Month: April 2014

Nixon’s legacy lives on

by digby

I was reading some Rick Perlstein the other day and it struck me that the current campaign finance system was something Nixon would have loved. And lo and behold, Ian Millhiser at Think Progress had the same thought and analyzed it for you.

There was a time when even members of congress understood what corruption was:

The Ervin report “identified over $1.8 million in Presidential campaign contributions as ascribable, in whole or in part, to 31 persons holding ambassadorial appointments from President Nixon, and stated that six other large contributors, accounting for $3 million, appear to have been actively seeking such appointment at the time of their contributions.” Outside of the White House, the report uncovered “lavish contributions” to members of Congress from both political parties. The chairman of one oil company testified that executives perceived campaign donations as a “calling card” that would “get us in the door and make our point of view heard.” American Airlines’ former chair testified that many companies funneled money to politicians “in response to pressure for fear of a competitive disadvantage that might result” if they did not buy off lawmakers. In essence, businesses feared that if they did not give money to elected officials, but their competitors did, then their competition could use their enhanced access to politicians in order to gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

And yet, according to Chief Justice Roberts and his fellow conservative justices, hardly any of this activity amounts to “corruption.”

What? You disagree? You think that might not be fair? Well, you need to think again. According to the Supremes, this is just a simple expression of free speech and democracy as defined under our constitution. Millhiser quotes from the Citizens United opinion to illustrate that principle:

Favoritism and influence are not . . . avoidable in representative politics. It is in the nature of an elected representative to favor certain policies, and, by necessary corollary, to favor the voters and contributors who support those policies. It is well understood that a substantial and legitimate reason, if not the only reason, to cast a vote for, or to make a contribution to, one candidate over another is that the candidate will respond by producing those political outcomes the supporter favors. Democracy is premised on responsiveness.

They’re just being responsive! As Millhiser quips:

Democracy certainly is premised on responsiveness. Though it is a strange definition of democracy that offers enhanced responsiveness to those who can afford to pay for it.

I’ve quoted founder John Jay’s maxim many times before (“The people who own the country ought to be the ones to govern it”)so it’s not as if this is a new idea. That’s essentially what we’re talking about, after all. The wealthy have a greater say because they allegedly have a greater stake. That’s hardly democracy but it hasn’t stopped many plutocrats and robber barons from pretending that it is.

But that’s not the honest rationale the Court is giving with these rulings. It’s making the fatuous claim that this is an equal playing field where everyone is equal and free and the money is just another form of political activity. If the country survives being an oligarchy and comes out the other side, I think these rulings will be considered among the most intellectually dishonest the court has ever made. And that’s saying something.

I’ve always thought that this modern conservative movement was really forged by Nixon. You have to know that he’d be pleased as punch with this decision.

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The race to the bottom continues as call centers move from India to the Philippines

by David Atkins

Big corporations just can’t get enough of that cheap, cheap labor:

Struggling to diversify the delivery footprint to take advantage of low-cost centres, India’s BPO industry is currently losing 70 per cent of all incremental voice and call centre business to competitors like Philippines and countries in Eastern Europe, says a report.

“It is estimated that in the ongoing decade India might lose $ 30 billion in terms of foreign exchange earnings to Philippines, which has become the top destination for Indian investors,” Assocham Secretary General D S Rawat said. Thus there is a need to reduce costs and make operations leaner across the BPO industry,” he added.

BPO companies could reduce the total operating costs by 20-30 per cent by moving to a low-cost city within India, with a cost differential of around 10-15 per cent for non-voice processes and upwards of 20 per cent for voice processes, the report pointed out.

Several Indian firms have set up substantial operations in Philippines which has a large pool of well-educated, English-speaking, talented and employable graduates. Almost 30 per cent graduates in Philippines are employable unlike 10 per cent in India where the training consumes considerable amount of time, according to the report.

The labor arbitrage game continues worldwide as corporations shift from country to country looking for highly trained workers to sell their labor for next to nothing on the global marketplace. These corporations are like parasites, putting jobs in one country for a decade or two, only to destabilize them and move the jobs elsewhere the moment something cheaper and better trained comes along.

Combined with increased capital mobility, labor arbitrage is giving corporations the upper hand in the battle with governments worldwide. The fate of the world’s economy–and, given the realities of climate change perhaps even the human race itself–will depend largely on whether the governments of the world can cooperate to neutralize the parasitic, plutocratic threat of global corporations.

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Rahm bomb

by digby

If you have ever wondered if your impression of Rahm Emmanuel was unfair or perhaps a little bit exaggerated, check out this interview with Isaac Chotiner. He really is an asshole, though and through.

