Month: June 2013

Re: Greenwald’s blockbuster: How do they know which calls are associated with terrorism?

by digby

By now just about everyone has heard about Glenn Greenwald’s blockbuster scoop in the Guardian. It was even featured this morning on the chirpy local morning news between diet tips and frittata recipes so even non-political types are going to hear about it. In case you haven’t, Greenwald revealed that the NSA has been requiring Verizon (and probably other carriers) to give the government massive amounts of data about its customers communications.  Read the article, it’s very concise and quite chilling.

If you’re one who has followed this sort of thing for a while, you’ll recall that Senators Udall and Wyden have been practically blinking in Morse Code to try and warn the public that something truly nefarious was going on for some time, but we couldn’t know exactly what they’re talking about because it’s classified and their hands have been tied:

The law on which the order explicitly relies is the so-called “business records” provision of the Patriot Act, 50 USC section 1861. That is the provision which Wyden and Udall have repeatedly cited when warning the public of what they believe is the Obama administration’s extreme interpretation of the law to engage in excessive domestic surveillance.

In a letter to attorney general Eric Holder last year, they argued that “there is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows.”

“We believe,” they wrote, “that most Americans would be stunned to learn the details of how these secret court opinions have interpreted” the “business records” provision of the Patriot Act.

The administration replied to this exposé in breezy fashion saying there’s nothing to see here, it’s no big deal,  nobody’s phones are being tapped and it’s just a bunch of numbers. But they also made a strange logical error. Marc Ambinder posted the administration’s talking points:

*On its face, the order reprinted in the article does not allow the Government to listen in on anyone’s telephone calls. The information acquired does not include the content of any communications or the name of any subscriber. It relates exclusively to metadata, such as a telephone number or the length of a call.

* Information of the sort described in the Guardian article has been a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats to the United States, as it allows counterterrorism personnel to discover whether known or suspected terrorists have been in contact with other persons who may be engaged in terrorist activities, particularly people located inside the United States.

It would be interesting to know how that works because if they already know who the terrorist suspects numbers are, they have no need for all this data, they can just get a normal warrant. So one must assume that despite their protestations to the contrary they are using this to identify, suspects which logically means the identifying information is somehow being accessed. This follow-up article in the Guardian explains that it’s not difficult to do:

The administration stressed that the court order obtained by the Guardian relates to call data, and does not allow the government to listen in to anyone’s calls.

However, in 2013, such metadata can provide authorities with vast knowledge about a caller’s identity. Particularly when cross-checked against other public records, the metadata can reveal someone’s name, address, driver’s licence, credit history, social security number and more. Government analysts would be able to work out whether the relationship between two people was ongoing, occasional or a one-off.
[…]
Fisa court orders typically direct the production of records pertaining to a specific, named target suspected of being an agent of a terrorist group or foreign state, or a finite set of individually named targets. The unlimited nature of the records being handed over to the NSA is extremely unusual.

This is why the government’s explanation doesn’t make sense. Why would they need all this data unless they’re fishing for the identities of suspects based upon some unknown criteria? FISA already allows them to track suspects.

When the news broke last night it was quite interesting to see the reaction on twitter. There was quite a bit of blasé ,”who cares, terrorism” and a fair amount of “they’ve been doing this stuff for years,” but I was struck by just how stunned so many people were over this. I certainly knew the FISA law had been renewed and assumed it had been active over the past few years. But the scale of this surprised me — I thought they had developed something much more finely tuned and narrow than this sort of dragnet. (I was even more surprised to learn that this leaked document might possibly be just a pro-forma renewal of something that’s been going on for years. I don’t think that’s been confirmed yet, however.)

