Month: April 2015

“I knew the cop didn’t do the right thing.”
by Tom Sullivan

When I heard the news on Tuesday night that a cop had shot and killed an unamrmed black man in South Carolina, and that it had been caught on video, my first thought was North Charleston. Parts are gritty. Working-class. Heavily African-American and Latino. The North Charleston department is not known for its subtlety or for its community policing.

The witness who shot the video came forward yesterday and appeared last night on MSNBC’s “All In with Chris Hayes.” Feidin Santana told MSNBC he was reluctant to come forward out of fear. He is still afraid:

“I felt that my life, with this information, might be in danger. I thought about erasing the video and just getting out of the community, you know Charleston, and living some place else,” the 23-year-old said. “I knew the cop didn’t do the right thing.”

Santana told reporters that he had, in fact, gone to the police to inform them he had video of the shooting, but left before speaking to anyone in charge. Instead he ran out and got a lawyer.

The question no one seems to have asked the North Charleston Police Department is what they might have done with that video if they had gotten it from the witness and he had never released it to the press.

The State newspaper out of Columbia reports that over the last five years police in South Carolina have fired on 209 suspects. While a few were accused of doing so illegally, “none has being convicted,” according to The State:

South Carolina has been in the news for a Highway Patrol officer’s shooting last September of an unarmed driver at a gas station after the officer stopped him for a seat-belt violation. But the vast majority of the suspects shot at in South Carolina during the past five years have been armed.

There’s video of that gas station shooting here.

Jeff Stein provides more stories from North Charleston at Salon. Here’s just one:

After going through the drive-through at a Kentucky Fried Chicken, Robert Wayne Bishop drove down Rivers Avenue in North Charleston before being pulled over. The officer told Bishop that “he was stopped randomly because he was driving through a high drug trafficking area,” according to federal court documents, and was ordered out of the vehicle.

Bishop was then pushed “face-first” onto the pavement, had the officer’s knees pushed into his neck and was dragged by his feet, according to records submitted by Bishop’s attorney.

“Another North Charleston Police Officer, Daniele, arrived on the scene with his canine and allowed the dog to ‘nip’ at Plaintiff, who sat in the road while handcuffed and bleeding from his nose and face,” the lawsuit states.

“As a result of the force … Plaintiff suffered a broken nose, a broken tooth, and a lacerated lip, all of which required surgery.”

The police officer had a different memory of the events, telling officials instead that Bishop had resisted arrest.

It has been a few years, but I have worked and stayed in North Charleston. Passing a shopping center on Rivers Avenue once, I watched as a couple of squad cars in the other lane emptied out, and all the officers immediately drew weapons on a black man standing in front of what might have been a liquor store. Never heard how that worked out.

I was going to write a post wondering who sets up and donates to the Officer Michael Thomas Slager Fundraising effort, which is now de rigueur for police shootings and bigoted business owners, when I found out that the GoFundMe site that was set up was shut down by GoFundMe as a violation of its terms and conditions.

Crowdfunding service GoFundMe removed a page Wednesday dedicated to raising money for fired South Carolina police officer Michael Slager, the website confirmed in a press release. Slager, a member of the force in North Charleston, was charged with murder Tuesday for the fatal shooting of black motorist Walter Scott and then dismissed.

 [snip]

“After review by our team, the campaign set up for Officer Slager was removed from GoFundMe due to a violation of our terms and conditions,” GoFundMe Public Relations Manager Kelsea Little told ThinkProgress. Little declined to say which terms were violated due to GoFundMe’s privacy policy.

There is much disgust and consternation in the LGBT community over a viral fundraiser effort, that has as of this writing, earned $842,387. Many have lamented, “If only our cause could raise that much money that fast.”

 I say, yes, we can.

So I looked and saw  that Cyndi Lauper’s True Colors Fund has set April 29 as the first national #40toNoneDay  to end #LGBT youth homelessness! And I thought, would it not be totally awesome if we equality supporters (and pizza lovers) could match that #MemoriesPizza  “charity” by April 29?  Can we match their amount and help homeless youth get off the street, learn life skills and get an education and jobs? 

