Month: November 2015

Ryan the ringmaster tries to tame the untrained lions

by digby

This should be fun:

Speaker Paul Ryan wanted to find out whether Republicans wanted to restart the appropriations process by passing individual spending bills.

The answer: A resounding no.

House Majority Whip Steve Scalise’s vote counters discovered widespread opposition to a financial services appropriations bill. Members are worried about a range of issues, including taking tough votes for legislation that stands no chance of being signed into law, according to multiple members of the GOP whip team.

Scalise’s squad – at Ryan’s behest – asked lawmakers whether they would support bringing the financial services appropriations bill to the floor when the House returns Nov. 16. They found resistance from all corners of the party. Many lawmakers privately told POLITICO they would prefer to jump-start the process of writing a large-scale catchall funding bill called an omnibus. Funding runs out Dec. 11.

Ryan has started the discussion about appropriations five weeks before the deadline – and just one week into his speakership – which gives him room to maneuver. But the angst about taking votes on items that will never become law is real – and could prove to be a recurring theme in a more freewheeling House. A handful of lawmakers also used a closed meeting Thursday to complain about difficult votes.

But Rep. Matt Salmon (R-Ariz.), a member of the House Freedom Caucus, said that’s a reasonable price to pay for empowering rank-and-file members.

“There are going to be tough votes for me, tough votes for them. I think that’s what the speaker said all along, you asked for an open process and that’s what that entails,” Salmon said. “That means people are going to have to take tough votes.”

Ryan notched an early win this week by passing a highway bill after voting on dozens of Amendments.

Spending bills, though, have been difficult to pass in recent years. For example, the Interior appropriations bill fell apart because lawmakers were split on how to handle whether the Confederate flag should be displayed in federal cemeteries.

So they want to “open up the process” but most of the caucus doesn’t want to vote on tough bills that will never become law. Well, yeah. That’s kind of been the problem all along.

Maybe Ryan can show the Freedom Caucus the error of their way on this by showing them that nobody likes them. But I’m pretty sure they already knew that. I’d guess he thinks that if shows he’s trying in good faith to do what they want they’ll shrug their shoulders and give up?

yeah, good luck with that.

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Cruz the human

by digby

Ted Cruz was on Jake Tapper’s show yesterday and I thought he was the best I’ve ever seen him. He not his usual unctuous, creepy self and seemed almost like a normal human. If you have the time to watch it, do it.  It’s interesting. If he can summon this persona more often I think he will be a much more formidable candidate. And that’s not good:

The evil éminence grise

by digby

Today’s New York Times story on Poppy Bush’s blockbuster comments on Cheney and Rumsfeld features this picture.

President George W. Bush at a Rose Garden news conference in 2007; Vice President Dick Cheney is at left. CreditStephen Crowley/The New York Times

Wow. A picture really is worth a thousand words.

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Rubio’s immigration challenge

by digby

I wrote about Marco Rubio’s checkered record on immigration and how it’s going to cause him heartburn if he starts to get serious traction for Salon today:

In an election where a billionaire demagogue can vault to first place in the polls by promising to deport millions of immigrants, it’s fair to wonder if the establishment favorite who once proposed a path to citizenship can beat him for the Republican nomination. That may be the biggest challenge facing Marco Rubio today.

Right-wing obsession with undocumented workers from Mexico has been waxing and waning for decades. It is sometimes attached to economic insecurity but more often it seems to be the result of free floating anxiety that isn’t attached to any particular circumstance. During the Bush years, before the crash, it bubbled up in communities around the nation which had little experience with Latinos who were branching out from the traditional migration pattern to places where new work was available. There were a number of stories done around 2005 about the town of Herndon, Virginia, where a militia had grown up to defend the town against illegal immigrants:

Bill explains that he “slid into the Minutemen” because he was disturbed by the way his neighborhood was changing, and the other Minutemen standing with him nod in agreement. “Dormitory-style homes” have popped up on their streets, Bill says, and the residents come and go at strange hours. Their neighbors’ children are intimidated and no longer like to play outside, in part because “we’ve got about 17 cars coming and going from our neighbors’ houses.” Matt, another Minuteman who lives in nearby Manassas, claims that the police have busted prostitution rings operating out of nearby properties…Even on the coldest mornings, more than 50 workers often convene at the 7-11, and Bill judges that sometimes only 10 or 20 get hired. “When,” he asks me, “is it ever a good thing for 40 men to hang out together?” [“Outside In: The Minutemen Are More Mainstream Than You Think,” The New Republic, November, 2005]

(I always thought that was a funny quote coming from a guy who had joined a militia.)

