean? Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, "inner cities"?

Love the references to "mongrel" races. Does that mean these guys are purebred? I don't recall seeing any of the dogs in the National Kennel Club show wearing funny robes and pointy hats.

They must have been competing in the "Mutt" category.

[David]

A better translation of the epigram by Archilochus: The fox knows many tricks, the hedgehog only one --- but it's a good one.