Month: May 2015

Proudly ripping off poor people to help the rich

by digby

Good lord this is bad:

The spectacular crash of Corinthian Colleges after years of systematically deceiving thousands of students into enrolling into low-quality, high-cost education programs has once again raised questions about how the for-profit college industry staved off stronger rules governing the $1.4 billion per year in federal loans that helped keep Corinthian afloat.

Some hints emerged today in the giant chain’s filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Delaware. It shows that Corinthian made secret payments to an array of political consultants, think tanks and political dark money groups.

The filing doesn’t list amounts, but shows that Corinthian made payments to Crossroads G.P.S., a group co-founded by Karl Rove that has raised over $300 million to elect Republican members of Congress through campaign advertising. Crossroads G.P.S., a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, does not disclose any of its donors.

Crossroads G.P.S. spent over $700,000 to help elect Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., during his 2010 election. As Bloomberg News revealed, Rubio later filed a letter with the Department of Education, requesting that the agency “demonstrate leniency” with Corinthian.

Corinthian registered only two lobbying firms last year — Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP and Akerman LLP. But the filing shows that Corinthian also paid a myriad of other consulting firms that work to influence the political process.

Corinthian’s creditor list includes: TheGroup DC LLC, a public affairs firm founded by Art Collins, an advisor to Barack Obama’s 2008 election; Stanton Communications Inc., a firm that specializes in “crisis management”; and Strategic Partnerships LLC, a Virginia-based public affairs company founded by Kenneth Smith, a former Reagan administration advisor who now serves as the president of Jobs for America’s Graduates, Inc.

APCO Worldwide, a lobbying firm, is among the Corinthian creditors, though the firm never registered to represent Corinthian under the Lobbying Disclosure Act.

The listing reveals a number of payments to influential D.C. groups that have battled regulations on the for-profit college industry. The U.S. Chamber of Commere is listed multiple times as a Corinthian creditor. The Chamber has run campaign advertisements on behalf of opponents of the Department of Education’s “gainful employment” regulation, which would measure the performance of vocational programs. The Chamber made defeating the rules a top priority.

The American Legislative Exchange Council, a nonprofit that helps corporate interests draft model legislation, is listed as a creditor. As Republic Report reported, although for-profit colleges are far more expensive for programs offered by community colleges and other public institutions, ALEC drafted a resolution calling for state officials to “recognize the value of for-profit providers.”

Another gainful employment regulation opponent, the American Enterprise Institute, is listed as a Corinthian creditor. AEI scholars have repeatedly attacked the rules, calling them an example of the Obama administration’s “crusade against for-profit colleges.” Last October, Andrew Kelly, AEI’s resident scholar on higher education reform, specifically defended Corinthian and criticized the “Obama administration’s bloodlust for such schools.”

You have to love the Democrats who jump into bed with this rogues gallery of corrupt right wing scumbags. Naturally one of my personal favorites, Leon Panetta, turns up here:

Payments are listed for current and previous board members to Corinthian, including former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Urban League President Marc Morial, and Sharon Robinson, president and chief executive officer of the non-profit American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. Payments are also listed directly to the Panetta Institute and Morial’s National Urban League.

Gosh, the Clinton and Obama administration must be so proud to have had this guy operating on the inside in some of the most important jobs in the executive branch. He’s a wonderful guy, dedicated to the cause.

And by the way, aside from all the rest, real people were hurt:

Corinthian allegedly lied to students by providing bogus job-placement statistics, misled accrediting agencies by claiming unemployed graduates were employed, and steered students to in-house loans for bachelor’s programs with a price tag as high as $75,384. Though Department of Education rules state that students do not have to make loan payments while attending school, the Miami Herald reported that Corinthian “frequently demanded that its students pay while attending classes” and were publicly shamed through classroom removals if they did not pay.

“This is public money that’s going into a for-profit college, that then is used to fund organizations that do lobbying work and other PR work on behalf of this company,” says Ann Larson, an organizer with the Debt Collective, a group pushing for loan forgiveness for Corinthian students who say they were defrauded. “In the end, Corinthian can file for bankruptcy while tens of thousands of students, most of them low-income, are stuck with this debt.”

If you love your house so much why don’t you marry it?

by digby

Via Kaili Joy Gray:

CALLER: I was listening to Bryan Fischer, and there was a question about if the Supreme Court decides to go with gay marriage, which I hope they never do — but anyway, I was listening to Bryan Fischer, and to show you how far this can get out of hand, I heard Bryan speak about a woman had married a house. That’s really strange, isn’t it?

