Lazy Saturday Reads
Posted: February 8, 2014 Filed under: Foreign Affairs, morning reads, Republican politics, Russia, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, Ukraine | Tags: Bosnia-Hertzegovina, First Look, FSB, GCHQ, Glenn Greenwald, Great Britain, Income Inequality, NSA, Paul Volker, seniors, Ukraine 50 Comments
Tom Wesselman Still Life #30, April 1963
Good Afternoon!!
I thought I’d put the “morning reads” up a little later to give you time to check out JJ’s cartoon posts. So . . . let’s see what’s happening out there today.
Well . . . Paul Volker was in Boston on Thursday night, and he talked to some richie-rich guys about income inequality. From The Boston Globe:
Speaking to a room filled with hundreds of Boston investment executives, former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker asked some tough questions about income inequality in America. He called the earnings gap one of the economy’s greatest challenges.
“What accounts for this? What justifies it?’’ an animated Volcker asked. He argued that the trend started in the 1980s and accelerated in the 1990s, with the spread of stock option compensation creating vast wealth and risk-taking.
During that period, he said, the link between pay and performance got “entirely out of whack.’’
The elder statesman of Fed watchers and author of the Volcker Rule — part of the Dodd-Frank reform package after the financial crisis — was speaking before the Boston Security Analysts Society’s annual market dinner…
Good for him. Whether it will do any good is questionable, but these people need to hear about what they are doing to 99% of Americans.
Just for the hell of it, I looked around for some more recent news articles about income inequality. There wasn’t a lot out there, but I did find a few interesting reads.
At the LA Times, Michael Hiltzik writes: Income inequality begins to hit business in the pocketbook. He argues that business is noticing that middle-class customers are disappearing.
The consumer market is beginning to look like a sandwich without meat in the middle–there are enough wealthy customers to keep the luxury market humming along, and a growing demand for cheap no-name and other bargain products.
The phenomenon has been reported by Matthew Yglesias of Slate.com and more recently by Nelson Schwartz of the New York Times. As we reported here and here, it’s been building for years. But it really picked up steam after the last recession, when the imbalance in income between the top 1% and everyone else has really taken off.
Most economists view the stranglehold of the wealthy on U.S. income and wealth as a problem–it leads to slower overall growth and more volatility. As economist Jared Bernstein has observed, it also promotes the creation of asset and credit bubbles, which have a tendency to burst, taking the rest of the economy with them.
The most important analysis of the economic impact of inequality has come from Barry Z. Cynamon and Steven M. Fazzari of Washington University in St. Louis. In a paper published last month, they ask two questions: “First, did rising inequality contribute in an important way to the unsustainable increase in household leverage that triggered the collapse in consumer demand and the Great Recession? Second, has the rise in inequality become a drag on demand growth…that has held back recovery?”
Their answer to both questions is yes. In simpler terms, rising inequality before the recession prompted U.S. households to borrow more to keep up their spending; when the debt frenzy ended (because of the bursting of the housing bubble) the economy crashed. Since then, the demand drag caused by the effect of inequality on the bottom 95% has held back recovery. The impact of inequality on the recovery, compared with previous recoveries, is shown in this stunning graph from their paper.
But Hiltzik notes that many oblivious pundits continue to deny the effects of the top 1% controlling most of the wealth.
At The News Virginian, Jason Stanford finds some “good news” in the fact that most Republicans now agree that income inequality is a problem.
Believe it or not, there is good news when it comes to income inequality. It turns out Republicans finally believe that the gap between rich and poor has become a problem. The bad news is, according to a new poll, is that Republicans think the best solution is cutting the taxes for the wealthy and big corporations so money and opportunity can rain down on the poor. Addressing poverty by ensuring that cash does not become lonely in the wallets of the wealthy is what passes for a Republican governing philosophy these days, and it is exactly why Barack Obama has decided to go it alone on income inequality.
The issue isn’t that income inequality exists but that the wealthiest 1 percent has achieved the financial equivalent of escape velocity, leaving us poor folk back here on Planet Broke. In 1982, the top 1 percent highest-earning families took home one out of every $10. Now they get more than twice that, leaving the other 99 percent of us to make do on less. The last time it was this bad was the Gilded Age, and majorities of Republicans, Democrats and Independents agree it’s time to do something about it.
OK, so Republicans see the problem, but they want to address it with the same old tired trickle-down non-solutions. I’m not really sure that qualifies as good news. Better than nothing, I guess.
