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Head over to Slate for the details of the arguments! :-)
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Slate’s annual guide to your Thanksgiving dinner-table arguments.
By John Dickerson, November 27, 2013
First, a prayer: May your Thanksgiving dinner be free of glitches or arguments about glitches. The annual family gathering is the wrong place to have a political argument. Thanksgiving debates are often a proxy for old grievances or an outlet for holiday stress—the turkey is taking too long, the flight was delayed, or the kids won't stop sulking. Also, anyone who really wants to sink their teeth into a meaty debate—at the possible expense of fellow feeling, family warmth, and ready pie—isn't going to be convinced of anything. So don't try to persuade them because you'll just be frustrated.
Instead, arm yourself with diversions. YouTube videos of cats are a crowd pleaser. Load one onto your smartphone and deploy at the first mention of Sen. Ted Cruz. This year at our house, the dishwasher seems to be having sympathy glitches with healthcare.gov, which might sound like a pain, but tending to it will give me a ready excuse to exit the table if things get too hot. (I expect that the vast majority of dishwashing users will have a positive experience by the end of the month.)
Despite similar warnings, in the six years Slate has been publishing its guide to Thanksgiving political arguments, we have learned that many people still can’t resist. Many find themselves offering a version of Loudon Wainwright's Thanksgiving prayer: "If I argue with a loved one, Lord, please make me the winner." In that spirit, we present our guide to some of this year's thorniest political arguments. Regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, there might be something in here to help you hold your own long enough to knock over a glass and make a run for it.
President Obama’s Deal With Iran:
[snipped]
President Obama's Health Care Plan:
[snipped]
Filibuster Reform:
[snipped]
Government Shutdown:
[snipped]
Chris Christie Will Be the GOP Nominee:
[snipped]
Hillary Clinton Will Be the Democratic Nominee:
[snipped]
Anyone for leftovers?
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Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
We're bouncing back and forth between degraded versions of both American conservatism and American liberalism
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Americans Are Stuck With Inept Versions of Both Parties
The financial crisis, Obamacare, and disinterest in fixing dysfunction in the system
By Conor Friedersdorf, November 26, 2013
Wouldn't it be nice if Republicans were hellbent on reforming the financial sector and Democrats were determined to get bureaucrats operating with competence and efficiency? Saying so makes one sound like a starry-eyed dreamer. In our political system, people like Elizabeth Warren focus on fighting Wall Street pathologies, while the GOP highlights government incompetence.
Short-term incentives drive that behavior, but the opposite approach would make more sense in the long run. Republicans' ability to bring about the America they want depends on public confidence in capitalistic financial markets. The progressive project requires a competent public sector.
I am hardly the first to notice this. Take a look at two passages, one about the financial crisis, the other about the Obamacare rollout. In the autumn of 2009, Luigi Zingales in National Affairs noticed that the financial crisis and its aftermath were bad news for supporters of free-market capitalism (emphasis added):
But ideological orthodoxies and interest-group capture prevent our political class from responding to even the most staggering failures in the way you'd hope. The country would be in fine shape if we were going back and forth between the best version of American conservatism and the best version of American liberalism. Instead we're bouncing back and forth between degraded versions of both.
That's why, despite the flaws of the Tea Party, Ross Douthat is right that an improved version of it is a better bet for GOP reformers than a return to the establishment that gave us the Iraq War, the K Street Project, and Wall Street bailouts. And it's why Larry Lessig's critique of Barack Obama remains the most potent:
I am not even sure that he'll seriously attempt them.
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Americans Are Stuck With Inept Versions of Both Parties
The financial crisis, Obamacare, and disinterest in fixing dysfunction in the system
By Conor Friedersdorf, November 26, 2013
Wouldn't it be nice if Republicans were hellbent on reforming the financial sector and Democrats were determined to get bureaucrats operating with competence and efficiency? Saying so makes one sound like a starry-eyed dreamer. In our political system, people like Elizabeth Warren focus on fighting Wall Street pathologies, while the GOP highlights government incompetence.
Short-term incentives drive that behavior, but the opposite approach would make more sense in the long run. Republicans' ability to bring about the America they want depends on public confidence in capitalistic financial markets. The progressive project requires a competent public sector.
I am hardly the first to notice this. Take a look at two passages, one about the financial crisis, the other about the Obamacare rollout. In the autumn of 2009, Luigi Zingales in National Affairs noticed that the financial crisis and its aftermath were bad news for supporters of free-market capitalism (emphasis added):
The economic crisis of the past year, centered as it has been in the financial sector that lies at the heart of American capitalism, is bound to leave some lasting marks. Financial regulation, the role of large banks, and the relationships between the government and key players in the market will never be the same.
More important, however, are the ways in which public attitudes about our system might change. The nature of the crisis, and of the government's response, now threaten to undermine the public's sense of the fairness, justice, and legitimacy of democratic capitalism. By allowing the conditions that made the crisis possible (particularly the concentration of power in a few large institutions), and by responding to the crisis as we have (especially with massive government bailouts of banks and large corporations), the United States today risks moving in the direction of European corporatism and the crony capitalism of more statist regimes. This, in turn, endangers America's unique brand of capitalism, which has thus far avoided becoming associated in the public mind with entrenched corruption, and has therefore kept this country relatively free of populist anti-capitalist sentiment.And New Republic Editor Franklin Foer recently wrote of the Obamacare rollout:
Liberalism has spent the better part of the past century attempting to prove that it could competently and responsibly extend the state into new reaches of American life.
With the rollout of the Affordable Care Act, the administration has badly injured that cause, confirming the worst slurs against the federal government. It has stifled bad news and fudged promises; it has failed to translate complex mechanisms of policy into plain English; it can’t even launch a damn website. What’s more, nobody responsible for the debacle has lost a job or suffered a demotion. Over time, the Affordable Care Act’s technical difficulties can be repaired. Reversing the initial impressions of government ineptitude won’t be so easy.The obviousness of these insights, and the fact that they've been publicly aired many times, hasn't seemed to affect the behavior of the Republicans and Democrats who run things. A catastrophe as historic as the financial crisis may have persuaded George Will that America ought to break up the big investment banks. Franklin Foer may grasp that the Obamacare rollout does harm to the liberal project, just as Kevin Drum grasps that the staggering ineptitude behind California's joke of a high-speed-rail project gives liberals a bad name.
But ideological orthodoxies and interest-group capture prevent our political class from responding to even the most staggering failures in the way you'd hope. The country would be in fine shape if we were going back and forth between the best version of American conservatism and the best version of American liberalism. Instead we're bouncing back and forth between degraded versions of both.
That's why, despite the flaws of the Tea Party, Ross Douthat is right that an improved version of it is a better bet for GOP reformers than a return to the establishment that gave us the Iraq War, the K Street Project, and Wall Street bailouts. And it's why Larry Lessig's critique of Barack Obama remains the most potent:
I believed that he had a vision of what was wrong with our government, and a passion and commitment to fix it .... In speech after speech, Obama described the problem of Washington just as I have, though with a style that is much more compelling. It was this theme that distinguished Obama most clearly from the heir apparent to the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton. For Clinton was not running to "change the way Washington works." She stood against John Edwards and Barack Obama in their attack on the system and on lobbyists in particular. As she told an audience at YearlyKos in August 2007: "A lot of those lobbyists, whether you like it or not, represent real Americans. They represent nurses, they represent social workers, yes, they represent corporations that employ a lot of people." .... Instead, Clinton's vision of the presidency was much like her husband's .... She saw the job of president to be to take a political system and do as much with it as you can. It may be a lame horse. It may be an intoxicated horse. But the job is not to fix the horse. The job is to run the horse as fast as you can .... Nowhere on that list was fundamental reform of how Washington worked.
I thought Obama got this. That's what he promised, again and again. That was "the reason [he] was running for President[—]to challenge that system." Yet Obama hasn't played the game that he promised. Instead, the game he has played has been exactly the game that Hillary Clinton promised and that Bill Clinton executed: striking a bargain with the most powerful lobbyists as a way to get a bill through—and as it turns out, the people don't have the most powerful lobbyists. As I watched this strategy unfold, I could not believe it. The idealist in me certainly could not believe that Obama would run a campaign grounded in "change" yet execute an administration that changed nothing of the "way Washington works."
But the pragmatist in me also could not believe it. I could not begin to understand how this administration thought that it would take on the most important lobbying interests in America and win without a strategy to change the power of those most important lobbying interests. Nothing close to the reform that Obama promised is possible under the current system; so if that reform was really what Obama sought, changing the system was an essential first step.If Chris Christie runs against Hillary Clinton, I expect he'll pick up on this theme. Obama could preempt that attack by holding the appropriate bureaucrats responsible for the Obamacare rollout failure and successfully reforming the way federal IT projects run so that government is capable of building a website. But does anyone have confidence that he'll achieve those things?
I am not even sure that he'll seriously attempt them.
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The “four percent solution” ... putting the wind back in the Democrats’ sails
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How Democrats Can Climb Out Of Their Political Hole
By Ruy Teixeira, November 26, 2013
Democrats are down in the dumps. The troubled roll-out of Healthcare.gov and the public relations disaster around individual policy cancellation has eliminated the momentum Democrats enjoyed after the GOP’s shutdown debacle. And every day seems to bring another poll showing President Obama’s approval rating sinking to new lows.
What to do? As many others have pointed out, the stupidest thing to do is to panic. The problems with the ACA are fixable and are in the process of being fixed. If they are, over time the damage from the initial roll-out will dissipate. Still, the wind is out of the Democrats’ sails — is there anything that would put it back in?
Yes, there is. It’s called the “four percent solution,” and it’s a plan for tackling unemployment that doubles as a political goldmine.
Americans still care about the economy more than any other political issue. That’s almost always true when a war isn’t dominating the headlines, but new research from Joel Benenson, Obama’s pollster, confirms it today. “Our data continues to show, unequivocally, that the nation’s economic health remains voters’ overriding priority,” Benenson writes. “Even amid a cascade of news cycles focused on the Affordable Care Act, Syria, the government shutdown and the NSA, voters’ primary focus has never shifted from their economic well-being.”
If Democrats want to start making political gains, Benenson suggests, they need avoid “inside-the-Beltway political dramas that have little bearing on [Americans'] immediate well-being,” and focus on “strengthening the economy, creating jobs, investing in education, [and] promoting a living wage.”
That means they should develop a laser-like focus on issues like raising the minimum wage and stimulus measures that could growth and bring down the unemployment rate. The best way for Obama and other Democrats to recenter on these things is to commit themselves to a definite goal: the aforementioned “the four percent solution.”
The name refers to the average level of unemployment we had in 2000, the last year we were at full employment and the last year of a healthy economic period (1995-2000) when wages and incomes rose smartly and inequality actually declined. In an important new book by Dean Baker and Jared Bernstein, Getting Back to Full Employment: A Better Bargain for Working People (available for free download), they make a sustained argument for enshrining the four percent figure as an overriding national priority and putting full employment squarely at the center of the progressive agenda.
Baker and Bernstein handily demolish the various arguments against such a target — unemployment that low would cause accelerating inflation, current unemployment is mostly structuralm and so on — and detail the many economic benefits that would follow from meeting or at least approaching that target. There is probably no other economic policy that would deliver as much in terms of raising material well-being, reducing inequality and even bringing down the long-range deficit.
