Month: October 2009

Disproportionate

by digby

Another killing. But this time, the court said the use of the taser was “disproportionate.” Apparently the man had done absolutely nothing wrong, presented no danger, had made no threats. The officers merely thought he might be mentally ill. And he screamed in agony when they shot him full of electricity five times in two minutes before he finally complied. (Of course, by “complying” I mean dying.) Therefore, they said they shouldn’t be held liable for killing him.

This is the logic that pervades the taser argument: The taser isn’t harmful so we shouldn’t be held responsible for killing people with them.

Actually this court decision is a step in the right direction. They at least held that there should be some probable cause before you kill someone with a taser. It isn’t much but it’s better than the idea that these deaths are “accidental” or caused by the police custody disease called “excited delirium.” At least they acknowledged that police can’t electrocute and kill citizens for no reason whatsoever.

Maybe someday we’ll even reach a point where courts will acknowledge that cops aren’t allowed to kill anyone for any reason but self-defense and that electro-torturing people into compliance is excessive force. It’s hard to believe it isn’t obvious that allowing police to commonly and reflexively use this level of pain, no matter how transient, is an authoritarian method worthy of the worst dystopian nightmare, but since huge numbers of people in this country seem to think the screams and terror they cause are really, really funny I guess you can’t really blame the cops for assuming it’s perfectly acceptable. The killings though, that might just be a step too far even for the jokesters. Maybe.

h/t to SM

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Accept The Pain

by digby

Greider on the scolds:

The deficit hawks are flapping their wings and making a terrible squawk about the government’s gusher of red ink. Good grief, a federal deficit of $1.4 trillion! What will become of us?

The gloom chorus includes GOP heavies and right-wing frothers, the editors of the Washington Post and other pinch-penny establishment journals, Blue Dog Democrats and even some of Barack Obama’s own advisers. Never mind the bloody mess we’re in, they insist. People should hunker down and accept their pain. Suffering is good for the soul.

This nonsense, grounded in ignorance and discredited nineteenth-century bromides, is a recipe for continuing the economy’s downward spiral and could prove poisonous for the country. The hawks claim self-righteous rectitude in their warnings, but their real intent is to stymie the very spending programs that can deliver economic recovery and relief to battered citizens. Whining about deficits is a way to halt promising talk about another substantial stimulus package, one that should be focused more concretely on job creation. That will require more deficit financing, for sure; but at a time when unemployment hovers near 10 percent and foreclosures are in hemorrhage, more is needed.

Now that GDP has blipped up a tiny bit, expect these guys to start their song and dance in earnest. Ans yet, as Greider writes, there is every reason to believe that much more is going to be needed. But as far as these true believers are concerned, the crisis has past, now it’s time to bleed the patient.

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Priorities

By digby

In case you were wondering whether the Republicans have a strategy to expand their coalition, this will give you a clue:

For the past week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s office has been looking for a Republican co-sponsor for an utterly non-controversial resolution honoring the legacy and role of Hispanic media.

None came, his office confirms. On Tuesday, Reid introduced and passed a resolution designating October 25 through October 31, 2009, the “National Hispanic Media Week” in honor of the Latino Media of America. The Nevada Democrat was joined by Sens. Robert Menendez (New Jersey), Mark Udall (Colorado) and Kirsten Gillibrand (New York) — all of whom are Democrats.

The resolution was your typical no-thrills, superficial fare that often takes up Senate business. Just last month, for instance, North Carolina’s Republican and Democratic senators (Richard Burr and Kay Hagan, respectively) introduced a resolution congratulating “the High Point Furniture Market on the occasion of its 100th Anniversary as a leader in home furnishing” (a thrilling legislative breakthrough)

They’re very busy:

Three Republican lawmakers on Monday introduced a resolution honoring participants in the Sept. 12 “tea party” protests in Washington D.C.

House Republican Conference chairman Mike Pence (Ind.), Republican Study Committee chairman Tom Price (R-Ga.), and Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) sponsored the measure, which has attracted 75 co-sponsors, whom are all Republican.

