Month: May 2014

Jeeves go fetch my ID will you? And light my cheroot before you go …

by digby

Via TPM:

A Republican candidate for Arkansas governor supports the new voter ID law, but he was left waiting after he forgot his identification.

Spokesman Christian Olson told The Associated Press that Asa Hutchinson forgot his ID when he attempted to vote at the polls in Bentonville on Monday. Olson says a staffer was able to retrieve the ID and bring it to Hutchinson so he could vote.

See? All you have to do is send one of your employees to get your ID for you. What’s the big deal? I mean, how many people can there be who need to get to work or only have a short period of time to vote who might not be able to get their butler or manservant to run back to the plantation and bring their drivers license to them? Surely not many.

Olson said Hutchinson thought the incident was a “little bit of an inconvenience” but still believes the law is necessary.

Of course it is. If a person isn’t in a position to have his houseboy fetch his ID in such a situation maybe he shouldn’t be voting in the first place.

Asa Hutchinson, by the way, is the Zelig of Republican office holders. He’s been turning up in every election cycle in one way or the other for about 30 years …

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Sad but unsurprising

by digby

From The Hill:

Privacy advocates that have pushed for legislation to reform U.S. government surveillance are backing away from a House bill that they say has been “watered-down” as it heads to the floor.

Though the original bill intended to end sweeping surveillance programs, the bill that the House will vote on as early as this week allows for “mass surveillance on a slightly smaller scale,” according to Harley Geiger, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology.

The bill — the USA Freedom Act, authored by Patriot Act Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) — was originally written to prohibit the U.S. government’s sweeping surveillance program.
But after moving through the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, where it saw some changes but retained the support of privacy advocates, last minute negotiations between House leadership and the Obama administration have left the bill with weakened language when it comes to banning mass surveillance, advocates say.

On Tuesday, Sensenbrenner filed a manager’s amendment at the House Rules Committee to be considered on the floor in place of the bill that passed the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees.

Sensenbrenner’s amendment still prohibits bulk collection but would allow government officials to search for records using “a discrete term, such as a term specifically identifying a person, entity, account, address, or device, used by the Government to limit the scope of the information or tangible things sought.”

While the standard in Sensenbrenner’s amendment is more specific than the one under current law, it leaves too much room for interpretation, as opposed to earlier versions of the bill, Geiger said.

It may keep the intelligence community from sweeping surveillance on a national level, but “it is ambiguous enough to allow for large scale collection,” he said.

“Ambiguity is what got us into this mess in the first place,” he said, referring to a controversial National Security Agency program that collected information about Americans’ phone calls.

This is why “oversight” will never be the only answer or even the main answer. As we saw after the Church Commission, we will probably see some slight improvement, for a time. But as long as the US is the dominant global super power this is a battle that will have to be fought over and over again just to keep it from going totally over to the dark side. If we’re lucky.

Also too, the $$$$. See: Enmptywheel

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Can the insurance industry help boost action on climate change?

by David Atkins

I did a couple of guest posts at the Washington Monthly this weekend. My second piece was on a very important but deep under-the-radar development on the climate change fight:

Close followers of the climate change battle have been watching carefully for one major event that might serve as a bigger catalyst than any other to mobilize legislative action. But that event has nothing to do with weather or natural disasters. It’s about money. Specifically, the big money behind the insurance industry.

Close followers of the climate change battle have been watching carefully for one major event that might serve as a bigger catalyst than any other to mobilize legislative action. But that event has nothing to do with weather or natural disasters. It’s about money. Specifically, the big money behind the insurance industry.

You see, in the same way that net neutrality advocates benefit from having the support of companies like Google and Netflix, climate change advocates have been waiting for their own unlikely corporate allies in the insurance industry.

The reason is obvious in retrospect: rising sea levels and more frequent natural disasters will either make many areas uninsurable, or insurance companies will go bankrupt trying to insure them (and the same goes for insurance backed by the federal government.) Insurance companies have an existential need to get ahead of the curve on the climate question. It has just been a matter of when the battle would be joined.