The excuse that voters would not buy it is simply not credible. Take a look back at some of Benenson’s data:
Democrats on the fence about this aggressive growth agenda should keep in mind the probable political payoffs from getting close to full employment. Obama’s approval rating would likely go up and that, combined with economic improvements, would give them a much better chance of gains in the 2014 election. And full employment wouldn’t exactly make the Democrats a lock for the 2016 Presidential election but that, combined with the Democrats’ burgeoning demographic advantage, would make them damn hard to beat.
..................................................................................................................................
How Democrats Can Climb Out Of Their Political Hole
By Ruy Teixeira, November 26, 2013
Democrats are down in the dumps. The troubled roll-out of Healthcare.gov and the public relations disaster around individual policy cancellation has eliminated the momentum Democrats enjoyed after the GOP’s shutdown debacle. And every day seems to bring another poll showing President Obama’s approval rating sinking to new lows.
What to do? As many others have pointed out, the stupidest thing to do is to panic. The problems with the ACA are fixable and are in the process of being fixed. If they are, over time the damage from the initial roll-out will dissipate. Still, the wind is out of the Democrats’ sails — is there anything that would put it back in?
Yes, there is. It’s called the “four percent solution,” and it’s a plan for tackling unemployment that doubles as a political goldmine.
Americans still care about the economy more than any other political issue. That’s almost always true when a war isn’t dominating the headlines, but new research from Joel Benenson, Obama’s pollster, confirms it today. “Our data continues to show, unequivocally, that the nation’s economic health remains voters’ overriding priority,” Benenson writes. “Even amid a cascade of news cycles focused on the Affordable Care Act, Syria, the government shutdown and the NSA, voters’ primary focus has never shifted from their economic well-being.”
If Democrats want to start making political gains, Benenson suggests, they need avoid “inside-the-Beltway political dramas that have little bearing on [Americans'] immediate well-being,” and focus on “strengthening the economy, creating jobs, investing in education, [and] promoting a living wage.”
That means they should develop a laser-like focus on issues like raising the minimum wage and stimulus measures that could growth and bring down the unemployment rate. The best way for Obama and other Democrats to recenter on these things is to commit themselves to a definite goal: the aforementioned “the four percent solution.”
The name refers to the average level of unemployment we had in 2000, the last year we were at full employment and the last year of a healthy economic period (1995-2000) when wages and incomes rose smartly and inequality actually declined. In an important new book by Dean Baker and Jared Bernstein, Getting Back to Full Employment: A Better Bargain for Working People (available for free download), they make a sustained argument for enshrining the four percent figure as an overriding national priority and putting full employment squarely at the center of the progressive agenda.
Baker and Bernstein handily demolish the various arguments against such a target — unemployment that low would cause accelerating inflation, current unemployment is mostly structuralm and so on — and detail the many economic benefits that would follow from meeting or at least approaching that target. There is probably no other economic policy that would deliver as much in terms of raising material well-being, reducing inequality and even bringing down the long-range deficit.
The excuse that voters would not buy it is simply not credible. Take a look back at some of Benenson’s data:
In a forced choice question, just 39% of voters and 23% of Independents agree: The way to get our country back on track is to get government out of the way and unleash the power of businesses and markets to create jobs by lowering taxes and eliminating needless regulations. While 59% overall and 65% of Independents agree with the alternate choice: The way to get our country back on track is to get the public and private sector working together to invest in manufacturing, technology, small businesses and education to create jobs our country needs and train our children to succeed in the new economy.Obviously, Congress will be an obstacle here but, contrary to the Zen precept, you can’t hit the target unless you’re aiming at it.
Democrats on the fence about this aggressive growth agenda should keep in mind the probable political payoffs from getting close to full employment. Obama’s approval rating would likely go up and that, combined with economic improvements, would give them a much better chance of gains in the 2014 election. And full employment wouldn’t exactly make the Democrats a lock for the 2016 Presidential election but that, combined with the Democrats’ burgeoning demographic advantage, would make them damn hard to beat.
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"... the rules would force groups engaging in constitutionally protected speech to disclose their donors ..." Like that's a bad thing?
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IRS moves to curb tax-exempt groups' political activity
By Gregory Korte and Fredreka Schouten, November 26, 2013
The Obama administration is moving to clamp down on the growing political activity of "social welfare" tax-exempt groups, six months after controversy erupted over the IRS scrutiny of conservative groups.
The Treasury Department's proposed rules, released Tuesday, would restrict the ability of those groups to conduct a wide range of activities, from running ads to distributing mailers that target specific candidates to get-out-the-vote drives.
Social welfare organizations funded by anonymous donors have become a big force in federal elections, reporting $256.3 million in political spending in 2012, according to a tally by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks money in politics. That's up from $82.7 million in 2008.
The proposed rules represent a significant change in how the IRS would treat social welfare groups. But a 90-day deadline for public comments, followed by public hearings, additional review and an implementation period make it unlikely that any regulation would be in place before the 2014 congressional elections.
Treasury officials would not discuss the proposed rules on the record, but said in the published notice that they "wish to receive comments from a broad range of organizations before deciding how to proceed."
The proposal completely avoids one of the most controversial issues: How much political activity — however it's defined — a group can engage in before threatening its tax-exempt status. That proportion isn't specified in existing rules but is widely assumed to be less than 50%.
"It's clear that the IRS is treading slowly into the waters, knowing that it's fraught with peril, and that they are starting to get ideas from people, which is exactly what they should be doing," said Donald Tobin, a law professor at Ohio State University. "One of the big problems you had in this area is the IRS couldn't win. There are people like me who complain they haven't been enforcing enough. There are others who say they've been unfairly targeted."
Tea Party groups denounced the proposal. Jay Sekulow, an attorney representing 41 groups suing the IRS, called it "a feeble attempt by the Obama administration to justify its own wrong-doing with the IRS targeting of conservative and Tea Party groups."
The IRS admitted in May that it had improperly held up groups seeking tax-exempt status based solely on the fact that they had the words "tea party" or "patriots" in their name. A list of targeted groups later obtained by USA TODAY revealed that groups were singled out for "anti-Obama rhetoric," but that some liberal groups were also flagged for scrutiny.
IRS officials told congressional investigators that they applied a "facts and circumstances" test to decide whether activities were political. The proposed rules would replace that test with more objective criteria.
So, for example, any mention of a candidate within 60 days of a general election would be considered political, regardless of the context. The rule would even apply to mentions of a candidate that happened before the 60-day window, but which remained on an organization's website. But it wouldn't apply to third-party comments on the same site.
Sekulow and other conservatives argue that the rules would force groups engaging in constitutionally protected speech to disclose their donors, exposing them to political harassment. "With this move, the Obama administration opens a new front in its war against political dissent," he said.
But the issue isn't speech, watchdog groups say. It's about disclosure.
The proposal "provides hope that the IRS is going to shut down a huge loophole that has allowed political organizations to spend hundreds of millions of dollars without disclosing their donors," said Paul Ryan, senior counsel with the Campaign Legal Center, which has sued the IRS to clamp down on the political activity of tax-exempt groups.
Rep. David Camp, R-Mich., who chairs the House committee that writes tax laws, said the proposal "smacks of the administration trying to shut down potential critics."
"There continues to be an ongoing investigation, with many documents yet to be uncovered, into how the IRS systematically targeted and abused conservative-leaning groups," he said in a statement. "Before rushing forward with new rules, especially ones that appear to make it harder to engage in public debate, I would hope Treasury would let all the facts come out first – something they could achieve by fully cooperating with Congress in the investigation."
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IRS moves to curb tax-exempt groups' political activity
By Gregory Korte and Fredreka Schouten, November 26, 2013
The Obama administration is moving to clamp down on the growing political activity of "social welfare" tax-exempt groups, six months after controversy erupted over the IRS scrutiny of conservative groups.
The Treasury Department's proposed rules, released Tuesday, would restrict the ability of those groups to conduct a wide range of activities, from running ads to distributing mailers that target specific candidates to get-out-the-vote drives.
Social welfare organizations funded by anonymous donors have become a big force in federal elections, reporting $256.3 million in political spending in 2012, according to a tally by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks money in politics. That's up from $82.7 million in 2008.
The proposed rules represent a significant change in how the IRS would treat social welfare groups. But a 90-day deadline for public comments, followed by public hearings, additional review and an implementation period make it unlikely that any regulation would be in place before the 2014 congressional elections.
Treasury officials would not discuss the proposed rules on the record, but said in the published notice that they "wish to receive comments from a broad range of organizations before deciding how to proceed."
The proposal completely avoids one of the most controversial issues: How much political activity — however it's defined — a group can engage in before threatening its tax-exempt status. That proportion isn't specified in existing rules but is widely assumed to be less than 50%.
"It's clear that the IRS is treading slowly into the waters, knowing that it's fraught with peril, and that they are starting to get ideas from people, which is exactly what they should be doing," said Donald Tobin, a law professor at Ohio State University. "One of the big problems you had in this area is the IRS couldn't win. There are people like me who complain they haven't been enforcing enough. There are others who say they've been unfairly targeted."
Tea Party groups denounced the proposal. Jay Sekulow, an attorney representing 41 groups suing the IRS, called it "a feeble attempt by the Obama administration to justify its own wrong-doing with the IRS targeting of conservative and Tea Party groups."
The IRS admitted in May that it had improperly held up groups seeking tax-exempt status based solely on the fact that they had the words "tea party" or "patriots" in their name. A list of targeted groups later obtained by USA TODAY revealed that groups were singled out for "anti-Obama rhetoric," but that some liberal groups were also flagged for scrutiny.
IRS officials told congressional investigators that they applied a "facts and circumstances" test to decide whether activities were political. The proposed rules would replace that test with more objective criteria.
So, for example, any mention of a candidate within 60 days of a general election would be considered political, regardless of the context. The rule would even apply to mentions of a candidate that happened before the 60-day window, but which remained on an organization's website. But it wouldn't apply to third-party comments on the same site.
Sekulow and other conservatives argue that the rules would force groups engaging in constitutionally protected speech to disclose their donors, exposing them to political harassment. "With this move, the Obama administration opens a new front in its war against political dissent," he said.
But the issue isn't speech, watchdog groups say. It's about disclosure.
The proposal "provides hope that the IRS is going to shut down a huge loophole that has allowed political organizations to spend hundreds of millions of dollars without disclosing their donors," said Paul Ryan, senior counsel with the Campaign Legal Center, which has sued the IRS to clamp down on the political activity of tax-exempt groups.
Rep. David Camp, R-Mich., who chairs the House committee that writes tax laws, said the proposal "smacks of the administration trying to shut down potential critics."
"There continues to be an ongoing investigation, with many documents yet to be uncovered, into how the IRS systematically targeted and abused conservative-leaning groups," he said in a statement. "Before rushing forward with new rules, especially ones that appear to make it harder to engage in public debate, I would hope Treasury would let all the facts come out first – something they could achieve by fully cooperating with Congress in the investigation."
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Monday, November 25, 2013
The walking dead -- losing their sense of agency, losing their homes, losing their jobs
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Zombie Politics and Casino Capitalism
November 25, 2013
Zombie Politics and Casino Capitalism
November 25, 2013
This week on Moyers & Company, author and scholar Henry Giroux explains how our political system has turned people into zombies -- "people who are basically so caught up with surviving that they become like the walking dead -- they lose their sense of agency, they lose their homes, they lose their jobs."