It apparently surprised a lot of people, including this guy:

In digital era, privacy must be a priority. Is it just me, or is secret blanket surveillance obscenely outrageous? ow.ly/lKS13
— Al Gore (@algore) June 6, 2013

Update:

Must read Emptywheel on this. She also points out the contradiction in the government’s “talking points” and asks a very pertinent question: if this is no big deal, why all the secrecy? It would give nothing away to admit that they are looking at all calls. If there truly is no identification involved, why would any would-be terrorist change their behavior? It really doesn’t make a lot of sense. And yet, as Wheeler points out, the administration has gone to unbelievable lengths to prevent the public from knowing about how this is being done, and contrary to their attempts to lay the blame on all three branches, they have systematically made it impossible to use the judicial system in an ordinary fashion to determine this program’s constitutionality:

The Administration wants you to believe that “all three branches” of government have signed off on this program (never mind that last year FISC did find part of this 215 collection illegal — that’s secret too).

But our court system is set up to be an antagonistic one, with both sides represented before a judge. The government has managed to avoid such antagonistic scrutiny of its data collection and mining programs — even in the al-Haramain case, where the charity had proof they had been the target of illegal, unwarranted surveillance — by ensuring no one could ever get standing to challenge the program in court. Most recently in Clapper v. Amnesty, SCOTUS held that the plaintiffs were just speculating when they argued they had changed their habits out of the assumption that they had been wiretapped.

This order might just provide someone standing. Any of Verizon’s business customers can now prove that their call data is, as we speak, being collected and turned over to the NSA. (Though I expect lots of bogus language about the difference between “collection” and “analysis.”)

That is what all the secrecy has been about. Undercutting separation of powers to ensure that the constitutionality of this program can never be challenged by American citizens.

It’s no big deal, says the Administration. But it’s sufficiently big of a deal that they have to short-circuit the most basic principle of our Constitution.

What in the world is really going on here?

Update II: Marcy on Majority Report speculates that the NSA has developed an algorithm that tracks people who fit a certain terrorist “profile”  — which in the past has meant suspicious behavior like buying beauty supplies. (The result of this is false positives — otherwise known as innocent people being targeted.)

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“Some in this nation are getting a little soft …”

by digby

A tense exchange between MSNBC host Touré and The Nation reporter Jeremy Scahill erupted into a borderline hostile back and forth on Wednesday…

“I’m curious, Jeremy, as to how you think we should be doing this,” Touré asked Scahill. “If you were the commander-in-chief entrusted with keeping Americans safe, and your legacy is on the line, and all those sort of things, how do you prosecute this war?” 

“I believe that we, like all nations around the world, have a right to self-defense,” Scahill began. He said that there was no evidence presented against the American-born cleric killed in a drone strike in 2011, Anwar al-Awlaki. 

What evidence that was presented against him was circumstantial at best and did not constitute the minimum requirement, in Scahill’s estimation, which would make him eligible for extrajudicial execution. 

“They did present evidence, Jeremy, you know that, in a Yemeni court,” Touré countered. 

“What was the evidence, Touré?” Scahill asked. “Would you want to be prosecuted in a Yemeni court?” 

“This is a country that set up a tribunal to prosecute journalists for crimes against the dictator,” he continued. “If you’re holding up the Yemeni justice system as a place where you think an American citizen is going to get a fair trial, then I would advise you to go to Yemen and start jaywalking and see what kind of treatment you’re going to get in those courts.” 

“You can’t have it both ways, man,” Scahill added. “If you want to act like Yemen’s courts are legitimate, then you better act like they’re legitimate when they put political prisoners in there or they put people in there for crimes against the dictatorship.”

When Touré starts talking about drone strikes I usually take the opportunity to tune out and eat lunch. I wonder if Scahill was aware of this before he went on the show:

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I love that he quotes Douglas MacArthur and says we may be in a permanent war.

He’s a true believer. A whole lot of trust and a whole lot of blood lust in that commentary. If I close my eyes I can see a Bush supporter circa 2004.

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The Box Turtle rides: Cornyn tries to obstruct Immigration Reform again.

by digby

So Jon Cornyn is at it again, coming in at the last minute to pull an immigration bill so far to the right that it ends up being punitive. He basically wants to make the border security requirements so onerous that they are impossible to achieve. Immigration reform in name only.

