Good Morning!
Galanthus. Scott Arboretum. March, 2013. Photo by joanneleon.
Steely Dan - Do it again
News and Opinion
h/t to joe shikspack for much of this news section today, from his Evening Blues post last night.
Obama Social Security Reform Ignores Data on Actual Living Standards of Seniors
Read this article, read it all:
Obama Does Social Security and Medicare
With Barack Obama putting his plan to cut Social Security and Medicare expenditures into writing in his Federal budget proposal the ability of those who voted for him to credibly deny his years of publicly stating he would do so disappeared. The pathetic pleas from liberals and progressives who only a few short months ago were assuring the unwashed masses Mr. Obama was on the cusp of a ‘liberal’ renaissance if only doubters would join them in granting him another term are today as empty as their assurances were then. And Mr. Obama’s self ‘sacrifice’ of voluntarily giving up 5% of his own $400,000 per year salary in solidarity with seniors present and future who will see their Social Security payments reduced calls into question his intelligence if sincere—the difference between the rich (Mr. Obama) voluntarily giving up a fraction of their yacht allowance versus millions of seniors choosing between eating and living indoors is fundamental. ...
Early reports even have liberal pundits sticking with the line Mr. Obama is only posturing with the proposals, despite his near decade prior explaining why he believes Social Security and Medicare must be cut to be ‘saved.’ However, this is truly a ‘let them eat cake’ moment. Mr. Obama’s policies will needlessly, and in economic terms gratuitously, hurt a lot of people—overwhelmingly those who self-identify as the Democrats’ political ‘base.’ And lest there be confusion over the matter, in his first term Mr. Obama fully restored the fortunes of America’s ruling class at several trillion dollars of public expense before proposing these cuts. ...
Mr. Obama’s delivery of several trillion dollars of public wealth to the banks in ongoing bailouts was sold as a way to ‘get banks lending again,’ ‘private’ Keynesianism, to raise the quantity of private debt issued to bolster consumption. But wholly reviving insolvent banks has no legitimacy in any economic theory. This is why the bailouts were, and still are, framed as liquidity provision when they are in fact solvency provision. ... The difference between the Federal government providing ‘liquidity’ to markets and restoring solvency to insolvent banks is more than a technicality. In the case of liquidity provision the government temporarily floods markets with money to facilitate transactions during bank panics– it is the ability to transact that is restored. In the case of restoring solvency the Federal government both buys bad assets from the banks that through fraud and / or incompetence rendered themselves insolvent and it provides subsidies from which banks can ‘rebuild’ their balance sheets. Both are transfers of public resources to private interests demonstrated by history to be economically destructive. ...
To those paying attention, the Dodd-Frank legislation being sold as a way to ‘reign-in’ bailed out banks contains ‘Cyprus’ clauses that leave banks (or their creditors, beginning with derivatives counter-parties) no alternative than to seize insured deposits when they need their next inevitable bailout.
Senate and House Leaders, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka Stand Against Chained CPI
Washington, D.C. – In response to the inclusion of chained CPI in the president’s FY 2014 budget, Senators Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Tom Harkin (D-IA), Congressional Progressive Caucus Co-Chairs Reps. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-AZ) and Keith Ellison (D-MN), Reps. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), John Conyers (D-MN) and Donna Edwards (D-MD), and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka held a press conference declaring their opposition to cutting benefits earned by America’s working families.
“We have come together here to express our collective opposition to a bad policy proposal—and that is the chained CPI,” said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. “Chained CPI is some economist’s fancy way of weakening one of Social Security’s most important protections, namely its cost of living increase—its annual COLA—that protects the purchasing power of benefits from inflation. Social Security represents the best of American values—and it works. I call on the President and members of Congress to use our energy to protect and enhance—rather than diminish—one of our nation’s finest and most popular family protection programs.”
“At a time when millions of working families are struggling economically, I am deeply disappointed that the president’s budget would make significant cuts in Social Security and veterans’ benefits and raise taxes on low- and middle-income Americans,” Senator Bernie Sanders said.
“Do not be distracted by the technicalities of chained CPI. We are talking about one thing: slashing Social Security benefits,” said Senator Tom Harkin. “The President apparently believes that by proposing this cut to Social Security, he will get the ball rolling on budget negotiations. This is misguided. Cutting Social Security is a bad place to start, and a bad place to end. Instead of deficit reduction that hurts seniors and the middle class, we should be targeting the nearly hundreds of billions in wasteful tax breaks for the wealthy.”
I don't know how much inside information or insight Carville has re: the Obama admin., doesn't seem to be too much, but he used to be an insider in another wing of the party, and this is interesting nonetheless.
