The Commentariat -- Nov. 17, 2014
Internal links removed.
"A Freakout Foretold." Charles Pierce: "This may wind up being the most pivotal week of the president's administration. First, he may take the executive action on immigration that he should have taken before the election. Then, the Congress may send him a pro forma bill supporting the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which he may then veto, even though that action may deprive the Republic of the services of Mary Landrieu, for whom some K Street lobbying firm likely already is clearing out an office, and despite the fact that it may very well occasion the launching of another Indian War in the West."
** Paul Krugman: "Conservatives want you to believe that while the goals of public programs on health, energy and more may be laudable, experience shows that such programs are doomed to failure. Don't believe them. Yes, sometimes government officials, being human, get things wrong. But we're actually surrounded by examples of government success, which they don't want you to notice." ...
... Katie Zezima of the Washington Post: "Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Mathews Burwell said 100,000 people submitted applications for coverage under the Affordable Care Act on Saturday, the first day of the law's second enrollment period."
Charles Blow: "Congressional Republicans have been sent to Washington with a mandate not so much to conduct business but rather to collect a bounty, to do what they promised and what their supporters expect: Stop Obama at any cost and at every turn, to erase his name or at least put an asterisk by it." ...
... No Surprise. Steve M.: "Republicans are planning to blame Democrats again for a GOP government shutdown." Surprise. Chuck Todd said to Bobby Jindal, "You're twisting my question."
E. J. Dionne: "On immigration, Boehner has lost all credibility to claim he wants to act in a bipartisan way. In his heart of hearts, might he like to pass a bill? Sure. But the speaker's heart is not what's at stake here. A willingness to take heat from the right wing of his caucus to pass a bill is what matters. And this is something he has showed, again and again, that he just won't do." CW: Another guy who mentioned the House's yearslong footdragging: Barack Obama.
Washington Post Editors: "... since the election Republican leaders have continued to indulge in hysterical 'war on coal' rhetoric, and they attacked the climate breakthrough in Beijing. They still appear determined to repeal the country's climate policies rather than replacing those policies with cheaper and more effective options, such as the market-based carbon-pricing programs that authentic conservatives would favor.... Whether out of cynicism, callousness or ignorance, Republicans over the past decade have ... indulged and encouraged shortsighted naysayers and climate conspiracists in the face of grave climate forecasts."
... Rebecca Leber of the New Republic: At the G-20 meeting, President "Obama put Australia's climate-denying Prime Minister [Tony Abbott] on the spot." ...
... Don Lee of the Los Angeles Times: "Criticized for being long on promises and short on delivery, leaders of the Group of 20 major economies set a target of lifting global economic output by at least 2% over five years -- an ambitious goal that would add $2 trillion to the world economy and millions of new jobs. To achieve that, the U.S. and other G-20 countries presented more than 800 specific projects and policy reforms that would, for instance, build more roads, improve trade and bring more women into the workforce." ...
... Here's video of the full press conference which President Obama held in Brisbane, Australia, at the close of the G-20 summit there:
Danielle Kurtzleben of Vox: "The latest jobs report showed the unemployment rate was at its lowest level in six years, 5.8 percent. But Americans aren't convinced that things are nearly that good. In a recent Ipsos-MORI poll, 1,001 Americans were asked, 'Out of every 100 people of working age, how many do you think are unemployed and looking for work?' Their average response was 32." ...
... CW: When (and if) the average American thinks one-third of potential workers are unemployed, the political party in power -- especially the party that holds the White House -- is in deep trouble. Misperceptions cause voters to make a lot of bad decisions. Ergo, Senator-Elect Joni Ernst. ...
... David Atkins in the Washington Monthly: "That has an impact, for instance, on immigration policy: no one believes that undocumented immigrants are taking high-wage jobs, so you'll b likelier to oppose immigration reform if you believe that there just aren't enough even low-wage jobs...." ...
... Danny Vinik of the New Republic: Activists confront the Federal Reserve. And Janet Yellen listens. CW: (a) Elections matter. (b) Thanks to everyone who forced President Obama to choose Yellen to head the Fed over his preferred choice, Larry Summers. Really, would Summers have listened to "little people"? I don't think so.
