The Cost of Hollow Government

CBS organized a kind of economic town hall meeting with President Obama and has most of it piecemeal (with a commercial for every piece) on its website.  This is a question from a laid-off federal government worker (the National Zoo) that more than anything I've seen makes concrete the fact that loose talk and action affecting government programs have consequences for real people.  As President Obama said before--and says again here--these people have families and homes, children and lives just like those employed in the private sector.  They aren't aliens.  As he points out here, while the number of private sector jobs have been growing (however slowly) for at least a year, the unemployment rate stays high because government jobs are being lost at every level.  In most cases these people perform useful and needed services, and are often not compensated accordingly even in the best of times.  Now they are literally being called "waste."  It's the human as well as social cost of political cynicism.

The Mystery of Health Insurance

Even given the political polarity at work, it's been hard for me to comprehend the virulence of the opposition to health care reform that can improve the situation even a little.  The health insurance situation is so bad and affects so many people that reform should be universally welcomed.  Why especially is anyone more afraid of what the government might do as opposed to what health insurance behemoths are already doing?

And according to the New York Times, still doing:

 " The nation’s major health insurers are barreling into a third year of record profits, enriched in recent months by a lingering recessionary mind-set among Americans who are postponing or forgoing medical care.... Yet the companies continue to press for higher premiums, even though their reserve coffers are flush with profits and shareholders have been rewarded with new dividends. Many defend proposed double-digit increases in the rates they charge, citing a need for protection against any sudden uptick in demand once people have more money to spend on their health, as well as the rising price of care...

Some observers wonder if the insurers are simply raising premiums in advance of the full force of the health care law in 2014. The insurers’ recent prosperity — big insurance companies have reported first-quarter earnings that beat analysts expectations by an average of 30 percent — may make it difficult for anyone, politicians and industry executives alike, to argue that the industry has been hurt by the federal health care law."

Much of the article is about how people are denying themselves medical care because of cost, even the cost of driving any distance for tests, because of gas prices on top of deductibles.  This is making health insurance even more profitable for these conscienceless companies.  Yet they can't break the habit of raising rates.  And these are the institutions that people trust?

Buying the Future

The graduation season focuses attention on the perils of universities these days.  Some worry that too many students are on drugs.  Now there's reason for everyone to worry that too many universities are on Koch.

Two Florida newspapers charged that the Florida State University economics department  "had accepted a $1.5 million grant from a foundation controlled by petrochemical billionaire Charles Koch on the condition that Koch’s operatives would have a free hand in selecting professors and approving publications."

NPR's All Things Considered picked up the story, and quoted officials as denying that Koch has a role in selecting faculty, but even in a short and shallow report, otherwise shows how the department bends over for the Koch agenda.

Think Progress, however, notes that Koch has been busy buying the educational future:. As reporter Kris Hundley notes, Koch virtually owns much of George Mason University, another public university, through grants and direct control over think tanks within the school. For instance, Koch controls the Mercatus Center of George Mason University, an institute that set much of the Bush administration’s environmental deregulation policy. And similar conditional agreements have been made with schools like Clemson and West Virginia University. ThinkProgress has analyzed data from the Charles Koch Foundation, and found that this trend is actually much larger than previous known. Many of the Koch university grants finance far right, pro-polluter professors, and dictate that students read Charles Koch’s book as part of their academic study."

Think Progress implicates Brown University, West Virginia University, Utah State and Troy University as well.

Starving government so it no longer has the resources to act in the public interest is the not so secret agenda of the GOPer coalition of the predatory capitalist right and the religious right--a coalition that's become so intertwined that a lot of folks personify both and may even believe they are the same thing. We're seeing this in many areas, and now it's becoming noteworthy in higher education--the last area of education in which the U.S. still holds world prominence, though admittedly more for a few elite institutions than the general makeup.  When you starve these institutions, interested above all in self-preservation, then support has to come from somewhere.  Increasingly, it's coming from billionaires with either or both motives for that agenda, which are linked not only by the profit motive but by opportunities to create a political climate favorable to that agenda.

All of this complements other efforts, from state governments and municipalities mandating what can and cannot be taught in schools regarding (for example) evolution and climate change, to the somewhat buffoonish but still troublesome efforts of people like Michelle Bachman and Mike Huckabee to rewrite history so it comports with Rabid Right ideology.

It's not that universities have heretofor been pure.  The Pentagon and military contractors have financed entire schools for years.  This is just more clearly ideological and political, and aimed at controlling what is taught and what is not.  Except for certain schools sponsored by Christian organizations, colleges and universities have officially and for the most part functionally upheld universal standards against impositions and dictates from outside.   

In the years directly after the Nazis and Fascists, and while the Soviet Union was being heavily critiqued, much was made in the U.S. about the difference between education and propaganda.  A lot of it turns out to be self-serving, but we did get a sense of the difference.  The counter-factual was propaganda, and all you had to do was prove it wrong and it could not masquerade as education.  Conversely, if something is called propaganda and it turns out to be true, it's education.  In today's world, it doesn't necessarily work that way anymore.

The New Terrorism

They won't attract the attention of Navy Seals, but they are more than metaphorically the most dangerous remaining terrorists threatening the U.S.  The GOPer congressional leadership is threatening to hold the United States hostage unless their demands are met, to the tune of two trillion dollars.

What makes meeting their demands impossible, even apart from the likely hacking away at Medicare and/or Social Security and/or Medicaid, is that their proposals are based on faulty economic premises (Bloomberg: Boehner's Views on Economy Contradicted By Indicators), and would not actually cut the deficit but--in the very headline of Ezra Klein's piece in the Washington Post : "Boehner's debt-limit demands would increase the deficit."  Notably:   "Extending the Bush tax cuts over the next 10 years, which Boehner favors, will increase the deficit by twice as much as the $2 trillion in spending cuts he's calling for will reduce the deficit."