This is just a taste from the very beginning. It gets worse:

Isaac Chotiner: Your predecessor held this job—

Rahm Emanuel: My predecessor?

IC: Yes, Richard Daley, who was in office for twenty-two years. What was it like taking over a city when one man had so much control for so long?

RE: I am here to build a future. You know he is a friend.

IC: I am not demanding you say anything bad about him.

RE: I am not going to. I would never do that. He was a great mayor. There are things he did that I would do differently. He acknowledged the public was ready for a change. Millennium Park used to be railroad tracks. He built it. It is one of the greatest public spaces built in the last fifty years in the developed world. That said, it was time for a change. His presence is such a part of the city. My goal is to ensure we have a future and to make the changes that I think people voted for…

IC: Let me ask you about your own image—sending people dead fish and so forth. To what degree have you tried to create this image yourself?

RE: Maybe I should ask the question to you. Look, I did send the fish. I and four other people. In 1986. [Pauses for several seconds.] We are coming up to almost thirty years. It is time for people to freshen up their anecdotes. You aren’t the same person you were when you graduated college. I didn’t say I didn’t do it. But where I was at twenty or thirty versus fifty-four, where I am a father of three—I’m just a different person.

IC: But you still have this reputation. You must have seen what Robert Gates called you in his book: “a whirling dervish with attention deficit disorder.”

RE: Yeah, so? What are you wondering?

IC: Well—

RE: Finish your question.

IC: Do you pursue this style and image because it has advantages in governing?

RE: The assumption is that I only have one gear.

IC: OK, I am asking about that gear.

RE: Well, first of all, I am interested in telling you I have more than one gear. Here is what I think about you guys…

Please let this be his last job in politics. Then he can go back to Wall Street where he belongs.

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The hidden bipartisan agenda in Paul Ryan’s budget

by digby

This piece by George Zornick should scare the hell out of everyone. He’s looked at Paul Ryan’s budget and sees three main areas where, if enacted, it would set the stage for another financial crisis:

It is easy to make the case that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer under Ryan’s so-called “Path to Prosperity” plan: one needs only to look at the literally trillions cut from Medicaid and food stamps while the rich pay much less in taxes.

But it’s important to refine that point and note that the financial sector in particular gets many special favors in the Ryan plan. After all, it is one of Ryan’s leading benefactors and he can even be spotted sipping $350 bottles of wine with industry leaders from time to time. And his budget is no doubt a path to prosperity for them.

Moreover, in three crucial ways Ryan’s budget not only gives Wall Street more leeway to act recklessly, but makes it more likely that average Americans face the consequences.

You can read the piece to see what he’s specifically talking about. What sent chills down my spine is that I could easily see Democrats signing on to it. Doing the bidding of Wall Street is the path of least resistance in a political world awash in money. In fact, you can’t really blame them. This is an arms race now.

I wish I knew what was going to fix this but I honestly don’t. If the last financial crisis didn’t wise these guys up — and it didn’t — I don’t know what will.

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Kristol’s brass

by digby

This comment from William Kristol on this morning’s This Week had me yelling at the TV.

The Rand Corporation says about 800,000 of those people were previously uninsured. Eight hundred thousand out of seven million, the huge bulk of them previously insured.

So big deal. He moved people from insurance plans they liked to — forced them into the exchanges. That’s like saying you’ve got to give the Soviet Union a lot of credit, 200 million people bought bread in their grocery stories. If it’s the only place you can buy health insurance, they’re going to get people to buy health insurance there.

800,000 uninsured people who are now insured is nothing I guess. But more importantly, does he honestly believe we all liked our incredibly expensive, lousy insurance before? What planet is he on?

I don’t know if he’s being sincere or just cynically spouting official talking points but I’d guess that a vast majority of those who switched to health insurance on the exchange got a better deal. Even those who are paying the same or more have more security and better coverage. And every last person in the private insurance market can now go to a website that will never ask them their medical history before selling them insurance. Do these jokers think that doesn’t matter to people?

That is not to say that Kristol’s lies aren’t a problem. After all, he knows that most Americans aren’t in the private insurance market and haven’t had to personally deal with these reforms so they just believe what they hear. The news media has spent more time speaking in abstractions about numbers and quotas and web site hits so they aren’t getting a picture of the reality from them. And since the Democrats, so far, haven’t countered the Koch Brothers ads all over the country all they’re hearing is horror stories. The story of people like me and my friends, people who were “responsible” citizens who previously paid through the nose for bad plans (and lived in terror that we’d get sick and lose everything anyway) has not been told. And it needs to be.