Carville: I Think Obama Likes Angering Liberals
Appearing on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," Carville said he thinks Obama relishes the commendation he's received from deficit hawks like New York Times columnist David Brooks and host Joe Scarborough. Asked by co-host Mike Barnicle how the President will respond to the outrage from the left-wing of the Democratic Party, Carville was blunt.
"I think he likes that," Carville said.
Budget Ax Targets Heating Aid
Spending on the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program would be reduced to $2.97 billion in the fiscal 2014 spending package that President Obama unveiled April 10.
It’s the latest reduction in LIHEAP funding, which has remained set at $3.4 billion since fiscal 2012. That’s down from $5.1 billion in fiscal 2010. ...
“With poverty increasing across the nation and millions of people still struggling to recover from the recent economic disaster, reducing funding to this vital program is unthinkable,” said Marsha Belcher, board chair of the National Fuel Funds Network.
ObamaCare Clusterfuck: IRS coverage ruling throws 500,000 children under the bus
Wendy Lazarus of The Children's Partnership in HuffPo:
Today, 52 percent of uninsured Americans say the main reason they don't have insurance is because they can't afford it. Unless the ACA changes this situation, it cannot succeed. Astoundingly -- since it is in direct conflict with the central goal of the ACA -- the Internal Revenue Service recently issued a ruling on how subsidy levels will be determined. Their ruling poses a huge affordability problem for families with children. It says that subsidies for families will be based solely on whether the individual employee's coverage is affordable; if it is, the whole family is ineligible for subsidies, even where the employer's family coverage is unaffordable. As a result, nearly half of a million children across the country are expected to remain uninsured because parents would not be able to afford coverage for the whole family.
The Truth About Corporate Tax Rates
US Govt. can read your emails, text messages, DMs and chats without a warrant
Internal Revenue Service guidelines state that they can access your email, direct message tweets, and even your Facebook chats and cell phone text messages without a search warrant, according to the results of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request initiated by the ACLU.
As the ACLU notes, sadly the federal law governing all of this is “hopefully outdated.” ”It draws a distinction between email that is stored on an email provider’s server for 180 days or less, and email that is older or has been opened,” writes Nathan Freed Wessler, a staff attorney at the ACLU. “The former requires a warrant; the latter does not.”
In other words, the law still treats email as some newfangled gimmick that real people don’t use for serious things. So if you have an email saved that’s over 180 days old – who would do that? – clearly you intended for the entire world to read it, because no one in the right mind would have email that old. Right? ...
How would you know if the government did this to you? Well, you wouldn’t necessarily. If the government uses a warrant, they don’t have to tell you. If they don’t use a warrant, they are required to tell you, but can delay it 90 days in the interest of the investigation (i.e., they don’t want to tip you off). But then, at the end of the 9o days they can delay notification for another 90 days, and so on, and so on, and so on. So you may never find out.
‘The Nightmare Has Started Again,’ According to Hunger Striking Guantanamo Prisoner
A prisoner, who has been held in detention for eleven years without charge or trial, has told an attorney that the prison authorities are trying to “break Muslims.” He is participating in a major hunger strike that has been ongoing since early February and shared details on his health as a result of his participation and what is fueling the hunger strike.
Clive Stafford Smith, executive director of the UK-based legal action charity, Reprieve, spoke with Younus Chekkouri on the strike on April 9. Chekkouri has been in the prison for eleven years without charge or trial. He is “very, very depressed” and misses his family.” ...
The following message was offered by Chekkouri to President Barack Obama:
The nightmare has started again. For some time, things had got a bit better here, some of the guards were acting like human beings. Even if we were treated like sheep, at least we were not always mistreated. But now it has changed again. And now 86 of us have been cleared for release and we are still here. Let us leave Guantánamo with clear hearts, and without hatred. Hatred is evil, and it harms the person who is hating as well as the person who is hated.”
BBC refuses to play Maggie Ding Dong song in full
Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/...
THE BBC has refused to play Ding, Dong The Witch Is Dead in full on the Radio 1 chart show this weekend – after a sick anti-Thatcher campaign helped it soar in the charts.
Instead, it will broadcast a short clip of it.
The tune, featured
Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/...
Thatcher's Funeral: World Elites, 'Death Parties'... Rubber Bullets?
As 10 Downing Street issued invitations for next week's funeral for former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, police and security forces in the UK are debating how to handle the expected presence of those who will mark the occasion with public celebrations, a form of final protest against the 'Iron Lady's' legacy of neoliberal policies and political contempt for the common good. ...
