Hullabaloo

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

 
Mr. Village

by David Atkins

The ways in which reading Thomas Friedman is infuriating as as deep as the ocean and endless as the horizon. Whether it's resorting to anecdotes from taxi drivers to prove a point, or repeating disproven economic shibboleths, Friedman is exhibit A in imbuing the most trite conventional wisdom with false profundity.

All of this turf has been covered extensively by other critics. But what I find most frustrating about reading Friedman is that he does appear from time to time to have a somewhat clearer view of actual reality than most Village pundits. But no sooner does it appear that he has finally seen the light from the way he sets up an argument, than he turns round and reinforces conventional wisdom with a passion that defies logic and common sense.

Consider his latest opinion piece. He starts by declaring the necessity for President Obama to use the bully pulpit:

President Obama has a clear choice on how to approach the 2012 election: He can spend all his energy defining Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich or whoever ends up as the Republican nominee in as ugly a way as possible, or he can spend all his energy defining the future in as credible a way as possible. If he spends his energy defining his Republican opponent, there is a chance the president will win with 50.00001 percent of the vote and no mandate to do what needs doing. If he spends his time defining the future in a credible way and offering a hard, tough, realistic pathway to get there, he will not only win, but he will have a mandate to take the country where we need to go.

OK, fine. The nation needs direction, and the President in is a position to provide it. And?

I voted for Barack Obama, and I don’t want my money back. He’s never gotten the credit he deserves for bringing the economy he inherited back from the brink of a depression. He’s fought the war on terrorism in a smart and effective way. He’s making health care possible for millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions, and he saved the auto industry. This is big stuff. But, as important as all of these achievements are, they pale in comparison to the defining challenge of Obama’s presidency: Can he put the country on a sustainable economic recovery path at a time when, if we fail, it could be the end of the American dream?

Fair enough. Obviously, progressive critics will take issue with this characterization of the Obama presidency, but there is a lot in this argument that resonates. So clearly, in order to boost economic recovery, the President will need a bold vision that stimulates demand and creates jobs. Right?

So far, this is a clearer encapsulation of the political moment than most Village pundits seem to have a handle on. But then comes the facepalm moment.

I believe the best way for Obama to do that is by declaring today that he made a mistake in spurning his own deficit reduction commission, chaired by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, and is now adopting Simpson-Bowles — which already has Republican and Democratic support — as his long-term fiscal plan to be phased in after a near-term stimulus. If he did that, he would win politically and create a national consensus that would trump his opponents, right and left.

And with this, Friedman comes to the brink of reality, only to step back and make a full-fledged retreat into the comfortable land of the conventional.

There is nothing popular about any of the deficit commission plans on the table. Cutting Social Security and Medicare is wildly unpopular even among Republicans. Cutting defense polls poorly or with marginal approval even among Democrats, no matter how bloated its budget becomes. Simpson-Bowles is dead on arrival--as it should be--because most of what is in it is politically toxic on both sides of the aisle.

But that's not all. Friedman sees the problem only to offer the wrong solution twice in the same op-ed:

Obama aides argue that so many G.O.P. lawmakers are committed to making his presidency fail, or have signed pledges to an antitax cult, that they would never buy into any grand bargain. I think that is true for a lot of Republicans in Congress. But I have some questions: Why are the Republicans getting away with this? Why are so many independents and even Democrats who voted for Obama sitting on their hands? Obama owns the bully pulpit of the presidency and he’s losing to Grover Norquist? Also, assuming it is all true about the G.O.P., how can Obama trump them? I think he can, if he leads in a new way.

So Friedman acknowledges that the Republicans are nuts, many of them in the grip of the Norquist cult, and that attempting to negotiate is useless. He also acknowledges that no matter how crazy the GOP becomes, they continue to get away with it.

But instead of taking the obvious conclusions from those facts--that the President should be unafraid to champion popular progressive policies, since the GOP will accept nothing less than total victory from any negotiation, and that a supine press will allow them to remain intransigent and careen ever rightward without calling them on their extremism--Friedman moves in precisely the opposite direction, with nonsensical results:

I think America’s broad center understands very clearly that the country is in trouble and that the Republican Party has gone nuts. But when they look at Obama on the deficit, they feel something is missing. People know leadership when they see it — when they see someone taking a political risk, not just talking about doing so, not just saying, “I’ll jump if the other guy jumps.” In times of crisis, leaders jump first, lay out what truly needs to be done to fix the problem, not just to win re-election, and by doing so earn the right to demand that others do the same.

What would it look like if the president was offering such leadership? First, he’d be proposing a deficit-cutting plan that matches the scale of our problem — one with substantial tax reform and revenue increases, a gasoline tax, deep defense cuts and cutbacks to both Social Security and Medicare. That is the Simpson-Bowles plan, and it should be Obama’s new starting point for negotiations. The deficit plan Obama put out last September is nowhere near as serious. “It is watered-down Simpson-Bowles,” said MacGuineas. “Most people don’t even know it exists.”

Second, he’d offer a plan in which the wealthy have to pay their fair share and more, because they’ve had a great two decades. But everyone, including the middle class, has to contribute something. This has to be a national effort. Third, he would offer a plan that is aspirational. It would not just be a roadmap to balancing the budget but to making America great again through reignited economic growth.

This is so stupid that it boggles the mind it even made it to print. The knock on President Obama since the beginning of his term has been that he is too keen to compromise, and that he begins negotiations by giving everything away in advance just to show goodwill. His negotiation tactics are so weak and so acquiescent to his opponents, that it has led many to fairly question whether it's not a issue of poor negotiating skills so much as an active desire to champion conservative policies.

The American Public does understand that the President isn't leading as strongly as he should. But the notion that he should be leading in the direction of more compromise and more unpopular cuts to popular programs is simply nuts. It's not born out by any data, but rather by grandiose wishful thinking. And that doesn't even touch Friedman's request for higher taxes on the poor and middle class, which is not just bad policy but politically suicidal.

Finally, as Paul Krugman pointed out, there is nothing in the Bowles-Simpson plan that promises economic recovery. The economy is not petrified of debt. It's petrified of lack of demand, which will only be hurt worse by cuts to the safety net and regressive tax increases.

But then there's the kicker:

My gut says that if the president lays out such a plan — one that begins with him taking all the political risks on himself and then demanding the G.O.P. and his own party follow — he will be both defining himself and the future in a way that would earn him so much centrist support and respect that it would leave every possible Republican opponent in the dust, no matter how obstructionist they are or want to be.

That would be a halfway intelligent paragraph, except for the fact that every single statement in it is wrong. First, the progressive base would abandon him. Second, "centrists," as defined as those with views in between the Democratic and Republican parties, don't sway elections. There are actually precious few of them. "Moderates" and "independents" sometimes do--but so-called "moderates" and "independents" aren't so much in the middle, as have views that lean GOP on some issues, and Dem on others. One thing moderates and independents do agree on is that cutting Social Security and Medicare is a bad thing, and so are tax increases on the middle class.

