Question ‘O The Day
by digby
By the way, he’s spilling some beans now. But it’s unlikely anyone will look into it. After all, that would require looking in the rear view mirror and we don’t do that sort of thing when banks like JP Morgan are involved. (If you’re a Real Housewife of New Jersey, however, you need to be made an example of so that the rubes don’t get the wrong idea.)
.
On marijuana as on so much else, progressives are always right but never respected.
by David Atkins
This is welcome news, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t tiresome to see this pattern repeated:
When President Obama gave the green light for states to set their own marijuana laws, he set in motion what is becoming unprecedented and much-needed change in our country’s antiquated and harshly counterproductive drug laws. Not only has Colorado and Washington State succesfully legalized recreational use of marijuana, other states are now exploring with similar legislation.
The amount of people behind bars because of possession of small amounts of marijuana has increased drastically since the War on Drugs was instituted by President Nixon in 1971. In Colorado alone, 9,000 residents a year were imprisoned prior to Amendment 64, the amendment that legalized marijuana in the state. Without a doubt, the criminalization of marijuana in America has become a very serious human rights issue, but one that Pres. Obama and states like Colorado are well on their way to fixing.
The easing of the drug laws is presenting Colorado with a complicated issue surrounding those who have been arrested after the passage, but prior to the implementation of, Amendment 64. Thankfully, in a historic ruling, Colorado judges have decided to retroactively apply the law to those incarcerated.
A panel of three Colorado Court of Appeals judges unanimously ruled in favor of allowing some state citizens who have been convicted of possessing small amounts of marijuana prior to the implementation of Dec. 2012′s Amendment 64 to request their convictions be overturned.
I don’t have a personal stake in this battle; I’ve never even tried the stuff. But it’s been fairly obvious since I was a kid that allowing alcohol to be consumed essentially unchecked while treating marijuana like some demon weed never made any sense. But anyone who has dared point that out over the years has been treated like a “unserious” stoner, even as millions of lives were ruined or damaged not by pot itself, but by a seriously misguided set of laws.
Slowly but surely the tide is changing on that question. Eventually decriminalizing will even make its way through Congress.
But at no point will the people who were right all these decades get credit for being right. At no point will they be treated seriously, nor will all the braying jackasses who claimed decriminalization would spell the end of the American way of life receive the scorn and marginalization they so richNoly deserve.
It’s more than just about the money–although of course there’s big money in continuing the useless drug war. It’s broadly cultural. For a society with only a few centuries of history under its belt and that loves to celebrate the rebel in its music and film, America has a very difficult time actually embracing agents of change. Even as our opinions of the elites continue to decline, most Americans generally still would rather go with the devils they know than take a chance on changing things for the better. That’s a real shame.
.
Royals and The Boss
by digby
Wow:
Hat tip to Kathy Geier who comments:
Seriously, I love Bruce. And as I’ve written before in this space, I also adore Lorde, the teen pop sensation from New Zealand. But I never thought of them as inhabiting the same musical universe, which is why his cover of her breakthrough hit from last year, “Royals,” is as delightful as it is unexpected. It’s an unlikely pairing because musically and generationally, the two are so different. But once you start thinking about their work thematically — the class-conscious populism, especially — it makes absolute sense.
She’s right. It really works. Whoduh thunk it?
.
Red country mice and blue city mice
by digby
The Wall Street Journal ran a piece today examining the urban rural divide and came to the conclusion that country folk are different from city folk. Shocker, I know. Still, it’s true, and it’s probably a better way to think about the political divide than just Red State vs Blue State because even many of the Red state cites vote Democratic and the Blue state rural areas vote GOP. In statewide and national contests it comes down to the total population and how many of them are urban dwellers.
Unfortunately, due to House gerrymandering and the twin undemocratic features of our system — the Senate and the Electoral College — the country mice have a lot more individual clout than us city mice do.
Anyway, the divide is nicely illustrated with this graph:
The article features some colorful anecdotes that are fairly predictable but fun to read. But this actually made me go back and read it twice:
At the Rusty Jug, a barbecue restaurant decorated like an old-West saloon, owner Todd Leonard suspects beer sales could help his shaky bottom line. But home-brewed root beer remains the strongest drink on tap for diners enjoying the deep-fried ribs and deep-fried potato salad.
Mr. Leonard, age 45, is afraid one of his customers might drive home drunk and kill someone if he served alcohol, he said. He also worries his pastor and neighbors might lose respect for him.