But this was a big story 10 years ago — immigrants were gathering in our small towns and suburbs and changing the culture with their strange language and dirty ways. To people who live in the Southwest or Florida or any big city, it was a bizarre concept. Even if it’s contentious for economic or political reasons, immigrants are part of the fabric of life in those places. But it was a culture shock to a lot of folks who hadn’t dealt with it before. And they didn’t blame the Democrats — they blamed George W. Bush:

The retired social studies teacher said she got involved because houses in her neighborhood had become packed immigrant dormitories. She suspects that most tenants in the rooming houses, including the one next door, are illegal. She deals with roosters crowing and men urinating in the yard, loud parties and empty beer cans dumped outside. She fears it’s driving down the value of her house.

“I’m angry,” said the 60-year-old widow. She said the fight against illegal immigration was deeply personal and broadly political. “George Bush is in it for the Hispanic vote, and we’re on the receiving end,” she said. “That’s not fair. Before, everybody looked out for everybody else; no one locked doors,” she said of her neighborhood. “Now we all have security systems.”

Jeff Talley, 45, an airplane maintenance worker who lives across the street from Bonieskie, also joined the Minuteman chapter. “When you start messing with the value of people’s houses, people get really upset,” he said. As Talley sees it, illegal immigrants take jobs from Americans  whom it would cost companies more to employ and that will have long-term effects on American society.

“There’s a disappearing middle class,” said Talley, a Republican. “George Bush is a huge disappointment to this country. The Republican Party used to be for ordinary people, but no more.”

I bring all this up just to preface what’s led up to the current predicament in the Republican Party and their fraught relationship with Latinos. There was a time when the party thought it had made substantial inroads with that community and were hopeful they would be able to gain the loyalty of enough of them to be able to compete nationally in a world in which whites are no longer a majority. It didn’t work and reading that piece about the Hernden Minutemen you can see how it happened.

The issue continued to vex Republicans throughout the Obama administration as they found themselves caught in the cross-current of changing demographics and a base that was growing more and more hostile to immigrants. GOP politicians who had championed comprehensive immigration reform with a path to citizenship — a mainstream position with both parties — were pressured to abandon their position. Not that it really mattered if they did. Anyone who had once advocated for reform was now seen as a conservative movement heretic, never to be trusted again.

This issue finally boiled over in 2014 when the Republican majority leader of the House, Eric Cantor, unexpectedly lost his seat in a primary to an anti-immigrant Tea Party upstart, David Brat, a novice politician heavily promoted by national conservative talk radio. Stars like Laura Ingraham had been pushing the anti-immigration line for quite some time and homed in on Cantor as a perfect example of a squishy establishment sell-out. Not that Cantor actually was a particularly immigrant-friendly politician. He had tepidly supported legalization of undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children, and once said that he thought immigrants should be allowed to enlist in the military “in principle,” but voted against allowing them to serve. That was all it took. As far as talk radio was concerned he was a dead man walking.

The talk radio enforcers who brought down Cantor are all eyeing Rubio. Some, like Laura Ingraham and Michelle malkin are irretrievable hostile. Some are saying they’ll take him at his word — for now. But if he even makes the slightest move away from the most hardcore anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy they’re ready to pounce.

This is the animating issue of the GOP base in 2016. And it’s Rubio’s greatest weakness. It should be very interesting to see how this plays itself out.

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If a cop says she believes you have a weapon, you have one

by digby

This is unbelievable. A police officer is filmed torturing an unarmed citizen with a taser and then executing him. And she was acquitted.

On Thursday, a jury acquitted Officer Lisa Mearkle for shooting David Kassick in Pennsylvania, who was pulled over for an expired inspection sticker. The same day, video of the deadly encounter was released by the local D.A., showing Kassick face down on the ground and obeying Mearkle’s orders before being shot twice.

The fatal traffic stop happened back in February. When Hummelstown Borough Police Department officer tried to pull over Kassick, the man escaped to his sister’s home nearby. A brief foot chase ensued, and the video begins with the officer yelling for Kassick to get on the ground. Mearkle fires her taser — 50,000 volts — into his back, and he writhes in pain in submission. Complying with Mearkle’s commands, Kassick makes his hands visible. As he lays face down on the ground, Mearkle shoots him with her gun, twice.