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The Stories Of The Dead

by digby

Bayh, Bayh, Bayh

by digby

Evan Bayh is being a typically insufferable DLC jackass and is making noises about joining the Republican filibuster. He’s saying that he has to be consistent and can’t vote to cut the filibuster if he plans to vote against the bill, which is balderdash. Maybe he thinks he’ll be rewarded with the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Contrarian Crank award, but his constituents wouldn’t like it much: the PCCC and Research 2000 conducted a poll:

PUBLIC OPTION: Indiana voters favor a public option 52% to 42%. Independents favor it 59% to 33%.

2010 GENERAL ELECTION: If Bayh joined Republicans in filibustering a public option, 35% of Independents would be less likely to vote for him, 13% more likely. (Nearly 3 to 1). Among Democrats, 51% to 7% (Over 7 to 1).

2010 PRIMARY: If Evan Bayh voted to filibuster a public option, 54% of Democratic voters would be less likely to vote for him in a primary. Only 6% would be more likely. (9 to 1)

INSURANCE COMPANIES: Indiana voters don’t trust insurance companies. 77% believe they put profit above the health of patients – only 11% believe they put patients’ health first. (7 to 1). 52% of voters think Bayh’s $1.5 million in campaign contributions from health and insurance interests hurt his judgment on health care – 29% say they don’t hurt his judgment.

BONUS: New research about Bayh’s history of voting for cloture and against the underlying bill.

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Family Feud

by digby

So Palin is hitting back at Levi Johnston in the press for saying that she refers to little Trig as retarded.

We have purposefully ignored the mean spirited, malicious and untrue attacks on our family. We, like many, are appalled at the inflammatory statements being made or implied. Trig is our ‘blessed little angel’ who knows it and is lovingly called that every day of his life. Even the thought that anyone would refer to Trig by any disparaging name is sickening and sad. CBS should be ashamed for continually providing a forum to propagate lies.

Notice she doesn’t exactly deny it. Just because he’s called their blessed little angel doesn’t mean they also don’t refer to him as retarded. In fact, it seems perfectly believable to me that they would without realizing that it’s no longer considered acceptable.

But what’s really notable about her comments is the last sentence. She’s right. It is irresponsible to provide a forum to propagate lies. Imagine if there existed a whole network that gave liars their own shows where they could lie every single night and even organize political activists based upon them. I certainly think that would be shameful.

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Is This Thing On?

by digby

I felt like my head was going to explode when I read this:

Moments ago, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) took to the chamber floor with a strange claim about the urgency surrounding legislation to extend unemployment insurance. “The benefits haven’t run out yet,” Kyl said. “We’re going to pass this before the benefits run out.” It’s tough to decipher exactly what he means. Roughly 400,000 folks exhausted their federal unemployment benefits in September, with another 200,000 projected to do the same by the end of October, according to a recent study by the National Employment Law Project, an advocacy group. By the end of the year, NELP estimates that 1.3 million Americans will have exhausted their benefits unless Congress steps in with an extension. Each day the Senate dallies, another 7,000 people go off the rolls.

I guess Kyl thinks these lazy bastards should just tap into their trust funds. isn’t that what everyone does?

And in case anyone doubts that the Republicans are holding a gun to the heads of the unemployed purely for political purposes, put them away:

Kyl claimed that Democrats are to blame for stalling legislation to extend unemployment benefits because party leaders are resisting consideration of several unrelated GOP amendments. “We could have been done with this bill 24 hours ago,” Kyl said. “We didn’t ask for the delay.”

Right. If the Democrats want to help these unemployed people all they have to do is pass a bunch of bills declaring ACORN a communist organization and bashing immigrants and they can have it. They only have themselves to blame if the people suffer.