This press release gives an excellent background briefing on Cornyn and his tactics that I wish reporters would read and understand as they report this out:

According to Frank Sharry, Executive Director of America’s Voice: “This is classic Cornyn. We know the pattern all too well. He pretends to be sincere about the need for reform. He asks for changes that are a bridge too far. He destabilizes the bipartisan agreement already in place. He helps to thwart reform. He votes no in the end anyway. That’s why we bestowed a lifetime achievement award for being the‘Biggest Hypocrite on Immigration.’”

Despite Senator Cornyn’s rhetoric and supposed rationale, the border and interior enforcement provisions already in the Senate’s immigration bill amount to the largest enforcement increase in American history. As Senator Cornyn’s home-state Houston Chronicle captures in an editorial today, “The fact is, the federal government has largely met border-security benchmarks laid out in the three immigration-reform bills introduced in the Senate since 2006…implacable opponents of reform will continually move the metrics. It’s a strategy to sabotage an effort that enjoys bipartisan support in Congress and popular support around the country.”

Added Sharry, “While calling himself an immigration reformer, Senator Cornyn has always found a way to ‘get to no’ on immigration. Back in the McCain-Kennedy days, Senator Cornyn made beautiful speeches about the need for reform. Then he worked with Jon Kyl to propose a bill aimed at undermining support for McCain-Kennedy. When the bill moved to the Senate floor in 2006, he proposed poison pill amendments and then, despite the fact that 23 Republicans voted for it, he voted against it. In 2007, after winning approval for a poison pill amendment that undermined support for the bill and began the demise of the effort, he again voted no. To add insult to injury, only moments after he helped defeat reform, Senator Cornyn took to the Senate floor and gave a speech about the need to pass immigration reform. In 2010, he voted against the DREAM Act, blocking the bill from the 60 votes needed to end a Republican filibuster and dashing the DREAMs of millions of young people. And we are supposed to believe that this time he’ll get to yes? We’re not buying it for a moment.

“The bottom line is that bill currently before the Senate has found the sweet spot: it combines the achievable path to citizenship that Democrats need with the largest increase in immigration enforcement in American history that the Republicans say they need. Messing with this balance threatens the whole project. Cornyn knows this. His colleagues should, too.”

He’s got a job to do and it’s to obstruct reform. Whether it’s by tying the bill up in knots before it even gets to a vote or making reform impossible in case it happens to pass, his goal is clear.

And guess what?  The Great GOP Hispanic Hope who’s allegedly been the moral conscience of the Senate on this issue is giving his tacit support.  (Nobody knows whether he really means it — virtually everyone except for Breitbart assumes he’s bluffing. It’s an odd gambit.)

So we are still in limbo. If Reid can get a bill that looks even slightly bipartisan, Boehner may (emphasis on may) be able to get this to the floor and let Democrats carry his water on the this bill. Smart members of the GOP know they need CIR if they plan to have a national party in the future. But if Cornyn has his way, it’s not a reform bill, it’s a recipe for nothing ever happening. Let’s hope Reid can get around the roadblock this time — and that Boehner can convince his caucus to let this bill come to the floor. Most of all let’s hope Democrats aren’t stupid enough to take the bait and vote for Cornyn’s atrocity and take the blame for the failure of Immigration reform in practice. It’s a high wire act at this point.

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It doesn’t have to add up to a lot of money for people to get upset at Big Government

by digby

As I listen to progressives explain why the people who will pay higher health care premiums should not be upset by it, I can’t help but remember an event that took place here in California 10 years ago exactly:

California’s vehicle license fees, which are based on the value of the car or truck, tripled Friday as state officials allowed a controversial provision of a law which had been gradually lowering them to kick in.

That provision sends the fees up to previous levels in times of state budget difficulties. California would face a possible budget deficit of as much as $38 billion by the end of the coming fiscal year if spending and revenue trends were to continue.

