Month: December 2013

QOTD: J. Edgar Hoover

by digby

1931:

“While it may not be illegal . . . [wiretapping] is unethical and it is not permitted under the regulations by the Attorney General…Any employee engaged in wire tapping will be dismissed from the service of the bureau.”

Fast forward:

Hoping to prove the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was under the influence of Communists, the FBI kept the civil rights leader under constant surveillance.

The agency’s hidden tape recorders turned up almost nothing about communism.

But they did reveal embarrassing details about King’s sex life — details the FBI was able to use against him.

The almost fanatical zeal with which the FBI pursued King is disclosed in tens of thousands of FBI memos from the 1960s.

The FBI paper trail spells out in detail the government agency’s concerted efforts to derail King’s efforts on behalf of the civil rights movement.

The FBI’s interest in King intensified after the March on Washington in August 1963, when King delivered his “I have a dream speech,” which many historians consider the most important speech of the 20th century. After the speech, an FBI memo called King the “most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country.”

The bureau convened a meeting of department heads to “explore how best to carry on our investigation [of King] to produce the desired results without embarrassment to the Bureau,” which included “a complete analysis of the avenues of approach aimed at neutralizing King as an effective Negro leader.”

The FBI began secretly tracking King’s flights and watching his associates. In July 1963, a month before the March on Washington, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover filed a request with Attorney General Robert Kennedy to tap King’s and his associates’ phones and to bug their homes and offices.

In September, Kennedy consented to the technical surveillance. Kennedy gave the FBI permission to break into King’s office and home to install the bugs, as long as agents recognized the “delicacy of this particular matter” and didn’t get caught installing them. Kennedy added a proviso — he wanted to be personally informed of any pertinent information.

While King did have associates who had been members of the Communist Party, by all accounts they severed those ties when they started working in the civil rights movement. What’s more, the FBI bugs never picked up evidence that King himself was a Communist, or was interested in toeing the party line.

But the long list of bugs in his hotel rooms picked up just enough about King’s love life.

It the long, existential fight against terrorism er …. communism, rules had to be broken. Surely we can all understand that.

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“Predictive Policing” aka “Pre-crime”. Where have I heard that before?

by digby

Ok, it’s time to dig out the Philip K Dick short stories and re-read them all. This is really creepy:

Unbeknownst to most taxpayers, the federal government spends considerable sums every year funding the research, development, and procurement of advanced surveillance technologies. Often these funds are given to private companies that have a long-term financial interest in the development of cutting edge surveillance products. Luckily for them, they can get government assistance to develop these tools, and then profit off of selling the finished product back to government agencies. The Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, and Justice each have their own research and development programs for surveillance tools of all kinds, and state and local police departments nationwide benefit from the trickle down of technology and gear.

Meanwhile, the taxpayers who foot the bill are more often than not kept entirely in the dark about how these monies are spent. But some of this information is public, and you can read at least basic summaries of the grant awards if you know where to look.

One of the federal offices that funds substantial R&D in surveillance technology is the Office of Justice Programs’ National Institute of Justice (NIJ). The NIJ describes itself as the “research, development and evaluation agency of the U.S. Department of Justice — [] dedicated to improving knowledge and understanding of crime and justice issues through science. NIJ provides objective and independent knowledge and tools to reduce crime and promote justice, particularly at the state and local levels,” its website says. The research monies invested at NIJ have a substantial effect on the tools, methodologies, and training systems deployed by police departments throughout the country, now and in the future. The agency’s funding choices therefore have a real impact on hundreds of millions of people’s lives.

For that reason, every now and then I peruse the NIJ website to see what kind of hair-brained schemes and research projects the DOJ is funding, with an eye towards local police department surveillance technologies. When I searched the website today, I found that the NIJ is putting lots of its R&D money towards investigating the efficacy of ‘predictive policing’, sometimes known as ‘intelligence-led policing’. Others simply call it ‘pre-crime’. Predictive policing uses big data, behavioral and associational surveillance models, and computer algorithms to direct public safety resources and focus patrols.

Sure, paranoia strikes deep. But sometimes people really are watching you.