Is there a slimier political operative who cloaks himself in the mantle of intellectual than Bill Kristol? I don’t think so. Case in point:

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “I don’t discuss personal opinions. … I’m familiar with what’s obviously true about it as well as what’s problematic. … I’m not a scientist. … It’s like me asking you whether you believe in the Big Bang.”

How evolution should be taught in public schools: “I managed to have my children go through the Fairfax, Virginia schools without ever looking at one of their science textbooks.”

Just plain slimy….

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The Queen of the Arctic lies again

by digby

Chutzpah:

“I tell my kids, ‘Yes, we eat organic, we just have to go shoot it first,’” she told her first guest, DeeDee Jonrowe, a veteran Iditarod musher.

“Our meals happen to be wrapped in fur, not cellophane,” Palin said, noting she didn’t realize people actually bought meat until she attended college out-of-state.

I call bullshit. I went to high school in Alaska back in the 70s, when Palin was still in grade school. I passed through Wasilla many times — it’s a suburb of Anchorage, after all, not a remote Indian Village out in the bush. They had a huge grocery store called — “Safeway”  — in a mall on the Parks Highway right in town. I doubt very seriously that Palin never went to the Safeway mall or passed by the meat section. In fact, I doubt very, very seriously she only ate game meat. A lot of Alaskans do eat it, for sure, but the only ones that eat it exclusively are the very poor.

Back when I lived there people from out of state would ask me if Alaskans really lived in igloos. I’d reply, “yes, and inside their igloos they have this big box with knobs on it called a “color TV.” It’s pathetic that she’s trying to portray Alaska as some 19th century throwback to the frontier. She grew up in a place that had grocery stores and movie theatres and car dealerships and fast food franchises just like everywhere else in America. What a liar.

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QOTW: Hillary Clinton

by digby

“There is a double standard, obviously. We have all either experienced it or at the very least seen it… The double standard is alive and well and I think, in many respects, the media is the principle propagator of its persistence.”

Indeed. In fact there are many examples from members of the media who openly profess to be liberal.

During the January 9 edition of MSNBC’s Morning Joe,* Chris Matthews — host of MSNBC’s Hardball — discussed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s (D-NY) victory* in the January 8 Democratic primary and said, “[T]he reason she’s a U.S. senator, the reason she’s a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner is her husband messed around. That’s how she got to be senator from New York. We keep forgetting it. She didn’t win there on her merit. She won because everybody felt, ‘My God, this woman stood up under humiliation,’ right? That’s what happened.”

But, while Matthews has an extensive history of attacking Clinton, his sexist commentary has hardly been limited to her. Following the Democrats’ victory in the November 2006 midterm elections, for example, Matthews asked a guest if then-speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was “going to castrate” Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) if he were elected House majority leader.

Following are other examples of Matthews’ sexist commentary:

Also during MSNBC’s January 8 primary coverage, Matthews said that Clinton is the only viable woman presidential candidate “on the horizon.” He asked: “Where are the governors? Where are the big state women governors? Where are they? Name one. They don’t exist.” Referring to Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D-MI), Matthews added: “Michigan, she’s a Canadian. She can’t make it.” In fact, at least four women governors currently head states whose population size is comparable to male governors who are currently seeking or sought the presidency in 2008. Currently, seven states have female governors.

On the September 12, 2007, edition of Hardball, Matthews began an interview with right-wing radio host Laura Ingraham by stating: “You are — I’m not allowed to say this, but I’ll say it — you’re beautiful and you’re smart. And you’ve got a huge radio audience.” When the interview ended, he asked: “Can I sing your praises?” adding, “I get in trouble for this, but you’re great looking, obviously. You’re one of the gods’ gifts to men in this country. But also, you are a hell of a writer.”

During the interview, Matthews also stated: “But it is interesting; all day long on this network and others, I’m seeing pictures of Britney Spears. … [S]he is showing no talent. She’s showing her body. She’s obviously a good-looking young woman, wearing very little.”

On the August 10, 2007, edition of Hardball, during a discussion of financial news, Matthews told CNBC’s Erin Burnett, “[Y]ou’re beautiful,” and, “You’re a knockout,” before closing the interview by saying, “It’s all right getting bad news from you.” Matthews also asked Burnett: “Could you get a little closer to the camera?” Burnett replied, “My — what is it?” Matthews then said: “Come on in closer. No, come in — come in further — come in closer. Really close.” After Burnett began to comply, Matthews stated, “Just kidding! You look great! Anyway, thanks, Erin, it’s great to — look at that look. You’re great.”