In fact, it was Obama's embrace of the austerity train that made his poll numbers take a massive hit, and it was only when the President began to take a more aggressive stance promoting jobs and progressive rhetoric that his poll numbers began to rise again. President Obama, far from attracting moderates and independents by embracing austerity commissions, will in fact repel them. We don't need to theorize about this; we only need look at recent history.

And third, Friedman only need look at his statement two paragraphs previous to see that no matter how far backward the President bent to enforce austerity on America, the GOP would move the goalposts ever rightward, and the media would again portray the situation as hyperpartisanship on both sides. Even if Friedman's astoundingly wrong assumptions about economics and political bases had any merit, his misunderstanding of Republicans and the media alone makes a mockery of his thesis.

In the analogy of Plato's cave, most Village pundits spend their entire careers pointing to and tracking the shadows they all create on the wall. But Friedman is all the more annoying because he occasionally steps forward into the light, only to run for cover back into the darkness, and insist that his visions of the sun only go to further proof the importance and relevance of the cavern shadows.

It's a wonder that anyone with even a moderately advanced intelligence can read most of his columns and come away with anything but exasperation.


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thereisnospoon 11/23/2011 07:30:00 AM |

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

 
You can believe me or you can believe your lyin' eyes

by digby

Perhaps people don't want to believe Paul Krugman because he's just a liberal, elite commie propagandist. Fine. But reality is seeping into the mainstream nonetheless. This one's suitable for sending around to your relatives:

I've been saying the following to friends and colleagues for months now: In all my many years as a business and economics reporter, I have never seen a greater cognitive dissonance than in the current coverage of the U.S. bond market. Even Chicken Little and the Boy Who Cried Wolf would have by now taken early retirement had their warnings proved as lame as those of the MSEM (mainstream economic media).

"S&P Downgrades!" "Bond Vigilantes Poised to Strike!" "America is Greece!" One-liners meant to catch the eye, freeze the heart. But flat-out irresponsible.

What, briefly, is the fear? Very simple. Investors in U.S. debt, aka U.S. bond holders, aka lenders to the U.S. government, are quaking at the prospect of U.S. debt default. The supposed reason: we can't lower our annual deficit or cumulative debt. So the investors will become "vigilantes" and wreak frontier justice the only way they know how: charging us more in interest to continue lending us money by purchasing our bonds.

This is, infamously, what happened to Greece. When it joined the European Monetary Union a decade or so ago, it borrowed money for 10 years at around 3 percent. Today, as those loans come due, its credibility, and thus its credit, is shot. To borrow money for 10 years, the price for Greece is now above 25 percent. The panic of the moment concerns Italy and Spain, however, both of which are indeed experiencing the wrath of the bond vigilantes, their 10-year interest rates flirting with the 7 percent level, at which point the vicious circle is said to start spinning: higher interest rates feeding higher deficits feeding even higher interest rates feeding even higher deficits...

And so now, the simplest of answers to the simplest of questions: how much does the United States have to pay to borrow money for 10 years? On the day the supercommittee throws in the towel? The day the Fitch ratings agency (not the widely discredited S&P) is reported on the verge of a downgrade? The United States will have to pay a king's ransom, right, as the bond vigilantes fasten the noose?

Let's see. Going to bloomberg.com. Clicking on "Markets." Clicking on "Bonds." Clicking on "U.S. Government Bonds." Scrolling down to "10-Year." Here it is: 1.97 percent. Hmmm. The United States has to pay less than two percent to borrow money for 10 years? That's anti-Chicken Little. Not the sky falling, but the interest rate plummeting. Exactly the opposite of all the dire warnings...

Investors also seem pretty sure that U.S. inflation is not going to be a problem anytime soon. If inflation scared them, they'd hardly let the United States lock in an interest rate of less than 2 percent for an entire decade.

So then why isn't it plausible to draw the following conclusion: that U.S. interest rates have been going in the "wrong" direction because investors are scared that the U.S. is going to reduce its debt and deficits, and such a reduction might horse-collar the world economy?

Good question. You'd think more people would ask these market psychics why they have been so wrong for so long.

This ongoing Scary Greece scenario is one of those "you can believe me or you can believe your lying eyes" propositions, so beloved by our elite leadership.

(My favorite remains this one from former President Bush:“We gave [Saddam Hussein] a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn’t let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power….” No matter how many times he said that, and he said it more than once, it didn't make it true.)


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digby 11/22/2011 04:30:00 PM |

 
Moving Right

by David Atkins

Ezra Klein has a good piece about the ill-fated Supercommittee. Upshot? The entire Overton Window was shifted rightward, with the Dems moving right and the GOP moving even further right:

If by "at fault" we mean "unwilling to compromise," we can do better than listen to the self-serving remarks of the players. We can look hard at the movement in the actual plans. Before the supercommittee, there were the Obama-Boehner negotiations. And we have a pretty good idea of the plan that almost -- but didn't quite -- clear those discussions. We also have the deals on the plans that were offered in the supercommittee. And if you look at the numbers, it's pretty easy to see which party moved further towards a compromise.

Hint: It's the one that named Sen. Max Baucus as one of its six key negotiators.

The final Boehner plan envisioned tax reform that would generate $800 billion in new revenues and bring the top rate down to 35 percent. In the supercommittee, the highest Republicans ever got on taxes was the Toomey plan's $300 billion, with envisioned a top rate of 28 percent. So on taxes, it's fairly clear: The supercommittee Republicans were far to the right of Boehner.

On the Democratic side, Obama eventually insisted on somewhere near $1.2 trillion in tax reform or, if the revenues were to move lower, on much less in entitlement cuts. In the supercommittee, the Democrats offered a plan (pdf) with less than a trillion dollars in tax reform -- and more entitlement reforms than Obama was willing to agree to.

Boehner had about $150 billion in Medicare beneficiary cuts in his opening bid in the negotiations with the president, and he went down from there. In the supercommittee, Baucus offered $200 billion in Medicare beneficiary cuts. Supercommittee Republicans were far beyond that, however. If you read Hensarling's op-ed today explaining why the committee failed, he complains that Democrats were too focused on tax increases but also that they refused to gut the Affordable Care Act or embrace "architectural changes" like turning Medicare into a premium-support system. You can support those policies or oppose them. They're not exactly compromise plans, however.

Frankly, it's hard to find even one area in which supercommittee Republicans offered a substantially new compromise -- or even matched what Boehner offered Obama.

