Month: March 2011

Hungering For Recovery

by digby

I’m thinking that winning the future might mean that this doesn’t happen in the richest country in the world:

One in five Californians struggled to afford enough food for themselves and their families last year, according to a new report by the Food Research and Action Center.

The rate in California was slightly higher than the national average of 18%.

Jim Weill, president of the Washington-based nonprofit, said the figures underscore the need for a strong nutrition safety net — including food stamps and school meals — for families that continue to struggle as the economy begins to recover.

“While the nation’s Great Recession may have technically ended in mid-2009, it has not yet ended for many of the nation’s households,” Weill said in a statement Thursday. “For them, 2010 was the third year of a terrible recession that is widely damaging the ability to meet basic needs.”

The report was based on data collected for the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, which conducted telephone interviews with more than 350,000 people in 2010, including 35,543 people in California.

Just over 20% of California respondents answered yes to the question: “Have there been times in the past 12 months when you did not have enough money to buy food that you or your family needed?”

That places the state at No. 16 in the nation for food hardship, the report said. The highest rate was recorded in Mississippi, where nearly 28% said they did not always have enough money to buy food. The lowest rate, just over 10%, was in North Dakota.

The best case scenario is only 10% of North Dakotans didn’t have enough money to buy food in the last year. Somehow that just doesn’t seem right to me in a nation which boasts hundreds of different brands of mascara and diet soda. It seems to me that a country that wealthy should be able to ensure that all its citizens have enough money for basic necessities — food, roof, doctor.

But when you have this, hunger follows:

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Sunday Read: Chris Hayes on The Village

by digby

If you read no other article on this lazy Sunday afternoon, read this one by Chris Hayes in The Nation about why Washington doesn’t care about jobs. It validates something someone pointed out to me long ago about one of the reasons the Europeans have had a welfare state and the US doesn’t: their parliamentary form of government and strict campaign laws make it so they draw more from the middle classes for their leadership.

There are lot’s of possibilities for why this is so, and I would imagine it’s a combination of the things Hayes sets forth and maybe a few more. Perhaps there’s something in certain people’s psyches that desire royalty and if you don’t have some sort of figure heads playing those roles, people will naturally start treating those with real power as monarchs — and they’ll start acting that way in return. Or maybe it’s just that American politics costs so much that only the rich or the corrupt can usually afford to participate. Certainly, our extreme income inequality is taking those who have money further and further away from the concerns of the ordinary American and since our political leaders and media stars are among them, that naturally makes them less able to relate to ordinary Americans.

Whatever the reasons, we have a ruling elite that is more and more out of touch as we can see with the fatuous blather from the celebrity Village pundits who drone on and on about “shared sacrifice” while extolling the virtues of tax cuts for themselves and cuts in Social Security for the rest of us. The dissonance is downright disorienting to those of out here in the rest of America.

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Losing to the DC

by digby

I don’t know if this is true, but it is certainly a good plan for Boehner:

–E.J. Dionne, in next Monday’s column, sees “perverse genius” in the GOP approach: “Boehner can just sit back and smile benignly as Democrats battle over which concessions they should give him. When the negotiating gets tough, he can sadly warn that his freshmen need more because he can’t guarantee what they’ll do. The perpetually tanned one is a shrewd dude. Democrats who underestimate him will only be playing into his hands.”

Democrats could play their own games, of course, for instance by trying to line up some Tea Partiers to oppose war spending or corporate tax breaks. Unfortunately, that would probably open the door for the president to make a deal with the rest of Republicans to protect war funding and corporate tax breaks. (Think NAFTA) These games are much easier for the Republicans since the president has already signaled that he’s willing to deal on their terms as long as they will “regretfully” give up some extreme strawman legislation to throw to his base as evidence of sharp negotiating.

I wrote yesterday about the fact that we are looking at a pending “deal” which, when combined with the extension of the Bush tax cuts, adds up to an economic program of massive tax and spending cuts. And as this post by Lawrence Lewis at DKos points out, this is a Republican program:

The problem is that, on economic issues, DC Democrats have forgotten how to be Democrats. By making the Bush tax cuts their own, they have removed even from discussion the most obvious means of addressing any fiscal issues. And it isn’t confined to the White House. Congressional Democrats are playing along by accepting those short-term budget cuts for a mere delay in the shutdown showdown, signaling as the White House already did with the tax cuts that the Republicans can get their way by playing hardball. But is it really only the Republicans’ way? That’s the question. And while some Democratic governors are attempting a more responsible approach, their efforts are being hampered by those Obama tax cuts:

Struggling states could lose as much as $5.3 billion in tax collections during the next few years in an unintended consequence of one of the lower-profile federal tax cuts that President Obama enacted in December, according to a report released Tuesday. The tax-cut package the president signed in December is best known for extending the Bush-era tax rates for two years and giving a one-year payroll tax cut to most Americans. But it included a business tax cut that could blow a hole in state budgets: a provision allowing businesses to deduct the full value of new equipment purchases from their taxes through 2011.