PERKINS: I wonder if it came with a mortgage?

Here’s the bottom line, all right? We know from the social science and from thousands of years of human history, societies rise and fall based upon the strength of families. You want strong communities, strong societies, you have to have strong families. And what’s the key to a strong family? It is a marriage between a man and a woman.

(Hey, I wonder if it came with a big flagpole, amirite??? AMIRITE???)

I really wish they’d be a little bit more specific about this. Throughout history marriage has traditionally been between a man and a woman — or a man and a woman and another woman and another woman etc, etc. Why do they refuse to acknowledge this? And why do they usually lie outright about it being between “one man and one woman”?

When a man is married to more than one wife at a time, the relationship is called polygyny; and when a woman is married to more than one husband at a time, it is called polyandry. If a marriage includes multiple husbands and wives, it can be called polyamory, group or conjoint marriage.

Some very traditional cultures still practice one of more forms of this very traditional form of marriage:

Globally, acceptance of polygamy is common. According to the Ethnographic Atlas, of 1,231 societies noted, 186 were monogamous; 453 had occasional polygyny; 588 had more frequent polygyny; and 4 had polyandry. At the same time, even within societies that allow polygyny, the actual practice of polygyny occurs unevenly. There are exceptions: in Senegal, for example, nearly 47 percent of marriages are multiple Within polygynous societies, multiple wives often become a status symbol denoting wealth, power, and fame. Polyandry is less rare than the figure commonly cited in the Ethnographic Atlas (1980), which listed only those examples found in the Himalayan mountains (28 societies). More recent studies have found more than 50 more societies that practice polyandry.

Critics of marriage equality will sputter and say that these are not cultures of Judeo-Christian origin so they don’t count. But you only have to look in Tony Perkins’ bible to see that polygyny is extremely common in the Judeo-Christian tradition — well, the Judeo part anyway although Christians have found reasons to allow it as well.

I realize this is a stale point but it bugs me whenever I hear these people self-righteously declare that marriage has always been “between one man one woman” when it so clearly has not — and is not even so today in some cultures. Sure most people today practice monogamy or serial monogamy. But it really wasn’t that long ago in human history when they were commonly practicing polygamy. And that means that the institution has evolved from one thing into another. This sacred “tradition” is a lot more malleable than they want to admit.

Nonetheless, I think we’re a very long way from people “marrying” houses. Unless the house is very, very cute.

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Culture war update: sorry, still raging. 


by digby

So I keep hearing the culture war is over because we may (emphasis on may) have won a big battle with marriage equality. If only it were true:

And this too:

And this:

And this:

And this:

And this:

If people don’t think those are all images of the culture war, they’re sadly mistaken.

But hey, I suppose nobody ever went broke prematurely declaring that the right wing has been vanquished forever. Liberals keep telling themselves that little fable every couple of years.

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Huckabee’s pitch

by digby

I wrote about him for Salon this morning

Yesterday, Mike Huckabee, the guitar-playing, Nugent-loving, ex-Governor preacher from Arkansas, announced that he is running for president. This was not unexpected, but it’s always a treat to hear him give a full-blown speech. He’s very talented, after all, at doing what he does best — stoking resentment among the white working class and lifting up the spirits of social conservatives. Often they are the same people. And they are all Mike Huckabee’s people.

In his speech yesterday, Huckabee hit all the right notes to get crowd excited. He pledged to repeal Obamacare and promised instead to adopt what he called a “curative approach,” which means he thinks we should concentrate on curing diseases rather than treating them. It’s an unusual policy, to say the least, but considering who he is and his background as a fundamentalist preacher it’s always possible that he thinks this can be accomplished through faith healing. So there’s that.

On the other hand, he heartily defended Social Security, a very wise move that you would think all the Republican candidates would adopt, considering the average age of their base voter. He also, however, defended Medicare against the encroachment of the evil Obamacare, following a successful GOP strategy since 2010: convincing the elderly that the federal government wants to put them all on the proverbial ice floe in order to give their hard earned health care to people who don’t deserve it.

Huckabee also took a very hard line on national security, characterizing Islamic militants in serpentine terms:

When I hear our current president say he wants Christians to get off their high horse so we can make nice with radical jihadists, I wonder if he could watch a Western from the 50s and be able to figure out who they good guys and the bad guys really are. As president, I promise you that we will no longer try to merely contain jihadism, we will conquer it! We will deal with jihadis just as we would deal with deadly snakes.