Here is the gofundme link to donate

This fundraiser will close April 28th at midnight. For information on this campaign and No Hate Pizza Parties , go to pizza4equality.org 

The media love X vs. Y stories, they need them for the drama. It gives just another knife twist into the “a nation divided” stories. 

You can seethe at jerks for acting like jerks, or figure out a way to help real victims of bigotry. And then the media will pick up that story for their new X vs. Y piece, until the next video makes their ears prick up and their mouth water.

Rand Paul’s biggest booster

by digby

Someone should mention this to all the members of the press corp. I get the feeling they don’t know that Rand Paul is a conspiracy theory weirdo:

A fringe right-wing radio host who believes the government was behind 9/11, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, and several other catastrophes, has been a key figure in the political rise of Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY)…

Paul has credited Alex Jones, who heads conspiracy website Infowars.com and an eponymous radio program, for being a vital part of his 2010 Senate campaign. Jones endorsed Paul, turned out followers to his events, and partnered with Paul for fundraising, at one point crashing his website. Since Paul’s election to the Senate, Jones has continued to serve as a key Paul booster, including endorsing him for 2016.

The fringe nature of Jones’ program is apparent during the introduction of one of Jones’ YouTube videos featuring Paul. The video begins with images of Nazi soldiers goose-stepping next to a Nazi flag-draped White House, and a poster claiming the government covered up 9/11. Such material is regular fodder for Jones, who is “one of the earliest and most influential 9/11 conspiracy theorists.”

Paul has been a longtime guest on The Alex Jones Show, originating from Jones’ friendship with Rand’s father, former Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX). Jones said last year he first interviewed Rand in 1996 and was “probably one of the first people to ever interview” him.

Jones hosted Paul several times during his 2010 Senate race, telling listeners that he “can’t stress enough how important this race for the Kentucky Senate is.” Jones called Paul the “real McCoy” who will fight “against the New World Order” and “stop the thieving, stop the gang raping” in Washington. Jones said on his January 26, 2015, broadcast that he privately encouraged Paul to run for Senate.

Paul’s alliance with Jones was an issue in his Senate race. The campaign of then-Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson, Paul’s Republican primary opponent, criticized Paul’s connections to Jones. A group called Coalition for Kentucky Values ran an ad criticizing Paul’s ties to Jones during the primary.

After Paul was elected senator, Jones told him during a celebratory interview that the election was “a great victory for all lovers of liberty” and similar to George Washington’s victory at the Battle of Trenton. In a 2012 interview, Jones told listeners that Paul “has actually been fulfilling his campaign promises” and is “refreshing,” uncompromising, and “amazing.”

Jones started encouraging Paul to run for president just weeks after he won his 2010 Senate race, calling him the second coming of Washington.

Paul has clearly been grateful for Jones’ support and affection. During a 2010 appearance about his candidacy, he told Jones and his listeners, “we can’t do it without you.” He described the radio host as one of the first people to give him “a fair shake” and “representation” in the political debate. And Paul said he hears from Jones fans “across the country and all across Kentucky.”

Jones and Paul pushed fringe conspiracy theories and rhetoric during Paul’s appearances. Paul worried that “martial law” with “mandatory” vaccines could surface. Paul agreed with Jones that Democrats want to start a “shooting war” marked by ammunition confiscation. Paul predicted that an “army of armed EPA agents” would enforce climate regulations. He connected the Obama administration to Nazi Germany. And he promised Jones he would help him fight the “globalist agenda” and help expose a White House adviser’s purported support for eugenics and forced drugs in the water supply.

Paul said Jones has influenced him, stating that he wouldn’t join the Bilderberg Group — a favorite target of New World Order conspiracy theories — in part because he’s “seen your videos” and he’d be “afraid” of Jones protesting him. Jones called Paul a “listener” to his show this year.

