The Commentariat -- June 4, 2013
A meritocracy is a system in which the people who are the luckiest in their health and genetic endowment; luckiest in terms of family support, encouragement, and, probably, income; luckiest in their educational and career opportunities; and luckiest in so many other ways difficult to enumerate--these are the folks who reap the largest rewards. The only way for even a putative meritocracy to hope to pass ethical muster, to be considered fair, is if those who are the luckiest in all of those respects also have the greatest responsibility to work hard, to contribute to the betterment of the world, and to share their luck with others. As the Gospel of Luke says (and I am sure my rabbi will forgive me for quoting the New Testament in a good cause): 'From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.' -- Ben Bernanke ...
... The full text of Bernanke's Princeton commencement address is here. ...
... ** Paul Krugman on Ben Bernanke's view of meritocracy (and why he favors a top tax rate of [at least] 73 percent). CW: A must-read, which raises the question: is Ben Bernanke the only Republican socialist?...
... Oh. Kevin Drum thinks maybe Bernanke is no longer a Republican.
Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post: "President Obama will nominate two female lawyers and an African-American federal judge to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit Tuesday, according to a White House official, in an effort to help reshape the federal judiciary before leaving office. The president will nominate veteran appelate lawyer Patricia A. Millett; Georgetown University Law Center professor Cornelia T. L. Pillard; and Robert L. Wilkins, a judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, according to the official.... Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, made it clear Monday Obama's nominees will face serious resistance." The New York Times story, by Michael Shear, is here. ...
... CW Update: in his nominating remarks, President Obama thoroughly smacked down Senate Republicans for obstructing his nominees & falsely accusing him of court-packing.
... ** Steve Benen: "... let's emphasize how uncontroversial this is -- there are vacancies on an important federal bench, so the president is sending qualified nominees to the Senate for consideration. Republicans are characterizing this as a scandalous power-grab, while many political reporters are describing this as Obama thumbing his nose at his political rivals. In reality, it's neither -- presidents filling judicial vacancies is basic American governance. It's Civics 101. That today's announcement is seen as somehow remarkable is evidence of just how broken the process has become." Read the whole post.
Natsha Lennard of Salon on the Bradley Manning trial.
Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post: "The nation's military chiefs have told Congress in writing that they oppose or have strong reservations about a controversial bill that would reshape military law by taking sexual-assault cases out of the hands of commanders, setting up a likely clash with lawmakers who are pushing the idea. In a rare joint appearance, the uniformed leaders of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, as well as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are scheduled to testify Tuesday before a Senate panel about what the Pentagon has described as an 'epidemic' of sex crimes in the ranks.... In an interview Monday, [Sen. Kirsten] Gillibrand [D-N.Y.] said the service chiefs' reluctance to weaken commanders' legal authority is inconsistent with their acknowledgment that most victims of sexual assault in the military do not trust their superiors to protect them or take their cases seriously."
Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "The death of Senator Frank R. Lautenberg of New Jersey poses new complications for the White House and Democrats on Capitol Hill as they try to push their agenda through a Senate where even a single vote can derail legislation. So crucial was Mr. Lautenberg's reliably liberal vote in a Senate where his party held a 55-45 majority that Democratic leaders twice asked him in recent weeks to return to Washington to vote despite his failing health." ...
... David Halbfinger of the New York Times: "The death of Frank R. Lautenberg on Monday has left Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey with [an] opportunity ... fraught with pitfalls, none bigger than having to choose between improving his party's fortunes in Washington and furthering his own political ambitions at home." ...
... Rachel Maddow on yesterday's news, Doonesbury, Frank Lautenberg, & Chris Christie's choice:
Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "Police may take D.N.A. samples from people arrested for serious crimes, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday in a 5-to-4 decision. 'When officers make an arrest supported by probable cause to hold for a serious offense and they bring the suspect to the station to be detained in custody,' Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority, 'taking and analyzing a cheek swab of the arrestee's D.N.A. is, like fingerprinting and photographing, a legitimate police booking procedure that is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.' Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Clarence Thomas, Stephen G. Breyer and Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined the majority opinion." ...
... The Supremes. New York Times Editors side with Nino & his backup group. CW: yes, a sexist remark, but this is an OTO (One Time Only): Scalia writes an opinion in which only Ginsberg, Sotomayor & Kagan concur.
