Month: May 2010

Blue America Saturday — chat with Marcy Winograd

by digby

Howie’s hosting Blue America endorsee Marcy Winograd today over at Crooks and Liars at 11am pdt 2pm edt.

Howie Klein writes:

Last week Marcy asked Jane Harman, the Blue Dog who currently holds the seat, to join her in calling on businesses and residents of the 36th District to boycott Arizona convention facilities and hotels in an effort to reverse anti-immigrant legislation. Harman ignored her and Marcy pressed on on her own.

“If Arizona is allowed to enact laws that promote racial profiling, other states may pass discriminatory laws, as well. That would be a travesty of justice, not only for immigrants summarily stopped and searched for citizenship papers, but for all of us who value civil rights and equality under the law… Rather than passing discriminatory state laws that scapegoat immigrants, we should support federal legislation for comprehensive immigration reform.”

That video up top is the one minute version of what will be a 30 second spot Blue America plans to run. When you donate to the Blue America PAC it will help us get it on television. If you donate to the Winograd campaign, it will help them run their grassroots-oriented campaign, like the phone-banking Marcy talks about below. You can do either– or both– at the Blue America ’10 page.

If you have more time than money to spare, the campaign could use that too. Winograd is asking for help with phone banking to get the people in her district to start voting on Monday by mail. As Howie notes:

More and more frequently, elections are being won and lost based on absentee and early voting. In CA-36 approximately a third of the voters will vote by mail. And among older voters that number skyrockets to close to 40%.

Watch the following for instructions on how you can help in these crucial days leading up to the primary:

And be sure to join the gang over at C&L at 11 to chat with Marcy online.

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Agent Goldilocks

by digby

What’s the point of this?

The Obama Administration is applying an old exception to the Miranda rule in a new way in order to interrogate terrorism suspects before reading them their rights, several experts tell TPMmuckraker, finding what one law professor calls a “middle ground” between those who want suspects put through the criminal justice system and those who believe they should be classified as “enemy combatants.”

Federal agents questioned both Faisal Shahzad, the man accused of planting a makeshift bomb in Times Square, and Umar Abdulmutallab, the failed Christmas Day bomber, under the so-called public safety exception to the Miranda rule for substantial periods before informing the men of their right to remain silent, and to an attorney.

Information gleaned during questioning under the public safety exception — in which police “ask questions reasonably prompted by a concern for the public safety,” according to the 1984 Supreme Court case that recognized the exception — is admissible at trial.

“It looks like to me they’re trying to find this middle ground between saying the Constitution applies with full force and the Constitution doesn’t apply,” says Sam Kamin, a professor of criminal law and procedure at Sturm College of Law in Denver who has written about terrorism interrogations. “It seems to be a deliberate strategy.”

The 5th and 6th amendments still exist whether or not the cops mirandize these suspects. Al;l that happen if they fail to properly inform them of their rights, it jeopardizes the cases in court. The government doesn’t get to decide a “middle ground” between when the Constitution does and doesn’t apply. At least not yet.

Has anyone seen “In The Name Of The Father” lately?

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Joined At The Hip Even Today

by digby

There seems to be something of a misapprehension among Americans about the influence of Big Business in our politics began in the 1980s. It’s true that this gilded age really took off when the Reagan Revolution hit and they instituted their frenzy of deregulation and tax cuts. But it had long been in the works.

This comes from a speech by GE Chief Jeff Immelt at the Ronald Reagan centennial celebration, which GE is helping to sponsor:

Mr. Reagan walked every assembly line at GE. Every single one. He had lunch with employees in the cafeteria. He listened. He wowed managers and impressed our customers. He hit the Rotary, the local Chamber of Commerce, the Kiwanis, and the Elks.

Our CEO at the time, Ralph Cordiner, told Mr. Reagan: “I am not ever going to censor anything you say. You are speaking for yourself. Say what you believe.”

And so he did, writing and delivering the message that would become known as “The Speech,” his testament of faith in the virtues and abilities of free people and the great country they
had built. In 1964, he gave a famous version of that speech before a national audience on behalf of presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, and began one of the most successful American political careers of the 20th century.

GE saw his roving ambassadorship as a way to engage with its workforce. Mr. Reagan saw it as an education.

he had been interested in politics long before that, of course. He was a union leader. But when GE hired him they were grooming him. And he delivered.

Go poke around at that site for a while to get a sense of just how entwined General Electric and Reagan really were. It’s very creepy.

h/t MS

Clues In The Runes

by digby

There’s a lot of talk today about the White House settling on Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court, along with some fairly alarming reports that she didn’t care about diversity when she was the dean of Harvard Law. This doesn’t speak well of her, especially since she is such a blank slate that such actions tend to be the only clues we have about her worldview. (I have assumed that if Obama ends up nominating her we will know for sure that he’s decided to run for the hills in anticipation of a right wing surge, which only means he’s decided on appeasement rather than leadership. Surprise.)