Links to all that are here.

The press corps seems to think that Paul’s stances on civil liberties are what make him a fringe character (which really says something about the state of journalism.) They are wrong. This is the stuff that makes him a fringe character who cannot be taken seriously as a presidential candidate.

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Arms for the poor…

by digby

Here’s a disturbing little factoid:

With the end of the Obama presidency just around the corner, discussions of his administration’s foreign policy legacy are already well under way. But one central element of that policy has received little attention: the Obama administration’s dramatic acceleration of U.S. weapons exports.

The numbers are astonishing. In President Obama’s first five years in office, new agreements under the Pentagon’s Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program—the largest channel for U.S. arms exports—totaled over $169 billion. After adjusting for inflation, the volume of major deals concluded by the Obama administration in its first five years exceeds the amount approved by the Bush administration in its full eight years in office by nearly $30 billion. That also means that the Obama administration has approved more arms sales than any U.S. administration since World War II.

The majority of the Obama administration’s arms sales—over 60 percent–have gone to the Middle East and Persian Gulf, with Saudi Arabia topping the list at $46 billion in new agreements. This is particularly troubling given the complex array of conflicts raging throughout the region.

The Saudi intervention in Yemen is just the latest example of the potentially disastrous consequences of runaway U.S. arms exports. The Obama administration has set new records for the value of U.S. weapons deals with the Saudi regime. The Saudis have used U.S.-supplied weaponry to help put down the democracy movement in Bahrain, and now to expand the conflict in Yemen to the point that it may spark a region-wide war. In addition, over $500 million in U.S weaponry destined for Yemeni security forces has gone missing, and may have found its way to Houthi forces or even to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The faction of the Yemeni army that has joined hands with the Houthi rebellion has ample U.S.-supplied armaments as well. It’s hard to imagine a clearer example of the negative consequences of aggressive arms dealing than the current situation in Yemen.

To be fair, the Bush administration has done more than its fair share in proliferating weaponry to current and potential U.S. adversaries in the Middle East. A significant portion of the $25 billion in arms and training supplied to Iraqi security forces—most of it on Bush’s watch—was abandoned to Islamic State (ISIS or IS) forces when they swept through northern Iraq in summer 2014, and IS also captured weapons that the CIA supplied to “moderate” Syrian factions. The Obama administration’s $500 million plan to arm and train forces to fight IS in Syria may not fare much better.

Good lord. This is our manufacturing base now, isn’t it?

I wish I thought that electing someone different would change this but honestly I don’t think anyone can or will do it without some huge external event It’s a cliche but this is literally the Military Industrial Complex Eisenhower warned against — it’s a self-perpetuating war machine.

Rand Paul’s condescension

by digby

Joan Walsh discusses his most recent hissy fit when a woman journalist had the nerve to ask him tough questions:

After a few pleasantries – Paul claimed he was too interested in sports, “academics and reading” to ponder a career in politics when he was younger – Guthrie asked him his position on the “framework” of an Iran nuclear deal announced last week by President Obama. Paul said he thought only Congress can lift the sanctions it imposed. That’s a controversial view, but widely shared. Fair enough.

Then Guthrie asked about three ways he’s changed his “unorthodox” foreign policy views in recent years: He once said Iran wasn’t a threat, he opposed foreign aid to Israel and he favored defense cuts; he’s flipped on all three.

Before she could finish the question, though, Paul interrupted her: “Before we go, before we go, before we go through a litany…why don’t you let me explain before talking over me, ok?”

“Sure,” Guthrie said. But Paul continued to berate her.

Before we go through a litany of things you say I’ve changed on, why don’t you ask me a question, ‘Have I changed my opinion on it?” That would be sort of a better way to approach an interview.

OK: Is Iran still not a threat?

No no no no no no no no; listen, you’ve editorialized, let me answer a question. You ask a question, “Have my views changed?” instead of editorializing and saying my views have changed. OK, let’s start out with regard to foreign aid.

