Month: March 2015

Bull in a china shop

by digby

Here’s some good news:

Three major Shiite militia groups pulled out of the fight against the Islamic State in Tikrit on Thursday, immediately depriving the Iraqi government of thousands of their fighters on the ground even as American warplanes readied for an expected second day of airstrikes there.

The militia groups, some of which had Iranian advisers with them until recently, pulled out of the Tikrit fight in protest of the American military airstrikes, which began late Wednesday night, insisting that the Americans were not needed to defeat the extremists in Tikrit.

A fourth Shiite militia group said it would remain in the battle in Tikrit, but vowed to attack foreign members of the American-led coalition, raising the possibility that it might turn anti-aircraft fire against American planes from what had been Iraqi fighting positions.

American military leaders were likely to welcome the withdrawal of the Shiite groups, so long as enough Iraqi fighters remain to keep the pressure on the Islamic State’s holdouts. Before starting the airstrikes, American officials demanded that Iranian officials and the militias closest to them to stand aside, and had expressed concerns about sectarian abuses in areas controlled by the Shiite militias.

Defense Minister Khalid al-Obaidi of Iraq, center, visited the Al Rashid Air Base on Thursday near Baghdad. Credit Khalid al-Mousily/Reuters
But too great or abrupt a withdrawal by militia forces, analysts said, could complicate the entire Iraqi counteroffensive. Even with the militias involved, officials said the current pro-government force would not be large enough to help take Mosul back from the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

Together, the four Shiite groups that were pulling out represent more than a third of the 30,000 fighters on the government side in the offensive against the Islamic State, analysts said.

“We don’t trust the American-led coalition in combating ISIS,” said Naeem al-Uboudi, the spokesman for Asaib Ahl al-Haq, one of the three groups which said they would withdraw from the front line around Tikrit. “In the past they have targeted our security forces and dropped aid to ISIS by mistake,” he said.

It’s very hard to know what this all means — it’s awfully confusing. But then, that’s the point. It’s very convenient for the Americans to say it’s what they wanted all along. And maybe it’s even true. Who can tell? But there can be little doubt that a good part of the time America is a bull in a china shop in the middle of these very complicated tribal and religious cross currents and alliances. We are not magic and we don’t have super-powers even though we are a super power. The immense hubris of the hawks makes us very vulnerable to mistakes. Like the Iraq war, for instance. Just look at what that has wrought.

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War of the Worlds

by digby

I have written for years that the right wing was so terrified of Muslim terrorists that they had literally confused them with invading space aliens. But maybe they aren’t the only ones.

Emptywheel noted this strange passage in the recently released FBI report on post 9/11 changes:

The Review Commission recognizes that national security threats to the United States have multiplied, and become increasingly complex and more globally dispersed in the past decade. Hostile states and transnational networks—including cyber hackers and organized syndicates, space-system intruders, WMD proliferators, narcotics and human traffickers, and other organized criminals—are operating against American interests across national borders, and within the United States. [my emphasis]

My God, it’s bad enough that all these people are out there operating against our interests. Now, we find out that “space-system intruders” hate America too.

Klaatu barada nikto, my friends.

*And yes, I’m sure they didn’t mean this to imply that space aliens are threatening America. It’s just one of those stupid opaque law enforcement terms. But as Emptywheel points out the report is so full of silly jargon and shrill fear-mongering that anyone can be forgiven for feeling that we are under siege from super-villains of every possible stripe.

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New Leaked TPP Chapter; Worse Than the Last Leaked Version

by Gaius Publius

There’s a new leaked chapter from the TPP draft agreement, thanks to WikiLeaks, and it confirms our worst fears. From a press release by Lori Wallach at Public Citizen (my emphasis):

TPP Leak Reveals Extraordinary New Powers for Thousands of Foreign Firms to Challenge U.S. Policies and Demand Taxpayer Compensation

Unveiling of Parallel Legal System for Foreign Corporations Will Fuel TPP Controversy, Further Complicate Obama’s Push for Fast Track

WASHINGTON, D.C.– The Trans-Pacific Partnership’s (TPP) Investment Chapter, leaked today, reveals how the pact would make it easier for U.S. firms to offshore American jobs to low-wage countries while newly empowering thousands of foreign firms to seek cash compensation from U.S. taxpayers by challenging U.S. government actions, laws and court rulings before unaccountable foreign tribunals. After five years of secretive TPP negotiations, the text – leaked by WikiLeaks –proves that growing concerns about the controversial “investor-state dispute settlement” (ISDS) system that the TPP would extend are well justified, Public Citizen said.

