The Commentariat -- Dec. 27, 2015
Internal links removed.
Peter Schroeder of the Hill: "Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has elevated debt relief for Puerto Rico to the top of the congressional agenda in 2016.... Puerto Rico Gov. Alejandro Garcia-Padilla (D) blasted Congress for failing to include language in the omnibus package, accusing lawmakers of acceding to hedge funds invested in the island's debt.... 'I am instructing our House committees of jurisdiction to work with the Puerto Rican government to come up with a responsible solution by the end of the first quarter of next year,' [Ryan] said in a statement one day after the omnibus was unveiled." ...
... New York Times Editors: "Congress needs to help the island, which is home to 3.5 million American citizens, by giving it the ability to restructure its debts in an orderly way.... [W]hat needs to happen is clear: Congress should change the law that excludes Puerto Rico from bankruptcy protection.... Congress failed to move on restructuring legislation before members left Washington for the holidays. Wall Street investors that own bonds issued by the island mounted an aggressive lobbying effort, aimed primarily at Republicans, to stall legislation." ...
... CW: We need to hear from Donald Trump on this. Trump has been thru four business bankruptcies himself; would he extend the same benefit to Puerto Rican-Americans?
David Willman of the Los Angeles Times: "... the Obama administration and Congress poured more than $230 million into design and engineering work on [the Precision Tracking Space System, supposed to detect missile launches & track warheads in flight] in 2009. Four years later, the government quietly killed the program before a single satellite was launched. The Missile Defense Agency said PTSS fell victim to budget constraints. In fact, the program was spiked after outside experts determined that the entire concept was hopelessly flawed and the claims made by its advocates were erroneous. It was the latest in a string of expensive failures for the missile agency.... 'It's an example of what can go wrong in defense procurement: Huge amounts of money just pissed away on things that should never have advanced beyond a study,' said David K. Barton, a physicist and radar engineer who served on a National Academy of Sciences panel that reviewed U.S. missile-defense programs, including PTSS."
Kimberly Kindy, et al., of the Washington Post: "Nearly a thousand times this year, an American police officer has shot and killed a civilian.... In a year-long study, The Washington Post found that the kind of incidents that have ignited protests in many U.S. communities -- most often, white police officers killing unarmed black men -- represent less than 4 percent of fatal police shootings. Meanwhile, The Post found that the great majority of people who died at the hands of the police fit at least one of three categories: they were wielding weapons, they were suicidal or mentally troubled, or they ran when officers told them to halt." ...
... Monica Davey of the New York Times: "Police fatally shot a man and a woman on [Chicago's] West Side early Saturday, setting off a new flurry of questions about a department already under intense scrutiny." ...
... Caryn Rousseau of the AP: "A Chicago police officer responding to a domestic disturbance call accidentally shot and killed a 55-year-old woman, who was among two people fatally wounded by police gunfire, according to officials with the department that's already facing intense scrutiny." CW: Here's the way the police describe the "accident": "Officers who responded to the call "were confronted by a combative subject resulting in the discharging of the officer's weapon." Why, the officer with his/her finger on the trigger had nothing to do with it. The "combative subject" somehow caused the weapon to "discharge." Innocent by virtue of the passive voice & euphemism. ...
... AP: "Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has issued a statement on the fatal police shooting of a man and woman after authorities said officers responded to a domestic disturbance call. In the statement on the early morning shooting issued late Saturday by the mayor, Emanuel says that 'anytime an officer uses force the public deserves answers, and regardless of the circumstances, we all grieve anytime there is a loss of life in our city.'" CW: Anytime. Which is an adverb. Even if Emanuel makes it a noun twice in one sentence. But it's nice anytime a mayor is concerned a combative public may result in the discharging of him. ...
... Margaret Talbot of the New Yorker: "The code of silence has protected some particularly reprehensible behavior in the [Chicago Police Department], much of it directed at the city's black population."