Then he simplistically and condescendingly walked her through the world according to Rand, with one more peevish “let me answer the question” about his evolving position on aid to Israel.

Walsh reminds her readers of this earlier back and forth between Paul and a female interviewer:

If all this sounds familiar, it should: Paul had a similar tantrum with another female interviewer, CNBC’s Kelly Evans, just two months ago. You’ll recall: Evans asked Paul about his odd statements questioning vaccine policy in the wake of a dangerous measles outbreak. The Kentucky senator not only bristled, he rudely shushed the news anchor, literally, with a finger to his lips. “Let me finish. Hey, Kelly, shhh. Calm down a bit here, Kelly. Let me answer the question.”

As she points out, both of these were tough interviews for Paul since they questioned him closely on his hypocrisy and inconsistency. And this is an old trick conservatives use because “attacking” the so-called liberal media is ever popular with their followers. But he does seem to have a particularly nasty approach with female interviewers, talking down to them like children in a way that stands out even among right-wingers. The last time I saw anyone do it quite so blatantly was when a drunk-appearing Dick Armey said to Joan Walsh on Hardball that he was glad he wasn’t married to her and forced to hear the sound of her voice every day.

Chuck Todd nervously told Andrea Mitchell this morning that Paul may want to take a look at a video of these exchanges to see how looks. It was the closest I’ve seen any mainstream male journalist come to saying that Paul is acting like a sexist prick when he does this. Progress … ?

Update: Brad Friedman made another interesting observation about the exchange which was obscured by Paul’s nasty demeanor:

While it’s true Paul appears to have trouble dealing respectfully with female interviewers and is now wildly reversing many of his previously strongly held foreign policy positions in hopes of wooing GOP voters, it’s the mindset behind Guthrie’s opening question which disturbs me far more. And it’s one that we’ve seen before in the supposedly “mainstream” media…

“You seem to have changed over the years. You once said Iran was not a threat, now you say it is. You once proposed sending foreign aid to Israel, you now support it, at least for the time being. And you once offered to drastically cut defense spending and now you want to increase it 16 percent,” Guthrie asked in her initial question, touching off Paul’s obfuscating interruptions, before she added: “So, I just wonder if you’ve mellowed out?”

In other words, setting aside Paul’s bluster and objections to be confronted with his past positions, the increased militarism of saber-rattling with Iran, sending more military aid to Israel and increasing an already wildly bloated U.S. defense budget is, in the eyes of Guthrie (and, quite representative of the mainstream corporate/media/political elite here) akin to having “mellowed out”.

Of course. Being a warmonger is the default normal mainstream position. The radical weirdo position is being for peace.

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Speaking of progressive challengers…

by digby

This went out to Blue America members today:

Yesterday, having forced Wall Street faux-Democrat Rahm Emanuel into a runoff, progressives came up short– although doing far better than pundits had predicted. Chuy raised $5.2 million, a substantial amount… but Rahm had over $30 million to spend, most of it from just a few super-wealthy families benefiting financially from his administration. That Chuy did as well as he did is a testament to local field organizers and an ability to collect small contributions from a wide audience.

The next great American city struggling to get out from under the grip of corrupt governance is Philadelphia, where the primary is just over a month away, May 19. Blue America’s candidate is Jim Kenny and Susie Madrak spoke with him and his staffers and has this report:

The first thing you need to know about Philadelphia is that it’s Ground Zero for the charter schools agenda. It’s the first city where charter schools took over, and it’s been “a miserable failure,” according to Democratic mayoral candidate and former City Councilman Jim Kenney.

The second thing you need to know is, Jim Kenney is the only Democrat running in the May 19th Democratic primary who is not a charter school supporter.

The third thing you need to know is, his closest competition is Anthony Hardy Williams, a fervently pro-charter state legislator who is funded by a trio of hedge fund billionaires from Susquehanna International Group (the primary benefactors of the generous tax credits Williams supplied via his school voucher legislation) and have pledged to spend a million dollars on last-minute ads.

