Month: February 2013

The ultimate symbol of elite failure

by digby

If this doesn’t demonstrate the decline of the American elite, I don’t know what would:

More than half of the roughly 125 Harvard University students investigated by the college’s disciplinary board for cheating on a take-home exam last spring were forced to temporarily withdraw, school officials announced Friday.

They cheated on a take-home exam.

And what was the course?

The students were accused of collaborating on the last of four take-home exams in the spring 2012 lecture Government 1310: Introduction to Congress.

The students were very upset and an uproar ensued:

He also addressed a major complaint among students: The disparity in tuition refunds for those who were suspended.

At Harvard, tuition refunds are pro-rated, based on when a student withdraws. As the Administrative Board delved into details of the case, the timeline for student hearings grew from weeks to months.

Those whose cases were heard in September were able to recoup thousands of dollars more than peers whose cases were decided in December.

Harvard administrators have decided to fix that disparity, and will now provide tuition refunds based on Sept. 30 as the withdrawal date for all.

If there’s one thing our future leaders care about it’s fairness.

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Shocking statistic ‘o the day

by digby

More than 1500 gun deaths since Newtown.

If you click the link you can see the details of each one. Horrible. Here’s just one:

Jamarcus Allen was a typical 4-year-old boy. He was a ball of energy, loved superheroes and had a curiosity about guns.

Just last week, his mother said, Jamarcus found his father’s pistol when it was supposed to be hidden in a bathroom of their Akron home. Jamella Allen said she scolded Jamarcus and demanded that her husband get rid of the gun.

On Wednesday morning, it appears that same gun was fired, the bullet piercing the head of Jamarcus. He died at Akron Children’s Hospital.

Jamella Allen, 42, spoke Wednesday afternoon, just hours after learning her son was dead.

She recounted the gun story and how she demanded that her husband take the firearm from the house. Now, she is left mourning and wondering why and how her son died.

“I don’t know. I’m going crazy wondering what happened,” Jamella Allen said.

Police have charged the boy’s father, Terrance Allen, with involuntary manslaughter, felony child endangering, having weapons under disability and tampering with evidence.

Terrance Allen, 48, was driving a Ford Taurus at South Arlington Street and Davies Avenue when he suddenly pulled over. Police said he waved down a Summit County sheriff’s deputy who happened to be driving nearby about 9:30 a.m. A witness said he saw the father on the ground with the boy on his chest.

“The cop approached the vehicle and the guy just laid on the ground and he had a child in his arms,” said Robert Leslie, who noticed the commotion while working at Monro Muffler on South Arlington Street. “He was talking to the guy, I don’t know what he was asking him, and then all of a sudden, the officer finally yanked really hard, grabbed the [boy] and ran to the ambulance and the ambulance just took off like crazy.”

Jamarcus was pronounced dead at 10:30 a.m. at Akron Children’s Hospital.

A bullet hole through the roof of the car was clearly visible. The hole was above the rear passenger seat, where a pool of blood could be seen. It appears the bullet was fired inside the sedan and exited through the roof.

Police Lt. Rick Edwards said investigators recovered a gun inside the man’s sedan.

“It appears the child got ahold of the gun and shot accidentally inside the car,” Edwards said.

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They actually pay reporters to do this and call it journalism

by digby

Here is the ultimate example of the Village kewl kidz indulging themselves in a little bit of public masturbation:

The evidence suggests that until Obama had access to a shooting range as president, he never went skeet shooting. He certainly did not speak like a politician who had once used a firearm.
But it is also curious that the White House refuses to provide any documentary evidence that he actually used the shooting range at Camp David, since he claims he uses it “all the time,” or that a presidential friend has not come forward to confirm the president’s comments.

We live in suspicious times and the president lives in a media fishbowl. That’s the way it is. In the meantime, we do not have enough information to make a ruling one way or the other. We are eager to see a photograph, or hear from someone who saw him at the skeet range, to put this matter to rest.

Unfortunately, not even this photo was not enough to put the matter to rest:

The White House released this photograph of the president at the Camp David skeet range on Aug. 4, 2010. We are pleased the White House has become more forthcoming about this matter, though it does not quite answer the questions concerning the president’s “all the time” language. What do readers think? (Also, given some of the controversy this column generated, we refer you to a negative critique that appeared on Mediaite, which certainly reflects the views of a number of readers who are upset that we thought this was even an issue.)

That’s because it’s ridiculous. The president says he goes skeet shooting at Camp David. The White House produced a photograph. The end.