And then we have the words of the man fighting for Joe Lieberman’s old position as the most sanctimonious, fatuous blowhard in the House of Lords:

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said the slow pace of the Senate is a blessing of design, shielding the country from de Tocqueville’s feared “tyranny of the majority.” “Unlimited debate. Unlimited amendment,” Alexander said. “There’s no need for the United States Senate if we don’t have that. … This is the body that protects the minority view.”

Qu’ils mangent de la brioche!

yes, it’s an inspiring thing to see “the minority” literally take the food out of people’s mouths and then brag about it. Makes you proud to be an American.

Earlier in the day, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) offered his own theory about why some lawmakers seem content to crawl toward passage of the unemployment benefits extension: they’ve simply been sheltered from the crisis. “Not very many of our colleagues really know any unemployed workers,” Brown said. “We don’t spend our time with people who are really suffering.”

Hey, Kyl’s manservant brought him a tepid cup of coffee this morning. Don’t ever say he doesn’t know about suffering.

I wish I knew why the Democrats weren’t making a big deal out of this. I know they are dealing with health care, but they aren’t going to get any Republicans on board, so there’s no need to play nice nice and this issue illustrates the painful results of the Party of No strategy perfectly. If they are afraid of the ACORN stuff then they need to get a grip. Nobody even really knows what ACORN is, but hundreds of thousands of people are suffering due to no fault of their own. There are no jobs. These Republicans are playing Russian Roulette with their lives and the public should know about it. It’s a perfect depiction of everything disgusting about the conservative philosophy.

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Bubbly Spartans

by digby

Atrios writes about a discussion of economic bubbles here at the conference. I had heard before that some economists believe that bubbles are necessary to a mature, dynamic economy, (adding, “you didn’t see bubbles in the Soviet Union, do you?”)but I didn’t know who they were: The Oracle himself, Alan “irrational exuberence” Greenspan Naturally, he didn’t worry about the effect of popping bubbles on “the parasites.” After all, they aren’t productive like hedge fund managers so they deserve to lose everything.

One of the speakers here, Suzanne Berger from MIT, made a very interesting case that even if we want more bubbles, we aren’t likely to get anything very impressive in the future because the kind of industrial innovation that used to be undertaken by private industry, such as Bell Labs, are so atrophied from the past couple of decades of short term financial pressure that they just don’t exist anymore. Therefore, it falls to the government to filo the gap — which isn’t a problem as long as the innovation has something to do with killing people or supplying an army.

In fact, we have the vast amount of federal welfare for educated white guys — defense spending — to thank for a rather large amount of the growth we have in the economy generally. Too bad Americans are mostly a bunch of overweight, mall shopping TV watchers or we’d have a future as the Sparta of the 21ast century. Our economy is gearing itself up to focus almost exclusively on war making. Support the surge, support the workers?

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Terrorist Fist Bump

by digby

From the beginning of the GWOT, I have wondered when the whole “black muslim,” Nation of Islam, prison gangs would become conflated with Islamic terrorism in the minds of racist Americans. During the campaign, the wingnuts certainly had no problem believing that Obama is a Muslim, because they simply think that all people of color are threatening and Islam is just an identification for dark enemy. The New Yorker cover and Jeremiah Wright controversies skirted around the issue a bit, but it never really got any traction.

I’m guessing this is going to give the racist wingnuts a major thrill up their legs:

After a 2-year investigation, FBI agents descended on a Dearborn warehouse Wednesday hoping to capture the suspected head of an Islamic fundamentalist group.

The scene quickly turned chaotic, however, in a shootout that caused agents to gun down Luqman Ameen Abdullah, 53, leader of the Masjid Al-Haqq mosque in Detroit. Abdullah is accused in a federal complaint of heading a Sunni Muslim group with the mission of establishing a separate Islamic nation within the United States.

Eleven other men were criminally charged in the raids, which also occurred in Detroit.

Abdullah, known to some as Christopher Thomas, died after firing on officers during the raid, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. An FBI dog also was fatally wounded.

