Month: December 2013

QOTD: Hillary Clinton

by digby

Uhm…

Hillary Clinton [declared] that the banker-bashing so popular within both political parties was unproductive and indeed foolish. … [S]he told the audience, in effect: We all got into this mess together, and we’re all going to have to work together to get out of it. What the bankers heard her to say … Beating up the finance industry isn’t going to improve the economy-it needs to stop. … (Clinton’s minimum fee for paid remarks is $200,000). … ‘It was like, “Here’s someone who doesn’t want to vilify us but wants to get business back in the game,”‘ said an attendee. ‘Like, maybe here’s someone who can lead us out of the wilderness.’ …

Right. Business hasn’t been “in the game.” Obviously that means being “in the game” isn’t about making money. They’re making boatloads of it. It’s about everyone in the country kissing their asses and telling them how wonderful we all think they are. And it’s about the government lifting any possible impediment to them doing whatever they want to do without even the remotest possibility of being held accountable if it fails.

And it would appear they believe Clinton is on their side in this. (Or they want to believe it. I’m not prepared to believe it based solely on this report. It’s second hand and who knows what the agenda is.) But because of the gargantuan cost of running a presidential campaign it’s probably inevitable that candidates of both parties will come hat in hand to these delicate flowers and give them whatever props they feel they need.

And I’m afraid that Hillary Clinton is going to have to do a gut check on this because her base does not want to hear the kind of pandering they reported in this story. She may just do it anyway, under the impression that her base has nowhere to go. But it will be ugly in a way I doubt any candidate wants. And I hope her campaign reads the rest of that article. These sensitive banker boys have a serious crush on their manly man Chris Christie so I honestly don’t know what trying to give these boys an emotional happy ending will buy her. I think they want to come out of the closet and have a real boyfriend this time, one who will proudly be seen in public with them. Clinton will not be able to give them what they need.

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Let’s just rename Michigan Gilead and call it a day

by digby

It doesn’t get much worse than this:

Both chambers of the Michigan legislature have passed a measure banning insurance coverage for abortion in private health plans unless women purchase a separate rider. And because of the way the legislation was put forward, it is set to become law despite the objections of both the state’s Democratic minority and the veto of the Republican governor.

In a charged hearing Wednesday, Michigan Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer told the story of her own rape and called the legislation “one of the most misogynistic proposals I’ve ever seen in the Michigan Legislature,” according to the Detroit Free Press. The fact that women are required to plan in advance to have an abortion, Whitmer said, “tells women who are raped … that they should have thought ahead and bought special insurance for it.”

“The fact that rape insurance is even being discussed by this body is repulsive,” she added.

“There are people in this chamber who have lived through things you can’t even imagine,” said Whitmer, referring to a colleague who had a wanted pregnancy that ended in abortion. Then she tearfully told her own story.

Yes, Michigan ladies you’ll need to insure yourself against pregnancy from rape because the misogynistic pigs of the Michigan legislature think women should be forced to give birth to their rapists children. This is Handmaid’s Tale come to life.

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Snowden IHOW

by digby

Michael Sherer wrote what would have been the cover story on Edward Snowden had he been chosen TIME’s man of the year. And it’s good. I urge you to read the whole thing but I thought I would just highlight some of the quotes from Snowden himself:

“There is a far cry between legal programs, legitimate spying, legitimate law enforcement—where it is targeted, it’s based on reasonable suspicion, individualized suspicion and warranted action—and the sort of dragnet mass surveillance that puts entire populations under a sort of an eye and sees everything, even when it is not needed. This is about a trend in the relationship between the governing and governed in America.”

—— 

“The NSA is surely not the Stasi, but we should always remember that the danger to ­societies from security services is not that they will spontaneously decide to embrace mustache twirling and jackboots to bear us bodily into dark places, but that the slowly shifting foundation of policy will make it such that mustaches and jackboots are discovered to prove an operational advantage toward a necessary purpose.”

—– 

“The President could plausibly use the mandate of public knowledge to both reform these programs to reasonable standards and direct the NSA to focus its tremendous power toward developing new global technical standards that enforce robust end-to-end security, ensuring that not only are we not improperly surveilling individuals but that other governments aren’t either.” 

