The Commentariat -- July 3, 2012
My column in the New York Times eXaminer is titled "I Never Believe David Brooks." I never do. The NYTX front page is here.
The Government We Deserve. Pew Research Center: "... just 55% of the public knows that the Supreme Court upheld most of the health care law's provisions; 45% say either that the court rejected most provisions (15%) or do not know what the court did (30%). Among those aware that the court upheld most of the law, 50% approve of the decision while 42% disapprove."
Understanding Mitt. Lisa Miller of New York: "... living high on the socioeconomic ladder can, colloquially speaking, dehumanize people. It can make them less ethical, more selfish, more insular, and less compassionate than other people.... 'While having money doesn’t necessarily make anybody anything,' [Prof. Paul] Piff says, 'the rich are way more likely to prioritize their own self-interests above the interests of other people. It makes them more likely to exhibit characteristics that we would stereotypically associate with, say, assholes.'" CW: this is a six-pager. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the printer version to load, so you'll have to page thru from the linked first page.
Jeff Toobin: Chief Justice John Roberts' opinion on the Affordable Care Act "was a singular act of courage," but "this should have been an easy case."
Adam Serwer of Mother Jones: "Conservatives want their judges to consider themselves card-carrying members of the conservative movement, and at the same time they want those judges' rulings, when handed down, to be treated with unquestionable legitimacy even by those who disagree with the decisions.... Having excoriated liberals for calling the court partisan, conservatives are now gnashing their teeth because the court failed to be as partisan as they wanted. That makes the complaints about politics supposedly driving Roberts' decision ring hollow. They wanted politics to drive the decision. They just wanted it to go their way."
Jonathan Chait: John Roberts' legal theory on the constitutionality of the ACA makes no sense (and neither does that of the conservatives justices, who don't even try). But it accomplished what he wanted to do, making it "results-oriented."
Fear of Taxes. Stephen Stromberg of the Washington Post: Get over it, people. "Taxation ... can be an extremely efficient way to achieve social ends as well as fund the government, and any fair conservative economist would recognize this."
Incidential Economist: "Obamacare is the biggest tax increase in history … if you ignore history. The I/E created a chart to disprove the GOP biggest-tax-increase-ever talking point. ...
... More from Kevin Drum on the "biggest tax increase" story. He adds, "no news outlet interested in accuracy should let it pass without challenge." Good luck with that. Of course, we may not hear this talking point for long on account of Romney's little "tax problem": see the Michael Shear story under today's "Presidential Race" for that.
Suzy Khimm of the Washington Post: okay, the Court has ruled on ObamaCare. Are you businesspeople who were clinging to the uncertainty apron all better now? Are you "certain" yet?
** Re: the Affordable Care Act, please read Victoria D.'s comment in today's Commentariat. Letters like the one she received can only help.
Ken Silverstein, in a New York Times op-ed: "Despots and crooks love to bring their money to America, not only for prestige but also because our corporate secrecy laws, like those of Switzerland and Luxembourg, make it almost impossible for law enforcement agencies to figure out who has money sheltered here."
Gene Robinson: "About one-fourth of all households [in the Washington, D.C. area] have no electricity, the legacy of an unprecedented assault by violent thunderstorms Friday night. Critics have blasted the Obama administration's unfruitful investment in solar energy. But if government-funded research managed to lower the price of solar panels to the point where it became economical to install them on residential roofs, all you global warming skeptics would have air conditioning right now. I'm just sayin'."
"Backpack" Vouchers. Ed Kilgore of Washington Monthly: Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's program to give vouchers to every kid should frighten Americans "because the basic idea of 'strapping public funds to kids' backs' and sending it wherever parents choose is at the heart of Mitt Romney's education platform." CW: and another reminder of why I despise Jeb Bush. He can be polite & reasonable-sounding, but that sucker is a prime mover in the privatization of education -- a key element in the Return to Gilded Age Rules.
Marc Ambinder in GQ: "According to ongoing discussions with Obama aides and associates, if the president wins a second term, he plans to tackle another American war that has so far been successful only in perpetuating more misery: the four decades of The Drug War."
