Month: June 2013

QOTD: the most offensive rich jerk in the world

by digby

Sometimes when they get mad they reveal themselves:

Micky Hurley is one half of the wealthy, Upper East Side–dwelling Chilean couple accused of essentially enslaving a nanny for three months. So that’s already one strike against him. Now a Chilean newspaper is reporting that Hurley, an interior designer (who once graced the pages of this very magazine), also said the very most condescending thing that a rich socialite has ever said. It happened over e-mail during a dispute with a Chilean photographer who claimed Hurley owed him money. Here is the translation, via Gawker. Get ready. It’s so bad.

Listen you poor, miserable, ROTEQUE [Ed note: “Roteque” does not have a direct translation to English. It implies someone from a lower class and is an incredibly offensive word. The most awful adjective you can think of], low-born social climber. 

Delete your grubby photos. DON’T COME THREATENING ME YOU WORTHLESS LITTLE SHIT. NEVER. Remember, you are ALWAYS going to be from a different class, you were born where you were born, and even if you were reborn a billion times, you will never have a Baroness for a grandmother like me.

It’s a little bit more colorful than Mitt Romney’s 47% remarks but it conveys a similar sentiment.

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Scalia loves the founding principles (except for that inalienable rights thingy)

by digby

He’s just letting it all hang out now:

In a speech titled “Mullahs of the West: Judges as Moral Arbiters,” the outspoken and conservative jurist told the N.C. Bar Association that constitutional law is threatened by a growing belief in the “judge moralist.” In that role, judges are bestowed with special expertise to determine right and wrong in such matters as abortion, doctor-assisted suicide, the death penalty and same-sex marriage.

Scalia said that approach presents two problems: Judges are not moral experts, and many of the moral issues now coming before the courts have no “scientifically demonstrable right answer.”

As such, he said, it’s a community’s job to decide what it finds morally acceptable, not the courts’.

The justice’s 35-minute speech at the bar association’s annual meeting was met with two rounds of applause, laughter and, afterward, some pointed questions.

During his speech, Scalia acknowledged that his opinion is not universally shared. Many legal scholars and judges – including some of his colleagues on the Supreme Court – believe in a “living Constitution” that reflects “evolving standards of decency.” This also has given rise to what Scalia decried as a sprawling application of the provisions of human rights and equal protection under the law.

In response to a question, he said he does not ascribe to a Constitution locked away from change. The law must evolve to deal with new phenomena, he said, but it should do so while remaining firmly moored in its founding principles. And most moral issues, he added, don’t qualify as new.

I find this so interesting. What do you suppose he thinks human rights and equal protection under the law are exactly. White, straight guys guys only?

Well… kind of. He has written that he believes that people should be “protected from” gays and that racism is the kind of “moral issue” that judges have no business involving themselves in. Really:

During a question-and-answer period that followed the judge’s speech, Sarratt asked Scalia if he would have taken a similarly hands-off approach to “Brown v. Board of Education,” the legal cornerstone of school desegregation across the country.

Scalia said he would have voted with the majority on the case to create more educational opportunities for blacks. He added, however, that “a good result” doesn’t make for good law. Had the courts not interceded, he said, state leaders would have eventually removed the racial barriers.

Gee, I wonder if they would have done it by now or if we’d still be “evolving.” After all, it took almost a century to get from freeing the slaves to Brown vs Board of Education.

There are marriage equality advocates who feel confident that it will be voluntarily legalized in all states without needing any constitutional opinion to make it happen. The idea is that it’s better to have social acceptance first so that the right is secured by consensus. So it’s not as if Scalia is completely alone in this concept.

On the other hand, waiting for “the long run” to organically take care of human rights is a risky bet, and one that consigns some people to living as unequal citizens for quite some time. I think it’s probably a good idea for the court to live in the now while acknowledging another founding principle — the one that animated the revolution that made this country:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Meanwhile, it’s perfectly clear the Scalia is signaling his opinion in a pending case that has not been announced. At what point is this guy going to get sanctioned for his behavior?

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Conservatives hate democracy so much they’re disenfranchising white Republicans now

by digby

The right wing credo: when you can’t win by playing by the rules, change the rules.

