Record highs increase likelihood that 2015 will also be the warmest year recorded.
Last month was the hottest June on record by a wide margin, Japan
Meteorological Agency said, increasing the likelihood that 2015 will
also be the warmest.
Global surface temperatures were 0.41 degrees
above the 1981-2010 average in June, the largest such anomaly in
records going back to 1891, according to preliminary data from the state
agency.
The previous warmest June came just last year, when the
departure from the long-run average was 0.33 degrees, indicating a
sizeable jump in 2015.
Worldwide temperatures are on a warming
trend as increased greenhouse gas levels trap more of the solar
radiation. A global summit in Paris set for late this year will seek to
limit that warming – and the potential for dangerous climate change – to
less than 2 degrees compared with pre-industrial times.
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said last
month that May and the first five months of 2015 were the hottest on
record.
Am I writing this to frighten you? Only if it moves you to action. This action, which is entirely doable, once enough of us want it. Believe me, if this keep up, we’re going to want it
In that sense this unwelcoming heat, for once, may be our best friend. Time to use it as one.
Heading to Netroots Nation / Phoenix. Early morning posts may be abbreviated through the weekend.
Annie Kinsella: Who’s for Eva Braun here? Who wants to burn books? Who wants to spit on the Constitution of the United States of America, anybody? Now who’s for the Bill of Rights? Who thinks that freedom is a pretty darn good thing? Who thinks that we have to stand up to the kind of censorship that they had under Stalin?
Washington, D.C. – Academy and Pulitzer Prize Award-winning documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras sued the Department of Justice (DOJ) and U.S. transportation security agencies today demanding they release records documenting a six-year period in which she was searched, questioned, and often subjected to hours-long security screenings at U.S. and overseas airports on more than 50 occasions. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is representing Poitras in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security, DOJ, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
“I’m filing this lawsuit because the government uses the U.S. border to bypass the rule of law,” said Poitras. “This simply should not be tolerated in a democracy. I am also filing this suit in support of the countless other less high-profile people who have also been subjected to years of Kafkaesque harassment at the borders. We have a right to know how this system works and why we are targeted.”
Poitras is a professional journalist who won an Academy Award this year for her documentary film “CITIZENFOUR” about NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, shared in the 2014 Pulitzer for Public Service for NSA reporting, and is a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant. During frequent travel from 2006 to 2012 for work on her documentary films, Poitras was detained at the U.S. border every time she entered the country.
During these detentions, she was told by airport security agents that she had a criminal record (even though she does not), that her name appeared on a national security threat database, and, on one occasion, that she was on the U.S. government’s No Fly List. She’s had her laptop, camera, mobile phone, and reporter notebooks seized and their contents copied, and was once threatened with handcuffing for taking notes during her detention after border agents said her pen could be used as a weapon. The searches were conducted without a warrant and often without explanation, and no charges have ever been brought against Poitras.
If they cannot punish Poitras officially for telling Snowden’s story, extrajudicial punishment will have to do. Cue Lee Greenwood.
Law professor Margo Schlanger has the strange idea that in order to counter terrorist ideology, the US Government will be more successful if it lives up to American principles and values rather than coming up with a clever “marketing strategy” to persuade people that terrorism is uncool. Go figure:
Over the past several years, a tiny handful of Americans have found hateful terrorist ideology sufficiently attractive that they have been convinced to commit violent crimes at home, or to travel abroad to join terrorist efforts there. This is a real problem. Most of the solution is the criminal justice system — detection and prosecution, and the deterrence that results. But the federal government has also begun to develop a non-criminal-justice response, which it labels “countering violent extremism” — CVE, for short. The “violent extremism” in question is, primarily, the terrorist ideology of groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS, communicated with Americans via the internet. And the central idea of CVE is to undermine the ideological appeal, to persuade Americans not to become terrorists.
Much governmental energy has gone into developing a counter-messaging CVE strategy: communicating an anti-terrorism message to these would-be recruits. While well-intentioned, this is the wrong tactic. We would be much better off taking a civil rights approach. Instead of talking, we should be doing: the government should demonstrate through its actions our core constitutional commitments to liberty and equality.