So this race is important. Really important. The low-turnout Democratic primary is the de facto mayoral election, and it will be all about who gets the vote out. Money makes a huge difference.

Jim Kenney isn’t only against things; he has a great progressive track record. Kenney is the reason Philadelphia was the first major city to offer same-sex partner benefits to employees. Last year, thanks to Kenney’s tireless work on City Council, Philadelphia decriminalized marijuana.

He also successfully pushed Mayor Michael Nutter to drop the city’s cooperation with so-called “ICE holds”– turning immigrants over to the feds on minor infractions.

And you should see the enthusiasm the famously-hyperkinetic Kenney displays when he talks about immigrants as “the future of Philadelphia.”

“My family were Irish immigrants. No Irish need apply, right? We need these people, we want them,” he said.

The Jesuit-trained Kenney is a firm believer in public service and social justice. That’s one reason why he also has a plan to bring universal pre-K into the city.

He’s also authored a plan to pair each community school with onsite social services – job training, counseling, literacy training.

Kenney was just endorsed by a broad coalition of African-American leaders (the same ones who supported the then-unknown Gov. Tom Wolf), and has sparked broad support from the millennium transplants, who love his in-your-face style. Philadelphia Magazine said:

“Kenney has found a potent political identity in that liminal space between old Philly and new. Nobody on the political stage today better blends the characters of those two great, colliding halves of the city. At his best, Kenney is like a walking hybrid of Two Street and a pop-up beer garden. It’s a combination that makes him a formidable candidate, with the potential to appeal to a broad swath of voters.”

PA Working Families and NOW have endorsed him, as well as local LGBT leaders. He has deep support from almost all local unions– including the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers and their more activist offshoot, Caucus of Working Educators.

The support he needs now is yours. Fight back against wealthy special interests and send a message: Once again, we’ve rejected the elite interests for a proud progressive agenda– just like we did in New York and Chicago.

Let’s put another urban center in the progressive “win” column.

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The existential threat of liberal narratives

by digby

My piece for Salon today is about the new right-wing meme about liberals perpetrating hoaxes to advance a “liberal narrative” about rape, police violence and income inequality. Because apparently, conservatives either believe those things don’t exist. Or perhaps they are simply in favor of them. Either way, the meme is gaining steam.

Oddly enough, conservatives are celebrating with high fives and wild excitement. Their happiness at the retraction of this story doesn’t appear to be based upon the singular idea that an injustice was done to particular individuals, or that a fine public university’s reputation (ahem) was wrongly besmirched. (Although they do pay lip service to that.) In reality, conservative jubilation over the Rolling Stone debacle is about something altogether more discomfiting: They evidently have staked out the position that rape doesn’t happen very often and that women routinely lie about it. They are saying that the idea of rape being a problem on campus is a false “liberal narrative.”

Here’s Brit Hume of Fox News, spitting fire on Monday:

Rolling Stone magazine’s overdue apology and retraction for its bogus story about that UVA fraternity rape brings to three the number of nationally exposed whoppers that have made their way into the national bloodstream. First was the claim that a white cop in Ferguson Missouri shot dead a young black man as he stood before him with his hands up. Then Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid refused even to try to defend his outright lie that Mitt Romney had paid no income taxes. And now the Columbia Journalism Review’s indictment of Rolling Stone’s recklessness on the UVA story. Three stories on widely divergent topics with one common thread: they all fit nicely into the favored political narratives of the American left. The claim of an epidemic of sexual assaults on college campuses. The idea of Mitt Romney and other businessmen as “fat cats” who unjustly enrich themselves at the expense of others. And the notion of American police forces as hotbeds of racist violence.

The three stories have collapsed but the larger claims they fed live on. Today at the White House, for example, a question to spokesman Josh Earnest about the UVA case. Was it about those falsely accused? Or the damage to the university or the fraternity? Of course not. It was about whether the exposure of the false story might quote, discourage other victims of sexual assault from coming forward.