Those Democratic governors deserve a lot of credit, because the politics of supporting responsible tax increases is not easy when a Democratic White House and its Congressional allies have removed tax increases from the federal conversation and are actually doing the exact opposite by promoting tax cuts at the same time they’re ostensibly concerned about deficits. Tax cuts that are making the jobs of those Democratic governors even more difficult.

And guess what? I’m sure you’ve noticed that these actions haven’t made the Republican governors any less hostile. As with their DC brethren, you give them an inch and they … bust unions.

Given that the Republicans don’t appear to have a standard bearer who can beat President Obama, it would seem that the administration is likely to slide into re-election with a tepid economic recovery under the banner of bipartisan compromise. It’s a “fingers-crossed” strategy and perhaps it will even work. Capitalism usually does equalize an economy over time, and maybe sheer luck will ensure that this one equalizes fairly quickly by historical standards. (Usually, however, it takes a long time and we all know where we’ll be when that happens, don’t we?) Let’s hope so for the sake of ordinary Americans who really need a break.

But it won’t change the fact that slashing spending for the middle class and taxes for the well-recovered wealthy is not really an effective way to deal with recession. Indeed, it’s not an effective way to deal with the debt either. The less ordinary people make, the less taxes they pay after all. With taxes for the wealthy off the table, this debt is self-perpetuating. Unfortunately, the efficacy of slashing spending and taxes on the wealthy will will become conventional wisdom now that Democrats have signed on to the program and the disaster capitalists will have won their war against egalitarianism and redistribution. The Democrats didn’t even put up a fight.

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Bachman’s MTP Debut

by digby

God I hope she runs:

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

I’m thinking that Beck-Bachman ticket is looking very promising.

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Saturday Night At The Movies

Nutted by reality: The Adjustment Bureau

By Dennis Hartley

Agents of fortune: Damon gets grilled by the hat squad

Do to others as you would have them do to you
-Luke 6:31

Do what thou wilt
-Aleister Crowley

Doo-be- doo-be-do
-Frank Sinatra

There is a post-film noir, contemporary film subgenre that I like to call Guys with Fedoras. A Guys with Fedoras film is usually sub-headed under (although not necessarily restricted to) the sci-fi genre. Think along the lines of Dark City , The Matrix , or A Beautiful Mind. When the Guys with Fedoras show up in those films, you just know that the protagonist’s world is about to be shaken up. The rug is about to pulled out from someone’s feet, and anything could happen. Up is down, down is up. These guys are the reality benders, the cerebral copulators, the puppet masters. They may very well be, in fact, the nebulous “they” who are so often referenced by someone who is deep in the throes of delusional paranoia (or of fervent prayer-in which case “they” may be referred to as “angels” or “demons” depending on how your day is going). That is, if you believe in that sort of thing. At any rate, it does bring up interesting questions, like “What is reality?” Or, “Am I really the master of my own fate?” Or, perhaps of most importance, “Does this explain why my iPhone picks the most inopportune moment to drop my call?”

All these conundrums and a large orange soda are incorporated into The Adjustment Bureau, a film perhaps best described as a “sci-fi romantic thriller”. This marks the directing debut for screenwriter George Nolfi (Bourne Ultimatum, Ocean’s Twelve), who has adapted from a short story by the late Philip K. Dick entitled “The Adjustment Team”. The result? Well, it ain’t Blade Runner) (or even Total Recall), but it is an engaging (if not 100% original) diversion that breezes along amiably, like a lightweight mash-up of Wings of Desire, The Truman Show, and Bedazzled (and I refer to the Peter Cook/Dudley Moore version, of course). Matt Damon settles in comfortably with his role as New York politician David Norris (a Brooklyn native) who is running for the U.S. Senate. Young, handsome, energetic and blessed with a winning persona, he looks to be a shoo-in…until he’s ratfucked by a NYC rag (a certain Rupert Murdoch property, I believe) when they unearth and publish a revealing frat party photo from his college days.