While President Obama has reportedly instructed negotiators (for the Dems, the chairs of relevant financial committees; for the GOPers, two purely political operatives with no economic experience or expertise) to keep an open mind, just what can be done to satisfy irrational demands built on faulty premises and non-factual assertions?  And it's not just a matter of politics, or even a few days of government shutdown to make a point--costly as that would be.  It is reneging on past obligations, including huge amounts spent by the Bush administration and authorized by the GOPer controlled Congress.  It makes America a deadbeat nation, and since it's never happened, nobody knows how bad it could be or for how long.  But there's quite a lot of agreement across the political spectrum of economists--just shy of the unhinged right--that it would be a huge disaster with continuing damage.   

Meanwhile, polls show huge majorities against the GOPers main policies: ending Medicare as we know it, and refusing to restore taxes on the extremely rich. 

So the world watches this hostage crisis unfold, as an entire country and the global economy as we know it threatened by political terrorists. 

Instant Komic

It's an instant icon apparently, that Situation Room photo, so of course it's being creatively parodied.  Wired collected contributions, and from their selection and others posted in the comments, I've chosen my top three.  It takes some detachment--maybe too much--from what's actually happening in this photo, to make sport of it.  But I must admit, these make me laugh.

 

Why Help in a Crisis, When You Can Manufacture Your Own?

He forced House GOPers to vote to end Medicare as we know it, which turned out to be as spectacularly unpopular as conventional wisdom said it would be.  Now fresh on the heels of that disaster, freshman Speaker of the House John Banal is freshly threatening to hold the full faith and credit of the United States hostage to his impossible demands.

Banal announced to a Wall Street audience on Monday that his GOPers won't vote to raise the U.S. debt ceiling unless Dems and President Obama agree to budget cuts--not in the mere billions--but in the trillions. Such cuts would inevitably involve Medicare and/or Social Security.  Dealing with those programs has befuddled policymakers of both parties for decades.  But Banal demands that this be done in the next few weeks, or he'll turn the United States of America into the biggest deadbeat on the planet.

Of course he will not even discuss revenue increases: restoring sane tax rates on the rich or withdrawing arm-twisted handouts to oil companies now soaking Americans for every cent they can get at the pump.

There are only a few conclusions to make from this.  First, that Banal is a deeply stupid man.  Even if it's a bluff or "tactic," his threat is apt to panic already nervous markets.  And if he is not a deeply stupid man, then his intent is to cause economic havoc for possible political advantage, which makes him evil as well as stupid.

photo from CBS News

Meanwhile, add the Midwest to the regions requiring federal assistance because of extreme weather, as record flooding proceeds--including the highest flood crest in the history of the Mississippi River.  Why deal with an actual crisis when you can manufacture one, and be its star?

2 Things From 60 Minutes

President Obama talked about the Osama bin Laden operation for more than 30 minutes to 60 Minutes on Sunday.  Two thoughts were most prominent in my response when I saw it later online.

First, the most amazing part of this operation--which nobody seems to be talking about--is that it was kept secret.  For months.  Nobody leaked, not even after a few drinks at the Correspondents dinner.

One way it was kept so secret, President Obama revealed, was that very few people knew.  Some of his aides--maybe even some in that now famous photo-- didn't know about it until it was pretty much happening. 

Michelle didn't know.  And, oh yeah, the Pakistanis.  (Another thought, not the second one, an ancillary thought, is that evidence that bin Laden was confident in his Pakistani protection was that he was evidently completely surprised by, and unprepared for, the raid.)

Still, think about this.  This whole operation could have come to a sudden and ignominious halt if word had leaked, at any point from last August, but especially in the final week.  But it didn't.  A lot of people deserve credit for various elements of the operation, but this is all President Obama and the people he chose to trust.

The second thing is rhetorical in nature.  President Obama scored points with forthright answers, and even if you disagree, he gets points for that comment that people who disapprove of bin Laden being killed "need to have their heads examined."  But I detected an unfortunate addition to his rhetoric, and I think I know where it comes from.

President Obama used the word "obviously" about nine times in his interview.  Overuse of that word is a characteristic rhetorical tic of Leon Panetta, now CIA chief, soon to be Secretary of Defense.  He's had it since his White House days with Clinton, and it was particularly annoying when he was testing the waters for a possible electoral run (for Gov or Senator) from California.  Panetta uses the word "obviously" to preface his answers to a truly annoying degree.  "Obviously" is always slightly insulting to the questioner.  It seems arrogant, although it also seems defensive.  Mr. President, stop listening to Leon!  Or at least check yourself.  You don't want to pick up this bad habit.

Emerson for the Day

"That way of viewing things you know of, least insisted on by you, however, least remembered--take that view, adhere to that, insist on that, see all things from that point of view.  Will you let these intimations go unattended to and watch the doorbell or knocker?  This is your text.  Do not speak for other men; speak for yourself. They show you as in a vision the kingdoms of the world, and of all the worlds, but you prefer to look in upon a puppet-show...

Thoughts that blot out the earth are best conceived in the night, when darkness has already blotted it out from sight.  We look upward for inspiration."

Henry David Thoreau

Happy Mothers Day

Sports Extra

In honor of the San Francisco Giants amazing 2010 season, Margaret got me a Giants calendar for Christmas--one of those daily calendars you tear off each day.  It's not a very functional calendar--they did away with the big number so it's pretty hard to find the date on it--but there's a piece of baseball trivia or a trivia question each day.  (Of course, there is no trivia in baseball.  There are only stats.)

Two stood out so far.  One was recent, on May 2.  First the background: striking out is pretty bad in baseball, especially with men on base or in a game-deciding situation.  But probably the worst thing a batter can do is hit into a double play.  That's a real downer.  You make not one out but two, and you erase somebody who might have scored a run.  It's a rally killer.  Okay, so guess who hit into more double plays than anyone?  Cal Ripkin, Jr.  The next five are Hank Aaron, Carl Yastrzemski, Dave Winfield, Eddie Murray and Jim Rice.  What else do they have in common?  They're all in the Hall of Fame, largely for their hitting. Pretty interesting, and you can choose your moral.

The other, from March, really fascinated me.  In the entire history of baseball, there was one hitter who hit two grand slam homers in the same inning of the same game.  And he hit them off the same pitcher.