The Georgia Republican Party will vote Saturday on whether to nominate its candidates at a convention rather than by regular primaries, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Georgia Republicans are weighing an election shift that could reshape the state’s political landscape by giving grass-roots activists tremendous new clout in picking the party’s nominee.

State GOP leaders plan to vote Saturday on whether to take a first step away from the summer primaries that elect the party’s nominee and toward allowing a convention of party insiders to choose the candidate for statewide and national office. Consider it an audition for a more sweeping electoral change.

Not surprisingly, some elected Republican leaders and assorted power brokers are wary of an overhaul they fear could disenfranchise the roughly 700,000 people who vote in party primaries and cede power to a smaller group of activists.

But supporters say the change is needed to offset what the resolution calls the “power of Big Money and Big Media” and give more say to the activists who feel they’ve been ignored during the GOP’s ascendancy.

The resolution being voted on Saturday doesn’t actually make the change, but rather calls for a closer examination of it. Switching the nomination process would require a change to state law.
Only a select few states employ this method. In Utah, primaries are only held if no candidate reaches 60 percent of the vote at the state party convention. In Virginia, the state party decides each year whether to nominate its candidates via primaries or convention.

The reason it matters: Conventions are often dominated by conservative party activists and tend to favor more conservative candidates.

First let’s just think about how conservative you have to be to believe that the Georgia GOP isn’t conservative enough. I think I’ll call this the Paula Deen faction.

They sure don’t like letting people vote.Of course, this time they’re trying to disenfranchise a bunch of white Republicans. Might they have gone too far this time?

This really is Big Brother: the leak nobody’s noticed

by digby

This McClatchy piece (written by some of the same people who got the Iraq war run-up story so right while everyone else got it wrong) is as chilling to me as anything we’ve heard over the past few weeks about the NSA spying. In fact, it may be worse:

Even before a former U.S. intelligence contractor exposed the secret collection of Americans’ phone records, the Obama administration was pressing a government-wide crackdown on security threats that requires federal employees to keep closer tabs on their co-workers and exhorts managers to punish those who fail to report their suspicions.

President Barack Obama’s unprecedented initiative, known as the Insider Threat Program, is sweeping in its reach. It has received scant public attention even though it extends beyond the U.S. national security bureaucracies to most federal departments and agencies nationwide, including the Peace Corps, the Social Security Administration and the Education and Agriculture departments. It emphasizes leaks of classified material, but catchall definitions of “insider threat” give agencies latitude to pursue and penalize a range of other conduct.

Government documents reviewed by McClatchy illustrate how some agencies are using that latitude to pursue unauthorized disclosures of any information, not just classified material. They also show how millions of federal employees and contractors must watch for “high-risk persons or behaviors” among co-workers and could face penalties, including criminal charges, for failing to report them. Leaks to the media are equated with espionage.

“Hammer this fact home . . . leaking is tantamount to aiding the enemies of the United States,” says a June 1, 2012, Defense Department strategy for the program that was obtained by McClatchy.

When the free free press, explicitly protected in the bill of rights becomes equivalent to an “enemy of the United States” something very, very bad is happening.

The administration says it’s doing this to protect national security and that it is willing to protect those who blow the whistle on waste, fraud and abuse. But that is not how the effect of this sort of program is going to be felt. After all, it’s being implemented across the federal government, not just in national security:

The program could make it easier for the government to stifle the flow of unclassified and potentially vital information to the public, while creating toxic work environments poisoned by unfounded suspicions and spurious investigations of loyal Americans, according to these current and former officials and experts. Some non-intelligence agencies already are urging employees to watch their co-workers for “indicators” that include stress, divorce and financial problems.

“It was just a matter of time before the Department of Agriculture or the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) started implementing, ‘Hey, let’s get people to snitch on their friends.’ The only thing they haven’t done here is reward it,” said Kel McClanahan, a Washington lawyer who specializes in national security law. “I’m waiting for the time when you turn in a friend and you get a $50 reward.”

The Defense Department anti-leak strategy obtained by McClatchy spells out a zero-tolerance policy. Security managers, it says, “must” reprimand or revoke the security clearances – a career-killing penalty – of workers who commit a single severe infraction or multiple lesser breaches “as an unavoidable negative personnel action.”

