Month: April 2015

Oh God, not another one

by digby

All the wingnuts are claiming that “hands up, don’t shoot” was a hoax and that this sort of thing never happens:

A white police officer in North Charleston, S.C., was charged with murder on Tuesday after a video surfaced showing him shooting and killing an apparently unarmed black man in the back while he ran away.

The officer, Michael T. Slager, 33, had said he feared for his life because the man took his stun gun in a scuffle after a traffic stop on Saturday. A video, however, shows the officer firing eight times as the man — Walter L. Scott, 50 — fled.

The North Charleston mayor announced the state charges at a news conference Tuesday evening.

The shooting comes on the heels of high-profile incidents of police officers using lethal force in New York, Cleveland, Ferguson, Mo., and elsewhere around the country. The deaths have sparked a national debate over whether police are too quick to use force, particularly in cases involving black men.

A White House task force has recommended a host of changes to the nation’s police policies, and President Obama dispatched Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., to cities around the country to try to improve police relations with minority neighborhoods.

North Charleston is the state’s third-largest city with a population of about 100,000. African-Americans make up about 47 percent of residents, and whites account for about 37 percent. The city police department is about 80 percent white, according to data collected by the Justice Department in 2007, the most recent period available.

You can see the video here.

Update: Here’s what they said before the video turned up

On Saturday the police released a statement alleging that Scott had attempted to gain control of a Taser from Slager and that he was shot in a struggle over the weapon. The Post And Courier reported the initial story:

Police in a matter of hours declared the occurrence at the corner of Remount and Craig roads a traffic stop gone wrong, alleging the dead man fought with an officer over his Taser before deadly force was employed.
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A statement released by North Charleston police spokesman Spencer Pryor said a man ran on foot from the traffic stop and an officer deployed his department-issued Taser in an attempt to stop him. 

That did not work, police said, and an altercation ensued as the men struggled over the device. Police allege that during the struggle the man gained control of the Taser and attempted to use it against the officer. 

The officer then resorted to his service weapon and shot him, police alleged.

The story clearly came from Slager but he was able to use the authoritative voice of the police department to bolster his narrative. Meanwhile, Scott could only be defended by friends who did not witness the incident. “Walter was a nice, good, honest person… He was a grown man working hard to take care of his family,” said Samuel Scott, the victim’s cousin.

By Sunday, the police department had clammed up and refused to release any additional information about the events. (It’s unclear when the department became aware of the existance of the video.)

On Monday, Slager sought to reinforce his narrative, this time releasing a statement through his attorney. From The Post And Courier:

Slager thinks he properly followed all procedures and policies before resorting to deadly force, lawyer David Aylor said in a statement.
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“When confronted, Officer Slager reached for his Taser — as trained by the department — and then a struggle ensued,” Aylor said. “The driver tried to overpower Officer Slager in an effort to take his Taser.”

Seconds later, the report added, he radioed that the suspect wrested control of the device. Even with the Taser’s prongs deployed, the device can still be used as a stun gun to temporarily incapacitate someone.

Slager “felt threatened and reached for his department-issued firearm and fired his weapon,” his attorney added.

If the video had not surfaced, that’s where the story might have ended. In nearly all cases where an officer fires a weapon, that is the end of the story. A study by The State found “in South Carolina have fired their weapons at 209 suspects in the past five years” but none were convicted. “We ruled all the shootings were justified – and we looked at dozens and dozens of them,” one former prosecutor told The State.

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Who’s your mommy?

by digby

Unless you believe that the votes of a majority of white males are the only votes worth getting, this seems to show a clear path for the Democratic party:

Republicans hold a 49%-40% lead over the Democrats in leaned party identification among whites. The GOP’s advantage widens to 21 points among white men who have not completed college (54%-33%) and white southerners (55%-34%). The Democrats hold an 80%-11% advantage among blacks, lead by close to three-to-one among Asian Americans (65%-23%) and by more than two-to-one among Hispanics (56%-26%). Women lean Democratic by 52%-36%….Democrats lead by 22 points (57%-35%) in leaned party identification among adults with post-graduate degrees.

And Democrats need to get them out to vote. Which means addressing their concerns.

Quote ‘o the Day: Rand Paul

by digby

“I support the Reagan approach to the Iran negotiations.”

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The middle class millionaire’s troubles

by digby

This is just … well, let’s just say it’s kind of funny:

He lives rent-free in an Upper East Side mansion, owns two homes in a prime Brooklyn neighborhood and earns a six-figure salary supervising hundreds of thousands of employees.

But Mayor Bill de Blasio is now facing a hurdle familiar to many of his constituents: navigating the financial aid process to pay for his children’s college educations.

Mr. de Blasio’s son, Dante, a senior at Brooklyn Technical High School, is currently mulling offers from a short list of exclusive schools, with Yale and Brown among the front-runners, according to people familiar with his options.

