The Commentariat -- June 29, 2014
Internal links removed.
** Joe Stiglitz in the New York Times, on income inequality. This is the best short discourse I've read on how the Republican Tea Party has destroyed "who we are" -- or were -- "as a nation." Also, Tim Geithner is a putz. (Stiglitz never mentions Geithner by name nor does he specifically call out Ronald Reagan & his legacy of unscrupulous wingers & selfish, self-defeating dingbat voters.) Thanks to P.D. Pepe & MAG. ...
... CW: If you want to look for a good example of what Stiglitz is talking about, one that is expected to come with tomorrow's news, Ian Millhiser of Think Progress obliges: "On Monday, the Supreme Court is expected to hand down two cases, Hobby Lobby and a lesser-known case called Harris v. Quinn. Of the two, more is actually at stake in Harris than in Hobby Lobby." If the Harris decision goes against the union, it "could set off a death spiral endangering the unions themselves." ...
... There's something else implied in Millhiser's piece: that the right is again using its very effective tactic of filling the air with sound & fury over "values" issues in order to hide its scheme to ruin ordinary Americans in service of the few. There's a reason John Roberts chose to issue these two decisions at the same time and -- unless Anthony Kennedy has developed a sudden fondness for healthcare workers -- Roberts' choice does not bode well for most Americans.
Julia Preston of the New York Times: "President Obama will ask Congress to provide more than $2 billion in new funds to control the surge of illegal Central American migrants at the South Texas border, and to grant broader powers for immigration officials to speed deportations of children caught crossing without their parents, White House officials said on Saturday."
Sari Horwitz, et al., of the Washington Post: "Ahmed Abu Khattala, a suspected Libyan ringleader of the 2012 terrorist embassy attack in Benghazi that killed four Americans, was brought Saturday from a Navy warship to the federal courthouse in the District, where he entered a plea of not guilty to a single conspiracy charge."
Annie Rose-Strasser of Think Progress: "The latest way that Facebook has been peeking into its users' personal lives may be the most surprising yet: Facebook researches have published a scientific paper that reveals the company has been conducting psychological experiments on its users to manipulate their emotions."
Nicole Winfield of TPM: "The Vatican conceded Thursday that most Catholics reject its teachings on sex and contraception as intrusive and irrelevant and officials pledged not to 'close our eyes to anything' when it opens a two-year debate on some of the thorniest issues facing the church. Core church doctrine on the nature of marriage, sexuality, abortion and divorce isn't expected to change as a result of the debate that opens in October." Via Steve Benen.
Emma Margolin of NBC News: "Six months after losing his ordination credentials for presiding over the wedding of his gay son and for leaving open the possibility of performing future same-sex wedding ceremonies, a Pennsylvania pastor has been welcomed back into the United Methodist Church. On Tuesday, a nine-person appeals panel of church officials overturned an earlier decision to defrock Rev. Frank Schaefer of Lebanon, Pa., who in 2007 married his oldest son, Tim, to another man. The wedding took place in Massachusetts...." Via Benen.
The Gray Lady Don't Shit. Often. Ben Zimmer in Slate: According to Politico's Mike Allen, President Obama & his aides have repeatedly said in off-the-record conversations with reporters that the Obama Doctrine is "Don't do stupid shit." However, the New York Times has bowdlerized the sentence to "Don't do stupid stuff" on four separate occasions, even in articles where the "doctrine" is the point of the story; this despite the fact that the Times in the past has accurately quoted Presidents Nixon & Bush II and others when they used the word "shit." Thanks to Barbarossa for the link. ...
... In a March 2014 New York Times op-ed, which Zimmer links, lexicographer Jesse Sheidlower makes "the case for profanity." Obviously, Sheidlower lost the case. ...
... CW: I think it is fair to euphemize surprise utterances, as in the Wendy Davis example Zimmer cites, but when a public figure purposely uses profane &/or obscene language, there's no reason to, um, mince words. I suppose I wouldn't put "shit" in a headline of a mainstream news outlet. It does really aggravate me when publications print "used a profanity," so I have to go hunting the Internets to find out what the person actually said. ...
... "Fuck Yourself." Ten years ago, Helen Dewar & Dana Milbank of the Washington Post -- and their editors & headline writers -- handled this story just right, IMHO. Sheryl Gay Stolberg & the Times, however, completely blew it." Salty language??? Oh, shiver me timbers.
Senate Election
Philip Bump of the Washington Post on why "Chris McDaniel isn't going to win any challenge" to the results of the Mississippi GOP primary runoff.
News Lede
ISIS, We Hardly Knew Ya. Washington Post: "In an audio statement posted on the Internet, the spokesman for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria announced the restoration of the 7th-century Islamic caliphate, a long-declared goal of the al-Qaeda renegades who broke with the mainstream organization early this year and have since asserted control over large areas spanning the two countries. The move signifies 'a new era of international jihad,' said the spokesman, Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, who also declared an end to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, as the group had called itself."
