Month: June 2012

Delicate male sensibilities

by digby

Tom Tomorrow today:

Somebody had to say it.

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Don’t forget about Poland

by David Atkins

We always knew. It was rumored for years. And finally the truth is out:

For years, the notion that Poland could allow the CIA to operate a secret prison in a remote lake region was treated as a crackpot idea by the country’s politicians, journalists and the public.

A heated political debate this week reveals how dramatically the narrative has changed.

In a string of revelations and political statements, Polish leaders have come closer than ever to acknowledging that the United States ran a secret interrogation facility for terror suspects in 2002 and 2003 in the Eastern European country.

Some officials recall the fear that prevailed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and defend the tough stance that former U.S. President George W. Bush took against terrorists.

But the debate is sometimes tinged with a hint of disappointment with Washington, as if Poland’s young democracy had been led astray – ethically and legally – by the superpower that it counts as a key ally, and then left alone to deal with the fallout.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Thursday that Poland has become the “political victim” of leaks from U.S. officials that brought to light aspects of the secret rendition program.

In his most forthcoming comments on the matter to date, Tusk said an ongoing investigation into the case is proof of Poland’s democratic credentials and that Poland cannot be counted on in the future in such clandestine enterprises.

Good for Poland. As for the U.S.? Well, it would be nice to think that this was a moral insanity of the Bush Administration that the nation has since recovered from, much like the Japanese internment camps over a half century ago. Unfortunately, that’s not the case.

That the United States continues to use rendition regardless of which party is in power should be a huge black mark on the nation’s conscience.

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Friends in high places

by digby

The poor “job-creators.” They just can’t catch a break:

Without much fanfare, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is edging towards what could be its first “perfect” Term before the Supreme Court since at least 1994. With today’s decision in Southern Union Company v. United States, the Chamber has declared victory in all seven of its cases that have reached a clear outcome (two are additionally classified as “other” because the Court avoided addressing the issue at stake on procedural grounds, and in one the Chamber filed on behalf of neither party).

This string of seven straight victories brings the Chamber’s overall win/loss rate before the Roberts Court up to 68% (60 of 88 cases). As we have reported in prior studies, this is significantly higher than the Chamber’s success before the Rehnquist Court of 56% (45 of 80 cases), and dramatically higher than its success rate before the Burger Court, when the Chamber only won 43% (15 of 35) of its cases.

At the time of Roberts and Alitos’ confirmations there was quite a bit of talk about corporate minded this court was going to be. Of course that’s not likely to be a contentious issues since it’s a bipartisan disease. But still, it’s fairly amazing to see just how extreme they’ve been. The Chamber is hardcore, Randian wingnut at this point — the NRA of economic interest groups. And they are doing very, very, very well with this court.

I’m a little bit foggy on what can be done about this. Voodoo dolls? What?

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North Carolina cretins say they’re sorry about the forced sterilization but money won’t help

by digby

Jezebel reports:

Between 1929 and 1974, the North Carolina Eugenics Board sterilized thousands of men and women without their knowledge or consent, most of whom were poor, black, disabled, institutionalized, or undereducated. According to TPM, an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 of them are still alive, and 146 of them have been found and verified. After years of working with victims to come up with an acceptable solution, the state’s House, led by Republican speaker Thom Tillis, proposed paying $50,000 to each of the living victims of the state’s foray into messing with the gene pool. A total of $10 million was set aside for currently known and to-be-discovered victims.

But apparently spending state money to compensate victims of a very recent state initiative was just too much to ask of Senate Republicans. Sen. Don East said, “I’m so sorry it happened, but throwing money don’t change it, don’t make it go away. It still happened.”
[…]
Sen. Austin Allrand echoed East’s dickhole sentiments, telling the AP, “I’m not so sure it would lay the issue at rest because if you start compensating people who have been ‘victimized’ by past history, I don’t know where that would end.”

If anyone’s been looking for the neanderthal logic behind “tort reform” this is it. It’s a shame when people do bad things to other people but we can’t change it after the fact so you’re shit out ‘o luck. Even this lady:

Elaine Riddick Jessie (born Elaine Riddick in 1954) is an African-American woman who, as a 14-year-old girl in 1968, was forcibly sterilized by the Eugenics Board of North Carolina, which argued that she was “feebleminded” and “promiscuous.”

Prior to the sterilization (at age 13), Jessie had been kidnapped, molested, and raped. Her son, Tony Riddick, states, “The work of the Eugenics Board was not far from the thinking of Hitler.”