The misguided counter-messaging vision is reflected in the Countering Violent Extremism Act, a bill introduced last month by Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, being marked up this week. The bill would create a small but high status CVE Office at the Department of Homeland Security. It would be headed by an assistant secretary and a career deputy assistant secretary. The central substantive provisions of McCaul’s CVE bill deal with undermining terrorist messages: the bill requires the new office to “[e]stablish a counter-messaging program to craft strategic counter-messages to [terrorist] propaganda.” Indeed, the bill directs the Secretary to include in the office’s staff “an individual who has a demonstrated background in technical matters, on and offline media, or marketing.” The Department of Justice and DHS have already started to deliver this kind of counter-messaging in government-sponsored roundtables bringing together government officials with Muslim and Arab leaders across the country.
But slick marketing can never get to the heart of the matter. Instead, the best way to reduce the bad guys’ appeal is to demonstrate the falseness of their core anti-American message, which is that the United States is at war with Islam. The best anti-terrorism persuasion program is to remember and act on our constitutional commitments of freedom of religion and equality of all.
Chairman McCaul’s bill detaches CVE efforts from this civil rights foundation. The message it sends is therefore the opposite of what we need. The bill, and the activities it would promote, communicate the idea that the government is interested in speaking to Muslims primarily to explain to them why their communities should resist terrorist recruiting. Agency engagement with communities is a great idea — but the point of it should be to solicit views, explain policies, and seek to address complaints or grievances, as a basic part of good and responsible government.
Also too, shaming bigoted assholes who hold powerful government offices would be good. (That’s not Schlanger’s idea, that’s mine.) I just think it would be helpful if we didn’t have Senators like Lindsey Graham making speeches about how “mideast hate” is so much worse than our neo-confederate racist hate. This isn’t helpful.
By the way, Schlanger worked in DHS and saw that making the point that that the US isn’t at war with Islam is a more powerful and effective way to positively engage with Muslims. You’d think the government would see this as a matter of common sense, which it is.
Though no Wall Street bankers went to jail as a result of the financial crisis, the deeply-religious governor warned of a different sort of punishment: “Just because you do something that’s greedy that can end up in failure doesn’t mean you committed a crime. But you know what? There’s a judgment that comes later, about how many people get hurt. And frankly, that’s a pretty tough judgment in my opinion.”
Don’t worry your pretty little heads about all that Wall Street greed and avarice. They’ll feel bad about it later. And they might even go to hell, so that’s good.
Seriously, if one of these fools ever uses the words “moral authority” again, my head is going to explode. Apparently the government must intervene on God’s behalf to impeach a president over a consensual sex act but regulating economic activity must be left to the afterlife.
Oh boy. Hearing all these wingnuts talk about Iran is enough to make me take to drinking before noon. What a bunch of phony macho posturing. None says it better than our Great Whitebread Hope who thinks fighting ISIS is as easy as barely winning a recall election in Wisconsin:
WALKER: As president, on my very first day going forward, I would pull back, I would terminate that bad deal with Iran completely on day one. I would then put in place crippling economic sanctions against Iran, and I’d convince our allies to do the same. This is not a country we should be doing business with.
I love how he says that he’ll “convince our allies” as if he’s going to haul out the waterboards if they don’t do what he wants. As anyone who’s been following this story with even the slightest attention knows, one of the reason this was so important to get done is that our Iran allies and our enemies alike were basically saying either come up with a deal or we’re going to start selling whatever we want, fuck you very much. But remember, Walker’s been busy dodging indictments and tweeting about his meatloaf dinner so he probably hasn’t had much time to bone up on the details.
Speaking of his meatloaf dinner, I wrote a piece about Walker’s brilliant electoral strategy for Salon today. (Hint: it’s truly innovative — run to the right in the primaries and then tack to the middle in the general. Unlike every other Republican presidential candidate of the past 50 years. Well, except for all of them.)