Deep fried ribs and deep fried potato salad? And he’s worried about people dying from a couple of beers?
(I’m just kidding really — I don’t judge other people’s eating habits. And I’m sure deep fried ribs and deep fried potato salad tastes great. But yikes …)
Anyway, rural America has a big demographic problem — young people move away for jobs, education and the freedom of the modern world. Of course that’s always been true, right? But this economy sure isn’t helping to stem the bleeding. But for some reason those salt of the earth folks seem to believe it will all be fixed if only we stop taxing Wall Street investment bankers and wealthy CEOs.
What an awesome con job …
.
Sunday Funnies — “stop the bullshit”* edition
by digby
Michael Kupperman and David Rees in today’s NY Times:
They’re baaaaack
by digby
The neocons, that is. I am watching Paul Wolfowitz on Fox right now! He’s rested, he’s ready, he’s itching for war with Russia. He says that we can’t do things in the rearview mirror with respect to Iraq — and then he evokes the 1930s. But then, that’s nothing new. I’ve written a lot about Wolfowitz and company’s desire to confront Russia, going all the way back .
[I]t pays to remember that the Wolfowitz/Cheney et al PNAC paper that launched Iraq originally targeted Russia long after the Soviet Union broke up. Don’t be so sure they wouldn’t have used this as an excuse for WWIII. They really were that crazy,:
That book “Present Dangers” was edited by Robert Kagan and cited these six “mounting threats” in the year 2000:
#1 China: The Challenge of a Rising Power
#2 Russia: The Challenge of a Failing Power
#3 Iraq: Saddam Unbound
#4 Iran: Fundamentalism and reform
#5 North Korea: Beyond Appeasement
The weren’t very tuned into the global terrorism thing, but they made good use of it once it reared its ugly head.
I’ve had plenty of criticisms of President Obama’s national security policy, but I think we can at least breathe a sigh of relief that he doesn’t have the likes of William Kristol and Robert Kagan (not to mention the thoroughly nutty Frank Gaffney and Michael Ledeen) whispering in his ear.
Yep. They sound just as crazy today as they always did. And considering their track record — which is about 0-35 — I think we can safely ignore them.
.
The outlier
by digby
In this graph of life expectancy at birth vs. health spending per capita, one country stands out pic.twitter.com/CE9RGh4hYf
— Conrad Hackett (@conradhackett) March 22, 2014
Spending more and getting less is the American way.
Nino the statist
by digby
Well it looks like we know where Scalia stands on the NSA.
The topic of the NSA’s controversial surveillance of telephone metadata came up during a laughter-filled Q&A between Scalia and Judge Andrew Napolitano, a faculty member at Brooklyn Law School and a close personal friend of the justice he accidentally called “Nino.”
While suggesting that the high court will take up NSA surveillance, Scalia expressed his opinion that judges should not be deciding matters of national security.
“The Supreme Court doesn’t know diddly about the nature and extent of the threat,” Scalia said. Later on, he added, “It’s truly stupid that my court is going to be the last word on it.”
Right. That should be left to Generals and politicians to do in secret. That way we’ll be sure to stay free.
Still, he hinted he would rule that NSA surveillance does not violate the Constitution if and when the issue comes before the Supreme Court. Although one judge has ruled the spying violates the Fourth Amendment, Scalia may disagree based on his strict interpretation of the Constitution.
The text of the Fourth Amendment bars unwarranted searches of “persons, houses, papers, and effects.” But, as Scalia told the audience, “conversations are quite different” from all four of those things.
Hey, the constitution doesn’t say anything about eavesdropping. If the founders had wanted that to be in there they would have put it in there. Next?
One astute law student said something, however, that may make Scalia reconsider his initial thinking on the constitutionality of the NSA’s domestic surveillance. That student asked if data in a computer were considered “effects” under the Fourth Amendment, in an apparent reference to the NSA capturing communications over the Internet.
Scalia, visibly impressed by the question, said, “I better not answer that. That is something that may well come up [before the Supreme Court].”
Well, the constitution didn’t say anything about computers either so I’m going to guess that’s a non-starter.
I do think it’s interesting that Scalia the “originalist” doesn’t feel the Supreme Court can assess threats so it shouldn’t have the last word on whether the government is violating the constitution. I wonder what the founders were going on about with all that Bill of Rights stuff then?
On the other hand, he feels perfectly competent to decide when human life begins and dictate when people are going to reproduce. Go figure.
.