Annals of "Justice," Ctd. AP (via the L.A. Times): The organization Equal Justice Under Law has "filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of ... jail inmates who argue that San Francisco and California's bail system unconstitutionally treats poor and wealthy suspects differently. Wealthy suspects can put up their houses or other valuable assets -- or simply write a check -- to post bail and stay out of jail until their cases are resolved. Poorer suspects ... [may] remain behind bars or pay nonrefundable fees to bail bonds companies.... Some ... who can't afford to post bail plead guilty to minor charges for crimes they didn't commit so they can leave jail.... [The organization's founder Phil] Telfeyan said a win in California could add momentum to the center's goal to rid the country of the cash bail system, which the lawyers say is used by most county jails in all 50 states." ...
... CW: The number of ways various governmental entities discriminate against the poor boggles the mind. It would appear that the words "justice" or "justice system" should almost always appear in scare-quotes.
Jordan Fabian of the Hill: "President Obama and first lady extended their 'warmest wishes' to those celebrating Kwanzaa, the week-long holiday as it began Saturday."
"Right to Rise." Harold Holzer & Norton Garfinkle in Salon: Abraham "Lincoln's decision to resist Southern secession and fight a war to maintain the American Union was motivated primarily by his belief that the nation was founded on the idea that this country 'proposed to give all a chance' and allow 'the weak to grow stronger.' The toxic combination of secession together with an unending commitment to unpaid human bondage by a new and separate Confederate nation, he calculated, would be fatal to the American Dream. It posed a direct threat to a self-sustaining middle-class society and to the promise of America leading the way to spreading the idea of opportunity and upward mobility throughout the world." Republished from their book A Just and Generous Nation. ...
... CW: Holzer & Garfinkle's analysis only further convinces me that the Civil War was a Big Mistake. A century-and-a-half later, the South is still resisting the "right to rise" (Jeb!'s slogan!), & neither the civil rights movement nor the influx of Northerners has much changed that.
Nicholas Thompson of the New Yorker reprises the Best of Borowitz for 2015.
Rachel Gross in Slate reports on a masterful bit of irony: "In what is almost a too-clever illustration of how evolution works, a scientist at Australian National University has created a chart to show us the evolution of anti-evolution bills."
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. D. R. Tucker of the Washington Monthly wonders when major teevee media will start covering climate change. C.W.: Network newscasts are just slightly-more sophisticated versions of when-it-bleeds-it-leads local news showz. The networks favor "breaking news," dramatic stories that give their anchors chances to fly around in helicopters & stand in front of war zones "Daily Show"-style. While many of the weather events they cover can be attributed in part to the effects of climate change, the story is the devastation, not the cause of the devastation. The "substance" of their coverage of these weather events is talking to local survivors who announce through tears that "God saved me because he has a plan for me" (after which they go looking for their FEMA money).
Presidential Race
Yay! Another conspiracy theory. Hunter Walker of Yahoo News: "The dustup over a data breach that briefly erupted in the Democratic presidential primary last week isn't over as far as Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and his team are concerned.... [A] top Sanders adviser told Yahoo News one of the remaining concerns is that [Josh] Uretsky[, the data manager Sanders fired for breaching the Clinton campaign's data files,] was recommended to the campaign by people with ties to the DNC and NGP VAN." CW: That is, Uretsky may have been a Clinton/DNC plant.
Ben Brody of Bloomberg: "Since dropping out of the race for the Democratic nomination, [former Sen. Jim] Webb has continued to maintain his Webb2016 website, which he has updated with posts about the possibilities of an independent run. On Twitter, he and his fans have been promoting a #WebbNation hashtag." Now he's using both to attack Hillary Clinton for her handling of Libya & to congratulate Bernie Sanders for taking on the DNC.
Jim O'Sullivan of the Boston Globe: Top Northerneastern Republican moderates won't rule out supporting Donald Trump if he's the GOP presidential nominee.
Peter Beinart of the Atlantic (Dec. 23): "It's less the content of what Trump says that offends Jeb than the manner in which he says it.... Jeb, like his brother and father, prizes decorum. He wants presidential candidates to behave like gentlemen." Even when he touches on substance, he "triangulates": "In Jeb's view, Trump was wrong to insult to Hillary for, essentially, being a woman, and Hillary was equally wrong for being insulted."