And with Mr. de Blasio’s daughter, Chiara, still attending college in California, not even the mayor of New York is immune, it seems, to seeking relief from the high cost of higher education.

“There’s going to be a big challenge in figuring out financial aid and visits and all sorts of stuff,” Mr. de Blasio said, when asked about Dante’s plans at the end of an unrelated interview in his office last week.

Mr. de Blasio said he did not expect his son to decide on a school until later this month. Aides to the mayor declined to elaborate further on Dante’s intentions or the family’s financial considerations, saying they were private matters.

The soaring cost of college is often seized upon by Mr. de Blasio’s fellow liberals, who call it both a symptom and a cause of the nation’s rising inequality.

But the college process has cast Mayor de Blasio as a curious test case: His family is now affluent by most standards. Mr. de Blasio is paid $225,000 as mayor and the family receives tens of thousands of dollars in rental income from two properties in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

And yet, the de Blasio family’s argument for aid would not be unreasonable, according to financial aid experts — a striking testament to the increasingly extreme costs of higher education.

The mayor’s daughter, Chiara, attends Santa Clara University, a private Jesuit institution where tuition, room and board is roughly $55,000 a year. If Dante were to attend Yale, for example, tuition, room and board would come to about $60,000 a year.

Particularly with two children in college, the six-figure income “is not going to disqualify him from demonstrating need,” said Kalman A. Chany, president of Campus Consultants, a firm based in Manhattan that advises families on financial aid.

And sky-high tuition has squeezed even upper middle-class families, said Mark Kantrowitz, the publisher of edvisors.com, a financial aid website.

“When you have colleges that are charging 50, 60, $70,000 a year, everybody is going to struggle to pay for college,” he said.

But, Mr. Kantrowitz added of the mayor, “We’re still talking about someone whose income is pretty close to the top 1 percent.”

In 2013, the mayor and his wife, Chirlane McCray, earned $52,200 in rent from a modest duplex they own in Park Slope, a home once occupied by Mr. de Blasio’s mother. And the family rowhouse down the street, which the de Blasios left for Gracie Mansion in Manhattan, was rented last year at $4,975 a month. The combined value of the homes will reach an estimated $2.8 million in the upcoming tax year, according to the New York City Department of Finance.

That additional income, however, might be offset: On his tax return last year, for instance, Mr. de Blasio declared a $6,493 loss on one house after accounting for mortgage costs, depreciation and other expenses. Ms. McCray draws no salary as chairwoman of the city’s nonprofit arm.

That’s a very moving story of middle class struggle.

*And yes, I realize that New York is expensive so money doesn’t go as far there as it does in other parts of the country. But once again, this is the median income of the citizens of New York City:

Measured by median income, Manhattan and (especially) Brooklyn are much poorer than you think. Manhattan’s median annual household income is $66,739, while Brooklyn’s is a mere $44,850. Its less fashionable neighbor, Queens, outearns Brooklyn at $54,373 per year. New York City’s most suburban borough, Staten Island, is also its richest, with a median household income of $70,295…

I certainly don’t begrudge the mayor a good living or think that owning real estate in the city is a crime. But let’s just say that if you have assets of nearly 3 million in real estate it’s unseemly to be presented as an average Joe American struggling to get along, I don’t care where you live.

You see this stuff often enough in the paper of record that it becomes clear why there’s such a disconnect in our economic discussions. It’s as if they live in a different world.

Also too, this.

The mainstream Democratic position on Social Security is expansion

by digby

I wrote a piece for Salon this morning about the evolution on Social Security that’s taken place over the past few years. This brings it up to date:

On Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported:

For years, liberal Democrats have fought against proposals to cut Social Security benefits. Now, they’re pushing the party not just to defend benefits but to increase them, and that could present a problem for Hillary Clinton.

The call for higher benefits is a marked difference from recent years in which the White House and Republicans were negotiating deficit-cutting deals, leaving liberals to argue merely for staving off benefit cutbacks. Separately, many experts in both parties have long argued that extending the solvency of the program would require a combination of benefit cuts and tax increases.

New legislation to increase benefits and raise the cap on payroll taxes (to include higher earnings) now has 58 co-sponsors in the House. The Senate voted on a similar measure and had 42 votes. This is a huge change from the reflexive handwringing over deficits and solvency that characterized the last three decades.

The Wall Street Journal contends that this is a problem for Hillary Clinton because she, like President Obama, has endorsed benefits cuts in the past. The article notes that her presumed rival former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley is a proponent of expansion in contrast to her more conservative position. But the truth is that nobody knows what Clinton thinks about this at the moment. The last time she ran, cutting benefits was as mainstream as it gets. Indeed, O’Malley himself signed on to something called “A New Agenda for the New Decade” back in 2000 which was filled with all the usual solvency hysterics and called for “reform” of Social Security. He thought it was a terrific idea to have low income people be able to “invest” in Retirement Savings Accounts so they could save for their own retirement. (Because they have so much extra money …) In his defense, that was the most liberal position at the time.

