Month: May 2014

Can you see what’s wrong with this picture?

by digby

This is clipped from the Memeorandum site:

Yes, it is a bit disconcerting to see a picture of staunch segregationist Strom Thurmond next to a story about about Congressman John Conyers. In fact it’s downright startling.

However, as weird it looks there at the aggregation site, on the original story it comes up in a slide show about write-in candidates, which is probably how John Conyers will end up running in the election if this ruling holds up. So it’s actually quite a clever juxtaposition — the right wingers are going to scream about voter fraud and what have you, so it’s nice that someone thought to bring up a little history:

In September 1954, incumbent U.S. Senator Burnet R. Maybank died while running unopposed for re-election. A replacement candidate from a rival faction of the Democratic Party was selected by party leaders so Thurmond, the former governor and 1948 States Rights Party presidential candidate, ran as a write-in and served in the Senate until 2003.

If write in candidacies are good enough for long time white supremacist office holders, they’re good enough for long time African American office holders as well.

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“Conservative” Heritage Foundation promotes shortsighted waste

by David Atkins

Remember when being “conservative” meant being boring and responsible, seeing the realities of the world and not taking off on flights of fancy in the pursuit of irrational feel-good excess?

Yeah. Well, every so often we get reminded of how low “conservatives” have fallen with stuff like this:

The conservative group Heritage Action is urging lawmakers to vote “no” on the energy efficiency bill set to hit the Senate floor next week.

Heritage charges that the bill, which promotes energy saving in industrial and commercial buildings, provides incentives that would “burden taxpayers and consumers.”

“This inappropriate intervention comes in the form of ‘voluntary’ federal mandates and taxpayer funded subsidies for energy efficiency updates in state government and tribal buildings,” Heritage states.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said during the spring recess that he wanted to bring the energy efficiency bill to the floor shortly after Congress returned.

A majority of lawmakers back the bill, which is a revamped version of last year’s version. Additional amendments from Republicans were sought to ensure the bill wasn’t killed this time around.

Energy saving is something pretty much everyone can agree on. Saving energy reduces cost, decreases reliance on oil, and doesn’t require major interventions or spending programs. It’s something Republicans and Democrats should both be able to get behind.

And indeed, most lawmakers are behind it. But not Heritage Action, banner carrier for Washington’s conservative vanguard. For most conservatives, the movement has been redefined as letting the biggest corporations and money men do whatever they want, whenever they want, however they want. It’s the very definition of amoral insanity, and has nothing to do with conservatism as it should be.

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Yay!

by digby

I needed that.  Oh how I needed that.

At long last sir …

by digby

They’re going there:

Three Republican U.S. senators wrote to President Obama Friday demanding to know where Obama was on the night of the Benghazi U.S. Consulate attack on Sept. 11, 2012.

Sens. John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire said it’s time for the White House to disclose the president’s location on the night four Americans, including Libyan Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, were killed during an assault on the consulate.

He was directing the attack from the situation room with Hillary, of course. Where else would he have been?

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Some genuinely good jobs news for a change

by David Atkins

There are all sorts of reasons to be bearish on the overall state of the economy. There is almost certainly a bubble in stocks and real estate, wages are still terrible, inequality is increasing and many would claim with some justification that the official unemployment rate is nowhere near accurate. No amount of positive developments on the temporary employment front can change the fact that the economy needs to be reoriented and its rules changed.

That said, good news is still good news that really matters to people’s lives. And this is definitely good news:

Employers added 288,000 jobs in April, the most since January 2012, while the unemployment rate fell to a five-year low, according to data released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The jobless rate fell to 6.3 percent from 6.7 percent in March, the lowest level since the height of the financial crisis in September 2008.

The numbers were well above expectations and came as welcome news to Democrats, who are hoping that improvements in the economy can help them in the midterm elections.
President Obama credited the jobs increase to the “grit and determination of the American people.”

“We have to keep a relentless focus on job creation and creating more opportunities for working families,” Obama said during a press conference with German chancellor Angela Merkel in the Rose Garden. “There’s plenty more that Congress should be doing, from raising the minimum wage to creating good construction jobs rebuilding America.”