The increase could boost the annual fees by an average of about $130.

The trigger for the increase had been a political hot potato as Gov. Gray Davis and some other elected officials tried to find a way to increase the fees without opening themselves up to voter backlash.

But state Sen. Tom McClintock, an opponent of the fee increase, on Friday filed paperwork with the state attorney general to collect signatures on two measures to lower or eliminate the fee.

We know what happened. They ended up recalling Davis and we ended up with a full decade of completely dysfunctional government.

It’s a different time now and health insurance benefits people directly while a vehicle licence fee does not. And yes, the private insurance market is much smaller than the number of people affected by the vehicle license fee. I draw the analogy simply to illustrate the fact that appealing to the common good will not work on everyone and that Republicans will find a way to turn this into a crisis, even though it will be just as stupid as that vehicle license fee brouhaha was. For the GOP the fact that premiums will go up for some people is very good politics.

I am not saying that Obamacare won’t be a net improvement. Of course it will be — it gets a lot of people insured who couldn’t be insured before and over the long haul it will likely lower costs throughout the system. But if implementation means that some people will have to pay more, it’s fair to assume that the Republicans will turn that into a full blown hissy fit — and that many of the those affected are going to scream bloody murder. People are looking for reasons to be upset about it.

If everyone read Jonathan Cohn’s piece in today’s TNR, the majority of them would probably come away assured that they are getting a good deal and it’s all worth it. But as I wrote earlier, the people who buy their own insurance on the private market know what they’re paying for and being told they will have to pay more for insurance they already decided they couldn’t afford is going to make at least some of them mad. Some of those who aren’t currently insured will also feel they are being made to do something they had consciously decided not to do. So the idea that it’s going to be a breezy, simple thing that everyone will gladly accept because it’s the right thing to do and will help other people just seems naive to me. I feel as if this is going to be a political battle and the supporters of the ACA aren’t really prepared for what’s coming.

I could be wrong, obviously. It’s absolutely true that the number of people who will have a plausible cause for complaint is quite small and maybe there won’t be very many who object. But what does that have to do with what the Republicans are going to do with this? They are very clever at turning people into victims of Big Government.

You can see how they are looking at it from this tweet from Townhall editor Kevin Glass:

This sentence would have meant a lot more from ACA supporters two years ago: “Guaranteeing insurance will tend to raise premiums somewhat.”
— Kevin W. Glass (@KevinWGlass) June 5, 2013

This article in Reason makes that point as well. I do remember there being discussion of rates going up but not as much as people are saying in that article. More importantly, I think that when the endless talk of lowering health care costs was raised s a primary motive for the reform, most people assumed it would lower their costs/premiums too. I’d be shocked if the average person who paid attention during the health care debate understood that health insurance premiums would likely go up for some people.

I was one who did, and I wrote about it, predicting some of this reaction back in 2009. I’ve always been willing to try to find ways to pay more because I do care about those uninsured people and I understand that everyone had to chip in in order to get more poor people cared for. I just can’t see my right wing “business consultant” neighbor who already complains about government regulations being someone who feels the same way. Maybe I’m underestimating him. But I doubt it.

Update:
Here’s a debate on this between Avik Roy and Ezra Klein on Chris Hayes show last night on this very subject.

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I think Ezra is over estimating the fact that because he responded to a CBO report and something from Evan Bayh that this constitutes a “debate” on the fact that premiums would obviously go up.  That’s a very elite debate — and I honestly don’t believe that this was made apparent to the public by the administration or Democrats in general.  I listened very closely and what was mostly being discussed was cutting costs and covering more people.  Sure, it should have been obvious that the money would come from somewhere, but I don’t think it was clear that some of it would be coming out of individuals’ pockets in the form of higher premiums. I’d love to see some polling on this at the time.