—– 

“In general, if you agree with the First Amendment principles, you agree with encryption. It’s just code. Arguing against encryption would be analogous to arguing against hidden meanings in paintings or poetry.”

—– 

“What we recoil most strongly against is not that such surveillance can theoretically occur but that it was done without a majority of society even being aware it was possible.”

The man’s obviously an insane megalomaniac who hates America. No wonder they picked the pope. He only thinks half the human population should be subjugated.

*Note: I did find it telling that Mark Zuckerberg was portrayed as the “light” to Snowden’s “dark”. But then Zuckerberg is stupid rich so I suppose in our culture that automatically makes him someone with a positive optimistic vision.

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Don’t worry kids, Jesus wasn’t a swarthy terrorist

by digby

Well of course he was white. Weirdly, he looked just like an 16th Century European. I think that’s one of the miracles:

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Democrats shouldn’t be crowing about the unemployment rate

by David Atkins

There’s a growing political phenomenon out there of Democrats saying nice things about the economy because unemployment seems to be going down somewhat. That’s a big mistake.

Americans who aren’t part of the economic elite and the asset class can see and feel that the economy is still terrible. The official unemployment rate may be decreasing, but it doesn’t feel that way to most–either because the unemployment rate isn’t being measured like it used to, or simply because underemployment is so prevalent that it barely matters if you’re making $30,000 a year at a service job if you used to make $70,000 a year at a skilled one that no longer exists. You may be “employed” per the official records, but the economy isn’t going to feel any better to you.

The country still hasn’t recovered from the worst economy since the Great Depression caused by Wall Street’s reckless greed and overleverage. The economy would be worse today under McCain/Romney, but both parties have been far too obsequious to the wealthy elites in general.

The entire economy is run on behalf of the asset class. Wage earners have been getting dumped on for the last 40 years, at least since Ronald Reagan if not before. Democrats have better than Republicans, certainly, but not even Democrats have done a great job of addressing these issues over the last 40 years or so.

That’s it’s important that the Democratic Party rally behind the banner of Elizabeth Warren and others like her. We need to acknowledge the reality that the system is still broken, and that while six years of a Democratic President have saved us from the depredations of the Tea Party, they still haven’t begun the right the ship of state. We need to acknowledge that both parties have frankly been far too cozy with the economic elite, and haven’t done the work to put the needs of Main Street ahead of the needs of Wall Street.

We need to boost wages in this country, and stop the runaway flood of money away from the middle class and into the coffers of the 1%. We need to either stop corporations with record stock prices making record profits from abusing and slashing their workforce, or we need to figure out a way to reorient the economy so that it works for regular people in spite of the challenges in the labor market.

It may well be that globalization, mechanization and deskilling of the labor market means that the new “natural” employment rate is only 90%. It may well be that companies simply don’t need to hire workers at decent wages anymore to make profit.

That doesn’t mean we have to put up with it, or shrug our shoulders as all the money pools at the very top where only skilled workers with advanced degrees can live decent lives.

Just as we changed the rules to prevent child labor, prostitution and the heroin trade, we can prevent the abuse of the American worker by the financial sector, too. Our economic rules were artificially constructed for the industrial economy of the 20th century. We can–and *should*–change them for the information economy of the 21st.

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The John Galts of San Francisco

by digby

The other day I linked to a video featuring what turned out to be a bit of activist street theatre (or a hoax, depending on your point of view…)A lot of people were offended that anyone would be so clumsily O’Keefish, one even demanding that I apologize for using the “slur” — “nasty Google boy.”

Well, there was more than a little bit of truth in that hoax, as it turns out. Get a load of this “start-up” guru:

Just got back to SF. I’ve traveled around the world and I gotta say there is nothing more grotesque than walking down market st in San Francisco. Why the heart of our city has to be overrun by crazy, homeless, drug dealers, dropouts, and trash I have no clue. Each time I pass it my love affair with SF dies a little.

The difference is in other cosmopolitan cities, the lower part of society keep to themselves. They sell small trinkets, beg coyly, stay quiet, and generally stay out of your way. They realize it’s a privilege to be in the civilized part of town and view themselves as guests. And that’s okay.