At the Akron Beacon Journal, Rick Armon writes about “an American success story.” Thanks to government programs like Social Security and Medicare, not as many seniors are living in poverty as they did in the past.
Fifty years after President Lyndon Johnson declared the War on Poverty, at least one group of Americans is much better off today: senior citizens.
The percentage of seniors nationwide living below the poverty line has plummeted from 27 percent to 9 percent today, according to a Beacon Journal analysis of census data….
Today, there are 3.7 million seniors living in poverty, compared with 5.2 million in 1969, when the 1970 census was conducted.
The reasons are pretty simple, experts say: It’s a combination of Social Security, pensions, 401(k) programs and Medicare that has kept more elderly people from slipping into poverty.
Armon says those figures may be a little too optimistic (read the details at the link); but still, it’s progress.
Yesterday everyone was talking about Asst. Sec. of State Victoria Nuland’s bugged phone call with the US ambassador to Ukraine in which she uttered the words “fuck the EU,” apparently using an unencrypted cell phone. Someone posted portions of the call to Youtube, and the U.S. has accused Russia of tapping Nuland’s phone. Read all the gossipy details at BBC News.
Of course Russia is accusing the U.S. of “meddling” in the Ukraine crisis. From The New York Times:
KIEV, Ukraine — The tense Russian-American jockeying over the fate of Ukraine escalated on Thursday as a Kremlin official accused Washington of “crudely interfering” in the former Soviet republic, while the Obama administration blamed Moscow for spreading an intercepted private conversation between two American diplomats.
An audiotape of the conversation appeared on the Internet and opened a window into American handling of the political crisis here, as the two diplomats candidly discussed the composition of a possible new government to replace the pro-Russian cabinet of Ukraine’s president, Viktor F. Yanukovych. It also turned the tables on the Obama administration, which has been under fire lately for spying on foreign leaders.
The developments on the eve of the Winter Olympics opening in Sochi, Russia, underscored the increasingly Cold War-style contest for influence here as East and West vie for the favor of a nation of 45 million with historic ties to Moscow but a deep yearning to join the rest of Europe. The tit for tat has been going on since November, when Mr. Yanukovych spurned a trade deal with Europe and accepted a $15 billion loan from Moscow. Months of street protests have threatened his government, and American officials are now trying to broker a settlement — an effort the Kremlin seems determined to block.
There’s a lot more background on the Ukraine situation in the NYT article.
If the problems in Ukraine weren’t enough, anti-government protests have now broken out in Bosnia-Hertzegovina. The Guardian reports:
Thousands of Bosnian protesters took to the streets in the centre of Sarajevo on Friday, setting fire to the presidency building and hurling rocks and stones at police as fury at the country’s political and economic stagnation spread rapidly around the country.
As many as 200 people were injured in protests that took place in about 20 towns and cities. Government buildings were set on fire in three of the largest centres – Sarajevo, Tuzla and Zenica.
At one point in the central Bosnian city of Tuzla, some of the 5,000-strong crowd stormed into a local government building and hurled furniture from the upper stories….
The scenes in Sarajevo were similarly fraught on Friday night, as fire raged through the presidency building and hundreds of people hurled stones, sticks and whatever else they could lay their hands on to feed the blaze. Police used rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannon trying to disperse the crowd. Buildings and cars were also burning in downtown Sarajevo and riot police chased protesters….
The protests have bubbled up out of long-simmering discontent at a sluggish economy, mismanagement, corruption and unemployment, which is rising irresistibly towards 30%. Bosnia has been hamstrung by political infighting and deadlock between its three main ethnic groups – Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs – in the near 20 years since its three-year civil war ended in 1995. The economy has suffered as a result, and the population remains deeply sceptical of a political class widely believed to be ruling in the interests of the elite, not the people.
There continues to be plenty of surveillance news–both about NSA, and more recently about Russia’s intelligence agencies and their security measures activities around the Sochi Winter Olympic Games. This article from The Moscow Times by Andrei Soldatov provides a good overview: FSB Makes Eavesdropping an Olympic Event. In NSA news, Glenn Greenwald and friends have stepped up their publishing activities in the run-up to the unveiling of their First Look news site, planned for Monday. I’ll just share a couple of items with you.
A little more than a week ago Greenwald worked with CBC reporters to “break” a story about alleged spying by Canada’s equivalent of NSA on airport passengers that supposedly continued for days after they left the airport. As usual, the report was deeply flawed, as explained by Matthew Aid, author of The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency: Analysis Indicates Recent CBC Story About Canadian SIGINT Agency Spying on Travellers Incorrect.