Enactment of the leaked chapter would increase U.S. ISDS liability to an unprecedented degree by newly empowering about 9,000 foreign-owned firms from Japan and other TPP nations operating in the United States to launch cases against the government over policies that apply equally to domestic and foreign firms. To date, the United States has faced few ISDS attacks because past ISDS-enforced pacts have almost exclusively been with developing nations whose firms have few investments here.

The leak reveals that the TPP would replicate the ISDS language found in past U.S. agreements under which tribunals have ordered more than $3.6 billion in compensation to foreign investors attacking land use rules; water, energy and timber policies; health, safety and environmental protections; financial stability policies and more. And while the Obama administration has sought to quell growing concerns about the ISDS threat with claims that past pacts’ problems would be remedied in the TPP, the leaked text does not include new safeguards relative to past U.S. ISDS-enforced pacts. Indeed, this version of the text, which shows very few remaining areas of disagreement, eliminates various safeguard proposals that were included in a 2012 leaked TPP Investment Chapter text. 

Stop here and reread that last bolded sentence. The leaked version is worse than the last leaked version of the same chapter, the one dealing with the corporate-only right-to-sue. Wallach again:

“With the veil of secrecy ripped back, finally everyone can see for themselves that the TPP would give multinational corporations extraordinary new powers that undermine our sovereignty, expose U.S. taxpayers to billions in new liability and privilege foreign firms operating here with special rights not available to U.S. firms under U.S. law,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. “This leak is a disaster for the corporate lobbyists and administration officials trying to persuade Congress to delegate Fast Track authority to railroad the TPP through Congress.” 

Dear Barack Obama: If you think TPP is such a good deal, refute this leak on its merits. (The same goes for you, self-styled “Progressive Coalition for American Jobs.”)

Back to Wallach:

Even before today’s leak, U.S. law professors and those in other TPP nations, the U.S. National Conference of State Legislatures, the Cato Institute and numerous members of Congress and civil society groups have announced opposition to the ISDS system, which would elevate individual foreign firms to the same status as sovereign governments and empower them to privately enforce a public treaty by skirting domestic courts and “suing” governments before extrajudicial tribunals. The tribunals are staffed by private lawyers who are not accountable to any electorate, system of legal precedent or meaningful conflict of interest rules. Their rulings cannot be appealed on the merits. Many ISDS lawyers rotate between roles – serving both as “judges” and suing governments for corporations, creating an inherent conflict of interest.

The TPP’s expansion of the ISDS system would come amid a surge in ISDS cases against public interest policies that has led other countries, such as South Africa and Indonesia, to begin to revoke their ISDS-enforced treaties. While ISDS agreements have existed since the 1960s, just 50 known ISDS cases were launched worldwide in the regime’s first three decades combined. In contrast, foreign investors launched at least 50 ISDS claims each year from 2011 through 2013. Recent cases include Eli Lilly’s attack on Canada’s cost-saving medicine patent system, Philip Morris’ attack on Australia’s public health policies regulating tobacco, Lone Pine’s attack on a fracking moratorium in Canada, Chevron’s attack on an Ecuadorian court ruling ordering payment for mass toxic contamination in the Amazon and Vattenfall’s attack on Germany’s phase-out of nuclear power.

“By definition, only multinational corporations could benefit from this parallel legal system, which empowers them to skirt domestic courts and laws, and go to tribunals staffed by highly paid corporate lawyers, where they grab unlimited payments of our tax dollars because they don’t want to comply with the same laws our domestic firms follow,” Wallach said.

Public Citizen’s analysis of the leaked text is available here….