In downtown SF the degenerates gather like hyenas, spit, urinate, taunt you, sell drugs, get rowdy, they act like they own the center of the city. Like it’s their place of leisure… In actuality it’s the business district for one of the wealthiest cities in the USA. It a disgrace. I don’t even feel safe walking down the sidewalk without planning out my walking path.

You can preach compassion, equality, and be the biggest lover in the world, but there is an area of town for degenerates and an area of town for the working class. There is nothing positive gained from having them so close to us. It’s a burden and a liability having them so close to us. Believe me, if they added the smallest iota of value I’d consider thinking different, but the crazy toothless lady who kicks everyone that gets too close to her cardboard box hasn’t made anyone’s life better in a while.

It’s hard to believe this isn’t a hoax too,  but he is a real guy. And he later apologized and removed the post from his Facebook page.

“If they added the smallest iota of value I’d consider thinking different.”

His contribution to the economy appears to be running an event planning company that organizes contests for new app inventors and then facilitates “parties” for the winners to meet investors. I guess that adds “value” but it’s not like he’s Steve Jobs or anything. In fact, the John Galt guys probably look at him the same way he looks at the crazy toothless: a parasite or, at best, a moocher. Funny how that works.

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Asymmetrical Public Relations

by digby

Whatever happened to those Gitmo hunger strikers anyway?

A media blackout on detailing the exact number of prisoners on hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay has been put in place because the protest was too successful at generating media attention, a public affairs official has told Al Jazeera.

Detainees at the controversial detention center launched the strike to protest their conditions and the fact that many of them have been held without charge for more than a decade, though scores have been cleared for release.

The dramatic protest has been successful in generating headlines across the globe, and at one time more than 100 prisoners were involved as daily updates were issued by camp officials. But with the number of protesters dwindling, military officials last week made the decision to stop releasing figures for those remaining on hunger strike — even when specifically asked by journalists.

“It’s been a self-perpetuating story,” said Cmdr. John Filostrat, director of public affairs for Joint Task Force-Guantanamo, in an interview with Al Jazeera at the base. “It’s (the strikers’) desire to draw attention to themselves, and so we’re not going to help them do that.”

This is not a new policy, unfortunately:

Religious leaders and doctors are weighing in on the subject of alleged torture of prisoners, following three suicides at Gitmo called “an act of asymmetical warfare” by a U.S. admiral, and a “p.r. move” by a U.S. diplomat.

Even though the Bush administration has said that it does not torture detainees and does not condone the torture of detainees, a group of religious leaders and other Americans – reportedly including former President Jimmy Carter – has taken out a full page ad in the New York Times denouncing any U.S. torture.

The American Medical Association is also out with a statement on the subject, making it clear that any doctors who participate in such activities are violating the code of medical ethics which they have sworn to uphold.

Two Saudis and one Yemeni hanged themselves Saturday, the first successful suicides at the base after dozens of attempts at Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. military prison in Cuba for terror suspects – many held for years after being arrested during the war in Afghanistan.

So far, only 10 detainees at Guantanamo Bay have been charged with crimes.

Military officials said the suicides were coordinated acts of protest, but human rights activists and defense attorneys said the deaths signaled the desperation of many of the 460 detainees held on suspicion of links to al Qaeda and the Taliban.

The Bush administration publicly backed off the contention that these prisoners were engaged in a “PR” campaign. I wonder if this administration will as well.

That link is from eight years ago. At the time they were insisting that Guantanamo held no innocent prisoners. In fact, they were “the worst of the worst.” Pretty sure we know that wasn’t true.

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The horror that is Bitcoin and its libertarian dream

by David Atkins

Bitcoin is the biggest thing going in Libertarian-land. A currency that goes unregulated and untaxed by federal governments, it’s the grand new hope of the cyberlibertarian community. Because Bitcoin operates under the regulators’ radar, life on Bitcoin provides a pretty decent sense of what a purely libertarian world would look like, free of economic regulation and taxation.