Eric Segall in Slate: "Taking law seriously -- as opposed to making decisions based mostly on personal values -- is what distinguishes judges from other political officials. On that basis, Supreme Court justices are simply not judges.... We have unelected, life-tenured politicians masquerading as judges, making important decisions that affect us all. It is important to recognize the court for the purely political institution it is, and to acknowledge that it is not a court of law...." ...
... CW: I would add to that a point made some time back, I forget by which writer (Jonathan Bernstein??), that not only do these political justices have life tenure, if they aren't carried out in a coffin, they decide when to retire based entirely on strategic political considerations, so their "life" tenure can actually continue for many generations, in their like-minded replacements. Ruth Ginsburg, David Souter (although Souter said he "probably" would have retired anyway if McCain had won the 2008 election) & Sandra O'Connor all made clear that politics determined their retirement decisions.
Nicholas Kristof: "... one element of white privilege today is obliviousness to privilege, including a blithe disregard of the way past subjugation shapes present disadvantage."
Sally Jenkins & Rick Maese of the Washington Post: "Federal drug agents conducted surprise inspections of National Football League team medical staffs on Sunday as part of an ongoing investigation into prescription drug abuse in the league. The inspections, which entailed bag searches and questioning of team doctors by Drug Enforcement Administration agents in cooperation with the Transportation Security Administration, were based on the suspicion that NFL teams dispense drugs illegally to keep players on the field in violation of the Controlled Substances Act...."
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. CW: Maybe I fooled you into thinking Chuck Todd had turned over a new leaf when he objected to Bobby's Jindal's twisting his words (see above). Nah. As Driftglass documents, Press the Meat was a veritable beauty pageant for wingers. My favorite: Carly Fiorina, who deigned to allow her man Chuck to break some big news: she cannot avoid considering a presidential run because "Well, when people ask you over and over again, you have to pause and reflect. So I'll pause and reflect at the right time." Thank you, California, for not electing this harridan as your representative to the greatest deliberative body on earth (TM).
Annals of Journalism, Ctd. Yes, Bill Keller Is Doing Something Useful. Ravi Somaiya of the New York Times: "The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization focused on the American criminal justice system and led by Bill Keller, a former executive editor of The New York Times, went live this weekend, the latest in a crop of start-ups seeking a place in an increasingly fragmented journalism landscape." ...
... Annals of "Justice," Ctd.
Here's the Marshall Project debut story, by Ken Armstrong, published in the Washington Post. Armstrong covers the failure of some lawyers to file timely petitions for habeas corpus in capital cases, "arguably the most critical safeguard in the United States' system of capital punishment.... Just last month, Mark Christeson, a Missouri inmate whose lawyers missed the habeas deadline in 2005, received a stay of execution from the Supreme Court just hours before he was set to die by lethal injection. In a court brief filed on Christeson's behalf, 15 former state and federal judges emphasized that he had not even met the appellate attorneys handling his federal case until after the filing deadline had passed. 'Cases, including this one, are falling through the cracks of the system,' they wrote. 'And when the stakes are this high, such failures unacceptably threaten the very legitimacy of the judicial process.'" ...
... CW: Once again, thanks, Newt Gingrich & Bill Clinton, and all you other phony "law & order" turkeys. ...
... Here's Part 2 of Anderson's report: "... an investigation by The Marshall Project has found that in at least 80 capital cases in which lawyers have missed the deadline -- sometimes through remarkable incompetence or neglect -- it is almost always the prisoner alone who suffers the consequences.... The lack of oversight or accountability has left many of the lawyers who missed the habeas deadlines free to seek appointment by the federal courts to new death-penalty appeals." ...
AND here's another death penalty horror story, courtesy of Paige Williams of the New Yorker. This one, not surprisingly, comes out of Alabama, where a judge can capriciously, it seems, override a jury's recommendation not to impose the death penalty, even as he questions whether or not the convicted man is even guilty.