Consequently, the mood at David’s campaign HQ on election night is less than joyous. Just prior to delivering his official concession speech, he ducks into a washroom to steal a few moments of privacy to collect his thoughts, and “meets cute” with a charismatic ballerina (Emily Blunt). Like many of us who have had the occasion to bump into charismatic ballerinas in the men’s washroom, David instantly falls head over heels-and the feeling appears to be mutual. It’s Damon and Blunt’s (and the film’s) best scene; buoyed by some well-written and tightly delivered repartee that recalls the flirtatious and sophisticated exchanges between Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint in North by Northwest (it’s a shame that the chemistry between our two leads peaks so early in the proceedings).

Before the two blushing lovebirds can arrange their first date, however, duty calls-and David has to go give his Big Speech, and Elise (the name of our washroom-lurking ballerina) has to flee before security catches up with her (don’t ask). David, inspired by the chance encounter, gives the speech of his political career; snatching a kind of PR victory from the jaws of defeat. Now, things are looking up for David…until he’s ratfucked by the Guys with Fedoras, who now enter the picture. Actually, they are much more subtle in their meddling ways than, say, the New York Post. You see, “they” are not out to shower malevolence onto David’s life; in fact they are only “authorized” to make the tiniest little “adjustments”, here and there, to assure that everybody on the planet follows their destiny, as has been pre-ordained by their boss, who is only referred to as “The Chairman”. Are you following all this so far? Now, as omniscient and all-powerful as these self-described “case workers” appear to be, they can still be trumped by Chance. It was Chance that David and Elise’s paths crossed; turns out that they are not pre-ordained to be together, and this has got the Guys with Fedoras’ underwear all in a bunch. Any further elaboration risks spoilers; suffice it to say that if Chance trumps the agents of fate, I think there is a general consensus that Love Conquers All. An existential game of cat and mouse ensues between David and these forces that are “conspiring” against him.

So, despite the dark and visionary sci-fi pedigree behind the source material and a $50 million budget, is this just a glorified update of It’s a Wonderful Life? After all, wasn’t Clarence the Angel a sort of a benevolent “adjustor”, a case worker assigned by the “boss” to nudge Jimmy Stewart back onto his Pre-Ordained Path? Although the “G” word is never mentioned in Nolfi’s film, it’s pretty clear that the “Chairman” represents You-Know-Who (although every time the Chairman was mentioned, I kept visualizing Ralph Richardson’s marvelously droll Supreme Being in Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits).

I still can’t decide whether writer-director Nolfi is telegraphing a sort of weirdly fundamental Christianist message; especially since it is implied that if David insists on pursuing and consummating the love of his life, he does so at the expense of not only the bright political future that apparently has been pre-ordained for him, but the fabulous fame and fortune that Elise is “destined” for in her chosen profession (the catch being, he has, by pure chance, stumbled into the man behind the curtain and learned about the Chairman’s “plans” for them, while she remains oblivious). The message seems to be that they are not “allowed” to have both. Mustn’t go against the will of God, you know, and give in to Temptation-or you’ll be tossed out of the garden (although, in this case, I can’t figure out if David and Elise are supposed to be Adam and Eve…or Edward and Mrs. Simpson). Then again, I could be projecting subtext into the film that isn’t really there (OMG-does that mean I’m “adjusting”?!). All that speculation aside, I think if you are a sci-fi fan, you will enjoy the ride. It’s also refreshing to see a reality-bending thriller that doesn’t O.D. on CGI and stuff blowing up (there is some violence, but none of it is fatal-which I found to be a pleasant surprise as well). And hey, any film featuring the ever-entertaining Terrence Stamp (playing a kind of super-Ninja adjuster) can’t be all bad, eh?

The Chairman?

Previous posts with related themes:

A Scanner Darkly
Inception

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Mama Grizzly, Poppa Bear and the wolfpack

by digby

Looks like there’s trouble in paradise. Dave Neiwert reports:

It’s hard to say why it happened, but all of a sudden Bill O’Reilly decided last night to stop tossing Sarah Palin the usual softball questions and Hannity Jobs she’s become accustomed to during her tenure at Fox News. He asked her to finally get specific instead of bloviating in vague generalities about where and how she’s achieve the budget cuts she’s calling for. It made for the entertaining sight of the Mama Grizzly growling at the Poppa Bear:

Neiwert writes:

[Y]ou have to wonder how much longer Palin is going to enjoy her free ride at Fox. If O’Reilly is toughening up on her, that probably means Roger Ailes is getting close to throwing her to the wolves.

