Month: April 2015

Corrupt cops and their pretend cop friends


by digby

Can you believe this?

Supervisors at the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office were ordered to falsify a reserve deputy’s training records, giving him credit for field training he never took and firearms certifications he should not have received, sources told the Tulsa World.

At least three of reserve deputy Robert Bates’ supervisors were transferred after refusing to sign off on his state-required training, multiple sources speaking on condition of anonymity told the World.

Bates, 73, is accused of second-degree manslaughter in the shooting death of Eric Harris during an undercover operation on April 2.

The sources’ claims are corroborated by records, including a statement by Bates after the shooting, that he was certified as an advanced reserve deputy in 2007.

An attorney for Harris’ family also raised questions about the authenticity of Bates’ training records.

Additionally, Sheriff Stanley Glanz told a Tulsa radio station this week that Bates had been certified to use three weapons, including a revolver he fired at Harris. However, Glanz said the Sheriff’s Office has not been able to find the paperwork on those certifications.

The sheriff’s deputy that certified Bates has moved on to work for the Secret Service, Glanz said during the radio interview.

“We can’t find the records that she supposedly turned in,” Glanz said. “So we are going to talk to her to find out if for sure he’s been qualified with those (weapons).”

Undersheriff Tim Albin was unavailable for comment Wednesday but in an earlier interview, Albin said he was unaware of any concerns expressed by supervisors about Bates’ training.

But here’s the thing: any Oklahoman is allowed to carry a loaded firearm after completing an 8 hour certification course. So unless he didn’t even have that much training, he’s no worse than thousands of civilians walking the streets who might have pulled out their guns and drilled somebody. But surprisingly, compared to a number of other states Oklahoma is actually fairly restrictive with their open carry law. They don’t let people carry them in bars. Yet.

Still, if this is true, they really went out of their way to let this particular guy slide. With lethal results.

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The Aristocrats!

by digby

I wrote about The new GOP populism at Salon this morning:

It’s been quite interesting to see Republicans embrace the notion that wealth inequality (or any inequality) is something to worry their pretty little heads about. Over the winter we heard numerous reports of various GOP luminaries expressing serious concern that average Americans were getting the short end of the stick while the wealthy few reaped all the rewards. Ted Cruz might as well have put on a blond wig and called himself “Elizabeth” when he railed against it after the State of the Union:

“We’re facing right now a divided America when it comes to the economy. It is true that the top 1 percent are doing great under Barack Obama. Today, the top 1 percent earn a higher share of our national income than any year since 1928,”

And here we thought that was supposed to be a good thing. Aren’t they the “job producers”? That’s how weird the GOP’s messaging has gotten lately. Mitt “47 Percent” Romney clutched his very expensive opera-length pearls, wailing that “under President Obama, the rich have gotten richer, income inequality has gotten worse and there are more people in poverty than ever before.” Rand Paul channeled his heretofore unknown inner Bernie Sanders, proclaiming that “income inequality has worsened under this administration. And tonight, President Obama offers more of the same policies — policies that have allowed the poor to get poorer and the rich to get richer.” It seemed to many observers at the time that this was a very odd choice of issue for potential Republican presidential aspirants to take up, since every item in the domestic GOP agenda would make wealth inequality even worse. This certainly wasn’t something they lost any sleep over before now.

[…]

In any case, this shallow attempt at appearing to give a damn was short-lived. This week the GOP is voting, as they always do, to ensure that the heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune won’t be faced with the terrible responsibility of having to pay taxes on their inheritances. Dana Milbank of the Washington Post pointed out just how successful these protectors of the progeny of the one percenters have been in recent years:

It had long been a conservative ideal, and the essence of the American Dream, to believe that everybody should have an equal shot at success. But in their current bid to end the estate tax, Republicans could create a permanent elite of trust-fund babies. The estate tax was a meaningful check on a permanent aristocracy as recently as 2001, when there were taxes on the portion of estates above $675,000; even then there were plenty of ways for the rich to shelter money for their heirs. As the son of a schoolteacher and a cabinetmaker, I’d like to see the estate tax exemptions lowered — so that taxes encourage enterprise and entre­pre­neur­ship while keeping to a minimum the number of Americans born who will never have to work a day in their lives. The current exemption of $5.4 million (the current estate tax has an effective rate averaging under 17 percent, according to the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center) does little to prevent a permanent aristocracy from growing — and abolishing it entirely turns democracy into kleptocracy.