Eugene Scott of CNN: "Rep. Trey Gowdy will spend the final days of 2015 campaigning in Iowa with Marco Rubio and will offer the Florida senator his 'full support,' a campaign aide told CNN Saturday. The aide, however, stopped short of saying that Gowdy would officially endorse Rubio." CW: Does this make sense? Is Gowdy being coy. Or what?
Alexander Burns & Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "As a presidential candidate, Gov. Chris Christie has sought to differentiate himself by spotlighting his tenure as the United States attorney for New Jersey, framing it as a time when he spent his 'life protecting our country' against terrorism. The message has begun to resonate: Mr. Christie, long an underdog in the Republican presidential field, has recently risen in the polls. A close examination of Mr. Christie's record as New Jersey's top federal prosecutor from 2002 to 2008 shows that he did acquire greater counterterrorism experience than his current rivals. But it also shows that he has, at times, overstated the significance of the terrorism prosecutions he oversaw -- he has called them 'two of the biggest terrorism cases in the world' -- and appears to have exaggerated his personal role in obtaining court permission for surveillance of terrorism suspects." ...
... In the Dec. 25 edition of the Washington Post, Frances Sellers also tried to make the case that Christie exaggerated his role but she made Christie's counterterrism-warrior claims look fairly credible.
Beyond the Beltway
Daniel Politi of Slate: "Authorities are investigating a two-alarm fire at a mosque in southwest Houston as possible arson. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives said the fire 'appears suspicious' because it had 'multiple points of origin.'" ...
... Update. Samantha Ptashkin of KPRC Houston: "Investigators with the Houston Fire Department said a fire that damaged a southwest Houston mosque was intentionally set."
Joel Rubin of the Los Angeles Times: "Feds step in & prosecute five L.A. County sheriff's deputies for beating a handcuffed man, Gabriel Carrillo, after the L.A County District Attorney failed to bring charges & cleared the deputies. Carrillo was not an inmate; he was visiting his brother, who was in jail, when he was caught carrying a cellphone in the jail's visitor center. CW: There should be a federal law against allowing local prosecutors to "investigate" cases of alleged police misconduct.
Way Beyond
Liz Alderman of the New York Times: "Few places are tilting toward a cashless future as quickly as Sweden, which has become hooked on the convenience of paying by app and plastic. This tech-forward country ... has been lured by the innovations that make digital payments easier. It is also a practical matter, as many of the country's banks no longer accept or dispense cash."
Sewell Chan & Milan Schreuer of the New York Times: His schoolteachers in Brussels had warned that Bilal Hadfi, who "blew himself up outside the national soccer stadium on the northern outskirts of Paris, part of attacks that killed 130 people," had become radicalized but school administrators never passed the warnings on to police. School officials suspended, on a flimsy "cause," one of the teachers who had warned of Hadfi's radicalization.
News Ledes
Washington Post: "Iraqi forces said Sunday that they had captured the main government compound in Ramadi, a symbolic win in a key city that has been under Islamic State control for seven months. Engineering teams were still working to clear explosive devices in the area, but the complex was entirely under the control of Iraqi forces, military commanders said. Still, much of the city's downtown remains in the hands of the militants, Iraqi officials said."
Weather Channel: "At least three tornadoes struck the Dallas suburbs Saturday, killing at least seven people, destroying several homes and damaging many more Saturday as Winter Storm Goliath emerged from the western U.S. and began interacting with the record warmth blanketing much of the South, leading to a large zone of severe weather risk." ...
... New York Times Update: "At least 11 people were killed in the Dallas area Saturday night when 11 tornadoes swept North Texas, officials said. The storm tossed cars off freeways and destroyed at least one apartment building, a recreation vehicle park and several homes across the suburbs northeast of the city, according to officials with the Dallas County Sheriff's Department and the Garland Police Department. About 50,000 people were without power, officials said." ...
... The front page of the Dallas Morning News currently links to numerous stories about the tornados. ...