Beyond the Beltway
Jon Swaine of the Guardian: "Video footage has emerged showing Darren Wilson -- the police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old in Ferguson, Missouri -- threatening and arresting a resident who refused to stop filming him with a cellphone. Wilson is seen standing near his Ferguson police SUV and warning Mike Arman: 'If you wanna take a picture of me one more time, I'm gonna lock your ass up.' Arman, who had requested Wilson's name, replies: 'Sir, I'm not taking a picture, I'm recording this incident sir.'... Filming police officers carrying out their duties is widely considered to be legal and protected by the first amendment of the US constitution."
Martin Pengelly of the Guardian: "A lawyer for Bill Cosby said on Sunday the comedian would not make any comment on 'decade-old, discredited' allegations of sexual abuse." Here's the full statement, published on BillCosby.com.
News Ledes
AP: "The cold-eyed militants lined up behind their victims in the latest Islamic State video appear to come from outside the Middle East, including one from France and possibly two from Britain, as the extremist group tries to show a global reach. The grisly video -- clearly aimed at a Western audience -- lingers as much on the faces of the camouflaged extremists as the men who are beheaded. The victims include American aid worker Peter Kassig and more than a dozen Syrian soldiers."
Reuters: "Former customers of Bernard Madoff may soon recover an additional $496.8 million as a result of a settlement with two 'feeder funds' that was announced on Monday by the trustee liquidating the swindler's firm. The settlement, with the Herald Fund SPC and Primeo Fund, both based in the Cayman Islands, is one of the largest obtained by the trustee, Irving Picard, since the failure of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC in December 2008."
Washington Post: "Martin Salia, a doctor who contracted the Ebola virus while treating patients in Sierra Leone, died on Monday while receiving treatment in Omaha. Salia was in 'extremely critical condition' after he was evacuated in a specially equipped air ambulance for treatment in the United States at the Nebraska Medical Center, which has a state-of-the-art isolation facility equipped for treating Ebola patients. A native of Sierra Leone with ties to Maryland, Salia had initially tested negative for the virus; but a subsequent test came back positive on Nov. 10."
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Reader Comments (23)
Over the weekend I watched the Anita Hill: Truth to Power documentary. Her life story and her arduous struggle with Clarence Thomas has never lost its hold on me. I have read countless books on this plus watched the full hearings multiple times. My draw to this stems from anger, surely, but more from a fascination at how ALL white males conducted a hearing so skewed that the person who was on trial was the woman who was testifying against the man who should have been. The fact that four other witnesses came forth to corroborate
Hill's story didn't matter; the fact that Biden never called all the other women who had similar experiences with Thomas didn't matter. Now, decades later this man, the one who called the hearings "a high tech lynching" (making those white men squirm) sits on the Supreme Court and, in my opinion, besmirches it.
Now we have the Bill Cosby situation––much more serious than pubic hair on coke cans or regaling women with stories of men with large penises and sex with animals...but just as insidious and harmful––using women as simply objects they can manipulate. I don't doubt for a moment that Cosby is guilty–––and I wonder if he, like Thomas, will shed the dishonor, and pretend none of this ever happened. If Cosby's new show does air we'll get the message.
@P.D.Pepe: Cosby is already denying the claims. On his own Website, Cosby's lawyer has called the charges "discredited." That kinda means they didn't happen. As noted in the WashPo last night, ",,, in 2005, [Andrea] Constand filed a civil suit against Cosby, and her lawyer promised depositions from 13 women who reportedly had stories similar to Constand’s. The case was settled out of court before those women testified."
Even given Cosby's celebrity status, it seems likely to me that at least half -- probably more -- of those women were telling the truth. Date-drugging seemed to work for Cosby. It also seems likely that the women's complete helplessness was a further turn-on for Cosby, who certainly could have found willing sexual partners without resorting to drug-assisted rape.
Marie
P.S. I wish the worst thing about Clarence Thomas was that he lied under oath about sexually-harassing co-workers, a practice that was extremely common at the time. (If there is any woman out there over the age of 45 who worked outside the home & wasn't subjected to sexual harassment on the job, consider yourself a member of a tiny, fortunate minority.)
Re Chuck Todd: Carly Fiorina has never been elected to public office. Period. The fact that he could even ask her whether she is considering running for the highest office in the land removes any doubt as to whether Todd is a serious journalist. The question is simply laughable (or should be).