This, however, makes me wonder if she wasn’t highly recommended by the people the administration most wants to please:

A top prospect for the Supreme Court was a paid member of an advisory panel for the embattled investment firm Goldman Sachs, federal financial disclosures show. Solicitor General Elena Kagan was a member of the Research Advisory Council of the Goldman Sachs Global Markets Institute, according to the financial disclosures she filed when President Obama appointed her last year to her current post. Kagan served on the Goldman panel from 2005 through 2008, when she was dean of Harvard Law School, and received a $10,000 stipend for her service in 2008, her disclosure forms show. A spokesman for Goldman Sachs did not respond to requests for comment Monday. The advisory panel met once a year to discuss public policy issues and was not involved in any investment decisions, Justice Department spokesman Tracy Schmaler said.

I’m not sure if that exonerates her or implicates her. Goldman’s stand on public policy issues are as much a problem as their investments. And there was plenty of public policy during these years that should have been questioned. By itself it doesn’t say much, but when you choose a stealth candidate, you have to make your judgments on what you have.

And by the way, this will give the Republicans a chance to raise the populist flag in the confirmation hearings. If the White House wants to play electoral politics with this, can’t they at least do it in a way that actually benefits the Democrats?

Update: So I’m told by various people that Kagan is the only confirmable possibility. I would love to know why that should be true. The Republicans have had little trouble since Bork confirming far right federalist society clones, whether they had a Democratic or Republican Senate. It doesn’t seem logical to me that there isn’t room for an unabashed liberal on the court with a 59 vote majority in the Senate.

Kagan is an unknown quantity, unlike Roberts and Alito who were clearly both conservative a highly political. Yet Bush managed to get them confirmed. I guess I just don’t understand the double standard when it comes to Democrats and I refuse to capitulate to the common wisdom that says no Democratic president can ever confirm a known liberal.

Moreover, I think Supreme Court confirmation battles are ideologically instructive for the nation and are one of the few times when it’s possible for people to speak at length about their philosophical worldview. Liberals have to stop running from this. Allowing the other side to define us is killing us.

There are a lot of people who have misgivings over Kagan and I think they’re worth listening to. I don’t know if she is conservative or not. Nobody does. But somebody who has reached her level and hasn’t staked out a clear position is worrisome.

I’d really like to see Obama nominate one of the liberals and have real fight over it going into the election. I don’t know why everyone assumes that we will always lose but it’s certain that we will if we don’t try.

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Shifting Coalitions In The Sausage Casing

by digby

Dday makes an important and valuable distinction as we look forward to the Senate vote next week on the Sanders compromise on the Fed audit. It’s important to keep in mind that when disparate political players coalesce around legislative issues they often have different goals in mind. Therefore, when compromises are struck, a new coalition often forms around the new legislation.

Ron Paul, a fake libertarian, Goldbug John Bircher, has a very different agenda than progressives on almost everything and his support for auditing the Fed is based upon different goals. Therefore, when the legislation changed in ways that don’t advance that goal he is unhappy. Dday explains:

Now I know Ron Paul and some libertarians are angered by [the Sanders] deal. But understand that Ron Paul doesn’t want an audit of the Federal Reserve. He wants to end the Federal Reserve. The best-selling book “End the Fed” that he wrote tipped me off to this. He wants to go back to hard-money policies and a return to the gold standard. Now, you can argue that this would end the cartel of central bankers scheming with their monetary policy, or that it would turn US monetary policy into the inflation-uber-alles laissez-faire mess we’re seeing in Europe that is threatening a global depression. The consequences for Paul’s favored end-state would be catastrophic if implemented in real time. This Fed is failing in different ways – and their actions should draw more scrutiny – but eliminating it would return us to the Stone Age.

And so you should probably know who you’re dealing with. There’s no good reason for the restrictions on this particular audit, but in its streamlined form, it seeks to answer one question – what did the Fed do on an emergency basis with two trillion dollars in taxpayer money. Not only does the Sanders amendment force an answer to that question, it opens it up to public scrutiny in ways that Paul-Grayson didn’t. As Baker says, this is a beginning and not an ending for transparency and accountability.

David Vitter may offer the original proposal for a vote and more power to him. But an audit really is just an audit. Ron Paul wanted to use an audit as a tool to destroy the Fed.

Progressive economists call the compromise a “big victory.” Paul’s balking because the legislation no longer fits his agenda. That’s fine. The senate came on board because of the changes and the conference will probably change it again. This is just plain old sausage making that benefits the progressive side for once. Unless one actually agrees with Ron Paul’s kooky Fed obsession, there’s no reason to care what he thinks about it.

