Month: July 2013

Self-defense


by digby

I’m sitting here watching the closing arguments in the Trayvon Martin murder trial and am struck once again by the both the majesty of the law  — and its limitations.  Trials are part drama and part reason and you can’t help but be impressed with the rituals and how seriously we adhere to them.  But it’s limitations are on obvious display here.

The facts show that George Zimmerman armed himself with a gun loaded with hollow point bullets and ended up killing an unarmed teenager who was just out buying some snacks. How that happened is disputed but to me it’s obvious that when you strap on a gun, go looking for trouble and end up stalking and killing an unarmed 17 year old, you’ve done something wrong.  To me, the carrying of that gun morally requires that he be held liable in some way for the unarmed Trayvon’s death.

But, as this article shows, the law in Florida says something different. It says that he was legally entitled to carry that gun with hollow point bullets, chase down someone he thought looked suspicious and then kill him in “self-defense” when they got into a tussle.  In this trial the state must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Zimmerman did not shoot Trayvon Martin in self-defense. It makes your head hurt a little bit.

Perhaps they should have charged him with criminally negligent manslaughter to begin with (or whatever the equivalent Florida statute.) But regardless, for him to walk completely is not justice.  It’s simply wrong if it’s determined that the level of irresponsibility and recklessness shown by this man that night is less than that of someone who gets drunk and kills a teenager in a car accident.  His judgment wasn’t impaired by alcohol. It can’t be less than a doctor who fails to notice something on a medical history or an employer who fails to properly secure the safety of an employee. There are people convicted of those crimes in jails all over the country.

Chasing a “suspicious” person you know nothing about in the dark with a gun loaded with hollow point bullets should mitigate against whatever we might normally think of as defending yourself.  But in a country that allows scared little men like George Zimmerman to make up for their shortcomings by carrying a great big gun, loaded for bear, as if that’s not dangerous in itself, means I suppose we’ll have to get used to this kind of vigilantism. If the law allows this, we’re basically saying that people can conceal a gun, provoke a fight and then shoot someone dead in “self-defense.”

Let’s hope the jury finds a just way of punishing George Zimmerman for his recklessness. The judge will allow a manslaughter verdict. He should get no less.

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Gee, where do people get the idea that this is a center-right country anyway?


by digby

There’s a lot to think about in Media Matters’ latest survey of the Sunday shows, but this is the breakdown that always floors me:

It is bad enough that they don’t feature more women and people of color, regardless of ideology. But that the imbalance is also tilted toward white conservative males tells you everything you need to know about the Village.

I guess we are supposed to be grateful they allow women and people of color on their shows at all. But these numbers should be at least a little bit startling when you think about the fact that women are half the population and whites are quickly becoming a minority ethnic identity.

And both the Senate and the White House are held by Democrats. To be sure, that doesn’t mean that liberals are in a majority, but since Democrats represent the left in these statistics you’d think they’d at least be represented by more than 20% of the interviews on these shows. I suppose that’s explained by the fact that if you’re going to book a huge number of white males, you’re going to get a giant skew toward conservatives.

These shows still have an outsized influence on the political dialog in our country because every reporters and pundit takes their cue from them about what constitutes the important stories of the week and what the prevailing narratives are.  And keep in mind that all of them see themselves as perfect examples of the average American.

*It should be noted that This Week tends to be more balanced than the others.  Obviously Fox is the worst and somewhat skews the average.  But even when you break it down by show, Face the Nation and Meet the Press are just terrible.

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Mr Takano grades little Johnny Boehner’s paper

by digby

Congressman Mark Takano was a high school teacher for many years:

I edited a draft letter by GOP members to Boehner that is looking for cosigners. Not signing it. #Immigration pic.twitter.com/xhLYSYi3lx
— Mark Takano (@RepMarkTakano) July 11, 2013

Nicely done congressman, nicely done.

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Looking forward to a progressive future

by David Atkins

On nearly every non-social-issue front, it seems that progressivism is taking a beating. Supply side economics continues to dominate despite its manifest failure; austerity fever still grips the world; the surveillance state has eclipsed personal privacy; asset growth has shadowed over wage growth; climate-killing burning of fossil fuels continues to increase; money in politics is worse than ever; the list goes on and on.

It would be easy to despair and imagine that the battle is lost. After all, if the Bush Administration, the financial crisis, the dramatic failure of austerity economics and all the rest wasn’t enough to change elite minds or at least foment enough unrest to change policies, what will? It seems hopeless enough.