In his book, Zombie Politics and Culture in the Age of Casino Capitalism, Giroux connects the dots to prove his theory that our current system is informed by a "machinery of social and civil death" that chills "any vestige of a robust democracy."
What's more, Giroux points out, the system that creates this vacuum has little to do with expanding the meaning and the substance of democracy itself. Under "casino capitalism," the goal is to get a quick return, taking advantage of a kind of logic in which the only thing that drives us is to put as much money as we can into a slot machine and hope we walk out with our wallets overflowing.
Also on the broadcast, a look at Birth of the Living Dead, a mesmerizing new documentary that examines the singular time in which the classic 1968 film Night of the Living Dead was shot -- when civil unrest and violence gave the nation nightmares and zombies were a metaphor for a troubled and distressed American public.
[snipped]
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"The time to take action for political reform is now. Let’s demand it." Damned right!!
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What really needs an ACA cure is our political process
By Pat McCoy, November 25, 2013
The political frenzy over the Affordable Care Act is an object lesson in what is wrong with American politics. Rhetoric equating the reform law with socialism, and even slavery, has abounded and belies its moderate scope and concessions to the market-based insurance system that had left almost 1 in 5 Americans uninsured.
Its complexity, and many of its implementation challenges, reflect the myriad compromises and deals among powerful special interests – and the elected officials they bankroll – that were necessary to limp the final bill to passage by a mere three votes in the House of Representatives.
It’s laughable that an effort to bring our health care system more in line with that of other developed democracies would be so loudly and relentlessly characterized as an existential threat to our way of life and basic freedoms. It’s like a sick joke that many attackers supported the individual mandate themselves for years as a necessary component of extending coverage and that the political party that has made opposition to the law its raison d’etre ran a candidate for president who had championed the mandate himself when it was politically expedient to do so.
The fact that the law is universally called Obamacare – becoming more about the president and politics than what is good for the uninsured and our future – speaks volumes about the tendency of our commercialized, profiteering political culture to turn debate into a sound-byte cesspool.
The Affordable Care Act does need improvement, and its proponents are not defending ineptitude in promoting and rolling out the new law. People can and should challenge its premise and weaknesses, as is our right. But their position should not be that we don’t need an adequate health care safety net or that folks can just go to the emergency room. Those who want to dismantle the ACA’s reforms need to propose a serious alternative, and they have not.
Can we live without health care reform? Sure, if we want to do nothing about 45,000 deaths a year for want of insurance coverage, runaway costs ultimately unsustainable, a delivery system riddled with inequality and injustice and overall outcomes that often compare more with impoverished nations than developed nations.
Can we live with a government that cannot rise to the challenge of health care reform? That’s less clear. This is the same government mired in inaction for years, and in some instances decades, on jobs, education, immigration, energy policy and climate change, growing income and wealth inequality, and deficit reduction. As polls show, the American people are deeply cynical about their cynical and unproductive government, and an appalling number don’t bother to vote.
It’s political reform we need most urgently. It won’t solve other problems, but it would give us a fighting chance to solve them. Many excellent proposals exist to reform campaign financing and lobbying, protect voting rights and increase voter participation, take partisanship out of redistricting, change Senate rules so a majority eventually can rule, and more.
Without improving the process of choosing a government and conducting its business, the progress we desperately need on health care and other major issues to keep our nation safe and strong will remain more mirage than reality. The time to take action for political reform is now. Let’s demand it.
..................................................................................................................................
What really needs an ACA cure is our political process
By Pat McCoy, November 25, 2013
The political frenzy over the Affordable Care Act is an object lesson in what is wrong with American politics. Rhetoric equating the reform law with socialism, and even slavery, has abounded and belies its moderate scope and concessions to the market-based insurance system that had left almost 1 in 5 Americans uninsured.
Its complexity, and many of its implementation challenges, reflect the myriad compromises and deals among powerful special interests – and the elected officials they bankroll – that were necessary to limp the final bill to passage by a mere three votes in the House of Representatives.
It’s laughable that an effort to bring our health care system more in line with that of other developed democracies would be so loudly and relentlessly characterized as an existential threat to our way of life and basic freedoms. It’s like a sick joke that many attackers supported the individual mandate themselves for years as a necessary component of extending coverage and that the political party that has made opposition to the law its raison d’etre ran a candidate for president who had championed the mandate himself when it was politically expedient to do so.
The fact that the law is universally called Obamacare – becoming more about the president and politics than what is good for the uninsured and our future – speaks volumes about the tendency of our commercialized, profiteering political culture to turn debate into a sound-byte cesspool.
The Affordable Care Act does need improvement, and its proponents are not defending ineptitude in promoting and rolling out the new law. People can and should challenge its premise and weaknesses, as is our right. But their position should not be that we don’t need an adequate health care safety net or that folks can just go to the emergency room. Those who want to dismantle the ACA’s reforms need to propose a serious alternative, and they have not.
Can we live without health care reform? Sure, if we want to do nothing about 45,000 deaths a year for want of insurance coverage, runaway costs ultimately unsustainable, a delivery system riddled with inequality and injustice and overall outcomes that often compare more with impoverished nations than developed nations.
Can we live with a government that cannot rise to the challenge of health care reform? That’s less clear. This is the same government mired in inaction for years, and in some instances decades, on jobs, education, immigration, energy policy and climate change, growing income and wealth inequality, and deficit reduction. As polls show, the American people are deeply cynical about their cynical and unproductive government, and an appalling number don’t bother to vote.
It’s political reform we need most urgently. It won’t solve other problems, but it would give us a fighting chance to solve them. Many excellent proposals exist to reform campaign financing and lobbying, protect voting rights and increase voter participation, take partisanship out of redistricting, change Senate rules so a majority eventually can rule, and more.
Without improving the process of choosing a government and conducting its business, the progress we desperately need on health care and other major issues to keep our nation safe and strong will remain more mirage than reality. The time to take action for political reform is now. Let’s demand it.
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"Our framers never intended for a system of checks and balances that would permit the minority to block the will of the majority"
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Politics of mutually assured destruction
By Brody Garland, November 25, 2013
Mutually assured destruction is no longer a strong enough deterrent for the Republican Party.
After several years of abusing the filibuster, the time finally came to strip the minority of their defensive weapons arsenal. Thursday’s decision by Majority Leader Harry Reid to embrace the nuclear option was once an unthinkable and unpopular political move, but in recent days we have seen a proliferation of support by Senate Democrats for necessary filibuster reform.
Reid was able to reign in his caucus, with only three notable defections. This is no small feat in the wake of 39 House Democrats defying their president, and in the backdrop of a contentious midterm election season. What would have previously been a political gamble was executed with a relatively small amount of blowback. After months of obstruction, exercising the nuclear option was the only politically viable move left to restore sanity and stability in the judicial nomination process.
Parliamentary procedure and Senate rules are being used as political weapons. Our framers never intended for a system of checks and balances that would permit the minority to block the will of the majority. James Madison warned of the growing dangers of factions fracturing our system of government, and those who vote out of malice and not conscience now personify his premonition. Advice and consent should in spirit be a process of thoughtful and productive dialogue between the leaders of our nation’s most deliberate body, but instead we are witnessing the decay of honor and civility in our Congress.
The 113th Congress seems determined to be immortalized in a legacy of intransigency and obfuscation. The Obama administration has encountered unprecedented and insurmountable opposition at every turn. In the last month alone, President Obama has seen all three of his overwhelmingly capable judicial nominations denied their seats on the federal bench. Robert Wilkins, Patricia Millett, and Nina Pillard are all immensely qualified to serve on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, and all three capable jurists have been thrown aside as casualties in a purely partisan political chess match. 22 Obama nominations have been filibustered or withdrawn from consideration. The politics of obstruction cannot serve the will of the people. The D.C. Circuit Court, a pipeline to the Supreme Court, is being stalled at the whim of political animals.
The real damage being done is not to the Obama administration, or the efficacy of Senate Democrats, but to our judiciary itself. The nation’s second most powerful and influential court cannot function with extended vacancies and continued uncertainty. The American people deserve a judicial system that functions wholly. For Senate Republicans to vote against the nominations of judicial candidates that they admit are qualified to serve on the bench is a violation of every constitutional principle we hold sacred, and an affront to representative democracy.
The fears of the Democratic Party and like-minded advocacy groups are recognizable. Initiating the nuclear option will serve their immediate needs, but perhaps threaten their interests in the long-term. The Republican Party, despite recent folly in national elections, will inevitably win back the White House one day. With this in mind, reasonable fears of 51 votes packing the courts with conservative judges can and should be entertained. Mindful consideration to attacks on the core beliefs of their party is understandable, but not at the expense of current functionality in governance. Such calculations must be put aside in an effort to make our judiciary whole again. Senate Democrats have been conceding the battles of the day, out of fear that it will cost them the war in the end. On Thursday, Reid made his first significant salvo against partisan gridlock. The nuclear option is said to be a weapon of last resort, but it is clear we have reached that tipping point. To ensure the progress and good work of our federal courts, the Democrats had to be willing to push the button.
..................................................................................................................................
Politics of mutually assured destruction
By Brody Garland, November 25, 2013
Mutually assured destruction is no longer a strong enough deterrent for the Republican Party.
After several years of abusing the filibuster, the time finally came to strip the minority of their defensive weapons arsenal. Thursday’s decision by Majority Leader Harry Reid to embrace the nuclear option was once an unthinkable and unpopular political move, but in recent days we have seen a proliferation of support by Senate Democrats for necessary filibuster reform.
Reid was able to reign in his caucus, with only three notable defections. This is no small feat in the wake of 39 House Democrats defying their president, and in the backdrop of a contentious midterm election season. What would have previously been a political gamble was executed with a relatively small amount of blowback. After months of obstruction, exercising the nuclear option was the only politically viable move left to restore sanity and stability in the judicial nomination process.
Parliamentary procedure and Senate rules are being used as political weapons. Our framers never intended for a system of checks and balances that would permit the minority to block the will of the majority. James Madison warned of the growing dangers of factions fracturing our system of government, and those who vote out of malice and not conscience now personify his premonition. Advice and consent should in spirit be a process of thoughtful and productive dialogue between the leaders of our nation’s most deliberate body, but instead we are witnessing the decay of honor and civility in our Congress.
The 113th Congress seems determined to be immortalized in a legacy of intransigency and obfuscation. The Obama administration has encountered unprecedented and insurmountable opposition at every turn. In the last month alone, President Obama has seen all three of his overwhelmingly capable judicial nominations denied their seats on the federal bench. Robert Wilkins, Patricia Millett, and Nina Pillard are all immensely qualified to serve on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, and all three capable jurists have been thrown aside as casualties in a purely partisan political chess match. 22 Obama nominations have been filibustered or withdrawn from consideration. The politics of obstruction cannot serve the will of the people. The D.C. Circuit Court, a pipeline to the Supreme Court, is being stalled at the whim of political animals.