CW: a note to everyone who says "I'm not going to vote for Obama. He betrayed me when he did/didn't do ... whatever": The Bully Pulpit Argument. Scott Lemieux of Lawyers, Guns & Money: "Plans to transform American domestic politics that involve heroic presidential daddies imposing major social change on powerful interests by sheer force of will are indistinguishable from having no plan at all."
Sometimes conservatives grow up. Patrick Gavin of Politico has the story.
Presidential Race
Michael Shear of the New York Times: "Mitt Romney's presidential campaign threw cold water on a central Republican attack line on Monday, saying that President Obama's health care mandate should be thought of as a penalty and not a tax. That message ... contradicts top Republican Party officials and leaders in Congress, who have spent the last several days eagerly accusing the president of levying a new tax. By straying from the party message, Mr. Romney's campaign offered a fresh example of his difficulty in carrying the conservative mantle on health care...."
Not Going to Talk about Healthcare. Josh Kraushaar of the National Journal: Mitt Romney's "campaign has been giving off clear signals that it doesn't want to make health care a major part of the election."
Not Going to Talk about Immigration, Either. Maggie Haberman of Politico: "Mitt Romney last week told a private group of potential supporters and business and media elites, including Rupert Murdoch, that he was treading carefully around the issue of immigration to avoid looking like a 'flip-flopper.'" CW: interesting post.
Not Going to Talk about My Personal Finances, Either. CW: Haven't had time to read this Vanity Fair story, but it looks good. Here's the blurb: "For all Mitt Romney's touting of his business record, when it comes to his own money the Republican nominee is remarkably shy about disclosing numbers and investments. Nicholas Shaxson delves into the murky world of offshore finance, revealing loopholes that allow the very wealthy to skirt tax laws, and investigating just how much of Romney's fortune (with $30 million in Bain Capital funds in the Cayman Islands alone?) looks pretty strange for a presidential candidate." ...
... Alexander Burns of Politico, commenting on the Vanity Fair story: "Romney's larger approach to the 2012 campaign: accepting a certain amount of heat over his lack of detail and transparency, in order to deny his critics and political opponents information they might use to attack him." Strategy translation: if you knew about the skeletons in Mitt Romney's closet, you would not elect him dogcatcher (even tho he's got a kennel on the top of his car), so the closet will remain closed. And we're counting on the press to "respect the candidate's privacy."
CW: so it looks like Romney's entire campaign message boils down to this: "The economy sucks and I'm white."
O Say, Can You Say "Marseillaise"? Steve Benen: Some Republicans -- Karl Rove & the National Review, fer instance -- have been claiming that President Obama will be spending the 4th in Paris attending fundraisers. Not true. "There is, of course, an underlying smear here, with the right falsely trying to connect Obama to France. But I'm curious: if a Parisian fundraiser from American donors is controversial, why aren't Romney's fundraisers in communist China equally problematic?"
Right Wing World
Let's Cuff the Attorney General. Steve Benen: Rep. Jason Chaffetz (RTP-Utah) goes on the teevee to raise the prospect of having the House sergeant-at-arms apprehend AG Eric Holder. CW: yes, making the black AG do the perp walk would be a great visual. I have no idea what the sergeant-at-arms would actually do with Holder once he "took control of" him because no one is going to prosecute Holder. Will they lock him up in the basement of the Capitol Building?
Local News
"Chris Christie, Still Auditioning for V.P., Calls Reporter an 'Idiot.'" Star-Ledger Editorial Board: "Christie signs laws against bullying while serving a prime example of the problem." The news story is here. CW: Marvin Schwalb has a point. See yesterday Comments on the Commentariat. ...
... But I still think Florida's Rick Scott win the "America's Worst Governor" contest. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos: an analysis has "found that 98.4 percent of the 2,625 people included on" Rick Scott's first list of "potential noncitizens" are eligible voters. CW: and Republican-run Lee County, where I live is the worst! Here's my case: Christie is calling New Jersey citizens "idiots" & "numbnuts"; Scott is disenfranchising the idiots in Florida.
Amanda Crawford of Bloomberg News: in Colorado Springs, the home of the anti-tax movement & a bastion of conservatism, is now experiencing -- in the wake of the disastrous fires -- the obvious downside of Norquist-think: fewer essential public services -- including police. And it is likely to get worse.