So, we have come a long way. The former Social Security reformer O’Malley has had a huge change of heart and is now agitating for expansion. The U.S. Congress now features a large faction of progressives and centrists in both houses backing the same. Despite the Wall Street Journal’s assumption that such a change is a “problem” for Hillary Clinton, the way this wind is blowing suggests that she will have no problem at all if, like O’Malley, she has evolved to support it. She will likely have a big problem if she hasn’t.

And it’s fair to assume that the Republicans do not like this one bit. The Democrats have marched right into the belly of the beast with a peace offering. After all, the people who stand to benefit the most from this are the most hardcore members of the Republican base. Will they turn down a raise?

I don’t know what Clinton will say when she’s asked about this. But that vote in the Senate a couple of weeks ago is a huge signal that the Party has moved on this issue.

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Why Rand Paul’s Anti-tax Libertarian-ish Ideas Excite Some Men

By Spocko

I can barely wait for the Rand Paul announcement for President. It’s perfect timing. I know he will be talking about his views on taxes. It would be interesting if someone dug into where some of the craziness comes from.

Tax time makes right wingers crazy. Especially men. The thing is, even though I’m only half human male, I get freaked out around tax time too. I wonder how much of this is traditional guy stuff? Or white guy stuff?

You know the lines you hear from rich male jerks? “Money is just a way of keeping score.” and “He who dies with the most toys wins.” There is still a part of me that buys that and it takes a Vulcalean effort to look at it rationally.

At this time of year in the male money world of “Keeping score” guys ask themselves, “What have I accomplished?”

First, there is the “I never get enough.”feeling.That’s because it’s always a moving goal post. Then I focus on what is “taken away.” (Never on what I got in services, always what is taken.) This focus on what is taken diminishes my self image, which I correlate with self worth. When I calculate my “net worth” on paper I can see that if I keep more, I’m “worth” more. Simple equations are seductive.

I don’t gratefully pay for services I got last year because, like Oscar movies premiering in January, I forget about them and nobody reminds me. I see no services, only taxes. So I take things like firefighters, clean air and water for granted.

Intellectually I know that my “worth” as a human being is not really measured by the numbers on a page, I’m more than that, but during this accounting time it’s my focus.

When poor conservative white guys vote with rich conservation white guys on something like the estate tax (Which doesn’t kick in until estates are in the multiple millions) it seems bizarre to us. But the mindset the rich men tap into with the poor men is the same:

“You are ‘reduced’ as a man when you pay taxes.”

(And we know what organ they are thinking about when they think of something being reduced.)

So the announcement of Rand Paul for President and his anti-tax Libertarian-ish views are perfect during this time of year:

“Vote for me and your penis will never be small again!”

These ideas are like boner pills for some guys.  I understand why they work, but I’m not buying.

The Goldilocks question
by Tom Sullivan

The phrase “big government” scrolled across the screen again the other day and got me thinking about how effectively the right has been in programming Americans to believe that any government at all is the ever-execrable big government of the GOP’s daily rantings. A little over a year ago, Gallup reported that 72 percent of Americans believe big government is a greater threat than big business or big labor.

Yet, writing at the Daily Beast, Matt Lewis warned fellow conservatives that big businesses that put profit margins ahead of principle are at best strange bedfellows for the right. He warns, it’s best not to trust anyone who’s trying to sell you something:

I think it’s time that social conservatives also realize that big business isn’t their friend, either. My theory is that there are essentially two groups of people you have to be wary of: big government and big business. Conservatives have typically obsessed over the former, while attempting to co-opt the latter.

When Ronald Reagan declared that government is the problem he might as well have delivered the message on stone tablets from Mount Sinai. Those who beatified Saint Ronnie use the phrase big government as if there is no other kind. Thus, when conservatives control the reins of power, they begin obsessively dismantling the America built by those who came before them. So obsessively, in fact, that it is fair to ask how they will know when they are done. When is it time to put down the sledge hammers?

I like to pose the Goldilocks question:

How much government is too big, how much government is too small, and how much government is just right?

For the Scott Walkers and the Sam Brownbacks and the Pat McCrorys and the John Kasichs and the Ricks Snyder and Scott, this is not a trivial question. Since a “right-sized” government does not seem to exist in their universe, these are questions the right seems completely unprepared to address. Asking the question generally leaves them with their mouths hanging open.