No wonder we have a populace that believes a third of people are out of work and the ACA is socialism.
From yesterday's NYTimes. Tho' to me his opinions are too often tainted by his close connection with Wall Street, Rattner piece yesterday on the scourge of American inequality is worth a look.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/17/opinion/inequality-unbelievably-gets-worse.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-top-span-region®ion=c-column-top-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region&_r=0
My paraphrase: It's not the economy, stupid. It's the tax structure!
The comments are also worth a look, if in some cases only for morning amusement.
The Reagan Legacy:
Untold wealth for the rich. Homelessness for the poor.
Republicans must be so proud of themselves.
Paul Krugman, in the piece linked above, notes the antipathy of Republicans to government programs that work, that do what they are intended to do. They've hated them for years. And they still do.
Republicans in awe of the Reagan hagiography and giddy fans of his blithe indifference to the suffering of other human beings can congratulate themselves this morning. A report just out from the American Institutes of Research's Center on Family Homelessness demonstrates how brutally efficient Republicans have become over the years at taking a machete to the few remaining strands of whatever social safety nets are left.
Since 2010, almost a million more children are homeless in the United States. That's about a quarter million more kids without a home every year. Currently there are 2.5 million homeless children in the "greatest country on earth". Two point five million. A good proportion of those are kids under six. How much do you think the top 1% have increased their personal wealth since 2010?
Republicans must be so proud of themselves.
But wait, that means there are plenty more ungrateful little urchins who should be shoved out into the wind and rain. Let's get crackin' on that Paul Ryan "Kill the Poor" budget. And lest you think Ryan wants only to protect those in his own backyard, think again. According to Wisconsin social workers Ann Forbeck and Robin Stuht, the number of homeless students in Ryan's hometown, Janesville has skyrocketed over the last few years, from 125 to 600.
But Ryan, who owes everything he has to government assistance, wants to kill as much funding as he can for everyone else. His budget, which will slash support for the poor and the homeless, will devastate an already bludgeoned population: “I just don’t see how some of them will stand a chance if we take more funding away, because we’re really just hanging on with what we do have," says Ms. Stuht, who describes the effects of Republican budget cuts as "terrifying."
Republicans at the local level want in on the fun too. Why should those Uriah Heeps in DC have all the fun? In Olympia, WA, Republican bashers of the poor and the innocent, last Februrary, "...killed off a bill that funds most of the state's homeless programs by ending the hearing before bringing it up." The state senate majority leader, Rodney Tom (R-Natch) instructed a crony to table a homeless funding bill so it couldn't even be brought up for a vote. This was apparently a way for him to score political points over a Democratic rival. Nice, huh? Throw people out in the cold for a petty victory over someone you happen not to like. This is far worse than immoral. This shit is fucking evil.
But it's an evil that Republicans seem to come by naturally, a blessing, of sorts from their patron saint of screwing over the poor, Ronald of Reagan, who once declared on national television that the homeless were out there sleeping on grates by choice. Funny how that particularly evil meme has nestled into the deepest crevices of the conservative brain. Wasn't it Romney and Ryan who suggested that the indigent were poor by choice? If those lazy moochers would just get off their blac....er, asses, and get a job as a CEO of some big investment bank, they too could have a beach house with an elevator.
How can we call ourselves a civilized nation and let millions of children endure the debilitating effects of homelessness, not to mention hunger? I'm sure I don't know. But there are plenty who could care less. As one Republican recently stated, it's not the business of government to provide help for housing or clothing or food for ANYONE.
Republicans must be so proud of themselves!
PD and Marie,
The best thing about Clarence Thomas's workplace harassment of what appears to have been multiple women, is that, at the time, he was heading an operation brought into existence to improve employment prospects, the EEOC.
Here 21st Century democracy brought to you by the GOP. I wonder if the Supremes would condone this dark money collaboration, or just point to its great effects its having on freedom of speech? Surely not, if there is a screen between two people, they can't be directly collaborating.
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/11/17/politics/twitter-republicans-outside-groups/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
@AK: Damn, man, ya shoulda been out on the campaign trail for all those lackluster democrats who never got this message across. Jeezus, we have so much ammunition (sans guns) to fight with and we end up with ping pong balls.