I’m sympathetic to the idea that the ACA was a hugely complicated bill that was difficult to explain. I’m sure it’s frustrating to those who were deeply immersed in the details to find out that people didn’t get the basic premise.  But I think everyone should have been prepared for the fact that these sorts of changes would be used by the opposition to undermine support for the plan. And now that we see just how willing the Republicans are to block all the tweaking/improvements that everyone knew would be necessary, this attitude is going to be even more of a problem.

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The Pope tweaks conservatives in Latin

by David Atkins

The Pope has twitter accounts in many of the world’s languages, including the Vatican’s native Latin. Pope Benedict first instituted and started using the accounts, and the current Pope has seen fit to use them as well. Last night Pope Francis tweeted this:

Rerum tutari naturam non homines a primordiis tantum iubentur sed nostrum etiam nunc unusquisque; divini namque pars totius est consilii.— Papa Franciscus (@Pontifex_ln) June 5, 2013

A loose translation would be:

People, each and every one of us, are commanded to protect the nature of things not only from its beginnings but also right now; for this is part of the whole divine plan.

That is first and foremost an environmental message, and it has received angry responses ranging from those pointing to Biblical suggestions that people use and dominate the earth, to even a white supremacist declaring loyalty to his own people over loyalty to the protection of nature. It is interesting to see conservative Catholics argue with their own Pope.

More than that, perhaps Pope Francis meant the tweet purely as an environmental message. But it’s also possible to interpret it as an economic message as well, seeing the “nature of things” not just in conservationist terms but human terms as well. In that interpretation, it would be important to care not only, say, about an unborn child but about people living right now outside the womb.

It will be interesting to see how successful the new Pope will be in his attempt to drag the organization kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Tweaking conservatives in the most conservative tongue possible is a funny way to try.

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List ‘O the Day

by digby

Brendan Nyhan has compiled an amazing list of loyalty smears against President Obama:

Smears of Barack Obama’s loyalty 2006-

December 2006: Columnist Debbie Schlussel notes that Obama’s father was a Muslim and asks “Where will his loyalties be?”

February 2008: Radio talk show host Bill Cunningham calls Obama “this Manchurian candidate” but says “I do not believe Barack Hussein Obama is a terrorist or a Manchurian candidate.”

April 2008: During an apperance on Glenn Beck’s show on CNN Headline News, Ann Coulter asks “Is Obama a Manchurian candidate to normal Americans who love their country? … Or is he being the Manchurian candidate to the traitor wing of the Democratic Party?”

May 2008: Fox News analyst Dick Morris states that “the determinant in the election will be whether we believe that Barack Obama is what he appears to be, or is he somebody who’s sort of a sleeper agent who really doesn’t believe in our system and is more in line with [Rev. Jeremiah] Wright’s views?”

June 2008: During separate television apperances on Fox News and NBC, Dick Morris says “[T]he question that plagues Obama is … Is he pro-American?” and states that “[T]his whole debate about what kind of president [Sen. Barack] Obama would make has swirled around almost an existential level. Is he sort of a Manchurian candidate? A sleeper agent? Or is he the great hope of the future?” Fox News host E.D. Hill also asked whether a fist bump between Obama and his wife was “A terrorist fist jab?”

April 2009: Frank Gaffney claims on MSNBC that Obama’s apparent bow to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia was “code” telling “our Muslim enemies that you are willing to submit to them.”

May 2009: Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich alleges on “Fox News Sunday” that there is a “weird pattern” in which Obama administration officials were “prepared to take huge risks with Americans in order to defend terrorists” and suggests that the Obama administration was proposing “welfare” for terrorists. He then claims on “Meet the Press” that the Obama administration’s “highest priority” is to “find some way to defend terrorists.”

June 2009: Senator James Inhofe calls Obama’s Cairo speech “un-American” and says “I just don’t know whose side he’s on.” Talk show host Lee Rodgers asserts that Obama is “an anti-American president” and that Obama’s policies will lead to a “few million dead Americans.”