And I doubt that they’ll be gentle:

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Even Saint Reagan …

by digby

The right wing hissy fit brewing over the administration’s refusal to defend DOMA is going to be very impressive. John Boehner is thumping his chest and promising to step in. But it’s important to remember that this administration isn’t the first to do this:

During the Eisenhower, Kennedy and Truman administrations, the presidents, in one form or another, refused to defend separate-but-equal facilities in schools and hospitals. The Ford Justice Department refused to defend the post-Watergate campaign finance law, much of which was subsequently upheld by the Supreme Court. The Reagan administration refused to defend the independent counsel law, a law subsequently upheld by the Supreme Court by a 7-to-1 vote. It also refused to defend the one-house legislative veto of many executive actions; in that case, the administration was more successful, winning 7–2 in the Supreme Court. The Clinton administration refused to defend a federal law mandating the dismissal of military personnel who were HIV-positive. The George W. Bush administration refused to defend a federal law that denied mass-transit funds to any transportation system that displayed ads advocating the legalization of marijuana. And in the George H.W. Bush administration, the Justice Department refused to defend a federal law providing affirmative action in the awarding of broadcasting licenses — a law subsequently upheld by the Supreme Court by a narrow 5–4 vote.

Depending on how you look at it, this may or may not be an appropriate thing to do. But one thing is sure: it isn’t a unique, socialistic power grab by the Muslim terrorist usurper. Not that Boehner’s minions will believe that.

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The Sound Of No Hands Clapping

by digby

I’m seeing a lot of chatter recently about how we all need to chill out because there’s no way that the draconian budget cuts, defunding of Planned Parenthood or cutting of Social Security is going to happen because all the Republicans really want to do is to slash the budget by a hundred million. And since the administration has already anted up half of that they’ll end up compromising somewhere in between 50 and 100 bill. And then, presumably, Barack Obama will be again hailed as a hero for avoiding a government shutdown and we’ll all be required to clap harder and revere his masterful negotiating skills.

But that’s ridiculous. First, considering the Democrats’ recent record of crack negotiating of there’s no guarantee that some of the culture war issues or social security cuts won’t be in a final deal. But even if they aren’t, what this adds up to is that last December, with a Democratic House and Senate our president agreed to extend massive tax cuts for the richest Americans and then in March, with only a Democratic Senate he agreed to massive spending cuts. I’m not really sure why I should applaud such a thing, particularly in light of the fact that every economist I respect says that this is the opposite of what any pragmatic technocratic, common sense leader would do in our current economic situation, much less a transformational progressive Democrat. I’m sorry, no clapping from me. The idea that we are supposed to accept the nonsensical idea that massive tax cuts for the rich combined with massive spending cuts to essential programs for ordinary Americans is a “victory” under those circumstances just doesn’t make sense.

I understand the politics, but it’s simply not correct to say that the only possible way to govern is to slash spending, cut taxes and gush a lot of happy talk about “investments” and “winning the future” while hoping against hope that the economy improves enough (and the opposition is lame enough) to get reelected. Not when you have the presidency, the US Senate and a fractious, divided, opposition that should be easily leveraged against itself.

Last session I was told that the president was powerless without more than 60 votes in the Senate and even then there wasn’t much he could do. Now, he’s powerless in the face of a GOP majority in the House and the smaller majority in the Senate will save us all from the Teabag dystopia. At this point I would think that the executive branch is fairly useless and we ought to get rid of it except for the odd fact that it seems to be able to function quite efficiently when the GOP is in power.

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How to force a false confession

by digby

Establishing the baseline state is important to demonstrate to the HVD that he has no control over basic human needs. The baseline state also creates in the detainee a mindset in which he learns to perceive and value his personal welfare, comfort, and immediate needs more than the information he is protecting. The use of conditioning techniques do not generally bring immediate results; rather, it is the cumulative effect of these techniques, used over time and in combination with other interrogation techniques and intelligence exploitation methods, which achieve interrogation objectives. These conditioning techniques require little to no physical interaction between the detainee and the interrogator. The specific interrogation techniques are:

a. Nudity. The HVD’s clothes are taken and he remains nude until the interrogators provide clothes to him.

–CIA memo describing combined interrogation techniques, December 30, 2004

I have often thought that one of the problems with our obsessive focus on waterboarding was that we may have inadvertently legitimized all the other torture techniques they used. It’s a common problem in advocacy — you focus on the worst because it’s the thing that will instantly convey the horror of the practice, but in the process you normalize lesser horrors that are just as wrong. It’s a problem for which I have no solution. It happens all the time.