The Double Jeopardy article by Paige Williams was revealing; had no idea there was such a thing as "override." Currently, she says, Florida and Delaware (really? Delaware?) besides Alabama (who uses it like snowflakes on cedars) are the only other states with override, but their judges use the provision very sparingly and when they do it's almost always to convert death sentences to life. And piggy backing onto Akhilleus' comments, the portrait of one of the young men that Paige features says this after having gone through our terrible justice program:
"[in his childhood] I stole food first, because I hated going to ask for next-door neighbors do they have some bread––a boy like that can be the laughing stock of the school the next day. It went from stealing one pack of bolonga to two packs. I used to go from apartment to apartment, trying to steal perfume, sell it on the street. Me and my sisters go to Burger King and eat. That makes you feel good, and special, to be able to do that for your sisters. I was eleven and twelve, doing that shit. By the time my mother did get clean, it was too late."
@Akhilleus. Sexual harassment? What sexual harassment. From an April 2014 Boston Globe story:
"[Anita] Hill’s allegations meant that Thomas was harassing her during the very years that he had reversed the EEOC’s position on the first sexual harassment lawsuit ever to reach the Supreme Court, Meritor Savings Bank v. Mechelle Vinson. Under President Jimmy Carter, the EEOC had issued guidelines saying when a boss pressured an employee for sex, the company was violating her right to equal employment under the 1964 Civil Rights Act’s Title VII. But when Clarence Thomas came in during a Republican presidency, the EEOC switched sides in Meritor, arguing for the employer instead of the woman harassed. In 1986, in a landmark decision in Meritor, the Rehnquist Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that 'sexual harassment' did indeed violate women’s rights."
So nine out of nine Supreme Court justices -- including Nino! -- said the head of the EEOC was wrong not to press sexual discrimination cases. Yet Pappy Bush nominates this numbskull to join these folks with whom he fundamentally disagrees about an issue on which he is supposed to be the expert. Then, thanks to Anita Hill, we find out why. And 52 U.S. senators say "Meh." To all working women.
Marie
@AK: Yes, re: your Thomas comment––don't you just love the irony?
And one more thing. The mention of Burger King in my comment above reminds me the the last season of Mad Men where Peggy and her crew were searching for reasons people went to the Burger Place they were doing an ad for. They missed the fact that poor people go to feel special.
And speaking of eateries: In our small New England town Chic–fil-a has come a calling. The day before it had its grand opening people had come in the wee hours of the morning––pitched tents in the parking place in order to be first in line to scourge themselves on Chic's finest. One woman traveled all the way from New Jersey. And we wonder why we have someone like Charlie Pierce's new best friend Joni Ernst in Congress.
@P.D.Pepe: There was a reason people lined up at your local Chick-fil-A & it wasn't that they hate the gays or love the chicken cool wrap. According to the Meredian Journal-Record,
"The first 100 customers will receive free meals for a year, a giveaway valued at $30,000 in total, according to company spokeswoman Cindy Chapman. Each customer will receive coupons for free meals at the restaurant each week."
And, yes, this has everything to do with poverty in the U.S., which @Akhilleus discusses above. Consider the Chick-fil-A campers today's version of bread lines & dance marathons.
Marie
The Rattner piece begs an important question (did I use the idiom correctly?). We in the USA had our prosperity peak when the marginal tax bracket (which most folks seem not to understand) was >60%, and as high as 90%. Business expenses, including payroll, depreciation and R&D were, and are, fully deductible. So, the high marginal rate would seem to create a low cost incentive to invest in items that create income. Like employees or equipment or new products. The current much lower rate removes that incentive. Perhaps the higher corporate rate, with the same deductions, accounts for our domestic creativity, if not production. Or am I missing something? If not, why is this feature never highlighted by even such as Prof. Krugman et al.
As a former staunch defender of Lance Armstrong until I wasn't, I can't help but wonder about Cosby. I've always liked him. I can't help now wondering how much of these current/past accusations are based on tearing down a liberal and tearing down a black man. Are my childhood heroes Willie Mays, Hank Aaron and Bill Russell really all that good, or did they just not get caught? It seems a central tenet of modern (Republican) nihilism is to destroy all heroes. They've been working MLK over for 50 years. Even after Armstrong, I want more information before pronouncing Cosby guilty.