That time is finally here, and that’s a very big deal.

Here’s what happened:

A major insurance company is accusing dozens of localities in Illinois of failing to prepare for severe rains and flooding in lawsuits that are the first in what could be a wave of litigation over who should be liable for the possible costs of climate change.

Farmers Insurance filed nine class actions last month against nearly 200 communities in the Chicago area. It is arguing that local governments should have known rising global temperatures would lead to heavier rains and did not do enough to fortify their sewers and stormwater drains.

The legal debate may center on whether an uptick in natural disasters is foreseeable or an “act of God.” The cases raise the question of how city governments should manage their budgets before costly emergencies occur.

“We will see more and more cases,” said Michael Gerrard, director of the Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School in New York. “No one is expected to plan for the 500-year storm, but if horrible events are happening with increasing frequency, that may shift the duties.”

Gerrard and other environmental law experts say the suits are the first of their kind.

Lawyers for the localities will argue government immunity protects them from prosecution, said Daniel Jasica of the State’s Attorney’s Office in Lake County, which is named in the Illinois state court suit.

“If these types of suits are successful – where is the money going to come from to pay the lawsuits? The taxpayers,” he said. The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, also named in the suits, declined to comment.

Several class actions accusing the Army Corps of Engineers of failing to secure levees breached during Hurricane Katrina in 2005 were mostly dismissed last year on immunity grounds.

“It’s a long shot for the insurance companies, but it’s not completely implausible, and if you have enough cases like this going forward it might build some helpful precedent,” said Robert Verchick, who served on the Obama administration’s Climate Change Adaptation Task Force.

As I continued on with my post, it’s unlikely that this legal strategy will work for the insurance companies. But it’s the first play in a longer game. This is an existential threat for the insurance companies. They can’t afford to pay on the increasingly large disasters that climate change is going to throw their way. They either need to help push for emissions reductions, or find a way out of their coverage obligations. They can, of course, try hard to do the latter, but communities aren’t likely to go entirely uninsured, either. Something has to give.

Stay tuned…

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Growing the civil liberties faction

by digby

Katrina VandenHeuval points out an inconvenient truth:

[Rand]Paul’s strong libertarian principles have always differentiated him from many of his Republican colleagues. It is, therefore, not all that shocking for him to speak out against a president he dislikes on a policy he disdains. Yet his outspokenness has many liberals and leftists asking a legitimate question: Why aren’t there more Democratic voices opposing the surveillance state? Protecting civil liberties should be a critical piece of the progressive platform, but too many establishment Democrats and progressives have been silent on this issue simply because one of their own is in the White House.

Some Democrats in Congress have taken bold stands. Longtime civil-liberties champion (and former House Judiciary Committee chair) John Conyers has worked to limit the National Security Agency’s collection of bulk telephone data. Reps. Keith Ellison of Minnesota and Adam B. Schiff of California have probed the administration’s drone and surveillance programs. Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California is pushing to prevent the NSA from weakening online encryption. In the Senate, Judiciary Committee chair Patrick Leahy of Vermont has held oversight hearings questioning excessive surveillance. Even Dianne Feinstein of California, chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and normally a committed defender of the intelligence community, finally spoke out after discovering that the CIA spied on Senate staffers. And last week, Sens. Mark Udall of New Mexico and Ron Wyden of Oregon sent a letter to Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr., strongly criticizing a “culture of misinformation” that has resulted in “misleading statements . . . about domestic surveillance.” And Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, has proposed a bill limiting FBI and NSA spying.

But, as Vandenheuvel also points out there are some people running for office who, if they were to win, could add to those ranks, notably Shenna Bellows in Maine. She is a Blue America endorsee, an economic populist in the Elizabeth Warren mode and a committed civil libertarian. She’s not afraid to run against the Big Banks and the Surveillance State. And she’s not afraid to defend health care reform or to fight for the minimum wage.