Paul Kane of the Washington Post on the House GOP -- hey, it's in disarray, broken into warring factions! Ya gotta love sentences like this: "The cabal quickly fell apart when several Republicans, after a night of prayer, said God told them to spare the speaker." Can they govern? No, they can't. ...
... OR, as Barbara Morrill of Daily Kos puts it: "John Boehner can thank God for his job. Literally." ...
... ** Dana Milbank: "A third House committee joined the stampede to examine the IRS on Monday, and its chairman did exactly what you would expect somebody to do before launching a fair and impartial investigation: He went on Fox News Channel and implicated the White House.... [The] approach by House Republicans ... seems to follow the Lewis Carroll school of jurisprudence. Not only are they placing the sentence before the verdict, they're putting the verdict before the trial." ...
... Lauren French of Politico: "Daniel Werfel..., the man President Barack Obama tapped to fix the scandal-scarred IRS, is moving aggressively to restore some measure of credibility there." ....
... MEANWHILE, Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: Some powerful House Republicans, e.g., Dave Camp, chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee, think they can gin up such public anger at the IRS that they can translate it into significant public support for a tax code overhaul that "would mean sacrificing or curtailing some politically popular tax breaks, like education tax credits and the mortgage interest deduction." So, anger at this ...
... will cause taxpayers to think that raising their personal tax obligations (by losing popular deductions & taking advantage of other tax breaks) is a great idea. It could work!
Jay Carney's non-response response to Darrell Issa's calling him a "paid liar":
... Sabrina Siddiqui of the Huffington Post: "Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Monday became the latest Republican to reject Darrell Issa's comments that White House press secretary Jay Carney is a 'paid liar' in relation to the IRS controversy. But Graham went further than his Republican colleagues, saying there's no evidence that the White House ordered the tax agency to target conservative groups.... Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) also pushed back on Issa's 'liar' charge during a TV appearance Monday morning." ...
... MEANWHILE, Jonathan Easley of the Hill: "Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Monday accused the Justice Department (DOJ) of targeting reporters who are critical of the Obama administration. 'We have seen a consistent pattern in this administration, and the pattern is a willingness to use the machinery of government to target those they perceive as their political enemies,' Cruz said on Fox News." ...
... Not that Tailgunner Ted doesn't have a teensy credibility problem:
The Obama Justice Department has decreased the prosecution of violent gun crimes by 30 percent. -- Sen. Ted Cruz (RTP-Texas)
Cruz is comparing Obama's performance against a high that even the Bush administration achieved only once. Moreover..., the numbers depend in part on decisions by non-federal prosecutors. In cases when federal prosecutors have decided whether to act on a referral, the data show that Obama's record actually is better than Bush's. -- Glenn Kessler
Jordy Yager of the Hill: "The Justice Department on Monday said Attorney General Eric Holder did not lie to Congress in his testimony about a national security investigation involving Fox News reporter James Rosen. Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik said DOJ never intended to prosecute Rosen, but was merely investigating him as part of a broader probe against a State Department employee believed to have leaked information to the reporter."
Andrew Rosenthal reviews the newest 2012 GOP post-mortem on "why young people don't vote Republican": when young people "were asked what words came to mind when they heard 'Republican Party,' the results 'were brutal -- closed-minded, racist, rigid, old-fashioned.'"
Ezra Klein debunks conservative Forbes columnist Avik Roy's pretend comparison-shopping for health insurance. CW: are conservatives "paid liars" or are they just pathetic ignoramuses? ...
... Okay, at the state level, legislators are just pathetic ignoramuses -- and vindictive ideologues. Klein again: A "study by the Rand corporation looks at the 14 states that have said they will opt out of the new Medicaid funds. It finds that the result will be they get $8.4 billion less in federal funding, have to spend an extra $1 billion in uncompensated care, and end up with about 3.6 million fewer insured residents. So then, the math works out like this: States rejecting the expansion will spend much more, get much, much less, and leave millions of their residents uninsured. That's a lot of self-inflicted pain to make a political point."
Frederic Frommer of the AP: " A Tampa, Fla., socialite and her husband claimed in a lawsuit Monday that the government willfully leaked false and defamatory information about them in the scandal that led to the resignation of Gen. David Petraeus as CIA director. Jill Kelley and Scott Kelley filed the lawsuit in federal court against the FBI, Pentagon and unidentified officials in the government, claiming the couple's privacy was violated."
