State Governments Interrupted
Posted: December 11, 2012 Filed under: Right to Work, War on Women, Women's Healthcare, Women's Rights | Tags: Michigan, union busting 27 CommentsI’ve spent the last few years watching Republican Governor Bobby Jindal enact the ALEC agenda 
down here and gut our state’s public education and health system to the point where it’s marginally functional. All the while, he’s been taking state assets and selling them to the lowest bidders–who also represent his donor class–in the name of expensive privatization. Any one with one of these Republican governors in office right now are watching many legislative agendas rammed through that have nothing to do with what the voting populace wants or needs. Florida, Louisiana, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio and now Michigan are being plundered by today’s Privateers.
None of this privatization drive has anything to do with quality of service or cost savings. Its purely away to transfer public wealth and the rights of people to corporations. Cuts to medicare and destruction of the social security program will not improve market outcomes, do not control costs, and do not benefit the stakeholders. Facts and other practical decision variables are not at the root at these moves. They are naked, political plays by plutocratic power brokers who are trying to recoup their losses in investments like Mittens who didn’t pay. They’ve turned their sights to vulnerable states and populations. Private insurance is expensive and cost-inducing.
According to the Council for Affordable Health Insurance , medical administrative costs as a percentage of claims are about three times higher for private insurance than for Medicare. The U.S. Institute of Medicine reports that the for-profit system wastes $750 billion a year on waste, fraud, and inefficiency. As a percent of GDP, we spend $1.2 trillion more than the OECD average .
That’s an amount equal to the entire deficit wasted on private medical care companies. One out of every six dollars we earn goes to doctors, hospitals, drug companies, and insurance companies.
Ending social security for its less effective and more expensive private counterparts benefits no one but Wall Street.
Various reports have concluded that administrative costs for 401(k) plans are much higher than those for Social Security — up to twenty times more.
It would be difficult to find, or even imagine, any short-term-profit-based private insurer that is fully funded for the next 25 years .
At the state level, we have wars on unions, women, and public servants. No where has the naked political aggression against working people and voters been more obvious this month than Michigan. The Lame Duck House Legislature is shoving through a “Right to Work” Law that is pure union busting. It will not increase jobs. It will not provide better outcomes for work or state budgets. What it will do is decrease the political clout of unions in key states that Republicans cannot win.
The Michigan House has approved one out of two right-to-work bills Tuesday. According to the AP, “The Republican-dominated chamber passed a measure dealing with public-sector workers 58-51 as protesters shouted ‘shame on you’ from the gallery and huge crowds of union backers massed in the state Capitol halls and on the grounds.”
A vote is still to come today on a second bill focusing on private sector workers.
Moreover the symbolism of Michigan’s pending right-to-work legislation cannot be overlooked. Michigan is the birthplace of the powerful United Auto Workers union–the state is practically synonymous with auto workers and other union jobs. Furthermore, Snyder’s support for the bill represents a shift in views for the Republican governor in his first term. Since he took office in January, 2011, Snyder has maintained that a right-to-work bill is not part of his agenda, and if he signs the legislation today, as is expected, he will likely face a harsh political backlash.
While Democrats lost their battle in Wisconsin, Democrats argued that the battle helped to energize the base for what turned out to be a decisive win for President Obama in the state.
And in Ohio, despite the recovering economy, Gov. John Kasich, who had his own losing battle with labor earlier this year, has approval ratings much lower than President Obama in Ohio. The latest Quinnipiac poll shows Kasich with 42 percent job approval rating–his highest of his tenure, but is still 12 points below that of President Obama’s 54 percent rating.
With all three Governors up in 2014, the success for labor will ultimately be judged by whether or not these three are re-elected.
The Fox News Propaganda Network is on full steam ahead mode.
Fox News host Gregg Jarrett on Monday advised a woman who thought Michigan’s so-called “right to work” law was unfair because it allowed some workers to benefit from unions without paying dues to just “go get a job elsewhere.”
Speaking to Fox News host Martha MacCallum, Michigan state Sen. Arlan Meekhof (R) defended the legislation by saying that workers “will be able to choose how they spend their money.”
After her interview with Meekhof, MacCallum noted that Fox News had featured a woman who was angry that the anti-union law would allow workers who didn’t pay union dues to unfairly receive benefits.
“One woman, in a soundbite we had earlier, said ‘I don’t want to work somebody who doesn’t have to pay what I have to pay.’ That is part of the outrage there,” MacCallum explained to Jarrett.
“I mean, if she doesn’t like that, she can go get a job elsewhere, I suppose,” Jarrett opined in reply. “But the point here is, it seems anathema to democracy to force somebody to join a union, to force somebody as a condition of having a job to join a union.”
People that benefit from the services provided by a Union should pay for them. Most people will free ride on union benefits. The true benefit to Republicans is that Union Dues will not fill Democratic political coffers while Billionaires will continue their Citizens United Funding Fest.