Yes, yes, I know you think that the idea of securing the base in the primaries and then moving to the middle is the moldiest of stale strategic tropes. And you’d be … right. Why anyone thinks this is worth remarking upon is the most remarkable thing about it.
Now it may be true that Romney “started in the middle and moved rightward” but I don’t think anyone deludes themselves that this was the preferred strategy. It just so happened that Romney was a pretty moderate governor (by modern GOP standards) who wanted to stay in the middle so he could get elected. Unfortunately for him, the GOP base forced him so far to the right he ended up sounding like a cross between Pat Buchanan and Scrooge McDuck before the whole thing was over.
It’s understandable that the campaign is pretending that this is some kind of novel strategy, but the truth is that someone with Walker’s record who shares a major media market with the Iowa caucuses shouldn’t have to work this hard to get the far right’s endorsement. The truth is that for all of his wingnut bona fides (and they are very, very real), the right wing of the Republican Party, particularly the social conservatives, don’t trust him. Recall that the grand poobahs summoned him to Washington to explain his various tiny deviations from their approved talking points just this past May.
Read on. This was supposed to be an easy lay-up for Walker. But he’s just not that good ..
This piece by Peter Beinert gets to the heart of the reason why the Republicans insist on rejecting all diplomacy, sight unseen:
When critics focus incessantly on the gap between the present deal and a perfect one, what they’re really doing is blaming Obama for the fact that the United States is not omnipotent. This isn’t surprising given that American omnipotence is the guiding assumption behind contemporary Republican foreign policy. Ask any GOP presidential candidate except Rand Paul what they propose doing about any global hotspot and their answer is the same: be tougher. America must take a harder line against Iran’s nuclear program, against ISIS, against Bashar al-Assad, against Russian intervention in Ukraine and against Chinese ambitions in the South China Sea.
If you believe American power is limited, this agenda is absurd. America needs Russian and Chinese support for an Iranian nuclear deal. U.S. officials can’t simultaneously put maximum pressure on both Assad and ISIS, the two main rivals for power in Syria today. They must decide who is the lesser evil. Accepting that American power is limited means prioritizing. It means making concessions to regimes and organizations you don’t like in order to put more pressure on the ones you fear most. That’s what Franklin Roosevelt did when allying with Stalin against Hitler. It’s what Richard Nixon did when he reached out to communist China in order to increase America’s leverage over the U.S.S.R.
And it’s what George W. Bush refused to do after 9/11, when he defined the “war on terror” not merely as a conflict against al-Qaeda but as a license to wage war, or cold war, against every anti-American regime supposedly pursuing weapons of mass destruction. This massive overestimation of American power underlay the war in Iraq, which has taken the lives of a half-million Iraqis and almost 4,500 Americans, and cost the United States over $2 trillion. And it underlay Bush’s refusal to negotiate with Iran, even when Iran made dramatic overtures to the United States. Negotiations, after all, require mutual concessions, which Bush believed were unnecessary; if America just kept flexing its muscles, the logic went, Iran’s regime would collapse.
These are puerile thinkers who are very confused. They believe that the US being a superpower means that it has “superpowers”. They are not the same thing at all.
The Puerto Rico debt crisis — Like Greece with a difference
by Gaius Publius
Because of the coverage of Greece and its debt problems, I’ve been fielding a lot of questions about Puerto Rico and its debt problems as well. Puerto Rico’s problems aren’t the same as the Greeks’ though; similar, but not matching. For one thing, Puerto Rico is a territory of the U.S. and subject to some unique-to-itself U.S. laws. Greece is under the thumb of northern Europeans.
Nevertheless, like Greece, Puerto Rico doesn’t have its own currency and doesn’t have “permission” to declare bankruptcy. There’s a nice explainer at Vox — “Puerto Rico’s debt crisis, explained in 11 basic facts” — that’s worth looking at. I’ll provide the “11 basic facts” below with some explanation, and suggest that you click through to see any explanation you’d like to know more about.