Originalists among the T-Party typically fall back on Article 1, Section 8 enumerated powers in the Constitution. Of course, there is no Air Force in there — it’s neither an Army nor a Navy. Therefore, no satellites, no telecommunications, no GPS. (Sorry, fishermen.) No system of lake, river, coastal, and aeronautical aids to navigation. They’re not exactly military, nor law enforcement, nor commerce — and there’s not really a market for trade in buoys, range markers, lighthouses, radio beacons, and air traffic control. No interstate highway system in Article 1, Section 8 either.

We ought to demand that our friends on the right define what their anti-big-government utopia looks like. Paint us a picture. Compare and contrast the life we live today with the one you promise your policies will provide. How about you start, Sam Brownback?

If you believe the lives we live right now are manacled by big, bad government, what would you demolish? What should go away? How much smaller should the military be? Is half a million installations worldwide too big? Is nearly 900 overseas bases too big? Would the Founders have considered that big government? Is Social Security big government? What’s your plan for demolishing it? Do you propose privatizing the interstate highways? Should there be tolls on all of them?

And no, no more abstract blather about more freedom and more choices and fewer taxes. Paint us a picture. Describe for us, in detail, what your small-government utopia will look like in day-to-day, physical terms. Lowly fiction writers can do that.

How much government is too big, how much government is too small, and how much government is just right?

Lonely billionaires rattling around their mansions

by digby

Is @mccarthyryanj still the keeper of the #billionairewhimsy hashtag? http://t.co/58V7WSfzc6 pic.twitter.com/OlxlaraKWQ— Felix Salmon (@felixsalmon) April 6, 2015

How droll.

In his book “Bloggers on the Bush” Eric Boehlert pointed out that my little Santa Monica beach pad could fit comfortably inside Ariana Huffington’s home office. In fact, Huffington’s home office is two stories, so to be precise, my little beach pad could fit in the downstairs floor of Huffington’s home office. (It’s incredible, by the way. Huffington’s office that is.)

They are different from you and me …

h/t to @amok921

QOTD: Huffpost Hill

by digby

President Obama couldn’t calm a group of kids about nearby bees, making it the second time in as many weeks the president has been unable to pacify a rowdy and disrespectful group of children about an overhyped existential threat.

Mitch McConnell is looking rather spry these days …

Oh no, it’s a bee. That’s OK, guys. Bees are good, they won’t land on you. They won’t sting you, they’ll be OK,” Obama paused, laughing.

“Hold on! Hold on! You guys are wild things! You’re not supposed to be scared of bees when you’re a wild thing!” Obama said, before he was able to continue.

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Rahm’s Rich Guy Mandate

by digby

If liberals care about nothing else, they should at least care about education. We’ll know tomorrow if Chicago Democrats do:

Rahm Emanuel’s refusal to seriously pursue any meaningful, progressive revenue solutions for Chicago Public Schools (CPS) funding needs will without question lead to further mass school closings in the city’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods if he wins re-election on April 7. As Emanuel’s economic policies prioritize the financial interests of billionaire campaign donors like Ken Griffin and other big business supporters, at the expense of public education in Chicago, the mayor is making a clear choice to drive the district into even further dire financial straits that he will use to justify additional school closings.

Griffin, one of the top contributors to Emanuel’s re-election campaign and the richest man in Illinois, has accused Chicago’s mayor of being “lackluster” for not closing 125 schools instead of 50, and recently reiterated to the New York Times that the number of closings, which disproportionately affected African American and Latino students and their families, “should’ve been 125.” Griffin also has claimed that the top 1 percent of income earners have too little influence in politics, which is seemingly why he has backed Emanuel with more than $1 million in campaign contributions. As Griffin’s influence on City Hall grows, future school closings are inevitable if Emanuel is re-elected.

“Rahm’s pledge not to close additional schools for five years, which he refused to put into writing or pass into law, will conveniently run out if he wins a second term,” said CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey. “In Ken Griffin, who is among the top donors to both Emanuel and his friend, Bruce Rauner, he has a billionaire puppet master for whom he’ll have to do a lot of dancing if he is fortunate enough to retain his office.”

In return for Griffin’s generosity, Emanuel has rejected holding the city’s most wealthy accountable for their growing untaxed income while he simultaneously fleeces working class families with regressive taxes. Emanuel also has committed millions of dollars in tax increment financing to one of Griffin’s hotel investments and remains silent on suggestions for a millionaire tax that nearly 2/3 of the state of Illinois voted to support.

That’s the tip of the iceberg.

The election is tomorrow. If you have friends in Chicago give them a call tonight and urge them to vote. If you live there and are reading this blog, I’m pretty sure you already have or are planning to.

Emmanuel is the perfect representation of everything that’s wrong with the Democratic Party. If his rival Chuy Garcia were to pull off an upset tomorrow it would reverberate all the way to the presidential campaign. It can happen if the progressives can get their turn-out. And if mainstream Democrats don’t fall back on their idiotic reflex to run into the light. Rahm Emmanuel is the greater of two evils. They have a clear choice on this one.

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