[…]

Mearkle has maintained that she was acting in self-defense. Kassick was unarmed, but during her trial, Mearkle explained that she believed Kassick was holding a weapon. “There was no reason for him to reach into his frigging jacket,” she said.

She also criticized prosecutors for charging her with murder.

“I’m a good police officer. This [arrest] should not have happened to me. I believe I could continue to be a police officer,” Mearkle testified. “I was only charged for political reasons. That’s how I feel.”

After the not-guilty verdict, President Les Neri of the local police union applauded the decision and slammed the public for criticizing cops.

“The demonizing of police officers who are forced to make split-second decisions unfairly tarnishes the work done by good police officers. It ignores the unreasonable actions or crimes committed by those who created these situations in the first place,” he wrote in a press statement.

I just don’t know what to say. There is, evidently, nothing you can do to not be killed by a police officer if he or she “feels” that you are a threat.

It is very, very, very dangerous to be pulled over by a cop in the United States of America now. They believe they have a right to kill you for any reason and they know it’s unlikely they will be held accountable for doing it. Even with a video they can get away with it.

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This is called gilding the lily

by digby

Recall this:

Appearing on CNBC’s online series “Speakeasy with John Harwood,” Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson defended comparing President Barack Obama to a psychopath, accusing him of lying about the unemployment rate. 

“Obama, you referred to him as a psychopath,” Harwood noted. “What did you mean by that?” 

“I said he reminds you of a psychopath,” Carson corrected.
“And tell me how.” 

“Because they tend to be extremely smooth, charming people, who can tell a lie to your face with complete — it looks like sincerity, even though they know it’s a lie,” Carson said. 

“Do you think he’s a liar?” Harwood pressed. 

“Well, I think he knows full well the unemployment rate is not 5.5 percent,” Carson replied. “He knows that. He knows that people who are not well-informed will swallow it hook, line and sinker, even though they’re sitting there in the city and can’t find a job.”

So, if you combine the weird stuff he said about how he would behave in the presence of a disturbed gunman (lead others to run into the line of fire like he’s Audie Murphy), his unverified story of how he was a violent potential mad dog killer in his youth and now this fake story about getting a scholarship to West Point, Carson appears to be someone who is very insecure about his macho bona fides. (Most of his friends from school remember him as a smart nerdy kid which makes sense.)

It’s just sad since his verifiable real life story is truly great and needed no embellishment.

On the other hand he’s got a lot of nerve saying President Obama reminds him of a psychopath for “lying” about the unemployment rate.

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Merkley & Sanders Introduce Bill to “Keep It In The Ground” on Public Lands

by Gaius Publius

The idea of ending the hypocritical role of the federal government in aiding and betting the warming of our planet is not a hard idea to hold, especially if you’re a climate-aware citizen, or climate-aware president. Yet, for some reason, the federal government, the guardian of land owned by the public, is still in the coal, oil and gas business.

Bernie Sanders and Jeff Merkley want to end that, with a bill called the “Keep It In The Ground” Act. Meteor Blades at Daily Kos (my emphasis):

Merkley and Sanders introduce bill to end new and non-producing oil and gas leases on public lands

Flanked by Sierra Club president Aaron Mair, tribal rights attorney Tara Zhaabowekwe Houska‎, and 350.org founder Bill McKibben, Sen. Jeff Merkley and Sen. Bernie Sanders introduced legislation Wednesday to stop issuing leases to extract fossil fuels from on- and off-shore federal lands. Titled the Keep It in the Ground Act, the bill would also terminate all existing federal leases that are not producing. Co-sponsors of the legislation are Democratic Sens. Barbara Boxer, Ben Cardin, Kirsten Gillibrand, Patrick Leahy, and Elizabeth Warren.

Behind the legislation is a simple message: When the common good depends on our adapting to and ameliorating the impacts of climate change, it makes no sense for public land meant for that common good to continue as a source of the fuels that are driving global warming.

Standing with a crowd of supporters near the Capitol in Washington, Sanders and Merkley praised the aggressive grassroots environmental movement that has been at the forefront of climate change activism, including opposition to the proposed Keystone XL pipeline that looks closer than ever to extinction.