August 2009: On the Lou Dobbs radio show, substitute host Tom Marr says “I have to believe that there is still an inner Muslim within this man that has some sense of sympathy towards the number one enemy of freedom and democracy in the world today, and that is Islamic terrorism.”

September 2009: Gaffney says Obama is “pursuing [an agenda] that is indistinguishable in important respects from that of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose mission ladies and gentlemen, we know from a trial in Dallas last year, is to quote to destroy Western civilization from within by its own miserable hand.” Conservative pundit Tammy Bruce says on Fox News that Obama has “some malevolence toward this country.”

November 2009: Fox’s Sean Hannity suggests that President Obama was somehow responsible for the Fort Hood shooting, stating that “our government apparently knew and did nothing” about “a terrorist act” and then asking “What does it say about Barack Obama and our government?”

December 2009: Citing a dubious report that the Obama administration had threatened Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) with closing Offutt Air Force Base, home of the US Strategic Command, if Nelson didn’t support the health care reform bill in the Senate, Glenn Beck suggests that the allegation would constitute “high crimes,” asked “[H]ow much closer do you get to treason?”, and said the claim “borders treason” and “borders on treason.”

January 2010: The New York Post publishes an editorial asking “Whose side is the Justice Department on: America’s or the terrorists’? … [T]he president and his administration also owe the American people an answer: Is the government’s prosecutorial deck stacked in favor of the terrorists?” Former senator Fred Thompson also jokes that the US could win the war in Afghanistan if we “[j]ust send Obama over there to campaign for the Taliban.”

February 2010: During a conference call with conservative bloggers, Senator Kit Bond (R-Mo.) accuses the Obama administration of having a “a terrorist protection policy” and conducting a “jihad to close Guantanamo.” In addition, based on a superficial resemblance between two logos, Frank Gaffney suggests that President Obama’s missile defense policies “seem to fit an increasingly obvious and worrying pattern of official U.S. submission to Islam and the theo-political-legal program the latter’s authorities call Shariah.”

April 2010: Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) writes an article for The Daily Caller alleging that Obama is “disadvantaging the United States one step at a time and undermining this country’s national defense on purpose.”

July 2010: Writing in the Washington Times, former GOP Rep. and third party gubernatorial candidate Tom Tancredo calls Obama “a more serious threat to America than al Qaeda” and “a dedicated enemy of the Constitution,” while columnist Jeffrey Kuhner of the Edmund Burke Institute describes Obama as an “usurper” who is creating “a socialist dictatorship” and has engaged in “treasonous” behavior by suing Arizona over its immigration law.

August 2010: National Review’s Andrew McCarthy publishes an entire book claiming that Obama is pursuing an agenda that will aid Islamic radicals. The dust jacket states that “the global Islamist movement’s jihad … has found the ideal partner in President Barack Obama, whose Islamist sympathies run deep.” Commentary’s Jennifer Rubin writes that Obama’s “sympathies for the Muslim World take precedence over those, such as they are, for his fellow citizens” in a post criticizing Obama’s statement on the proposed Muslim community center near Ground Zero.

September 2010: David Limbaugh suggests that Obama may be “trying intentionally to take us over the cliff” in a Newsmax.tv interview.

May 2013: When asked whether Obama “actually switched sides in the War on Terror,” former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld answered, “You know, I just don’t feel competent to answer. I can’t tell.”

Yes, that guy. Former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. Seriously.

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Your Daily Grayson

by digby

Speaking of Social Security:

Ding, Dong, The Witch Is Dead.

How is that crazy proposal to cut Social Security benefits?

Food for worms. Kicked the bucket. Bought the farm. Six feet under. Dead dead dead.

What do I mean?

