Month: October 2014

Wary of change?

by digby

This is from a story on the pot measures around the country looking like they’re coming up short in this election:

“We’re dealing with a tough mood in the country right now with Ebola and ISIS and the big drop in the stock market,” Nadelmann said. “It puts a drag on things. People are not in a forward-thinking state of mind. They are more wary of change.”

It made me wonder if 2008 might have been different if the financial crisis had hit earlier in the cycle. Would people have been less “forward thinking” and more wary of change? I guess it’s possible. But I think this mood right now is different because people don’t see a way out. In 2008 there was a lot of fear growing sharply at the end but Obama was well positioned to be seen as the savior who would fix it. Now it feels like nobody can.

I just hope the country doesn’t decide that Ted Cruz and his ilk might be the way to go after 8 years of ongoing duress. Because they really are nuts, even the allegedly normal ones.

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From the “if you build it they will use it” files: Inside the Border Patrol

by digby

Politico Magazine is featuring a fascinating photo essay about the Border Patrol:

In 2007, artist David Taylor began documenting the quickly changing face of the U.S.-Mexico border at the height of the U.S. Border Patrol’s post-9/11 surge. He built relationships with smugglers, migrants and, in particular, the Border Patrol agents with whom he embedded off and on for four years, observing their workaday routines and shadowing them while they responded to calls. Over time, Taylor gained access to some of the most hidden corners of the agency’s various facilities along the border—in one instance, an agent told him he was the only person who had ever photographed a room stocked to the brim with M4 rifles. Throughout the project, Taylor saw a network of no-frills double-wide trailers staffed with career agents balloon into a state-of-the-art $3.5 billion behemoth, beset with allegations of rampant abuse and misconduct. The Border Patrol today, he says, “is not the Border Patrol I started with.”

You know what they say about money corrupting and all that jazz …

Here’s a bit of the story that accompanies it:

By 7 p.m., the Border Patrol, having questioned the first two victims, had realized there was a third victim, notifying the FBI that a kidnapping had occurred and that the girl was probably being held by a Border Patrol agent. The magnitude and horror of the crime were unusual, but the potential perpetrator wasn’t. The FBI in McAllen had gotten used to investigating assaults and misconduct among Border Patrol agents; it had become the field office’s top criminal priority. 

It took only hours to narrow down a suspect: When investigators examined the truck Manzanares used on his shift, they found blood and duct tape.

By 12:39 a.m., FBI agents knocked on his red door, Apartment 1513, and shouted, “FBI—federal agents.” At first, there was no response. Then, the agents heard a single gunshot as Manzanares took his own life. When a SWAT team broke down the door, they found the teen inside, still naked and bound, but alive.

Now it was definitely time to tell the new commissioner.

Kerlikowske had already known that the Border Patrol was troubled, of course: It had taken 1,870 days into the Obama administration before he even became the first Senate-confirmed commissioner of the Obama era, and he was well aware he didn’t have much time to right an agency that was beset by corruption problems and excessive force complaints, the unfortunate legacies of a massive hiring surge that had doubled the force’s size in just a few years after 9/11. That lying and obfuscation had often accompanied the scandals was no real surprise either.

Read the whole thing to see an agency awash in money and getting more corrupt and criminal by the day. And then ponder this story from last year:

Five Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee who frequently rail against government spending voted to increase federal appropriations on border security by an undetermined billions of dollars during the Senate Judiciary Committee’s mark-up of the bipartisan senate immigration bill on Thursday, agreeing to deploy twice as many border agents to the South Western border than “will be on the ground in Afghanistan at the start of 2014.” The measure failed in a vote of 5 to 13.

The debate came during consideration of an amendment offered by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to triple the number of border patrol agents on the border and quadruple the technological infrastructure. The measure, which would have delayed the path to legalization for the nations 11.1 million by almost 10 years, could have required as much as $60 billion in additional government spending.

Ted Cruz is the very essence of the Republican Party. The federal government has a blank check for police and military — and nothing else. It must focus its power on foreigners and people of color, of course. Nice white people who toe the line must be “free.” When you strip away all the Randian bullshit and paeans to freedom and liberty this is what they want.

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Men with guns

by digby

I don’t know what’s wrong with this police officer but something is. This is completely unprofessional.

The footage began with an apparent conversation between the two men and then showed MacLeod’s reaction when Valdes told him “God bless you.” MacLeod, who seemed to be letting Valdes go with a ticket, came back up to the motorcyclist and got in his face as he shouted.