Not that the media will cover it as a broad, bipartisan capitulation to the right-wing. In fact, they will fight to do anything but. Via DougJ at Balloon Juice, this bit from Paul Kane from a Kaplan reporter forum is really something:

Reader: Paul, I’m guessing you won’t be sympathetic to the following point, but I’ll put it out there anyway. Most reporting on the supercommittee—like most reporting on the deficit—reflects an acceptance of a basic fallacy. Whenever there is an impasse, there seems to be a desire to blame both sides equally, on the theory that if only Democrats would concede more, Republicans would reciprocate (all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding). Yes, Democrats have drawn lines in the sand, but as Greg Sargent and other commentators have documented, when you compare the specifics, there is no factual basis for blaming both parties equally. So my question is, why does the Post’s coverage do so anyway, either explicitly or implicitly?

Paul Kane: Yeah, you’re right. I think this point is just absurd and ridiculous. This is a big thing among folks calling it “moral equivalence” (Fallows, Ornstein) and others calling it the “cult of balance” (Krugman).

It’s just stupid. If you want someone to tell you that Republicans stink, read opinion pages. Read blogs. Also, the underlying sentiment on the left is that this is the real reason why things went wrong in 2010: That the mainstream media is to blame. Sorry, I think that’s the sorta head-in-sand outlook that leads to longer term problems for a movement.

Greg is a fine writer. He’s an opinion writer, in the opinion section of the web site. I encourage you to keep reading him. And I encourage you to keep reading the news coverage, which should always strive to present both sides of the story. If you really don’t want to hear anything about the other side of the story, I really do encourage you to stop reading the news section.

The country keeps moving farther and farther right, even as the traditional media painstakingly characterizes the problem as hyperpartisanship on both sides.


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thereisnospoon 11/22/2011 03:11:00 PM |

 
Casual dehumanizing fun

by digby

From the dehumanization files, here's Ann Coulter:

WINGLESS, BLOODSUCKING AND PARASITIC: MEET THE FLEA PARTY!

This is going around as well:



I'm sure it's all just harmless fun and far be it from me to ever, ever suggest that fine, upstanding Americans could ever do anything even remotely as ugly to one another on the scale discussed here. Still, it should at least be of some abstract academic interest, I think, to note that conservatives are calling Occupy protesters parasites and vermin.

Update: How about this?

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digby 11/22/2011 01:30:00 PM |

 
Newtie's immodest proposal

by digby

I'm so looking forward to this GOP primary with Newt Gingrich as the front runner. He's been around for so long, has said so many incredibly idiotic things and continues to do so, that for a political blogger it's the mother lode for material.

Here's one of my favorites from Mr Family Values back in the 90s:

In 1994, during the early days of the public debate on welfare reform, Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich ignited a media firestorm by suggesting that orphanages are better for poor children than life with a mother on Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). Responding to blistering criticism, he first defended the proposal by invoking the idyllic orphanage life of the 1938 film "Boys Town," finally retreating, at least rhetorically, from the entire controversy. Orphanages became just another blip on the nation's radar screen, or so it seemed.

In fact, the plan to revive orphanages is embedded in the Personal Responsibility Act, the Republican plan for welfare reform, and is a major piece of the Republican Contract With America. The Republicans' pledge promised to balance the budget, protect defense spending, and cut taxes, targeting programs for the poor--cash assistance, food, housing, medical, and child care--as the big areas for major budget savings.

He explained that what "liberals" really believed was “put your baby in a dumpster, that’s Okay.” He claimed that 800 babies were thrown in dumpsters in Washington DC every year, which was, needless to say, absurd.

The Boys Town thing came in response to Hillary Clinton criticizing GOP calls for removal of poor children from their parents. He tartly responded:

"I'd ask her to go to Blockbuster and rent the Mickey Rooney movie about Boys Town. I don't understand liberals who live in enclaves of safety who say, 'Oh, this would be a terrible thing.'"

Apparently Newtie believes everything he sees in the movies. It explains a lot. (I wonder if the revelations about the Irish orphanage abuses have altered his opinion on the wonderful advantages of orphanages? Maybe someone should ask him.)

His comment provoked a firestorm back in 1994 and he slithered back a bit on his stand, as he usually does when he says something outrageous like this. But he never really changes his mind. Look what he said just last week:

"It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children in, first of all, child laws, which are truly stupid," said the former House speaker, according to CNN. "Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school. The kids would actually do work, they would have cash, they would have pride in the schools, they'd begin the process of rising."

"You're going to see from me extraordinarily radical proposals to fundamentally change the culture of poverty in America," he added.

Generally, the Fair Labor Standards Act allows minors over 14 to work in most jobs, with several exceptions for minors under that age. Hours are limited for minors under the age of 16. Some states have higher age standards.

By the way, his "extraordinarily radical proposals to fundamentally change the culture of poverty" are the same as they ever were:

The Republicans' pledge promised to balance the budget, protect defense spending, and cut taxes, targeting programs for the poor--cash assistance, food, housing, medical, and child care--as the big areas for major budget savings.

Add to that orphanages and his bold new proposal to get rid of child labor laws and you have a patented "radical" Gingrich proposal. I'm sure it will be quite popular with the GOP base. This could be his moment.

AFSCME has put together a little video on the subject:




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digby 11/22/2011 12:00:00 PM |

 
California Solidarity

by digby

If you are as revolted by the recent police brutality at California Universities as I am, you might want to show solidarity with the faculty and students by signing on to this petition as a "citizen signer"

This week, we have seen excessive force used against non-violent protesters at UC Berkeley, UCLA, CSU Long Beach, and UC Davis...We demand that the Chancellors of the University of California cease using police violence to repress non-violent political protests...

We call for greater attention to the substantive issues that motivate the protests regarding the privatization of education. With massive cuts in state funding and rising tuition costs...public education is undergoing a severe divestment. Student debt has reached unprecedented levels as bank profits swell.

Signed,
The Board of the Council of UC Faculty Associations

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digby 11/22/2011 10:30:00 AM |

 
RIP Supercommittee

by digby

My new post at Al Jazeera is about the late, departed Super Committee. May it rest in peace:

So we reach the end of yet another lengthy deficit reduction negotiation, and all signs at this writing point to failure.

This is actually very good news, although to hear the pundits tell it, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse will be trampling down the doors of the New York Stock Exchange and everyone in the US will soon be force-fed poisoned baklava at gunpoint. Indeed, if you followed the financial and political press over the past couple of weeks, you would have thought the world would literally come to an end if this arbitrary deadline to cut an arbitrary percentage of the deficit isn't met.

And yet, no deal means "sequestration" (also known as "the triggers") will kick in, which will mean brutal cuts to discretionary spending and defence starting in 2013. If the goal is to cut $1.2tn in order to set the country's fiscal house in order, why should all these deficit hawks care how the government gets there? Well, it turns out that this isn't really about deficit reduction at all. The entire exercise is about gutting the social safety net, thus giving the markets "confidence" in the United States' ability to govern itself.

Ironically, this was considered to be so important that our democratic government had to convene a secretive committee to meet behind closed doors and enact policies that go against the explicit desires of a vast majority of American citizens. read on

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digby 11/22/2011 09:00:00 AM |

 
Lord of the Flies

by David Atkins

Via ABL at Balloon Juice, this story makes me want to hurl large objects out a skyscraper window:

Victim One, the first known alleged victim of abuse by former Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky, had to leave his school in the middle of his senior year because of bullying, his counselor said Sunday.