But that isn’t really the end of it, naturally:

UPDATE: A reader notes that because Obama said he does skeet shooting “all the time,” perhaps our standard of proof should be higher–such as several photographs. That’s a reasonable point. We have also been asked why we did not immediately award Pinocchios, such as when Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) made unproven claims about Mitt Romney’s taxes. We try to avoid using “verdict pending,” but in cases of self-aggrandizement, we are willing to be a bit more patient. Obviously, if the White House is not forthcoming with additional evidence, then the claim becomes increasingly doubtful.

Verdict Pending

For those of you who weren’t following politics in the 90s, this is the utter bullshit we were all complaining about. Petty, manufactured “scandals” were constant, with the press taking it upon themselves to act as arbiters of the president’s “integrity” by parsing his every word about inconsequential matters and pronouncing him dishonest when he was unable to demonstrate the veracity of his claim in ways that satisfied the Mean Girls. There have been many examples of media perfidy since then, but this is the first time I’ve seen this particular form of kewl kidz journalism in quite some time. God help us if they’ve decided to dust off their old school uniforms for the second term.

Update:

To fully understand just what a snotty, middle school “reporting” style this is, you have to look at the original pictures Kessler posted:

On Monday, White House spokesman Jay Carney said he did know how often the president has gone skeet shooting and that he has not seen a photograph. “When he goes to Camp David, he goes to spend time with his family and friends and relax, not to produce photographs,” Carney told reporters.

Of course, this did not stop the White House from releasing these photographs in 2011. (Obama is shown at Sasha Obama’s birthday party at Camp David; the second was taken the same weekend of Vice President Biden, but that is not at Camp David)

I’m sure they all snickered and snorted with delight when they came up with those.

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A tale of two headlines

by digby

I don’t know about you but, in my view, the second story makes the first story seem incomprehensible. Once an institution has shown itself to be so malevolently immoral that it tacitly condones child rape I cannot understand why anyone would listen to their moral instruction again. It’s not as though we’re just talking about one bad apple. It was system-wide corruption.

I recognize that the objection to the birth control mandate is not confined to the Catholic Church. But it has always been the leading anti-birth control institution in the world and continues to provide much of the legal and religious intellectual foundation for that position.

The church had always been opposed to birth control but it wasn’t until the 1930s and the Protestants started loosening up their proscriptions against that it got specific:

On New Year’s Eve 1930, the Roman Catholic Church officially banned any “artificial” means of birth control. Condoms, diaphragms and cervical caps were defined as artificial, since they blocked the natural journey of sperm during intercourse. Douches, suppositories and spermicides all killed or impeded sperm, and were banned as well. According to Church doctrine, tampering with the “male seed” was tantamount to murder. A common admonition on the subject at the time was “so many conceptions prevented, so many homicides.” To interfere with God’s will was a mortal sin and grounds for excommunication.

Yes, it was about “tampering with the male seed” which pretty much tells you what the whole thing was all about, doesn’t it? There was optimism that the Church would change its edict in the 1960s with the advent of the pill. No dice:

On the morning of July 25, 1968, the Vatican called a press conference to announce its decision on the Pill. In the papal encyclical entitled Humanae Vitae (“Of Human Life”), Pope Paul VI ended the speculation over oral contraceptives and birth control once and for all. He reaffirmed the Church’s traditional teachings and classified the Pill as an artificial method of birth control. To go on the Pill or use any other contraceptive device would constitute nothing less than a mortal sin.

In addition to condemning abortion and sterilization, the Pope singled out the Pill for its role in separating the act of sex from procreation. The Pill, Humanae Vitae declared, “opened up a wide and easy road… toward conjugal infidelity and the general lowering of morality. Man, growing used to contraceptive practices, may lose respect for the woman and come to the point of considering her as a mere instrument of selfish enjoyment, and no longer as his respected and beloved companion.”

Also too, she would have the unilateral power to “tamper with the male seed” which, as we know, was tantamount to murder.

Meanwhile:

The Catholic sex abuse cases are a series of convictions, trials and investigations into allegations of child sexual abuse crimes committed by Catholic priests and members of Roman Catholic orders against children as young as 3 years old with the majority between the ages of 11 and 14.These cases included anal sex, and oral penetration, and there have been criminal prosecutions of the abusers and civil lawsuits against the church’s dioceses and parishes. Many of the cases span several decades and are brought forward years after the abuse occurred. Cases have also been brought against members of the Catholic hierarchy who did not report sex abuse allegations to the legal authorities. It has been shown they deliberately moved sexually abusive priests to other parishes where the abuse sometimes continued.This has led to a number of fraud cases where the Church has been accused of misleading victims by deliberately relocating priests accused of abuse instead of removing them from their positions. 

In the 1950s, Gerald Fitzgerald, the founder of a religious order that treats Roman Catholic priests who molest children, concluded “(such) offenders were unlikely to change and should not be returned to ministry,” and this was discussed with Pope Paul VI (1897 – 1978) and “in correspondence with several bishops.” In 2001, sex abuse cases were first required to be reported to Rome. The Dallas Morning News did a year-long investigation, after the 2002 revelation that cases of abuse were widespread in the Church.