... AP: "At least 11 people died and dozens were injured in apparently strong tornadoes that swept through the Dallas area and caused substantial damage this weekend, while five people died in a flash flood in Illinois. It was the latest of a succession of powerful weather events across the country, from heavy snow in New Mexico, west Texas and the Oklahoma panhandle to flash flooding in parts of the plains and midwest. Days of tumultuous weather have led to 35 deaths overall -- those in Texas and Illinois, plus 19 in the south-east after another body was found Sunday in floodwaters."
AP: "The Islamic State group on Saturday released a new message purportedly from its reclusive leader, claiming that his self-styled 'caliphate' is doing well despite an unprecedented alliance against it and criticizing the recently announced Saudi-led Islamic military coalition against terrorism."
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Reader Comments (8)
From above: "It’s an example of what can go wrong in defense procurement: Huge amounts of money just pissed away on things that should never have advanced beyond a study".
It's equally important to note that such money does not just evaporate. Every nickel of it ends up in somebodies' pockets. And the deepest pockets don't belong to Civil Service employees, or anyone else who works for a salary.
The military space programs have been a wonderful vehicle for Congress to shovel large amounts of tax money to the aerospace industry in exchange for campaign contributions. It can be argued that this does create spinoffs, stimulating useful R&D, creating new jobs and industries. So why not spend directly on R&D or infrastructure? Defense spending has the advantage of being wrapped in secrecy. So politicians can castigate each other for 'pork barrel spending' (definition: any federal spending in a state or district represented by a member of the other party) while reaping the benefits of their largess to defense contractors.
I want to thank John McAfee, the owner of the web security company for solving a current issue. I just bought a new computer and it offered two security systems. Now that McAfee is running for POTUS as a libertarian, Kaspersky wins!
Ah yes, the evolution story again. There was a piece in today's Star Ledger about how wonderful religion is for children and family (don't even think about reading it). Yes, teaching your children that science is meaningless certainly helps along with telling them that all of the rest of humanity lacks true morality.
@ DC Clark: Pork barrel spending is starting to look better. At least it produced jobs and useful infrastructure, which didn't kill anyone.
Marvin,
I didn't know about McAfee, thanks. Found the following summary:
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/ex-fugitive-anti-virus-creator-john-mcafee-running-president-n423881
Colorful character, indeed. Good libertarian -- elevates contempt for the rule of law to a philosophic principle.
Says he divested himself of McAfee Associates 20 years ago, though. That's a couple of lifetimes in software, so I may keep using it. Have had issues with Norton, -- and Comcast integrates McAfee.
Victoria,
My favorite pork barrel spending story:
When the Interstate Highway system was built during the Eisenhower administration, they had to call it the National Defense Highway System in order to justify so much federal spending. Not as if it was otherwise a good idea or anything.
Further thoughts on my last:
So maybe we could repair the crumbling bridges on the Interstates by calling it the National Anti-Terrorist Highway system. And expand the rail system by saying it's needed to transport all of those millions of undocumented immigrants to the border in cattle cars.
That ought'a sell.
@D.C. Clark: you may be on to something in repackaging infrastructure bills; I wish Dems would get more creative! It's all in a name.
I had no idea the National Defense Highway System had that backstory. Although I always found it a little odd that the name implied the whole purpose was for defense....
Victoria,
See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Aid_Highway_Act_of_1956
Rationales included access to strategic air bases, reinforcing bridges to support tanks and heavily laden military truck convoys, as well as troop movement and civilian evacuation routes in the event of invasion or nuclear attack.
See also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Education_Act
Passed in response to Sputnik and the Space Race, and from which I, and my generation, benefitted enormously, through the implementation of advanced math, physics, and chemistry classes in public high schools. I remember them well, still have some of my old textbooks.
Not to mention:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Aeronautics_and_Space_Act
Which provided me employment for most of my adult life.
Pretty big government, tax and spend guy was Likable Ike. Of course the was a dark side -- La Donald likes him for:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wetback
Ain't it amazin' what an appeal to paranoia can do? Surely we present day progressives can figure out some ways to get on this bandwagon. I recall a recent article on the number of young Americans insufficiently fit to pass an enlistment physical. How about a National Defense Childhood Health and Nutrition Act?