Jessie was living with her grandmother, Maggie “Miss Peaches” Woodard, when a social worker discovered her pregnancy. The illiterate Woodard signed an X on a consent form, not knowing what it was, only that if she didn’t sign, Elaine would be sent to an orphanage. The Perquimans County Department of Public Welfare had earlier custody of Jessie and her 7 siblings (from their alcoholic parents), sending 5 to an orphanage, and Elaine and one of her sisters to live with Woodard.

In March 2003 Mrs. Jessie and other victims of the Eugenics Board spoke out against the atrocities committed to the Eugenics Study Committee. As she said “When you’re a little girl, what do you want? You want to be a mommy. To find out that’s been taken away from you is devastating.” She was prominent in the celebrations at the law’s repeal.

Yeah, it’s true that money can’t fix that. But it’s all we’ve got. That women deserves some kind of compensation for what was done to her. She’s 58 years old and has another quarter century to live on this earth with the knowledge of what was done to her. Is it really too much to ask for these cretinous pigs to be human just once?

Don’t answer that …

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What to do if SCOTUS overturns the Affordable Care Act

by David Atkins

With the conservative Supreme Court’s remarkably activist anti-labor 5-4 decision today, it is becoming apparent to almost everyone that the court is a purely partisan political body. Interested parties from interest groups to bloggers are preparing for next steps should the Court take the extraordinary step of overturning the entirety or parts of the Affordable Care Act.

To me, the answers are clear:

1) For the short term, by far the most important progressive issue is the Supreme Court. Nothing else comes close. I would rank climate change as the pressing issue for humanity over all, but absent miraculous scientific breakthroughs it will require heavy national and international regulation to make a dent. Even were such a thing politically possible, it is obvious that this Court would find some reason to strike down any sort of meaningful regulation on this front. Meanwhile, the Citizens United decision is perhaps the most baleful event for progressive politics in at least the last 20 years.

That fact in turn puts presidential politics in an increasingly stark light. The next President will have the likely opportunity to replace three septuagenarian justices during his term. The current Court stands on the edge of a knife, with a 5-4 conservative split. The election of the President for the next four years doesn’t just affect the next four years of public policy: it will likely affect the next half century. Whatever the disappointments of the current administration, there is no question that Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor have been excellent nominees. It is no overstatement to say that the ability of the country’s middle class to survive may well depend on which political party has the ability to nominate justices over the next four years.

2) The issue of reforming the healthcare system will necessarily devolve to the states. While they have always been important to close political observers, state legislatures will become the main battleground on which healthcare reform is fought. Fortunately for progressives, state legislature races are also where grassroots political organizing can have the greatest impact in terms of picking better Democrats at the endorsement and primary stage. Legislature battles are ones we can actually win more easily than Congressional battles where the power of big money and big influence is often simply too much to overcome.

Vermont already has a single-payer healthcare law, but the state is too small to have the leverage to truly make it work. California is but a few good progressive votes away from passing the bill (a combination of just enough Republicans and cowardly/corrupt conservadems still stand in the way.)

Enough states have majority Democratic legislatures than pressure can be brought to bear to pass single-payer healthcare in Democratic states. Those Democrats who refuse to vote for it should face grassroots primary challenges on the issue in every district.

The only way out of this mess is to organize, lobby and charge grimly through it. Refusing to vote for the President won’t “teach the Democrats a lesson” or reorient the system in any way. All it will do is give the presidency to Romney, convince Democrats to become even more conservative, and most importantly lock in conservative dominance on the Supreme Court for the next half century.

Meanwhile, refusal to engage in local legislative political organizing because it’s seen as too boring, too small-time or not sexy enough to merit attention is precisely what will ensure that this country never receives universal single-payer healthcare.

One thing is certain: Scalia, Alito, Roberts, Thomas and Kennedy couldn’t care less how many people march in the streets, or how many people stay home and don’t vote. And it’s increasingly clear that they and the seats they occupy have the greatest impact on all of our future. It’s up to us to do something about it.

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Dan Froomkin flagged an interesting new poll conducted by YouGov, put together by a Dartmouth professor. Yes, the Republicans are still completely misinformed:

Apparently vast numbers of Republicans really do believe those lies. I don’t know what to say. The poll does indicate that Republicans pay closer attention to the news and world events than Democrats, so this is probably just more proof of a professionally mendacious right wing media.

In light of that idiocy, what’s more surprising is that the rest of the poll isn’t just useless gibberish. It’s quite revealing, actually. Republicans and Democrats agree on an awful lot, more than I expected frankly. They share priorities in many cases and only differ on the margins about a number of issues. But where they disagree tells us much about our gridlock.

Take this for example:

That’s right. 53% of Republicans will not stand for any tax increases or any cuts to the military, social security and medicare. And yet, they are obsessed about the debt.

We’re not quite as marginal as people are intent upon believing we are.