The scent of bad budget deals

by digby

It must be getting close to Christmastime because the smell of pine cones and noxious budget deals are in the air:

A pair of House Republicans have a new bill that would spare the military from sequestration by cutting the Social Security benefits of many Americans who already experience painful federal budget cuts.

Reps. Jim Bridenstine (R-Okla.) and Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) are introducing the Provide for the Common Defense Act on Tuesday. The legislation would cancel out the next two years of sequestration cuts for the Pentagon by putting a heavier burden on senior citizens and federal workers.

Specifically, the plan would change the way cost-of-living adjustments are calculated for Social Security, using a measurement called “chained CPI.” The result would be less money in the pockets of beneficiaries. It would also increase federal employee retirement contributions and means-test Medicare premiums. Critics of means-testing argue that such a change would undermine the popularity of the program, turning it into welfare for lower-income Americans.

“Washington has a spending problem, but incessantly and mindlessly cutting national security will not get us out of our fiscal mess,” said Lamborn in a statement. “President Obama must realize that out-of-control entitlement spending is drowning our country in debt. Our bill cancels national security sequestration for two years by enacting a few Obama-endorsed reforms that will actually produce over $300 billion in savings over ten years. Two-thirds of the savings will go toward debt reduction.”

President Barack Obama has, in the past, been open to each of these measures in the context of a bigger deal with revenue also on the table.

In addition, the White House has said it wants to undo both the national security and domestic sequestration cuts.

One might be concerned about this since the Democratic leadership long ago decided that defending Social Security is a big loser of a political issue. But unless the Republicans can come up with some phony, temporary loophole closings, this isn’t going to fly. All Democrats care about is tax hikes now. So that’s good.

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Fine defenders of the Second Amendment

by digby

I’ve been writing about the gun rights zealots who use their second amendment rights as a license to intimidate those who disagree with them by appearing armed at gun control rallies for a long time. That’s not all they’re doing:

Shannon Watts knew she was heading into a rough neighborhood when she became an activist in the battle over gun control. A former corporate executive and mother of five children, Watts launched a gun-control group, now called Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, not long after the Newtown shootings. As the new push to restrict guns grabbed attention over the ensuing year, Watts and other activists experienced the blowback up close, in sometimes frightening detail.

At protest rallies, they have been met by men carrying rifles. (It’s legal: many states permit the open carry of “long guns.”) Watts has had her home address in Indianapolis posted online along with the suggestion that “people show up and show why it’s important to have a gun.” She has gotten letters at home saying that the sender knows where her kids go to school and where her husband works. On the lighter side, an ironist has been sending her free issues of Guns & Ammo.

She has a harder time finding irony in images floating around online featuring her head bloodied by a huge knife stuck into her skull.

On the Facebook page of Starbucks—a battleground, thanks to Moms Demand Action’s successful effort to get Starbucks to discourage open carry of weapons in its shops—McBeefington posted a map of Martin’s neighborhood with the message: “I saw there was a recent incident where an NYPD officer got shot by someone—in the middle of Bloomberg’s gun-free utopia—and quite near your home, to boot.” (The image, in fact, depicted Martin’s old neighborhood.) On the same page, he posted another message noting that Martin’s son was about to turn four: “I went to Starbucks and had an early celebration for his upcoming birthday,” he wrote, with an accompanying photo of a birthday cake set beside an NRA membership card. (He’d apparently deduced the child’s age from years-old postings by Martin elsewhere online.) Also on Facebook, someone else sent Martin a direct message with a gory picture of a badly wounded foot. “BTW, this is what happens when careless people tread on coiled, venomous snakes,” the message read.

It’s logical that people who feel the need to wear guns in public might be prone to violence, especially those who ostentatiously carry them at political events with the obvious intention of intimidating those who disagree with them. These are not your benign game hunters or fellows who have a gun in the house for protection. They are armed fanatics.  This social media harassment is a slightly less intimidating approach, but considering the statistics on abuse, it’s predictable that it features such violent misogyny. There’s just something about guns that brings out the assholes.