Such despair seems rational from one perspective. But history shows us that things can change suddenly and dramatically, sometimes for the worse but very often for the better. What had seem immutable can change quite rapidly. Better yet, those changes seem to come ever faster as our technology increases, accelerating speed ever since the industrial revolution. If today’s economic and social structures seem too resistant to major change, what things might change as a result of technology in the future that will require progressive solutions?

Well, last year Kevin Drum had a few thoughts:

1. Climate change. Needs no explanation, I assume.

2. Robots. Explanation here. Even Paul Krugman is tentatively on board now.

3. Immortality. Laugh if you want, but it’s hardly impossible that sometime in the medium-term future we’ll see biomedical breakthroughs that make humans extremely long-lived. What happens then? Who gets the magic treatments? How do we support a population that grows forever? How does an economy of immortals work, anyway?

4.Bioweapons. We don’t talk about this a whole lot these days, but it’s still possible—maybe even likely—that extraordinarily lethal viruses will be fairly easily manufacturable within a couple of decades. If this happens before we figure out how to make extraordinarily effective vaccines and antidotes, this could spell trouble in ways obvious enough to need no explanation.

5. Energy. All the robots in the world won’t do any good if we don’t have enough energy to keep them running. And fossil fuels will run out eventually, fracking or not. However, I put this one fifth out of five because we already have pretty good technology for renewable energy, and it’s mainly an engineering problem to build it out on a mass scale. Plus you never know. Fusion might become a reality someday.

I would largely agree with Drum’s list. It could be expanded significantly, of course, but this is a good start.

I would particularly want to focus on items #2 and #3, which will likely have a dramatic impact in many of our lifetimes.

I do believe that my generation will be the last to die of old age, and that medical technology will give the generation after the Millennials the blessing–and the curse–of potentially living for hundreds of years.

I also believe that as machines start to swallow up the jobs not only of blue collar workers but also white collar workers who have greater impact on elite policy decisions, the economic impact of machines on the job market will start to actually be noticed by policy makers.

It’s a pretty simple equation: 20th century capitalism simply cannot exist in its current form when people have the ability to live hundreds of years, but machines can do most of the available jobs better and more efficiently than most humans. The world will look vastly different, one way or another.

If the plutocrats are the only ones preparing for such a future, then it will be a dystopia worthy of science fiction, with a two-tiered economy divided between the wealthy few with access to immortality, and the hoveling impoverished masses without. If, on the other hand, progressives organize and prepare for such a future with ready-made policy prescriptions, we can own it and do away with the dead weight of old economic systems.

But one needn’t look so far away as immortality and machine jobs to see the same dynamic. Take privacy, for instance. The day is coming very soon when your retina (or other intensely personal trait) will serve as your credit card and ID; when everyone will have an undetectable form of Google Glass on them at all times; when everything is being recorded by everyone else; when driverless cars requiring your personal ID to enter phase out steering wheels; where lightweight drones replace patrol cars; et cetera. That day is coming, sooner than most people think.

When it does, the old battles over privacy and government surveillance will be almost moot. Privacy will functionally cease to exist unless privacy guarantees from both government and corporations are expressly written into constitutional law. Nor will guarantees from a single nation’s constitution be adequate given the hyperconnected world. In this context, a progressive approach to privacy law would focus less on shoring up a 4th Amendment groaning under the weight of Big Data, and more on what a 21st century guarantee of privacy should look like.

Banking would be another example. In a world where companies are starting to force employees to take payment on fee-prone charge cards, many progressives are leaning toward a postal banking system. The problem with that is that in a few decades the written check will be nearly a novelty item, and the post office itself will be on its last legs as we know it. The move to a world in which all transfers are performed electronically is coming sooner rather than later. So how do progressives ensure that financial institutions don’t extract rents from that scenario, and how do we ensure that the unbanked are also treated fairly?

There are a myriad of similar policy questions from trade to economics to anti-terrorism and everything in between, that will render 20th century economic structures obsolete. It will be a battle of ideologies, ideas and above all organization to make certain that what follows the destruction of the vile status quo is something better rather than something worse.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be taking on a few of these subjects, examining what the future likely holds for humanity, and determining what a progressive approach might look like in the years ahead to prepare for it.

It should be a fun journey.

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It takes a tortoise

by digby

It’s that kind of day folks ….