Update: Alan Grayson, co-sponsor of the bill in the House issued a statement:

If Senator Sanders’ Federal Reserve Transparency Amendment passes in its current form, as we hope and expect, then America will finally find out about every secret bailout and ‘help for our friends’ slush fund established and perpetrated by the Federal Reserve in the past three years. This includes not only the so-called “Section 13(3) facilities,” but importantly, foreign currency swaps and mortgage-backed securities as well.
The Fed will be brought to account for its favoritism for the benefit of huge failed banks from 2007 through today. We expect that when we finally see what the Federal Reserve has been up to, the public will be outraged. Releasing this information will show that the Federal Reserve’s arguments for secrecy are — and have always been — a ruse, to cover up the handing out of hundreds of billions of dollars like party favors to the Wall Street institutions who brought the American economy to the brink of ruin. The continued government lobbying against the Sanders Amendment should end now. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke doesn’t want an audit because Ben Bernanke doesn’t want to be audited. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, the former head of the New York Fed, doesn’t want an audit because Tim Geithner doesn’t want to be audited. This is stating the obvious. But we cannot let legislation be determined by the personal vested interest of high government officials. What matters is not what’s good for them, but what’s good for America. Yet when it does pass, the Sanders Amendment is only a partial victory. The most important improvement over what the Sanders Amendment offers would be to subject the Fed to audit for what it does going forward. To say that America can learn about only what the Fed has done already is like trying to drive a car by looking only in the rearview mirror. The Fed is an institution that has the power to hand out hundreds of billions of dollars on a whim. Because of that power, the Fed must always be subject to independent audit — completely, and without reservation..

Polling For A Plan

by digby

One of my readers sent me this rather astonishing email:

Yesterday evening we got a phone call at our home. My wife answered it and
asked me if I felt like taking a survey about oil companies. She said they
wanted to speak to the man of the house. [!!!]

I took the call and it quickly began to sound to me like this was public opinion
research being done by BP to figure out the best way to address the disaster
from a PR perspective.

I was asked how I felt about Exxon, Chevron, Shell, and BP. I was asked if I
had heard about a problem in the Gulf of Mexico. I was asked who’s fault I
thought it was. If you wanted me to, I could spend a few minutes trying to
remember more of the questions and the order that they came in, but the ones
that impressed me the most came near the end– They surveyor presented about
five different engineering responses to the leak, mostly they were the ones that
have been discussed in the news reports, and after each one wanted to know if I
thought that this tactic would help to solve the problem or not.

I was genuinely shocked by this. I mean, it’s one thing to spin information,
and use research data to determine a PR strategy. That’s bad enough, I guess,
but whatever. We’re used to that. But why on earth would they care whether I
think this or that disaster management technique would work or not? I’m a child
psychiatrist, not a deep sea drilling expert! I just want the problem to go
away! I don’t know what they’re going to do about it, I’m just praying that
there’s something that they CAN do about it.

I’m still trying to get my head around this. Maybe they really have so little
idea about what to do about this that figuring out what will sound best to the
public is their best way to decide how to proceed?

I’m also hard pressed to understand why pollsters would ask questions that way if they weren’t trying to determine which disaster management techniques would sell the best to to the public. And that is a very, very weird thing to do in the middle of the disaster.

Now, I don’t know who might have been doing this. But we do know the name of one polling and PR outfit working with BP. From Michael Moore:

It’s the Corporate Cash, Stupid; BP’s bogus “Beyond Petroleum” greenwashing campaign was “planned and evaluated” by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, a Democratic PR firm run by veterans of the Clinton administration

I actually have no problem with PR firms being mercenaries. That’s kind of what they do. But I do object to PR firms selling their partisan credentials to help those who hold values which are diametrically opposed by the majority of the Party they pretend to represent. I suppose that selling your services as a beard may be considered a form of PR, but it isn’t exactly honest or respectable.

Meanwhile, while BP tries to figure out what plan child psychiatrists prefer, the Gulf gets slicker and slicker and slicker ….

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Warniing: Arizona May Be Hazardous To Your Health

by tristero

Turns out there’s E. coli in our vegetables again. Guh-ross:

The FDA is focusing its investigation on lettuce grown in Arizona as a possible source for the outbreak…

E. coli conservatives indeed.

Here We Go Again

by tristero

Every 20 years or so, there comes along some damn fool who thinks a sensible morality can be derived from science. Sam Harris is the latest. You might ask: Is that the same Sam Harris who wrote In Defense of Torture? Yeah, that’s him.

For reasons I don’t quite understand, people I respect, like PZ Myers, take Harris seriously enough to argue with him. I won’t. Suffice it to say that there is something genuinely demented about this strange but all-too-common urge to ground a theory of morality in a non-human reality.

There lie monsters.

The Banks Are Too Big Too Fail

by digby

Brown-Kaufman got only 33 votes. I can’t tell you how this shocks me to the bone. No one could have predicted such a strange and unexpected outcome.

This was never going to happen folks. I know that’s depressing, but it’s true. It would have required that either the political class believed the people would revolt if they didn’t do something drastic or that our financial overlords saw some advantage in it. It probably would have taken both of those conditions for passage and neither were present. You’d certainly think that the public and the bankers would be spooked enough by the instability we’re seeing everywhere to have finally realized that we need to shore up the system as a whole, but they just aren’t. Yet. Sometimes it takes a while for things to become clear:

I’m not saying this is what’s happening. But it’s clear that the banksters don’t think anything terribly serious has transpired. So perhaps the problem is that like most gambling addicts, they just haven’t hit bottom yet.

The Audit The Fed bill seems to have lived to see another day. Dday has the details, to the extent we know them.

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This Is News?

by digby

Signs of Neanderthals Mating With Humans

This should have settled any question about that a long time ago.

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