Once again showing his savvy recognition of the age of his likely voter, he evoked an image only people who were born in the first half of the 20th century would understand. (People of more recent vintage might just think the “bad guys” of those movies were the intended “good guys,” and vice versa.) It’s fair to say that Huckabee, like most of the GOP pack, promises a national security policy based on old cowboy movies. (And it wouldn’t be the first time.)

Read on. I doubt Huckabee can win the nomination. It’s a crowded field and there are others who can lay claim to this crowd and also raise the necessary money. But he’s such a pure representation of a certain right wing mindset that I find him to be an endlessly interesting character.

And hey, you never know. The New York Times published a new poll yesterday:

Republican voters showed the most openness to considering Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and former Govs. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas and Jeb Bush of Florida among their party’s presidential contenders, the survey found.

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Obama to Speak at Nike – Does Nike Have Access to TPP Drafts?

by Gaius Publius

This is about Obama, Nike and TPP. But let’s start with a taste of Your Weekly Oliver:

And Now, the News

Nike is ground zero for “made in Asia” shoe apparel. President Obama is ground zero for “let’s send more jobs to Asia and claim the opposite.” I’m not sure it benefits either to put the two together. Nevertheless, Obama will travel to Nike headquarters in Oregon this week to put the case that TPP is somehow good for American workers.

Reuters:

Obama to push case for trade deal at Nike headquarters in Oregon

President Barack Obama will
travel to Nike Inc headquarters in Oregon next Friday [May 8] to
argue that a 12-nation Pacific trade deal and the fast-track
legislation needed to finalize the pact are good for workers.

Obama faces tough opposition from his fellow Democrats in
Congress over the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal,
which they fear could hurt American jobs and the environment.

He will use the trip to the headquarters of Nike, a company
once criticized for its use of “sweatshops,” to “discuss how
workers will benefit from progressive, high-standards trade
agreements that would open up new markets and support
high-quality jobs,” the White House said in a statement.

Nike was targeted by labor activists in the early 1990s for
contracting with factories in Asia where workers faced dangerous
conditions and low pay. The criticism prompted the company to
create a code of conduct for contractors and open factories for
inspections.

Reuters is being polite. There’s a lot wrong with Nike and TPP, but I want to focus on just one aspect — the use of contracted and subcontracted labor. From an article in Business Insider, we learn about Nike, its place in the world of off-shored manufacturing, and its history as a sweatshop owner:

One Stunning Stat That Shows How Nike Changed The Shoe Industry Forever 

When Nike was founded in 1964, just 4% of U.S. footwear was imported.

Five decades later, that figure has skyrocketed to 98%, and Nike has likely played a role in driving it up.

Now one of the world’s biggest retailers of athletic shoes, Nike
manufactures a vast majority of its footwear and apparel outside the
U.S.

The company’s founder, Phil Knight, came up with the idea of
outsourcing manufacturing jobs to cut costs while attending Stanford
Business School in the early 1960s, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The company now has 68 factories in the U.S., representing just 9% of
its manufacturing facilities. Those U.S.-based factories employ just 1%
of its total workforce, or 13,922 employees.

Becoming an early adopter of outsourcing has helped propel Nike into
one of the biggest athletic footwear and apparel companies in the world.

Not only is Nike wildly successful; Phil Knight is wildly successful as well. Forbes has him as the richest person in Oregon, the 21st richest person in the U.S., and the 35th richest human on earth. His “real-time” net worth as of this writing, according to Forbes, is $23 billion. That’s $23,000,000,000. Net worth.

Here’s how he and Nike got that way. It’s a simple method, one you’ll understand immediately. Back to Business Insider:

Nike [became] a symbol of abusive labor practices, after reports of unsafe
conditions at many of its foreign factories began emerging in the 1990s.

In a May 1998 speech,
then-CEO Phil Knight was forced to admit that Nike had “become
synonymous with slave wages, forced overtime, and arbitrary abuse.”

If you use global wage-power to pay people as little as 30 cents an hour to make something wildly popular you can sell for $100 each — and you have the kind of conscience that allows you to do that — it’s not that hard to pocket that first billion. After that, the money just makes itself, especially if you can blackmail your home state as Knight has been doing to Oregon (read on for that).

Nike Will Say They’ve Changed, But Do They Police Their Contractors?

Nike has been saying they’ve seen the light, so to speak, and “established a new set of working standards, as well as a vigorous new auditing system to monitor labor practices in its factories and restore consumer faith in its brand” (Business Insider again).

I suspect the only light they saw is the need to “restore consumer faith” in their brand. Because companies like Nike are notorious for not policing their contractors, who often have contractors themselves, whom no one polices. Watch the John Oliver video above starting at 10:30 and you’ll see what I mean. (That segment starts with the sentence, “Deniability seems to have been stitched into the supply chain” — which should tell you where that part of the discussion is headed.)