As usual, the name “right to work” itself is a term meant to mislead the public. The Fox reporter played into that completely. It’s really about open and closed shops.
Law enforcement officials said they wouldn’t let Michigan become another Wisconsin, where demonstrators occupied the state Capitol around the clock for nearly three weeks last year to protest similar legislation.
Armed with tear gas canisters, pepper spray and batons, State Police officers guarded the Capitol as protesters shouted “No justice, no peace!” and “Shut it down!” NBC station WILX of Lansing reported. State Police confirmed that one of their troopers used pepper spray on one protester. No details were immediately available; the agency said it was still gathering information.
On the lawn, four large inflatable rats were set up to mock Snyder, House Speaker Jase Bolger, Senate Republican leader Randy Richardville, and Dick DeVos, a prominent conservative businessman who union leaders say is behind the bills.
This is just so obviously the work of wealthy corporate donors who are insisting their agendas be passed despite public outcry and votes. The Republican led legislature is also attack women’s rights in a last minute attempt to shove right wing legislature through after losing at the polls.
Republican Senator Mark Jansen was the main sponsor of S.B. 613. This bill passed the state Senate and has been referred to the House Insurance committee. It prohibits abortion coverage in qualified health plans offered by the state insurance exchange in accordance with the Affordable Care Act unless a rider is purchased. So unless a female pays extra, she has no coverage in the case of an emergency. That would include an abortion needed to protect her life. How on earth is any woman supposed to look into the future and see if she would need to purchase such a rider? And one would wonder at the cost of such coverage.
Mr. Jansen didn’t stop there, though. He also sponsored S.B. 614 which requires any woman purchasing any insurance in Michigan to purchase a rider for abortion coverage. It’s sneaky about it, though. It prohibits any licensee, health care agency or facility from accepting reimbursement from any health plan for elective abortion services unless it’s from one of the aforementioned riders. Additionally, insurance providers won’t be required to even offer these riders. Again, women are expected to be able to predict the future and buy one of them. If they can even find an insurance company that offers one. And be able to afford it.
The Michigan House jumped right on board with these policies, passing H.B. 1293 and H.B. 1294, both sponsored by Rep. Joseph Hune and containing the same provisions. These were given “immediate effect.” These bills essentially ban any health care policy issued in Michigan from providing abortion coverage, making it almost impossible to obtain a medically necessary procedure.
This should show every one exactly how extreme and right wing Republican politicians have become recently and how detached they are from the will of their voters. This should be an outrage and a warning to every concerned voter in the country. This amounts to trying to overturn election results. The governor of Michigan has caved to plutocratic privateers and should be removed from office. The legislature was tied to a spending bill so it cannot be removed by voters like a similar bill was treated in Ohio.
Michigan can’t go the way of Ohio, where a referendum last year reversed legislation that would have restricted collective bargaining. Michigan’s right-to-work legislation is attached to an appropriations bill, meaning it can’t be reversed by referendum. Also, it may be too risky to wait and go the way of Wisconsin, where litigation continues after a judge struck down parts of a collective bargaining law.
However, in Michigan, there is an option of a “statutory initiative,” which would be permitted if opponents of the bills can collect enough signatures to equal 8% of the votes cast in the last gubernatorial election, union leaders say. A so-called veto referendum could be triggered by collecting signatures equal to 5% of the votes cast.
A statutory initiative would allow voters to cast a ballot on right-to-work legisation in November 2014, when Gov. Rick Snyder, who has said he would support the legislation, will be up for reelection.
“There are multiple options for a referendum,” a senior labor leader said Tuesday. “All options are on the table. This fight is far from over.”
It’s unclear whether unions are promoting a referendum now to warn Snyder of the repercussions that signing the legislation would have.
Democrats including Sen. Carl Levin and Rep. John Dingell met with Snyder on Monday to urge him to veto the legislation. The governor promised to “seriously” consider their concerns, but Democrats remained worried that he would sign the bills.
“The governor has a choice: He can put this on the ballot, and let the voters make the determination, or he can jam it through a lame-duck session,” Dingell said Monday.
Tuesday Reads: The 27 Club, Brain Development, Pot, and Grapefruit
Posted: December 11, 2012 Filed under: Barack Obama, morning reads, religion, Senate | Tags: 27 Club, addiction, alcohol, brain development, grapefruit, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, marijuana legalization, Stephen Colbert, taxing the rich 35 Comments
Good Morning!!
It will probably be another slow news day today–in fact we’ll most likely have nothing but slow news days until we get past New Years. So I’ve got some non-political and not-all-that-important news to start this post.
If he had lived, Saturday, December 8 would have been Jim Morrison’s 69th birthday. Hard to believe. Of course the way he was going, he probably would have killed himself with alcohol anyway. But I wonder what he would have thought about the world today, if he had lived?