Officials at Central Mountain High School in Clinton County weren’t providing guidance for fellow students, who were reacting badly about Joe Paterno’s firing and blaming the 17-year-old, said Mike Gillum, the psychologist helping his family. Those officials were unavailable for comment this weekend.

The name-calling and verbal threats were just too much, he said.

Other alleged victims are turning to each other for support, since they fear others will out them and cause a media swarm. The only encouragement for Victim One, Gillum said, is watching other alleged victims come forward because they felt empowered by his courage.

“He feels good about that,” Gillum said. “That’s the one good that’s come of all this.”

I took some heat for my post some time back defending progressive homeschooling/unschooling. But this is a perfect encapsulation of what is wrong with the school system, aside of course from a chronic lack of funding.

The culture in most schools, from the most destitute public schools to the most elite private schools, is dominated by children rather than adults. Principals and teachers tend to be too busy, and too afraid of parents of abusive kids and of the kids themselves to take any significant action against peer pressure and pervasive bullying.

Any kid that said a word cross-wise to Victim #1 should have been faced with immediate expulsion, and their parents should have been called up and berated by the principal. That sort of appalling behavior will extend into adulthood, and if it's not being corrected by a parent (who is probably just as asinine as their offspring), then it should be corrected by whatever adults are in charge on campus. That's how it would work in a just society. Instead, this poor soul is now being subjected to another round of victimization by his peers and forced to leave his school and his few friends. And nobody is doing a damn thing about it.


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thereisnospoon 11/22/2011 07:30:00 AM |

Monday, November 21, 2011

 
Police, pain and peppers

by digby

Quite a few professional police officers and criminal justice academics are weighing in on this notion of "pain compliance" in the wake of that pepper spray assault at UC Davis.

As awful as these incidents have been, I can't tell you heartened I am by the fact that people are finally speaking up on this subject. Indiscriminate tasering has been going on for years now, it's clearly documented and rarely has anyone questioned the right of the police to inflict pain for mere non-compliance. (The tasering of the mentally ill is a separate subject.) YouTubes have gone viral and the comments to them suggest that many, many people find such violence hilarious and support it fully. I won't even go into the way Hollywood uses it for cheap laughs.

Indeed, the most common arguments I hear on this topic is "if an officer tells you to do something, you don't ask questions, you do it" and "the cops first obligation is to protect his own safety and the safety of other cops." This means that a police officer essentially has the right to immediately taser/pepper spray anyone who doesn't immediately respond in order to preserve his or her own safety. And the definition of "safety" is pretty malleable, as we saw this week-end:

UC Davis Police Chief Annette Spicuzza said officers used force out of concern for their own safety after they were surrounded by students.

Does any one remember this? Probably not, since it was hardly covered except by a few blogs and Democracy Now:

The New Orleans City Council has unanimously voted to move ahead with the demolition of 4,500 units of public housing. Under the plan, the city’s four largest public housing developments will be razed and replaced with mixed-income housing. Hundreds of people were turned away from the City Council meeting. Police shot protesters with pepper spray and tasers.

Many police officers and citizens believe that pain compliance on peaceful demonstrors is completely acceptable, including the use of batons. Here's one commenting on the UC Davis assault:

Charles J. Kelly, a former Baltimore Police Department lieutenant who wrote the department's use of force guidelines, said pepper spray is a "compliance tool" that can be used on subjects who do not resist, and is preferable to simply lifting protesters.

"When you start picking up human bodies, you risk hurting them," Kelly said. "Bodies don't have handles on them."

After reviewing the video, Kelly said he observed at least two cases of "active resistance" from protesters. In one instance, a woman pulls her arm back from an officer. In the second instance, a protester curls into a ball. Each of those actions could have warranted more force, including baton strikes and pressure-point techniques.

And in everyday life they use tasers and pepper spray on grandmothers and children, on people already in restraints, in wheelchairs and in sickbeds. They do it all the time. Normally it is considered so "harmless" that it doesn't even merit a small news story --- unless someone dies. Which happens fairly frequently.

Here is a former police officer and professor of criminal justice explaining what's wrong with all this:

In the police academy, I was taught to pepper-spray people for non-compliance. Ie: “Put your hands behind your back or I’ll… mace you.” It’s crazy. Of course we didn’t do it this way, the way were taught. Baltimore police officers are too smart to start urban race riots based on some dumb-ass training. So what did we do to gain compliance? We grabbed people. Hands on. Like real police. And we were good at it.

Some people, perhaps those who design training programs, think policing should be a hands-off job. It can’t be and shouldn’t be. And trying to make policing too hands-off means people get Tased and maced for non-compliance. It’s not right. But this is the way many police are trained. That’s a shame. (Mind you, I have no problem using such less-lethal weapons on actual physical threats, but peaceful non-compliance is different.)

I know that it's arduous for the police to have to physically deal with citizens or remove protesters engaged in non-violent civil disobedience, but that's how we do things in America. Or at least that's what we're supposed to do in America.

This amazing article from a couple of weeks ago in The Nation by the former chief of police of Seattle, goes deeply into the broader subject of police militarization:

[T]he police response to the Occupy movement, most disturbingly visible in Oakland—where scenes resembled a war zone and where a marine remains in serious condition from a police projectile—brings into sharp relief the acute and chronic problems of American law enforcement. Seattle might have served as a cautionary tale, but instead, US police forces have become increasingly militarized, and it’s showing in cities everywhere: the NYPD “white shirt” coating innocent people with pepper spray, the arrests of two student journalists at Occupy Atlanta, the declaration of public property as off-limits and the arrests of protesters for “trespassing.”

The paramilitary bureaucracy and the culture it engenders—a black-and-white world in which police unions serve above all to protect the brotherhood—is worse today than it was in the 1990s. Such agencies inevitably view protesters as the enemy. And young people, poor people and people of color will forever experience the institution as an abusive, militaristic force—not just during demonstrations but every day, in neighborhoods across the country.

Much of the problem is rooted in a rigid command-and-control hierarchy based on the military model. American police forces are beholden to archaic internal systems of authority whose rules emphasize bureaucratic regulations over conduct on the streets. An officer’s hair length, the shine on his shoes and the condition of his car are more important than whether he treats a burglary victim or a sex worker with dignity and respect. In the interest of “discipline,” too many police bosses treat their frontline officers as dependent children, which helps explain why many of them behave more like juvenile delinquents than mature, competent professionals. It also helps to explain why persistent, patterned misconduct, including racism, sexism, homophobia, brutality, perjury and corruption, do not go away, no matter how many blue-ribbon panels are commissioned or how much training is provided.

As I have written too many times, this militarization of our society at large, not just the police, was bound to catch up with us. (The recent calling of the president the "commander in chief" of the people, rather than just the military symbolizes this as well as anything.)