What especially fascinates me is that this didn't happen in the 1890s but in 1999.  I know I'm not the fan I used to be but how did that get by me?  The hitter was Fernando Tatis of the St. Louis Cardinals.  The pitcher was Chan Ho Park of the Los Angeles Dodgers.  Tatis was the fourth batter in the 3rd inning, with all three preceding batters on base.  He hit a fast ball 450 feet.  By the time he came to bat again--in that same inning-- the bases were loaded again.  They'd been loaded for Mark McGuire,who had set the single season home run record of 70 homers the year before.  But he flied out, so Tatis came up with one out and the bases still loaded. On a 3-2 count Tatis hit a curve or (he said) a slider that made it into the seats.

This required such an improbable set of circumstances that it only happened once.  Yet I can't find a narrative of that inning, beyond what I've just strung together.  Tatis wasn't a home run hitter--just 5' 10.'' Still, he was batting cleanup, behind McGuire.  I'm still intrigued.

This was also so recent that until this year both men were still in the majors.  Tatis (who wore 23 for the Cardinals, Michael Jordan and Barack Obama's basketball number) played for several teams, often in a utility role, including some time in the minor leagues, and for awhile he was even out of baseball.  Today he's back with the New York Mets.  He hit another grand slam ten years later almost to the day of his two-slam inning.  The jersey he wore on that day in 1999 sold for over $10,000.

You might think that giving up 8 runs to the same guy in one inning would destroy a pitcher, but Chan Ho Park's career was just beginning.  He even pitched in the 2001 All-Star game (although he was the losing pitcher.) His career also took him to a number of teams.  After the Dodgers he played for the Texas Rangers, Mets, Houston Astros, the Dodgers again, the Phillies, the Yankees in 2010, finishing the season and his major league career with the Pittsburgh Pirates.  He plays now in South Korea, which is where he's from.  While with the Pirates, he became the winningest Asian pitcher in U.S. major league history.  But in addition to giving up those two grand slams in one inning, he also gave up two more historic homers in one game--Barry Bond's 71st and 72nd, that broke McGuire's single season record.

Maybe baseball lends itself to intriguing stories.  Otherwise I'm getting detached--in more ways than one--from media sports.  Right now the Lakers are in the process of dropping themselves out of the NBA playoffs in the second round.  Update: they did, in very ugly fashion. Some teams can look good losing but not the Lakers.  They're losing to a lesser team.  Only today did I by chance see something that seemed to explain it.  It seems (if it's true) that Pau Gasol (who is playing uncharacteristically badly) is upset over being dumped by his girlfriend, a situation in which Kobe Bryant's wife allegedly had a hand, so things are tense between Kobe and Gasol.  This comports with Gasol's mystifyingly bad play, the complaint by another player that the team isn't "communicating" on court, and Bryant's dismissal of that complaint.  (Gasol and Bryant were asked about the rumor and denied it.)

  So it's very unlikely Phil Jackson gets his threepeat to retire on, and the franchise will boot millions of dollars, possibly over the hurt feelings of a couple of multi-millionaire athletes.  As a contending team, the Lakers are toast for years to come. It's all too believable, maybe even all too human, but not exactly motivation to get invested in the games.  What's worse is it paves the way for the loathsome Miami Heat to win the championship.  Only the new Chicago Bulls seem remotely capable of standing in their way.

Guns at Home

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Rachel Maddow visited Pittsburgh during last week's National Rifle Association convention.  She interviewed Ricky Burgess, City councilman from Homewood, one of Pittsburgh's mostly African American neighborhoods.  In this segment and another, he described in personal terms the impact of easily available guns on his life and the lives and life of his neighborhood.  Anything about Pittsburgh hits home to me, but this truly tragic situation affects everywhere in America, especially cities.  What is most disturbing to me--and to Burgess, I suspect--is that due to the NRA's monomanical efforts, the Pennsylvania legislature passed a law that forbids individual cities from passing their own gun control laws, to govern their own circumstances.  As Burgess points out, nobody is shooting rabbits or deer in Homewood.  They are shooting each other.  This is a very powerful video piece, as is the second segment at The Maddow Blog.

Maddow revealed one reason the NRA opposes any limitations on guns, ammunition, etc. at all--several of their board members are in the business of selling these items.  It's really all about money, not second amendment rights.  All of this forces my attention on what it is too depressing to see most of the time--this culture has lost all semblance of sanity on this issue.  The gun is the foremost symbol of power and even sexuality in this society--just walk down the aisles of a video store and look at the covers.   

Canada's Cold Update

Our northern correspondent has logged in via email with a link to this article ("Canada''s Cold New Dawn")  from the Guardian (UK) which explains the consequences of the parliamentary elections as kind of the Americanization of Canada with a polarized result: lots more seats for the farthest left party, and even lots more for the farthest right.  The upshot, quoting the article, is a "Canadian version of George W Bush, minus the warmth and intellect, is now prime minister." And he has a legislative majority.  Among expected changes:

Harper's Conservatives will pass an omnibus law and order bill within 100 days to make jail sentences mandatory for many offences, and begin building super-jails, copying a system that even its authors, the Americans, have begun to abandon. The huge purchase of fighter jets from Lockheed Martin, which was an election issue, will now go ahead – Harper says it will cost $9bn, government auditors say $39bn – as will massive military shipbuilding.

The Evangelist Christian right is at the heart of Harper's Conservative party, and after years of being shushed, it will now demand an end to a number of things, including abortion rights. Canada has no law against abortions, and they are available free.

Corporate taxes will be cut almost immediately, Bush-style. Political financing laws will change: parties now get money for each vote – but this will end under the Conservatives, whose plans also include loosening the section of the current law that sees corporations barred from donating to parties. Given further corporate tax-cutting and other Conservative measures, the party will have a huge advantage in terms of the amount it can solicit in corporate donations under a new political financing law.

All this presided over by a prime minister who sounds like an Evangelical Richard Nixon: "Harper himself is a famously strange man... Humourless and awkward in gait, he was once photographed shaking hands with one of his own children."

Our correspondent added an election analysis by Marc Zwelling that suggests the non-right didn't add numbers of votes but reallocated them to the New Democrats.  Plus he notes that the oil and gas industries are just as involved in Canada in their machinations on behalf of the right.