If you’d like to help her change the dynamic and grow that faction of civil libertarians in the congress, you can do so here.

Alaskans are being told not to believe their lying eyes

by digby

Over at Salon this morning I talk about the colorful politics of the 49th state, my old home — Alaska. A state which is seeing its climate change dramatically on a daily basis. And yet — it’s a red state, drenched in oil, that requires its politicians to deny what their lying eyes are telling them:

If Alaskan politics is a study in contradictions, there is no greater example than the argument over climate change in the Senate race between incumbent Democrat Mark Begich and his rivals in August’s Republican primary: Mead Treadwell, Dan Sullivan and the far-right gadfly in the Vogler tradition, Joe Miller of Fairbanks. .

Begich is the “hysterical hippie” of the bunch simply by admitting that climate change exists. Even he, however, is not one to jump on the “we need to do something urgently” bandwagon. He agrees that it should be studied but prefers the issue be discussed in terms of costs and benefits because … well, because. The knock-down, drag-out fight is among the Republicans. Apparently, no matter how shrilly you decry climate change as a communist plot to destroy everything good and wholesome about America, it is not enough.

Read on to see the pretzel logic they must employ to be taken “seriously” among the right wingers. Basically, they cannot tell the truth even when the truth is evident all around them.

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No hope and change for mortgage relief


by digby

If you’ve been reading Dave Dayen’s work over the past few years (and I know you have) then you already know the details of what went wrong with housing policy in half a dozen different ways. It’s not a pretty picture. Today legislative expert Sarah Binder summarizes one of the more depressing aspects of the failure: the administration’s strange unwillingness to push for “cramdown” — the mortgage relief program which had been widely assumed, even by the banks, to be a done deal:

As journalists’ accounts suggest, however, the administration never leaned in. Accounts in Pro Publica and the New York Times, for example, raise doubts about the administration’s commitment to the cramdown proposal. As former assistant Treasury secretary Michael Barr has noted, “There wasn’t enough political capital, time or energy.” Democratic lawmakers had a similar impression. As Blue Dog former member Rep. Jim Marshall (D-Ga.) who sponsored the December cramdown effort observed, “We would propose that this stuff be included and they kept punting.” The Obama White House reportedly discouraged lawmakers from including cramdown in the sure-to-pass stimulus bill in February 2009, and candidate Obama had previously persuaded Democrats to keep it out of the must-pass TARP bill during the 2008 campaign. Moreover, former chairman of the Senate banking panel, Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), noted the intense lobbying of community bankers, a group deeply rooted in most congressional districts. With their opposition, Dodd said, “you don’t win much.” Finally, in The Washington Post’s account, Geithner dismissed the utility of debt relief for homeowners, suggesting that it would do more economic harm than good.

In Stress Test, Geithner makes a far broader claim about the economic necessity of saving Wall Street– rather than fundamentally reforming it. He dismisses more politically palatable solutions as the “central paradox” of financial crises: “What feels just and fair is often the opposite of what’s required for a just and fair outcome.” For now, put aside whether lessening household debt with unspent TARP funds would have precluded a just and fair outcome if coupled with the Wall Street bailout. I think it’s fair to say that the cramdown episode highlighted the administration’s discomfort with more aggressive financial reform (reflecting the views of the Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party). 

The White House seemed to prefer working within existing political constraints rather than challenging them. Channeling public anger in the wake of the financial crisis seems not to have been a White House priority. With a still sluggish housing recovery today, one wonders about the longer-term economic consequences of that political choice.

The White House seemed to prefer working within existing political constraints rather than challenging them.

Think about that. And then remember this:

We are looking for more than just a change of party in the White House. We’re looking to fundamentally change the status quo in Washington.

It’s a status quo that extends beyond any particular party and right now that status quo is fighting back with everything it’s got, with the same old tactics that divide and distract us from solving the problems people face, whether those problems are health care that folks can’t afford or a mortgage they cannot pay.