…

The unemployment report could be a sign that the economy weathered the brutal winter that slowed economic growth to an anemic 0.1 percent in the first three months of the year.

In another big positive for the labor market heading into summer, employers added 36,000 more jobs than initially estimated in February and March.

February’s revised figure jumped to 222,000 from 197,000, while the total for March increased to 203,000 from 192,000.

Employers have hired 713,000 workers in the past three months, bumping up the monthly average to 238,000 after it had slipped over the winter to less than 200,000.

The biggest piece of bad news, meanwhile, is directly related to the elimination of the long-term unemployment benefits:

Still, the jobs report showed a troubling drop in labor force participation, a statistic that captures the number of people in the job market. That number fell to 806,000 in April, following an increase of 503,000 workers in March.

“While it’s welcome news that more of our friends and neighbors found work in the past month, this report also indicates more than 800,000 Americans left the workforce last month, which is troubling,” Boehner said.

The overall job market participation rate fell 0.4 percentage points to 62.8 percent, the lowest since the late 1970s.

Mark Zandi, chief economist with Moody’s Analytics, said the expiration of the emergency unemployment benefits program is probably weighing on labor force participation.

“Older workers who have lost unemployment insurance are now retiring and stepping out of the workforce,” he said in an email to The Hill.

“This was widely anticipated to happen and now it is showing up in the data.”

The need for structural changes to the economy is going to become ever more starkly clear in the future, and the asset-based boom and bust cycles are going to be increasingly frequent. But any time more people can prosper even in the short term is a good thing.

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Setting traps to kill teenagers is the hottest right wing trend around

by digby

I blogged about Sean Hannity’s staunch support for murderous fiend Byron Smith earlier today. He’s going to love this guy:

Seventeen-year-old Diren Dede lost his life Sunday, while in Missoula, Montana on a high school exchange program from Germany. He was shot dead at the home of Markus Kaarma, after Kaarma set a trap for intruders by intentionally leaving the garage open and placing a purse in clear view.

After motion sensors detected someone in the garage, Kaarma shot Dede. And while he has since been charged with first degree murder, he is already invoking a Stand Your Ground-like defense…

An NRA-backed law passed in 2009 not only added a Stand Your Ground provision; it also expanded the Castle Doctrine that allows self-defense inside the home. While it once only authorized deadly force against an intruder who was acting in a “violent, riotous, or tumultuous manner,” the new law allows deadly force by an individual who “reasonably believes” the force is necessary to prevent assault or a forcible felony. The 2009 law also shifted the burden of proof and presumes that the shooter is innocent, according to Gary Marbut, a Montana gun lobbyist who has written model state laws.

Looking for some really fun 21st century style “hunting”? Set up a deer blind, only for people, and wait for a dumb teenager to wander into it. Then kill him, claiming you’re “standing your ground.”

Premeditated murder is now legal in a whole bunch of states.

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Taking what’s mine and giving it to “those people”

by digby

Kevin Drum:

[U]sing questions from the General Social Survey, Nate Silver tries to quantify the effect of Barack Obama’s election on the racial attitudes of white Republicans and Democrats. On several of the most overtly racist questions (“blacks are lazy,” “blacks are unintelligent”) there’s little evidence of change. But on two of the questions with more political salience, there’s evidence of a pretty substantial effect.

This one in particular:

Both Silver and Drum discuss this in terms of Barack Obama’s election and it’s obviously relevant. The sharp change isn’t a coincidence.

But I think it’s important to look at the question itself and recognize that this is the essence of American conservative ideology — it’s as clear as it’s ever been. There aren’t very many Cliven Bundy’s out there who openly admit to racist beliefs (and even his toxic comments were couched in ridiculous terms about how they’d been “enslaved” by Big Government.) Hardly anyone will cop to believing that “blacks are lazy” or “unintelligent” even if they clearly think so.