The Rolling Stone music, you might say, has stopped. But the beat goes on…

Hume essentially says that there is no problem of rape on campus, no problem with wealthy businessmen using special loopholes to avoid paying taxes and no problem with young black males being unfairly targeted by police forces around the country. These are all just false “notions” that were given currency by lies and hoaxes perpetrated for the purpose of spreading a false narrative — which now exist independently of the false stories that “fed” them.

Hume’s timing for this rant wasn’t all that great since we just now have seen a video of a white police officer murdering a black suspect as he tries to run away. Of course, last night he was on Megyn Kelly’s show last night going on about the lying beyotches on campus. He didn’t have anything to say about the “false narrative” over the shooting in South Carolina. That is the one that really upsets him. And the rich guy thing.  Of course …

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This is the point of progressive challenges

by digby

Today on Tamron Hall’s show on MSNBC she questions Chicago reporter Lynn Sweet about Rahm Emanuel’s victory last night in the Chicago mayoral race. Hall noted that Rahm claimed last night that the race will make him a “better mayor” and said he was grateful for the challenge. Sweet said:

We’ll see how long he remains humbled. I’d guess 10 or 20 minutes because he did win. But here’s what will be different.The campaign spawned an opposition that’s not going to go away. He had governed mainly by fiat in the first four years and I think his ability to just call the shots now is diminished with this…

Progressives will always have a hard time competing with people like Rahm, who has access to vast amounts of money. Sometimes they will win, nonetheless, and that’s great. It’s the goal. But these races are important regardless because they create progressive organization, experience and have the capacity to become a real opposition and at least dilute the power of the plutocrats.

One of the most frustrating aspects of progressive activism is having to defend the idea of raising money and organizing around progressive candidates who are facing uphill fights. But defend it we must because too many people believe that unless someone is obviously politically crippled there’s no point in challenging him or her because it’s unlikely you’ll win. Aside from the obvious fact that if you don’t bother to compete you’ll never win, the reality is that that politics requires long term strategy, reinforcement of ideas and philosophy and the building of coalition and institutions over time. Campaigns are a great vehicle for doing those things and are always worthwhile for their own sake. You may not always win, but the experience of doing it advances the cause, sometimes by increments and sometimes in great leaps.

If what Sweet says is true, that Emmanuel now has an opposition and will have to work harder to get buy-in from the people or face a backlash, then this was well worth doing.

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A Vote in April on Fast Track & TPP?

by Gaius Publius

A what-to-expect note on TPP. There will be several battles; the first is coming in the Senate Finance Committee, likely in April, with a vote on “Fast Track” enabling legislation. (“Enabling” legislation means Fast Track enables TPP by disabling Congress’s ability to debate and amend it.) If Fast Track passes out of committee, it will go to the Senate floor. If it passes the Senate, it will go to the House. If Fast Track passes both houses of Congress, TPP will be introduced. If Fast Track fails at any of these points, TPP will never see the light of day (unless Wikileaks leaks more of it).

Therefore, the first chance we have to kill TPP is to kill Fast Track in the Senate Finance Committee. (To help that effort, see the last few paragraphs below, about Sen. Ron Wyden. Then send him a nice note discussing his re-election.)

The White House Thinks TPP Will Pass

According to this piece in The Hill, the administration thinks Fast Track will succeed in the Finance Committee and Congress as a whole, while left-leaning (pro-worker) forces are pushing Democrats hard to defeat it. The Hill reports this about the administration’s view (my emphasis throughout):

An Obama administration official said Wednesday that lawmakers will pass fast-track within the next month.

“We
believe that the votes are there to move forward,” said Catherine
Novelli, undersecretary of State for economic growth, energy and the
environment, in Singapore.

“We do expect it to be passed soon, within the next month or so,” she said, according to a Reuters report.