Click through for more, especially to read the leaked text itself. I know I’m going to. In the meantime, have I mentioned that Obama Legacy Library project lately?

GP

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Why aren’t these con men in jail?
By Tom Sullivan

“The lack of prosecutions, quite frankly, does not indicate a lack of evidence,” Richard Bowen told Bloomberg’s “Market Makers” last week. The former Citigroup Chief Underwriter for Consumer Lending has testified before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission but contends that evidence he provided never made it to the Department of Justice for further investigation and prosecution.

A lengthy article on Bowen in New Economic Perspectives outlines some of what the whistle blower might have provided. Furthermore, that the FCIC, DOJ, and the SEC might not (or might not want to) understand how the accounting control fraud “recipe” at the heart of the financial crisis actually worked. Once you explain how the “sure thing” at the heart of the recipe works, writes William Black, “jurors understand quickly that the officers were acting in a manner that makes no sense for honest bankers but is optimal for officers leading frauds.”

Matt Taibbi (citing Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism) looks at corruption in the Private Equity business, and the seeming indifference of Andrew Bowden, the SEC’s Director of Compliance Inspections and Examinations. A study “found that over half of the companies they looked at were guilty of ripping off their clients” using hidden fees. Bowden mentioned the discovery in a speech within the last year. Since then … crickets:

By this month, Bowden had achieved a complete 180, telling a conference of PE professionals that their business was just “the greatest.”

This is Bowden on March 5th, on a panel for PE and Venture Capital issues at Stanford. Check out how he pooh-poohs the fact that his SEC has seen “some misconduct,” before he goes on to grovel before his audience:

Is a slightly less worshipful attitude too much to ask from people charged with oversight? Taibbi asks.

Apparently, yes.

(h/t MS)

Mean Tweets

by digby

This is pretty good:

I’m not sure Boehner is really in the joke, but then that’s what makes it funny …

Ted Cruz, bro-country boy

by digby

I wrote a piece for Salon today about Ted Cruz and country music:

So Texas firebrand Ted Cruz explained that 9/11 changed him so much that he lost his former taste in music and found another He said:

Music is interesting. I grew up listening to classic rock. And I’ll tell you sort of an odd story: My music tastes changed on 9/11. I actually intellectually find this very curious, but on 9/11, I didn’t like how rock music responded. And country music — collectively — the way they responded, it resonated with me. And I have to say just at a gut level, I had an emotional reaction that says, ‘These are my people. And ever since 2001, I listen to country music. But I’m an odd country music fan because I didn’t listen to it prior to 2001.

I’m going to guess he figures Mike Huckabee has the Nugent vote all sewn up.

He “intellectually finds it very curious” that on 9/11 he didn’t like how rock responded? What is that supposed to mean? Apparently when they held all those concerts and fundraisers like the Concert for New York City he thought they were trashing America. Sure, the Dixie Chicks were famous for saying that they were ashamed George Bush was from Texas during the run up to the Iraq war, but they’re as country as they come. (And I think we can be fairly confident that Cruz endorsed the abusive treatment they received from radio stations for saying it. President Bush certainly did.)

But I’m hard-pressed to think of any rockers, classic or otherwise, who were disrespectful in the aftermath of 9/11. Certainly it wasn’t Bruce Springsteen or Paul McCartney or Neil Young or Fleetwood Mac or literally dozens of other rock and pop artists who penned heartfelt songs about the event. But then Cruz undoubtedly didn’t want to hear poetic songs about loss and pain. He wanted songs of revenge and killing, like Toby Keith’s famous anthem, “The Angry American” which featured the kind of language that gets Cruz and his voters very, very excited.

Read on. I talk about “bro-country” and strange happenings at Keith Urban concerts and Nixon wearing black socks and wingtips on the beach …

QOTD: Cruz

by digby

Think Progress

“Global warming alarmists are the equivalent of the flat-Earthers. You know it used to be it is accepted scientific wisdom the Earth is flat, and this heretic named Galileo was branded a denier.