@Whyte Owen: "The Rattner piece begs an important question (did I use the idiom correctly?)."
No, although you used it as it is commonly used today. I made the same mistake myself,* after I saw good writers use "beg the question" just as you have. I thought I must have misunderstood its meaning when my high-school English teacher tried to explain what "beg the question" meant. Turns out she was right.
Here's Grammar Girl:
"Begs the question is actually a term that comes from logic, and it's used to indicate that someone has made a conclusion based on a premise that lacks support....
"I remember what begs the question means by thinking that the argument raises a specific question -- it begs *the* question -- What's your support for that premise? OR more informally, What does that have to do with anything? You use the phrase begs the question when people are hoping you won't notice that their reasons for coming to a conclusion aren't valid. They've made an argument based on a lame assumption. The question is What's your support for that premise?...
"Here's an example of a simple argument that begs the question. This one just restates the conclusion as a basis for the conclusion: Chocolate is healthful because it's good for you. That begs the question. How do you know chocolate is good for you?,,,
"In fact, wrong usage is so common some people will argue it's not an error anymore."
Marie
*A reader, maybe MAG, corrected me.
@ Marie: Thanks for clearing up the reasons for all those night crawlers camped outside of Chic-fil-A. Makes sense.
@ Citizen: I doubt very seriously whether the accusations (a new one just surfaced) of Cosby have anything to do with being black and liberal. What I do think it has to so with is something Marie mentioned about Cosby "getting off" by a woman's complete helplessness for whatever pathological reason, because as she rightly points out he was certainly able to entice women given his celebratory position and his colorful personality.
@Citzen625: Hannibal Buress, the comedian who brought the Cosby story to the fore again, is a black man. He is also a Cosby rival, & in fact, his schtick on Cosby was based on that premise. Is some of the Cosby bashing traditional American black-man-bashing? I don't doubt it.
Men might argue that there is also a certain amount of plain ole man-bashing going on, of the type that P. D. Pepe & I expressed. As long as the power differential between men & women exists, we women are going to keep on squawking, in general, & in specifics, like Cosby, who up till now has paid a small price for what are alleged to be serial rapes. When something isn't fair, the victims & those who empathize with them will try to change the dynamic. Our complaint is as much against a system that allows men to behave as Cosby is alleged to have behaved, that discourages victims from seeking redress (none of Cosby's victims came forward timely), & that more often than not lets celebrity perps off with nothing a good PR team can't paper over.
It also is true that there is a certain schadenfreude in bringing down the celebrated & super-successful, not matter what their sex or color.
I think much of the now-ingrained Obama-bashing was a product not of his color but of his uber-popularity & celebrity. I can't remember any politician -- with the exception of posthumous JFK -- who engendered the kind of adoration Obama enjoyed during 2008. No actual human politician -- especially one who gets the dirty job of running the country -- can sustain that kind of popularity.
Republican politicians, of course, went bananas about Obama. Even during the campaign, McCain ran an ad mocking Obama's celebrity. The GOP had to knock him down, & they had to do it fast; they knew they couldn't compete with a near-messianic figure. Aiding & abetting their takedown were Obama himself & the left, which was understandably disappointed with the "real Obama." Unlike the right, the left has few true believers who will mythologize its leaders.
On the general question, all of our "heroes" have feet of clay, In fact, if you read the Gospel of Mark, so does his fictional hero Jesus, even though Jesus is as perfect as a mortal can get. The problem, it seems to me, is not in tearing down these "heroes," but in building them up in the first place. Bill Cosby is an actor-comedian, for Pete's sake. He is an icon because of his personal accomplishments, not because of the "good" he has done for others. (Yes, he has used some of his millions for worthwhile projects; that makes him -- in that regard -- a damned good citizen, but it doesn't make him a hero. More heroic: the seamstress who gave all of her savings -- $150,000 -- to a public university scholarship program, while she herself lived very modestly.)