What Percentage of Nike’s Workforce Is Contracted? Almost All of It

To what extent does Nike rely on contractors? Consider just these two data points. First, Nike’s stated workforce, according to the Portland Business Journal:

The company employs 56,500 worldwide, including retail workers, a 17 percent increase in the past year, according to the company’s most recent annual report.

Yet if you go to the Nike Manufacturing interactive website, and use the controls to select Vietnam, for example, as the country of manufacture, you find 67 factories, 333,000 workers.

And those are just the people it knows about, or claims to know about, in Vietnam. Does it know everyone to whom its work is subcontracted? Does it police its contractors’ subcontractors?

And while we’re at it, two more questions:

1. Is Nike getting any poorer? Not likely. If you click through to that Portland Business Journal article, you can read about how Nike used the threat of leaving Oregon entirely to strong-arm state government into giving it “tax certainty.”

In exchange for a commitment that it would create at least 500 jobs and spend at least $150 million on [Nike] campus expansion by the end of 2016, lawmakers agreed to give Nike “tax certainty,” and continue taxing the company only on the sales of products in Oregon.

A global company, one of the richest in its industry, pays state income taxes only on sales in Oregon, not its total income. All in exchange for 500 local jobs and the promise to upgrade the Nike campus. Not state infrastructure, say. Just its own corporate headquarters. Nice deal you “negotiated,” Mr. Knight.

2. Does Nike have a seat at the TPP bargaining table? According to Public Citizen (pdf): “In the United States, approximately 600 corporate lobbyists have been named as official advisors [to TPP negotiations], granting them steady access to the negotiating texts, as well as the negotiators.”

Would Obama cut Mr. Knight, the king of moving manufacturing to Asia, out of TPP negotiations? I’d be shocked if he did.

Two Questions for Mr. Obama When He Speaks at Nike

So if anyone has a press seat at Obama’s Nike speech, I suggest asking two simple questions:

• Do Nike’s lobbyists or other representatives have access to TPP draft text?
   
• If so, why can’t the American people see it before Fast Track is voted on?

I’d love to see the answers. So would Elizabeth Warren, I’m sure.

(A version of this piece first appeared at Down With Tyranny. GP article archive here.)

GP

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QOTD: Senator Joe Manchin

by digby

Haha:

“I don’t know what’s going on in Texas. I don’t know the paranoia that goes on in Texas, but the people in West Virginia welcome — welcome the special forces exercises…Please come to West Virginia. We’ll welcome you with open arms. We’re not afraid of you, we embrace you, we want you to be part of us”.

Judging from the rabidly angry right wing reaction to the piece I wrote about this for Salon a while back, this from Rick Perry is going to send them around the bend:

“It’s OK to question your government. I do it on a regular basis. But the military is something else. Our military is quite trustworthy. The civilian leadership, you can always question that, but not the men and women in uniform.”

Better duck Perry. They hate it when you point out their inconsistency. In fact, it makes them spitting mad:

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My favorite: “TX conservs don’t hate troops. TX cons are suspicious of Obama, who weaponizes govt.”

I do give this pair extra points for actually being pretty funny with their insults.

Bless their hearts …

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Clink-o de Mayo: Clinton throws down on immigration, private prisons
by Tom Sullivan

Hillary Clinton chose Cinco de Mayo to come out squarely in favor of immigration reform and against prison occupancy rules in an appearance at Rancho High School in Nevada yesterday. The Wall Street Journal called it “a full-throated embrace of much of the agenda of the immigration-rights movement”:

LAS VEGAS—Hillary Clinton, bidding to maintain Democratic dominance among Hispanic voters, said Tuesday she would work to expand President Barack Obama’s executive actions protecting people in the U.S. illegally from deportation, and push for legislation including a path to citizenship.

She said GOP proposals for legal status, which some Republicans have embraced, fall short of what’s needed. “We can’t wait any longer for a path to full and equal citizenship,” she said. She said not a single Republican candidate has consistently supported that policy. “When they talk about ‘legal status,’ that is code for second-class status.”

It was a message aimed at solidifying support among a Latino community where a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows Clinton the “prohibitive favorite”among Latino voters. Her closest rival in the Republican field, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, trails her by 31 points. Clinton’s message was also a shot at Rubio and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who have talked about legal status, but have backed away from calling for a path to citizenship.