The real damage being done is not to the Obama administration, or the efficacy of Senate Democrats, but to our judiciary itself. The nation’s second most powerful and influential court cannot function with extended vacancies and continued uncertainty. The American people deserve a judicial system that functions wholly. For Senate Republicans to vote against the nominations of judicial candidates that they admit are qualified to serve on the bench is a violation of every constitutional principle we hold sacred, and an affront to representative democracy.
The fears of the Democratic Party and like-minded advocacy groups are recognizable. Initiating the nuclear option will serve their immediate needs, but perhaps threaten their interests in the long-term. The Republican Party, despite recent folly in national elections, will inevitably win back the White House one day. With this in mind, reasonable fears of 51 votes packing the courts with conservative judges can and should be entertained. Mindful consideration to attacks on the core beliefs of their party is understandable, but not at the expense of current functionality in governance. Such calculations must be put aside in an effort to make our judiciary whole again. Senate Democrats have been conceding the battles of the day, out of fear that it will cost them the war in the end. On Thursday, Reid made his first significant salvo against partisan gridlock. The nuclear option is said to be a weapon of last resort, but it is clear we have reached that tipping point. To ensure the progress and good work of our federal courts, the Democrats had to be willing to push the button.
..................................................................................................................................
The question: how do you balance commercial and social imperatives by way of a rapper's songs?
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The Most Important Political Statement At The American Music Awards Last Night
By Alyssa Rosenberg, November 25, 2013
Macklemore and Ryan Lewis picked up two prizes at the American Music Awards last night, for Favorite Artist and Favorite Album in the Rap/Hip-Hop categories. And while Stevie Wonder has pledged to stop performing in Florida and other Stand Your Ground states, the two men were in Florida yesterday, and decided to use the confluence of geography and a platform to make a different kind of statement about the same issue.
“Due to the fact that we are in Florida tonight accepting this award I want to acknowledge Trayvon Martin and the hundreds and hundreds of kids each year that are dying due to racial profiling and the violence that follows it,” Macklemore said in the duo’s video acceptance speech. “This is really happening. These are our friends, our neighbors, our peers and our fans, and it’s time that we look out for the youth and fight against racism and the laws that protect it.”
The statement was both a good use of the televised broadcast, and a reminder of one of the issues that’s dogged Macklemore during his rise. The song with which he and Lewis broke out, “Same Love,” is a call for marriage equality. Macklemore is heterosexual, though Mary Lambert, who sings the hook on the track, is a lesbian. And there have been some questions about why a white, straight man’s hip-hop anthem to gay rights has gotten such attention and traction when black rappers’, and gay and black rappers’ work on similar subjects haven’t taken off in the same way. Is it because their work complicates the popular, though not particularly accurate, narrative of black homophobia, while Macklemore is able to call for marriage equality while still retaining the privileges of his skin color and sexuality? Or did Macklemore simply have a decent track, some good timing, and a label smart enough to put some money behind it?
This is, of course, an issue that Macklemore has addressed at some length on “A Wake,” a track from The Heist that hasn’t been released as a single, but that is just as meta and uneasy about pop tropes as Lourde’s “Royals.” The songs would be stronger as a piece of social commentary if he and Ryan Lewis had fact-checked his assertions about teen pregnancy, which is actually on the decline, in the first verse. And it would be better still if the song hadn’t descended into a cliched condemnation of some of hip-hop’s gender politics that seems more like an effort to bolster Macklemore’s “conscious” cred than to intervene in the conversation in a way that might have moved it forward.
But there is something interesting happening in the second half of the second verse, in which Macklemore meditates on the way media saturation affects our perceptions of racism, and the challenges of acting on race as a white ally, and as a celebrity. He raps:
..................................................................................................................................
The Most Important Political Statement At The American Music Awards Last Night
By Alyssa Rosenberg, November 25, 2013
Macklemore and Ryan Lewis picked up two prizes at the American Music Awards last night, for Favorite Artist and Favorite Album in the Rap/Hip-Hop categories. And while Stevie Wonder has pledged to stop performing in Florida and other Stand Your Ground states, the two men were in Florida yesterday, and decided to use the confluence of geography and a platform to make a different kind of statement about the same issue.
“Due to the fact that we are in Florida tonight accepting this award I want to acknowledge Trayvon Martin and the hundreds and hundreds of kids each year that are dying due to racial profiling and the violence that follows it,” Macklemore said in the duo’s video acceptance speech. “This is really happening. These are our friends, our neighbors, our peers and our fans, and it’s time that we look out for the youth and fight against racism and the laws that protect it.”
The statement was both a good use of the televised broadcast, and a reminder of one of the issues that’s dogged Macklemore during his rise. The song with which he and Lewis broke out, “Same Love,” is a call for marriage equality. Macklemore is heterosexual, though Mary Lambert, who sings the hook on the track, is a lesbian. And there have been some questions about why a white, straight man’s hip-hop anthem to gay rights has gotten such attention and traction when black rappers’, and gay and black rappers’ work on similar subjects haven’t taken off in the same way. Is it because their work complicates the popular, though not particularly accurate, narrative of black homophobia, while Macklemore is able to call for marriage equality while still retaining the privileges of his skin color and sexuality? Or did Macklemore simply have a decent track, some good timing, and a label smart enough to put some money behind it?
This is, of course, an issue that Macklemore has addressed at some length on “A Wake,” a track from The Heist that hasn’t been released as a single, but that is just as meta and uneasy about pop tropes as Lourde’s “Royals.” The songs would be stronger as a piece of social commentary if he and Ryan Lewis had fact-checked his assertions about teen pregnancy, which is actually on the decline, in the first verse. And it would be better still if the song hadn’t descended into a cliched condemnation of some of hip-hop’s gender politics that seems more like an effort to bolster Macklemore’s “conscious” cred than to intervene in the conversation in a way that might have moved it forward.
But there is something interesting happening in the second half of the second verse, in which Macklemore meditates on the way media saturation affects our perceptions of racism, and the challenges of acting on race as a white ally, and as a celebrity. He raps:
Now every month there is a new Rodney on Youtube
These are genuinely good questions to be asking. Can white people speak about racism without silencing or speaking over people of color? Is it a gesture of respect to acknowledge the death of Trayvon Martin on social media, or horribly trite, especially in a medium where context can get detached from an individual tweet? How do you balance commercial and social imperatives, especially when commercial success is the thing that means you might be able to have a political impact in the first place? And if you decide to try to turn your fan base from one set of concerns to another, what’s the best way to make that pivot? The easiest answer to this set of inquiries is to drop back and drop out in the name of deference to other people. The harder, but more correct one, is to try to determine where your voice fits, knowing well that you’ll be opening yourself up to criticisms both of what you say and on the grounds that your decision to speak rebounds to your own benefit.It’s just something our generation is used toAnd neighborhoods where you never see a news crewUnless they’re gentrifying, white people don’t even cruise throughAnd my subconscious telling me stop itThis is an issue that you shouldn’t get involved inDon’t even tweet “R.I.P Trayvon Martin”Don’t wanna be that white dude, million-man marchingFighting for a freedom that my people stoleDon’t wanna make all my white fans uncomfortable“But you don’t even have a fuckin’ song for radioWhy you out here talking race, trying to save the fucking globe?”Don’t get involved if the cause isn’t mineWhite privilege, white guilt, at the same damn timeSo we just party like it’s 1999Celebrate the ignorance while these kids keep dying
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I suppose it's too much to hope that we won't have to suffer through those ads soon
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The One Place on Earth Where Political Ads Are Sorely Missed
By Matt Berman, November 25, 2013
Unless you live in New Jersey or Virginia, 2013 has been blissfully free of televised political ads. You can watch all the Seinfeld reruns you want and not be bombarded with someone's grandma calmly explaining to you over the air why your congressional representative is the second coming of Lucifer. Or, you know, that a politician running for one of your state's Senate seats isn't a witch.
But, as it turns out, that's not good news for everybody. In fact, it's very, very bad news for the companies that own local television stations.
According to data compiled by Pew Research, some big companies have suffered major revenue losses this year due to the lack of political advertising. The Washington Post Co., which owns six local television stations, saw an 18 percent revenue decline this year, with a $16 million loss in political ad money. Scripps, which owns 19 local television stations, amassed just $1 million in political ad revenue in the third quarter of this year, compared with nearly $33 million during the same period in 2012. Seven major companies in total showed significant declines in revenue this year compared with last year.
Last year, local television stations received a record $3.1 billion from political ads. So while you may be dreading the return of election season next year, know that there are at least a few people who can't have the ads turned back on soon enough.
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The One Place on Earth Where Political Ads Are Sorely Missed
Local television revenues are taking a hit in the election off year.
Unless you live in New Jersey or Virginia, 2013 has been blissfully free of televised political ads. You can watch all the Seinfeld reruns you want and not be bombarded with someone's grandma calmly explaining to you over the air why your congressional representative is the second coming of Lucifer. Or, you know, that a politician running for one of your state's Senate seats isn't a witch.
But, as it turns out, that's not good news for everybody. In fact, it's very, very bad news for the companies that own local television stations.
According to data compiled by Pew Research, some big companies have suffered major revenue losses this year due to the lack of political advertising. The Washington Post Co., which owns six local television stations, saw an 18 percent revenue decline this year, with a $16 million loss in political ad money. Scripps, which owns 19 local television stations, amassed just $1 million in political ad revenue in the third quarter of this year, compared with nearly $33 million during the same period in 2012. Seven major companies in total showed significant declines in revenue this year compared with last year.
Last year, local television stations received a record $3.1 billion from political ads. So while you may be dreading the return of election season next year, know that there are at least a few people who can't have the ads turned back on soon enough.
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Sunday, November 24, 2013
"... the operating principle in Washington is to take the path of minimum regret, which is one of antagonizing the fewest number of voters. The object is one of getting re-elected ..."
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Political theater in Congress getting old
By Stephen J. Butler, November 24, 2013
After hearing Leon Panetta speak recently at the Oakland Speakers Series, I think his likeness should be added to Mount Rushmore. It's hard to imagine a former congressman who has been called to such a distinguished trajectory through Washington's corridors of power.
After being director of the Office of Management and Budget, he went on to become chief of staff in the Clinton White House. He described the staff he inherited as being "like a grammar school soccer team where all the kids just go for the ball and nobody knows what they're supposed to do." After herding those cats successfully, he went on to become head of the CIA and then secretary of defense.
Panetta got really heated when talking about the failure of elected officials to actually lead anymore. When he was a congressman from Monterey, he said that he had to make tough decisions that didn't always sit well with his constituents, but he did it because it was his obligation as a leader.
Today, more than ever, the operating principle in Washington is to take the path of minimum regret, which is one of antagonizing the fewest number of voters. The object is one of getting re-elected rather than anything having to do with what we would consider to be leadership.
Take the farm bill that was just passed earlier this year. For its next five-year period, it will cost us $1 trillion in subsidies -- most of which go to large corporate farms that have headquarters in major cities and that often have operations in more than one state.
Paul Ryan, to his credit, had originally proposed a $750,000 annual limit to any single recipient, but he was slapped down by his colleagues. The food stamp program has been separated from the farm subsidy bill, so now those benefits can be reduced without affecting the feeding trough for Midwestern farmers.
As Nancy Pelosi put it when she apologized for showing up late for a Warren Buffett speech, "we were busy taking food from the mouths of babies."