Update: Our correspondent adds (in the comments) that the Conservatives won 40% of the popular vote while the combined others, mostly to the left, got 60%.  But according to parliamentary district, the Conservatives won 54% of the seats.  He also wants you to see this video, for a reason I have yet to fathom.

Bankrupt: Opening and Closure

President Obama has extolled the possibility of unity growing out of the end of bin Laden, and on Thursday he went to Ground Zero to further the healing process and perhaps even that elusive "closure."  But judging from the surrounding noise, bin Laden's death has not so much closed a wound as opened one.

For we're suddenly reliving the Bush years.  While GOPers are back defending the efficacy of torture (while interrogation experts continue to say it's useless as well as the terrorists' top recruiting tool, and numerous people who should know--plus a New York Times investigation--affirm that torture played no part in gaining the information that led to bin Laden), Democrats are opening their eyes again to the costs of Bushwar.  And they are even more tragic now.

On Tuesday, Lawrence O'Donnell compared John Kerry's 2004 position on terrorism and Iraq with Bush's, and showed that the years since have proven Kerry right.  Plus if Kerry's approach had been implemented, it would have been far, far, far less costly in money and lives.  But what O'Donnell doesn't say is that Kerry's prescription was at least in general the same as what Al Gore talked about immediately after 9-11. 

Also on Tuesday, Rachel Maddow used her program's considerable skills in making a point clearly and visually.  The point she made has been advanced by others ( most recently, the Washington Post reporter she quoted, Ezra Klein.)  The point is this: Osama bin Laden's basic intent was to leverage terroristic acts to force the United States government to bankrupt itself.  Literally, financially. 

Bin Laden had actually seen this happen to a Superpower, when the Afghan resistance he was a part of (at the behest of the Saudi royals) effectively bankrupted the Soviet Union.  He figured he could do it to the U.S., too.  Sure enough, as Maddow showed, the U.S. government doubled its defense budget and spent untold billions on intelligence and other activities directly flowing from a particular U.S. administration's response to bin Laden.  (This concludes Maddow's point and begins mine.)

For thanks to some unfortunate events in Florida and a politicized Supreme Court, bin Laden got a willing partner in the White House--helped by a cowardly Congress-- for this particular goal.  The Bushites responded as they did for all kinds of reasons.  That's evident from their resurgent talking points this week, as well as what they're not saying, which has to do with sustaining GOPer power and enriching their corporate partners.

But isn't it odd that bin Laden's goal and the stated goal of the Rabid Right--to so diminish the ability of the federal government that it can be drowned in a bathtub--is essentially the same?

Maybe that's a stretch for some people, but I submit the effect is pretty damn much the same.  Look at where we are.  Apart even from the thousands of dead, the thousands of wounded, the thousands of families and millions of people whose lives have been twisted if not ruined--there's the federal government, with huge debt and diminished abilities to respond to the real needs and greater threats that we face.

The ongoing needs--education, health care, infrastructure, investment in clean energy--that have only grown worse, and for which there are scant resources (and diminished ability within the federal government, systematically depleted in key areas for political reasons.)  All of the needs that could have been addressed.

What this week has accidentally reminded us is how much we wasted in the past decade, and how tragically timed that waste was.  Because we failed to address, even accidentally, the greatest threat to our civilization, even when it was more generally acknowledged: the Climate Crisis.

The news this week--ignored as usual--was that the most prestigious study so far (though not the first) indicates that UN estimates for melting of Arctic and Greenland ice were way too modest--the melting is happening much faster, and as a consequence they predict a greater rise in sea levels.

It's just one of the daily pieces of evidence.  At this point our fate is probably sealed, whatever it turns out to be, but it's not likely to be good.  But had we been addressing this for the past ten years, and even if we had the federal surplus to apply to getting ready for the effects, we might have gotten through this without the major dislocations we're facing.  And so here we are, in so many ways, bankrupt.

The Phantom Menace and the Shameless Few

Judging from the rising unemployment claims of the past few weeks, there's little likelihood that unemployment will show much if any decline when those figures are announced later today.  Perhaps in anticipation of that, Paul Krugman wrote a scathing column .  He notes the weak recovery and its negligible effects on employment: "Employment has risen from its low point, but it has grown no faster than the adult population. And the plight of the unemployed continues to worsen: more than six million Americans have been out of work for six months or longer, and more than four million have been jobless for more than a year.  It would be nice if someone in Washington actually cared."

Krugman writes that Washington isn't exactly complacent--it is quaking with fear, but afraid of all the wrong things: debt crisis, dollar crisis, inflation crisis, none of which, he claims, are likely to happen, especially now or in the next few years.  What is happening is the jobs crisis.  "Unemployment isn’t just blighting the lives of millions, it’s undermining America’s future. The longer this goes on, the more workers will find it impossible ever to return to employment, the more young people will find their prospects destroyed because they can’t find a decent starting job. It may not create excited chatter on cable TV, but the unemployment crisis is real, and it’s eating away at our society... So we’re paying a heavy price for Washington’s obsession with phantom menaces."

Last week Think Progress worked out the figures and assembled a graph showing income inequality by nation.  Income inequality has been growing in the richest industrial nations the past few years--still, the United States is the most unequal among western nations, and is the least equal in the world except for one other country: Uganda. And that's pretty close to a tie.  There's a wider gap in America than in any Third World country that supposedly is defined by such gaps.  Pakistan is more equal.   Not since the Great Depression has there been this great a gap in the U.S.

Just as this is joblessness with cell phones, it may well be the Great Depression with color TV for many in America.  Income inequality has been growing since the 1980s, with the super rich amassing obscene wealth while everyone else slips back and now an increasing proportion are genuinely suffering, or are very near the edge of losing even the illusion of a middle class life.  How cynical would it be to suggest that the plutocracy in America will never experience shame for this?  But what about the country as a whole?  Is it possible to feel shame as a nation anymore?

That's in part a political question.  President Obama knows the costs of unemployment to people.  He sees those stories every night in the letters he reads from those who write to him.  With the GOPers threatening to hold the nation hostage in the debt ceiling debate, that takes immediate precedence.  It's not even clear what he can do, with this Rabid Right congressional fever, but the time is coming soon to try.