I think BagNews summed it up with these two pictures:

Michael Shaw archly notes:

After all the cracking down that’s been going on Stateside, a fresh look at Egyptian riot cops today reminds me how much we do things bigger and better in America.

(Click here to see the story of the two pictures --- the first is Cairo the second is Portland.)

Oh, and for those of you who complained about my characterization of pepper spray as torture read this from today's Scientific American. It's torture all right. And it's dangerous as hell, particularly when inhaled:

As the North Carolina researchers point out, any compound that can influence nerve function is, by definition, risky. Research tells us that pepper spray acts as a potent inflammatory agent. It amplifies allergic sensitivities, it irritates and damages eyes, membranes, bronchial airways, the stomach lining – basically what it touches. It works by causing pain – and, as we know, pain is the body warning us of an injury.

In general, these are short term effects. Pepper spray, for instance, induces a burning sensation in the eyes in part by damaging cells in the outer layer of the cornea. Usually, the body repairs this kind of injury fairly neatly. But with repeated exposures, studies find, there can be permanent damage to the cornea.

The more worrisome effects have to do with inhalation – and by some reports, California university police officers deliberately put OC spray down protestors throats. Capsaicins inflame the airways, causing swelling and restriction. And this means that pepper sprays pose a genuine risk to people with asthma and other respiratory conditions.

And there have been numerous studies and reports to that effect, including the documentation of numerous deaths. And still it's used.


Have any of you inhaled dried chipotle peppers? I have and it was horrible. That's Jalapeno pepper for those who aren't proficient in "pepperology", less than half the scale of pepper spray.

Update: Mike Stark writes in to point out that my comment above rather grandly understates the scale. He said: "less than half the scale of pepper spray" is precisely correct in the same way that a new born kitten weighs in at "less than half the scale" of an overweight African elephant..."

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digby 11/21/2011 06:30:00 PM |

 
Tough medicine

by digby

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Dylan Ratigan: Oh, yes, it's a board game coming out for this holiday season. They've perfected it in Washington and we'll all get to play soon enough. Any chance, though, of a final deal? Is there anything about my narrative that's too cynical or too vicious an indictment? Can you correct me in some way?

Luke Russert: well, Dylan, there was some talk of an 11th hour deal today. Senator John Kerry called some members of the super committee into his office in an attempt to grab the low-hanging fruit. Maybe a couple hundred billion that both parties could agree on. We've heard from capitol hill aides on both sides, saying that meeting was very much about aesthetics, trying to show the members of congress that those people were serious about debt reduction, on the eve of this super committee announcing that it would fail.

Remember when John Boehner and President Obama both said failure is not an option? It looks like failure will be the option. And really, the reason why, Dylan, it comes down to two things. The issues that have plagued not only this congress, but this country. Republicans will not see taxes go up under any circumstances, Democrats do not want taxes touched under any circumstances without revenue.

If you look at the backdrop, Dylan, just look at the stats. Federal revenue now is at its lowest level since 1950. If you extend the Bush tax cuts the way the Republicans want, you get $3.8 trillion added to the deficits. If you add them the way Democrats want, you get $3 trillion added over the next three years. If you don't do anything to medicare or medicaid or social security, those programs will not be solvent.

Both parties don't want to tell the american people it's time to drink their tough medicine.

Both parties are going to try to take 2012 as the avenue to have this debate further. But as this debate goes on and on and on. The real difficult decisions, the real ideas of how are we going to cut this deficit, they go unanswered.

All so folks can can get re-elected, continue to get their $174,000 salaries, and the beat goes on and on. The special interests get rich, the parties can argue and argue and argue.

In terms of this super committee, Dylan, they had an opportunity to do something special. They had an up or down vote in the United States Senate, filibuster proof. That is so valuable here on Capitol Hill, I can't tell you. And they punted it all away, because they were besieged with the same thing that has killed every idea here on Capitol Hill, the partisan interests on both sides.

Dylan Ratigan: you're starting to sound like me, first of all, Luke, so you're probably going to get thrown out of there. I can't imagine you're going to last in D.C. much past the next month or so.

Apparently they forgot to tell Ratigan that Luke Russert was raised on vacuous beltway platitudes like these from the time he was a little boy on his big daddy Tim's knee.

It is really, really rich to be lectured by this fatuous little jerk about "drinking my tough medicine" when he was handed the celebrity spokesmodel job he has now without any real qualification or slightest bit of talent beyond doing a bad impression of his father (who also wasn't that great) for several years now. How much do you think this callow little boy is worth?

I won't even comment on his inane narrative which is so stultifyingly predictable I think even Cokie Roberts would be embarrassed to deliver it. It speaks for itself.

He and Ratigan went on to give each other big wet kisses about how great they both are so I'm assuming they are good friends. Which doesn't say much for Ratigan, who has also fallen into the cheapest trap in political analysis: "they're all alike so I'll just rant and rave about what losers they are and won't bother talking about the details." In fact, he and Russert said nothing that was real, important or relevant to anyone watching that segment.

The stench of unwarranted moral superiority in that exchange was overpowering. It makes me reflexively defend the politicians out of simple human decency. And I really don't want to defend politicians.

You can see the whole segment here.

Update: And please spare me Erin Burnett's pearl clutching about the stock market reaction. Someone needs to get her some smelling salts.

Here's reality from Krugman:

Again and again, slight upticks in interest rates have been attributed — in news stories, not opinion pieces — to debt fears, despite the complete absence of any actual evidence to that effect.

Bloomberg today has an interesting twist: U.S. Futures Decline on Concern Supercommittee Won’t Agree on Budget Cuts. In reality, US rates are down, suggesting no increase in debt concerns whatsoever.

But if you read the Bloomberg piece carefully, what it actually says is that market players fear that the absence of a debt deal means no stimulus. So the actual fear is not that spending won’t be cut enough, it is that it will be cut too much — which actually makes sense, and is consistent with the action in stock and bond markets.

There's no reason, by the way, that the failure of this deal should be attributed to an inability to pass any further stimulus. It's not as if the Republicans would have allowed that in any case.

Plus this.

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digby 11/21/2011 04:30:00 PM |

 
Underwater Home Traps Driving Unemployment

by David Atkins

Chris Mims at Grist highlights a Brookings Institution report showing that the rise in homeownership is helping drive up unemployment numbers:

The U.S. is suffering crushing unemployment, yet workers can't move to where the jobs are because they are trapped in underwater mortgages, explains a new report from Brookings. This, it turns out, is the ultimate fate of the "ownership society" that our government has been pushing for so long through Fannie, Freddy, and tax policy: People can't migrate to where they're needed most, even if their livelihood depends on it...

The data show that not only are people less likely to move from one state to another, they're also failing to move even within the same county -- say, to upgrade to a slightly better job across town, or shorten their commute.