This baby hippo was separated from his family by a tsunami and a 103 year old tortoise became his best friend

h/t to @UberFacts

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Slavery, schmavery. Let’s talk about taxes


by digby

I assume you’ve already heard about this, but just in case:

An aide to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has a history of inflammatory comments about race and the Civil War.

Yes, that’s the real guy

As first reported by the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative online publication, Paul new media staffer Jack Hunter has for years been a provocative talk radio host who called himself the “Southern Avenger.” Before that, he was a member of the League of the South, a group that advocates Southern secession.

“Sen. Paul holds his staff to a standard that includes treating every individual with equal protection and respect, without exception,” spokeswoman Moira Bagley said in a statement.
It’s not clear how close Hunter is to the senator. He serves as Paul’s new media director. According to a recent Washington Monthly article, Hunter has been advising Paul on foreign policy. In addition to his current work for the senator, Hunter helped Paul write a 2011 book, “The Tea Party Goes to Washington.” But on his Web site and radio show he clearly speaks for himself (as when he endorsed Mark Sanford in the May South Carolina special election). Hunter also worked on former South Carolina senator Jim DeMint’s 2011 book, “Now or Never: Saving America From Economic Collapse.”

“My entire adult life I’ve defended the Old South and the southern cause in America’s bloodiest war. Not because I support slavery or racism but despite it,” Hunter says in one 2011 video.

But in other commentary, Hunter has waded explicitly into racial politics.

“Americans aren’t wrong to deplore the millions of Mexicans coming here now,” he wrote in 2007. “A non-white majority America would simply cease to be America for reasons that are as numerous as they are obvious – whether we are supposed to mention them or not.”

I have been informed that Daddy Paul’s foray into confederate calumny was done mostly for political purposes — he needed the backing of the neo-confederates for money etc. I’m just saying, I’ve heard that.

Sonny boy doesn’t need any of that.  But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t see the political upside for himself. He’s obviously running for president and I would expect him to run a southern strategy.  (In fact, any Republican pretty much has to.) These dogwhistles mean something to a certain rather significant subset of GOP primary voters. What else is new?

However, that’s not the most interesting thing about this story. The reporter Rachel Weiner followed up today with this very interesting run down of an internecine war among libertarians over “the war of northern aggression.” It’s so much fun!

[L]ibertarians have spent years trying to deal with the sliver of their movement that is focused on re-litigating the Civil War. Yes, the Civil War, which officially ended 148 years ago.

The divide is between so-called “neo-Confederates” and the “cosmotarians” or “liberaltarians” (all disputed terms) who oppose them.

Cosmotarians see the neo-Confederates as an embarrassing stain on libertarianism; neo-Confederates in turn see cosmotarians as intolerant, hypocritical and pro-war.

“These groups are usually at each others’ throats more often than not,” said Reason magazine editor Matt Welch.

Reason is firmly in the anti-neo-Confederate camp. In 2008 they reported on the racist newsletters put out under Texas Rep. Ron Paul’s name and criticized the presidential candidate for allying himself with that strain in libertarianism. In response, they received scores of angry letters accusing them of selling out the movement. The neo-Confederates are largely centered around libertarian author Lew Rockwell (who worked with Paul and is widely suspected to have written the offensive newsletters), his website LewRockwell.com and his think-tank the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
[…]
And there are some ideological similarities that explain the gravitation of the anti-Abraham Lincoln crowd to the pro-liberty movement. Libertarians often support a person or political group’s right to secede peacefully. America was founded, after all, on a secession movement). But most will say that seceding so that it can enslave an entire race is not by any stretch of the imagination libertarian. Individual freedom easily trumps “state’s rights.”

Libertarians also pride themselves on their open-mindness, and the movement is made up of people who have been dismissed by the political mainstream. That can make libertarians tolerant of views they find personally repugnant.

There are contrarians who criticize Lincoln’s use of federal power and argue that the South had a right to secede — but have no love for slavery or the Confederacy. Libertarians are anti-war and in favor of market-based solutions, and some argue that even though slavery was abominable, it would have ended for economic reasons with far less bloodshed if the North had allowed the South to secede.

“Though I think Lincoln was the worst tyrant in U.S. history and his war was illegal, immoral, unconstitutional, I do not think the [Confederacy] was some quasi-libertarian bastion of freedom or justified,” said Stephan Kinsella. “The real enemy is, as always, the State — whether it be the USA or the [Confederate States of America].”