“You want to be a sarcastic bitch? I’ll be fucking a bigger bitch,” MacLeod said. “You’re fucking with the wrong dude, bro. I’ve been here longer than you’ve fucking been alive. I’ve put up with more shit that you can ever think of. So if you want to test me again, you’ll be finding Dade County Jail real fucking hunky dory tonight.”

In the video, Valdes told MacLeod he just wanted to go to work.

“Then don’t be a fucking little wise-ass 20-year-old punk,” MacLeod said.

A decent cop would have ignored the comment.  Or maybe said “thank you”. Or even rolled his eyes. But losing his cool over that? That’s a bad cop. He should not be on the street.

On the other hand, my husband was topped the other day for rolling through a stop sign. The cop was amazingly professional, very cool, all business even let us off with a warning saying that he knew my husband wasn’t “going to do it again … right?” (He was Santa Monica PD.) This was in stark contrast to an LAPD stop I had a couple of years ago when the officer was abusive towards me, yelling and screaming because my tail light wasn’t working. You just never know …

The job has tons of benefits and they deserve all of them. Cops are just people and they have a very stressful job. But when they get like this they need to be relieved of duty. It’s that simple. You can’t have people in authority with weapons who have a short fuse like that.

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Deprogramming the Prosperity Gospel

by Tom Sullivan

Just because you don’t hear the term “free-market fundamentalism” much these days doesn’t mean the faith has gone away. More on that in a minute.

Der Spiegel looks at The Zombie System: How Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails. The wizards of finance are not the choir boys that prove the moral superiority of capitalism, as analyst Mike Mayo believed when he entered the business. Instead, writes Michael Sauga, Mayo found “the glittering facades of the American financial industry concealed an abyss of lies and corruption.”

Ironically, some the most blessed(?) beneficiaries of the corruption, global financial and political leaders, now say they want to fix capitalism, make it more inclusive:

It isn’t necessary, of course, to attend the London conference on “inclusive capitalism” to realize that industrialized countries have a problem. When the Berlin Wall came down 25 years ago, the West’s liberal economic and social order seemed on the verge of an unstoppable march of triumph. Communism had failed, politicians worldwide were singing the praises of deregulated markets and US political scientist Francis Fukuyama was invoking the “end of history.”

Today, no one talks anymore about the beneficial effects of unimpeded capital movement. Today’s issue is “secular stagnation,” as former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers puts it. The American economy isn’t growing even half as quickly as did in the 1990s. Japan has become the sick man of Asia. And Europe is sinking into a recession that has begun to slow down the German export machine and threaten prosperity.

Sauga’s detailed account features several financial experts worried about the future course of a world economy seeing an explosion in private wealth from technical financing tweaks (instead of genuine growth), and a concomitant imbalance of wealth with the rest of society. There is, writes Sauga, “a dangerous malfunction in capitalism’s engine room.”

In this sense, the crisis of capitalism has turned into a crisis of democracy. Many feel that their countries are no longer being governed by parliaments and legislatures, but by bank lobbyists, which apply the logic of suicide bombers to secure their privileges: Either they are rescued or they drag the entire sector to its death.

But you don’t need a financial analyst to know that fixing this mess will require a movement akin to the one that broke up the trusts a century ago. Some hoped Barack Obama, arriving in Washington as the financial crash broke, might have the political capital and the stomach for leading such a movement to bring the banks to heel. We know how that worked out. Still, while a movement may need a leader, a leader also needs a movement.

Lack of accountability and “too big to fail” have meant that top firms are back earning what they did (or more) before the crash, while other “zombie banks” that received bailouts instead of funerals remain too weak to lend money, and now survive only by more speculation:

What distinguishes the current situation from the wild years before the financial crisis is that speculators were once driven by greed but have since turned into speculators motivated by need.

Much of the Der Spiegel account looks at the possibilities for returning the capitalist system to health. Yet, the power of organized wealth, especially as it has the ear of politicians and the ability to, as Sen. Elizabeth Warren repeats, rig the system to its own advantage, will not easily give up its power and deep faith in its own rightousness.

Scientology, Randism, New Age mysticism, or the Prosperity Gospel, cults have a way of morphing and adapting. Internal contradictions are ignored, explained away, or synthesized into fresh doctrines to support the faith. Keeping the free-market faith — patching it, preserving it, defending it — is easier than giving it up cold turkey. Even the losers in the comment threads hold to it as fervently as any fringe evangelical or most committed member of the Comintern.

Which means, perhaps, that any efforts to reform capitalism are premature. A key feature of the kind of self-reinforcing faith one sees among many cults, and maybe characteristic of our culture, is the way money becomes the measure of all things, especially God’s grace — making a priesthood of the rich. Before any balance can be restored, before “inclusion” can take place, breaking that spell may be a prerequisite. It suggests that any efforts at re-regulating gilded capitalism may first have to wait until after the deprogramming.