The suspects “are members of a group that is alleged to have engaged in violent activity over a period of many years and known to be armed,” a joint statement from the Detroit FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

[…]

Abdullah, 53, of Detroit stayed true to his word Wednesday as armed FBI agents raided a Dearborn warehouse at Michigan Avenue and Miller. Four other suspects surrendered without incident. Authorities said Abdullah refused to surrender, opened fire and then died in a shootout in which an FBI dog also was killed.

“We’re not any fake terrorists, we’re the real terrorists,” Abdullah once boasted to an undercover informant, according to the affidavit.

But this is the real kicker:

Federal officials said Abdullah was the leader of a group that calls itself “Ummah, a group of mostly African-American converts to Islam, which seeks to establish a separate Sharia-law governed state within the United States.”

“The Ummah is ruled by Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, formerly known as H. Rap Brown, who is serving a state sentence … for the murder of two police officers in Georgia.”

Brown came to prominence in the 1960s as a leader of the Black Panther Party.

Read the whole thing, although by the time this is done I suspect you will know more about these guys than you ever cared to. It’s quite a story. And it’s going to feed the paranoid ravings of the toxic asylum that calls itself the right in all the predictable ways.

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TARP On Steroids

by digby

I am attending the Making it In America conference and heard a bit of news that’s pretty depressing. Apparently, this new bill to allegedly end the “too big to fail” actually institutionalizes it. I shouldn’t be surprised but I keep clinging to hope that the Democrats aren’t going to whiff on this issue. Not gah happen.

Here’s Mike Elk writing from the conference:

After leading the dramatic three day Showdown in Chicago at the American Bankers Association (ABA) Convention in Chicago, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka will head to the House Financial Service Committee today to testify against proposed reform legislation that actually gives the banks more power. In a twist of irony, he literally sit down the table from American Bankers Association Ed Yingling as he testifies against the banksters.

After weakening current law on derivatives., the committee has once again weakened law in the banker’s favor. The drafted legislation concerning banks “too big to fail” which would actually lead to more bailouts over the long run.

In an advance copy of AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka’s prepared testimony that I obtained, Trumka will tesify that:

The discussion draft appears to take the most problematic and unpopular aspects of the TARP and makes them the model for permanent legislation.

Essentially the legislation would weaken regulation and lead to the conditions in which the American people would be forced to bail out the banks again. As Trumka testifies:

The discussion draft would appear to give power to the Federal Reserve to preempt a wide range of rules regulating the capital markets – power which could be used to gut investor and consumer protections.

Trumka goes onto explain in vivid details how the Federal Reserve with its lack of accountability has traditionally acted in the interests of the banks:

The Federal Reserve currently is the regulator for bank holding companies. In that capacity, it was responsible throughout the period of the bubble for regulating the parent companies of the nation’s largest banks. While regulatory authority rests in the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve in Washington, routine responsibility for regulatory oversight has been delegated by the Board of Governors to the regional Federal Reserve Banks. The Federal Reserve System’s regulatory expertise resides in these regional banks.

The problem is that these regional Federal Reserve Banks are actually controlled by their member banks – the very banks whose holding companies the Fed regulates. The member banks control the selection of the majority of the regional bank boards, and the boards pick the regional bank president, who are effectively the CEO’s of the regulatory staff…

Giving the Federal Reserve with its current governance control over which financial institutions are bailed out in a crisis is effectively giving the banks the ability to raid the Treasury for their own benefit.

Trumka explains how the proposed legislation would incredibly give the big banks more of an incentive to take risky bets in order to drive out their competition:

read on …

Evidently, it’s been decided that accountability means giving more power to the unelected bankers that run the federal reserve just in case the plebes get a little bit too big for their britches.

I keep asking people what the motive is for all this. Is it shock doctrine, greed, fear, political strategy, slave mentality … what? What is the real reason that, at every step of the way, the government has not just enabled the Masters of the Universe, but actively, openly protected and promoted them? I have concluded that we are dealing with a similar dynamic as that which led to the Iraq war — everybody’s got a different reason for doing the wrong thing. And I’m pretty sure that the end result will be just as good.

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