The Commentariat -- April 24

Art & caption by Karen Garcia.I have been remiss is lending festivities to the Easter holiday. Karen Garcia, however, has not. She had great advice for everybody, including those of you planning to attend tomorrow's Easter Egg Roll at the White House.

** "Poor Jane's Almanac." Jill LePore in a New York Times op-ed: "Today ... the nation’s bookshelves sag with doorstop biographies of the founders; Tea Partiers dressed as Benjamin Franklin call for an end to social services for the poor; and the 'Path to Prosperity' urges a return to 'America’s founding ideals of liberty, limited government and equality under the rule of law.' But the story of Jane Mecom, [Bejamin Franklin's sister,] is a reminder that, especially for women, escaping poverty has always depended on the opportunity for an education and the ability to control the size of their families."

The White House has finally made video available of President Obama's full Facebook townhall, which he & Mark Zuckerberg conducted last Wednesday:

"Hold the Halo." Maureen Dowd: "Next Sunday ... Pope Benedict XVI will preside over the beatification for the man he revered, the first time in a millennium that a pope has elevated his immediate predecessor and the swiftest ascension toward sainthood on record.... As progressive as [John Paul II] was on [many] issues, he was disturbingly regressive on social issues — contraception, women’s ordination, priests’ celibacy, divorce and remarriage. And certainly, John Paul forfeited his right to beatification when he failed to establish a legal standard to remove pedophiles from the priesthood, and simply turned away for many years."  

     ... Update: I've added a comments page for Dowd's column in Off Times Square, & I've posted my comment to her column.

     ... Update 2: the Times has held back Karen Garcia's excellent comment on Dowd, but you can read it here AND write or copy-and-paste your own comment.

Binyamin Appelbaum of the New York Times: "The Federal Reserve’s experimental effort to spur a recovery by purchasing vast quantities of federal debt has pumped up the stock market, reduced the cost of American exports and allowed companies to borrow money at lower interest rates. But ... benefits [to the general economy] have been surprisingly small. The latest estimates from economists, in fact, suggest that the pace of recovery from the global financial crisis has flagged since November, when the Fed started buying $600 billion in Treasury securities to push private dollars into investments that create jobs."

Paul Richter of the Los Angeles Times: "Although the United States and the European Union have blocked access to more than $60 billion in Libya's overseas bank accounts and investments, other nations have done little or nothing to freeze tens of billions more that Kadafi and his family spread around the globe over the last decade, according to U.S., European and U.N. officials involved in the search for Libyan assets. Kadafi has moved billions of dollars back to Tripoli since the rebellion began in mid-February, the officials said. The totals are not clear, in part because investigators believe the Libyan ruler made significant investments in companies and financial institutions that shield his identity."

Theola Labbe-DeBose of the Washington Post: "The growth of technology has left 911 behind. Although people can send a text to vote for the next American Idol, they can’t send one to report the East Coast Rapist.... Other simple actions, including sending 911 a smartphone photo of a car speeding from a robbery, are also impossible.... Federal and local officials readily acknowledge the need to modernize 911 calls, and they have taken small steps to digitize, but there are no plans in place for how to pay the billions of dollars the upgrade will cost and no timetable has been set." CW: because "America is broke," & we can't afford luxuries like a modern 911 system. More tax breaks, anyone?

Caitlan Flanagan in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, advocates for shutting down fraternities. "A 2007 National Institute of Justice study found that about one in five women are victims of sexual assault in college; almost all of those incidents go unreported. It also noted that fraternity men — who tend to drink more heavily and frequently than nonmembers — are more likely to perpetrate sexual assault than nonfraternity men, according to previous studies. Over a quarter of sexual-assault victims who were incapacitated reported that the assailant was a fraternity member." CW: Before I read Flanagan's op-ed, I thought the premise was ridiculous. I'm less sure of that now. See what you think.

Nicholas Kristof says young American prostitutes are victims of human trafficking, too. "... They deserve sympathy and social services — not handcuffs and juvenile detention."

After reading Joe Nocera's (implied) criticism of Spencer Bachus, the Republican Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, who hails from Jefferson County, Alabama, & wants to delay or dismantle derivatives regulation, reader Haley S. told me I should link to an article that told the whole story of what happened in Jefferson County. She 's right. So here it is: ...

... America in the Age of Oligarchy: One County's Story. Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone: "In 1996, the average monthly sewer bill for a family of four in Birmingham [Jefferson County, Alabama] was only $14.71 — but that was before the county decided to build an elaborate new sewer system with the help of out-of-state financial wizards with names like Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase. The result was a monstrous pile of borrowed money that the county used to build, in essence, the world's grandest toilet — "the Taj Mahal of sewer-treatment plants" is how one county worker put it. What happened here in Jefferson County would turn out to be the perfect metaphor for the peculiar alchemy of modern oligarchical capitalism: A mob of corrupt local officials and morally absent financiers got together to build a giant device that converted human shit into billions of dollars of profit for Wall Street — and misery for [the people of Jefferson County]." Read the whole story.

Charles Hanley of the AP: "Former chief U.N. nuclear inspector Mohamed ElBaradei suggests in a new memoir that Bush administration officials should face international criminal investigation for the 'shame of a needless war' in Iraq. Freer to speak now than he was as an international civil servant, the Nobel-winning Egyptian accuses U.S. leaders of 'grotesque distortion' in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, when then-President George W. Bush and his lieutenants claimed Iraq possessed doomsday weapons despite contrary evidence collected by ElBaradei's and other arms inspectors inside the country."