The two senators and Mair also spoke about ensuring that workers in the fossil fuel industry are not left behind. Merkely said their legislation, in particular, and fighting climate change, in general, by ending the extraction and burning of fossil fuels should not be an exercise in green vs. blue. Ours, he said, “must be a green and blue movement” with eco-activists working side by side with workers in the transition to renewable energy sources now underway.

Sanders said we have a “moral responsibility” not to bequeath a planet to our kids and grandkids “that is unhealthy and in some cases uninhabitable.” You can’t just “talk the talk” and then support extracting huge amounts of oil and gas from federal lands, he declared.

There’s quite a bit more at the link, including this, about how to protect workers during the transition.

Mair, who has been president of the Sierra Club since May, said what is needed is a “green TARP” for fossil fuel workers, referencing the 2008 bail-out of financial institutions. Activists need to push a fully funded clean-green energy transition that protects workers, he added. He recommended “retooling” America just as was done to defeat the Axis powers during World War II. Houska, a member of the Couchiching First Nation, spoke in favor of the legislation, noting that indigenous people have been in the forefront of the climate change fight because they are among the most affected by those changes and by the extraction of fossil fuels.

Note the reference to World War II and its “retooling” of America. If I remember my history, that wasn’t a “free market” effort — as in, General Motors didn’t get to “free market decide” how many tanks and jeeps to build. The word for that kind of effort is “emergency mobilization.” Stay tuned for more; this actually represents a way out of the worst of the mess we’re headed for.

The article also notes that “Current extraction of fossil fuel from federal lands and waters accounts for nearly one-fourth of all emissions in the United States” (my emphasis) so this is not nothing. On the other hand, it will take quite a bit to get this passed.

How You Can Help

What this bill does:

1. It lays down a marker, a stake in the ground. “Keep it in the ground” is a moral obligation and a doable one. It’s also easy to understand and an easy phrase to remember.

You can help — by asking, as the writer says, “every candidate for public office, Democrat or Republican—from city councils to state legislatures to Congress—whether they agree climate change has created what Sanders calls a ‘major, major, major’ crisis and if so, what they propose to do to meet the challenges that crisis presents.” As the writer correctly notes, “Anybody who blows off such questions or treats them as a side issue is worthy of progressives’ disdain, not our support.”

2. It tells you what a President Sanders would strive to do if he achieves the Oval Office. That’s big. Will any other announced candidate back this bill, and by implication, support the ending of climate-killing carbon leases on public land?

You can help — by supporting Bernie Sanders in his bid for that office. Adjust the split any way you wish at the link. You can also help by asking Mr. O’Malley and Ms. Clinton the same question. They deserve the right to answer.

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

GP

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TPP: It’s The Company’s world. They just let you live in it.
by Tom Sullivan

Credit Mary Shelley with the “creation gone wrong” trope. Or perhaps Genesis. Yet, the evil mega-corporation is as much a staple of popular fiction as the radiation-spawned monstrosities and failed experiments we grew up with at matinees as kids. Omni Consumer Products (OCP) from Robocop, for example, Ridley Scott’s Tyrell Corporation from Blade Runner, or the Weyland-Yutani Corporation (“The Company”) from his Alien films. All fictional. But like those, it seems the real beasties are neither biological nor technological, but legal.

Enter TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The full text was released yesterday, but as a series of PDFs. The Washington Post has made the full agreement searchable. (Note: some English spellings are internationalized.) At Vox, Timothy Lee explains that it may take a month to examine and sort out its impact:

But the agreement is also a lot more than a trade deal. It has more than two dozen chapters that cover everything from tariffs to the handling of international investment disputes. The reason these deals have gotten so complex is that people realized that they were a good vehicle for creating binding international agreements.

Modern trade deals include a dispute settlement process that helps ensure countries keep the commitments they make under trade deals. If one country fails to keep its commitment, another country can file a complaint that’s heard by an impartial tribunal. If the complaining country prevails, it can impose retaliatory tariffs on the loser.

Following on the heels of last week’s New York Times three-part series on how arbitration agreements have essentially privatized the courts to the benefit of corporations and to the harm of consumers, one wonders how much more extra-judicial authority TPP may be handing our budding Weyland-Yutanis in shifting power from the people to the plutocrats. How much of the thousands of pages is fine print?

Politico:

“The text that I’ve read so far includes annexes and exclusions up the wazoo,” said Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.), a member on the House Ways and Means committee. “You think you’ve seen it all? You have not. Exclusions to rules by each country. Bilateral deals with Japan, and more than 50 two-way side letters.”