The largest tornado ever recorded in the U.S.:
News Ledes
Russian Guards Nab Feline Smuggler! Raw Story: "The Russian prison service said Monday it had caught a cat being used as a courier to smuggle banned cell phones and chargers into a prison camp in the country's remote far north."
NBC News: "An American woman was gang-raped after accepting a ride in India, where previous sex attacks have sparked angry protests and scared off female tourists. Police said three men were being questioned Tuesday about the attack in a resort town in the foothills of the Himalayas, which is certain to focus new attention on the plight of women in India."
Reuters: "The court-martial of a soldier charged with using the WikiLeaks website for the biggest leak of classified information in U.S. history heads into a second day on Tuesday, with a cyber crime investigator the day's lead-off witness. At the start of the trial on Monday, military prosecutors said Private First Class Bradley Manning, 25, had been driven by arrogance to leak more than 700,000 documents, combat videos and other data to the anti-secrecy website, hurting U.S. interests."
New York Times: "Reporting 'new levels of brutality' in Syria's more than two-year-old conflict, United Nations investigators said on Tuesday they believed chemical weapons and thermobaric bombs were used in recent weeks and urged the international community to cut off supplies of weapons that could only result in more civilian casualties." ...
... NBC News Update: "Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday defended a scheduled arms sale to Syria after the United Nations released a scathing report citing 'new levels of cruelty and brutality' by the regime of President Bashar Assad and calling for a halt to all arms transfers to the embattled country. Putin said any attempt to intervene militarily in Syria would be 'doomed to fail' and echoed the UN call for restricting arms sales -- but only to rebel forces trying to overthrow Assad."
Reuters: "China and Russia are expected to join four Western powers in voicing deep concern about Iran's atomic activities this week and pressing it to cooperate with a stalled inquiry by the U.N. nuclear agency, diplomats said on Tuesday."
AP: " A 22-year-old man died during an anti-government protest in a [Turkish] city near the border with Syria and officials gave conflicting reports on what caused his death, as hundreds of riot police backed by water cannons deployed around the prime minister's office in the capital Tuesday."
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Reader Comments (9)
Re the Supreme Court ruling today on getting DNA swabs:
..."The ruling was praised by the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network.
"DNA has already aided nearly 200,000 investigations, and thanks to today's decision it will continue to be a detective's most valuable tool in solving rape cases," said Scott Berkowitz, the group's president and founder. "We're very pleased that the court recognized the importance of DNA and decided that, like fingerprints, it can be collected from arrestees without violating any privacy rights. Out of every 100 rapes in this country, only three rapists will spend a day behind bars. To make matters worse, rapists tend to be serial criminals, so every one left on the streets is likely to commit still more attacks. DNA is a tool we could not afford to lose.
Getting DNA swabs from criminals is common. All 50 states and the federal government take cheek swabs from convicted criminals to check against federal and state databanks, with the court's blessing. The fight at the Supreme Court was over whether that DNA collection could come before conviction and without a judge issuing a warrant."
This may be the first and last time I agree with a decision voted for by Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito! DNA was not even a possiblity when the 4th amendment was written and passed. Today there are undoubtedly quite a few innocent people on Death Row who would be exonerated if DNA testing were more common. There have been several stunning cases where innocent people have been imprisoned for years, released only when DNA testing exonerates them--and identifies the guilty person.
I guess I am not a full-blooded librul, since I agree with Justice Breyer: "If you have nothing to fear, you have nothing to fear."
Truth to tell, I am much more upset by the prospect of the Keystone Pipeline being approved. That will be disastrous for our environment. Nobody will be punished--just highly rewarded with big tainted money! IMHO, getting away with murder.
To answer the question "paid liars" or ignoramuses? (Coincidentally, my son asked the same question last night, prompted by the same Ezra Klein article of projected costs of health insurance under the ACA.)
My answer last night and tonight is "both." Fervid beliefs blinds, and the R's are a party anchored by believers so blind they are immune to fact. So much is a given. But there's a lot of paid lying going on on the R side, too. True, the Republicans have become the home of not just the ignorant (whom they invite in, tell to sit down and make themselves comfortable here among friends, and then provide with a draught of the sweet oblivion of their choice) but also of those who have bought into the equivalence of morality and money, of measuring one's worth by his bank account, that is, millions of our fellow citizens.