A few days later, according to a “Page Six” article in the New York Post, Matthews “told Page Six he was only fooling around with Burnett because the camera lens had already made her appear closer than usual. ‘It was this weird fishbowl look. … I was just kidding around.’ “

During MSNBC’s April 26, 2007, coverage of the first Democratic presidential debate, Matthews discussed the “cosmetics” of the evening. In doing so, he complimented Michelle Obama’s pearl necklace and declared that she “looked perfect,” “well-turned out … attractive — classy, as we used to say. Like Frank Sinatra, ‘classy.’ “

Matthews said: “Some people are, by the way, just watching tonight. They stopped listening a half-hour in, and they noticed how pretty she is — Michelle — and they said, ‘I like the fact he’s [Barack Obama] got this pretty wife. He’s happily married. I like that.’ They like the fact that Hillary was demure, lady-like in her appearance.” When NBC chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell interjected, noting “You’re talking about two … lawyers,” who went to “Harvard and Yale,” Matthews responded, “Cosmetics are a part of this game.”

Discussing the victory speeches of Clinton and Pelosi during MSNBC’s election coverage on November 7, 2006, Matthews said to Republican pollster Frank Luntz, “Pelosi … has to do the good fight against the president over issues like minimum wage and reforming — perhaps — prescription drugs, so that people can afford drugs and get them in a program that’s easy to understand. All kinds of things like that she’ll have to go head-to-head with this president. How does she do it without screaming? How does she do it without becoming grating?”

That was the tip of the iceberg, as I’m sure everyone will recall.

Clinton gives a hint of how she’s dealt with all that:

Quoting Eleanor Roosevelt, much like she did during a February speech at NYU (and surely a few other times), Clinton suggested that women who wanted to be players in the big public debates of the day to “grow a skin as thick as the hide of a rhinoceros.”

“You should take criticism seriously,” she said, now addressing the audience, “because you might learn something, but you can’t let it crush you… and despite whatever the personal setbacks, even insults that come your way might be. And that takes a sense of humor about yourself and others. Believe me, this is hard-won advice (laughter) that I am now putting forth here.”

The change I see in the way progressives feel free to talk about women in public has changed rather dramatically in just the last five years. I don’t know whether it’s come because of soul searching and a sense of shame or simply having their consciousness raised by the women with whom they live and work, but it’s a vast improvement. (Clinton seems to have risen above all that, even if I haven’t…)

The right will never change. We will see far worse from them than Chris Matthews’ puerile drivel if she decides to run. They have no limits. But hopefully, we will see a united front on the left this time that will eschew the kinds of sexist and misogynist commentary many of them employed the last time — which will allow us to have a healthy debate on policy, at least among ourselves. Finding ways to disagree and push back without being an ass really isn’t that hard.

It’s simply not acceptable for progressives to speak in the terms they did back in 2008. Neither is it acceptable to allow a presidential campaign to unfold without a serious discussion of the economic, international and national security issues confronting us. It’s probably not an easy needle to thread for some people but it can be done. It must be done.

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Life in these United States

by digby

Alec MacGillis gives us a snapshot of what a plutocracy looks like:

1. On Sunday, billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson concludes the weekend summit at the Venetian in Las Vegas where four Republican presidential prospects for 2016 came to make their implicit pitch for financial support from the man who spent nearly $150 million during the 2012 campaign.

2. On Monday, a Senate subcommittee releases a report on the tax avoidance used by Caterpillar, the giant Peoria, Ill.-based heavy equipment manufacturer, which cut its tax bill by $2.4 billion over the past 13 years by allotting $8 billion in revenues from its parts division to a subsidiary in Switzerland, where only 65 of the division’s 8,500 employees work. In an email exchange about whether this was appropriate, a managing director at PricewaterhouseCoopers, which was paid $55 million to concoct this arrangement, said: “What the heck, we’ll all be retired when this audit comes up on audit…Baby boomers have their fun, and leave it to the kids to pay for it.”

3. On Tuesday, House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan releases the latest version of the famous Ryan budget. To make up for tax reductions for the wealthy, the budget calls for very deep cuts in spending on Medicaid, food stamps and discretionary spending, which includes research and development, transportation and infrastructure. Amtrak would lose its $1 billion in already-meager annual subsidies and have to rely entirely on fare-box revenue.

4. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court releases a 5-4 ruling in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, eliminating caps on how much total money ultra-rich donors can give to candidates, parties and PACs in a given election cycle. Where donors had previously been limited to giving $123,200 to candidates and parties in a given cycle, they can now give as much as $3.6 million. Chief Justice John Roberts writes: “Spending large sums of money in connection with elections, but not in connection with an effort to control the exercise of an officeholder’s official duties, does not give rise to quid pro quo corruption.” Celebrating the ruling, House Speaker John Boehner says, “I’m all for freedom, congratulations.”