But they just can’t hide their fundamental belief that the government takes from them and gives to African Americans. It’s the main reason they hate the government. I’ll just link to this stale old post from a long time ago discussing studies which show that America’s history of slavery is what hindered the development of a welfare state like the rest of the developed world. Unlike other immigrant groups which had social and religious institutions to help their own impoverished, African Americans had to rely on the government to fill that gap. They had no money available for philanthropic purposes. There were government welfare programs that were noticeably used by African Americans in the north before the Civil War and more throughout the country afterwards. And the civil war itself could be seen in this light — a great undertaking by the US Government to take the “property” of white men on behalf of blacks. What this did was merge the racist loathing for African Americans with the federal government.

Chris Hayes hosted an interesting segment last night with David Frum and Sam Seder in which Frum made the point that conservatives (who are almost all white) are hostile to Obamacare because they are older and see the money for it coming out of the programs that favor them. Again, taking from the deserving white people and giving it to the undeserving people of color.

This is fundamental to American conservatism going way back and I wonder if the shift in that graph above isn’t just because an African American was elected president since it also coincides with the worst economic downturn since the 30s. When white people start to suffer and see the government take action, many of them assume that the help is going to the undeserving African Americans at their expense. The fact that an African American president was at the helm was surely a factor in raising their indignation and anger, but in truth it only reinforced a distorted view that was already there — when the going gets tough the government mainly helps “the blacks.”

There was an exception, of course. During the depression, the Democratic government was exceedingly active and was also supported by white people, especially the working class. Of course, the economic situation was even more desperate so there was good reason for whites to set aside their prejudices. But they didn’t have to do too much to get beyond it: the government assiduously avoided helping African Americans in any specific way or confronting Jim Crow.

Of course the election of Barack Obama exacerbated existing racism. But I think the great economic crisis exacerbated it as well.

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Insider snark tells its own story

by digby

I guess this nasty little piece of snark is supposed to say something really insulting about Edward Snowden but for the life of my I can’t figure out what:

Edward Snowden, the poster child for truth telling, answered questions live, but the audience was instructed not to record them.

Irony, much?

That was the scene at an awards ceremony held at the National Press Club this week where a watchdog group that decries government secrecy wouldn’t let attendees keep digital record of Snowden’s virtual appearance.

An attendee at the event tells the Loop the room was packed to see Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor and everyone’s favorite whistleblower, accept the Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling from an undisclosed location in Russia. His remarks, the source says, were “poignant and moving.”

But during a question and answer session, Danielle Brian, the executive director of the Project on Government Oversight and emcee of the event, took the microphone and told the crowd, “I‘m sorry to interrupt just for a second but I want to make it clear that no one can be recording. There had been an understanding with the media but others in the room have iPhones…”
[…]
To layer on the irony, the freedom-loving Russian government did not seem to have any problem with Snowden being recorded when he asked Russian President Vladimir Putin a question on Russian TV.

The thing is, I don’t think Snowden made the rules on either one of those video hook-ups. I guess it’s fair to wonder why the Project on Government Oversight didn’t want any recordings of his comments, but to backhandedly slam Snowden as a hypocritical “poster child for truth-telling” because of it is weird. And telling. The fact that journalists are so hostile to a whistleblower will never stop surprising me.

Mother Jones and others did record the session, reported his comments in full and published the recording. They reported the “irony” this way:

At one point during Snowden’s appearance, an organizer of the event asked the audience not to record him—but this was near the end of his remarks, and numerous people in the audience were holding up smart phones and recording devices.

I have no idea why they said this, but it doesn’t seem to have been some gestapo-like edict where they were confiscating iPhones or anything. So, whatever.

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Vigilantism is the new Law and Order

by digby

Sean Hannity is giving Ted Nugent a run for his money:

Poor Sean Hannity. He’s every wingnut grandma’s favorite little boy but he just can’t catch a break. First he suffers the indignity of being beaten in the ratings by MSNBC feminazi Rachel Maddow and then Big Daddy Roger Ailes demotes him for conservative bombshell Megyn Kelly. And then he was threatened with the loss of every right-wing celebrity’s most valued possession (after his AR-15 of course), his radio show. It’s enough to make any red-blooded right-wing fellow feel a little bit insecure.

But Hannity has been going beyond the normal macho Fox News posturing to try to win his way back into the hearts and minds of conservatives. He’s become downright bloodthirsty on a level you rarely see outside the right-wing fever swamps (where they are still gleefully enjoying the details of this week’s “botched” executions in Oklahoma — with a bottle of nice Chianti).