The results made public in 2004 showed that even after the public outcry, priests were moved out of the countries where they had been accused and were still in “settings that bring them into contact with children, despite church claims to the contrary.” Among the investigation’s findings is that nearly half of 200 cases “involved clergy who tried to elude law enforcement.” In July 2010, the Vatican doubled the length of time after the 18th birthday of the victim that clergymen can be tried in a church court and streamlined the processes for removing “pedophile priests.
[…]
In November 2009, the Irish Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse reported its findings in which it concluded that “the Dublin Archdiocese’s pre-occupations in dealing with cases of child sexual abuse, at least until the mid 1990s, were the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church, and the preservation of its assets. All other considerations, including the welfare of children and justice for victims, were subordinated to these priorities. The Archdiocese did not implement its own canon law rules and did its best to avoid any application of the law of the State”.

If that’s not total moral corruption, I don’t know what is. Perhaps they can redeem themselves. But they have not yet done it and, frankly, I’m not sure if it’s even possible. Until they do I really don’t think we need to hear from them.

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That filibuster reform could have come in handy

by David Atkins

No sooner do Democrats cave on real filibuster reform, than Republicans get to work filibustering any hope of reining in Wall Street. Adam Serwer has the details:

A little more than a week after Senate Democrats decided not to weaken the filibuster, Republicans are vowing to filibuster President Barack Obama’s nominee to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau unless its powers are reduced, Reuters reports.

The CFPB was created as part of the 2010 financial regulation bill specifically to prevent financial institutions from engaging in the kind of exploitative practices that helped lead the country to the brink of economic collapse in 2008. Since January 2012, when Obama appointed former Ohio attorney general Richard Cordray to head the bureau, it has done exactly that—reigning in unscrupulous mortgage lenders, credit card companies, and debt servicers. But the CFPB has only been able to do those things because Obama, using what’s called a recess appointment, installed Cordray in his post while most of Congress was on vacation—an attempt to bypass Senate Republicans’ efforts to block the nomination. Before Cordray was picked and blocked, Republicans had vowed to filibuster Elizabeth Warren, who came up with the idea for the bureau and helped found it, too. That didn’t go as well as they had hoped: Warren recently returned to the chamber as the new Democratic Senator from Massachusetts.

But, of course, the Supreme Court ruled against President Obama’s ability to make such appointments. So now Republicans are free to obstruct at their extortionist leisure:

Senate Republicans want three big changes before they’ll stop blocking Cordray. First, they want the CPFB to be by Congress rather than the Federal Reserve. Subjecting the bureau to the congressional appropriations process would compromise its political independence. Second, Republicans want the range of financial institutions the bureau has authority to regulate narrowed. This would leave unsupervised some of the problematic institutions the bureau was created to regulate. Finally, the GOP is demanding that other bank regulators—the same ones who failed to prevent the 2008 financial meltdown—be allowed to chaperone the CFPB by “verifying” that its rules “would not harm the safety and soundness of banks.” This would let regulators who turned a blind eye to exploitative practices in the past because they were profitable tell the CFPB what to do—and the more different regulators have to approve of a rule, the more convoluted and less effective it is likely to be.

Blocking Cordray could leave the CPFB without most of its powers to regulate the very financial institutions whose practices helped lead the country into near-economic collapse in 2008. That’s just how Republicans want it. Having failed to prevent the financial regulation law from being passed, they are now seeking to nullify it through procedural extortion.

To say that Democrats are complicit in this would be a terrible overstatement. 47 Democrats wanted filibuster reform, and the President did attempt to bypass the GOP.

But there are just enough dinosaurs and recalcitrants in the Party to stop us from doing what is necessary. We’re close, but we’re not quite there. Until we get there, the GOP will continue to burn the country down in its effort to funnel more money into the pockets of the wealthy financial sector fat cats.

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Big Bowl week-end

by digby

Here’s a look at the preparations for the big game — and the half-time show. (No lip-syncing here):

Go Whiners!

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QOTD: Ken Cuccinelli

by digby

“And really the way to fight back, given the governmental structure we have, the primary way is to get good judges who don’t accept what is wrong as right after a while,” Cuccinelli said, according to a video clip of the discussion. “Justice Scalia is in this category: ‘Well, we’ve been doing it wrong for a while, so now it’s part of the Constitution.’ I don’t buy that. I don’t buy that. And that needs to be reflected in the judges selected by the president, not this president, but the president generally, and approved by the Senate. They need to take that a lot more seriously than they do.”