Could a person really be this dumb?

by digby

How is it even possible?

Officials have confirmed that an offensive Halloween display at a Fort Campbell residence has been removed.

A ClarksvilleNow.com reader sent a photo of the display, which shows what appears to be a black family hanging from a tree in a yard on Litwin St.

The child in the display has a knife in its back and one of the figures holds a sign that is not legible in the photo.

Fort Campbell Public Affairs said they are aware of the display and have since had it taken down from the yard.

Brendalyn Carpenter with Public Affairs said they received a report of a Halloween decoration that was “offensive in nature” and contacted authorities to investigate. The occupant was informed of the concerns made by the community and removed the display.

Carpenter said it was her understanding that the display was not intended to be offensive, but authorities deemed it could be interpreted as such. She said the occupant did extend an apology about the decorations.

I suspect it is possible this person didn’t know he or she was doing anything wrong. It’s too obviously outrageous. Which means he or she must really be this dumb.

It happened on a military base. You don’t suppose they ever issued this person a gun or anything do you? Or a driver’s license? He’s obviously a danger to everyone around him simply by virtue of his empty headedness.

Update:  According to Raw Story some people are claiming this is based on a movie called “Sinister” which is about a white family that’s been killed.  The black garbage bags for faces was just an oversight.  It might even be true.  In which case these people are definitely dumber than dirt.

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Oh those darned kids

by digby

This is sort of funny since I wrote a post just yesterday on this subject without this latest information:

Democrats have lost ground with millennials compared to past election cycles — a development that suggests the country’s youngest voters are open to both parties, according to a new Harvard Institute of Politics poll.

The nationwide poll of more than 2,000 adults ages 18 to 29, conducted Sept. 26 to Oct. 9, found significant political divisions across racial lines, no significant gender gap in the age group, and a slight Republican advantage among definite voters going into the 2014 midterm election.

“A lesson here, for us, is that young people, millennials, are no longer the political outliers that they once were,” said John Della Volpe, the Harvard Institute of Politics polling director, on a conference call with reporters. “In contrast to where we were four years ago, the youth vote is very much up for grabs politically.”

The 2014 poll shows that 51 percent of millennials considered most likely to vote would rather see a Republican Congress — 4 points higher than those who prefer Democrats. That’s a 16-point jump from 2010, when that group preferred Democrats by 12 percent.

These are midterm voters so it doesn’t represent the whole electorate. But it’s interesting nonetheless.

The point of my post yesterday is that you have to look at who they voted for when they came of age and it’s not always as obvious as people think. The conclusion of that piece quoted an expert saying this:

New college students are liberal – just not as liberal as freshmen were four years ago. This new class is about as liberal as young people were early in the Carter and Clinton administrations. People who turned 18 during the Carter administration ended up being somewhat more Republican than average; those who came of age during Clinton’s were somewhat more Democratic. How today’s college freshmen will vote likely depends on the state of the economy over the next four years.

Are the new college freshmen just a blip in a sea of student liberalism?

The polling says “probably not”. Before the election, American University/GfK polled high school (13-17 year-olds) and college students. The margin between Obama and Mitt Romney for high school students was 21pt less than among all college students. (Note: there’s no discernible difference between the voting patterns of 18-29 year-olds with at least some college education and those without.)

The huge fall isn’t exactly surprising. The Roosevelt generation is liberal because people became politically aware when Roosevelt was viewed as a success. The Gipper generation is conservative for the same reason with regard to Reagan. Conversely, the younger Bush is mostly viewed as a failure, and as such, most young people revolted.

Obama’s presidency, meanwhile, is only seen as a moderate success – as illustrated by a rather close re-election margin in the popular vote. Given past history, it’s expected to be seen as somewhere between good and average, as far as presidencies go. We would expect, therefore, that people who come of age during this presidency to be about as Democratic as the nation, or slightly more so.

And that’s exactly what seems to be happening.

Indeed, the generation of the next few years isn’t likely to be either conservative or overwhelmingly liberal; it’s probably going to be moderate. The UCLA survey found that the fastest growing group are people who describe themselves as “middle of the road”. On social issues, like gay marriage, they lean lean to left; on fiscal issues, like healthcare, they lean more to the right than the majority of current 18-29 year-olds.

Overall, I doubt we’re looking at a pipeline of new liberals. Far more than most young voters today, the next generation is likely to be up for grabs.

The hints of this have been out there for a while. The Democrats would be very foolish to take this generation for granted. They seem to think they have them all sewn up but they don’t.