One would think that the ultimate defenders of individual liberty would have no problem distancing themselves from a culture and philosophy that literally owned other human beings. But for some reason this is complicated for many of them and they just can’t seem to make what would seem to be an obvious leap. I’ll leave you to speculate as to why that might be …

Anyway, it’s a really interesting little post. Highly recommended.

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My name is Sue, how do you do

by digby

A tale of a man looking for a job:

Somewhere after the four month mark my confidence was starting to take a hit. The people rejecting me were business people too, how could my reasoning that I was perfect for these jobs be so different to theirs? Putting on my most serious business head I went back and scoured my CV. It was the only contact any of my potential employers or their recruitment companies had had with me. My CV was THE common denominator and if something was wrong it MUST be there.

I had fortunately seen a number of CVs in my time. I was happy with the choice of style and layout, and the balance of detail versus brevity. I was particularly pleased with the decision I made to brand it with my name with just enough bold positioning to make it instantly recognisable, and as I sat scouring every detail of that CV a horrible truth slowly dawned on me. My name.

My first name is Kim. Technically its gender neutral but my experience showed that most people’s default setting in the absence of any other clues is to assume Kim is a women’s name. And nothing else on my CV identified me as male. At first I thought I was being a little paranoid but engineering, trades, sales and management were all definitely male dominated industries. So I pictured all the managers I had over the years and, forming an amalgam of them in my mind, I read through the document as I imagined they would have. It was like being hit on the head with a big sheet of unbreakable glass ceiling.

My choice to brand the CV with a bold positioning of my name actually seemed to scream that I was a woman. I could easily imagine many of the people I had worked for discarding the document without even reading further. If they did read further the next thing they saw (as politeness declared at the time) was a little personal information, and that declared I was married with kids. I had put this in because I knew many employers would see it as showing stability, but when I viewed it through the skewed view of middle aged men who thought I was a woman, I could see it was just further damning my cause. I doubt if many of the managers I had known would have made it to the second page.

I made one change that day. I put Mr in front of my name on my CV. It looked a little too formal for my liking but I got an interview for the very next job I applied for. And the one after that. It all happened in a fortnight and the second job was a substantial increase in responsibility over anything I had done before. In the end I beat out a very competitive short-list and enjoyed that job for the next few years, further enhancing my career.

Where I had worked previously there was a woman manager. She was the only one of about a dozen at my level, and there were none on the next level. She had worked her way up through the company over many years and was very good at her job. She was the example everyone used to show that it could be done, but that most women just didn’t want to. It’s embarrassing to think I once believed that. It’s even more incredible to think many people still do.

I have some experience with the opposite effect. When everyone just knew me as “digby” most assumed I was male. And when they found out I wasn’t, most people were fine with it. But there were those who felt that the moment I revealed myself to be a woman my writing began to suffer and I was no longer credible. (I guess it must have been the stress…)

There are many studies that show hiring practices are highly influenced by names. For instance, they’ve done controlled experiments with common African-American names like Jamal or LaToya and found that they get far fewer callbacks than those with names like Sally or Bob. There may be some that prove this gender bias as well. And what’s most insidious about this is that many people don’t even know they’re doing it.

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The Koch philosophy:You’re richer than the average Somali so STFU

by digby

I’d be simply hoping we can hold out until these evil old brothers finally shuffle off their mortal coils but unfortunately, there are probably a lot more where they came from:

On Wednesday, the Charles Koch Foundation launched a $200,000 media campaign in Wichita, Kansas, with a hint of expanding it elsewhere. It is the Kochs’ biggest media buy since they promised to do more to “persuade politicians” after suffering losses in the 2012 election. 

In an interview with the Wichita Eagle published Tuesday, Koch said that the minimum wage is one policy he is working against:

We want to do a better job of raising up the disadvantaged and the poorest in this country, rather than saying ‘Oh, we’re just fine now.’ We’re not saying that at all. What we’re saying is, we need to analyze all these additional policies, these subsidies, this cronyism, this avalanche of regulations, all these things that are creating a culture of dependency. And like permitting, to start a business, in many cities, to drive a taxicab, to become a hairdresser. Anything that people with limited capital can do to raise themselves up, they keep throwing obstacles in their way. And so we’ve got to clear those out. Or the minimum wage. Or anything that reduces the mobility of labor.

I don’t know if you know this, but before we had subsidies like the minimum wage or health and safety regulations there were no poor people. You remember those good old days, right?