On January 30, the Canadian television channel CBC broke a story written by Greg Weston, Glenn Greenwald and Ryan Gallagher, saying that the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), which is Canada’s equivalent of NSA, used airport WiFi to track Canadian travellers – something which was claimed to be almost certainly illegal. This story was apperently based upon an internal CSEC presentation (pdf) from May 2012 which is titled “IP Profiling Analytics & Mission Impacts.”
However, as is often the case with many of the stories based on the Snowden-documents, it seems that the original CSEC presentation was incorrectly interpreted and presented by Canadian television.
Read all the gory details at the Aid’s blog.
Then yesterday, Greenwald–in collaboration with NBC News–released a truly bizarre article, Snowden Docs: British Spies Used Sex and ‘Dirty Tricks’, that reveals methods and sources for the GCHQ’s efforts to arrest malicious hackers, criminals, and terrorists, and to prevent nuclear proliferation. You have to wonder why NBC news thought those efforts were somehow wrong or illegal. I’m running out of space, so I’ll let Bob Cesca explain the problems with this story.
There’s one sentence in the new Glenn Greenwald revelation for NBC News that renders everything that follows mostly irrelevant. It’s the lede. And not even the entire lede — just the first part of it.
British spies have developed “dirty tricks” for use against nations, hackers, terror groups, suspected criminals and arms dealers…
The only sane reaction to this news should be, “Great!” We don’t really need to know anything else. But that didn’t stop Greenwald and NBC News from spilling the beans on operations that target such poor helpless victims as malicious hackers, the Taliban, Iran and, yes, terrorists dealing in loose nukes.
See more examples at The Daily Banter. Cesca sums up:
Regardless, what we’re looking at here is another leak from Greenwald & Company that tips off some of our most dangerous enemies including and especially the looming threat of nuclear proliferation and loose nukes. These leaks have been published yet again under the banner of the public interest, but it’s difficult to see any public interest in an operation expressly aimed at those who even the article admits are our “enemies.”
Greenwald has been publishing quite a few leaks about British spying lately. I have to assume that this is his threatened revenge for the Brits detaining David Miranda at Heathrow airport last year. Pretty childish, if you ask me.
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Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Stephen Kim pleads guilty in Fox News leak case
What about Rosen? What about Fox News? Reading further on in the article it states:
“Revelations that Justice Department invetigators seeking access to Rosen’s email records had described him as a co-conspirator in the crime contributed to a public furor last year that resulted in Attorney General Eric Holder issuing new guidelines limiting the use of similar tactics in the future.”
Shouldn’t Rosen and his employer, Fox News be held accountable. Maybe they can be sent to a special labor camp in North Korea.
Rosen was only described as a co-conspirator for purposes of securing the warrant for his records. The first amendment almost certainly precludes any prosecution and one assumes the media which freaked out knew that. It was an excuse for a huge poutrage by all the media though.
North Korean labor camp is a good idea though.
American Snowboarder Wins First Gold of Games
He’s is from Coeur D’Alene, Idaho. Love you 1950/60’s ads today. I was kid, and mom would send me to local mom and pop store for “Sunbeam” bread……..long time since I had any lap bread.
…and RC Cola!! Haven’t seen those bottles in a long time. Brought back memories.
I used to put a bag of salted peanuts in my RC Cola.
My aunt lived on the stuff… that and Newports.
Sunbeam bread is the only bread my son will eat.
BB Idid not know about the ” fuck the EU” comment…did you see woody Allen wrote an Op.Ed response to Dylan Farrow?
Woody Allen Speaks Out – NYTimes.com
Dylan Farrow Responds to Woody Allen: ‘Distortions and Outright Lies’ – The Hollywood Reporter
10 Undeniable Facts About the Woody Allen Sexual-Abuse Allegation | Vanity Fair
Yes, I read them last night. Woody Allen’s piece is nothing but lies. It’s hard to understand why he bothered. It’s all just the same victim-blaming and Mia-blaming that he used back in the early 1990s
Refer to the actual transcript.
Or this summary by Maureen Orth — Sorry, I didn’t see that you linked it already.
I admire the “Fuck the EU” comment. Nuland speaks for untold millions saying that.
I didn’t have any problem with it.
Any diplomat using “Fuck the [whatever] country,” especially over a phone, should know better.
They also released video from the movie shooting: Surveillance Video Florida Retired Cop Movie Theater Shooter | Mediaite
I can’t stand to watch it.