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Readying for the riot

by digby

Remember how everyone was shocked by the militarization of the police during the Ferguson protests? Well it looks like the police were properly chastised by our outrage and in anticipation of a Grand Jury decision they’ve taken a whole new approach. Not:

Anticipating a furore, the St Louis County Police department has been reportedly stockpiling riot gear. The department has spent $173,000 since August on tear gas, plastic handcuffs, smoke grenades and canisters, rubber bullets, beanbag bullets and pepper balls. They have also invested in new helmets, batons and shields.

Well, they haven’t invested in any new sound cannons or taser tanks so I guess it’s all good.

Of course the police have to prepare for unrest. I don’t think anyone believes they shouldn’t do that. But I’d be a lot more impressed if the stories were about the various police departments reviewing their tactics and taking a different approach rather than loading up on more riot gear. How much more of that stuff do they need anyway?

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Brain damage or death. Your choice.

by digby

I wrote about this Missouri taser incident at the time but I came across this Fox News update today while I was looking for something else. It would be darkly funny if it weren’t so tragic:

INDEPENDENCE, Mo. — An Independence teenager injured after being hit with a police taser is out of a coma, but is having trouble remembering a few things. We’re now getting a better picture of what may have happened before the officer reacted.

After the incident that sent Bryce Masters to the hospital in critical condition, police applied for search warrants for his car and phone.

Court documents describe the officers’ account of some of the things that happened during the traffic stop. The 17-year-old was in a medically induced coma over the weekend because doctors say his heart stopped after being tased.

An attorney representing the Masters’ family says the teenager has an infection, but is improving. He does say that Masters is suffering from some memory loss.

Investigators say Masters wouldn’t cooperate with the officer, and the officer used his taser. Police say they found drug paraphernalia in Masters’ car.

In court documents, police officer Tim Runnels states he smelled the odor of marijuana coming from inside Masters’ car when the teen rolled down the window, but would not roll it all the way down telling the officer, “why? I can hear you.”

Officer Runnels states he told him to get out of the car several times with Masters replying, “why, am I under arrest?”

According to court documents, Masters braced himself in the car so the officer could not get him out and was tased inside the car. Masters ended up on the ground, handcuffed.

Officer Runnels states Masters did not comply with his command to move to the side of the road, so he grabbed Masters from behind and carried him to the side of the road where, according to an affidavit, Masters began to suffer from some sort of medical emergency. What the affidavit does not say is if Officer Runnels provided medical aid to Masters before the ambulance arrived.

That is something the Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into during its investigation, to see if Masters’ civil rights were violated.

The Masters’ family also asked the Justice Department to get involved. Documents also state that Masters was videotaping the incident on his cell phone. That phone is in the custody of the Independence Police Department.

“Some sort of medical emergency?” Actually the kid’s heart stopped beating, he sustained brain damage and is in rehab. A little infection and “some memory loss” is the least of it.

But even more important is this notion implicit in that report that the police contend that he somehow deserved to be put into a coma because he refused to cooperate. That’s truly outrageous.

Apparently, white teens in Missouri who fail to properly deal with authorities deserve to get brain damage. Black teens deserve to get shot dead on the spot. Either way, the lesson is that your civil rights end the minute you come in contact with a police officer. Which is just plain weird.

The story of his tasering is here, with witness accounts that tell a very different story than the ones the cops are telling.

“He pulled him out of the car, handcuffed him then drug him around the car then let him fall and it looked like he hit his face on the concrete, you could see blood coming out of his mouth and the cop put his foot on his back and moved it back and forth like he was putting a cigarette out and asked him ‘are you ready to get up now?’ You could tell the kid was going into convulsions. He turned him over and his head was dangling like this and he had blood coming out,” said Baker.

He almost tortured that kid to death.

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Blue America vs Sheldon Adelson


by digby

So Sheldon Adelson came into my congressional district in the last couple of weeks and spewed some anti-Muslim vomit all over the race to succeed Henry Waxman.  I’m not sure what he hoped to achieve but I doubt he will succeed in painting Ted Lieu as a terrorist symp.

Blue America doesn’t have Adelson billions.  But we do what we can.  So we took out a full page ad in the LA Times today, highlighting the fact that the Westside of LA is lucky to have such a staunch liberal leader to send to congress. I don’t think Adelson can beat this record with a bunch of bigoted swill:

If you happen to be in or near the district you can help get out the vote by going here.

We’d like to run another get out the vote ad on the day before the election if we can. If you can help us do that you can contribute here.

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I can’t not say this; nor can Rick Weiland

by Gaius Publius

I can’t not say this, because it’s news and it pertains.