So this will not be easy. Make no mistake about what we’re up against. We’re up against the belief that it’s all right for lobbyists to dominate our government, that they are just part of the system in Washington.

But we know that the undue influence of lobbyists is part of the problem and this election is our chance to say that we are not going to let them stand in our way anymore.

We’re up against the conventional thinking that says your ability to lead as president comes from longevity in Washington or proximity to the White House. But we know that real leadership is about candor and judgment and the ability to rally Americans from all walks of life around a common purpose, a higher purpose.

That was from January, 2008. And, in fairness, he also said that he wanted to work with Republicans and was going to usher in a new era of bipartisanship, so it’s not as if he lied about what approach he was going to use to achieve these goals.

It didn’t work out.

But I don’t think most people thought that guys like Tim Geithner, who believed that “saving” Wall Street meant that many millions of average people would have to suffer needlessly while the perpetrators of the crisis continued to prosper (hugely) would be who this president would rely upon to guide him.

Update: Also too: Geithner presenting saving rather than reforming Wall Street as “the central paradox” —which evokes the Keynesian paradox that recommends spending in a recession — is offensive. One might ask him what exactly he means by a “just and fair outcome.”

NPR puts America to shame with report on court fees and poor defendants

by David Atkins

NPR programming gets a lot of flack from progressive activists for mealy-mouthed centrism on many issues. But this report yesterday on the barbarity of court “fees” for poor defendants was really top-notch work. Infuriating and heartbreaking. Here’s a taste:

A yearlong NPR investigation found that the costs of the criminal justice system in the United States are paid increasingly by the defendants and offenders. It’s a practice that causes the poor to face harsher treatment than others who commit identical crimes and can afford to pay. Some judges and politicians fear the trend has gone too far.

A state-by-state survey conducted by NPR found that defendants are charged for many government services that were once free, including those that are constitutionally required. For example:

In at least 43 states and the District of Columbia, defendants can be billed for a public defender.
In at least 41 states, inmates can be charged room and board for jail and prison stays.
In at least 44 states, offenders can get billed for their own probation and parole supervision.
And in all states except Hawaii, and the District of Columbia, there’s a fee for the electronic monitoring devices defendants and offenders are ordered to wear.
These fees — which can add up to hundreds or even thousands of dollars — get charged at every step of the system, from the courtroom, to jail, to probation. Defendants and offenders pay for their own arrest warrants, their court-ordered drug and alcohol-abuse treatment and to have their DNA samples collected. They are billed when courts need to modernize their computers. In Washington state, for example, they even get charged a fee for a jury trial — with a 12-person jury costing $250, twice the fee for a six-person jury.

…

Courts usually offer alternatives to paying fees, like doing community service. But sometimes there’s a cost with that, too. Jayne Fuentes, in Benton County, Wash., went on the county work crew to pay off her fines — only there was a $5-a-day charge, which she had to borrow from her daughter.

…

The people most likely to face arrest and go through the courts are poor, says sociologist Alexes Harris, at the University of Washington. She’s writing a book on these fees and the people who struggle to pay them.

“They tend to be people of color, African-Americans and Latinos,” Harris says. “They tend to be high school dropouts, they tend to be people with mental illness, with substance abuse. So these are already very poor and marginalized people in our society, and then we impose these fiscal penalties to them and expect that they make regular payments, when in fact the vast majority are unable to do so.”

…

Many fees can be waived for indigent defendants, but judges are more likely to put the poor on a more manageable payment plan.

Courts, however, will then sometimes tack on extra fees, penalties for missed payments and may even charge interest.

In Washington state, for example, there’s 12 percent interest on costs in felony cases that accrues from the moment of judgment until all fines, fees, restitution and interest are paid off in full. As a result, it can be hard for someone who’s poor to make that debt ever go away. One state commission found that the average amount in felony cases adds up to $2,500. If someone paid a typical amount — $10 a month — and never missed a payment, his debt would keep growing. After four years of faithful payments, the person would now owe $3,000.