Like Watts, Martin is relatively unperturbed by the harassment. But she does worry others could be dissuaded from getting involved in gun control activism by the online nastiness or by the open-carry protesters, like the large group that gathered recently outside a strip-mall restaurant near Dallas where a few Moms Demand Action members were meeting for a strategy session. “I’m not worried about any of this stuff. But what about the mom in Texas who’s scared shitless?” said Martin. “If I were younger and less vocal and more easily intimidated…who are they stopping from sharing their thoughts?”

Let’s just say that when I see someone openly carrying a gun I avoid him like the plague. I keep quiet in his presence and I get out of there as soon as possible. I’ve always done this, even when I lived in Alaska where there are a lot of guns. They are deadly weapons and people who feel the need to prove their macho bonafides in public by carrying guns already prove they have a psychology of bullying and intimidation that makes them dangerous. Certainly, if I go to a political event and someone is armed I will leave. It’s possible that tempers will flare, as often happens around politics, and there will be unintended violence or, more likely, the intimidation will work and it will be a waste of time because half the people will keep their opinions to themselves. (Nice little first amendment you have there …)

The vast majority of Second Amendment activists are upright citizens just doing what we’re all doing. But unlike most activists, it only takes one armed gun fanatic to lose his temper at a political event for something very bad to happen. It is, by its very nature, undemocratic to come armed to a rally. And they know it. That’s why they do it. They could, after all, just carry a sign and make speeches like everyone else.

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SEC won’t even force corporations to disclose campaign contributions to shareholders

by David Atkins

Since our glorious Supreme Court has seen fit to decide that in every instance money is equivalent to speech in politics, serious campaign finance legislation seems to be off the table for the time being absent a constitutional amendment. Given that new laws limiting actual spending cannot be passed, activists have gone for the next best thing: disclosure. There are state-based disclosure laws being considered in states across the country, including and especially California, where there’s a big push for laws that would require the head of the main sponsor to actually appear on camera, for the top donors to be prominently displayed, etc. The challenge with these laws is “pierce-through”: requiring disclosure that pierces through the various front groups to get at the real sources of the money.

Another hoped-for attempt at corporate spending disclosure was among shareholders. The idea is that if campaign spending by corporations is disclosed to shareholders, that information will spread out publicly. It would also theoretically lead many shareholders to question the value of said spending to the company’s bottom line.

The corporate disclosure rules were being considered by the SEC, which would have the authority to put them in place. The typical right-wing types opposed the potential new rules tooth and nail.

So the SEC decided to give up on the idea:

The Securities and Exchange Commission has dropped from its rulemaking agenda a contentious proposal to require publicly traded firms to disclose campaign spending to their shareholders.

The decision, heralded by First Amendment defenders, reflects a major setback for a campaign launched in 2011 to counter the influx of corporate political spending in recent election cycles.

“There’s no accountability for political spending for the folks that actually own the companies — the shareholders,” said Lisa Gilbert, director of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division. “This is sort of a slap in the face to investors that have been demanding this.

The SEC announced it was considering imposing the regulations late last year, when it included the measure on its 2013 regulatory agenda. The action came in response to a petition submitted by a group of law professors contending that shareholders have a right to know how companies involve themselves in politics.

The agency was flooded with 640,000 comments, the vast majority backing the plan. But the agency has remained largely silent on the issue this year, and a 38-item regulatory agenda unveiled just before Thanksgiving contains no mention of the proposal.

The Chamber of Commerce is quite pleased.

Business groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce also opposed new corporate giving regulations, calling the proposal a thinly veiled effort to drive the business community out of politics and public policy issues.

“We are pleased that the SEC saw this proposal for what it was,” Chmber spokeswoman Blair Latoff Holmes said Monday. “Campaign finance reform is not, has never been, and should never be a function of the SEC.”

Keep in mind: nothing about the proposed rules created any limits at all on business spending in elections. It was just an attempt to make the spending by corporations transparent to their own shareholders. These people know that their actions are so immoral and so contrary to even the business’ own best interests that they don’t even want their own shareholders to know about it.