On April 5, the New York Times ran this disturbing headline:

“Obama Budget to Include Cuts to Programs in Hopes of Deal”

But here are some more recent headlines:

Red-State Democrats Buck Obama On Social Security Cuts, Huffington Post
Ryan Sees No ‘Grand Bargain’ on Budget, Wall Street Journal
Republicans Sean Duffy, Phil Gingrey Oppose Obama’s Social Security Cut, Huffington Post
Richard Trumka: The ‘grand bargain’ is a dead end, The Cap Times
Deficit Deal Even Less Likely, Wall Street Journal
No Push for a Grand Bargain on the Deficit? Fox Business News

And who led the charge? Moi, as John Kerry would say. Consider this quote from the lead article in the New York Times on April 10, just after Obama’s budget was released:

“The A.F.L.-C.I.O. president, Richard Trumka, in a blistering statement, called the proposed changes “wrong and indefensible.” An e-mail from Representative Alan Grayson, a liberal from Florida, was headlined “President’s Budget Breaks Promise to Seniors.”

We won.

But this proposal, like Dracula, will come back from the dead. Wall Street is always hungry for money, and the Social Security Trust Fund has a lot of it. For now, though, we’ve beaten them.

How did we do it?

We organized. We called. We e-mailed. We got an army of more than three million people together to say no. With one voice. We got more than 45 Democratic Members of Congress to commit that they would not vote for legislation that includes these cuts. Real Democrats, not squishy, sort of, kind of, Democrats. Then we began to peel off Republicans.

But we need more than a stop sign. We need a green light towards a better life for all Americans.

Over the course of the next month or so, I’m going to be laying out an agenda for real Democrats. Not half a loaf, but a loaf and a half.

Get excited. True Blue Democrats — we are coming.

Courage,

Congressman Alan Grayson

“…we need more than a stop sign. We need a green light towards a better life for all Americans.”

Maybe a full-throated, real progressive agenda will get the blood pumping again. I look forward to hearing more.

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Social Security and immigration: Put ’em on the grid Part XXIV

by digby

Following up on David Atkins’ post below I thought I’d highlight Krugman’s column from a couple of days ago about the future health of Social Security and Medicare. It should put people’s minds somewhat at ease — at least those who’ve been staying up nights worrying about its ability to pay full benefits decades down the road. Krugman concludes with this:

The truth is that the long-term outlook for Social Security and Medicare, while not great, actually isn’t all that bad. It’s time to stop obsessing about how we’ll pay benefits to retirees in 2035 and focus instead on how we’re going to provide jobs to unemployed Americans in the here and now.

What he doesn’t mention in his column is something that’s starting to be a part of the dialog more and more often. (Some of us have been talking about this for years, but we’re DFH weirdoes …)

A Senate bill to overhaul U.S. immigration laws would help ease financial strains on the Social Security retirement program, government analysts said on Wednesday in a report that marked the latest salvo in a debate over the legislation’s impact.

In a letter to Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio, who is one of the authors of the bill, analysts at the Social Security Administration said the overall effect of the bill on the Social Security’s finances “will be positive.”

The analysis said the bill would create a net 3.22 million jobs over the next decade and boost U.S. gross domestic product by 1.63 percentage points over that period…

Advocates for immigration reform contend it would help ease pressure on government programs such as Social Security because it would result in a greater number of younger workers to support aging baby boomers, who are beginning to retire in large numbers.

The analysis from the Social Security actuaries could lend support to that argument.

And keep in mind that this temporary blip in demographics from the greedy geezer baby boomers will taper off as we die out and balance will eventually be restored.

Younger workers are just what the doctor ordered. And they too will be eligible for benefits when they get old, supported by their offspring just as the program intended.

Unfortunately, I wonder if this argument will end up making it harder to pass immigration reform. It might be too much of a double whammy for the rabid right wing base to tolerate: Latino immigrants funding social security (and eventually getting it.) But as with so many things, they’d be shooting themselves in the foot by not supporting it. Putting these folks who want to work and live in the US into the system is good for everyone, especially the old white folks who will need to depend on Social Security for the next few decades. Put ’em on the grid!