Another rock ‘n’ roll legend who died at age 27–Jimi Hendrix–would have been 70 on November 27. Would he still be “blowing minds” if he were alive today? Maybe.
Instead these two, along with other musical members of the “27 club” are frozen in time, still young and vibrant while the rest of us have aged. Is there something significant about being 27? Is it a year in which a person gets over the hump, so to speak, and begins to move toward adulthood?
According to a study reported by the BBC in 2009, human “mental powers” are greatest at age 22, and the brain begins to decline at age 27.
Professor Timothy Salthouse of the University of Virginia found reasoning, spatial visualisation and speed of thought all decline in our late 20s….His seven-year study of 2,000 healthy people aged 18-60 is published in the journal Neurobiology of Aging.
To test mental agility, the study participants had to solve puzzles, recall words and story details and spot patterns in letters and symbols….In nine out of 12 tests the average age at which the top performance was achieved was 22.
The first age at which there was any marked decline was at 27 in tests of brain speed, reasoning and visual puzzle-solving ability.
Things like memory stayed intact until the age of 37, on average, while abilities based on accumulated knowledge, such as performance on tests of vocabulary or general information, increased until the age of 60.
It may be true that certain mental abilities peak at age 22, but we now know that the frontal lobes continue to develop well into the 30s, and the brain can form new neurons even in old age. I guess it depends on which mental powers are most important to you. Personally I’m glad I didn’t check out at 27.
Would Morrison and Hendrix be surprised that it has taken so long for states to begin decriminalizing and legalizing marijuana? Or would the be surprised that has happened at all?
Yesterday, Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper signed an executive order declaring that recreational pot use is legal in the state.
“Voters were loud and clear on Election Day,” Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, said in a statement, as he signed an executive order to officially legalize the personal use and limited growing of marijuana for those 21 or older. Amendment 64, as it’s called, is now a part of the state’s constitution.
It is still illegal, however, to buy or sell marijuana “in any quantity” in Colorado or to consume it in public.
Hickenlooper, who opposed the amendment in the run-up to Election Day, announced the start of a 24-member task force that would “begin working immediately” to help the state navigate federal laws and establish how citizens can legally purchase and sell cannabis.
Possession and sale of pot are still federal crimes, however. In Washington, where pot became legal last week, at least one bar is now allowing patrons to smoke pot on the premises.
Frankie’s Sports Bar & Grill, owned by one Frank Schnarr, is thought to be the first of its kind anywhere in the U.S.: a bar that lets patrons toke up freely.
“I’m about to lose my business,” the Olympia, Washington-based business owner told Reuters. “So I’ve got to figure out some way to get people in here.”
Just to make sure he’s not chasing off all his customers, Schnarr has set up the second floor of his bar as a private club called “Friends of Frankies.” Interested patrons are charged a $10-a-year fee to access the lounge, where they can smoke marijuana freely. The lounge also serves alcohol, manned by a staff of volunteers paid by tips.
I’m not sure I’d like it if public places in Massachusetts started allowing pot smoking. I guess that would make me into more of a homebody than I already am. I wouldn’t want to smell pot everywhere anymore than I want to smell cigarette smoke. Mary Crescenzo at HuffPo has similar concerns.
I have lots of questions about new state laws regarding weed. With U.S. nonsmoking laws among the most restrictive in the world, I can’t help but wonder if recreational marijuana smokers in Washington and Colorado will regard smoking marijuana as an exception to our nonsmoking rules. In these two states, will smoking marijuana be tolerated in public while smoking cigarettes in public is, for the most part, clearly restricted? A few days ago in Seattle, as people gathered in the streets to celebrate the legalization of the use of marijuana, police asked those smoking pot not to smoke in public. For now, Washington police officers are limited to issuing verbal warnings to smokers but nothing more. Those police requests didn’t seem to dampen the party, though. I can’t be the only one with questions on these new twists and turns in the law.
I have some other worries. I think it’s important for people to understand that pot isn’t completely harmless. A certain percentage of people will become addicted to it. I have seen people in withdrawal from marijuana–it can be problem for people who have addictive tendencies. Smoking a lot of pot may also push vulnerable young people into psychological disorders such as schizophrenia. And a recent study in New Zealand found that smoking pot before age 18 can hinder brain development.
Among a long-range study cohort of more than 1,000 New Zealanders, individuals who started using cannabis in adolescence and used it for years afterward showed an average decline in IQ of 8 points when their age 13 and age 38 IQ tests were compared. Quitting pot did not appear to reverse the loss either, said lead researcher Madeline Meier, a post-doctoral researcher at Duke University. The results appear online Aug. 27 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The key variable in this is the age of onset for marijuana use and the brain’s development, Meier said. Study subjects who didn’t take up pot until they were adults with fully-formed brains did not show similar mental declines. Before age 18, however, the brain is still being organized and remodeled to become more efficient, she said, and may be more vulnerable to damage from drugs.