The "ownership society" is one way of putting this. Another way of putting it, as I have said before, is priotizing assets over wages:

American public policy on both sides of the aisle reoriented itself away from a focus on wages and toward a focus on assets. Specifically, the idea was that wage growth was dangerous because it led to core inflation in a way that asset growth did not. American foreign policy became obsessed even more than it had been with maintaining access to oil, both to prevent future oil shocks and to prevent inflationary oil spirals. Wage growth was also dangerous because it would drive increasing numbers of American corporations to employ cheaper overseas labor.

But that left the question of how to sustain a middle class and functional economy while slashing wages. The answer was to make more Americans "true Capitalists" in Reagan's terms. Pensions were converted to 401K plans, thus investing about half of Americans into the stock market and creating a national obsession with the health of market indices. Regular Americans were given credit cards, allowing them to take on the sorts of debt that had previously only been available to businesses. Most crucially, American policymakers did everything possible to incentivize homeownership, from programs designed to help people afford homes to major tax breaks for homeownership and much besides.

The greatest mistake of the Obama Administration has been a futile and misguided attempt to continue these policies, rather than reorient the economy toward a more sustainable and more just future.

In terms of homeownership policy, the right move is neither to try to reinflate the housing bubble nor to foreclose people out of their homes, but to move people from ownership of a home they will never be able to pay for to renting said home at lower, more sustainable rates. This will in turn drive home prices lower (which is where they need to go), while allowing people to escape their location trap homes in pursuit of employment opportunities. Lower home prices with more difficult-to-acquire loans will in turn attract responsible buyers still currently priced out of the market, which will in turn help reinvigorate the economy over time.

Like the case of people holding onto jobs they don't want in order to continue to have private health insurance, this is another instance where "ownership society" market policy actually creates economic inefficiencies so profound that they seriously impact the real freedom of consumers and wage-earners.

The only people who are more "free" under our current laissez-faire market-driven policies are the executives of lending institutions and health insurance companies. Everyone else is trapped in jobs they don't want and houses they can't move out of, while the blowhards on Fox News accuse anyone who tries to liberate these people as enemies of "freedom."


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thereisnospoon 11/21/2011 03:04:00 PM |

 
Poll 'O The Day

by digby

A new poll has a shocking finding: "Some News Leaves People Knowing Less"

Sunday morning news shows do the most to help people learn about current events, while some outlets, especially Fox News, lead people to be even less informed than those who they don't watch any news at all...

[P]eople who watch Fox News, the most popular of the 24-hour cable news networks, are 18-points less likely to know that Egyptians overthrew their government than those who watch no news at all (after controlling for other news sources, partisanship, education and other demographic factors).

Media Matters has more:

Fairleigh Dickinson political science professor Dan Cassino stresses that because of the survey controls that were implemented, it's not true that Republicans in general were uninformed about current events. But rather it was specifically Fox viewers who scored poorly. "The results show us that there is something about watching Fox News that leads people to do worse on these questions than those who don't watch any news at all," he said.

I hate to say it, but maybe it's just that people who watch Fox news aren't all that bright in the first place?

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digby 11/21/2011 01:30:00 PM |

 
Romantic Psychosis

by digby

Boy has Krugman really hit on something today. Talking about the delusion of technocratic saviors, he says this:

I know from technocrats; sometimes I even play one myself. And these people — the people who bullied Europe into adopting a common currency, the people who are bullying both Europe and the United States into austerity — aren’t technocrats. They are, instead, deeply impractical romantics.

They are, to be sure, a peculiarly boring breed of romantic, speaking in turgid prose rather than poetry. And the things they demand on behalf of their romantic visions are often cruel, involving huge sacrifices from ordinary workers and families. But the fact remains that those visions are driven by dreams about the way things should be rather than by a cool assessment of the way things really are...

[O]ur discourse is being badly distorted by ideologues and wishful thinkers — boring, cruel romantics — pretending to be technocrats. And it’s time to puncture their pretensions.

Read the whole column. He does know from technocrats and even though he doesn't mention it, he's talking about exactly the same dynamic we saw in the run up to the Iraq war. There it was the starry-eyed Neo-cons pretending to be "realists" by invading a country in order to build their own version of Barbie's dream house.(See: Imperial Life in the Emerald City.)

These romantic delusions happen on all sides of the political spectrum but in recent years it's the gooey dreamers of the right who have been wrapping the world in their fantasies of Greatness. History shows that tends to lead in some very unpleasant directions.


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digby 11/21/2011 12:00:00 PM |

 

Occupy Art

by digby

I don't know if you've noticed some of the great poster art that's coming out of Occupy, but it's really exceptional. Meteor Blades (welcome back) has put together a wonderful post over at DKos about political posters through the ages and it features many examples both old and new.

Here are just a couple of examples:

click over for dozens more.

digby 11/21/2011 10:30:00 AM |

 
No Deal is the best deal

by digby

I'll just let Bernie Sanders explain it to Wolf Blitzer, who appears to be extremely confused by the fact that someone might have liberal principles. In fairness, it's not something he hears every day. Usually, it's a Democrat explaining that he or she is more than willing to drive the social safety net over the cliff but the other side is refusing to kick in gas money.

This is very different:

BLITZER: Do you want this so-called super committee to reach a deal, a big deal by this coming week?

SANDERS: I want them to reach a good deal, a deal that's fair to the middle class and working families of this country that does what the American people want, which says no cuts in Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid, ask the wealthiest people in this country to pay their fair share of taxes, do away with corporate loopholes so that companies making billions of dollars a year in profits start paying some taxes.

BLITZER: But as you know, the compromise in the works has always been there would be some tax increases, which is what you want, but at the same time there would be cuts in what's called entitlement spending, including Social Security and Medicare.

SANDERS: Well, I think that position is way out of line with what the American people want. I just saw a poll today. Seventy percent of Republicans, of Republicans say do not cut Social Security. Numbers are higher for Democrats and independents. In this economic moment when so many people are hurting, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are enormously important. They are life and death issues.

BLITZER: Are you open to reforms in Social Security, for example, raising the retirement age?

SANDERS: No. I'm open to reforms by lifting the cap taxable income so that millionaires contribute more into Social Security so that it will be solvent for 75 years. Let's be clear. Social security has not contributed to one nickel to the deficit. Compare every benefit for the next 25 years has a --

BLITZER: Are you open to means testing for Social Security recipients, in other words, if you're a millionaire, do you still need to get a $2,000 a month check?

SANDERS: Yes, you do. No, you know why -- no, the millionaire should be asked to contribute more into it. Once you start with millionaire, trust me, next year it'll be those making $100,000, and in 10 years it will be those making $50,000 --

BLITZER: So you don't want to touch entitlement spending at all?

SANDERS: I want to make sure that in the midst of recession, when tens of millions of people are desperately hanging on, that you don't cut those people at the knees so that they become even more desperate. The issue now, Wolf, let's be clear, the richest people in this country are doing phenomenally well, large corporation, record- breaking profits. You do not balance the budget in a civilized democratic society on the backs of the most vulnerable. You ask those people who are doing well whose effective tax rates are lower than in that case to start paying their fair share of taxes.