More NSA news:
WSJ: NSA Collects 20% or Less of U.S. Call Data
The last time NSA collect most phone calls domestically was 2006.
F-35 Program Compromised By Discovery Of Iranian Spy?
http://www.inquisitr.com/1105133/f-35-program-compromised-by-discovery-of-iranian-spy/source/outbrain/
Ralph,
NYT has a new Snowden story up. Do you understand what they are talking about?
Snowden Used Low-Cost Tool to Best N.S.A.
Where he was working, in Hawaii, they hadn’t gotten the latest security updates yet.
It says Snowden would have learned that NSA protections against outside hackers were very strong, but they only had “rudimentary protections against insiders.”
I know what they’re talking about and, from inside a network, it’s very possible to use an old web crawler to collect tons of data. Basically it’s how Google collected most of their original data they used to index the net.
For Snowden’s crawler to function from a system in Hawaii to locations in Maryland or wherever, it would have to run over VPN connections. That network people didn’t notice and question persistent connections seems sloppy, really sloppy.
One of my engagements entailed setting up system and network monitoring for customers in the US where the monitoring was actually done by software on some of our systems in Brazil. The operators who were notified in case of errors or problems were in a facility in Canada. All the communications were done over VPN connections between the secure networks but network admins for each location knew about the VPNs and signed off on them.
Using a crawler potentially answers a question I’ve had since the first power point slides were published. Usually when a presentation is made, at least an audio recording is made so that people can access it later and get the effect without someone doing it twice or 40 times. Where was the presentation which went along with those ppt pages?
I had thought the presentation may have made it plain the slides were a project pitch instead of a ‘we’re doing this’ type dog and pony show. But maybe his search terms for the crawler missed the recording which accompanied the power points instead? Who knows?
It’s an interesting article, if it’s true. But for the past few days we’ve been getting a lot of stories that make NSA sound less competent than we thought. It could be deliberate disinformation or it could be there are different factions in NSA leaking stuff to make each other look bad. I’m not sure what’s going on.
That’s certain of all of us!
http://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/?single=1
from 1964 and still true:
The Paranoid Style in American Politics
NPR breaking news:
Holder Orders Equal Treatment For Married Same-Sex Couples
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/02/08/273608036/holder-orders-equal-treatment-for-married-same-sex-couples?utm_medium=Email&utm_source=BreakingNews&utm_campaign=
Good for Holder!
An occasion for champagne!
Here’s something we told the Dude Bros. Kind’ve interesting.
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/news/barack-obamas-conservative-utopia
Barack Obama’s Conservative Utopia in 7 Charts
While politicians on the far right scream socialism, President Obama has quietly created a conservative America. And the statistics prove it.
There are still tons of ignorant dudebros who will argue that Obama is the liberal savior while Hillary is some evil ConservaDem. The stupid just burns, now more than ever.
We’ve been able to say “We told you so” hundreds of times over.
tpm: Arkansas Basketball Team To Retire Number 42 In Honor Of Bill Clinton
Take that Rand Paul, you worthless douchenozzle.
Hooray.
Jay Rosen has a good analysis of why people like Chuck Todd and Ron Fournier are so completely useless.
Behold how badly our political journalists have lost the freakin’ plot
Rosen doesn’t mention it but these savvy guys consider themselves hard-bitten realists but are prone to man-crushes on tough, manly politicians like McCain.
The State of Florida is gonna run a con game on it’s own citizens. Brainchild of Marco Rubio, of course.
Florida set to launch its own limited insurance marketplace
The Republicans always offer illusions unless you can afford to be a bundler for their election compaigns.
You can bet your bottom dollar a boatload of campaign contributions went into who got picked to offer “services”. Rick Scott was a huge Medicaid fraudster so he would most definitely know how to set up a giant scam.
In Louisiana, Blue Cross tries to crawl away from covering HIV patients. CMS says this is a no-no.
Louisiana AIDS patients in Obamacare bind as insurers reject checks, discontinue coverage
Jimmy Kimmel at Muehlers today. Yum…
Dak, I looked at that graph from the Cynamon & Fazzari piece. What is “PCE” an abbreviation of?
It is a measure of inflation based in personal consumption and used by the Fed for policy purposes.
Thanks.
This is unusual.
Raw Story: Texas grand jury refuses murder indictment on man who killed deputy on no-knock raid
Sleazy:
That is disgusting, and sounds like the same kind of shit tactic the GOP used when sending cards in the mail to Dem districts with the wrong info on absent voting instructions and election dates.