“Marijuana is not harmless, particularly for adolescents,” said Meier, who produced this finding from the long term Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study. The study has followed a group of 1,037 children born in 1972-73 in Dunedin, New Zealand from birth to age 38 and is led by Terrie Moffitt and Avshalom Caspi, psychologists who hold dual appointments at Duke and the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London.
About 5 percent of the study group were considered marijuana-dependent, or were using more than once a week before age 18. A dependent user is one who keeps using despite significant health, social or family problems.
I do support legalization, because I think it’s ridiculous that we are putting people in jail for possession of pot. But society needs to be aware of the consequences if more people begin using the drug regularly.
Could Stephen Colbert replace Jim DeMint in the Senate? A new poll shows he would be the popular favorite.
Why not? We already have one comedian in the Senate.
I really liked this piece by Chris Weigant at HuffPo: If We’re Going to Tax the Rich, Then Let’s Tax the Rich.
Due to the political courageousness of President Obama (there is simply no other way to put it), the folks inside the Beltway are finally having a serious discussion about taxing the rich. Obama is not only strongly fighting for higher tax rates on the higher-income earners, but he was the one who put the subject front and center in the election season — when he could easily have punted it to a non-election year.
But the “tax the rich” policies so far being discussed (at least the ones that leak out to the public) are laughably timid and tame, when you really examine the big picture. So far, what is making Republicans howl is President Obama’s plan to end the Bush tax cuts on the top two marginal income tax rates, which would raise them from 33 percent to 36 percent, and from 35 to 39.6 percent. Seen one way, that’s impressive, since tax rates haven’t gone up in such a fashion since President Clinton’s first year in office. But seen another, it’s not all that radical at all.
Consider the fact that nothing Obama is doing is going to “fix” the problem of Warren Buffett paying a lower tax rate than his secretary — a problem Obama has repeatedly said he’d like to tackle. On “entitlements reform,” only a few lonely voices crying in the wilderness are suggesting ending the most regressive federal tax around, by scrapping the cap on income for Social Security payroll taxes. Also seemingly forgotten in this debate is the proposal for a “millionaires’ tax” or a “transactions tax.” The real measure of whether Democrats and Republicans are both selling smoke and mirrors is whether they permanently fix the Alternative Minimum Tax — again, a subject which has barely been mentioned.
Click on the link to read Weigant’s recommendations.
It’s not just the Catholic Church that has a problem with sexual abuse. The New York Times has an article about a Hasidic religious counselor who has been convicted of abusing a young girl.
Sexual abuse in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community has long been hidden. Victims who came forward were intimidated into silence; their families were shunned; cases were dropped for a lack of cooperation.
But on Monday, a State Supreme Court jury in Brooklyn delivered a stunning victory to prosecutors and victims’ advocates, convicting a 54-year-old unlicensed therapist who is a prominent member of the Satmar Hasidic community of Williamsburg of repeatedly sexually abusing a young girl who had been sent to him for help.
“The veil of secrecy has been lifted,” said Charles J. Hynes, the Brooklyn district attorney. “The wall that has existed in parts of these communities has now been broken through. And as far as I’m concerned, it is very clear to me that it is only going to get better for people who are victimized in these various communities.”
The case against the therapist, Nechemya Weberman, was a significant milestone for Mr. Hynes, whose office has been criticized for not acting aggressively enough against sexual abusers in the borough’s large and politically connected ultra-Orthodox community.
These creeps are everywhere.
I’ll end with this. I love grapefruit, so I didn’t appreciate this piece at Slate: Grapefruit is disgusting. I think it was intended to be tongue in cheek, but I didn’t laugh once. Katy Waldman objects to her least favorite fruit being given as a Christmas gift.
It needs to stop. This killjoy has already invaded our breakfast routines. Its baleful pink, white, or red flesh shines from thousands of tables. Its pulp gets stuck in our teeth. Its juice stains our clothes. And now, we are asked to inflict the scourge on our relatives, shipping it off in packages of 12 or more in order to demonstrate our love?
No. Grapefruit is unwieldy, disgusting, and in some cases dangerous to eat. It is indisputably the worst fruit anyone has ever put on a plate.
A pause, now, for its partisans to bellow, “But it’s a superfood!” Grapefruit enjoys an exalted reputation, thanks in part to countless magazine stories and nutrition listicles singing its praises. It figures in fad diets, including its eponymous diet, dreamed up by Hollywood sadists. Even its scientific name, Citrus x paradisi—so called because, in 1750, naturalist Griffith Hughes dubbed grapefruit the “forbidden fruit” of the Barbados—implies that it belongs somewhere in the Garden of Eden. It does not. It belongs in the trashcan.
Read her reasons at the link. Dan Amira agrees with me, and some DC bartenders also objected to the “grapefruit bashing.”