Puerto Rico’s debt crisis, explained in 11 basic facts
On June 28, the governor of Puerto Rico, Alejandro Garcia Padilla,
announced that the island was not going to be able to pay the $72
billion it owes. The announcement is the culmination of several years of
economic woes, but the island’s debt has now become an urgent problem
for the US territory — and therefore, for the US.
The problem is especially tricky because US bankruptcy laws don’t
allow government institutions in Puerto Rico to declare bankruptcy, as
those in US states can. US policy did a lot to create the problem, and
people on both sides of the debate — Puerto Ricans and the creditors who
own their bonds — are Americans.
The worst news: The island’s fate is in the hands of Congress.
Now the first of the “11 basic facts”:
1) Puerto Rico is sinking under $72 billion in debt
Puerto Rico has been dealing with a worsening debt crisis for several
years. It’s been suffering economically since 2006, but thanks to a
federal tax loophole it’s continued to be able to borrow money without
people paying a whole lot of attention to its creditworthiness. As a
result, both the main Puerto Rican government and its “public
corporations” (like utilities) have racked up immense amounts of debt
through bonds and tanked their credit ratings — even while trying to cut
services and raise taxes. Now the Puerto Rican government is
acknowledging that it’s not going to be able to keep borrowing money
just to pay off old debts.
So the question is whether Puerto Rico — either itself or its public
corporations — will be able to declare bankruptcy and start working with
a judge to restructure its debts. Congress is considering allowing some
bankruptcy in Puerto Rico. But it’s divided because many of the holders
of Puerto Rican debt are American citizens and American investment
funds.
2) Puerto Rico’s economy has been struggling since 2006, when the federal government stopped offering business incentives
In the middle of the 20th century, the federal government wanted to
encourage manufacturers that were tempted to move or expand to
developing countries to move to Puerto Rico instead. But since Puerto
Rico has the same labor standards as the US, that wasn’t exactly
appealing to businesses — especially when Congress decided in 1974 to
bring Puerto Rico’s minimum wage up to the rest of the US’s, as well.
So instead, the government granted big tax breaks to businesses that
had operations in Puerto Rico; starting in 1976, basically any profit a
company could trace to Puerto Rico wouldn’t be taxed. The tax breaks
gave Puerto Rico a pharmaceutical industry.
This cost the US a lot of money in lost tax revenues, and in 1996
Congress decided to phase out the tax break. It officially ended in
2006, throwing Puerto Rico into a recession. (Many of the companies that
benefited from the tax break moved to the Cayman Islands.)
That was swiftly followed by the Great Recession of the late 2000s,
which basically kicked Puerto Rico while it was down. It’s been
struggling ever since. In 2013, 45.4 percent of Puerto Ricans were
living in poverty.
3) People kept buying Puerto Rican bonds because of a quirk in the tax code
None of this sounds like a government you would want to invest in.
And indeed, Puerto Rico’s bond rating has been downgraded to junk level.
But people continued buying Puerto Rican bonds even after it stopped
being a good idea to do so.
The reason for this is, again, a federal tax break. Puerto Rican
bonds are “triple-tax-exempt” — American companies and individuals who
buy them don’t have to pay federal, state, or local taxes on them.
Typically, a municipal bond is only triple-tax-exempt if you buy it from
the city where you live. But Puerto Rican’s bonds are triple-tax-exempt
for everyone. That made Puerto Rican bonds a particularly appealing
investment opportunity — so appealing that people might not have looked
too closely at the island’s fiscal situation.
Right now, hedge funds hold about $15 billion in Puerto Rican debt, mutual bond funds hold another $11 billion or so, and individuals hold the rest.
So the Puerto Rican debt crisis isn’t just relevant to Americans
because Puerto Rico is part of America — it’s relevant because Americans
are the ones owed the money.
And the rest:
4) Hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans moved to the mainland, worsening the economic crunch
5) Puerto Rico is caught in a “death spiral” of emigration, tax hikes, and benefits cuts
6) An obscure federal law from 1920 makes everything more expensive
7) It’s not just the central government that owes money — it’s also utilities and other public corporations
8) Puerto Rico can’t declare bankruptcy. Neither can its cities or utilities.