Employees must turn themselves and others in for failing to report breaches. “Penalize clearly identifiable failures to report security infractions and violations, including any lack of self-reporting,” the strategic plan says.

The Obama administration already was pursuing an unprecedented number of leak prosecutions, and some in Congress – long one of the most prolific spillers of secrets – favor tightening restrictions on reporters’ access to federal agencies, making many U.S. officials reluctant to even disclose unclassified matters to the public.

The policy, which partly relies on behavior profiles, also could discourage creative thinking and fuel conformist “group think” of the kind that was blamed for the CIA’s erroneous assessment that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction, a judgment that underpinned the 2003 U.S. invasion.

I don’t know about you, but that does not sound like freedom. In fact, it sounds like something else entirely to me.

This government paranoia and informant culture is about as corrosive to the idea of freedom as it gets. The workplace is already rife with petty jealousies, and singular ambition— it’s a human organization after all. Adding in this sort of incentive structure is pretty much setting up a system for intimidation and abuse.

And, as with all informant systems, especially ones that “profile” for certain behaviors deemed to be a threat to the state, only the most conformist will thrive. It’s a recipe for disaster if one is looking for any kind of dynamic, creative thinking. Clearly, that is the last these creepy bureaucrats want.

This is the direct result of a culture of secrecy that seems to be pervading the federal government under president Obama.  He is not the first president to expand the national security state , nor is he responsible for the bipartisan consensus on national security or the ongoing influence of the Military Industrial Complex.This, however, is different. And he should be individually held to account for this policy.:

Administration officials say the program could help ensure that agencies catch a wide array of threats, especially if employees are properly trained in recognizing behavior that identifies potential security risks.

“If this is done correctly, an organization can get to a person who is having personal issues or problems that if not addressed by a variety of social means may lead that individual to violence, theft or espionage before it even gets to that point,” said a senior Pentagon official, who requested anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the issue publicly.
[…]
“If the folks who are watching within an organization for that insider threat – the lawyers, security officials and psychologists – can figure out that an individual is having money problems or decreased work performance and that person may be starting to come into the window of being an insider threat, superiors can then approach them and try to remove that stress before they become a threat to the organization,” the Pentagon official said.

The program, however, gives agencies such wide latitude in crafting their responses to insider threats that someone deemed a risk in one agency could be characterized as harmless in another. Even inside an agency, one manager’s disgruntled employee might become another’s threat to national security.

Obama in November approved “minimum standards” giving departments and agencies considerable leeway in developing their insider threat programs, leading to a potential hodgepodge of interpretations. He instructed them to not only root out leakers but people who might be prone to “violent acts against the government or the nation” and “potential espionage.”

The Pentagon established its own sweeping definition of an insider threat as an employee with a clearance who “wittingly or unwittingly” harms “national security interests” through “unauthorized disclosure, data modification, espionage, terrorism, or kinetic actions resulting in loss or degradation of resources or capabilities.”

“An argument can be made that the rape of military personnel represents an insider threat. Nobody has a model of what this insider threat stuff is supposed to look like,” said the senior Pentagon official, explaining that inside the Defense Department “there are a lot of chiefs with their own agendas but no leadership.”

The Department of Education, meanwhile, informs employees that co-workers going through “certain life experiences . . . might turn a trusted user into an insider threat.” Those experiences, the department says in a computer training manual, include “stress, divorce, financial problems” or “frustrations with co-workers or the organization.”

An online tutorial titled “Treason 101” teaches Department of Agriculture and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration employees to recognize the psychological profile of spies.

A Defense Security Service online pamphlet lists a wide range of “reportable” suspicious behaviors, including working outside of normal duty hours. While conceding that not every behavior “represents a spy in our midst,” the pamphlet adds that “every situation needs to be examined to determine whether our nation’s secrets are at risk.”

The Defense Department, traditionally a leading source of media leaks, is still setting up its program, but it has taken numerous steps. They include creating a unit that reviews news reports every day for leaks of classified defense information and implementing new training courses to teach employees how to recognize security risks, including “high-risk” and “disruptive” behaviors among co-workers, according to Defense Department documents reviewed by McClatchy.