News Ledes
New York Times: "Andy Griffith, an actor whose folksy Southern manner charmed audiences for more than 50 years on Broadway, in movies, on albums and especially on television -- most notably as the small-town sheriff on the long-running situation comedy that bore his name -- died on Tuesday at his home on Roanoke Island in North Carolina. He was 86." The Times has an "Andy Griffith -- In Performance" video feature here. I recommend "What It Was, Was Football," which was my introduction to Griffith.
New York Times: "The United States has quietly moved significant military reinforcements into the Persian Gulf to deter the Iranian military from any possible attempt to shut the Strait of Hormuz and to increase the number of fighter jets capable of striking deep into Iran if the standoff over its nuclear program escalates."
AP: "The Obama administration is moving toward decisions that would further cut the number of U.S. nuclear weapons, possibly to between 1,000 and 1,100, reflecting new thinking on the role of nuclear weapons in an age of terror, current and former officials say."
Reuters: "Firefighters grappling with the two most destructive wildfires on record in Colorado reported progress on Monday...." The Denver Post's coverage is here.
New York Times: "A prominent human rights advocacy group accused the Syrian authorities on Tuesday of building an 'archipelago' of at least 27 torture centers where abuse of the government’s opponents points to a crime against humanity." Guardian story here. ...
... AP: "Syrian President Bashar Assad said he regrets the shooting down of a Turkish jet by his forces, and he will not allow tensions between the two neighbors to deteriorate into an 'armed conflict,' a Turkish newspaper reported Tuesday." ...
... Al Jazeera: "International powers have agreed that a transitional government should be set up in Syria to end the bloodshed there but left open the question of what part President Bashar al-Assad might play in the process. Peace envoy Kofi Annan said after talks in Geneva on Saturday that the government should include members of Assad's administration and the Syrian opposition and pave the way for free elections."
AP: "Iraqi officials on Tuesday said at least 25 people were killed and 40 others wounded in a series of blasts in central Iraq as insurgents seek to undermine the Shiite-led government."
Guardian: "US and Pakistani officials have expressed optimism that Islamabad is close to reopening its Afghan border to Nato troop supplies after a seven-month blockade, a move that could significantly reduce tension between the two countries."
AP: "British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline will pay $3 billion in fines -- the largest healthcare fraud settlement in U.S. history -- for criminal and civil violations involving 10 drugs that are taken by millions of people. The Justice Department said Monday that GlaxoSmithKline PLC will plead guilty to promoting popular antidepressants Paxil and Wellbutrin for unapproved uses. The company also will plead guilty to failing to report to the government for seven years some safety problems with diabetes drug Avandia...."
New York Times: "Robert E. Diamond Jr., the chief executive of Barclays, resigned on Tuesday, less than a week since the British bank agreed to pay $450 million to settle accusations that it had tried to manipulate key interest rates for its own benefit." The Guardian is liveblogging the story; other executives are expected to resign.
Washington Post: "Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. sharply criticized lawmakers Monday for voting to hold him in contempt of Congress last week, saying Republicans have made him a 'proxy' to attack President Obama in an election year."
New York Times: "... Fermilab physicists said Monday that its Tevatron, now shuttered but once the world’s most powerful physics machine, had fallen just short of finding a long-hypothesized particle. Known as the Higgs boson, it explains why things in the universe have mass, and is a cornerstone of modern physics despite never being seen."
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Reader Comments (5)
Christie sure is a nice man, isn't he? It doesn't matter. He won and the Democrat lost. Winners write the history and Democrats are too busy worrying about playing nice instead of beating back the Republican hordes. Think LBJ and much is possible.
Marie,
Thanks for the link to that Mother Jones story on conservative apoplexy over the ACA ruling. The level of hypocrisy is startling. After years of ripping liberals as desirous of activist judges, they reveal themselves to be far more addicted to having everything go their way. They don't even try to make a show of the importance of judicial restraint. Last week after the ruling came down right-wing commentator Stu Burguiere, on the Glenn Beck radio show screamed at the top of his lungs: "Why can't we appoint justices on our side that actually do the things they're supposed to do?"
"The things they are supposed to do" and he ain't talking about restrained adjudication.