Update: The unemployment rate edged up to 9.0 from 8.8 but the economy added a "healthy" number of jobs--244,000-- beyond expectations. The New York Times business guy thinks it's because last month's unemployment number was off, and this is closer to the true number.

Koch is It

If you had the slightest doubt about the nature of the connection between billionaires--specifically the Koch brothers--and the tea party/Rabid Right, or you thought that even if the Kochs were financing these folks, they weren't directly responsible for their inflammatory talking points: check out these few sentences that a New York Magazine reporter got out of fossil fuel and chemicals billionaire David Koch at a charity fundraiser.

After saying President Obama deserves "zero credit" for getting Osama bin Laden,  David Koch said this:  Obama is "a hardcore socialist," Koch told us, "and he’s marvelous at pretending to be something other than that, but that is what I believe he truly is, a hardcore socialist. He’s scary to me."

That's the Rabid Right mantra on President Obama: socialist, devious, scary. It is Koch.  And  Koch is It.

Meanwhile on Planet Canada...

 
  Our cousin to the north suggested something was brewing up there in the Canadian elections.  So I paid attention to the TPM preview.  Even though it was titled Yes, America, There Is A Canada, it took a google news search to even find election results.

So here's is another U.S. take on the story, a business-oriented one from the LA Times (for that's what counts about Canada--our biggest oil supplier and chief trading partner, you see.)  It allows that the Canadian elections were "surprisingly interesting."  Could we get any more condescending?  I guess we're not afraid of their terrorists or nukes.




  Personally I found the results unsurprisingly confusing, since it's a parliamentary system, and the parties are different (the Liberals are middle of the road, the Conservatives are for single-payer national healthcare, and the New Democrats are to the left of any of our Democrats.) Even the colors are different: the conservatives are blue, and though there is a Green Party, the New Democrats are orange.  Gee, we don't even have orange.

The upshot seems to be that it was a tremendous victory for the New Democrats and also a tremendous victory for the Conservatives.  The NDP won a bunch of seats--three times as many as it had before-- and became the party with the second-largest representation in the legislature, but the Conservatives won a majority for the first time anyone has done so in ten years.  This analysis from the Globe & Mail says it was a result tied to some familiar-sounding economic divides.  But what does it all mean?  I await enlightenment.

[Top photo is Vancouver, BC.  On the left wing is Hamilton, Ontario.] 

Saturday Night and Sunday Night

According to news reports, President Obama made the decision on Friday to go ahead with plan he had previously selected from several options, to find and capture or kill Osama bin Laden.  Because it wasn't absolutely certain that bin Laden was there, some of his National Security team reportedly had not been in favor of this.  It seems clear that President Obama pretty much staked his presidency on being right about this, and on a successful mission. 

The mission was scheduled for Saturday, but was called off because of bad weather.  So as previously scheduled, President Obama attended the correspondents' dinner, where he laughed at a comedian's joke about bin Laden's whereabouts (he hosts an afternoon show on C-Span), and provided his own brilliant and exquisitely timed stand-up routine. 

Part of it seemed actually politically significant to me when I watched it later, and now--after the events of Sunday--both Josh Marshall and Howard Fineman commented on exactly that part of it, which assumed even more power because of Sunday.  It came after President Obama kidded himself and his attackers concerning the birther blather.  He then pretended to start similar rumors about GOPer contenders (Michelle Bachman was really born in Canada; Tim Palenty's middle name is Hosni.)   Then he took on Trump, describing the kind of executive decisionmaking that qualifies him to be President:

" But all kidding aside, obviously, we all know about your credentials and breadth of experience. (Laughter.) For example -- no, seriously, just recently, in an episode of Celebrity Apprentice -- (laughter) -- at the steakhouse, the men's cooking team cooking did not impress the judges from Omaha Steaks. And there was a lot of blame to go around. But you, Mr. Trump, recognized that the real problem was a lack of leadership. And so ultimately, you didn't blame Lil' Jon or Meatloaf. (Laughter.) You fired Gary Busey. (Laughter.) And these are the kind of decisions that would keep me up at night. (Laughter and applause.) Well handled, sir. (Laughter.) Well handled. "

Even if the bin Laden mission hadn't happened Sunday, this one moment might have been enough to destroy Trump's candidacy in everyone's eyes except probably his own.  Now it almost certainly has.

A lot of correspondents from major print and electronic outlets were at the dinner, along with Hollywood celebrities and major political figures, including Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.  The correspondents saw Obama completely at ease, apparently having a good time.  They had no idea of the decision he had made, and the stakes of the operation that had been rescheduled for just a few hours later.  "One thing should be clear now," wrote New York Times reporter Michael Shear in that paper's political blog: "Don't play poker with President Obama." 

What transpired on Sunday confirmed President Obama as Commander-in-Chief.  But what makes him a great President was the context he created and the meaning he gave it in his address to the nation on Sunday night.  Michael Scherer  reports on the crafting of that speech on Sunday night.  President Obama, he reports, knew what he wanted to say when he began talking with aides:

Obama has discussed this thematic connection with his aides in the West Wing, explaining that the death of bin Laden signals something far greater than a national security accomplishment. “He views this as a demonstration of this country’s capacity to overcome skeptics and do things that people had decided were no longer doable,” explained Press Secretary Jay Carney, in an interview Monday afternoon. “There is sort of a grit and resolve. And not in a John Wayne way, but in a commitment and focus.”

It was a restatement, Scherer wrote, of his theme of "We do big things."  But it was even more a restatement of what Americans can achieve when they work together in good faith, and a call once again to serious approaches to serious problems.  It is a theme he will continue in the days ahead.  Obviously it is a re-election theme, but it is also the core of his message from his candidacy: we must work together to solve problems, and we have some really big problems.  It may not be easy, it may take time, but Americans have done it before.  We have done big things.  This is the mythos he urges us to adopt: we do big things.  But particular big things:

"That is the story of our history, whether it’s the pursuit of prosperity for our people, or the struggle for equality for all our citizens; our commitment to stand up for our values abroad, and our sacrifices to make the world a safer place. Let us remember that we can do these things not just because of wealth or power, but because of who we are: one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

The big things he came to office to do--and the big things that circumstances required that he do--are aimed at winning the future.  He identified addressing the healthcare problem as the most critical one--its costs to businesses of all sizes and government at all levels as well as to families and individuals, that were only going to grow exponentially in the future.  To truly solve this efficiently would require everyone's sincere efforts.  That was the point of attempting a bipartisan bill.  But because of infantile whatever-you're for-we're against GOPer partisanship, it was costly to pass an imperfect bill, and it will be a struggle to implement and perfect it. 