No, that wasn’t a mistaken cut and paste from the World Socialist Website. That really was Dana Milbank writing in the Washington Post, which is a testament to just how outlandish these Republicans have become. When mainstream columnists start using words like aristocracy and kleptocracy you know that something’s in the air.

There’s lots more at the link. Protecting wealth for subsequent generations of rich people is the big kahuna for the right wing. And yes, that’s called aristocracy. It’s who they are.

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Preening for war

by digby

I wish I understood why everyone is so ok with this:

For months Obama resisted attempts led by Republicans and some Democrats to open an agreement with Iran to congressional approval. On Tuesday he backed down in the face of mounting bipartisan support for the bill, which gives Congress at least 30 days to review a final deal during which time Obama would be unable to waive or suspend many U.S. sanctions.

Negotiators for Iran and six major powers are trying to ensure Iran does not acquire an atomic bomb by securing an agreement by June 30 under which Iran would curb its nuclear program in exchange for relief from international sanctions.

“If I were an Iranian negotiator, I would walk into that room and say ‘you told us all along you were going to stop legislation,'” said Richard Nephew, a former U.S. negotiator with Iran now at Columbia University.

“‘How can you guarantee us that we’re not going to have this problem when we bring the deal forth?'”

“Will it be fatal? No,” he added. “It’s going to make things a lot harder, a lot more complicated, a lot more difficult for the (U.S.) negotiating side.”

Basically, the Democrats stabbed him in the back and it’s fairly obvious they did it under pressure from outside groups who want to scuttle this nuclear arms deal. They surely will say that it’s because they think that it’s important that congress preserve its prerogatives but congress has never before insisted on announcing its prerogatives in advance of agreements such as these and it’s bullshit anyway. This is a nuclear arms agreement the success of which could prevent WWIII.  Are their prerogatives are more important than that?

The president caved on this because a big Senate spectacle was the last thing they needed. And the truth is that the bill doesn’t seem affect the agreement substantially. But it makes the negotiations harder for no good reason. (And this excuse that the president “needed” some hardliners so he could make a better deal is just fatuous nonsense.)

I’m not a huge fan of unilateral executive power in the abstract. But when we have a bunch of warmongering neanderthals running the Senate and the president is using his power to negotiate a peace agreement I tend to be fairly utilitarian about it. War is the wrong option and should be prevented however it can be prevented. The Senate’s prerogatives aren’t really of primary concern in that equation.

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Not captured yet
by Tom Sullivan

“The populists capture the Democratic Party,” declares the headline on Dana Milbank’s Washington Post column. “Can Hillary Clinton manage those rowdy populists?” asks Katrina vanden Huevel.

Well, not so fast. The big split to be managed soon is over a Senate resolution to give the president “fast track” trade authority for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. Milbank writes:

Twenty years ago, half of Senate Democrats and 40 percent of House Democrats voted for the North American Free Trade Agreement. This time, even if Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.), top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, signs off on a fast-track deal, proponents say a best-case scenario has them winning only 10 of the 46 Democrats — and an even smaller percentage of House Democrats, despite aggressive lobbying by the usually passive White House.

Progressive Senators and Representatives from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (MA) to Rep. Alan Grayson (FL), alongside labor leaders, may have staged a protest outside the Capitol yesterday, but the Obama administration has so far not flinched on supporting TPP. Milbank’s headline writer may have jumped the gun.

Obama, Republican leaders and business leaders are pushing hard for the treaty, while Hillary Clinton has still not declared her position on TPP. Meanwhile, progressives are organizing to pull her and the party to the left. Vanden Heuvel writes:

Warren has joined with Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., to launch the Middle Class Prosperity Project, planning to convene hearings across the country on economic policies threatening the middle class, including, most recently, the need to relieve the burden of student debt. Progressives are gearing up a major campaign for four years of free public college.

Next week, the Campaign for America’s Future will announce an alliance with three major national grassroots organizations — National People’s Action, USAction and the Alliance for a Just Society — to drive a populist platform into the political debate. Moveon.org, the Progressive Congressional Campaign Committee and Progressive Democrats of America are all mobilizing online support for the demand that candidates address “bold ideas” for economic reform. Warren is joining the Center for Community Change Action as it launches a campaign for jobs. The AFL-CIO will hold convocations in each of the early primary states focused on the issue of raising wages.