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Reader Comments (4)
If you link onto the Facebook article above you will see another very entertaining video on top of page where Fox host Neil Cavuto chastises the gal with the far-away eyes, Ms, Bachmann who continues her nonsense about our King in the White House––"take away any funding–-after all Congress is in charge of the purse," she says. The exchange between these two is amusing and when Cavuto calls her ranting silly, ya jest gotta love the guy––a little.
Started reading an article by Joseph Stiglitz in the Time's Sunday Review section, but when I went back to it couldn't access it. Could they have taken it down for some reason?
@PD Try the Opinionator blog (I think it is there): http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/27/inequality-is-not-inevitable/
CW: I'm equally fearful about tomorrow's Harris decision. Was going to begin pre-decision analysis by saying, I don't know much law, but...but then remembered this court is not all that fond of precedent anyway, so knowledge of established law doesn't much matter...
What should matter is logic. Here we have "free riders" who benefit from the combined bargaining power of the unions to which they choose not to belong but don't want to pay a fee to the unions for their service. They want to be "free" of those fees, and we all know these Supremes find very powerful magic in that word...for some.
I can understand the freeloaders' feeling. During the Bush years I surely did not want to pay my income taxes to a federal government that was spending trillions on an off-the-books illegal war against people who had done nothing to us (I'm old enough to remember another tax protest against another foolish war)...but ignoring the citizenship arrangement I was born into and chose to benefit from was not an option. Wonder what the Supremes would have said to an argument that proposed a citizenship status that allowed me to drive on the interstate, visit the national parks, anticipate the benefits of medicare, but not pay the portion of my taxes that supported the Iraq invasion...Not to mention my current annoyance with the billions spent on the NSA monolith that I think overall does far more harm than good to the country...
Logic would also lead me to think that a Harris decision that freed the freeloaders (anyone else think of Red Skelton here?) from their agency fee should also "free" them to negotiate their own salary and benefits? They could call that new negotiating arrangement "the power of one," which is exactly the number employers would like to deal with, lone workers, one at a time...
But logic that so directly linked the freeloaders bargaining power to the group that provided it might actually strengthen the union because then the connection between the two would more likely be obvious to even the most dim-witted.
So don't think that outcome likely. It would make sense but not the kind of sense this Court is happy with. Instead the Roberts' Court specializes in applying and extending rights and freedoms to the individuals and primarily to the groups and entities it likes, and unions and women are clearly not among them.
Once again, I dearly hope I'm wrong...
Ken,
You're talking about the social compact we all, as citizens, enter into, or at least we did, based on our understanding of how the United States works--or has worked--for generations.
In our system we elect women and men to represent us. We hope that they will make good choices and spend our tax dollars wisely. But because of the multiplicity of competing interests, we also hope they are smart about parsing those differences and supporting them (or not) based on their deserts. We may not agree with the uses to which they put some of those dollars. We may, as in the examples you cite, be exceedingly vexed at the uses to which our resources are put.
But our system offers--at least until some uniquely anti-American, anti-democratic group or party tries to say otherwise--avenues for redress of those issues, if they are offensive enough to arouse political ire.
Likewise for things like membership in unions. We can choose not to join a union. Maybe then we don't get a job in a union shop, but that decision was made collectively (ooooh don't say that word to conservatives!) by other Americans who see unionization as a bulwark, a prophylactic against corporate temerity and greedy fecklessness. But if you want to enjoy to enjoy the benefits of union muscle, then you need to pay your way. Those who want to claim "personal freedom" but not pay, are like those who decide they don't want to be part of a system that offers health care to other Americans who aren't exactly like you. This un-American in the extreme. At least it used to be.
Conservatives on the Supreme Court are in the midst of the most profound reshaping of the contours of American democracy, probably since the founding of the nation itself. They're like fractious cartographers who don't like the map of the world so they draw their own and expect everyone else to abide their demarcations.
They hypocritically employ wedge concepts (personal FREEDOM, eg) in unsupportable and disingenuous ways to disable sub-systems of the body politic with the express goal of initiating a kind of political and social grand mal seizure. I won't even bother with my usual run down of the many two-faced ways in which personal choice, for example, is venerated by the court for some issues, but, most assuredly, not all. It's held in high esteem and provided with a wingnut "nihil obstat" if and only if the relevant points of contention can be secured within the boundaries of right-wing cartographic orthodoxy.
The Stiglitz article Marie links (which I had to force myself to read--like a horror story you just know will end badly) coats the recent past with a revealing goosh of luminol, the substance crime scene investigators use to expose the bloody fingerprints and spatter left behind by murderous perpetrators, in this case, movement conservatives and their vicious ideological hitmen, the most impressive of whom are named Alito, Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy, and Roberts.
A right-wing Murder Incorporated.
Their goal? Kill the American Dream. Draw an orange line around the body politic, pull a sheet over it, and transfer the deceased's effects to corporate overlords.
So much for the social compact. The really stupid thing is that most of those voting for this insanity are also on the hit list. Just look at the Roberts' court's rulings. QED.
Just one more example of the toxicity of ignorance.