5. On Thursday morning, the Wall Street Journal runs an op-ed by one of the best-known mega-donors, Charles Koch, who with his brother backs Americans for Prosperity, which spent $122 million leading up to the 2012 campaign and has already spent more than $30 million in the past six months attacking Obamacare and Democratic senators up for reelection this fall. In the op-ed, Koch explains his heavy spending by warning of the “collectivists” threatening to take over the country. “The fundamental concepts of dignity, respect, equality before the law and personal freedom are under attack by the nation’s own government,” he writes.

6. Later on Thursday morning, between 9 and 10 a.m., part of the overhead electric line that powers the Acela train comes down onto the tracks near Bowie, Maryland, between Washington, D.C. and Baltimore. Virtually all train traffic between Baltimore and Washington shuts down for hours as undermanned crews struggle to repair the line, thereby severely hampering traffic in the Washington to Boston Northeast corridor that carries 750,000 passengers on 2,000 trains per day and also spelling panic for the Thursday afternoon rail commuters heading north out of Washington.

It’s their world. We just serve them in it.

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Big data, NSA, Snowden and Wikileaks go pop comic book movie pop culture

by David Atkins

I’m not a big comic book movie fan, but I was persuaded to accompany some friends yesterday to see the Captain America sequel out in theaters. The movie was a pretty run-of-the-mill comic book flick from a moviemaking, acting and script perspective, but its national security politics provided a strong contemporary statement and were of keen interest.

To get into why, spoilers will be required. So SPOILER ALERT. Read no farther if you don’t want to learn plot details of the Captain America movie.

To make a long story short, the film’s protagonist is our FDR-era hero who was frozen in ice for 70-odd years until present day. He’s now a soldier who works for a shadowy pseudo-governmental agency acronymically called SHIELD.

It turns out that SHIELD has been compromised from the inside by a cult (the rogue Nazi villains from the first Captain America film) that wants to eliminate all possibilities of terrorism by using a big data algorithm to murder anyone likely to become a threat. Using SHIELD’s NSA-style database of information combined with new death-from-the-sky aerial vehicles, their vision is near reality.

Somewhat preposterously, the big data algorithm identifies 20 million people in need of immediate killing. That’s quite a false positive, even for a predictive anti-terror murder machine; the moral ambiguity would have been much more compelling if the machine had identified a few dozen. But this is a comic book film, after all.

Needless to say, our heroes rebel against SHIELD, become murder targets themselves and wind up victoriously eliminating SHIELD entirely. They dump every single state secret onto the public internet, thereby compromising even their own identities.

That’s some heavy material, and an extremely interesting dynamic for a summer tentpole blockbuster. And being a summer comic book flick it doesn’t leave a lot of room for nuance. On one side is an evil governmental organization using the power of Big Data to create a murderous surveillance state; on the other are our heroes who take the radical step of declassifying and publishing everything under the government’s control, including the identities of secret agents. Nor does the film mince words at all about which side of the Manichean divide it stands on.

Digby and I tend to differ, I think, on the scope of matters requiring state secrecy as well as the protocols that should be in place for whistleblowing on overreach. I also believe that the use of big data in dealing with a host of issues including national security is essentially inevitable and needs to be managed rather than resisted at all costs.

That said, we can all agree using big data for national security is really creepy. The potential for its abuse is great even in benevolent hands–and we all know that when it comes to national security, the hands in control of the classified documents and the shadow agents tend to be anything but benevolent. The public has good reason to recoil from a government that eliminates personal privacy in an attempt to predict behavioral patterns in ways that violate multiple amendments in the Bill of Rights.

If forced to choose between radical transparency and creepy Big Brother, the argument is going to come down on the side of radical transparency. That’s already happening in pop culture, and that’s as it should be.

Ironically and counterintuitively, however, the agenda of radical transparency and the creepy “pre-crime” security state may both get their way at some point in the future. The power of big data may become so effective and pervasive that governments may begin taking “preventive” action against people who haven’t even done anything wrong. Simultaneously, it may become so impossible to maintain data security against breaches that it becomes nearly impossible to maintain state secrets. In such a world, both personal and governmental privacy would be eliminated, and wars could theoretically be fought over corporate intellectual property.

That’s a terrifying thought. It would also be an interesting premise for a provocative sci-fi flick.

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Saturday Night at the Movies


Winsome wisps of WASP-y whinging: Breathe In 

By Dennis Hartley