Moreover, the subsidized ethanol hoax has us using more energy to grow corn than the savings created by mixing the biofuel into gas. "Stuck on stupid" is how the police refer to most people who commit crimes, but the term would apply these days to the collective conscience of our politicians. Even the IRS, thanks to the sequester, has had its ranks cut like everyone else. One would think that we would make an exception for the one branch of government that generates something like 5 dollars in otherwise unpaid taxes for every dollar we spend on that agency.
We shouldn't harbor any false expectations that anything will change soon. The New York Times last week had an article headlined, "A Dirty Secret," which described the fact that Republicans don't really want to cut entitlements and Democrats don't really want to raise taxes. The reality for Republicans is that old people all vote and even many tea party members are old enough to be benefiting from Social Security and Medicare. GOP members probably recall the photo of the guy at a tea party rally holding the sign saying "Keep the Government out of My Medicare."
As for Democrats, a lot of their campaign contributions come from wealthy people in California and New York who don't want to see any reduction in the mortgage interest deduction on first and second homes -- or similar deductions for state income taxes or charitable donations. In other words, "no new taxes."
So we have a stalemate with no end in sight, but it may not matter in our everyday lives. What will happen is that the deficit will be steadily shrinking thanks to an improving economy and higher tax revenues from both increased personal incomes and corporate profits. Congressional leaders will just get to continue the political theater that we've had to endure for the past year. But, like Italy for decades, we may learn that we don't really need a functioning government until some problem gets down to the wire -- like Social Security in 2030.
Meanwhile, I love Panetta's grammar school soccer team analogy. It certainly applies to Congress, where every grandstanding politician is going for the ball instead of working as a team to get it into the goal. If we're lucky, it won't matter all that much.
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Political theater in Congress getting old
By Stephen J. Butler, November 24, 2013
After hearing Leon Panetta speak recently at the Oakland Speakers Series, I think his likeness should be added to Mount Rushmore. It's hard to imagine a former congressman who has been called to such a distinguished trajectory through Washington's corridors of power.
After being director of the Office of Management and Budget, he went on to become chief of staff in the Clinton White House. He described the staff he inherited as being "like a grammar school soccer team where all the kids just go for the ball and nobody knows what they're supposed to do." After herding those cats successfully, he went on to become head of the CIA and then secretary of defense.
Panetta got really heated when talking about the failure of elected officials to actually lead anymore. When he was a congressman from Monterey, he said that he had to make tough decisions that didn't always sit well with his constituents, but he did it because it was his obligation as a leader.
Today, more than ever, the operating principle in Washington is to take the path of minimum regret, which is one of antagonizing the fewest number of voters. The object is one of getting re-elected rather than anything having to do with what we would consider to be leadership.
Take the farm bill that was just passed earlier this year. For its next five-year period, it will cost us $1 trillion in subsidies -- most of which go to large corporate farms that have headquarters in major cities and that often have operations in more than one state.
Paul Ryan, to his credit, had originally proposed a $750,000 annual limit to any single recipient, but he was slapped down by his colleagues. The food stamp program has been separated from the farm subsidy bill, so now those benefits can be reduced without affecting the feeding trough for Midwestern farmers.
As Nancy Pelosi put it when she apologized for showing up late for a Warren Buffett speech, "we were busy taking food from the mouths of babies."
Moreover, the subsidized ethanol hoax has us using more energy to grow corn than the savings created by mixing the biofuel into gas. "Stuck on stupid" is how the police refer to most people who commit crimes, but the term would apply these days to the collective conscience of our politicians. Even the IRS, thanks to the sequester, has had its ranks cut like everyone else. One would think that we would make an exception for the one branch of government that generates something like 5 dollars in otherwise unpaid taxes for every dollar we spend on that agency.
We shouldn't harbor any false expectations that anything will change soon. The New York Times last week had an article headlined, "A Dirty Secret," which described the fact that Republicans don't really want to cut entitlements and Democrats don't really want to raise taxes. The reality for Republicans is that old people all vote and even many tea party members are old enough to be benefiting from Social Security and Medicare. GOP members probably recall the photo of the guy at a tea party rally holding the sign saying "Keep the Government out of My Medicare."
As for Democrats, a lot of their campaign contributions come from wealthy people in California and New York who don't want to see any reduction in the mortgage interest deduction on first and second homes -- or similar deductions for state income taxes or charitable donations. In other words, "no new taxes."
So we have a stalemate with no end in sight, but it may not matter in our everyday lives. What will happen is that the deficit will be steadily shrinking thanks to an improving economy and higher tax revenues from both increased personal incomes and corporate profits. Congressional leaders will just get to continue the political theater that we've had to endure for the past year. But, like Italy for decades, we may learn that we don't really need a functioning government until some problem gets down to the wire -- like Social Security in 2030.
Meanwhile, I love Panetta's grammar school soccer team analogy. It certainly applies to Congress, where every grandstanding politician is going for the ball instead of working as a team to get it into the goal. If we're lucky, it won't matter all that much.
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"... the manure lagoons of the Internet have only nourished the same old malice."
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Ugly political malice isn't as new, or as marginal, as we might like to think
By Ron Meador, November 22, 2013
What I remember first and, unfortunately, best about Nov. 22, 1963, is the cheering in my sixth-grade classroom. This was in Muncie, Ind., and here's what happened:
The upper grades were outdoors for recess, after lunch, when the first news bulletins reached the offices of Westview Elementary School.
Playground bells rang in the normal way and we moved back inside. In Mr. Beatty's classroom we hung our jackets on hooks and began to notice, one by one, that our typically dour teacher looked especially grim, saying nothing as we took our seats.
[snipped]
When everyone was quiet, he told us that the president had been shot in Texas. I don't remember his words because of the cheering that erupted, I think, before he had quite finished.
[snipped]
Fitz looked as if one of the bullies had punched him in the gut and so, actually, did Mr. Beatty. He had been standing at the blackboard but now moved to his desk chair. The cheers stopped before he was seated and the boys who had done it knew they were in the deep weeds for sure.
When you could hear Mr. Beatty's chair squeak he raised his head and said, "You should be ashamed." Then nothing more for a long couple of minutes until the PA system carried us the principal's announcement that President Kennedy had died, that school would be dismissed early, and that our prayers should be with the Kennedy family over the weekend.
It seemed strange to me for many years afterward that Mr. Beatty hadn't paddled anyone for cheering, or used the misbehavior to teach us all a lesson. Perhaps he felt they had already done the teaching. Perhaps he was right.
What happened that day — and the reason I'm writing it down now — was a demonstration of a fundamental ugliness in our politics, in our culture, that is neither as new nor as intensified nor as marginal as we nowadays might like to think. If anything the manure lagoons of the Internet have only nourished the same old malice.
There is a living argument, raised first by Dallasites and now perpetuated by right-wing bloggers, over whether fourth-grade schoolchildren in Dallas cheered the news of President Kennedy's shooting.
The story appears to have originated with a sermon delivered two days afterward, by a minister who said he had heard of the incident from the teacher in the classroom where it occurred.
It was reported nationally on CBS News over the objections of local station executives who maintained that the children were actually cheering the announcement that school was ending early for the weekend.
Which, I grant, if true, is less awful than cheering the shooting itself. A little less awful, anyway.
And I certainly understand why people in Dallas feel so affronted by a story, which they believe to be false, that paints their city in such a repulsive way. Also, the anecdote is easier to challenge than, say, the pictures of posters that greeted President Kennedy with accusations of treason, or the documented heckling of his motorcade by assorted right-wingers and racists.
However, it is known that schoolchildren also cheered the shooting, for example, in Oxford, Miss., according to a memoir by the managing editor of the Columbus Dispatch. "It happened throughout the South," he writes, and also at a junior high school in Ohio's capital.
In every way but size and capital status, the Muncie of my youth was more like a Columbus than an Oxford: a northern industrial city where labor unions were strong and the black population was substantial, though segregated; a university town that elected Democrats from time to time. (I seem to remember from a Boy Scout research project that there were two Roman Catholic parishes, a Reform synagogue and 83 Protestant churches in town.)
The hatred that rose around Jack Kennedy was not about southern political culture. It was about anti-Catholic bigotry, anti-Communism at the right-wing fringe, resentment of wealth and privilege, and it was above all about the man seen to embody hated things.
There has been some discussion this week about whether the virulence of feeling against President Obama rivals the anti-JFK sentiments. I don't know the answer and I don't know how to arrive at it, but my instinct is that, yes, it does, and maybe even exceeds them.
I think it's a mistake, however, to leave the Clintons out of the comparisons, and George McGovern, and also to pretend that every president is hated, after all, with the vitriol flowing evenly from both the left and the right.
I will freely admit joining in the mockery of Ronald Reagan for his naps and gaffes, and of George W. Bush for his struggle, as someone memorably put it, "to wrap his lips around the English language."
But such mockery is nothing like the malice that rose against Jack Kennedy in his time and rises today against Barack Obama, for reasons that start with resentment of his race, and his grace, and just roll on from there, looking for presentable rationalizations.
[snipped]
I remember my mother wondering aloud, when I told her about the cheering, how those boys' parents had taught them to be so hateful — not merely rude, mind you, but hateful.
Even then I think I knew no formal instruction had been necessary.
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Ugly political malice isn't as new, or as marginal, as we might like to think
By Ron Meador, November 22, 2013
What I remember first and, unfortunately, best about Nov. 22, 1963, is the cheering in my sixth-grade classroom. This was in Muncie, Ind., and here's what happened:
The upper grades were outdoors for recess, after lunch, when the first news bulletins reached the offices of Westview Elementary School.
Playground bells rang in the normal way and we moved back inside. In Mr. Beatty's classroom we hung our jackets on hooks and began to notice, one by one, that our typically dour teacher looked especially grim, saying nothing as we took our seats.
[snipped]
When everyone was quiet, he told us that the president had been shot in Texas. I don't remember his words because of the cheering that erupted, I think, before he had quite finished.
[snipped]
Fitz looked as if one of the bullies had punched him in the gut and so, actually, did Mr. Beatty. He had been standing at the blackboard but now moved to his desk chair. The cheers stopped before he was seated and the boys who had done it knew they were in the deep weeds for sure.
When you could hear Mr. Beatty's chair squeak he raised his head and said, "You should be ashamed." Then nothing more for a long couple of minutes until the PA system carried us the principal's announcement that President Kennedy had died, that school would be dismissed early, and that our prayers should be with the Kennedy family over the weekend.
It seemed strange to me for many years afterward that Mr. Beatty hadn't paddled anyone for cheering, or used the misbehavior to teach us all a lesson. Perhaps he felt they had already done the teaching. Perhaps he was right.
What happened that day — and the reason I'm writing it down now — was a demonstration of a fundamental ugliness in our politics, in our culture, that is neither as new nor as intensified nor as marginal as we nowadays might like to think. If anything the manure lagoons of the Internet have only nourished the same old malice.
There is a living argument, raised first by Dallasites and now perpetuated by right-wing bloggers, over whether fourth-grade schoolchildren in Dallas cheered the news of President Kennedy's shooting.
The story appears to have originated with a sermon delivered two days afterward, by a minister who said he had heard of the incident from the teacher in the classroom where it occurred.
It was reported nationally on CBS News over the objections of local station executives who maintained that the children were actually cheering the announcement that school was ending early for the weekend.