Populists may not have taken over the party, but down-ticket Democrats as well as Hillary Clinton will need the Warren Wing in 2016, writes Linda Feldman for the Christian Science Monitor:

First, she needs Senator Warren’s supporters to get excited about her – and not just vote for her grudgingly in the general election. She needs them to donate and volunteer. If enough Warren enthusiasts sit this election out, Clinton could have a hard time winning.

Right now, it’s too soon to tell how that will go. Republican candidates are already staking out policies they’ll run on. Clinton has yet to get specific. Katrina vanden Huevel pokes Clinton, “Front and center?”

Somebody call for rewrite

by digby

If neo-confederate culture weren’t so prevalent in today’s GOP I don’t think anyone would wonder what they mean by this:

Speaking of the braindead policies of the past …

by digby

I’m afraid that fresh, young face Marco Rubio is still a member of a party that hasn’t had a new idea since Ronald Reagan sold arms to Iran in exchange for hostages:

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio launched a Republican presidential campaign this week with a promise to reject “the leaders and ideas of the past.”

It was a not-so-subtle jab from a 43-year-old fresh-faced, senator at his likely 2016 competitors, Republican Jeb Bush and Democrat Hillary Clinton, whose families were cemented as political dynasties in the 1990s. A closer look at Rubio’s early priorities, however, suggests that many of his policy prescriptions were born in the same era he’s vowing to leave behind.

Moreover, he confused his opening argument by comparing today’s taxes and government spending to 1999, the year Bush took office as Florida governor and Bill Clinton was president.

A look at a few facts behind his rhetoric:

RUBIO: “Too many of our leaders and their ideas are stuck in the 20th century.”

THE FACTS: On foreign policy, taxes and government spending, many of Rubio’s policies are rooted in Republican positions from the 1990s or even earlier.

Foreign policy stands out in particular for Rubio, who embraces the same muscular approach that dominated the Reagan and last Bush administrations.

While some conservatives now favor a reduced international footprint, Rubio has shown an appetite for pre-emptive military action against the Islamic State group and has not ruled out ground forces. He has also become Congress’ leading opponent of Obama’s plans to normalize relations with Cuba. The senator said in a Tuesday interview that the United States should not open an embassy on the island and should continue its longstanding policy that has isolated Cuba since the early 1960s.

On spending, Rubio has repeatedly endorsed a constitutional amendment to balance the federal budget. Republican calls for such an amendment persisted throughout the Clinton years in the late 1990s after being embraced by President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.

Rubio is also calling for sweeping changes to entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security to control government spending. While the push for “premium supports” to control Medicare costs was born this century, pieces of Rubio’s plans to change Social Security are decades old. Specifically, he would repeal the “earnings test” for anyone who claims Social Security before full retirement age but keeps working.

The GOP’s 1992 platform outlined the same position. Rubio also wants to raise the retirement age, something George W. Bush suggested as a presidential candidate before the 2000 election.

This is kind of an unfair fact check. For Republicans these things are new ideas. Their old ideas (which they haven’t abandoned) are patriarchy, slavery and aristocracy. So let’s give them a teensy bit of credit for progress.

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QOTD: David Brooks (!)

by digby

This is very good.  And very right.  I have tried to make this point many times but haven’t done it so well:

Privacy is important to the development of full individuals because there has to be an interior zone within each person that other people don’t see. There has to be a zone where half-formed thoughts and delicate emotions can grow and evolve, without being exposed to the harsh glare of public judgment. There has to be a place where you can be free to develop ideas and convictions away from the pressure to conform. There has to be a spot where you are only yourself and can define yourself.

Privacy is important to families and friendships because there has to be a zone where you can be fully known. There has to be a private space where you can share your doubts and secrets and expose your weaknesses with the expectation that you will still be loved and forgiven and supported.

Privacy is important for communities because there has to be a space where people with common affiliations can develop bonds of affection and trust. There has to be a boundary between us and them. Within that boundary, you look out for each other; you rally to support each other; you cut each other some slack; you share fierce common loyalties.

When Snowden explains that they can watch your keystrokes as they’re being typed, then erased, this is what that means. They have the capability of looking into your thought processes. When they collect all of your google queries about various illnesses, they are seeing into your fears and worries. Knowing who you call and who you know says volumes about who you are even though these things are nobody’s business but your own. These are not abstract issues. They go directly to what it means to be a human being. We simply cannot exist without privacy. It will make us crazy.