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Expand Social Security, don’t cut it

by David Atkins

Well, glory hallelujah. An op-ed columnist not named Paul Krugman from a major newspaper points out the obvious need to expand Social Security rather than cut it. Michael Hiltzik in the Los Angeles Times makes the case:

What the latest figures show is that Social Security is still the best retirement program we have. It’s the safest, the most dependable and by far the most important source of income to the vast majority of retired Americans: Two-thirds of them get more than half their income from Social Security.

The biggest problem is that most retirement funds outside Social Security are at risk in the financial markets. Among workers with any employer-provided retirement plans, the fraction covered solely by a defined-benefit plan — the traditional kind, where your retirement check was based on your longevity and salary history with your company — declined by more than 80% between 1980 and 2003, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. Even firms that still offer these plans typically exclude new employees.

Over the same period, the percentage of workers covered solely by defined contribution plans tripled. Since the retirement benefits generated by these 401(k)-type plans are based on how much their owners save during their working lives and how well those nest eggs perform in the financial markets, the exposure to financial downturns is severe.

Meanwhile, the proper way to “fix” Social Security (if it needs messing with at all) is simply to raise the cap. Yes, that would involve increased taxes on the ultra-rich. Yes, the corporate shills at Third Way and the like would be very upset:

There’s no trick to making Social Security more relevant to more Americans. Benefits should be increased, especially for those whose lifetime annual earnings have averaged $50,000 or so (roughly two-thirds of all beneficiaries). The benefits for women who have spent most of their working-age lives as caregivers by raising a family or tending to aged parents should be augmented through a “caregiver credit” that recognizes their contribution. You know all those politicians who go on the stump or on TV to praise family and motherhood? This is a chance to put their votes where their mouths are.

How to pay for that? No trick to that, either: Raise the payroll tax cap, or even better, scrap it. The most common objection to this solution to Social Security’s fiscal issues is that it would raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans to, well, “unsustainable” levels.

That’s the case made by Third Way, a self-described moderate think tank that’s guided by civic-minded representatives of Wall Street and big business. Eliminating the earnings cap without countervailing benefit cuts is a solution that “will never happen and should never happen,” the group said in an “idea brief” last month.

A good way to determine good public policy is just to ask oneself what Third Way would do, then do the opposite. Eliminating or altering the earnings cap can, in fact, happen. It’s a popular idea. It just requires the political will to make it happen.

In any case, the last thing we should be doing is advocating cuts:

Experience shows that nothing has worked better to shore up the average American’s retirement prospects than Social Security, and nothing has kept the elderly healthy better than Medicare. With the trustees suggesting that the dire projections of the recent past may not be so dire, truly fresh thinking would say that the moment has come to invest more in these programs, not less. Why are we still talking about cuts?

If this were debate class, the progressive side would win easily. The Third Way types and the Paul Ryan crowd have no leg to stand on in a fair fight. The only reason they keep the right thing from happening is the corruption of massive piles of money, combined with the easily manipulable social resentments of certain kinds of people in certain kinds of areas.

But it’s nice to see at least one more opinion writer point out that the austerity emperor has no clothes.

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Bleeding Dodger blue

by digby

It’s a rough year so far for Dodger fans.  I’m a member of a “Dodger family” and we need all the “moments” we can get. Last night something really fun happened and I thought I’d share it:

Yasiel Puig made his much-anticipated major league debut Monday night a memorable one by using his powerful and accurate right arm to complete a game-ending double play, catching the San Diego Padres off guard in a 2-1 victory at Dodger Stadium.

“That’s one happy Cuban,” Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully said.

Puig, a 22-year-old defector from from Cuba whom the Dodgers signed in 2012, has drawn comparisons to Bo Jackson for his athleticism, but a fairer association might be Vladimir Guerrero, a free-swinger from the Dominican Republic who also, of course, had a big arm.  (MLB video here.) 

Here’s a Youtube from a fan in the stands:

It’s the little things …