The Liberty Tax
by digby
I guess he still rules their world:
Just paid the Obamacare penalty for not ‘getting covered’… I’M CALLING IT A LIBERTY TAX!
— MATT DRUDGE (@DRUDGE) March 21, 2014
Of course the penalty isn’t in effect until you’ve been uninsured for more than 9 months but Drudge claims that he’s doing this as a small business so he has to pay.
Was Drudge lying or misinformed? Or, did he actually pay the penalty and is being unfairly criticized?
Conservative outlets including Breitbart and The Washington Times jumped to his defense, echoing a later claim from Drudge himself that he was actually paying a small business or self-employed tax as part of his quarterly 2014 estimated tax payments.
As with so many other tax laws, it turns out there might be varying degrees of truth for each argument.
The H&R Block Tax Institute told The Wire that Drudge is likely overpaying his tax debt now and that the overpayment will be deducted once the health insurance penalty is assessed early next year. However, H&R Block also said there is no formal payment calculation yet in place by the IRS for the Individual Shared Responsibility Provision. What’s more, when individuals make estimated tax payments, they cannot specify which government program their payments are going to, i.e. building roads, fighting wars or healthcare.
So, if H&R Block is right, Drudge’s literal claim is probably not exactly true, either. At best, he’s overpaying his taxes and assuming that extra money will go to his eventual penalty for not getting health insurance.
I don’t have to pay the “Liberty Tax” because … I bought insurance through the exchange and got better coverage and saved money. Just like Drudge, I did just send in my estimated taxes for the second quarter though. But I’m calling it THE MILLIONAIRE SUBSIDY!
.
L.A. Times writes entire article on the U.S. becoming the next Saudi Arabia. No mention of climate change
by David Atkins
Hooray! The U.S. is well on its way to becoming the oil and gas exporter of the world!
Five years ago, the idea of exporting U.S. gas and oil was not only unheard of, but, in the case of most U.S. crude oil, illegal. At that time, the United States was facing a future of dwindling domestic supplies and vulnerability to foreign producers. It was anxiously building facilities to import natural gas, worried about ever-higher prices and building much of its foreign policy on the need to secure energy supplies.
But U.S. energy production has boomed with the technological revolution of hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, and the ability to tap newly accessible massive reserves. The nation surpassed Russia in 2009 as the largest producer of natural gas and is expected to zip past Saudi Arabia next year to become the largest oil producer in the world.
Now, the U.S. energy industry is pushing for a new era of exports.
The new liquefied natural gas plant under construction by Cheniere Energy Inc. along a waterway known as Sabine Pass in Louisiana is the first large-scale export facility approved in the country, expected to begin operation next year. Twenty-one other proposed plants are awaiting federal approval, 17 of which would line the Gulf Coast, with four others on the Atlantic and Pacific shores.
Although energy companies are legally free to export natural gas, they must go through a lengthy review process for building the multibillion-dollar terminals that are required to turn it into a liquid so it can be transported on ships. Crude oil, meanwhile, is largely subject to an export ban enacted in the 1970s-era energy crisis, when long lines at gas stations and soaring prices led to political pressure to save domestic resources for American consumers.
The oil and gas industry is pushing the Obama administration and Congress to legalize crude exports and speed up the process of licensing gas export terminals. Industry officials argue that the U.S. is now in a position of economic strength and national security that will be further enhanced by energy exports. Foreign markets for U.S. crude and natural gas will spur additional production, create thousands of new jobs, enable the U.S. to counter hostile foreign energy powers and generate billions of dollars in wealth, according to the American Petroleum Institute. Already, the U.S. is exporting 3 million barrels of gasoline per day.
So, if we’re exporting oil why is gas still over $4 a gallon? Oh right–because oil is sold on a world market, and it doesn’t really make a hill of beans worth of difference where it’s produced.
On a broader level, though, given what we know about climate change and CO2, there’s something nearly nihilistic about writing an article in which the U.S. is set to frack and drill its way to becoming one of the world’s lead oil and gas producers, without mentioning the fact that the planet will become uninhabitable by humans if all of that gas and oil is extracted and burned.
But as Robert Cruickshank pointed out to me on Twitter when I highlighted the article, it shouldn’t be too surprising. The author of the piece is Ralph Vartebedian, the same guy who took over the California high-speed rail beat to mercilessly sandbag the project. Vartebedian pretty clearly has a pro-oil industry agenda at the L.A. Times and can’t be counted on for unbiased journalism on energy-related issues.
.