Of course, it’s an absolute disaster:

Bitcoin is most useful to criminals.
Currently, for ordinary people, cash and credit work just fine. While some mainstream businesses do take Bitcoin, there is no compelling reason — yet — for ordinary people to use it. If you’re a criminal, however, there are very compelling reasons to use it: you can transfer vast sums of cash completely anonymously. Cash transfers are a real problem for criminals. When you can’t use bank accounts, lugging around vast sums of cash gets old pretty quickly. Bitcoin solves that. So Bitcoin is very, very empowering for criminals.

There is a Bitcoin crime wave going on right now.
Given that Bitcoin is good for criminals, it should not be surprising that those criminals are targeting other Bitcoin users for thefts. The most spectacular theft so far is the Sheep Marketplace robbery, in which one hacker appears to have emptied a massive Bitcoin marketplace of up to $220 million in Bitcoins. Note that Sheep Marketplace was basically a trading post for drug dealers. Bitcoin exchange and account thefts are very common. Here’s a potted history of recent Bitcoin capers.

…

Bitcoin as a currency is horribly unstable.
This chart (above) tells you all you need to know. One day you’re rich, when Bitcoin approaches $1,200; the next day half your wealth is wiped out as it plummets to $700. Bitcoin isn’t backed by any government’s bonds or central bank gold. It’s literally an asset without an underlying asset. So its price is determined entirely by its flows.

Bitcoinistan makes the Weimar Republic look sedate. Even if you could live with the crime, the instability makes transactions wildly unfair to the party on the downside.

Bitcoin has produced comical wealth inequality.
Libertarians don’t care about inequality, of course. They see it as a reflection of individuals’ natural talents, and as an incentive to work harder. But even the most hardcore free marketeer ought to blanche at the incredible level of inequality already endemic to Bitcoin. Just 47 individuals own nearly one-third of all Bitcoins. About 927 people control half the entire currency. There are just over 1 million Bitcoin holders — the vast majority of them own mere crumbs.

Bitcoin hoarding could produce a cartel that controls all Bitcoin.
A study from Cornell has claimed that if Bitcoin miners cooperate, they could end up controlling most Bitcoins and thus control the currency’s price. The cartel could beggar or enrich all Bitcoin holders overnight, depending on how they trade it.

There’s much more in Jim Edwards’ article, including mass instability and assassination cartels.

And this, ultimately, is where the far extremes of the political universe mirror one another and fail. Human beings evolved to be selfish animals–if not purely for themselves, then at the least on behalf of their little in-groups. Both libertarian and communist paradises fail because people are far too selfish to make either one work, and because human life and dignity are incredibly cheap when put either on the unfettered free market or in the hands of unaccountable politburos.

The primary political imbalance we have in the world today is that after the fall of Communism the left generally learned that lesson, understanding the nuances of human nature and the need to allow the public and private sectors to occupy their appropriate roles. Progressives and neoliberals argue stridently over the nature and extent of those roles, but what binds us together under the big tent of the Democratic Party is the understanding that both the public and private sectors of society need to be healthy and in an uneasy detente for human economic systems to work. Human society will never be perfect because the human animal will never be perfect.

The Right never learned that lesson. A huge portion of the Right believes in their Galt’s Gulches and the vision of a perfect society without those nasty “others” in it, never had their own ideological chastening, and simply want to destroy the public sector entirely. That’s what makes them so radical and dangerous.

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Enslaved by all that freedom

by digby

Corey Robin explains how they imprison you with all those choices:

In the neoliberal utopia, all of us are forced to spend an inordinate amount of time keeping track of each and every facet of our economic lives. That, in fact, is the openly declared goal: once we are made more cognizant of our money, where it comes from and where it goes, neoliberals believe we’ll be more responsible in spending and investing it. Of course, rich people have accountants, lawyers, personal assistants, and others to do this for them, so the argument doesn’t apply to them, but that’s another story for another day.