Marie
PD,
Your comment about the kid who stole to survive reminded me of another time in this country when strict authoritarians and an earlier generation of Republicans who believed the poor and those unjustly treated deserved no consideration.
The clip below is the end of one of the most harrowing American films ever made, "I Was a Prisoner on a Chain Gang", starring Paul Muni as a man who makes a mistake and ends up a hunted animal. The truly frightening thing is that this film could probably be remade today with few changes, and it would still be relevant.
The last line says it all...I'm sure Paul Ryan and Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell would all demand that this guy be tracked down and returned to the chain gang, because, oh...who the fuck knows why? Because Republican, that's why!
Marie,
Thanks for the link to that Globe story.
Thomas's use of his taxpayer funded office to attack citizens and support corporations in their mission of undercutting the rights of employees was right in line with Reagan's inversion/perversion of government. If you deem an entity the problem, as he did with government (whether he was setting it up as a straw man for wingers is beside the point), then you don't care how you use it, as long as your side wins, and clearly, for Reagan, despite his just folks, aw-shucks, down-home bullshit, was never for average Americans.
And the extent and depth of his perversion of government as a powerful aid to the rich against the poor and middle class was made inarguably clear by the fact that even far-right Supremes were unable to support Thomas's warped view of his core mission.
Our problem has been that too many Democrats, rather than pushing back against such heinous misuse of the public trust, and abuse of a system set up to help the powerless against the oligarchs, have tried their best to stay out of the cross hairs, and have gotten to this point where they really don't stand for much at all anymore.
At least you know when you vote Republican, you're getting mendacity, gleeful hypocrisy, and possible criminality in support of a very determinate ideology.
Orson Welles's character in "The Third Man" comes to mind when thinking about the Democrats' dilemma. You can, in this short speech, replace "brotherly love, democracy, and peace" with "aversion to conflict, fear of Fox criticism, and inability to stand up for what's right".
Don't be so gloomy? Sure, easy for you to say...
The funny thing is, I wonder if Reagan would even recognize the guy who supported his perversions with such zeal. Once at a meeting of US mayors, Reagan bumped into his own HUD secretary, Samuel Pierce. He didn't even know who he was, greeting him with a "Hello, Mr. Mayor, how's things in your city?"
Ahh....they all look alike, right?
Oops...should have mentioned that Samuel Pierce was black.
But he, like Thomas, was a true Reagan guy. He handed out deals to cronies and friends of Reagan in what would become a serious scandal and oversaw the evisceration of HUD programs to inner cities, programs that Reagan gutted, because you know....inner cities....nudge, nudge.
Did I already say they all look alike?
Marie, clear explanation of "beg the ?" which I was hoping to stretch a little to query an effect that has not a direct link to the cause. Or something. I still wonder if the link between the marginal rate and prosperity is under-appreciated.
@Marie: I quite agree with your comment, "I think much of the now-ingrained Obama-bashing was a product not of his color but of his uber-popularity & celebrity. " I have long felt that this was an underestimated dynamic. One small point, though: you say that JFK was wildly popular posthumously. I seem to remember as a child waiting for hours at a train station to see him speak at a whistle stop. I thought he was pretty wildly popular as a candidate and in his early presidency, too.
Want to know what is wrong with medicine in America? This article about the 21st physician in NJ convicted of accepting bribes to refer patients to a diagnostic lab. Yes it is 21st.
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2014/11/point_pleasant_doctor_admits_to_accepting_bribes_in_exchange_for_referrals_to_parsippany_medical_lab.html#incart_river
@Victoria D. Yes, I once greeted JFK -- we chatted! -- at the Miami airport at about 1 am. He was "wildly popular" among Democrats & Roman Catholics. But he was not, as Obama was, "wildly popular" among many young people whose parents were Republicans & among many adult Republicans. Kennedy became a national icon after his death; Obama became one in life.
Obama's popularity is low now, however, I predict that within a couple of decades -- and still in his lifetime -- he will be considered one of the great American presidents, one who endured atrocious abuse by the opposing party but still got things done -- without growling about it. History will not be nearly as kind to McConnell, Boehner & Co. Obama is going for his place in history now, & the Opposition Beware.
Marie