“It’s about people’s profiles, their approach to work, how they interact with management. Are they cheery? Are they looking at Salon.com or The Onion during their lunch break? This is about ‘The Stepford Wives,’” said a second senior Pentagon official, referring to online publications and a 1975 movie about robotically docile housewives. The official said he wanted to remain anonymous to avoid being punished for criticizing the program.

The emphasis on certain behaviors reminded Greenstein of her employee orientation with the CIA, when she was told to be suspicious of unhappy co-workers.

“If someone was having a bad day, the message was watch out for them,” she said.

Some federal agencies also are using the effort to protect a broader range of information. The Army orders its personnel to report unauthorized disclosures of unclassified information, including details concerning military facilities, activities and personnel.

The Peace Corps, which is in the midst of implementing its program, “takes very seriously the obligation to protect sensitive information,” said an email from a Peace Corps official who insisted on anonymity but gave no reason for doing so.

Granting wide discretion is dangerous, some experts and officials warned, when federal agencies are already prone to overreach in their efforts to control information flow.

The Bush administration allegedly tried to silence two former government climate change experts from speaking publicly on the dangers of global warming. More recently, the FDA justified the monitoring of the personal email of its scientists and doctors as a way to detect leaks of unclassified information.

Maybe this is just another way of reducing the federal workforce. Nobody normal should want to work there.

When the Department of Education is searching for “insider threats” something’s gone very wrong.

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A Reasonable Man

by tristero

The Times reviewer assures us that despite having a visceral disgust for any kind of sexual behavior he doesn’t enjoy and an opinion on human procreation that verges comically close to the notion that “every sperm is sacred,”  Professor George of Princeton is not your typical conservative bloviator. No, we are told, he is an oh-so-thoughful Serious Thinker, far removed from “the blunderings of Todd Akin and the theatrics of Rush Limbaugh.“

Of course he is.

And then there’s this:

George, in other words, speaks for a sizable number of conscientious objectors to America’s ruling liberal secularism.

Ah yes, so many powerful Republicans and Democrats are such proud atheists.

Right Wing Rhetoric Watch: Secular humanism is dead; long live liberal secularism!

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Tweet o’ the day: @LOLGOP takes on Paula Deen

by David Atkins

Paul Deen could have avoided so much trouble by just talking about people who are on “welfare” or “food stamps.” http://t.co/fIIJFuWU4w
— LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) June 21, 2013

Poor Ms. Deen just doesn’t have the knack for code that Republican politicians do.

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QOTD: Netroots Nation edition

by digby

Barney Frank:

“Harass us, because we really do pay attention. Look at who’s on the ballot, and vote for the candidate you agree with the most. The next time, you get better choices.”

He’s talking about primaries there, folks. I’ve heard him say before that incumbents hate them. Too many of them don’t want to have to pay attention to anyone but their rich donors. But when you give them a run for their money it focuses their minds in another direction. Toward voters…

(*And yes, I know he sort of endorsed drone warfare, but that doesn’t mean his advice above doesn’t apply.)

Afternoon read: Taibbi on the ratings agencies

by David Atkins

I’ve got a busy schedule today at Netroots Nation in San Jose so I don’t have as much time as usual for blogging, but for those who want a superb afternoon read, be sure to check out Matt Taibbi’s tremendous piece on the corrupt pay-to-play ratings agencies that helped bring about the financial crisis. Here’s a small taste:

But what about the ratings agencies? Isn’t it true that almost none of the fraud that’s swallowed Wall Street in the past decade could have taken place without companies like Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s rubber-stamping it? Aren’t they guilty, too?

Man, are they ever. And a lot more than even the least generous of us suspected.

Thanks to a mountain of evidence gathered for a pair of major lawsuits by the San Diego-based law firm Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd, documents that for the most part have never been seen by the general public, we now know that the nation’s two top ratings companies, Moody’s and S&P, have for many years been shameless tools for the banks, willing to give just about anything a high rating in exchange for cash.

In incriminating e-mail after incriminating e-mail, executives and analysts from these companies are caught admitting their entire business model is crooked.

“Lord help our fucking scam . . . this has to be the stupidest place I have worked at,” writes one Standard & Poor’s executive. “As you know, I had difficulties explaining ‘HOW’ we got to those numbers since there is no science behind it,” confesses a high-ranking S&P analyst. “If we are just going to make it up in order to rate deals, then quants [quantitative analysts] are of precious little value,” complains another senior S&P man. “Let’s hope we are all wealthy and retired by the time this house of card[s] falters,” ruminates one more.