BLITZER: But you know even President Obama is open to some changes on Medicare and Social Security, for example, adjusting what's called the cost of living index so that there's less of increase every year to deal with --

SANDERS: President Obama is dead wrong on that issue. He should go back and listen to what he said during his campaign. You go and talk to senior citizens and you say, you know, the COLA that you're getting, it's too generous.

BLITZER: COLA is the Cost of Living Allowance.

SANDERS: Right. The Cost of Living, it's too generous. They'd say you're crazy. For two years in a row when prescription costs, health care costs were soaring, we didn't get anything. Zero is too generous? Nobody believes that. And again, the poll that I just saw, 70 percent of Republicans say do not go in that direction.

BLITZER: But based on if everyone took -- the Democrats took your position, there would be no compromise with the Republicans because they are adamant they don't want tax increases.

SANDERS: Then you go -- let's be clear, there is a situation there will be sequestration, which does not --

BLITZER: Automatic cuts, the triggers.

SANDERS: Military and others which do not begin, Wolf, until January, 2013. And then the American people can make a decision in this election, which side are they on? Do they believe and agree with Republicans that you give tax breaks to billionaires and you cut Social Security? If I were a Republican, believe me, I would not want to run on that proposal.

BLITZER: So what I hear you saying, and correct me if I'm wrong, senator, you would rather have what's called the sequestration, the trigger, the automatic cuts beginning in 2013, half defense, half non- defense, rather than some sort of compromise which would deal with entitlement spending like Social Security?

SANDERS: I would rather have no deal than a bad deal. And the deals that I'm hearing -- and in all fairness, I'm not on the committee. But what I'm hearing is revenue, maybe we get it from the middle class, maybe a little bit here and there. I'm not impressed by what I'm hearing so far.

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digby 11/21/2011 09:00:00 AM |

 
Moral High Ground

by David Atkins

The United States is truly leading the free world:

Two people were killed in Cairo and Alexandria this weekend as Egyptian activists took the streets to protest the military's attempts to maintain its grip on power. And guess how the state is justifying its deadly crackdown.

"We saw the firm stance the US took against OWS people & the German govt against green protesters to secure the state," an Egyptian state television anchor said yesterday...

Yeah—it gets harder and harder to maintain a moral high ground when videos like this and pictures like this are unavoidable.

How bad are things in Egypt? Pretty bad:

Reporting from Cairo—
Egypt is frayed, bloody and slipping toward a new revolt.

The clashes that erupted for the second day in a row Sunday between police and protesters are the most volatile challenge in months to the nation's military leaders. The anger glimpsed through the tear gas and on the bruised faces of demonstrators marked a dangerous chasm between the Egyptian people and the generals who have refused to relinquish power to a civilian government.

What is unfolding in the streets of Cairo, Suez and the coastal city of Alexandria is the compounded anger over the unrealized promise of a revolution that ousted Hosni Mubarak in February but has yet to steer the country toward a new democracy. Five people have been killed across the nation, including three Sunday in Cairo's Tahrir Square, and more than 1,000 have been injured since violence broke out on Saturday.

Security forces and military police, swinging batons, firing birdshot and driving armored personnel carriers, stormed the square late Sunday afternoon, chasing out protesters and burning tents. The troops quickly retreated and growing ranks of demonstrators returned to the area, yelling epithets against the military as darkness fell. Protesters numbered as many as 20,000 before midnight.

And the Egyptian police state authorities are using the American crackdown to legitimate protests as their justification.

I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free.

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thereisnospoon 11/21/2011 07:30:00 AM |

Sunday, November 20, 2011

 

Setting the terms

by digby

If you want to see how it's done, watch Jon Kyl set the terms of the debate:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Gregory: Secretary Panetta has said the following about the impact of that. sequester, he said, which is the process by which those automatic triggers go into place, will lead to a hollow force that in effect invites aggression. He also said in a letter to senator Mccain of armed services, the impact of these cuts would be devastating for the department of defense. as a result we would have to forumlate a new security strategy that accepted substantial risk of not meeting our defense needs. would you support a workaround of some measure that would not -- that would prevent the automatic tax cuts from going into place. excuse me, automatic lick spending cuts.

Kyl: what people should know is that one way or another we're going to have $1.2 trillion in reduced spending. it could either be done the ugly way, which would happen if our committee fails. or we could do it more intelligently. but we do have the opportunity, even if the committee fails, to work around the sequester so that we still have $1.2 trillion in savings over ten years. but it's not done in the very draconian way that secretary panetta is referring to. now that will require work on congress' part, and some agreement. but i can't imagine that, knowing of the importance of national defense, that both democrats and republicans wouldn't find a way to work through that process so way still get to $1.2 trillion in cuts, but it doesn't all fall on defense as secretary panetta pointed out.

Gregory: so you don't think the defense cuts will happen?

Kyl: well, i think there's a way to avoid that, if there's goodwill on both sides. again, i think when the reality sets in and even those democratic friends who would like to see more defense cuts, when people like secretary panetta says this would be extraordinarily bad policy for the national security of the united states, we'll find ways to work around that.

Gregory: do you feel some urgency to get this done? what about the potential of another downgrade of america's debt?

Kyl: again there's going to be $1.2 trillion in savings, whether the committee agrees on a method of doing it or it happens automatically, as you say. this shouldn't foster a downgrade or run on the market or anything like that. $1.2 trillion in savings occurs one way or the other.

Note Kyl's language: he never says 1.2 trillion in deficit reduction. He says, "cuts", "savings", "reduced spending." No taxes or revenue of any kind. He's simply asserting that this is about discretionary and mandatory domestic spending cuts, period. And that trigger obviously means nothing.

Then, you had John Kerry on right afterwards saying that the Democrats were more than willing to take a meat ax to the budget as well but they really, kind of, wanted some revenue too. It doesn't look like they are going to get even that (thank God.) But the terms of the election year debate are all going to be about how the Democrats are insisting on raising taxes. After all, the only spending cuts that are controversial anymore are the defense cuts --- which Democrats will never fight for.

In fact, the Republicans will be able to say quite honestly in their campaign ads that the Democrats want to cut social security and medicare and raise taxes.

Those are all very popular stands with the public.

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digby 11/20/2011 06:30:00 PM |

 
Virtually Speaking Sunday

by digby

It's a good pair for this week. Civil liberties and Supercommittee extravaganza:

9 pm eastern | 6 pm pacific |McJoan is back with emptywheel.

Joan McCarter and Marcy Wheeler discuss developments of the week, highlighting issues neglected or misrepresented on the Sunday morning broadcasts, drawing from their work of the prior week and the wickedly funny Bobblespeak Translations. Worth tuning in for Culture of Truth on the Most Outrageous Moment from the Sunday morning talk shows. Follow @JoanMcCarter @emptywheel.