If only there were some sort of Chief Executive who could put pressure on the SEC to do the right thing…

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CNN: Ooops.

by digby

Americablog:

In a rather embarrassing revelation for CNN, their own “expert” crashed the Obamacare Web site yesterday by doing something that every child in America knows you simply do not do on the Internet: Refreshing the Web page while your transaction is processing.

Yet, an examination of the video reveals that that is exactly what CNN did – their expert refreshed the Affordable Care Act federal exchange site while their application was “processing.”

And what happened as a result? The page crashed. As it does on every single Web site in the world when you’re dumb enough to refresh the page while a transaction is in progress.

Now that’s funny.

Click here to see the video.

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I just want to thank all the third-wayers who made this possible

by digby

Here’s a nice article called the The Vanishing Abortion Clinic to make you feel all warm inside. In a nutshell:

When I look at that map I recall the decade I’ve spent screaming about this and can’t help wonder what might have happened if the Democratic establishment hadn’t eagerly listened to foolish, self-serving claptrap like this:

June 22, 2007
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Why Pro-Choice Is a Bad Choice for Democrats

By MELINDA HENNEBERGER

I KEEP reading about a universe in which social conservatives are warming to Rudy Giuliani. But this would have to be a place where his estranged children and three wives and multiple appearances in fishnets were irrelevant to the Republican base. Where the nice gay couple he moved in with between marriages would be asked to appear in the film montage at the nominating convention in St. Paul.

Even in the real world, a pro-choice Republican nominee would be a gift to the Democrats, because the Republican Party wins over so many swing voters on abortion alone. Which is why Fred Thompson, who is against abortion rights, is getting so much grateful attention from his party now. And why, despite wide opposition to the war in Iraq, Democrats must still win back such voters to take the White House next year.

Over 18 months, I traveled to 20 states listening to women of all ages, races, tax brackets and points of view speak at length on the issues they care about heading into ’08. They convinced me that the conventional wisdom was wrong about the last presidential contest, that Democrats did not lose support among women because “security moms” saw President Bush as the better protector against terrorism. What first-time defectors mentioned most often was abortion.

Why would that be, given that Roe v. Wade was decided almost 35 years ago? Opponents of abortion rights saw 2004 as the chance of a lifetime to overturn Roe, with a movement favorite already in the Oval Office and several spots on the Supreme Court likely to open up. A handful of Catholic bishops spoke out more plainly than in any previous election season and moved the Catholic swing vote that Al Gore had won in 2000 to Mr. Bush.

The standard response from Democratic leaders has been that anyone lost to them over this issue is not coming back — and that regrettable as that might be, there is nothing to be done. But that is not what I heard from these voters.
[…]
What would it take to win them back? Respect, for starters — and not only on the night of the candidate forum on faith. As it turns out, you cannot call people extremists and expect them to vote for you. But real respect would require an understanding that what supporters of abortion rights genuinely see as a hard-earned freedom, opponents genuinely see as a self-inflicted wound and — though I can feel some of you tensing as you read this — a human rights issue comparable to slavery.

The Democrats listened and followed that advice. They hemmed and hawed and droned on about “safe,legal and rare” and a “culture of life” — and it didn’t buy one, single vote. In fact, a strong stand in favor of women’s rights is credited with energizing the Democratic voters in 2012. Imagine that.

Unfortunately, it was too late. Where fighting this might have at least resulted in an awareness of what was happening, years of Democrats chasing votes that were never going to come their way resulted in zealots quietly passing laws at the state level making abortion more and more difficult to obtain.  I guess that’s what the anti-choice minority in the Democratic Party calls “winning.” They must be so pleased.

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CA Republicans use taxpayer dollars to send mail to bash the ACA with fake website

by David Atkins

Karoli at Crooks and Liars has a great report on the latest round of franked, taxpayer-funded mail from Republican Assemblymembers in California. They’ve actually put up their own propaganda site at “CoveringHealthCareCA.com” with outright propaganda against the ACA, trying to veer people away from the exchanges. Needless to say, it’s set up to look like an official government site.

Here’s one pathetic example from the FAQ:

Does the law penalize low-income households?