Because of that infantile partisanship, fueled by oil billions and fear, we are risking the future by not addressing the Climate Crisis as a civilization.  President Obama has gotten what he could by emphasizing the economic benefits of  green energy innovation, so there is still a chance, however slim, to win the future.  If it takes something as nebulously related as the end to a great symbol of evil to bring Americans together long enough for them to actually hear what President Obama has been saying, it is a possibility worth exploring.  "...our sacrifices to make the world a better place" doesn't just mean the sacrifices of soldiers and their families regarding military actions.  Ultimately it is an excellent description of why we must confront the Climate Crisis.  

Gleanings from the bin Laden News

A few thoughts and gleanings from today's dominant story: the U.S. military operation that killed Osama bin Laden in a firefight at his Pakistan compound.

First, on the facts, as various bits of misinformation have floated around, and the disinformation has begun.  The body of bin Laden was confirmed both by DNA and eyewitness identification (by his wife, who sustained a minor injury and was left behind with other survivors.)  One report said that Pakistan government operatives took control of the compound shortly after the U.S. Navy Seals left (operating under the Joint Special Operations Command).  They were on the ground for about forty minutes.  Bin Laden was buried at sea, in accordance with Islamic law (as approved by clerics in America today.)  

As the timeline was further revealed Monday, the connection to bin Laden was made through the identity and later the location of a courier he used instead of electronic communications.  Some TV "experts" previously connected with the Bush administration touted that this intelligence came from "enhanced interrogation" (i.e. torture.)  This however was strongly denied by Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein.  A Time Magazine reporter quotes her: 

Feinstein was adamant that no information obtained by waterboarding led to Abbottabad. “We’re doing a report on detention and interrogation, which is the Democratic majority report, and we’ve gone through over three million cables, pages, documents going back and I do not believe that there is any evidence that this came from waterboarding,” she said.

Confirmation of Democrat Feinstein's assertion came from an unusual source: Donald Rumsfeld, Bush's Secretary of Defense at the time.  There are contemporaneous reports that I recall that said that intelligence was obtained from suspects, but through incentives and humane treatment, not threats and torture.

Reports are that bin Laden lived in that fortress compound for several years, in a highly populated area only a mile from the Pakistani version of West Point military academy and not far from the capital.  Lawrence O'Donnell points out that it was built in 2005, which was also the year that the Bush administration closed the office in the CIA that had been charged with locating bin Laden.

About the immediate response to the news on Sunday: The comment I was most struck by was to the effect that the spontaneous demonstrations were from primarily young people, which showed how important bin Laden was symbolically to them and their lives.  If true, that surprises me and seems significant to me. 

This is the cover of the upcoming special issue of Time Magazine.  Osama bin Laden's death was announced on May 1, 2011.

This is the cover of Time Magazine, following the announcement of the death of Hitler on May 1, 1945.











There are a lot of complexities about the meaning of what's happened in the past 24 hours, just as the actual facts of what happened are still being clarified.  But clearly in some way these two covers express the emotions of the moment, though as with everything, the equivalence of Hitler to anyone is usually a false one in degree at least.  But for our time it is for many Americans and perhaps others, that kind of moment.

From President Obama's statement to the nation on Sunday night:

THE PRESIDENT: Good evening. Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda, and a terrorist who’s responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children.

 [After nearly ten years].....Yet Osama bin Laden avoided capture and escaped across the Afghan border into Pakistan. Meanwhile, al Qaeda continued to operate from along that border and operate through its affiliates across the world. And so shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our war against al Qaeda, even as we continued our broader efforts to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat his network.

Then, last August, after years of painstaking work by our intelligence community, I was briefed on a possible lead to bin Laden. It was far from certain, and it took many months to run this thread to ground. I met repeatedly with my national security team as we developed more information about the possibility that we had located bin Laden hiding within a compound deep inside of Pakistan. And finally, last week, I determined that we had enough intelligence to take action, and authorized an operation to get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice.

Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability. No Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body....

Yet his death does not mark the end of our effort. There’s no doubt that al Qaeda will continue to pursue attacks against us. We must –- and we will -- remain vigilant at home and abroad.  As we do, we must also reaffirm that the United States is not –- and never will be -– at war with Islam. I’ve made clear, just as President Bush did shortly after 9/11, that our war is not against Islam. Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims. Indeed, al Qaeda has slaughtered scores of Muslims in many countries, including our own. So his demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity.

The American people did not choose this fight... Yet as a country, we will never tolerate our security being threatened, nor stand idly by when our people have been killed. We will be relentless in defense of our citizens and our friends and allies. We will be true to the values that make us who we are. And on nights like this one, we can say to those families who have lost loved ones to al Qaeda’s terror: Justice has been done.

We give thanks for the men who carried out this operation, for they exemplify the professionalism, patriotism, and unparalleled courage of those who serve our country. And they are part of a generation that has borne the heaviest share of the burden since that September day.

Finally, let me say to the families who lost loved ones on 9/11 that we have never forgotten your loss, nor wavered in our commitment to see that we do whatever it takes to prevent another attack on our shores.

And tonight, let us think back to the sense of unity that prevailed on 9/11. I know that it has, at times, frayed. Yet today’s achievement is a testament to the greatness of our country and the determination of the American people.

The cause of securing our country is not complete. But tonight, we are once again reminded that America can do whatever we set our mind to. That is the story of our history, whether it’s the pursuit of prosperity for our people, or the struggle for equality for all our citizens; our commitment to stand up for our values abroad, and our sacrifices to make the world a safer place.

Let us remember that we can do these things not just because of wealth or power, but because of who we are: one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you. May God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America."