This whole line of attack is very clever because it’s so headache inducing. It shouldn’t be, but it is. The reality is clear on this:

“Modern scientists follow the evidence-based scientific method that Galileo pioneered. Skeptics who oppose scientific findings that threaten their world view are far closer to Galileo’s belief-based critics in the Catholic Church”

Cruz goes on to say that he knows he’s correct because “he follows the science.” This is just a lie but it confuses matters just enough to leave you scratching your head and saying “wait a minute, the science says …” And that’s when he brings up the heretic example as if the small handful of scientists who disagree with the consensus are the the brave Galileos bucking the Church. Except the scientific consensus isn ‘t the Council of Trent, it’s science, the very thing he says he follows. (Here comes the headache …)

And anyway, Galileo was branded a heretic not because he refused to “listen to the science” but because the theologians were committed to believing this:

[T]o check unbridled spirits, [the Holy Council] decrees that no one relying on his own judgement shall, in matters of faith and morals pertaining to the edification of Christian doctrine, distorting the Scriptures in accordance with his own conceptions, presume to interpret them contrary to that sense which the holy mother Church… has held or holds…

They believed the earth was the center of the universe and that was that.

And the flat earthers had nothing to do with anything. He just wants to pretend that his people are the scientists and …. the scientists are the priests and it fits nicely with their overall anti-science wingnut worldview that says science is superstition and superstition is science.

We know that the deniers are acting like the Inquisition and that Galileo would be on the side of the climate change scientists. But Cruz knows that by framing this ridiculous argument as if the denialists are Galileo and the scientists are the Church, his confused right wing followers can not only feel they are martyrs to the cause but that they are the ones bucking the superstitious hierarchy. They like that.

And yes, I know you have a full-blown migraine by now, so go take an aspirin. Just wait until some partisan talking heads try to “debate” this on cable news. You’ll need a fistfull of aspirin  — and very large scotch to wash it down.

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Watch your wallet

by digby

Speaker Boehner is so uncharacteristically enthusiastic about a bipartisan “reform” of Medicare you really have to wonder why:.

And look at all these accolades from far right wingnuts:

A major deal struck between House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to overhaul Medicare appeared to win President Barack Obama’s endorsement on Wednesday.

“As we speak Congress is working to fix the Medicare-physician payment system. I’ve got my pen ready to sign a good bipartisan bill, which would be really exciting,” he said in a speech about Obamacare at the White House. “I love when Congress passes bipartisan bills that I can sign. It’s always very encouraging.”

The presidential endorsement could sway enough Senate Democrats, who have emerged as a potential obstacle, to support the agreement.

“We’re just looking at it now,” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said moments before Obama’s remarks Wednesday. “We’ll see where we come out.”

The deal would end the perennial “doc fix” problem by replacing a formula that imposes steep annual cuts to Medicare physician payments. The package would also cut Medicare benefits for higher-income seniors and reduce spending on supplemental “Medigap” plans. It would extend the Children’s Health Insurance Program for two years.

If the legislation passes both chambers, it would amount to the most sweeping health care overhaul since Obamacare.

Republicans sure love it:

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI):

“Many of us have worked for a long time to repeal this flawed formula and replace it with a more patient-centered system. Now we have a chance to get it done. This package is the best opportunity to turn the page on years of short-term fixes so that we can finally make the reforms we need to strengthen Medicare for our seniors. This is real patient-centered reform—done in a bipartisan way—and I urge all of my colleagues to support it.”

Rep. Joe Pitts (R-PA):

“For years, the SGR has distorted Medicare’s finances and the federal budget. We’re now very close to permanently replacing it and passing some real Medicare reforms that will have a lasting impact. There’s a lot for conservatives to like here.”

Rep. Michael C. Burgess, M.D. (R-TX):

“It’s historic: fundamental structural changes in Medicare not sold on the back of a tax increase.”

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN):

“This legislation will provide actual, structural entitlement reform by changing the way healthcare providers are paid. Everyone agrees that healthcare reimbursement should encourage quality and coordination of care, rather than volume. This legislation is the right move in that direction. It is a win-win-win for seniors, your local healthcare providers, and hard-working taxpayers.”