A: There are subsidies in the program for health insurance. However, there is an argument that the Affordable Care Act provides strong incentives for firms to avoid hiring workers from low-income households. Eligibility for receiving subsidized insurance is based on household income, and firms can be penalized if one of their workers gets subsidized coverage in an exchange. Thus, firms have a strong incentive to find workers who won’t qualify for subsidized coverage. For instance, a restaurant might find it better to hire young waiters from upper-income neighborhoods, as opposed to low-income areas, because they would be less likely to qualify for subsidized insurance in the exchange.

Or their tab on “young adults”:

Young adults will end up paying for much of federal health care reform by subsidizing the cost of sicker people, or by paying a tax penalty if they do not obtain health insurance under the provisions of the individual mandate, which requires all Californians to have coverage beginning in 2014.

Subsidizing Sicker Adults

The Affordable Care Act requires young adults to pay higher premiums for health insurance because the law prohibits insurers from denying coverage to sicker individuals because of pre-existing conditions and limits what they can charge to older or sicker policy holders. This will mean that young adults will pay higher premiums even though they are generally healthier and do not visit the doctor as often.

These people are disgusting and shameless.

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Oh heck, let’s just privatize it all

by digby

Because what we really need are more middle men skimming profits from the taxpayers for inferior services, rightwing groups including Norquist and the Kochs have sent this letter to Paul Ryan in hopes he will include it in the budget process:

Dear Chairman Ryan:

As you go to conference with the Senate on the budget for fiscal year 2014 and set forth the appropriate budgetary levels for fiscal years 2015 through 2023, the undersigned organizations respectfully recommend consideration of a variety of strategies to reduce spending, and increase revenue, through policies under the general heading of“privatization”.

Privatization includes, but is not limited to, vouchers, asset sales, contracting out, divestiture, franchising, concessions, ESOPs, and public-private partnerships and those in the Government Accountability Office (GAO) publication, Terms Related to Privatization Activities and Processes (GAO/GGD-97-121, July 1997).

Implementation of such privatization policies and processes have helped national governments around the world—as well as governors, state legislators, and local officials of both parties here at home—balance their budgets, hold the line on taxes, create private sector jobs, increase government efficiency, and lower the costs of service delivery.

Among the measures we would recommend in the budget conference are:

 Implementation of a “‘Yellow Pages’ Test”. If a government activity is available from a private company found in the Yellow Pages of the telephone book, that activity should either not be a responsibility of the Federal government, should be actually performed by a private firm under contract with the Federal government, or should at least be subject to a public-private cost and quality competition, pursuant to Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-76, to determine which sector is the best provider. This process is established by H.R. 1072/S. 523, the “Freedom from Government Competition Act (FFGCA) of 2013”, introduced by Representative John J. “Jimmy” Duncan, Jr. (R-TN) and Senator John Thune (R-SD), respectively.
 Re-establishment of a Joint Committee on Reduction of Non-Essential Federal Expenditures toidentify and provide legislative action to modify or eliminate underperforming ornonessential Federal programs, as well as Federal programs and activities that duplicate or compete with activities available from the private sector. Such a Congressional committee, previously known as the Byrd Committee, existed from 1941 to 1974, but was folded into the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and House and Senate Budget Committees by the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974. Legislation to create such a panel is found in H. Res. 119/S. 253/S. Res. 30 by Representative Jeff Duncan (R-SC) and Senator Mark Udall (D-CO), respectively.
 The sale of surplus, unneeded, and under-utilized Federally-owned land and buildings. The Obama Administration has proposed the sale of some 14,000 buildings and structures currently designated as excess. There is more than 5.1 million acres of federal land classified as “vacant” with no definable purpose and 3.3 million acres of lands which the Bureau of Land Management has identified through its land use planning process as surplus and suitable for disposal. The sale of such surplus property could not only generate revenue to the government, but also reduce operating and maintenance expenses. Legislation to inventory, evaluate, surplus, and dispose Federal land has been introduced as H.R. 916 by Representative Ron Kind (D-WI), H.R. 328 and H.R. 2657 by Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), H.R. 695 by Representative Jeff Denham (R-CA), and S. 1382 and S. 1398 by Senator Tom Carper (D-DE).
 The report of President Reagan’s Privatization Commission (1988), the Private Sector Survey on Cost Control (PSSCC), commonly referred to as The Grace Commission (1984), the Clinton Administration’s reinventing government program, officially known as the National Performance Review report, Creating a Government That Works Better and Costs Less (1993, 1994), and numerous GAO and Inspector General reports all provided privatization recommendations never implemented and which are even more necessary and relevant today than when they were originally proffered. Numerous private sector and nongovernmental organizations have also made serious and workable privatization recommendations. These should all be on the table.