The greedy takers we've trained are equally at home in today's Republican Party. To them, all actions are justified by a bloated bottom line. A number of studies have shown that the behavioral distance between many "successful" business leaders, stock traders and hedge fund managers and sociopaths is not large, if it exists at all. Lying is nothing to these people; they do it all the time. It's all a game, and money is the only marker. Traditional conscience plays no part. That discomfiting word has been excised from their dictionary.
Today the goal of the R's game is simply to defeat anyone who thinks that true morality might contain an element about sharing. To a contemporary capitalist, the idea of sharing is the most mortal of sins, a sin so dark its defeat excuses anything, a little lying the least of the ploys encouraged and allowed.
And when the Lie of the Day falls on the right ears and is believed, there is a joyful marriage in Republican Heaven because the paid liars and the willfully ignorant are made One.
From the NYT article on Rep. Camp's desire to churn citizen anger at the IRS into tax reform:
"Mr. Werfel* ... (said) ... he had reached the “inescapable conclusion” that organizations applying for tax-exempt status had been targeted according to political labels."
Makes sense. If you are looking for political organizations, one way to find them is to look for their political labels. That's how I find boxed goods in stores.
How could the guys charged with the task (finding the politicos among the social org applicatns) know that reading labels was the wrong way to find what the law told them to look for?
* new IRS acting commissioner
Are Republicans simply liars (paid, ie, professional, or unpaid, enthusiastic amateurs) or ignorant humps?
I think an argument can be made that some can be both (ignorance, even the kind displayed by many conservatives, is no impediment to lying even though at least one definition of lying requires the liar to understand that she is spreading false information which requires a certain level of awareness and at least a scintilla of sensibility). In most cases though, I think it is the liars who are most prevalent.
The salient question is why they lie and the answer, in most cases, I would suggest, is to win. What do they wish to win? I suppose “power” seems a reasonable answer, but in many cases it’s much more elementary. They simply wish to win any contest they find themselves in: healthcare vs "Just go to the emergency room!", taxes vs no taxes, womens’ rights vs caveman rule, immigration reform vs hateful demagoguery, nondenominational secularism vs Christian theocracy, rights of the individual vs rights of giant corporations, and on and on. The result does carry with it the reward of power and one might assume that accretion of power suggests a larger goal.
For some conservatives, the goal is pretty much a larger version of the reward for a successful lie. It makes it look like their side wins. For others there is a larger goal: the dissolution of governmental power and the destruction of democracy itself.
Basically, they view the world as a zero sum game. So any acknowledgement of something like global warming and climate change they view as a total loss to fucking hippies (liberals, progressives, environmentalists, all viewed as hated enemies), even if there might be a way to address seemingly intractable difficulties by finding a sliver of common ground. Same thing with taxes, education, foreign policy, and choice of ice cream. Everything in right-wing world comes freighted with ideological consequence, the successful (winning) resolutions of which they view as self fulfilling outcomes allowing them to routinely--and happily--break the ninth commandment with impunity. Because who needs religious consistency if America-hating liberals and pain in the ass minorities might "beat" you?
Why? Because they need to win. They need to be right. And they need everyone else to be punished for not letting them have what they want. And let’s not even get into the eternal victimhood of these people. Yet another reason to lie.
If this seems petty, childish, and a teensy bit psychotic, it is, but the outcome of such lies are most certainly not inconsequential.
Conservatives who fancy themselves intellectual powerhouses (the neo-cons, David Brooks, even faux intellectuals like Paul Ryan and Rand Paul) comfort themselves in their multitudinous lies by recalling Socrates’ theory of the “Noble Lie”, a willful falsehood told by ruling elites and kings to save their subjects from hard truths. So lying to take the country to war is fine because, well, they’re the kings whose lies are necessary to achieve their “noble” ends. Lying about a black man in their White House isn't just noble, it's a requirement.
The problem, of course, with the zero sum approach and all the lying is that, as Sissela Bok in her philosophical treatise on lying suggests, constant lying reduces public morale and promotes suspicion, fear, and distrust, all very useful to any group or individual intent on destroying the public’s confidence in governance and government in general. Also, more importantly, the spread of disinformation means a dramatically reduced ability for anyone or any governmental entity to address serious problems, facts in hand, which wouldn’t be so bad if conservatives lived on their own planet and were the only ones who had to deal with the ramifications of their chronic mendacity. But they don’t. And any enterprise fueled by deceit and designed to make it eminently more difficult to resolve difficult situations impacts everyone on the planet and the planet itself.