Whom do you figure that complexity favors? Workers?

Cathy Feingold, director of international affairs with the AFL-CIO, said the structure of Cafta left little incentive for the Guatemalan government to monitor and improve labor standards. It allowed Guatemala to start reaping the rewards of the trade pact without first showing evidence it was complying with the deal’s labor standards.

Critics say TPP commits the same error. Without immediately demanding that countries comply with its labor provisions, it extends benefits to countries like Malaysia, where a recent report found nearly a third of all migrant workers in the nation’s booming electronics industry are working under forced labor conditions, and to Vietnam, which bans all unions that are independent of a top-down labor federation tied to the Communist Party dictatorship.

As the International Business Times graphically points out, citing past trade agreements, it is one thing for trade pacts to legalize unions. It another to protect them. Compliance with “labor provisions in most partner countries is generally not monitored or enforced systematically.”

Count me skeptical. “Trust us” counts for doodly squat.

QOTD: Dr Ben, who else?

by digby

From that Facebook post I published earlier:

“Every signer of the Declaration of Independence had no elected office experience…What they had was a deep belief that freedom is a gift from God.”

The Wall Street Journal issued a little correction on this doozy:

Thomas Jefferson, Sam Adams, John Hancock and many other signer of the Declaration of Independence all held elected seats in colonial assemblies, Benjamin Carp, an associate history professor at Brooklyn College, told the paper.

Carson’s spokesperson said he was talking about “federal office.” The fact that there was no federal government prior to the revolution might have made that difficult but whatevs. (I won’t even go into the “deep belief that freedom is a gift from God” nonsense …)

I would guess a lot of this is coming from that insufferable wingnut hack David Barton, who I wrote about for Salon recently. The man is a menace.

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The hospital attack in Kunduz from the inside

by digby

Well this will certainly help you sleep tonight. It’s a recitation of events at the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) hospital attack in Afghanistan, Via Shadowproof:

“MSF staff recall that the first room to be hit was the ICU [intensive care unit], where MSF staff were caring for a number of immobile patients, some of whom were on ventilators. Two children were in the ICU. MSF staff were attending to these critical patients in the ICU at the time of the attack and were directly killed in the first airstrikes or in the fire that subsequently engulfed the building. Immobile patients in the ICU burned in their beds.”

The review further recounts, “After hitting the ICU, the airstrikes then continued from the east to west end of the main hospital building. The ICU, archive, laboratory, ER, x-ray, outpatient department, mental health and physiotherapy departments as well as the operating theaters were all destroyed in this wave after wave of strikes.”

“After the first strike, MSF medical teams working in the operating theaters ran out of the OT [occupational therapy room] and sought shelter in the sterilization room. The two patients on the operating table in the OTs
were killed in the airstrikes.”

One MSF nurse showed up to the administrative building “covered from head to toe in debris and blood with his left arm hanging from a small piece of tissue after having suffered a traumatic amputation in the blast.” Staff immediately attempted to treat the nurse, who was bleeding from his left eye and oropharynx (the part of the throat behind the mouth).

Staff heard a propeller plane that sounded like an AC-130, the aircraft which was reported to have circled the MSF hospital.

“Many of those interviewed describe massive explosions, sufficient to shake the ground. These bigger explosions were most frequently described as coming in concentrated volleys. MSF staff also described shooting coming from the plane.”

The review recounts how staff were gunned down by the aircraft, as they tried to flee the main hospital building.

“Some accounts mention shooting that appears to follow the movement of people on the run,” according to the review. “MSF doctors and other medical staff were shot while running to reach safety in a different part of the compound. One MSF staff member described a patient in a wheelchair attempting to escape from the inpatient department when he was killed by shrapnel from a blast. An MSF doctor suffered a traumatic amputation to the leg in one of the blasts. He was later operated on by the MSF team on a make-shift operating table on an office desk where he died.”

“Other MSF staff describe seeing people running while on fire and then falling unconscious on the ground. One MSF staff was decapitated by shrapnel in the airstrikes.”

There is more but I really couldn’t read on.

This is a preliminary look at the internal report being prepared by Doctors Without Borders. they do not comment on how the attack may have occurred or why it was ordered. They do swear that it was not some kind of “Taliban base” as some have claimed.

I did not know that they were attacked by an airship shooting people as they ran. I don’t know why that makes it worse. But somehow it does.

HOrrifying.