Which, I grant, if true, is less awful than cheering the shooting itself. A little less awful, anyway.
And I certainly understand why people in Dallas feel so affronted by a story, which they believe to be false, that paints their city in such a repulsive way. Also, the anecdote is easier to challenge than, say, the pictures of posters that greeted President Kennedy with accusations of treason, or the documented heckling of his motorcade by assorted right-wingers and racists.
However, it is known that schoolchildren also cheered the shooting, for example, in Oxford, Miss., according to a memoir by the managing editor of the Columbus Dispatch. "It happened throughout the South," he writes, and also at a junior high school in Ohio's capital.
In every way but size and capital status, the Muncie of my youth was more like a Columbus than an Oxford: a northern industrial city where labor unions were strong and the black population was substantial, though segregated; a university town that elected Democrats from time to time. (I seem to remember from a Boy Scout research project that there were two Roman Catholic parishes, a Reform synagogue and 83 Protestant churches in town.)
The hatred that rose around Jack Kennedy was not about southern political culture. It was about anti-Catholic bigotry, anti-Communism at the right-wing fringe, resentment of wealth and privilege, and it was above all about the man seen to embody hated things.
There has been some discussion this week about whether the virulence of feeling against President Obama rivals the anti-JFK sentiments. I don't know the answer and I don't know how to arrive at it, but my instinct is that, yes, it does, and maybe even exceeds them.
I think it's a mistake, however, to leave the Clintons out of the comparisons, and George McGovern, and also to pretend that every president is hated, after all, with the vitriol flowing evenly from both the left and the right.
I will freely admit joining in the mockery of Ronald Reagan for his naps and gaffes, and of George W. Bush for his struggle, as someone memorably put it, "to wrap his lips around the English language."
But such mockery is nothing like the malice that rose against Jack Kennedy in his time and rises today against Barack Obama, for reasons that start with resentment of his race, and his grace, and just roll on from there, looking for presentable rationalizations.
[snipped]
I remember my mother wondering aloud, when I told her about the cheering, how those boys' parents had taught them to be so hateful — not merely rude, mind you, but hateful.
Even then I think I knew no formal instruction had been necessary.
..................................................................................................................................
How can the "nuclear option" make anything worse? This Congress has enacted only 49, yes, only 49 laws, the least productive since record-keeping began in 1947
..................................................................................................................................
Washington blows up: Has American politics hit an all-time low?
The approval ratings of Congress, the Republican Party, and President Obama have now all hit all-time lows. And the Senate's 'nuclear option' is supposed to make things worse?
By Mark Sappenfield, November 24, 2013
One by one, some of the most august members of an august political body came forward Thursday. The tones were undeniably tragic, as though befitting a funeral.
The Senate had changed forever. In one fateful afternoon, Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D) of Nevada had changed an institution whose greatest strength lay in its constancy and tradition. He changed the Senate's rules.
In this case, he killed filibusters for all executive branch nominees except those for the Supreme Court. But the "old lions" like Sens. John McCain (R) of Arizona and Carl Levin (D) of Michigan spoke as though he had done something far more profound – as though he had changed Washington itself.
At this moment, however, one might wonder if Senators McCain and Levin have it backward.
Will the "nuclear option" change Washington, or has Washington already changed?
By all accounts, Washington is not working and has not for some time. Nine percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing – an all-time low in the 39-year history of the Gallup poll.Twenty-eight percent of Americans approve of the Republican Party – also the lowest number since that poll began in 1992, according to Gallup. And President Obama's approval rating has hit its lowest point since he took office, according to a host of polls.
The government shutdown in October was Republican political strategy of the most apocalyptic sort, to be exceeded, perhaps, only by the rollout of HealthCare.gov, which seemed to all but confirm that big government is spectacularly inept.
Now comes an analysis from Politico that Congress has enacted only 49 laws – a pace that would make this Congress the least productive since record-keeping on the subject began in 1947. The famous "Do Nothing" Congress of 1947? Three hundred and eighty-eight laws enacted. By June.
What, exactly, might the nuclear option blow up?
Political scientists disagree about how big a deal the filibuster is. Some argue that even if it was banished altogether, gridlock would remain. The House, after all, isn't going to magically start passing all the new bills being sent from the Senate. It can't even pass immigration reform, which most political analysts saw as being in its best interests after the missed opportunity of the 2012 presidential election.
Yet the filibuster is a potent symbol in Washington these days. It is a symbol of the minority party's right to impede the majority, and in an era of hyperpartisanship, that is no small thing. In fact, it is virtually everything. If October's government shutdown had any point whatsoever, it was to underscore that, to many Republicans, winning was much less important than fighting, and obstruction is the ultimate weapon for congressional lost causes.
This, of course, is not how Washington used to work. Washington used to not be so partisan. The voting lineup on any bill might have crossed party lines in a variety of ways. Republicans in the minority, for example, couldn't use the filibuster in a partisan way because many Republicans were on the Democrats' side – and many Democrats' on the Republicans' side, for that matter.
But "as that era waned, the filibuster became constant because parties could agree on what to oppose," writes Ezra Klein on the Washington Post's "Wonkblog." Today's parties, he adds, are now "reasonably unified and disciplined ideological combatants."
To McCain and Levin, the memory of what came before is not yet completely dark, nor is the hope for bringing it back. But for the moment, in a Senate where 55 members were elected since 2006, many know no other Senate than the one they know now.
In that way, Reid's move this week was significant, whether or not it helps or hinders Washington gridlock. It represented an acknowledgment that the rules in Washington have changed, even if those in the Senate hadn't.
..................................................................................................................................
Washington blows up: Has American politics hit an all-time low?
The approval ratings of Congress, the Republican Party, and President Obama have now all hit all-time lows. And the Senate's 'nuclear option' is supposed to make things worse?
By Mark Sappenfield, November 24, 2013
One by one, some of the most august members of an august political body came forward Thursday. The tones were undeniably tragic, as though befitting a funeral.
The Senate had changed forever. In one fateful afternoon, Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D) of Nevada had changed an institution whose greatest strength lay in its constancy and tradition. He changed the Senate's rules.
In this case, he killed filibusters for all executive branch nominees except those for the Supreme Court. But the "old lions" like Sens. John McCain (R) of Arizona and Carl Levin (D) of Michigan spoke as though he had done something far more profound – as though he had changed Washington itself.
At this moment, however, one might wonder if Senators McCain and Levin have it backward.
Will the "nuclear option" change Washington, or has Washington already changed?
By all accounts, Washington is not working and has not for some time. Nine percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing – an all-time low in the 39-year history of the Gallup poll.Twenty-eight percent of Americans approve of the Republican Party – also the lowest number since that poll began in 1992, according to Gallup. And President Obama's approval rating has hit its lowest point since he took office, according to a host of polls.
The government shutdown in October was Republican political strategy of the most apocalyptic sort, to be exceeded, perhaps, only by the rollout of HealthCare.gov, which seemed to all but confirm that big government is spectacularly inept.
Now comes an analysis from Politico that Congress has enacted only 49 laws – a pace that would make this Congress the least productive since record-keeping on the subject began in 1947. The famous "Do Nothing" Congress of 1947? Three hundred and eighty-eight laws enacted. By June.
What, exactly, might the nuclear option blow up?
Political scientists disagree about how big a deal the filibuster is. Some argue that even if it was banished altogether, gridlock would remain. The House, after all, isn't going to magically start passing all the new bills being sent from the Senate. It can't even pass immigration reform, which most political analysts saw as being in its best interests after the missed opportunity of the 2012 presidential election.
Yet the filibuster is a potent symbol in Washington these days. It is a symbol of the minority party's right to impede the majority, and in an era of hyperpartisanship, that is no small thing. In fact, it is virtually everything. If October's government shutdown had any point whatsoever, it was to underscore that, to many Republicans, winning was much less important than fighting, and obstruction is the ultimate weapon for congressional lost causes.
This, of course, is not how Washington used to work. Washington used to not be so partisan. The voting lineup on any bill might have crossed party lines in a variety of ways. Republicans in the minority, for example, couldn't use the filibuster in a partisan way because many Republicans were on the Democrats' side – and many Democrats' on the Republicans' side, for that matter.
But "as that era waned, the filibuster became constant because parties could agree on what to oppose," writes Ezra Klein on the Washington Post's "Wonkblog." Today's parties, he adds, are now "reasonably unified and disciplined ideological combatants."
To McCain and Levin, the memory of what came before is not yet completely dark, nor is the hope for bringing it back. But for the moment, in a Senate where 55 members were elected since 2006, many know no other Senate than the one they know now.
In that way, Reid's move this week was significant, whether or not it helps or hinders Washington gridlock. It represented an acknowledgment that the rules in Washington have changed, even if those in the Senate hadn't.
..................................................................................................................................
The suppression of science can mean a lack of competent people to come up with new ideas and new products
..................................................................................................................................
Bill Nye: Debate Over Evolution In Texas Schools Is Jeopardizing Our Future
Posted November 23. 2013
A battle has been raging in Texas, and it's all about evolution.
On one side are creationist-minded members of the state Board of Education. They don't believe evolution should be taught in public schools in Texas. On the other side are board members who don't want religious or political ideologies to suppress a widely accepted theory.
Huffington Post Science reached out to Bill Nye to get his take on the ongoing debate, which had recently flared during a board discussion about whether to approve new science textbooks. And the "Science Guy" had some choice things to say.
"This textbook business is, to my way of thinking, a very serious matter, because of the economic impact," Nye said in an email to HuffPost. "Everyone should take a moment and think what it will mean to raise a generation of students who might believe that it is reasonable to think for a moment that the Earth might be 10,000 years old."
"It's an outrageous notion," Nye continued. "It's not a benign idea. It's inane or silly. These students will not accept the process of science, which will stifle or suppress innovation."
How so?
Using a Dallas-based high-tech company as an example, Nye said the suppression of science ultimately would mean that such companies "would not be able to find competent engineers to come up with new ideas and create new products."
"It's not a religious issue, as such. It's the future of the United States' economy that's at stake," Nye said.
The board ultimately decided to adopt the contested textbooks, but, of course, the evolution-in-schools debate has not been limited to the Lone Star State.
So what can parents across the U.S. do to make sure their kids' scientific education isn't being stunted?
Vote -- every chance you get, Nye concluded. "Make your voice heard."
..................................................................................................................................
Bill Nye: Debate Over Evolution In Texas Schools Is Jeopardizing Our Future
Posted November 23. 2013
A battle has been raging in Texas, and it's all about evolution.
On one side are creationist-minded members of the state Board of Education. They don't believe evolution should be taught in public schools in Texas. On the other side are board members who don't want religious or political ideologies to suppress a widely accepted theory.
Huffington Post Science reached out to Bill Nye to get his take on the ongoing debate, which had recently flared during a board discussion about whether to approve new science textbooks. And the "Science Guy" had some choice things to say.
"This textbook business is, to my way of thinking, a very serious matter, because of the economic impact," Nye said in an email to HuffPost. "Everyone should take a moment and think what it will mean to raise a generation of students who might believe that it is reasonable to think for a moment that the Earth might be 10,000 years old."
"It's an outrageous notion," Nye continued. "It's not a benign idea. It's inane or silly. These students will not accept the process of science, which will stifle or suppress innovation."