That’s from today’s piece at Salon. Hannity’s latest conservative super-hero, is a a murderous fiend. It’s sick.

Pointless and immoral drug war causing police to get away with literal highway robbery

by David Atkins

This is sheer madness:

If someone with a gun stops you and takes your money — would you call police? What if the person who takes your money also has a badge?

Some people in Humboldt County, tongue-in-cheek, call it “highway robbery.”

One deputy in particular is being singled out for his practice of pressuring travelers to abandon their money or face losing their cars as well. The I-Team has obtained exclusive dash-cam video from one of these drug interdiction stops. While no drugs were found, that didn’t stop the deputy from grabbing the cash.

“How much money you got?” Humboldt County Deputy Lee Dove can be heard asking on the video.

Dove can be seen dropping cash on the hood of the car.

Deputy Dove: “That’s not yours, is it?”
Motorist: “That’s mine.”
Deputy Dove: “Well, I’m seizing it.”

The dash-cam video gives insight into what some say is a pattern of questionable drug interdiction stops by Deputy Dove along I-80 near Winnemucca in northern Nevada.

The out-of-state motorist was stopped for doing 78 mph in an 75 mph zone. Deputy Dove finds $50,000 cash and $10,000 in cashiers checks during a search of the car.

The first issue is whether Dove obtained permission to search the car or whether he simply told the driver, Tan Nguyen, he was going to do it.

Deputy Dove: “Well, I’m gonna search that vehicle first, ok?”
Nguyen: “Hey, what’s the reason you’re searching my car?”
Deputy Dove: “Because I’m talking to you … well, no, I don’t have to explain that to you. I’m not going to explain that to you, but I am gonna put my drug dog on that (pointing to money). If my dog alerts, I’m seizing the money. You can try to get it back but you’re not.”
Nguyen: (inaudible) got it in Vegas.”
Deputy Dove: “Good luck proving it. Good luck proving it. You’ll burn it up in attorney fees before we give it back to you.”

But Dove never seizes the money under state forfeiture law, instead he offers Nguyen a deal. Abandon the cash and you can leave with the cashiers checks. Otherwise, Dove will confiscate the cash anyway and tow the car because Nguyen’s name isn’t on the rental agreement.

Deputy Dove: “It’s your call. If you want to walk away, you can take the cashiers checks, the car and everything and you can bolt and you’re on your way. But you’re gonna be walking away from this money and abandoning it.

“Our sheriff and our DA have said there’s no wrongdoing here,” said Dee Holzel.

Holzel is a Winnemucca blogger who wants an investigation of the I-80 cash seizures that’s independent of the local district attorney and sheriff.

“What they said initially was, ‘well, these are civil forfeiture programs. These kinds of things happen everywhere. There’s nothing unusual about Humboldt County.’ But that turned out to not be true. When you have people by the side of the road and you’re having them abandon their money so they’ll be allowed to get in their car and drive away, they don’t do that everywhere,” Holzel said.

Deputy Dove: “I don’t have all day to sit here debating it. You need to give me a decision what you want to do.”

Critics believe deputies have been avoiding court oversight by leaning on drivers to abandon their cash rather than seizing it and giving warnings rather than tickets.

This isn’t happening in some developing country. This is the United States of America.

None of this would be happening without the pointless war on drugs. If we decriminalized drugs in this country and provided for treatment and rehab instead, we would generate tax revenue, reduce the number of addicts, dramatically reduce crime, and allow police to work on real problems like murder, theft, missing persons, rape, and all the other major crimes that seem to be curiously understaffed by comparison. Even (gasp) white collar crime.

Historians are going to look back at us and hang their heads in shock at our barbarity. They’re going to curse us for our failure to act on climate change, mock us for our neanderthal treatment of the drug problem, shake their heads in disbelief at our approaches to economic inequality and labor rights, and deride us for our dismal shortsightedness in the pursuit of just world fallacies and the enforcement of a perverted sense of cosmic justice.

I only hope that the record will show that some of us were ahead of our time and fought for sanity and decency. We weren’t all barbarians.

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