Tornado Update

From the AP: "At least one of the massive tornadoes that killed hundreds across the South this week was a devastating EF-5 storm, according to an analysis Friday by the National Weather Service, which suspects several others also were the worst of the worst."

Meanwhile, more climate scientists relate the tornado outbreak to Climate Crisis climate change.

Us

When tornadoes tore through the southeast a few weeks ago, one meteorologist interviewed by news media talked about how unusually big and strong the outbreak was.  There was even a case of three twisters circling each other in a cluster.  But the good news, he said, was that this was so unusual that we didn't have to worry about another outbreak this year.

Then came the tornadoes this week that hit Alabama and Georgia, went into Tennesseee and even Virginia, leaving unprecedented destruction and killing upwards of 300 people.  "Some of the killer tornadoes that ripped across the South may have been among the largest and most powerful ever recorded, experts suggested," said a Reuters report.

"We have never experienced such a major weather event in our history," said the Tennessee Valley Authority in an official statement. "Hundreds of thousands of consumers are without power because of damage to power lines and other equipment…."  Power was cut to a nuclear power plant in Alabama, but emergency systems reportedly worked well enough for a controlled shutdown.

President Obama visited the hardest hit city of Tuscaloosa.  He promised the federal government would do everything possible to help people there.  This is clearly a time when everyone wants the government's help--even Texas governor Rick Perry, who has more than once threatened to secede because of his hostility to the federal government, was whining that the President was helping Alabama but not Texas, which is hard-hit from massive fires.

But the congressional budget cut funds for FEMA and specifically for emergency capabilities.  Moreover, the hostility to infrastructure projects in the guise of budget-balancing in the states as well as in the GOPer House, means that municipalities are not prepared for disasters which will inevitably result from the growing changes that make up the Climate Crisis--and the power of these tornadoes could well be such a result.  Specifically the recent flooding in Missouri revealed the inadequate levies there.  As climate studies like this one (with data from 2010) indicate, the weather-related and climate-related disasters of this spring are historically unusual, but they may well prefigure the "new normal."  Even USA Today notes the likelihood of this due to the Climate Crisis.

Now in the next days and weeks, the country faces record flooding in the midwest, including from the Mississippi River.  This tumultuous spring follows a winter of such extreme weather that the U.S. economy was strongly affected--the drop in growth is attributed largely to winter weather, and to higher commodity prices, some of which result from bad weather elsewhere in the world as well.  This, too, is likely to become the new normal.

I don't think the current political wallowing in angry fantasy and denial is unrelated to both climate news and the obvious facts of the weather and climate-related catastrophes--storms, floods, droughts, fires.  That's probably a starting point for another installment in my Climate Inside series.  But for now these disasters--coupled with the furor over the GOPer attempt to destroy Medicare--may be sobering enough for people to be able to hear what President Obama has been saying about government as the way we take care of one another beyond our personal reach.  Then maybe they'll begin to hear his insistent application of this principle to the future.

An Offer (Yes) We Can Refuse

The cable news bobbleheads are trying to find a way to describe Donald Trump's speech in Las Vegas, in which his foreign policy is apparently to tell China to fuck off and to take Iraq and Libya's oil.  Bob Shrum likened it to Howard Beale in Network.  Exactly wrong.  Beale was the voice of the powerless.  Trump thinks he's powerful.  He's talking like a movie version of a Mob boss.  That he's talking that way in Vegas is exactly the point.

And why shouldn't the President be a Mob boss?  Don't we got the biggest guns?

Trump like all demagogic GOPers appeals to the truly fearful among the powerless, and the always resentful among the powerful who are never satisfied with what they've got until they've got it all.  What they have in common is an infantile heart.  They don't have the maturity to deal with complexity.  A lot of them don't care about anyone other than themselves, although this is more likely to be the infantile attitude of the powerful than the powerless pitiful tea party grunts.     

Birther of a Nation

Wednesday following President Obama's brief statement and the release of the long-form birth certificate was an extraordinary day for television news.  It seemed to unleash pent-up frustration and anger among television journalists who had been covering the birther story with the sort of veneer of objectivity that has proven both saving grace and, when exploited, a dangerous weakness (specifically in the outrageously scurrilous attacks on John Kerry's Vietnam experiences in the 2004 campaign that has since given us the term "swiftboating.")

I noted the anger first among black journalists, but it was widespread beyond any category.  Andrea Mitchell and Chuck Todd were among the first to respond after President Obama's statement, characterizing Donald Trump's innuendos and charges as racist.  That turned out to be just the beginning.

Before the end of the day, Chris Matthews grilled some birther politicians so relentlessly that one was struck utterly speechless.  Lawrence O'Donnell eviscerated the Orly lady and ended the interview abruptly when she refused to respond directly on the matter of the birth certificate.  O'Donnell had earlier directly called out the entertainment division of his own network, NBC, to immediately announce what Trump's commitments were to the network, because they already know whether he is going to be in position to actually run for President.  On CNN, historian Douglas Brinkley called on NBC to dump Trump or face a consumer boycott.  I've seen reference to Bob Shieffer on CBS grilling Trump and accusing him of racism.  Rachel Maddow called out members of the media for treating the birther charges as if they had some reasonable basis, specifically focusing on Ed Henry, the winger White House reporter for CNN.

But a mere recitation of some of these responses doesn't do justice to the disgust and anger they expressed, nor to their vocabulary.  Trump in particular was called out for race-baiting, called a racist enabler, a clown, a disgrace. (He continued this later Wednesday, when he raised more questions about President Obama's education, which I think was the bridge too far for a lot of black journalists in particular.)  Matthews referred to all the GOPers who joined the birthers or hinted that they might have a point as having checked into a roach motel, and that all were now sullied and indicted.

I don't know that I've heard such direct talk or seen such emotion before.  It's clear already that as President Obama predicted, there are still some who will not let even this additional evidence concerning his birthplace convince them.  But it's also clear that as least as long as Trump is a possible candidate or other candidates and officeholders continue to push the birther theme, there are a lot of voices in the media that are going to keep calling them out for what they are, and what this represents.