Virginia Dickerson, of Richland, Wash., has been drug-free for more than three years and out of jail for over a year. She’s living in a treatment house and working as a waitress and cook. On the day last fall when NPR reporters met her, Dickerson was at the courthouse trying to get a summary of how much she owed in fines, fees and interest. The total: almost $10,000.

“I don’t want to have to worry about going to jail. And that is my biggest fear,” she says. “Relapses aren’t even a thought to me. This is the only thing that is hindering me.”

Go read the whole thing.

Something wicked happened to this country around the late 1970s. Nearly every negative trend from rising inequality to wage stagnation to the “war on crime” to the “war on drugs” to modern union busting to deregulation fever started then.

We’re still paying the price as a country for the sins of a bunch of cranky, prejudiced jerks with a perverse since of cosmic justice, who still can’t seem to get over the 1960s and are desperately trying to pull the ladder up behind themselves after growing up in the cushy economy the New Deal built. Collectively, the people who voted for and encouraged all these trends are some of the worst people in the world. History will not be kind to them.

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Oh Lord

by digby

This always puts things in perspective for me:

Americans would more likely support a philandering presidential candidate than an atheist one — by an 18 percent margin — according to a Pew Research Center poll published Monday.

While 35 percent of respondents said they would be less likely to support a presidential candidate who had an extramarital affair, 53 percent of Americans indicated that not believing in God — the trait viewed most negatively of the 16 tested — would make them unsupportive of a candidate.

In accordance with a widely cited study by the University of Minnesota, which found atheists to be the most disliked and distrusted minority group in the nation, only 5 percent of respondents said they would be more likely to vote for a secular candidate.

The Pew survey, which questioned 1,501 adults nationwide from April 23 to 27, also found a significant partisan divide on the issue.

While 70 percent of Republicans and 42 percent of Democrats expressed opposition to an atheist candidate, 49 percent of Democrats viewed a potential candidate’s atheism as irrelevant.

It’s a good thing America’s greatest writer  Mark Twain never ran for office.

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Marco, dude

by digby

You’re tripping if you think people don’t know this means you smoked pot:

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said asking whether a politician has ever tried marijuana is a “worthless question” in American politics.

Rubio, a potential 2016 candidate for president, has consistently dodged the question about if he experimented with the drug as a younger man. In an interview that aired Monday from ABC News-Yahoo News, Rubio reiterated that answering the question honestly is a lose-lose.

“Here is the problem with that question in American politics,” he said. “If you say that you did, suddenly there are people out there saying it is not a big deal, look at all these successful people who did it. And I don’t want my kids to smoke marijuana. And I don’t want other people’s kids to smoke marijuana. I don’t think there is a responsible way to recreationally use marijuana. On the other side of it, if you tell people that you didn’t, they won’t believe you. So it is just a worthless question.”

He added: “I understand it is a question today that people think they need to ask, but the bottom line is, I don’t think people should smoke marijuana.”

It sounds to me like he toked up right before he answered that question…

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Murdoch publication calls protesters against conservative Aussie government “ferals”

by David Atkins

As the damage to civil society from conservative policies becomes increasingly clear, the Right is going to become more and more aggressive in its rhetoric toward those who challenge the status quo. The conservative Abbott government in Australia is doing horrible things on both the economy and the environment. People are protesting. The Murdoch press responds with this:

I’ve never been a big believer in street theater, and I’m extremely uncomfortable with pushing the reset button that is revolution unless literally every single other option has been utterly exhausted. None of the advances we have made in America over the last two hundred years necessitated that approach; indeed, eliminating slavery was the consequence not of revolution, but of the quelling of an insurrection.

That said, if the plutocrats want to up the ante by using words like “feral” to describe people upset with plutocratic rule, they may eventually reap the undesirable consequences. It’s not how I would play it, but then I don’t have the evil hubris that comes with a sociopathic personality and billions of dollars in net worth stolen from the people who actually do the work.

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