Earlier this month I wrote about how, while progressives are constantly hectored (blackmailed) by Democratic leaders to never let Democrats lose a house of Congress — those same “Democratic” leaders had themselves surrendered the House and are a skosh away from surrendering the Senate … because they won’t back strong progressive candidates, preferring corp-sponsored losers who play ball with their own big-money friends instead.

In other words, corporate-supported Democratic leaders are already Tea Partying progressives. How about them apples?

And now comes Rick Weiland, Democratic and progressive candidate for the U.S. Senate in the battleground state of South Dakota, to say the same thing.

Shorter Rick Weiland:

“Would you believe? I’m being ‘Tea Partied’ by non-progressive Senate Democratic leaders. They’re tanking my candidacy in favor of a right-leaning ‘independent’ who happens to be Harry Reid’s friend.”

Can I say his assertions are true? No. Can I say he says they are? Absolutely — it’s news and it pertains. Read the story and decide for yourself; from the Argus Leader:

Weiland accuses own party of sabotaging his campaign

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Rick Weiland accused his own political party of trying to undermine his campaign in a striking news conference Monday.

Weiland said the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s ads attacking Republican incumbent Mike Rounds have backfired and hurt him.

“You put negative on a candidate and you put your disclosure at the bottom that says ‘Paid for by the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee,’ the Democratic candidate’s going to get blamed for that,” Weiland said.

But Weiland went a step further and said this wasn’t just an inadvertent side effect of the negative ads. He said it was deliberate — an attempt to sabotage him and boost independent Larry Pressler.

“My national party — that I’m a member of — (was) trying to drive votes to Larry Pressler and trying to drive up my negatives,” Weiland said.

A spokesman for the DSCC declined to comment on Weiland’s charges. …

And the mitigation:

National political analyst Larry Sabato was skeptical of Weiland’s claims.

“Unless (Weiland) has evidence he didn’t present, it’s quite a stretch, if not a wild charge,” said Sabato, president of the University of Virginia’s Center For Politics.

While it’s true that the DSCC “would welcome a victory by either
Pressler or Weiland,” Sabato said, “I don’t think that was the DSCC’s
intention to have the ads backfire on (Weiland).”

Even though Pressler previously served in the Senate and reportedly has a personal relationship with Sen. Reid (see same article), my suspicion is that Sabato is right — given the chance that Weiland could win, Reid et al had to make a show of caring; the rest may have been a “happy” accident. Still, it’s been clear for some time, by his previous and total lack of support, that Harry Reid would not welcome Weiland into the Senate.

Still, as of the latest polling, Pressler’s numbers are now falling, and Rounds, the Republican, is the beneficiary. If Reid loses the Senate, will his non-support of Weiland, when it could have counted, be held against him in the mainstream press? Will they even notice that Reid likely tanked himself? I’ll go with No on that one.

But this isn’t over. You can help Rick Weiland by donating here. And if you’re a South Dakota resident, by all means volunteer. After all, Auburn doesn’t beat Alabama by crying in their helmets in the fourth quarter. They play to the whistle.

Howie Klein has more (scroll down to the UPDATE). Quoting Weiland (my emphasis):

“For every one of the 18 months since I became a candidate for the United States Senate, and the 6 months since I was formally selected to be the candidate of the party you are supposed to represent, I have been asking you for positive assistance with my campaign. Instead of that assistance you have said I am not your choice, tried to dry up my funds by saying I cannot win, refused to have your DSCC even endorse me, and now you have come into my state with ugly, negative attacks against Mike Rounds, ads that you and every knowledgeable political strategist in America knows hurt me and help Larry Pressler, the longtime Republican who has apparently won your support for his so called independent campaign by whispering that if elected he might vote to help you [Harry Reid] keep your job as Majority Leader.

“Based on this record of non-support for me, and of actions which assist one of my opponents, I am today formally requesting that you either begin airing positive advertising about my fight against big money, and for the ordinary citizens who our party is supposed to be pledged to support, or else you get out of our state. I do not want phony help that actually helps Larry Pressler by attacking Mike Rounds over what appears to everyone to be my name because it says paid for by the national political party of which I am a member.”

“I am also today requesting that the South Dakota Democratic Party join me in repudiating these tactics and requesting that you and the National Democratic Party assist all South Dakota Democrats in our fight for a higher minimum wage, protection and expansion of Medicare and Social Security, equal rights for all citizens, and in helping us to help like-minded voters get to the polls on November 4.”

People like Reid say the Senate is so important. Then they do stuff like this. What to believe, their admonitions to progressives, or their unnoticed actions?

GP

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