Listen live and later on BTR

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digby 11/20/2011 05:45:00 PM |

 
Sweet 'phobe Alabama

by digby

The good news is that Alabama is equal opportunity xenophobic. The bad news is that they aren't really supposed to be:

A German manager with Mercedes-Benz is free after being arrested for not having a driver's license with him under Alabama's new law targeting illegal immigrants, authorities said Friday, in an otherwise routine case that drew the attention of Gov. Robert Bentley.

Tuscaloosa Police Chief Steven Anderson told The Associated Press an officer stopped a rental vehicle for not having a tag Wednesday night and asked the driver for his license. The man only had a German identification card, so he was arrested and taken to police headquarters, Anderson said.

The 46-year-old executive was charged with violating the immigration law for not having proper identification, but he was released after an associate retrieved his passport, visa and German driver's license from the hotel where he was staying, Anderson said.

The length of his detainment and the status of his court case weren't immediately known.

Mercedes-Benz, which is a division of Daimler AG, builds sport-utility vehicles at a large plant in Vance, about 20 miles east of Tuscaloosa. The automaker's decision to open a factory in Alabama in 1993 was considered a major coup for the state's economic development efforts and launched a trend of other foreign automakers and suppliers who opened major factories in the state, including Honda, Toyota and Hyundai.

Bentley, a Republican who signed the illegal immigration law earlier this year, called the state's homeland security director, Spencer Collier, after hearing of the arrest to get details about had happened, Collier said in an interview.
[...]
The law — parts of which were put on hold amid legal challenges — requires that police check citizenship status during traffic stops and take anyone who doesn't have proper identification to a magistrate. Anderson said that's what was done, but someone in the same situation wouldn't have been arrested before the law took effect.

"If it were not for the immigration law, a person without a license in their possession wouldn't be arrested like this," he said. Previously, drivers who lacked licenses received a ticket and a court summons, the police chief said.

Mexico issued a travel warning to its citizens thinking of visiting Arizona after it passed its draconian immigration law. Maybe European countries should think about doing that for Alabama. It's clearly a dangerous place to be a foreigner --- even if your employer provides thousands of jobs to the locals. But surely they never meant for it to impact a nice German man. (And somehow I really doubt that the GOP leadership and the Governor's office normally gets involved in these things.)

Meanwhile, I continue to be surprised to learn that individual states have created "homeland security" departments. Why do they need such a thing on top of their state and local police departments, various Federal DHS agencies plus the FBI? Alabama's DHS web site explains:

The Alabama Department of Homeland Security (AL DHS) was established by an act of the Alabama State Legislature and signed into law by Governor Bob Riley on June 18, 2003. Alabama is the first state in the Nation to create its own legislatively enacted Cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security. The head of AL DHS is Director Spencer Collier.

Alabama’s Homeland Security Department is staffed and organized to mirror the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The Alabama Department of Homeland Security is divided into four major functional areas including: Borders, Ports and Transportation; Science and Technology; Information Management and Budget; and Emergency Preparedness and Response.

The mission of the AL DHS is to work with our federal, state, and local partners to prevent acts of terrorism in Alabama, to protect lives and safeguard property, and if required, to respond to any acts of terrorism occurring in Alabama. To accomplish this mission, the Alabama Department of Homeland Security works closely with both public and private sector stakeholders in a wide range of disciplines: law enforcement, emergency management, emergency medical, fire services, public works, agriculture, public health, public safety communications, environmental management, military, transportation, and more.

Since its inception, the Alabama Department of Homeland Security has administered, throughout Alabama, over $100 million in federally appropriated homeland security grants.

Well, there you have it. A brand spanking new police agency with an incredibly broad mandate and a whole lot of money. What's not to like?

Update: I guess I'm the last to know, but Mr Google tells me that dozens of states have "Departments of Homeland Security" and they and other public safety departments are recipients of many millions of DHS grants to "fight terrorism." I knew, of course, that vast amounts of federal money was flowing to state and municipal police agencies in the wake of 9/11 but I did not realize that states were explicitly replicating the federal DHS at the state level. I guess you just can't have too many redundant policing agencies.


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digby 11/20/2011 04:30:00 PM |

 
Progressive Caucus Recertified

by David Atkins

There was a significant hubbub caused when the California Democratic Party delayed recertifying its Progressive Caucus (of which I am a member, though I wasn't present to vote on the resolution in question) after it passed a resolution encouraging a primary challenge to Barack Obama.

Much of the progressive blogosphere freaked out about this, claiming that the Party was attempting to quell dissent and expel anyone who stepped out of line. In truth, the delay in recertification at the last CDP executive board meeting in Anaheim took place in order to avoid an ugly and bruising floor fight that might have resulted in the decertification of the aucus, particularly at the hands of angry minority groups (whose constituents still strongly support the President) including the African-American Caucus.

The delay in recertification was the right move at the time, as I have said in the past. It allowed cooler heads to prevail and for rifts to be at least partially mended. And today at the CDP Executive Board meeting in Burlingame, I was proud to be among the board members to vote to recertify the Progressive Caucus in the California Democratic Party.

In any organization particularly on the Left, you'll mostly find good people usually trying through fits and starts to do the right thing. Processes often get corrupted and bad leaders can do extraordinary damage sometimes, but by and large these are real people in these organizations, giving hundreds of hours of their time for free for a cause. The CDP has been doing a fantastic job of late as one of most progressive and effective Democratic organizations in the country, and the handling of the Progressive Caucus business has been no exception.


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thereisnospoon 11/20/2011 03:00:00 PM |

 
Libertarian patriarchy

by digby

I've been given to understand that Ron Paul really does believe that the half of the population that manages to get by without a penis is entitled to liberty just as the one's who are lucky to have them. I have been skeptical of this position since he also believes that women don't have the freedom to control their own bodies and has long history of associating with Christian Reconstructionists.

I think he may have clarified his position once and for all at the Thanksgiving Family Forum:

Ron Paul (at 15:22): “Matter of fact, when the people came to Samuel and said, “Look, we need more rules and more laws. We want more government to tell us what to do and we — we need more of this.” And Samuel was old and ready to retire and he says, “No, that’s a bad mistake. You don’t need more rules and more government. You don’t need this — the government will overreact.”

And today this is what I think has happened to us. We have deferred to.. to the federal government. We have weighed too much government. We should go in other directions. Before you know it the next step — what if the next step is, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the United Nations defined marriage?”

I don’t want to go that way, I want to go back down… all the way to the family and the Church — believe me it would be a happier and more peaceful world if we went in that direction, rather than asking the government and asking the King to solve all these problems… we need the family to deal with it.

And we can take our message and learn something from the Old Testament, how there was such a strong emphasis on the Patriarchal society and the disputes settled by judges rather than looking for Big Government.”

Those really were the good old days.

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digby 11/20/2011 01:30:00 PM |