So the bottom line is greed, sociopathy, and a complete lack of concern for other human beings. Oh yeah, and nodding stupidity.
Short term political gain achieved by a never ending blizzard of lies, a big WIN for them and a huge loss for truth, human society, and the world we live in. The Conservative Way.
So I guess it IS possible to be liars and ignoramuses at the same time.
Lucky us.
@Patrick. Couldn't agree more. The worst actors in this whole "scandal" have been Democrats -- including the President -- who have been sucked into this trumped-up characterization of the IRS's activities & either believe or are pretending to believe that these IRS agents were unfairly picking on honest, civic-minded "social welfare" groups. No, the IRS was trying to find political groups masquerading as social welfare organizations, & -- just as you say -- using the names of these groups to identify likely miscreants. WHICH ONLY MAKES SENSE. The reason they didn't flag "Fire & Rescue" is that organizations with names like that actually are social welfare groups as the law defines them.
We all need to remember of course that none of the IRS activities affected the tax status of the groups -- they all, unfortunately, qualify for tax-exempt status, whether or not they get "pre-approved" for 501(c)(4) status. The whole brouhaha is just more conservative "liberals are picking on us/government sucks" rhetoric.
Shame on Democrats. This is an excellent opportunity to change the law & make it exclude all groups that engage in any political activity reveal the names of their donors. What's wrong with that?
Marie
@Ken.
Well said. I especially liked the last sentence.
I think the motivational spectrum that is the catalyst for incessant Republican lying ranges from malignant narcissism (Cruz) to the depths of pure ignorance (Gohmert). However, (a lot of) the news media is most reprehensible. Their primary motivation to spew constant sensationalist garbage is in pursuit of dollars. Although some Republicans act as they do after actually determining a strategy rather than in response to a character disorder or mental deficiency, much of the news media makes a clear decision to amass profits over good investigation and fact reporting on behalf of the public. Hard to say which group is more craven. Taken together, they are breathtaking in their destructive force.
@Marie: Obama loses his temper over News reports, whether or not they're true. Does Shirley Sherrod ring a bell?
I'm sure groups that have Tea Party in their name just want to feed the hungry. Yeah right. What's the big deal? Did any of them not get their tax-exempt status? Akhilleus is right. Conservatives have a permanent sense of victimhood.
So god told wingers not to deep six Cheeto Man?
Wow. How come that wasn't a Fox Exclusive? Doesn't Ailes have the Big Guy on speed dial? Maybe god pissed him off one day so Mr. Fair and Balanced deleted his number.
But this is big news, right?
God tells some newbie teabagging backbencher that he's a modern King David and should spare Saul (Boehner).
Earlier I was writing about how many conservatives consider themselves intellectual material because they read the Cliff Notes version of Plato's Republic in between jello shots and Ayn Rand binging during college, and now fancy themselves his modern day equivalent by practicing prevarication on a grand (old party) scale.
They profit from purveying the "Noble Lie". And today they align themselves with kooks like Southerland and his teabag supporters. Had they actually read The Republic, they would have learned that Plato considered religion a noble lie told to the yokels so they would STFU already about stuff they had, according to the elites, no business meddling in. We want to invade the next kingdom. We have to take crops, materiel, men, horses, the works, from the yokels who might make a stink. What to do? Hey, the GODS told us to do it. And they told you all to STFU already. And by the way, where are those offerings we told you about? Fork 'em over and we'll see that they get to the gods.
Sound familiar?
A few years ago Brit comedian Ricky Gervais directed and starred in a movie called "Invention of Lying". In this world everyone tells the absolute truth. Lies are unheard of. In fact, no one knows what lies are. If you tell people you're the Emperor of the Universe, they fall on their faces and wonder how long you'll let them live. Gervais learns this great secret and employs lies to help friends avoid arrest and to get himself laid. But his biggest and most successful lie?
Religion. He tells people about a man in the sky watching them and gives them his Ten Rules.
In similar fashion conservatives demand that we consult the bible before making public policy and prior to deciding the fate of congressional power structures.
Maybe a closer reading of Plato is in order. And not the version edited by James Dobson.