Contra assertions by Fracking Joe Nocera, ("In Texas and Oklahoma, it has been used for decades, with nobody complaining much about environmental degradation.") friend of T. Boone Pickens, not everybody in Texas loves fracking. Kate Galbraith of the New York Times: "On Wednesday, several dozen protesters marched through downtown Fort Worth, waving signs and chanting anti-drilling slogans that reflected concern over air and water pollution. The anxiety centers on a recently expanded drilling method called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which is now used in more than half of new gas wells drilled in Texas. This practice — which involves blasting water, sand and chemicals far underground to break up rock and extract gas — is common in the Barnett Shale, a major shale-gas field around Fort Worth."

Right Wing World *

"Pity for the Rich." Matt Yglesias: "You can tell something’s happening in the economic policy debate when you start reading more things like AEI’s Arthur Brooks explaining that it would simply be unfair to raise taxes on the rich. Harvard economics professor and former Council of Economics Advisor chairman Greg Mankiw has said the same thing." Here's a link to Brooks' pathetic Washington Post op-ed (it's so stupid you might think Arthur was related to Our Mister Brooks, but I don't think he is.) ...

   ... Paul Krugman: "... my take is that what we’re looking at is the closing of the conservative intellectual universe, the creation of an echo chamber in which rightists talk only to each other, and in which even the pretense of caring about ordinary people is disappearing. I mean, we’ve been living for some time in an environment in which the WSJ can refer, unselfconsciously, to people making too little to pay income taxes as 'lucky duckies'; where Chicago professors making several hundred thousand a year whine that they can’t afford any more taxes, and are surprised when that rubs some people the wrong way." ...

... BUT Screw the Poor, Especially if They're Neglected Children. Todd Heywood of the Michigan Messenger: "Under a new budget proposal from [Republican] State Sen. Bruce Casswell, children in the state’s foster care system would be allowed to purchase clothing only in used clothing stores.... Under his plan, foster children would receive gift cards that could only be used at places like the Salvation Army, Goodwill and other second hand clothing stores.... Casswell says the plan will save the state money, though it isn’t clear how much the state spends on clothing for foster children or how much could be saved this way." CW: I'm sorry, but it's getting harder & harder not to think of Republicans as essentially evil.

NEW. Yesterday, Ben Smith of Politico, who is generally a good reporter, wrote this, which I found pretty incredible:

I've been looking for a good analogue to the willingness of Republicans to believe, or say they believe, that Obama was born abroad, and one relevant number is the share of Democrats willing to believe, as they say, that 'Bush knew.' ...More than half of Democrats, according to a neutral survey, said they believed Bush was complicit in the 9/11 terror attacks. [emphasis Smith's]

      ... But as Driftglass notes, as only Driftglass can, it ain't so. I've asked Smith to respond. ...

      ... Update: I've corresponded with Smith on this & wrote three (comments hog!) comments on Driftglass's post. The bottom line: Smith's assertion that "more than half of Democrats ... believed Bush was complicit" is not accurate.

Peter Wallsten of the Washington Post: "Anxiety is rising among some Republicans over the party’s embrace of a plan to overhaul Medicare, with GOP lawmakers already starting to face tough questions on the issue at town hall meetings back in their districts. House leaders have scheduled a Tuesday conference call in which members are expected in part to discuss strategies for defending the vote they took this month on a budget that would transform the popular entitlement program as part of a plan to cut trillions in federal spending." CW translation: they're going to make indefensible cutbacks sound great! Look for identical talking points Tuesday afternoon.

Over in Right Wing World, the Street people are getting very upset about the "collapse of the dollar." But Barry Ritholtz of The Big Picture asks, "Where were all you concerned dollar bulls earlier in the decade? ... US currency [dropped] by less than 20% over the past few years. That’s not a dollar collapse; A fall from 121.02 in July 2001 to 70.69 in March 2008 — Now THATS a dollar collapse:

Those are years along the horizontal axis, beginning with 2000.* Talks only to itself.

News Ledes

AP: "Deep divisions within Yemen's opposition appeared to doom an Arab proposal for the president to step down within a month, raising the prospect of more bloodshed and instability in a nation already beset by deep poverty and conflict."

AP: "At least 500 people died in religious rioting that followed Nigeria's presidential election, a civil rights group said Sunday, as volatile state gubernatorial elections loom this week. Meanwhile, police in the northern state of Bauchi said at least 11 recent college graduates who helped run polling stations as part of the country's national youth service corps have been killed in postelection violence, while other female poll workers have been raped."

... Al Jazeera: "Heavy fighting has raged anew in Misurata, leaving at least 25 people killed and at least 71 others critically injured as forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi gave up more ground inside Libya's third-largest city. Libyan Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim said early on Sunday the army had suspended operations against rebels in Misurata, but not left the city...." ...

     ... AP Update: "An air strike on Moammar Gadhafi's sprawling residential compound early Monday badly damaged two buildings, including a structure where Gadhafi often held meetings, guards at the complex said."

AP: "Syrian security forces detained dozens of opposition activists and fired from rooftops in a seaside town Sunday as authorities turned to pinpoint raids after days of bloodshed brought international condemnation and defections from President Bashar Assad's regime."

AP: "Doctors say Rep. Gabrielle Giffords can walk a little and is even trying to improve her gait. But the report Sunday in The Arizona Republic adds the congresswoman herself is planning to 'walk a mountain.'" Update: the Arizona Republic has much more detail.