Things haven’t changed all that much since. It’s appalling enough that all of this happened in the first place in a democratic society. But it’s ten times worse that so little of it has been fixed.

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Why churches should be up in arms about cuts to food stamps

Guest post by Pastordan

Look, you don’t have to be a Christian to be outraged by the clowning around about life on food stamps that Digby wrote about yesterday. Anybody with half a brain or half a heart can see how mean-spirited and clueless this publicity stunt was. These people are coming very, very close to saying they’d rather let people starve than inflict even a few dollars’ extra tax burden on the Koch brothers. And if the victims could smile and whistle a happy tune as their children’s lives are sucked away by diabetes and malnutrition, hey, that’d be great too. It’s not like anybody we know is going to be affected, right?

I do think Christians have a particular reason to be angry about this story, though, and by the larger movement to cut SNAP. The church I attend houses the local food pantry and a feeding ministry, each of which serves dozens of people a week in a town of about 40,000.

If you’ve ever spent time around soup kitchens or food pantries, you learn very quickly that many of their clients rely on Social Security or some form of assistance: SNAP or WIC or disability payments. They tend to come in for supplemental food when the government checks run out, in the last weeks of the month, and they’re always grateful for things like toilet paper that you can’t buy with food stamps. Many of them are elderly, mentally or physically handicapped, or families with too many mouths to feed. I’ve literally had those families tell me they used to be middle-class just like us, until someone got sick or lost a job or a house. The line between taxpayer and charity case is very, very thin these days, and getting thinner all the time.

Though churches aren’t the only groups that feed vulnerable people, they do the vast majority of that work in the US, by virtue of sheer numbers if nothing else. When right-wing ideologues bloviate about “trimming the fat” out of SNAP, they’re essentially hawking a big loogie and spitting in the face of the churches that pick up the slack for the government. Digby points out how counterproductive that approach is. As much as I believe in the ministry of the church, government support is simply more efficient and more effective. You can literally see the difference written in flesh and blood.

So every time a conservative argues for cuts to SNAP, they are in effect saying to the people who run food pantries and soup kitchens, “We’re going to make you work harder.” As Booman says, that seems to be the point: they want vulnerable people to work harder. And if they fail, it’s their own damn fault.

You know who else wanted people to work harder?

That same day Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the people, as well as their supervisors, ‘You shall no longer give the people straw to make bricks, as before; let them go and gather straw for themselves. But you shall require of them the same quantity of bricks as they have made previously; do not diminish it, for they are lazy; that is why they cry, “Let us go and offer sacrifice to our God.” Let heavier work be laid on them; then they will labor at it and pay no attention to deceptive words.’

It’s no accident that Pharaoh issues these orders in the midst of a labor dispute. He adds to the Israelites’ burden specifically so they can’t think about, much less organize, a different and more just society. See any parallels?

If it were up to me, this message would get preached far and wide across the land. The miracle of the loaves and the fishes is the only one reported in all four gospels; it’s so important that some of them mention it twice! And in all three Synoptic Gospels, when the disciples ask Jesus to dismiss the crowds so they can something to eat, he responds with some variation on “You feed them.” He doesn’t say “feed them without increasing the marginal tax burden,” or “feed them the bare minimum while going to great lengths to root out fraud and waste,” or “feed them in churches and only in churches.” He says, “feed them.”

I know that some people, maybe many people, will think this is some kind of soft-hearted religious pablum. Some folks are going to read this and point out all the hate and violence that has come about in the name of Christianity. And it’s true: the church has a lot to be ashamed of in its past, and in some cases, in its present. But that’s missing the point. There is a definite political edge to the gospel, whether in Hebrew scripture or the New Testament. The message we’re meant to take away is that God wants justice in the world. God wants people to be paid a living wage, God wants everyone to eat. That’s the core message. By comparison, the regulations in Leviticus that people get so hung up on are marginal notes about how to keep mission discipline. Jesus preaches again and again about not judging, not envying, not buying into this rule or that, because he wants to keep the disciples’ focus where it belongs: “You feed them.”

Don’t you think the world would be a better place if churches did the same thing?

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