US states can’t declare bankruptcy. But “substate entities” within a
state — like cities, judicial districts, or public corporations — can.
Puerto Rico also can’t declare bankruptcy, but under US law neither
can its “substate entities.” If PREPA and other Puerto Rican public
corporations were located in New York or California, they’d be able to
declare bankruptcy — but because they’re in Puerto Rico they can’t. …
9) Democrats are pushing to allow limited bankruptcy; Republicans say it isn’t enough
10) Creditors argue that changing the bankruptcy laws is unfair
11) But if nothing changes, Puerto Rico is looking at a slow, rolling fiscal disaster
If Congress doesn’t make any changes to bankruptcy laws, Puerto Rico
is going to start falling behind on its minimum debt payments in
mid-July. That opens up the possibility that individual creditors will
start suing Puerto Rico to get their money back — and asking a judge to
make the territory start paying any revenue it gets to its creditors,
rather than paying its public employees or paying any benefits to its
residents. …
Two takeaways from me — One, we’re living in a world where, according to those who run it, every creditor must be made whole, period, independent of the fact that risky bets (investments) come with risk premiums, which is by definition their compensation in case of default.
Because the investor class runs the (non-military, non–state security) aspect of the world, they can enforce a regime in which none of their friends can lose money, no matter how risky the bet (investment). Yet if Trump can declare bankruptcy (three times, or so I hear), the same should be allowed to Greece and Puerto Rico. In that sense, Puerto Rico very much resembles Greece.
The second is the “brown south” problem. In both cases, Puerto Rico and Greece, the debt is owed by “those people” to people who look rather white — most Americans, most Germans, most of the French and the Dutch.
I endured an interesting rant at dinner the other day. A perfectly nice (white) Frenchman started in on Greece and two phrases fell almost immediately from his lips: “I’m sick of having to continue to pay…” and “lazy.” Mind you, not all French people think as my friend does. Thomas Piketty, who is French, is definitely not in that camp. Nor are all Germans and other northern Europeans.
But enough in the north are following the lead of German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, who seems to have taken the German reigns from Angela Merkel vis-à-vis Greece, that it sure looks like, down the road, the European project is in real trouble.
As is Puerto Rico. And as I said at the beginning, the fate of Puerto Rico is in the hands of Congress. Stay tuned.
(The following, from the movie version of West Side Story, featuring Oscar winners Rita Morena and George Chakiris, is a good example of the duality of Puerto Rico and its “brown south” problem as seen by white Americans. Note especially the dialog that introduces the song:
Did you catch the love of consumer culture at about 1:30? “I’m going back in a Cadillac. Air-condidtioned. Built-in bar. Telephone. And television. Compatible color.” And later, “In Puerto Rico we had nothing.” Reply: “We still have nothing, only more expensive.”
I’m Scott Walker and ALEC wants your vote
by Tom Sullivan
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka responding to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s announcement yesterday that he’s running for president:
Scott Walker is a national disgrace.
As CNN reports, Walker told the crowd in Waukesha, “Americans want to vote for something and for someone.” Walker qualifies.
Several outlets noted that Walker’s support for requiring photo identity cards for voting is a big applause line. This from an NBC news political correspondent:
Voter ID is consistently one of Scott Walker's loudest applause lines— Kasie Hunt (@kasie) July 13, 2015
There was more. The Castle Doctrine, drug testing for public assistance recipients, dismantling organized labor, etc. Many of Walker’s applause lines were retreads from the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations. Walker wants to rebuild the economy using the Laffer Curve and Reagan-era tax levels. It was a speech virtually ghostwritten by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) the way the Koch brothers-funded ALEC ghostwrites legislation in states across the country. During each pause, Walker nodded left and right like a bobblehead doll.
Walker campaign staffers were prepared for protesters, but none appeared MSNBC reported, “save for an airplane overhead that carried a sign reading ‘Scott Walker has a Koch problem,’ a reference to his relationship with conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch.”
The thing is, Scott Walker has a Scott Walker problem.