No concern for anything piddling like Law or Justice. It's all about their side winning. Beck is now peddling a t-shirt with Roberts' face and the word "Coward" under it. It apparently is one of his biggest sellers. Because thinking for yourself is never allowed in right-wing world. Ideology must be obeyed. And to that end I point you to a far scarier article in the new edition of American Scholar:
http://theamericanscholar.org/justice-for-sale/?key=53514768
Lincoln Caplan, a legal affairs reporter for the NY Times describes our future under Citizens United. A future in which justices are elected solely by money. Here's a taste. In Wisconsin, conservative PACs have been working for the last few years, pouring millions into races to elect judges. Several years ago special interest money allowed conservatives to overthrow the first black member of the Wisconsin Supreme Court with the help of millions of dollars in fraudulent attack ads. It was only the third time in history that a sitting justice was defeated and the first time by a candidate with credentials thinner than rice paper. The millions it took to elect Michael Gableman, a right-wing hack, to the Wisconsin high court was followed by more millions and behind the scenes legal support worth additional millions in order to help him fend off misconduct charges stemming from the viciousness of the attack ads.
Interestingly the law firm who supplied the free legal counsel for the next two years appeared before the court 10 times subsequently. Gableman recused himself only once, siding with the firm 5 times including the case against Wisconsin's public employee unions. How's that for bang for your buck? Wait, it gets better.
The outrage ignited by the case of a sitting judge who had received free services from a firm refusing to recuse himself in cases in which that same firm appeared before him (and ruled in their favor 5 times!!) created a new surge of interest in the importance of recusal in order to avoid the taint of conflict of interest. But conservatives took care of that nonsense. Business groups appearing or expecting to appear before the court got together and created a "law" that made it unnecessary for judges to recuse themselves when donors to their campaigns for election to the high court appeared before them. That way they buy a seat on the court and ensure that good government types and liberals can't say anything about it when their guy returns the verdict they paid for. The Wisconsin Supreme Court voted along party lines for that ruling too. The deciding vote was cast by former right-wing hack, now sitting Supreme Court Justice, Michael Gableman.
And this is just the beginning.
22 states elect judges. Within a few years nearly half the country could have supreme and lower courts stuffed with employees of right-wing groups or corporations with business likely to come before those employees.
Is America a great country, or what?
Oh and one more thing about that moron Stu Burguiere. The day after his scream fest, Audie Cornish, on NPR, asked David Brooks about the outburst and wondered how he could square this with his earlier statement about how even handed and restrained conservatives are. He ignored the question and stated that this court is the least activist in history and conservatives are always on the side of judicial restraint. Lies? Or willful self delusion?
A lot of both, I'm thinking.
Whatever it is, we can expect things to get a lot worse in the next few years. The Citizens United may well turn out to be a kind of Kristallnacht for justice in this country.
Yesterday I received a letter from my health insurer which included the following information:
"Under the Affordable Care Act, your policy will now include coverage for the preventive care services described in the enclosed document at 100%. You will not have to pay a copayment, coninsurance or deductible for these services."
The attachment was a FULL PAGE listing all the services I will now have covered, additional to the ones already covered by the initial implementation of the Act.
Most likely women across the country have received, or shortly will receive, a similar letter.
We can discuss the merits of the ACA and the wisdom of the Supreme Court decision ad infinitum (and we are!) but what is interesting is that it is being implemented even as we Americans continue to debate its merits. As many have observed, average citizens really have had little idea of what the Act will do for them.
Apparently, they are about to find out....they may be pleasantly surprised.
The Lisa Miller article from New York is a great documentation of what I call " Marie Antoinette syndrome".
@Akhilleus-
My father, a Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice from 1944-48 would spit fire from his grave to know what is going on with the high court in Wisconsin today. He was a conservative, but was appointed by a Democratic Governor, and had for years taught constitutional law at the U of W. He believed passionately in the rule of law, and thought politics had no place on the court.
He lost his re-election bid to a political hack with a large right-wing following (Joe McCarthy supporters) and lots of money. It was a close election, and my father lost in part because he refused to talk about communists in the state government. And where did he lose? In all of the counties where people supported Joe McCarthy, of course--people who thought our country was being overrun by communists, because old Joe said so.
Different time. Different craziness. Same shameful stain on our judicial system. Fear, IMHO, has always ruled the day and won elections, when paired with money. Joe McCarthy was perhaps the most frightening and effective advocate of fear-based politics in my lifetime. Or maybe not. Scalia is certainly a runner-up!