The dream is that we’d all have our gazillion individual accounts — one for retirement, one for sickness, one for unemployment, one for the kids, and so on, each connected to our employment, so that we understand that everything good in life depends upon our boss (and not the government) — and every day we’d check in to see how they’re doing, what needs attending to, what can be better invested elsewhere. It’s as if, in the neoliberal dream, we’re all retirees in Boca, with nothing better to do than to check in with our broker, except of course that we’re not. Indeed, if Republicans (and some Democrats) had their way, we’d never retire at all.

True. But in this neo-liberal dream most of us won’t live to a ripe old age because we’ll die early of stress-related diseases. Which is a feature, not a bug. After all, it’s that extended life expectancy that’s causing all the trouble.

He goes on to explain that it’s not that the left thinks socialism is a path to utopia. Indeed he describes it like this: “I think the point of socialism is to convert hysterical misery into ordinary unhappiness. God, that would be so great.”

Wouldn’t it though?

This complexity is more than just vexing, I’m afraid. I know a lot of people for whom it’s simply impossible. They don’t think in these “market terms” and trying to navigate all the bells and whistles the wonks think are so terrific because it gives people “choice” are painful exercises in futility. It may be that the health care websites turn out to be just simple enough (and the costs of failure so high) that people will force themselves to claw their way through the system to come out on the other side with something they fully understand and which makes sense for their current financial and health status. But I have to believe that a good many folks are going to get in there, pick the lowest prices (or use some other metric that doesn’t necessarily reflect a measured analysis of their needs) and call it a day. And that’s if they do it at all.

I keep coming across a peculiar phenomenon, especially among people I know who are getting older. They come into a little money, an inheritance or an insurance settlement say. And rather than being thoughtful about what to do with it, by investing in a portfolio or even a piece of property that will likely increase in value, they spend every penny of it almost immediately. I think they are so daunted by the complexity of being financially responsible that they want to get rid of the money as quickly as they can so they don’t have to think about it anymore. It’s not like it used to be where you could just put your money in a savings account and feel like you’re saving your money. There’s intense pressure to “be smart” with your money and yet the world of money is ever more arcane and impenetrable. A lot of people just say to hell with it and live in the now. As Robin says, “we’re either athletes of the market or the support staff who tend to the race.”

I’m always a little bit confused by people who revere the corporate beehive and worship the markets because it’s not that I can’t understand how these systems work, it’s that I find it so tedious and unpleasant to do it that the idea it represents “freedom” is simply ridiculous. It’s the opposite. But then that’s probably the point.

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The most powerful Vice President in history

by digby

… is a right wing fanatic:

“I don’t think that Barack Obama believes that the U.S. is an exceptional nation,” Cheney complained on Fox and Friends. “Nobody cares much in the Middle East anymore what the U.S. thinks because we don’t keep our commitments.”

The former vice president moved to Iran and without mentioning any specific criticisms of the agreement, claimed it’s bad because of unrelated health care issues. “We don’t follow through and Iran we’ve got a very serious problem going forward and a deal now been cut,” he said. “The same people that brought us you can keep your insurance if you want are telling us they’ve got a great deal in Iran with respect to their nuclear program. I don’t believe it.

Keep in mind that this man is not just some talk radio gadfly. He spent 8 years at the highest level of government and was give free rein by the halfwit president who picked him, to do pretty much whatever he wanted. Recall that on 9/11 this man basically took over the government and ordered the shoot-down of commercial airplanes despite the fact that the president was in good health and fully accessible. Also keep in mind that the president refused to be interviewed alone by the members of the 9/11 commission and insisted that Cheney be at his side.

Dick Cheney had top level access to the entire US spying apparatus for nearly a decade, as did various loyal henchmen such as Scooter Libby and David Addington. What on earth makes people believe that someone like this could never abuse such access? In addition to his imperious assumption of authority on 9/11, his administration took office through a very dubious and undemocratic process, he was known for his visits to CIA headquarters where he made sure that information justifying an unjustifiable war was “stove-piped” and he was proved to be someone who would punish dissenters without compunction. And yet I still hear people pooh-poohing the Snowden revelations as if it’s nothing that the government is collecting and hoarding extremely private, personal information on just about everyone because they just can’t believe anyone in government could possibly have such ill-intent as to use it for the wrong reasons.

I sure wish I still believed in such fairy tales. Life would be so much simpler.

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