“It is not the role of government to provide services. It is the role of government to see to it that services are provided,” former New York governor Mario Cuomo once said. Privatization should be a bipartisan solution to our debt and deficit crisis. We respectfully recommend that the budget resolution include a broad and robust privatization agenda.

That’s funny. They don’t believe the government should “see to it” that services are provided either.

“Privatization” is yet another bipartisan, neo-liberal trope, once championed by DLC types as the perfect solution to the alleged problem of Big Government, that has proven itself over and over again to be a failure. If the outsourcing for Obamacare and these ongoing, defense procurement scandals don’t show us that we need to be more skeptical not less, I don’t know what will.

And the administration needs to stop saying ridiculous things like this:

“While there is more work to be done, the team is operating with private sector velocity and effectiveness, and will continue their work to improve and enhance the website in the weeks and months ahead,” the administration wrote in a report outlining its success.

Because it results in Villager nonsense like this:

CHUCK TODD: David, the most interesting thing in this report, right, page one — it’s page three of the report, it says here that, “The team is operating with private sector velocity and effectiveness.”

DAVID GREGORY:Yeah.

CHUCK TODD: Okay, that is an acknowledgement that, “You know what? If this was a government operation for a long time and it failed, now we’re bringing in the private sector folks.” I mean that is an indictment on the whole idea of government as a solution, frankly…

Wonderful.

Some things the private sector does well and some things the government does well. They each have their role to play in our economic and civic lives. About 25 years ago the Democratic Party abandoned its mission, forged during the Great Depression, to defend the things the government does well, and decided that the traditional Republican defense of the private sector was more to their liking. I’m sure money had nothing to do with it.

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Time to throw a tiny bit of chum to lower middles? How nice.

by digby

Fabulously wealthy political celebrities Robert Rubin, Robert Altman, Peter Orszag and bunch of other elites are getting together to talk about what it’s like to make less than 60k a year. If anyone knows about that they do, right?

More than half of American families earn $60,000 or less a year — outside of poverty but with limited economic security. Indeed, many of these families rely on government programs for support and one major setback could throw their lives into chaos. On December 4th, The Hamilton Project at Brookings will host a forum to highlight two new proposals for aiding America’s lower-middle class.

The forum will kick off with introductory remarks by former U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin.

Joel Berg, Executive Director of the NYC Coalition Against Hunger; James Ziliak, Director of the Center for Poverty Research at the University of Kentucky; and Robert Greenstein, President of the Center on Budget & Policy Priorities, will join a panel with Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach of Northwestern University to discuss her proposal to strengthen the food stamp (SNAP) program. Roger Altman, Founder and Executive Chairman of Evercore will moderate the panel.

In a second panel, Kevin Hassett, Senior Fellow and Director of Economic Policy Studies at AEI, and Peter Orszag, former director of the Office of Management & Budget and the Congressional Budget Office, will join Melissa Kearney and Lesley Turner of the University of Maryland to discuss their proposal for a secondary earner tax deduction to help “make work pay” for both spouses in low income families. Glenn Hutchins, Co-Founder of Silver Lake, will moderate the panel.

The forum will conclude with a discussion between Jason Furman, Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, and David Leonhardt, Washington Bureau Chief for the New York Times, on the challenges facing America’s lower-middle-class families.

If any of these people want to know what the central problem here is, it’s very simple: these folks don’t have enough money.

And I would just add that part of the reason they don’t have enough money is that the Robert Rubins and Robert Altman’s have successfully tilted the playing field to benefit others like themselves. A clever new “tax credit” and more food stamps kind of elides the real issue, don’t you think?

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