Now what are you reading and blogging about today?
Monday Reads
Posted: December 10, 2012 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: Big Media Consolidation, Hillary Clinton 2016, Paris Caverns and catacombs, Paul Krugman, Robber Barons 22 Comments
Good Morning!
I’ve got some interesting things for you to watch and read today. The first is a show with Bill Moyers on Big Media’s Power Play. It includes comments by Senator Bernie Sanders and a former Republican Congressman of the old school sort’ve conserative who thinks today’s Republican party is not “rational” or “adult”.
In 1983, 50 corporations controlled a majority of American media. Now that number is six. And Big Media may get even bigger, thanks to the FCC’s consideration of ending a rule preventing companies from owning a newspaper and radio and TV stations in the same city. Such a move — which they’ve tried in 2003 and 2007 as well –would give these massive media companies free rein to devour more of the competition, control the public message, and also limit diversity across the media landscape. Bernie Sanders, one of several Senators who have written FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski asking him to suspend the plan, discusses with Bill why Big Media is a threat to democracy, and what citizens can do to fight back.
Also on the show, Bill is joined by former Republican Congressman Mickey Edwards, a founding father of modern conservative politics who now fears the movement has abandoned its principles. Edwards explains why both political parties require radical change, and shares his perspective on Grover Norquist and anti-tax pledges. “It’s not conservatism, not rational, not adult,” Edwards tells Bill. ” It’s a 12-year-old’s kind of thinking.” Edwards chaired the Republican Policy Committee, was a founding trustee of the conservative Heritage Foundation, and served as National Chairman of the American Conservative Union.
The next suggestion is an article and series of pictures call “Going Souterrain” from The Economist in its December Intelligent Life Feature. The article provides a narrative of a repeat adventure into the massive caverns, catacombs, and basements of old Paris.
SOME YEARS AGO, I sat on a stone-cut bench in a dark chamber in the catacombs of Paris wearing a headlamp and muddied boots, and listened to the strange story of Félix Nadar, the first man to photograph the underground of Paris. In 1861, Nadar invented a battery-operated flash lamp, one of the first artificial lights in the history of photography, and promptly brought his camera into Paris’s sewers and catacombs. Over three months, Nadar—41, moustachioed, with unruly red hair—shot in the darkness beneath the streets. He used 18-minute exposures and, as models, wooden mannequins dressed in the garb of city workers. On the surface, the images of dim, claustrophobic passageways created a stir. Parisians had heard of the vast subterranean networks underlying their streets and Nadar brought this dark lattice to light. The pictures opened up Paris’s relationship to its subterranean spaces—catacombs and crypts, sewers and canals, reservoirs and utility tunnels—a connection which, over the years, has grown deeper and more peculiar than in any other city.
Now, a century and a half behind Nadar, I am back in Paris with a group of urban explorers. Our aim is to examine the city’s connection to its underground in a way no one has before: we will attempt to walk from the southern edge to the northern, using only catacombs, telecom tunnels, sewers and other hidden infrastructure. It is a 14-mile trek, every step illegal. The six of us—five Americans and an Australian—are prepared for a two- or three-day journey, with nights sleeping in the bowels of Paris. We have packed food, sleeping bags, an arsenal of flashlights and headlamps, and gas meters to alert us to any poisonous fumes in the sewers. It will be urban troglodytism, a walkabout in the wilderness under the city.
Hillary Clinton’s presidential aspects have never looked better but is she willing to take it on again? There was speculation from James Carville on ABC’s Sunday Show and a big article in the NYT. First off , Carville’s take on the how popular the SOS with Democrats.
With Clinton’s popularity across the board surging in the four years after her first run for the presidency, Carville says that the consensus among Democrats is that Hillary Clinton would give the party its best chance to win.
“I don’t know what she’s going to do, but I do know this: The Democrats want her to run. And I don’t just mean a lot of Democrats. I mean a whole lot of Democrats, like 90 percent across the country,” Carville said. “We just want to win. We think she’s the best person and shut it down. And that’s across the board.”
But Republican political adviser – and Carville’s wife- Mary Matalin said it’s unlikely the Secretary of State would be able to clear the field.
“I wish she would run. But it defies human nature to think that Democrats, even though they are redistributionist and utopians, would not be competitive, that [Virginia Senator Mark] Warner or all these other Democrats who’ve been waiting in the wings are going to have a dynasty, since Democrats are always complaining about these dynasties, they’re going to have another Clinton step up, and everyone’s going to go, yeah, step back? I don’t think so,” Matalin said.
Jodi Cantor’s take at the NYT is a bit more studied.
Ann Lewis, a longtime adviser, echoed that. “In the last four years, she has seen firsthand the difference she can make for women and girls,” she said.