Rep. Larry Bucshon, M.D. (R-IN):

“For the first time, real structural reforms that ensure access to quality care for seniors and help us protect the Medicare promise are within our grasp. Let’s build upon the unprecedented progress of last Congress, and solve this problem once and for all.”

Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY):

“This is the type of substantive and cost-saving reform the American people elected us to enact. Repealing and replacing the SGR is a milestone achievement that will reduce long-term costs, increase quality of care and implement structural changes to Medicare.”

Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-KY):

“Now is the time to finally leave the flawed SGR formula in the past, and begin working on real reforms to our health care system that will improve care for seniors while putting the Medicare program on more sound fiscal footing.”

Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC):

“It’s time we in Congress do our job and show leadership by enacting permanent legislation to repeal and replace the flawed SGR formula. … Continually kicking the can down the road is only perpetuating Washington’s spending problem, while yet another SGR deadline quickly approaches.”

Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX):

“The first concrete step in saving Medicare is solving the way it pays local doctors for treating our seniors. … Congress and the President could continue to duck the issue. They can simply ‘kick the can down the road’ by extending the current damaging doctor payment system for another year or two — as they have an astounding 15 times already. Or they can come together and pass a permanent solution now that encourages doctors to see Medicare patients and rewards them for providing quality care at affordable cost.”

Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX):

“I think it’s good. We need some of the structural entitlement reform. That’s a good thing. … I know how hard this is. Our seniors are having more and more difficulty getting doctors because Medicare doesn’t reimburse, and doctors are dropping Medicare.”

Rep. John Fleming (R-LA):

“These are two huge improvements that would drive costs down and actually, in the long-run, improve care and access to care. This is a long-term solution for doctors who are having their patients really destroyed. … This is a huge advance.”

Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX):

“We must find a way to get it done, and will. … The art of getting it done is in everyone’s interest. … I view it as a must-pass piece of legislation.”

Rep. Fred Upton (R–MI):

“We can see the light at the end of the SGR tunnel—finally. Our bipartisan product begins the task of strengthening Medicare over the long term. This responsible legislative package reflects years of bipartisan work, is a good deal for seniors, and a good deal for children too. It’s time to put a stop once and for all to the repeated SGR crises and start to put Medicare on a stronger path forward for our seniors.”

They really care. So what’s the catch? McJoan at Daily Kos spells it out:

The existence of a bipartisan permanent fix, coming out of the insane Republican House is remarkable. Also remarkable is the expectation that it will pass.

A floor vote is planned for Thursday, House leadership aides said, after the top Democrat and Republican successfully resolved concerns about abortion language.

“It is all shaping up very well on both sides,” said Kevin Smith, a spokesman for Boehner.

Ah, but that “abortion language” is the kicker, and it’s the reason that it is much less certain that the plan will pass the Senate. The nature of the “doc fix,” a must-pass bill because it has two powerful constituencies—seniors and the medical community, means that it will be a magnet for other things. They can’t resist tacking on a bunch of sweeteners, and those sweeteners end up being poison. That’s the case here, when $7.2 billion for community health centers was added. That’s great. Community health centers need to be funded. The problem is that Republicans insisted on anti-abortion Hyde amendment language being added to that funding, despite the fact that community health centers generally don’t provide abortion and an executive action signed by President Obama when Obamacare passed makes doubly sure no federal funds will be used for abortion in these clinics.

House Democrats argue that it’s okay to include the language because of those facts—it makes no difference. But the same argument could be turned against them—the anti-abortion language need not be included at all and is absolutely unnecessary. In fact, adding it—as Senate Democrats say—brings us that much closer to codifying the abortion ban in the law, as opposed to tacking it on as an amendment on spending bills. Accepting it means losing even more ground on choice, which so far Senate Democrats aren’t willing to do.

Republicans are obviously ecstatic that they get to tell their constituents that they were able to stab abortion rights in the back. After all, they have to make sure doctors are being paid under Medicare or their grey haired constituents would have a fit. And a couple of years of funding for some poor kids and a few health centers that don’t deal with lady parts makes them feel good about themselves. But down the road this codification of the abortion ban will come back to haunt them, probably when some Supreme Court case cites this big bipartisan vote as proof that the country has evolved on the issue of abortion and agrees that it should be banned.