How so?
Using a Dallas-based high-tech company as an example, Nye said the suppression of science ultimately would mean that such companies "would not be able to find competent engineers to come up with new ideas and create new products."
"It's not a religious issue, as such. It's the future of the United States' economy that's at stake," Nye said.
The board ultimately decided to adopt the contested textbooks, but, of course, the evolution-in-schools debate has not been limited to the Lone Star State.
So what can parents across the U.S. do to make sure their kids' scientific education isn't being stunted?
Vote -- every chance you get, Nye concluded. "Make your voice heard."
..................................................................................................................................
Saturday, November 23, 2013
Examination of metadata, everything but the “content”, allows the government to build a comprehensive accounting of our lives
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Taking the “Meh” out of Metadata
How the government can discover your health problems, political beliefs, and religious practices using just your metadata.
By Dahlia Lithwick and Steve Vladeck, November 22, 2013
This week brought a new round of revelations about yet another National Security Agency surveillance program, this one created to hoover up details about how individual Americans use the Internet. The new disclosures were met by most observers with a fatalistic shrug. After all, we’ve quickly grown accustomed—or at least desensitized—to the fact that the government is looking at much of the information we voluntarily provide to others. And the material being collected in this case was only “metadata”: the details of when, where, and how we used the Internet—not what we actually read or wrote.
Should NSA sweeps of our “to” and “from” lines be fair game? How much can the government really learn about us without knowing what we’re saying in the text?
The legality of the “telephony metadata” program—the initiative revealed by Glenn Greenwald in the Guardian in June that showed the government collecting telephone records of Americans on a mass scale—will be considered by a federal district judge in Manhattan on Friday. According to the now disclosed orders of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, such “metadata” includes “the originating and terminating telephone number and the time and duration of any call.” It also includes information about the location of both parties to the call and the international mobile subscriber identity (IMSI) and international mobile station equipment identity (IMEI) numbers, which allow Uncle Sam to “identify the user or device that is making or receiving a call.” But because it doesn’t include the content of the phone calls, the story goes, there’s no invasion of our privacy. Nothing, therefore, to worry about?
As Professor Edward Felten, director of the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University, explains in a declaration filed in that phone records case, our metadata in fact tells the government a lot more about us than we might realize, especially when different types of metadata are aggregated together. Consider calls to single-purpose hotlines: NSA collection of our metadata means the government knows when we’ve called a rape hotline, a domestic violence hotline, an addiction hotline, or a support line for gay teens. Hotlines for whistleblowers in every agency are fair game, as are police hotlines for “anonymous” reports of crimes. Charities that make it possible to text a donation to a particular cause (say, Planned Parenthood) or political candidate or super PAC could reveal an enormous amount about our political activities. And calling patterns can reveal our religious beliefs (no calls on Sabbath? Heaps of calls on Christmas?) or new medical conditions. If, for instance, the government knows that, within an hour, we called an HIV testing service, then our doctor, and then our health insurance company, they may not “know” what was discussed, but anyone with common sense—even a government official—could probably figure it out.
But there’s more, says Felten: By analyzing our metadata over time, the government can separate the signal from the noise and use it to identify behavioral patterns. The government can determine whether someone is making lots of late-night calls to someone who isn’t his spouse, for example. When those calls cease, the government might reasonably conclude that the affair has ended. Metadata may reveal whether and how often someone calls her bookie or the American Civil Liberties Union or a defense attorney. And by analyzing the metadata of every American across a span of years, the NSA could learn almost as much about our health, our habits, our politics, and our relationships as it could by eavesdropping on our calls. It’s not the same thing, but the more data the government collects, the more the distinction between metadata and actual content disappears.
And that’s just telephony metadata. This week’s disclosures confirmed that the government has collected years’ worth of our Internet metadata as well. And there’s little reason to believe that other species of metadata have not also been vacuumed up—perhaps our financial records, software metadata, and the potential goldmine of our everyday commercial transactions. We might well think we don’t have an expectation of privacy in information we separately provide to Amazon, Bank of America, Costco, Facebook, and Walgreen’s, but only the government is in a position to aggregate all of that data and thereby build a comprehensive accounting of our lives by examining everything but the “content.” The Obama administration has insisted that it is not actually accessing these vast stores of data without some kind of individualized suspicion. But such restraint is not required under any statute, and future administrations may not feel similarly circumspect. In any event, every new round of NSA disclosures brings with it fresh reports of “compliance incidents,” where such records were accessed despite such promises.
These concerns highlight the significance of the pending legal challenges to the telephony metadata program. We may not get as excited about the government’s sweeping collection of our metadata as we have been over eavesdropping, subway searches, or stop-and-frisk policies, but that may only be because we don’t fully appreciate just how invasive and intrusive these separate data streams can become, once someone is in a position to put them all together.
..................................................................................................................................
Taking the “Meh” out of Metadata
How the government can discover your health problems, political beliefs, and religious practices using just your metadata.
By Dahlia Lithwick and Steve Vladeck, November 22, 2013
This week brought a new round of revelations about yet another National Security Agency surveillance program, this one created to hoover up details about how individual Americans use the Internet. The new disclosures were met by most observers with a fatalistic shrug. After all, we’ve quickly grown accustomed—or at least desensitized—to the fact that the government is looking at much of the information we voluntarily provide to others. And the material being collected in this case was only “metadata”: the details of when, where, and how we used the Internet—not what we actually read or wrote.
Should NSA sweeps of our “to” and “from” lines be fair game? How much can the government really learn about us without knowing what we’re saying in the text?
The legality of the “telephony metadata” program—the initiative revealed by Glenn Greenwald in the Guardian in June that showed the government collecting telephone records of Americans on a mass scale—will be considered by a federal district judge in Manhattan on Friday. According to the now disclosed orders of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, such “metadata” includes “the originating and terminating telephone number and the time and duration of any call.” It also includes information about the location of both parties to the call and the international mobile subscriber identity (IMSI) and international mobile station equipment identity (IMEI) numbers, which allow Uncle Sam to “identify the user or device that is making or receiving a call.” But because it doesn’t include the content of the phone calls, the story goes, there’s no invasion of our privacy. Nothing, therefore, to worry about?
As Professor Edward Felten, director of the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University, explains in a declaration filed in that phone records case, our metadata in fact tells the government a lot more about us than we might realize, especially when different types of metadata are aggregated together. Consider calls to single-purpose hotlines: NSA collection of our metadata means the government knows when we’ve called a rape hotline, a domestic violence hotline, an addiction hotline, or a support line for gay teens. Hotlines for whistleblowers in every agency are fair game, as are police hotlines for “anonymous” reports of crimes. Charities that make it possible to text a donation to a particular cause (say, Planned Parenthood) or political candidate or super PAC could reveal an enormous amount about our political activities. And calling patterns can reveal our religious beliefs (no calls on Sabbath? Heaps of calls on Christmas?) or new medical conditions. If, for instance, the government knows that, within an hour, we called an HIV testing service, then our doctor, and then our health insurance company, they may not “know” what was discussed, but anyone with common sense—even a government official—could probably figure it out.
But there’s more, says Felten: By analyzing our metadata over time, the government can separate the signal from the noise and use it to identify behavioral patterns. The government can determine whether someone is making lots of late-night calls to someone who isn’t his spouse, for example. When those calls cease, the government might reasonably conclude that the affair has ended. Metadata may reveal whether and how often someone calls her bookie or the American Civil Liberties Union or a defense attorney. And by analyzing the metadata of every American across a span of years, the NSA could learn almost as much about our health, our habits, our politics, and our relationships as it could by eavesdropping on our calls. It’s not the same thing, but the more data the government collects, the more the distinction between metadata and actual content disappears.
And that’s just telephony metadata. This week’s disclosures confirmed that the government has collected years’ worth of our Internet metadata as well. And there’s little reason to believe that other species of metadata have not also been vacuumed up—perhaps our financial records, software metadata, and the potential goldmine of our everyday commercial transactions. We might well think we don’t have an expectation of privacy in information we separately provide to Amazon, Bank of America, Costco, Facebook, and Walgreen’s, but only the government is in a position to aggregate all of that data and thereby build a comprehensive accounting of our lives by examining everything but the “content.” The Obama administration has insisted that it is not actually accessing these vast stores of data without some kind of individualized suspicion. But such restraint is not required under any statute, and future administrations may not feel similarly circumspect. In any event, every new round of NSA disclosures brings with it fresh reports of “compliance incidents,” where such records were accessed despite such promises.
These concerns highlight the significance of the pending legal challenges to the telephony metadata program. We may not get as excited about the government’s sweeping collection of our metadata as we have been over eavesdropping, subway searches, or stop-and-frisk policies, but that may only be because we don’t fully appreciate just how invasive and intrusive these separate data streams can become, once someone is in a position to put them all together.
..................................................................................................................................
"Do religious conservatives really want their faith to be known for its fears?"
..................................................................................................................................
The entrepreneurs of outrage
By Michael Gerson, November 14, 2013
Among the saddest aspects of a political culture premised on the exaggeration and organization of grievances is the way policy debates get pulled into a vortex of paranoia.
Some governors, Democrats and Republicans, attempt to set some (rather anemic) common academic standards, and it is said to “destroy America and the system of freedom as we know it.” Some governors, Democrats and Republicans, advocate HPV vaccinations to reduce the incidence of cervical cancer, and this is attacked as a violation of parental rights that puts “little children’s lives at risk.”
This is the way the modern ideological market often works. It is driven by entrepreneurs of outrage, marketers of resentment, innovators in the on-time delivery of anger. Their market share does not need to be large to be influential. Several thousand calls to Congress can seem like a populist wave.
A recent success of this approach concerned the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities — a treaty negotiated by the George W. Bush administration, signed by President Obama in 2009 and still awaiting Senate approval.
The treaty essentially takes the protections of our Americans with Disabilities Act and sets them as an international norm, with a committee of experts issuing reports on violations it sees. To some conservative activists, this translates into: “My kids wear glasses, now they’re disabled, now the U.N. gains control over them.” And: “The global community could force America to sanction sterilization or abortion for the disabled — at taxpayer expense.” And: America is “signing up to be an official socialist nation.”
Based on a short, successful campaign by the religious right and tea party groups last year, ratification of the treaty fell six votes short. A number of otherwise responsible legislators were intimidated by highly organized nonsense.
The treaty does nothing to encourage abortion. It only sets the expectation that a country’s existing “sexual and reproductive health” services should be equally available to the disabled. In practice, this means disabled people should not be subjected to forced sterilization or forced abortion — presumably pro-life commitments. The United States has made clear that it views the treaty as silent on the general legality of abortion — a view uniformly accepted by other signatories.
Some conservatives, particularly home-schoolers, have claimed that the treaty surrenders U.S. sovereignty to U.N. bureaucrats who could remove disabled children from parental care and force them to be educated in public schools.
The fear here — and not just limited to the disabilities treaty — is that international law can be used to override U.S. law. There are, in fact, cases in which litigious activists have tried to enforce international law in U.S. courts. But this treaty — and the congressional Reservations, Understandings and Declarations (RUDs) that accompany it — provides no basis for such challenges.