I should also point out that he’s making this point to explain why he was originally leery of body cameras on police officers but has changed his mind, and I understand that too. Who wants to be filmed doing their job every day? But police officers are representatives of the government and they are imbued with awesome power over individual citizens. As I have said many times, they have a very tough but necessary job and they should be very well compensated for it and allowed many extra benefits (such as those generous pensions) to do it. I wouldn’t never begrudge police officers a dime for what they do. But that also comes with the responsibility to follow the law and the constitution and there are just too many perverse incentives and too much of a military culture in police work not to use the safeguards that body cams bring to the task.

It’s a delicate balance. But there’s a huge difference between the government using technology to intrude on the most private thoughts and habits of average Americans without cause and using it to ensure that police interactions with citizens are proper. After all, there’s nothing new in having police give a report after an incident. All that’s different about this is that there will now be independent documentation to back up what they say.

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Game changing inside baseball for dummies

by digby

I wrote about some tiresome Villagers for Salon today:

[N]onsensical attention to trivia is what drives campaign coverage, and one clue as to why that is can be found in this article in last weekend’s Washington Post style section:

With the presidential campaign just getting started, the race for the White House figures to be the most covered, and perhaps the most over-covered, story of 2015. Major news organizations have all but made that official by engaging in an arms race of sorts to hire more political journalists. The staffing binge comes as many in the news media are cutting back in other areas.

Perhaps the most ostentatious hire of the cycle is Bloomberg Media nabbing the king of conventional wisdom Mark Halperin and his sometime writing partner John Heilemann for a reported cool million each several months ago. They have been campaign reporting darlings ever since they published their 2008 book “Game Change” known for the HBO movie featuring Julianne Moore and the vicious, back-biting gossip obsessively directed at Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin and the wives of other candidates, from Cindy McCain to Elizabeth Edwards. (The latter portrayal will go down in history as one of the most gratuitously cruel portraits of a dying woman ever put on the page.)
[…]
If you’re curious about the “not dumbed down” coverage so far, here’s a little taste of their “definitive scouting report” on Hillary Clinton:

What she’s got: A gold-plated resume; policy expertise (foreign and domestic); a deep and wide fundraising base; staunch support among every key Democratic nominating constituency; no viable intra-party challenger (as of now); a strong, battle-tested staff; skin as thick as a rhino’s hide (about most things); unrivaled understanding of the hyper-partisan media freak show; historic nature of her candidacy; nostalgia for the Roaring Nineties; her husband.

What she lacks: A clear rationale for her candidacy; a compelling or even discernible message; evident skills at managing a winning campaign operation; natural gifts as a political performer; the consistent ability to free herself from the constant miasma of chaos and psycho/melodrama that have swirled around her for decades; the ready capacity to represent the future rather than the past.

So, she’s got a top résumé, enough money, no challenger, a competent staff and a good husband going for her. On the other hand, she’s an incompetent, talentless, aging, shrieking harpy with no reason to run. Oh, and she hasn’t mastered the magical ability to make Heilemann and Halperin disappear in a puff of smoke. How foolishly inept of her.

Read on … it’s going to be a long campaign.

Remedial 90s by Chris Hayes

by digby

This All-In series is not only vastly entertaining, if my twitter feed and Facebook feeds are representative, it’s also necessary. Way too many people have no idea what the real stories behind this “narrative” really are.

How do you explain the Clinton non-troversies of the 1990s to voters who may not remember them? Chris Hayes offers this handy guide. Episode One: Cookie-gate!

@HillaryClinton for Millenials: http://t.co/eKIrEdBP66 #inners
— All In w/Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) April 14, 2015

Hillarycare!:

“@hillaryclinton for Millennials: Episode 2″ http://t.co/a68duHI3jB #inners
— All In w/Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) April 15, 2015

Just remember kiddos: you too will look a lot older 20 years from now….

Looks like the Neocons won themselves a big one

by digby

I’m not shocked by too much these days but this is a shocker:

Republicans by a ratio of more than 2-to-1 say the U.S. should support Israel even when its stances diverge with American interests, a new Bloomberg Politics poll finds. Democrats, by roughly the same ratio, say the opposite is true and that the U.S. must pursue its own interests over Israel’s.

These are the flag-waving hyper-patriots — the one’s who yell “love it or leave it”.  I get that Israel is a major ally and one to which we’ve pledged our support. But since when do patriotic Americans believe that our government should put the interests of any foreign country above the interests of our own? WTH? That used to be called treason.

There must be something wrong with that poll.  If Republicans are so addled that they don’t understand what they’re saying here we’re in bigger trouble than I thought.