They are, as usual, playing the long game.

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“They smell blood in the water”

by digby

They just don’t like Jeb. And why would they? They put their heart and soul into Poppy and then Junior and look where it left them …

The leaders of evangelical and other socially conservative groups say they do not believe that Mr. Bush, the former governor of Florida — whom they already view as the preferred candidate of the Republican Party’s establishment — would fight for the issues they care most about: opposing same-sex marriage, holding the line on an immigration overhaul and rolling back abortion rights.

The efforts to coalesce behind an alternative candidate — in frequent calls, teleconferences and meetings involving a range of organizations, many of them with overlapping memberships — are premised on two articles of conservative faith: Republicans did not win the White House in the past two elections because their nominees were too moderate and failed to excite the party’s base. And a conservative alternative failed to win the nomination each time because grass-roots voters did not unite behind a single champion in the primary fight.

This time, social conservatives vow, will be different. They plan to unify behind an anti-establishment candidate by this summer or early fall, with the expectation that they will be able to overcome the presumed fund-raising advantage of the Republican elite by exerting their own influence through right-wing talk radio and social media, and by mobilizing an army of like-minded small donors.

“Conservatives smell blood in the water,” said Kellyanne Conway, a Republican pollster who has participated in the vetting. “They feel they’ve got the best shot to deny the establishment a place.”

Ms. Conway said the candidates seen as having potential to energize the party’s right wing would be invited to make their case before national groups of social conservatives in the coming weeks and months.

Also too, they’ve gotta make a buck:

Richard Viguerie, the conservative direct-mail pioneer, said he was involved in the effort to rally behind a candidate so “we won’t go into this season divided six or eight different ways.”

More power to them. Primaries are designed for the party rank and file to decide who the party nominates. Sure, the “donor primary” is awfully important. But it’s really just the modern version of the men in smoke-filled rooms of yesteryear. If those plutocrats and party insiders want to take control completely, they’re going to have to cut out the voters entirely. And frankly, I won’t be surprised to see them do that. Especially if these grassroots conservatives have any luck in organizing themselves around someone the Big Money Boyz don’t find acceptable and they win. Remember, the true conservative position on all this is that “those who own the country ought to govern it.”

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Let’s face it, they’re just better at everything

by digby

The good news today is that the Supreme Court ruled that UPS has an obligation not to treat pregnant workers like crap. (Or something like that.)

The bad news continues to be this:

Even though nine out of 10 nurses are women, men in the profession earn higher salaries, and the pay gap has remained constant over the past quarter century, a study finds.

The typical salary gap has consistently been about $5,000 even after adjusting for factors such as experience, education, work hours, clinical specialty, and marital and parental status, according to a report in JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association.

“Nursing is the largest female dominated profession so you would think that if any profession could have women achieve equal pay, it would be nursing,” said lead study author Ulrike Muench from the University of California, San Francisco.

Muench and colleagues used two large U.S. data sets to examine earnings over time. One, the National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses, provided responses from nearly 88,000 participants from 1988 to 2008. The other, the American Community Survey, offered responses from nearly 206,000 registered nurses from 2001 to 2013.

Every year, each of the data sets found men earned more than women; the unadjusted pay gap ranged from $10,243 to $11,306 in one survey and from $9,163 to $9,961 in the other.

There was a gap for hospital nurses, $3,783, and an even bigger one, $7,678, for nurses in outpatient settings.

Men out-earned women in every specialty except orthopedics, with the gap ranging from $3,792 in chronic care to $17,290 for nurse anesthetists.

The standard explanation, and also offered in the article, is that women don’t deserve the same pay because they insist on slacking off when they give birth. Either that or they’re just bad at getting what they want. (And who’s fault is that, amirite?)

This is obviously wrong. Sure nursing may have been an exclusively female profession for years and is still dominated by women. But clearly, it wasn’t until men joined the profession that it started getting done properly. Just as all those Wall Street traders are harder and smarter workers than nuclear physicists, so too men are harder and smarter workers than women. It’s called meritocracy. And lord knows our meritocratic system works perfectly.

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