Clinton discussed issues with deportation hearings and other hurdles facing undocumented immigrants:

Clinton said she believes that undocumented immigrants who are children, who are particularly vulnerable such as transgender individuals, or who generally are not criminals should not be detained. She also criticized the congressional mandate that a certain number of detention beds be maintained and the fact that private prison companies run many immigrant detention facilities.

“People go out and round up people in order to get paid on a per-bed basis,” she said. “That just makes no sense at all to me. That’s not the way we should be running any detention facility.”

Politico called the speech a “smart move“:

“It’s a debate Republican candidates don’t want because the most extremist elements of their base oppose moderation on the issue,” said Kica Matos, spokeswoman for the Fair Immigration Reform Movement. “And it’s a debate the money and strategy kings of the Republican Party don’t want, because their party is blocking comprehensive immigration reform that would keep families together.”

Liberal Democrats have been wary of Clinton, many progressives preferring Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Some “Draft Warren” organizers met with Warren recently to discuss policy, although Warren’s office claims she was unaware of the connection. Warren’s influence may be pulling Clinton to the left. In her talk yesterday, Clinton echoed Warren when she said, “our undocumented workers in New York pay more in taxes than some of our biggest corporations in New York.”

Stay tuned.

Amazing footage

by digby

Berlin 1945:

Whenever I watch something like this I just keep thinking over and over “war is stupid, war is stupid, war is stupid.”  Because war is stupid.

h/t to Michael Tomasky

Looks like we’re going to rumble

by digby

Clinton just threw down the gauntlet on immigration:

Hillary Clinton vowed on Tuesday that she would not only support immigration reform and protect deportation relief policies put forward by President Barack Obama. If elected president next year, she would expand them.

“If Congress continues to refuse to act, as president I would do everything possible under the law to go even further,” the 2016 Democratic candidate said at an event with young undocumented immigrants, held at Las Vegas’ Rancho High School.

Clinton’s remarks, which essentially ran down the wish list of immigration activists, were more detailed than most expected. She argued that she would lean in on immigration, and she used that as an attack on Republican presidential candidates who have backed away from the issue.

On deportation relief, Clinton said she would do something that Obama hasn’t: extend protections to the parents of Dreamers, the young undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children. She said that other categories of undocumented immigrants should also be able to apply for such relief.

Some Dreamers are able to remain in the U.S. and work temporarily under Obama’s 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. In November executive actions, the president extended similar protections to more Dreamers and to the parents of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents. Those executive actions are currently blocked in the courts, but if they move forward, as many as 5 million undocumented immigrants could gain relief. Millions more would remain without protections.

On Tuesday, Clinton defended Obama’s actions against attacks by Republicans. “He had to act in the face of inaction that was not on the merits but politically motivated for partisan reasons,” she said.

Clinton said it was unrealistic to act as though all 11 million undocumented immigrants now in the U.S. could be deported. She said the idea was “beyond absurd. That’s not going to happen.”

She also addressed less widely discussed immigration issues, arguing that those in deportation proceedings — at the very least, the young — should receive more legal representation.

Clinton said she believes that undocumented immigrants who are children, who are particularly vulnerable such as transgender individuals, or who generally are not criminals should not be detained. She also criticized the congressional mandate that a certain number of detention beds be maintained and the fact that private prison companies run many immigrant detention facilities.

“People go out and round up people in order to get paid on a per-bed basis,” she said. “That just makes no sense at all to me. That’s not the way we should be running any detention facility.”

Anti-immigrant zealot Laura Ingraham was quoted saying:

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Employers are the real victims

by digby

At least according to these wingnuts who are all in favor of allowing employers to fire women for using birth control or having abortions. In this case, it’s supposedly because it might violate their “religious freedom” to prohibit them from passing moral judgement on the private lives of their employees.  Rand Paul, the avatar of liberty, is on board.  But you knew he would be. What conservatives and libertarians truly care about the owners of property’s freedom to do any damned thing they want with what they own. Individual human freedom is always secondary. Unless you’re an owner you’re just out of luck.

They’ve had to accept that outright slavery isn’t going to go over in this modern age.  So, using this fatuous religious freedom argument, they are constructing a legal regime to protect the rights of employers to simply treat their employees like slaves with the only protection for the worker being their “freedom” to starve. Women, having the burden of gestating the human race are particularly problematic. After all, it’s not as if the owners get to keep the offspring and put them to work like the good old days.

And anyway a man owns his castle and his business and his freedom to run that castle and business is what’s at issue. That’s what liberty is all about. All these non-owners clamoring for “rights” are simply trying to enslave the slaveowner.  The slaveowners just want to be free.

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