But even if Mrs. Clinton returns full time to her activist feminist roots, it is not yet clear exactly where she would begin: the topic is diffuse by its very nature. Nor is a campaign for, say, safer cookstoves in China the obvious way to win over voters in Iowa — and her work could touch on issues, including reproductive health, that could prove sensitive.
But former aides say that Mrs. Clinton drew a lesson from her 2008 run: she believes that the country approves of her, and of female candidates in general, when they appear to be serving others rather than seeking power out of personal ambition. By that logic, Mrs. Clinton’s interest in helping poor women around the world would not hurt her politically in 2016 and might add to her current politician-above-politics luster.
Her former aides also agree that she was too cautious in the early months of her last campaign and hurt herself by hiding her real passions. Regardless of whether she runs, telling Mrs. Clinton not to focus on women would be like “telling Al Gore not to talk about the environment,” said Paul Begala, a longtime adviser to Mr. Clinton. (Mr. Gore did not always emphasize his knowledge on the subject in 2000, which later looked unwise.)
Today is Human Rights Day all over the world.
Sixty-four years ago today, on December 10, 1948, the world came together to adopt the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). In the UDHR, the United States and governments from around the globe recognized that human beings are, by virtue of their birth, endowed with certain inalienable rights, and that these serve as “the foundation of freedom, justice, and peace in the world.” Today, we affirm this commitment and look to the Universal Declaration not just as a reminder of values, but as a guide for action.
Last Thursday in Dublin, Secretary Clinton emphasized the important role that human rights has played and will continue to play in our foreign policy. As she said, “Human rights cannot be disconnected from other priorities. They are inextricably linked with all of the goals we strive for in our countries and around the world.” Regardless of gender, race, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, or physical or mental disability, all people deserve the freedom to pursue happiness and fulfillment, to speak openly, to come together with others and organize peacefully, to believe and worship as they see fit, and to participate fully in the public life of society with confidence in the rule of law. In upholding and advancing these freedoms, we live up to our values, we honor our international commitments, and we create an environment for every individual to reach their full potential.
Paul Krugman writes today of the robber barons and stealing resources from our country. Corporate profits have never been higher but more people in the US are falling out of the middle class and into financial trouble. Krugman continues to discuss the problem of income inequality and plutocratic piracy. He also discusses the increased role of technology in modern business. What role do all of these things have in collapsing the income of the American Worker?
What about robber barons? We don’t talk much about monopoly power these days; antitrust enforcement largely collapsed during the Reagan years and has never really recovered. Yet Barry Lynn and Phillip Longman of the New America Foundation argue, persuasively in my view, that increasing business concentration could be an important factor in stagnating demand for labor, as corporations use their growing monopoly power to raise prices without passing the gains on to their employees.
I don’t know how much of the devaluation of labor either technology or monopoly explains, in part because there has been so little discussion of what’s going on. I think it’s fair to say that the shift of income from labor to capital has not yet made it into our national discourse.
Yet that shift is happening — and it has major implications. For example, there is a big, lavishly financed push to reduce corporate tax rates; is this really what we want to be doing at a time when profits are surging at workers’ expense? Or what about the push to reduce or eliminate inheritance taxes; if we’re moving back to a world in which financial capital, not skill or education, determines income, do we really want to make it even easier to inherit wealth?
So, there are some things to think on today.
What’s on your reading and blogging list?
The Jeffrey MacDonald Case, Domestic Violence, and Media Gullibility
Posted: December 9, 2012 Filed under: Crime, Criminal Justice System, The Media SUCKS | Tags: abusive husbands, Brian Murtagh, Colette MacDonald, domestic violence, Errol Morris, Helena Stoeckley, Jeffrey MacDonald, Joe McGinniss, Kimberly MacDonald, Kristin MacDonald, Lynn Stuart Parramore, murder, murder as risk of pregnancy 17 Comments
Colette, Kristin, and Kimberly MacDonald
A couple of weeks ago, I read an article at Alternet by Lynn Stuart Parramore called: How I Changed My Mind About the Jeffrey MacDonald Murder Case. Parramore announced that she had read a new book on the MacDonald case by Errol Morris, A Wilderness of Error, and that
After traveling a months-long journey that has led me from certainty to doubt to horror at a grave injustice, I’m going to turn in this article and then go run some errands and make myself a bite to eat. Mundane things that Jeffrey MacDonald has not been able to do for over 30 years. The simple acts of coming and going as I please and caring for my own basic needs have been denied him. His wife Colette and his children have also been forever denied these things — but not, I have come to believe, by the man who is currently serving three consecutive life sentences.
A little background…
Jeffrey MacDonald
MacDonald was accused of murdering his wife Colette and their two little girls, Kimberly, age 5, and Kristin, age 2, in their home at Ft. Bragg military base in North Carolina on February 17, 1970. Colette was five months pregnant when she was murdered.