If Antonin Scalia is a pansy “living “constitutionalist” the Republican party has not only jumped the shark, it’s jumped the entire Pacific Ocean.

The Tea Partiers have a new hero.

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Arkansas Senator Jason Rapert, the eternal face of American conservatism

by David Atkins

Meet Arkansas State Senator Jason Rapert:

You’ve got to change the hearts and minds of the people that live around you. You’ve gotta pray. It says ‘Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord. And I wonder sometimes when they invited all the Muslims to come into the White House and have them a little Ramadan supper, when our President could not take the time to go attend a National Prayer Breakfast–I wonder what he stands for. You know what, what they told is what you say speaks so loudly–excuse me–what you do speaks so loudly that what you say I cannot hear. I hear you loud and clear, Barack Obama. You don’t represent the country that I grew up with. And your values is not goin’ to save us. We’re gonna try to take this country back for the Lord. We’re gonna try to take this country back for conservatism. And we’re not going to allow minorities to run roughshod over what you people believe in.”

Somebody send this guy the new memo: it’s not the values, it’s the message. I’m sure if he just had better communications skills, his virtuous message would play well with Americans of all stripes.

In all seriousness, though, Republicans are reaping what they sowed. They rode this circus to power for 30 years using the Southern Strategy and now they get to live with it. Try as they might, the RNC isn’t going to get away from this anytime soon. They can run Marco Rubio for President all they’d like, but countless politicians like this guy will be making headlines for years and years to come, wiping away Republican support from decent-minded communities everywhere.

It couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of bigots.

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Consumers are nervous about their skin in the game

by digby

Oh heck:

Dropping past analysts’ expectations, a gauge of consumer confidence fell this month to its lowest level in more than a year, led by gloomier expectations and views of the present situation, according to data released Tuesday.

The Conference Board reported that its gauge of consumer confidence dropped to 58.6 in January, the lowest level since November 2011.

“Consumers are more pessimistic about the economic outlook and, in particular, their financial situation,” said Lynn Franco, economic indicators director at the Conference Board. “The increase in the payroll tax has undoubtedly dampened consumers’ spirits and it may take a while for confidence to rebound and consumers to recover from their initial paycheck shock.”

Analysts polled by MarketWatch had expected a January reading of 64.3, compared with an initial December estimate of 65.1, reasoning that higher payroll taxes and fiscal uncertainties would more than offset recent positive news on the labor market. See economic calendar. On Tuesday, the Conference Board revised December’s level to 66.7.

Generally when the economy is growing at a good clip, confidence readings are at least 90.

I think the idea was that they would be so thrilled that people over 450k a year were paying slightly more in taxes that they wouldn’t mind having their own meager checks slashed as well. You know, because all we really care about is that millionaires have some “skin in the game.” True they only have a hangnail while the rest of us are thoroughly flayed, but it’s the thought that counts. It sounds as though consumers are more worried about their own paychecks getting smaller than they are about a “balanced approach” to deficit reduction.

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Conventional wisdom on the deficit is starting to turn

by David Atkins

Manias are a funny thing. Whether it’s buying tulips or invading Iraq, all the Very Serious People agree on a policy and ramp up their collective hysteria. Then the obvious stupidity of mania starts to present itself. Some detractors voice their skepticism in the wilderness, the policy starts to fall apart, mainstream cracks start to form, and then the mania comes crashing down.

Deficit hysteria is no different. We had our ramp up, our Very Serious People, and our detractors in the wilderness. The obvious failure of Austerity in Europe showed the policy falling apart. We’re now in the crackup stage. The public Krugman/Scarborough fight was one mainstream crack. This L.A. Times article is another:

Listening to the political shouting match and seeing Washington lurch from one fiscal crisis to another, one might think the federal budget deficit is the economic equivalent of a giant meteor hurtling toward America, about to hit any day.

The reality is quite different. In fact, the debt is probably not even the country’s biggest economic challenge, most experts say, and certainly not the most urgent.

The evidence shows that the country is on a course of spending and debt accumulation that could lead to serious trouble not today or tomorrow but probably 10 to 20 years down the road.

What the evidence does not show is that such a crisis is close at hand or that the U.S. is in any imminent danger of turning into an economic basket case like present-day Greece.

Moreover, financial experts agree that although America’s burgeoning healthcare costs pose huge long-term challenges for the budget, the nation’s debt could most likely be controlled for at least the next decade by making a series of relatively moderate policy changes. Those changes, although perhaps unwelcome, would not require drastic adjustments in the lives of most Americans.

For the first time, I get the sense that progressives are going to win the deficit battle and there will be no Grand Bargain. I could be wrong, of course. But there’s light at the end of the tunnel.

Unfortunately, there won’t be accountability for all the Very Serious People who were seriously, seriously wrong. There never is.

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