The case of Bradley Manning may be illustrative of that. He’s been held, without charges, under punitive conditions that mirror in some respects the treatment of terrorist suspect detainees in the nation’s foreign prison camps. However, he isn’t being waterboarded, so there is resistance to the idea that this is torture. But it is:

“Removal of clothing was authorized by the Secretary of Defense [Rumsfeld] for use at GTMO [Guantánamo] on December 2, 2002,” acknowledges the recently released U.S. Senate Armed Service Committee report on the use of harsh interrogation techniques. It also reports that the use of prolonged nudity proved so effective that, in January 2003, it was approved for use in Afghanistan and, in the fall of 2003, was adopted for use in Iraq.“Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody”

The Senate report came out shortly after a secret International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) report on CIA torture techniques used as part of its detention program was leaked by Mark Danner of the “New York Review of Books.” These reports provoked a storm of media attention, much of it focused on the use of waterboarding (or what the ICRC more aptly calls “suffocation by water”) and, in particular, its use on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times and Abu Zubaydah 83 times.

The media paid less attention to the host of what the ICRC calls the other “methods of ill-treatment.” … Failure to publicly acknowledge the full scope of sexual torture, along with all the other “harsh” interrogation techniques, creates a sanitized, “official,” history. Americans will never know what torture was committed in their name, nor be able to hold accountable those who ordered and executed these actions unless they go beyond “official” sources.

The ICRC conducted interviews with fourteen “enemy combatants” from eight countries. The detainees were arrested over a nearly three-year period, from March 2002 through May 2005. Eleven of the detainees were subject to prolonged nudity “during detention and interrogation, ranging from several weeks continuously up to several months intermittently.”…

The Senate report provides a far different assessment on what it calls “removal of clothing.” It makes clear that the use of prolonged nudity found strong support within the CIA and military as an interrogation technique. It reports that nudity was imported into Iraq, especially Abu Ghraib prison, from Afghanistan and GTMO.

It states that this technique served a number of critical interrogation purposes, including to “humiliate detainees,” to “renew ‘capture shock’ of detainees” and as an incentive for good behavior. It use was extensive, as indicated by two of the many officers interviewed. COL Jerry Philabaum, the Commander of the 320th MP, reports seeing “between 12-15 detainees naked in their own individual cells.” CPT Donald Reese, the Commander of the 372nd MP Company, acknowledged that prolonged nudity was “known to everyone” and it was “common practice to walk the tier and see detainees with clothing and bedding.” Other officers made similar statements.

I suppose we are supposed be grateful that they are only using this particular technique on an American soldier for seven hours a day instead of the weeks or days they routinely used on Al Qaeda members. Perhaps they learned through their long experience at Gitmo and Bagram that combined with the sleep deprivation and isolation, the intermittent period of being clothed and naked coerces false accusation and confessions more easily. That’s the only proven result of such techniques, after all.

As Mark Kleiman eloquently put it: “This is a total disgrace. It shouldn’t be happening in this country. You can’t be unaware of this, Mr. President. Silence gives consent.”

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Oil, And All That That Implies

by digby

If anyone still wonders why we are mired in military actions in the middle east this offers a big clue:

Earlier this week, the President announced that the U.S. would unilaterally impose sanctions on Libya because the continued violence there poses an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to U.S. national security. Mother Jones reports that the business coalition USA*Engage, which reportedly lobbies for oil giants ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips, called that approach a “failed strategy.”

USA*Engage — which has also called for the U.S. to remove the travel ban and trade embargo with Cuba — feels that unilateral sanctions put U.S. business at a disadvantage. And even though the coalition called Qaddafi’s violent crackdown “profoundly depressing,” co-chair Bill Reinsch told Mother Jones that its partners, including Big Oil, play RealPolitik when operating abroad in countries like Libya:

“The reality is that the oil in all the nice countries has been exploited already, we can’t drill anymore in Norway,” Reinsch said. “I don’t detect any abiding affection for the Libyan government. In the [oil] business, you don’t have any choices.”

USA*Engage won’t officially disclose its membership and among large U.S. oil industry corporations, only Halliburton has confirmed that it is a member. Mother Jones notes that the group “has also made an effort to shield its powerful members from criticism,” which is perhaps why Reinsch tried to disuade Mother Jones from publishing the report. “I think it would be better for the story never to come out,” he said.

I’m sure it would be nice if people didn’t know about it. But it won’t change the fact that America has known for decades that the places where oil is most plentiful are drastically unstable have had more than 30 years to properly prepare for the day when the fight over resources would become lethal. Instead of moving to alternative sources of energy, when we weren’t gluttonously using as much oil as it was possible for one country to use, we pretended like it wasn’t happening. During the Bush years they even instituted tax credits for people who bought more than one super gas guzzling SUV like the Hummer. Now the day of reckoning may be upon us.

The last thing the economy needs is another oil shock. But allowing Qadaffi to wag war against his people without responding won’t fix that. It’s a problem. Hopefully we’ll cheat our destiny one more time. But we won’t be able to do it forever.

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