MacDonald claimed he had been sleeping on the couch in the living room, because his daughter Kristin had gotten into bed with his wife and had wet the bed. His story was that he had awakened suddenly to see these four people standing over him, and at the same time he had heard his wife and two daughters calling for him. He claimed that the woman was saying “Acid is groovy, kill the pigs,” and that the three men attacked him with a club and an ice pick, that somehow his pajama top was pulled over his head and he had used it to protect himself.
(It’s important to note here that these events took place only a few months after it was revealed that the Tate LaBianca murders in Los Angeles had been committed by so-called “hippies,” who were part of the “Manson family.” In addition, MacDonald had recently read a copy of the latest Esquire Magazine, which included a number of articles about the Manson murders and about hippies, drugs, and “witchcraft.”)
MacDonald said that he had eventually been knocked unconscious and when he came to he was lying in the hallway near the couch. He then went into the master bedroom and found his wife covered in blood–she had been bludgeoned repeatedly, and both her arms were broken. She had been stabbed 21 times with an ice pick and 16 times with a kitchen knife. The two girls were in their bedrooms. Kimberly had also– been bludgeoned–so badly that a bone protruded from her face. She had also been stabbed repeatedly in the neck. Kristin had been stabbed in the chest and back, 33 times with a knife and 15 times with an ice pick.
In contrast, MacDonald’s injuries were relatively minor. He had a bruise on his forehead, some small puncture wounds, and a wound in his right chest that partially punctured his lung. He did not even require any stitches. He was, however emotionally overwrought and his doctors were concerned about that.
MacDonald was initially released after an Army hearing, but after a thorough re-investigation, the Justice Department indicted him in 1975. In 1979 he was found guilty by a jury. He has had eight appeals, including two that went to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Back to the Parramore piece… Read the rest of this entry »
The Irrelevancy of the Sunday News Shows
Posted: December 9, 2012 Filed under: Republican politics, The Media SUCKS, Voter Ignorance, We are so F'd 10 CommentsIt’s rather amazing to me when a professed news junkie like me starts turning off a number shows that used to be the sole reason I kept cable TV and a TV around the house.
CNN used to be on in the background during my at-home office hours. I used to luxuriate in bed on a Sunday Morning with a paper and some good interviews. But, that was before these stations have become permeated with panels of people who don’t do math, science, reality, facts or anything but knee-jerk memes. The panel handlers–supposed journalists–don’t appear to have any motivation to provide news or information. It seems to be all about accessing the same stale old politicians. This Sunday seemed to perfectly reinforce the narratives of the recent fact checking lows of journalists’ coverage of the 2012 elections. This is the situation where–in fairness to differing view points–we have to listen endlessly to Republicans tell us that the sky is green and grass is blue simply because they want it that way.
Political journalists had no doubt heard similar arguments many times before, mostly from left wing bloggers. But this time the charge was coming from two of the most consistent purveyors of conventional wisdom in town, bipartisan to a fault.
And they were pretty harsh in their critique of the media. “Our advice to the press: Don’t seek professional safety through the even-handed, unfiltered presentation of opposing views,” they wrote in the Post. “Which politician is telling the truth? Who is taking hostages, at what risks and to what ends?”
Initially, at least, Mann and Ornstein weren’t completely ignored. “We had really good reporters call us and say: ‘You’re absolutely right’,” Mann said. “They told us they used this as the basis for conversations in the newsroom.”
But those conversations went nowhere, Mann said.
“Their editors and producers, who felt they were looking out for the economic wellbeing of their news organizations, were also concerned about their professional standing and vulnerability to charges of partisan bias,” Mann said.
So most reporters just kept on with business as usual.
“They’re so timid,” Mann said.
Some reporters did better than others, Ornstein said, particularly crediting Jackie Calmes of the New York Times and David Rogers of Politico among a few others. “They grew a little bit more straightforward in what they do, and showed you can be a good, diligent unbiased reporter, report the facts, put it in context, and yet show what’s really going on,” he said.
Most reporters, however — including many widely admired for their intelligence and aggressive reporting — simply refused to blame one side more than the other.
Consider, Paul Krugman. He’s the only economist in the room frequently. What’s his reward? His credentials get questioned and his motivation simply because he speaks from the data, facts and theories that drive our shared discipline. WTF do George Will or Mary Matalin know about even basic economics or math for that matter? Do they actually have the chops to analyze Paul Ryan’s budget plan?
After Krugman called House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s budget a “fake document” and the columnist said he was “amazed that people haven’t gotten that,” Will unsheathed his verbal sword and went at Krugman.
“I have yet to encounter someone who disagrees with you who you don’t think is a knave, or corrupt, or a corrupt knave,” Will said, borrowing a phrase founding father Alexander Hamilton used to rail against those unwilling to respect the good faith of their political opponents.
“No, I’ve got some people,” Krugman said, suggesting that some conservatives are indeed intellectually honest.