The resolution of ratification makes clear that the Americans with Disabilities Act remains the controlling U.S. law and that the treaty will not affect current enforcement or create additional causes for legal action. The treaty cannot be enforced through U.S. courts, and it creates no international venues for litigation. Recommendations from the committee of experts are non-binding. This does not require trusting the United Nations, only trusting the supremacy of the Constitution and U.S. law.
So if the treaty leaves U.S. law exactly the same, why take the risk of signing at all? The answer depends on your broader view of America’s calling. If you think American exceptionalism is sullied or stained or corrupted by engagement with the world, then isolation from the contagion of international norms is a natural response. But if American exceptionalism is expressed by shaping international norms according to the universal values of our founding — including the rights and dignity of disabled men and women — then engagement is instinctive.
These tendencies have been at odds throughout American history. And religious people have often helped determine the balance. Recently, religious activists have led movements to encourage international religious liberty, confront genocide in Sudan and fight against the global AIDS pandemic. They have entered unexpected ideological alliances with more traditionally liberal human rights or global health organizations to push for idealistic national goals.
On the disabilities treaty, some religious activists have exhibited a different approach: defensive, self-focused and poorly informed. And they have made common cause with conservative organizations that trade in conspiratorial fantasies.
This type of activism is discrediting — and also clarifying. Do religious conservatives really want their faith to be known for its fears?
..................................................................................................................................
The entrepreneurs of outrage
By Michael Gerson, November 14, 2013
Among the saddest aspects of a political culture premised on the exaggeration and organization of grievances is the way policy debates get pulled into a vortex of paranoia.
Some governors, Democrats and Republicans, attempt to set some (rather anemic) common academic standards, and it is said to “destroy America and the system of freedom as we know it.” Some governors, Democrats and Republicans, advocate HPV vaccinations to reduce the incidence of cervical cancer, and this is attacked as a violation of parental rights that puts “little children’s lives at risk.”
This is the way the modern ideological market often works. It is driven by entrepreneurs of outrage, marketers of resentment, innovators in the on-time delivery of anger. Their market share does not need to be large to be influential. Several thousand calls to Congress can seem like a populist wave.
A recent success of this approach concerned the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities — a treaty negotiated by the George W. Bush administration, signed by President Obama in 2009 and still awaiting Senate approval.
The treaty essentially takes the protections of our Americans with Disabilities Act and sets them as an international norm, with a committee of experts issuing reports on violations it sees. To some conservative activists, this translates into: “My kids wear glasses, now they’re disabled, now the U.N. gains control over them.” And: “The global community could force America to sanction sterilization or abortion for the disabled — at taxpayer expense.” And: America is “signing up to be an official socialist nation.”
Based on a short, successful campaign by the religious right and tea party groups last year, ratification of the treaty fell six votes short. A number of otherwise responsible legislators were intimidated by highly organized nonsense.
The treaty does nothing to encourage abortion. It only sets the expectation that a country’s existing “sexual and reproductive health” services should be equally available to the disabled. In practice, this means disabled people should not be subjected to forced sterilization or forced abortion — presumably pro-life commitments. The United States has made clear that it views the treaty as silent on the general legality of abortion — a view uniformly accepted by other signatories.
Some conservatives, particularly home-schoolers, have claimed that the treaty surrenders U.S. sovereignty to U.N. bureaucrats who could remove disabled children from parental care and force them to be educated in public schools.
The fear here — and not just limited to the disabilities treaty — is that international law can be used to override U.S. law. There are, in fact, cases in which litigious activists have tried to enforce international law in U.S. courts. But this treaty — and the congressional Reservations, Understandings and Declarations (RUDs) that accompany it — provides no basis for such challenges.
The resolution of ratification makes clear that the Americans with Disabilities Act remains the controlling U.S. law and that the treaty will not affect current enforcement or create additional causes for legal action. The treaty cannot be enforced through U.S. courts, and it creates no international venues for litigation. Recommendations from the committee of experts are non-binding. This does not require trusting the United Nations, only trusting the supremacy of the Constitution and U.S. law.
So if the treaty leaves U.S. law exactly the same, why take the risk of signing at all? The answer depends on your broader view of America’s calling. If you think American exceptionalism is sullied or stained or corrupted by engagement with the world, then isolation from the contagion of international norms is a natural response. But if American exceptionalism is expressed by shaping international norms according to the universal values of our founding — including the rights and dignity of disabled men and women — then engagement is instinctive.
These tendencies have been at odds throughout American history. And religious people have often helped determine the balance. Recently, religious activists have led movements to encourage international religious liberty, confront genocide in Sudan and fight against the global AIDS pandemic. They have entered unexpected ideological alliances with more traditionally liberal human rights or global health organizations to push for idealistic national goals.
On the disabilities treaty, some religious activists have exhibited a different approach: defensive, self-focused and poorly informed. And they have made common cause with conservative organizations that trade in conspiratorial fantasies.
This type of activism is discrediting — and also clarifying. Do religious conservatives really want their faith to be known for its fears?
..................................................................................................................................
Hunger Games-- what is *your* interpretation? Some see it as left-leaning and others see it as right-leaning
..................................................................................................................................
The malleable politics of 'Hunger Games: Catching Fire'
By Rebecca Keegan, November 23, 2013
Like any good dystopia, "The Hunger Games" depicts a frightening world that resonates with the anxieties of contemporary audiences -- a futuristic version of North America blighted by income inequality, government overreach and sadistic entertainment.
With the release of the box-office juggernaut "Hunger Games: Catching Fire" this weekend, the debate over the political interpretations of author Suzanne Collins' bestselling trilogy is heating up, with thinkers on the left and the right both seeing their views reflected in it.
The new movie, which is based on the second book in the series, finds its rugged heroine Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) back in their impoverished District 12 after winning the 74th Hunger Games, a fight to the death among children designed to intimidate a beleaguered public from dissenting.
As they're about to depart for a victory tour, the despotic President Snow (Donald Sutherland) visits Katniss and explains that when she defied the rules of the Capitol so that she and Peeta could both survive the "Hunger Games," she inspired rebellion and unrest.
When it comes to 2013 political interpretations, that rebellion might represent 99 percenters speaking up against the wealthy elite or Tea Partiers rising up against an oppressive government.
On the conservative website Big Hollywood, writer Christian Toto drew parallels between Snow's fictional authoritarian government and the "age of Obama," citing the NSA and IRS scandals and Obamacare, Democrats' move in the Senate this week to abolish the filibuster and the Obama administration's relationship with the press.
"Snow's willingness to do whatever it takes to get his way certainly recalls this week's 'nuclear' decision by Senate Democrats," Toto wrote. "It's also alarming to consider how Fire's fearsome government manipulates the images broadcast to the huddled masses when the Obama administration is strong-arming the press to make sure its best side is constantly shown."
On the website GoLocalProv.com, Rhode Island Republican Travis Rowley echoed some of those views, seeing in Snow's government a "highly imaginable tyranny. Soft, at first. Then, much more ruthless ... Right up this Tea Partier’s alley."
But Sutherland, who plays Snow, is a lifelong leftist who told Britain's Guardian newspaper that he hopes the movies inspire young people to the kind of activism he took part in the in 1960s as a protester against the war in Vietnam.
"Hopefully they will see this film and the next film and the next film and then maybe organize," Sutherland said. "Stand up. They might create a third party. They might change the electoral process, they might be able to take over the government, change the tax system."
In an interview with the website Screen Rant, Sutherland said that the notion of a heroic character provoking civil unrest against an unjust government was part of what made him interested in taking a role in the "Hunger Games" in the first place.
He said the movie series "could be another Battle of Algiers," a reference to the 1966 film about the organization of a guerrilla movement during that Algerian War that has been a source of inspiration for insurgent groups.
Jeffrey Wright, the actor who plays Beetee, a "Hunger Games" participant gifted in the use of electronics, said the genius of the series is in its varying possible interpretations.
“It’s welcoming of the entire political spectrum,” Wright told the website Hypable. “Some people look at these stories and take a 1% versus the 99% perspective, which can be read something as a left-leaning perspective. I think others look at this and they view it from a more right-leaning perspective as a condemnation of government. Others may look at is as a validation of a need for strong allegiance to the 2nd Amendment. So it’s nondiscriminatory, it’s nonpartisan."
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The malleable politics of 'Hunger Games: Catching Fire'
By Rebecca Keegan, November 23, 2013
Like any good dystopia, "The Hunger Games" depicts a frightening world that resonates with the anxieties of contemporary audiences -- a futuristic version of North America blighted by income inequality, government overreach and sadistic entertainment.
With the release of the box-office juggernaut "Hunger Games: Catching Fire" this weekend, the debate over the political interpretations of author Suzanne Collins' bestselling trilogy is heating up, with thinkers on the left and the right both seeing their views reflected in it.
The new movie, which is based on the second book in the series, finds its rugged heroine Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) back in their impoverished District 12 after winning the 74th Hunger Games, a fight to the death among children designed to intimidate a beleaguered public from dissenting.
As they're about to depart for a victory tour, the despotic President Snow (Donald Sutherland) visits Katniss and explains that when she defied the rules of the Capitol so that she and Peeta could both survive the "Hunger Games," she inspired rebellion and unrest.
When it comes to 2013 political interpretations, that rebellion might represent 99 percenters speaking up against the wealthy elite or Tea Partiers rising up against an oppressive government.
On the conservative website Big Hollywood, writer Christian Toto drew parallels between Snow's fictional authoritarian government and the "age of Obama," citing the NSA and IRS scandals and Obamacare, Democrats' move in the Senate this week to abolish the filibuster and the Obama administration's relationship with the press.
"Snow's willingness to do whatever it takes to get his way certainly recalls this week's 'nuclear' decision by Senate Democrats," Toto wrote. "It's also alarming to consider how Fire's fearsome government manipulates the images broadcast to the huddled masses when the Obama administration is strong-arming the press to make sure its best side is constantly shown."
On the website GoLocalProv.com, Rhode Island Republican Travis Rowley echoed some of those views, seeing in Snow's government a "highly imaginable tyranny. Soft, at first. Then, much more ruthless ... Right up this Tea Partier’s alley."
But Sutherland, who plays Snow, is a lifelong leftist who told Britain's Guardian newspaper that he hopes the movies inspire young people to the kind of activism he took part in the in 1960s as a protester against the war in Vietnam.
"Hopefully they will see this film and the next film and the next film and then maybe organize," Sutherland said. "Stand up. They might create a third party. They might change the electoral process, they might be able to take over the government, change the tax system."
In an interview with the website Screen Rant, Sutherland said that the notion of a heroic character provoking civil unrest against an unjust government was part of what made him interested in taking a role in the "Hunger Games" in the first place.
He said the movie series "could be another Battle of Algiers," a reference to the 1966 film about the organization of a guerrilla movement during that Algerian War that has been a source of inspiration for insurgent groups.
Jeffrey Wright, the actor who plays Beetee, a "Hunger Games" participant gifted in the use of electronics, said the genius of the series is in its varying possible interpretations.
“It’s welcoming of the entire political spectrum,” Wright told the website Hypable. “Some people look at these stories and take a 1% versus the 99% perspective, which can be read something as a left-leaning perspective. I think others look at this and they view it from a more right-leaning perspective as a condemnation of government. Others may look at is as a validation of a need for strong allegiance to the 2nd Amendment. So it’s nondiscriminatory, it’s nonpartisan."
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