Seven Dials, in central London, was synonymous with poverty and crime, a black hole to most Londoners.

And hey, we’d still be better off than the poorest countries in Africa, amirite?

Here’s the ad:

*This seems relevant: “Although he deems low-wage workers part of a “culture of dependency” on the government, Koch Industries is on the receiving end of oil subsidies, government contracts, and bailouts.“

Jaaahb createrz.

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What happens when you create a bunch of True Believer cultists?


by digby

They can’t change …

Read Ed Kilgore. He knows what he’s talking about:

In all my writings on this subject, I’ve stressed the fact that the contemporary conservative movement—and particularly its increasingly dominant “constitutional conservative” wing—is unusually resistant to changes in its ideology, policies and messaging, for the rather obvious reason that they believe in a fixed, timeless government model located somewhere in the 1920s that reflects not only the Founders’ design but a divine imperative communicated through the Declaration of Independence, natural law, and scripture. So of course they will look high and low for evidence that they don’t have to “change to win,” and even if that pursuit fails, they’ll argue for holding out for a perfect electoral storm to avoid any compromise in their “conservative principles.”

Case in point, here’s Paul Krugman:

True believers will say that this kind of agenda [“libertarian populism”] is actually great for low-income workers because it would lead to wonderful economic growth. This happens to be a view contradicted by all the evidence, but more to the point, what on earth would make anyone think that it’s a workable political strategy? Yelling even more loudly about the wonders of sound money and supply-side economics isn’t going to persuade anyone who hasn’t been persuaded already. 

As a practical matter, the current GOP agenda isn’t so much about hard money or even lower top marginal rates as it is about slashing safety-net programs. There has been a highly successful attack on unemployment benefits, and the party has worked itself into a lather about food stamps too. 

So, news flash: these programs don’t just benefit Those People; they’re also very important to downscale whites, the very people that will supposedly rescue the GOP. This is especially true of unemployment insurance: 

Data are scrappier on food stamps, with a lot of states failing to report the race of many recipients; but if we look at, for example, Pennsylvania, which does have almost complete reporting, we find that 59 percent of food stamp recipients are non-Hispanic whites. 

In short, the idea behind libertarian populism seems to be to bring back disaffected whites by preaching, even more forcefully, the virtues of the pro-wealthy policies the GOP has been following all along, and meanwhile destroying the safety net programs many of those disaffected whites depend on. Sounds like a winner.

 I think it actually is a winner. If by “winning” you mean keeping their base happy. For them, as long as the wrong people (if you know what I mean) aren’t getting any government help, it’s all good. Even if they have to suffer to make sure that happens.

*I wrote my thoughts on this a few days back.

Are we dead inside or just scared to death?

by digby

Comey, it seems, is not a story even to those who generally give a shit.— Rick Perlstein

Perlstein has a blockbuster post up today, examining why nobody seems to care that our Democratic president has nominated a Republican who was involved in the policy formation of some of the worst excesses of the Bush administration’s assault on civil liberties, including torture for a ten year term as FBI director. He examines some of the social media stats he’s observed which shows that people simply don’t care about that anymore.  In other words, they got away with it. Looks like Liz Cheney will be able to run for office taking ownership of the torture regime and it probably won’t cause any ripples.

I don’t know what’s causing this, but I’m going to guess the constant, relentless demagoguery about the terrorist threat has been fully absorbed into the subconscious of most Americans now — and that means pretty much anything goes. Previously, a large number of people were opposed to such behavior but now that a Democratic president has adopted similarly aggressive policies (except for torture — well, sort of) thus validating the idea that the threat from these religious fanatics is so overwhelming that our very existence is at stake. Indeed, if you are to look at the scope of our activities the entire world is our enemy, even our closest allies.

Anyway, read Perlstein’s post. And knowing what we know about Comey’s acquiescence to some of the worst practices of the Bush administration, (no, it’s not enough to tell the AG you think waterboarding is “awful”, you quit) contemplate what this means for the future of the Republic:

Comey’s hearing, nearly three hours long, occasionally seemed like a coronation. Blumenthal said Comey enjoyed “very solid support” on the committee. Comey made self-deprecating jokes and slipped into colloquialisms. Queried about the FBI’s current practice of reading emails older than 180 days without a warrant, Comey said: “I don’t think the fourth amendment has, like your yogurt, an expiration date.”

Hahahaha…

Update: Scott Lemieux has more.

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