“Specifics have indeed been offered,” Will insisted, referring to Republican budget plans.
That face-off followed a couple of prickly interactions between Matalin and Krugman earlier in the program.
“The Republicans are unable to actually make concrete proposals” about resolving the fiscal cliff, Krugman said, claiming they’ve failed to offer “any specifics” about how they would rein in the deficit.
Matalin called Krugman’s remark “completely mendacious.”
“Are you an economist or a polemicist?” she asked with an expression suggesting she found the Princeton professor and winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in economics to be insufferable. “Do you want to talk about economy or do you want to talk about polemics?” she said.
Matalin and Krugman also sparred over Medicare cuts, with the former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney insisting that any cut in payments to providers would impact beneficiaries and the Times columnist insisting that was not always the case.
As if Matalin were not peeved enough, Krugman chimed in later to correct her when she said John Maynard Keynes had said: “Ideas drive history. Ideas drive progress.”
“The actual Keynes quote is….’ideas which are dangerous for good or evil,'” Krugman said.
Perhaps Matalin shouldn’t have tried to quote Keynes (whom she sarcastically called “our hero”) to a Keynesian. Unsurprisingly, Krugman has written on the specific quote.
How can we get any serious discussions about policy when journalists appear unwilling and unable to take a role in actually fact checking and providing a framework for what’s real and what’s imagined narratives on simple things like data? Why do they allow politic pundits with no real basic knowledge of policy issues to name call, misquote, and basically lie? Matalin couldn’t even get a simple quote right in front of person who’d actually done a lot of research and writing on that simple quote.
As rumors swirl that Democrats may consider raising the Medicare eligibility age to reach a deal before the looming “fiscal cliff,” a top Senate Democrat expressed opposition to that option Sunday. Speaking on Meet the Press, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) said raising the age at which seniors can receive Medicare from 65 to 67 would leave retired seniors with a dangerous gap in their health coverage:
DAVID GREGORY (HOST): Senator, one point about Medicare. You say you want to put off this discussion until later. But bottom line, should the Medicare eligibility age go up? Should there be means testing to get at the benefits side, if you want to shore this program up, because 12 years as you say before it runs out of money?
DURBIN: I do believe there should be means testing. and those of us with higher income in retirement should pay more. That could be part of the solution. But when you talk about raising the eligibility age, there’s one key question. what happens to the early retiree? What about that gap in coverage between workplace and Medicare? How will they be covered? I listened to Republicans say we can’t wait to repeal Obamacare, and the insurance exchanges. well, where does a person turn if they are 65 years of age and the medicare eligibility age is 67? They have two years there where they may not have the best of health. They need accessible, affordable medical insurance during that period.
Earlier this week, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) also rejected raising the Medicare eligibility age as part of a year-end deal on spending cuts and tax increases, saying, “I am very much against it, and I think most of my members are.” President Obama was reportedly willing to support raising the Medicare eligibility age during 2011 debt negotiations, but has not said where he stands on the issue as part of the current deal.
A Congressional Budget Office study of the proposal to raise the Medicare age to 67 found it would have “little effect on the trajectory of Medicare’s long-term spending” because the youngest Medicare beneficiaries are the healthiest and least costly to the program. The costs, meanwhile, would include an estimated net increase of $5.6 billion in out-of-pocket health insurance costs for beneficiaries who would have been otherwise covered by Medicare, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation study. Seniors in Medicare Part B would also face a 3 percent premium increase, the study found, since younger and healthier enrollees would be routed out of Medicare and into private insurance. Beneficiaries in health care reform’s exchanges would see a similar spike in premiums with the addition of the older population.
At some point, some one outside of a Democratic partisan has to point out that the Republicans keep coming up with the same old tired things that only protect their rich benefactors. None of their policies provide fiscal discipline. None of their policies achieve jobs and economic growth. None of their policies or their asserted outcomes have shown to be remotely close to reality when exposed to rigorous analysis. When will the press stop supporting lies in the name of balanced coverage?
Also, why is Rupert Murdoch being allowed to purchase more newspapers and media outlets in this country when the ones he’s got his nasty old claws into now are nothing short of gossip and propaganda rags? There is an absolute conspiracy in this country among the plutocrats to dumb down our nations most important social institutions–our free press and our public education institutions–and to destroy the ones that create economic equality and justice. Those, of course, are labor laws, progressive taxation, public infrastructure, and safety net programs. They are currently trying to rewrite the message of the election to match what they wanted to be the outcome. Our only recourse is to continue to tell our elected officials that our votes should mean something. We need a person in office—like Al Gore’s VPship–that will go through all those agencies and start throwing out the Dubya left overs. Democrats need to start fighting for every Federal appointment and every attempt at any more grand bargains. You cannot bargain with liars nor should you take any of their policy suggestions seriously. Now is the time to hold the Democrats to account.
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