They might be right. There may be enough NAFTA-style (mainly bought) congresspeople in both parties to get Fast Track out of committee and passed on a floor vote in both houses.

Progressives Are Pushing Back Hard

Or maybe not. Left-leaning (populist and pro-worker) groups and all labor unions are opposed. The group Credo is being particularly aggressive in their opposition:

Petition urges Hillary to oppose Obama on trade

Liberal groups are pushing Hillary Clinton to oppose the Obama
administration’s ambitious trade agenda and swing momentum their way.

Credo
Action unveiled a petition on Thursday calling on the former secretary
of State and Democratic presidential front-runner to publicly oppose
trade promotion authority (TPA), also known as “fast track,” and the
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

“We can get a huge boost in our
fight to stop this secret trade deal, which is being negotiated behind
closed doors by the governments of a dozen countries in collusion with
corporate interests, if the next leader of the Democratic Party publicly
goes on record against fast-track and the TPP now,” the petition says.

Credo
argues in the petition that the trade deal is in trouble because of the
work of activists who have taken the fight to voters.

Clinton has
yet to play her hand on the issues. While she has acknowledged that the
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) — a deal between the U.S.,
Mexico and Canada that her husband, former President Bill Clinton,
ushered through Congress — likely hurt U.S. workers, she has shown no
signs of opposing the current agenda.

Actually, Clinton has shown many signs of supporting neo-liberal “free” trade in general.

This is good strategy on Credo’s part, since Clinton is front-and-center these days due to her widely expected candidacy announcement (note that there are no ifs in Credo’s phrasing, “the next leader of the Democratic party”). She’s also front-and-center due to her widely reported ties, in this Warren Wing moment, to Wall Street and Big Money in general. Ultimately the question becomes:

The question is a sword that cuts two ways; it attempts to force Clinton’s hand and also the Senate’s. From that mentioned petition:

What does Secretary Clinton really believe on trade? If she wants to be president, she must commit to us that she stands for and with us.

As First Lady, she reportedly supported North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).[1]

As a senator, she voted for numerous free trade agreements, but she also voted against giving President George W. Bush Fast Track authority — the same authority Bill Clinton employed during the 1990s to pass NAFTA and that President Obama is now requesting.[2]

As a candidate in 2008, she criticized NAFTA and swore to do things differently.[3] But then, as Secretary of State, she actively helped to pass the very deals she vehemently opposed as a candidate, including the job-killing Korea agreement, and a free trade agreement with Colombia – a country notorious for its horrific labor rights and unionist assassinations.[4] And, she was a vocal promoter for the Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty back in 2011.[5]

As Clinton makes the move towards her near-certain presidential campaign in her pursuit for the nomination of the Democratic Party, now is the time for her make it clear where she stands on a trade deal which has been called “NAFTA on steroids” – for good reason. If Secretary Clinton wants to become President Clinton, she must come out and oppose Fast Track authority for trade deals like the TPP.

That petition is here, by the way. If you want to do a progressive good deed — by pressuring Clinton and money-led senators as well — feel free to lend your name by signing it.

DC Democratic Leaders Want a “Path to Yes”

Mainstream Democrats — and I include “progressive” Nancy Pelosi here (who also supported Social Security benefit cuts) — are still seeking “a path to yes” on TPP. From the same Hill article:

Democratic leaders like House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.)
have said they want to find a way to “yes” on the trade deals.

But first her caucus intends to closely examine whether the TPP is good for U.S. workers.

This is both the problem and the “out,” the hoped for “path to yes.” Finding a way to declare TPP somehow “good for U.S. workers” is all the ground cover any money-financed Democrat needs to follow the yellow brick road and vote Yes on Fast Track. I’m hearing that Pelosi is not actually in favor of TPP (via private pushback against this earlier article), but vehicles like The Hill keep printing otherwise. If Nancy Pelosi wants to make these articles say something different, I suspect she knows how to do that — tell them to print something different. I’m sure they’d be glad to.