With 'death parties' planned for this weekend, and protests expected during next Wednesday's procession, the police in London announced that though they will protect the rights of those who wish to mourn Thatcher, they "have no plans" to employ harsh tactics—such as water cannons or rubber bullets—to disrupt the protests likely to arise. ...
Still, one asks whether the funeral is the appropriate venue to protest, even if the the policies of Thatcher were highly abbhorent? According to journalist and historian Dave Zirin, the time immediately following the death of "a powerful public figure" like Thatcher "is when the halo becomes permanently affixed to their head." Citing Ronald Reagan's death, he argues:
When Ronald Reagan passed away, a massive right wing machine went into motion aimed at removing him from all criticism. The Democrats certainly didn't challenge this interpretation of history and now according to polls, people under 25 would elect Reagan over President Obama, even though Reagan's ideas remain deeply unpopular. To put it crudely, the political battle over someone's memory is a political battle over policy. In Thatcher's case, if we gloss over her history of supporting tyrants, we are doomed to repeat them.
Cove Where Exxon Oil Has Been Found Is Part of Lake Conway
Local wetlands experts say that oil is in the lake, and Exxon tweaks its message.
When ExxonMobil's Pegasus pipeline ruptured on March 29, the company announced that no oil had leaked into Lake Conway, a major recreational reservoir just nine-tenths of a mile from the spill site in central Arkansas.
Some oil had spilled into a "cove adjacent to" the lake, the company said, but "Lake Conway remains oil free," according to news releases Exxon issued as recently as April 5.
That position has sparked a debate over where Lake Conway—one of Arkansas' premier fishing spots—begins and ends.
Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel told reporters, "I don't understand where this distinction is coming from. ...The cove is part of Lake Conway."
Oglala Sioux Tribe renews vow to stop XL Pipeline
PINE RIDGE RESERVATION - The Oglala Sioux Tribal Council renewed its commitment to stop TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL Pipeline at a meeting on March 26. The pipeline would slurry tar-sands crude oil from Alberta Province across the Great Plains to refineries and export facilities in Oklahoma and Texas. ...
Passage of the new Resolution 13-60, “reaffirming the Yellow Bird Steele-Poor Bear Administration opposition to the Keystone XL Pipeline” aims to keep the pipeline “from crossing the Mni Wiconi Water Line, any part of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and any and all 1851 and 1868 treaty lands,” it states.
The Mni Wiconi Rural Water Supply Project, enacted by the U.S. Congress, pipes Missouri River water to Pine Ridge, Rosebud, and Lower Brule Indian reservations, as well as to non-Indian communities in the South Dakota counties of Haakon, Jackson, Jones, Lyman, Mellette, Pennington, and Stanley.
The resolution by the Oglala Sioux Tribe, which is a 1934 Indian Reorganization Act government, explicitly supports the traditional Black Hills Sioux Nation Treaty Council's resolution approved unanimously on Feb. 18, 2012. The earlier resolution states: “The Great Sioux Nation hereby directs President Barack Obama and the United States Congress to honor the promises of the United States made through the 1851 and 1868 Fort Laramie treaties by prohibiting the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline and any future projects from entering and destroying our land without our consent.”
The traditional leaders’ resolution, argues against the dilbit pipeline on the grounds of international law, citing the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Japan, U.S. agree on Tokyo joining Trans-Pacific trade talks
(Reuters) - Japan and the United States on Friday agreed on a deal paving the way for Tokyo to join talks on an Asia-Pacific free trade agreement, increasing the economic weight of the proposed pact and triggering a loud protest from U.S. automakers.
The deal brings Japan closer to entering talks on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which the United States, Canada, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Australia and New Zealand hope to finish this year.
"I think Japan's national interests are protected under this U.S.-Japan agreement," Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters on Friday after a meeting with Cabinet ministers.
Seriously.
US publishes Magnitsky list of sanctioned Russians
The United States has published a list of mainly Russian officials banned from entering the country because of alleged human rights abuses.
Russia had earlier warned against making the 18 names public, warning it could severely damage relations.
The US imposed the sanctions after Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky died in jail in 2009 in disputed circumstances.
The list includes tax officials and police officers who jailed Magnitsky after he accused them of corruption.
But senior officials from President Vladimir Putin's entourage who had been expected to be included were left off, including Russia's top police official Alexander Bastrykin.
Alexei Pushkov, a senior Russian lawmaker, said the pared down list suggested that "the US presidential administration decided not to take the path of aggravating a political crisis with Moscow", according to the Interfax news agency.
Blog Posts and Tweets of Interest
Wow, this has finally made it's way into the beltway bubble/cable news hive mind?
steely dan - daddy don't live in that new york city no more