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QOTD: pink leather shorts edition

by digby

From Senator Scott “Playmate” Brown:

“Each and every day that I’ve been a United States senator, I’ve been discussing issues meeting on issues, in secret meetings with kings and queens and prime ministers and business leaders and military leaders talking, voting, working on issues every single day.”

The evidence is here.

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Dana has a comprehension problem

by digby

Via Adele Stan at Alternet I learned that Dana Milbank is at it again. Milbank described Van Jones’ speech earlier this week like this:

The Occupy movement is preoccupied.

In October, when liberal activists gathered in Washington, they had hopes that the nascent Occupy Wall Street movement would become the left’s answer to the tea party.

But this time around — the annual Take Back the American Dream Conference was moved up to June this election year — the Occupy encampments are gone, and participants in the conference were pondering what went wrong. Or, as activist Van Jones put it to them, what has become of “the voice that is missing.”

Jones, an Obama administration official who resigned under pressure because of his far-left positions, is a fixture at the annual gatherings and a fiery orator. But this version of his yearly pep talk was laced with disappointment. “I’m watching that movement that inspired the world . . . that stunned the world, in the moment of maximum peril now sit down,” he lamented at the opening session…

Milbank was obviously too busy playing Words with Friends to hear the speech (or too drunk to understand it) because according to Stan, Jones said exactly the opposite.

Jones essentially laid into the national liberal establishment — the institutions of the anti-war movement, the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the environmental movement — for failing to act with gusto in the current presidential campaign, and for abandoning the recall effort in Wisconsin…

As a contrast, as examples of courage in the face of opposition, he used the examples of the “young people” of the DREAM Act movement, the anti-Keystone movement, the LGBT rights movement — and the Occupy movement:

Look at the young people who rescued America last year, coming out of that horrible August when the Tea Party put Congress in a headlock and said, “If you don’t do what we say, we’re going to blow a hole in the American economy; we’re going to destroy America’s credit rating.” And this whole town trembled in fear and gave in and said, “We’ll create a super-committee to do super damage to the American people.” And some young people and some strugglin’ folks — no pollsters , no lobbyists, no big grants — went down with some sleeping bags and some tents to the scene of the crime against their future, and occupied Wall Street, and turned this country upside down.

That piece has already been published in newspapers across the country and I haveno doubt that every Villager chuckled over the silly progressives and their silly, silliness.

Click over to Alternet to read the whole thing and it will also give you some email addresses to which you can send a nice polite note to the Washington Post about their dishonest coverage of the event.

The sad thing is that most people won’t hear what Jones had to say about the liberal establishment’s failure, which is truly interesting. But then that’s also something that would make the Villagers very uncomfortable so we can’t have that.

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King Romney comes first

by digby

Everybody’s going to have to sacrifice for Mitt Romney.(Well, rich people won’t have to sacrifice any money, but that goes without saying.)

Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign asked Florida Governor Rick Scott to tone down his statements heralding improvements in the state’s economy because they clash with the presumptive Republican nominee’s message that the nation is suffering under President Barack Obama, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Scott, a Republican, was asked to say that the state’s jobless rate could improve faster under a Romney presidency, according to the people, who asked not to be named.

What’s unfolding in Florida highlights a dilemma for the Romney campaign: how to allow Republican governors to take credit for economic improvements in their states while faulting Obama’s stewardship of the national economy. Republican governors in Ohio, Virginia, Michigan and Wisconsin also have highlighted improving economies.

Scott should follow the advice of the Romney campaign and it won’t undermine his own message, said Mac Stipanovich, a political strategist and lobbyist in Florida.
“This is one of those situations where you could have it both ways and there’s enough truth in it that it would resonate,” Stipanovich said. “It would be better if everybody was singing from the same hymnal.”

It’s been obvious for quite some time that the Romney campaign was counting on a bad economy to push them over the finish line first. But I would guess that other powerful members of the party realized they would have to take a bullet in order for him to make the claim.

On the other hand, nobody should be surprised by all this. Rush Limbaugh said it up front immediately after the GOP lost big in 2008: they wanted President Obama to fail. And they did everything in their power to make that happen. But it was bound to cause trouble for GOP high office holders who would run for re-election alongside of him. After all, they’re supposed to perform too.

Still, it takes a lot of nerve to tell someone to downplay their own “accomplishments” for the good of their leader. But that’s how aristocracies roll, and the GOP operates on that model.

*I should point out that the Democratic version isn’t much better. They prefer a Lord of the Flies organizing principle.

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The Ryan/Romney tax plan

by David Atkins

Class warfare:

Only one side is waging it. Most of the other side either can’t or wont because we don’t have a representative democracy. We have rule by legalized bribery.

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