TPP Is the Next Piketty Battle

TPP is the next “Piketty battle” in the war between the Rich and the Rest, and it’s a major one. NAFTA involved three countries. TPP, at last report, involves twelve:

The Hill is aware of how critical this fight is (as you should be as well):

Meanwhile, the trade debate is hitting at a critical time for lawmakers up for reelection or chasing a bid for the White House.

Labor
unions and other groups opposed to fast-track are pressuring Democrats
to bring a halt to the trade agenda or face backlash at the polls.

“I
don’t think anyone can credibly argue that America’s trade policies are
accomplishing our key national objectives — whether you point to our
chronic current account trade deficits, our unsustainable net
international debt, or the broader labor market data on wage stagnation
and growing inequality,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in
a Thursday op-ed in The Philadelphia Inquirer.

“If we keep at it, this could turn out to be a decent deal for us.”

Does that last sentence, attributed to Trumka, frighten you? It did me until I looked up the source and found his next sentence:

“If we keep at it, this could turn out to be a decent deal for us.
But that won’t happen with fast track.”

On reading the whole source paragraph, it seems Trunka thinks that adding provisions to “fix weak rules of origin that China will exploit” and others to “address climate change and rebalance the pro-Wall Street tilt in the financial services, procurement, and food safety chapters” — that somehow this kind of language will be make TPP a good deal.

It won’t. Here’s how that fantasy of NAFTA-enforced environmental regulations — used to sell NAFTA to the unwary — actually plays out:

After over ten years, it is now evident that in many ways NAFTA’s
environmental initiatives were flawed from the outset, sundered by
decisive weaknesses within its institutional frameworks and
intentionally imprecise mandates. These only compounded the problems of
insufficient funding and support for environmental efforts. Several
specific shortcomings are particularly noteworthy. First off, in
relative terms, NAFTA’s environmental institutions are painfully under
funded: the CEC’s original $9 million budget has remained unchanged.
Furthermore, the language of the agreement framing the institutions was
made intentionally murky. The use of non-binding, toothless phrases like
“fostering protection,” underscores the NAEEC’s fundamental lack of
regulatory authority. What few rules do exist regarding monetary fines
or sanctions are practically dormant, and serve more as a symbolic
gesture than as a means of enforcement.

This is the way any progressive-friendly selling points will end up: underfunded, under-defined, unenforced.

But if Trumka wants to make Fast Track his bottom line, he’s helping kill TPP for good, environment-protection “mandates” or not. TPP is so toxic that its authors don’t want its text to become public until four years after it’s signed. That’s a toxic treaty. Without Fast Track, TPP is dead.

To which I add only this: Wonderful news; now please help. Those votes are coming soon. You can start with Sen. Ron Wyden, the pro-TPP Democratic gatekeeper (enabler) for “free trade moderates” in the Senate. Why Wyden? See here. Ron Wyden’s contact information is here:

If TPP passes, on the economic front it won’t matter who’s president. And if the “first woman president” abets sending yet more jobs to Asia in order to send yet more money to billionaire cash accounts … maybe we need a different “first woman president.” Or none at all until we find a good one. Just a first-woman-president thought…

(A version of this piece first appeared at DownWithTyranny. GP article archive here.)

GP

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Bringing back the nightmares
by Tom Sullivan

Matthew Yglesias yesterday reminded us of how just a dozen short years ago Donald Rumsfeld took time out from overseeing Moe, Larry, and Curly in Baghdad to send this memo to Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feith. Rummy had a few extra things he needed Doug to clean up for him:

The first time I recall seeing Feith’s name was in a Salon expose a year later on the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans. Feith, described as “a case study in how not to run a large organization,” and OSP stovepiped raw intelligence to Vice President Dick Cheney’s office for use in building a public case for the Iraq invasion. Gen. Tommy Franks was less kind in his assessment of Feith.

Where are they now? Still waiting for the “sweets and flowers,” are they?