Focus

In releasing his long form birth certificate, President Obama ended his remarks with this:

"We live in a serious time right now and we have the potential to deal with the issues that we confront in a way that will make our kids and our grandkids and our great grandkids proud. And I have every confidence that America in the 21st century is going to be able to come out on top just like we always have. But we’re going to have to get serious to do it.

I know that there’s going to be a segment of people for which, no matter what we put out, this issue will not be put to rest. But I’m speaking to the vast majority of the American people, as well as to the press. We do not have time for this kind of silliness. We’ve got better stuff to do. I’ve got better stuff to do. We’ve got big problems to solve. And I’m confident we can solve them, but we’re going to have to focus on them -- not on this."

Earlier in his remarks, he referenced the House budget and his speech on his budget priorities, and the urgency of coming to agreements.  But the news coverage, he said, was primarily about the birther issue.  This is why he decided to confront it.

But the President deserves more credit for that speech (detailed beginning here) and for its influence.  The current problems GOPers are having defending the Ryan budget are on two issues that President Obama highlighted in his speech: more tax cuts for the rich and--as he was the first to say--"ending Medicare as we know it."

These are the issues GOPer congresspeople are hearing about in their town halls back in their districts.  In fact, the news kept playing a clip of a woman who was essentially reciting lines from this speech and from the President's own town hall meetings when she said it is easy to balance the budget on the backs of the poor, the helpless and the young who have no lobbyists in Washington.

When Worlds Collide

The Republicans' furious activities of the past two years, accelerating since their November victories, have brought together the more extreme elements of the Big Money GOPers with the most extreme and ideological Tea Party Rabid Righters.  The Big Money GOPers carefully nurtured and fed the fire-breathing tpartiers, and got them elected.  The tea wild partiers repay that patronage, especially on the state level, with the kind of extreme privatization, more money to those with the most money already while busting the system so that Democrats are at deeper disadvantage in future elections. All of this serves the Big Money GOPers' long-term interests, as well as their always short-term bank accounts.

In Washington so far it's been more noise than substance, but this smoke and mirrors deficit hawking, and extreme stuff like the Ryan budget, moves the whole playing field to the right, so that works for the Big Money GOPers.  Unfortunately, it seems that a lot of their new fire-breathers actually believe this Rabid Right revolution stuff.

These two very different groups, the globeshattering billionaires and the local yokels, have managed a match made in hell pretty well so far.  But now these worlds seem to be on a collision course, and if these worlds collide in the next few weeks on one crucial issue, the economic future could suddenly be catastrophic.

Right now Wall Street is already getting a bit nervous about the congressional GOPers posturing on refusing to raise the U.S. debt ceiling.  According to reports, the billionaires and their multimillionaire minions are working these folks behind the scenes to basically convince them not to do this, to raise the ceiling as usual and as quickly as possible, and a few GOPer political consultants are saying it out loud.

Moreover they are warning that the tea wild partiers in the House can't even do the brinksmanship thing like they did on the budget.  The debt ceiling has to be raised by early July, but some are saying that Congress has to do it by early June or the international shit is going to hit the fan, big, big, big time.  That's apparently not good for Big Money GOPers and their really big...money.

The debt ceiling merely allows the U.S. to pay its past debts, like the billions Bush spent on invading and occupying Iraq, giving out millions in tax breaks to billionaires, and giving billions in federal money to health insurance companies for senior prescription coverage without adding revenue to offset it.   Without raising the debt ceiling, the U.S. becomes the biggest deadbeat in history and the global financial dominoes could come tumbling down.  Some warn that it's not like shutting down the government for a day or two to make a point either--once the world loses faith in America as a credit-worthy stable safe haven that no political nonsense can shake, it's pretty much over.  The tea wild partiers can do in a few weeks what no enemy could do in war, and what no terrorists could dream of accomplishing.

So can Obama and the Dems make a deal with Banal and the GOPers, and will the tea wild partiers let that happen?  The key question may be: can the Big Money GOPers control the tea wild partiers they got elected?  If they can't, it may be time to shop for another planet.  They may be able to afford one, but I don't think there's one ready to move into.

Is Dictatorship Unconstitutional?

Rachel Maddow has been doing a series of stories on the truly alarming authoritarian moves being made by GOPer governors and legislatures in a number of U.S. states.  They include laws to deny unions the right to organize, laws that create barriers to registering to vote, laws that substitute appointed dictators for local elected officials in municipalities deemed troubled,  as well as laws essentially voiding Roe v. Wade, imposing new and otherwise extra-legal conditions on whether a presidential candidate's name can appear on a state's ballot, etc.

While she has also emphasized the political response to these efforts, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop: the courts.  Surely many of these efforts violate law.  Surely some of them are unconstitutional.  Surely the third branch of government is our ultimate protection.

But mostly that shoe has not dropped.  There is a challenge to Wisconsin's union-killing law, based however on violation of the state constitution not in terms of its content but in the process the legislature used to pass it.  Yesterday, Maddow reported a court challenge in Michigan to that state's Emergency Financial Manager law, and its use in overriding elected officials in the predominantly black city of Benton Harbor, and in the intended closing of a Detroit school that is a one-of-a-kind educator for pregnant women and new mothers who are predominantly black (and who almost always go on to college.)  This law empowers one state government-appointed person with essentially dictatorial powers.

The suit is citing Michigan law and one aspect of the U.S. Constitution, though only a section of the first amendment that allows the federal government to stop any state from violating legal contracts, such as those negotiated in collective bargaining.  

Which leaves me still wondering--where are the court cases?  Maybe they are still being developed.  Maybe people are reluctant to bring them.  It's acknowledged that women's groups aren't challenging state laws that restrict the right to choose because they fear that when those cases get to the Supreme Court, the current Court will rule against them and void Roe v. Wade entirely.  Could that be a fear in these other issues?

Or is it that the Constitution doesn't offer protections against such laws.  That states can constitutionally make demands on registration so that the right to vote is restricted,  as long as it doesn't involve a poll tax?  That states can essentially change the qualifications for federal office by restricting the ability to get votes for that office in that state? That states can allow child labor? That dictatorships are not unconstitutional, as long as it isn't at the federal level?  

I really would like an answer to these questions...