Trevor Timm at The Guardian writes Congress won't protect us from the surveillance state—they'll enhance it:
The same Senator who warned the public about the NSA’s mass surveillance pre-Snowden said this week that the Obama administration is still keeping more spying programs aimed at Americans secret, and it seems Congress only wants to make it worse.
In a revealing interview, Ron Wyden—often the lone voice in favor of privacy rights on the Senate’s powerful Intelligence Committee—told Buzzfeed’s John Stanton that American citizens are being monitored by intelligence agencies in ways that still have not been made public more than a year and a half after the Snowden revelations and countless promises by the intelligence community to be more transparent. Stanton wrote:
Asked if intelligence agencies have domestic surveillance programs of which the public is still unaware, Wyden said simply, “Yeah, there’s plenty of stuff.” |
Wyden’s warning is not the first clue about the government’s still-hidden surveillance; it’s just the latest reminder that they refuse to come clean about it.
There are more pundits to savor or shed below the fold.
Charles M. Blow at The New York Times writes Flash Point Ferguson:
Sometimes we understandably want justice to come quickly—but justice, if it is to be permanent, often inches forward. For those in the grip of injustice, toiling in the shadow of oppression, the wait can be nearly unbearable. But that hasn’t necessarily happened in this case.
It could be argued that the protest movement born in Ferguson in the wake of the killing of Michael Brown by Darren Wilson—a movement that quickly expanded from a focus on a single case to a sprawling indictment of the system—has been one of the most successful in recent history, both in terms of the speed at which it has garnered results and the breadth of those results.
And yet, that progress has been tarnished by flashes of violence.
That doesn’t have to be the case. There is a moral continuity that bridges and binds all people of good conscience.
Doyle MacManus at the
Los Angeles Times writes
John Boehner's minority government of pragmatic Republicans:
Last week's drama in the House of Representatives, when Speaker John A. Boehner needed Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi to rescue him from his own rebellious party, looked like a messy disaster for Republicans. But it could have been worse.
If the House GOP had forced a shutdown of the Homeland Security Department, as conservatives had threatened, it could have been a genuine debacle for a party trying to show it can govern: Transportation Security Administration and Border Patrol agents forced to work without pay, offices shuttered and more. Instead, Boehner's quiet capitulation to reality was mostly just humiliating.
And it suggests that Boehner has begun to master an unexpected challenge: the art of leading a minority government.
Minority? On paper, Republicans hold an impressive majority in the House of Representatives, with 245 seats to the Democrats' 188. But the GOP conference has been chronically, even theatrically divided.
Donovan X. Ramsey at
The New Republic warns that
It's Time to Focus on the Other Fergusons in America:
six-month Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation validated what we heard from many Ferguson residents after the August shooting death of Michael Brown drew the nation’s attention to their city: that their police department has, for several years, exhibited a disturbing pattern of discriminatory policing—and, frankly, grift of its citizens.
Further action by the DOJ may reform (or even overhaul) the Ferguson police department entirely. The shooting of two police officers from neighboring departments early Thursday morning in front of the Ferguson police headquarters will likely add pressure for resolution sooner than later. But, while attention to the ongoing tension in Ferguson is merited, there is a danger in Ferguson remaining virtually alone in the national spotlight. The problem of police brutality is hardly endemic to that one city. What about the rest of the 18,000 other departments across the country that may have similarly sick cultures and procedures?
Other Fergusons loom on the horizon, and we shouldn't wait until an officer shoots another person and a city erupts to fix them.
Michelle Chen at
The Nation writes
Workers Behind Ruthless and Effective Grassroots Campaigns Are Now on Trial for Racketeering:
Until recently, the Laundry Workers Center United’s claim to fame was a rabble-rousing protest encampment on Times Square, a self-fashioned “Worker Justice Café” erected by workers as part of a unionization campaign at a Hot and Crusty bakery. Back in 2012, their foolishly brave, Occupy-inspired tactics proved successful in challenging their employer’s power. Now the LWC is facing its own challenge in court, accused of illegally “conspiring” to protest against a boss.
According to a complaint brought by the LWC’s latest campaign target, the Liberato restaurant in the Bronx, the LWC isn’t a humble worker center, agitating on behalf of low-wage immigrant workers, but a racketeering enterprise, waging class warfare against a local business.
The allegations of gangsterism stem from a basic labor dispute: a group of current and former workers have partnered with the LWC to campaign against the restaurant over alleged labor violations and mistreatment. After the conflict escalated and the LWC took legal action last year—with a class action lawsuit and National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) complaint now pending—the restaurant responded with a classic New York tactic: the countersuit. Liberato has variously charged the LWC with slander and harassment, as well as violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). This federal law, a curious hybrid of reactionary politics and organized-crime fighting, has historically been used to nab both mob bosses and union organizers. The suit seems to follow a rich tradition of corporations seeking to criminalize collective action as labor’s “extortion” of capital.
Maddie Oatman at
Mother Jones wonders
Will Obama's Ag Chief Wimpify the 2015 Dietary Guidelines to Please Big Meat?:
Should the new Dietary Guidelines—the advice the federal government issues every five years on what constitutes a healthy diet—include recommendations about what makes for a healthy planet? The meat industry sure doesn't think so.
The industry started flipping out when it saw some of the language in the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee's February report: "Consistent evidence indicates that, in general, a dietary pattern that is higher in plant-based foods...and lower in animal-based foods is more health promoting and is associated with a lesser environmental impact (GHG emissions and energy, land, and water use) than is the current average US diet." [...]
It's no coincidence that the committee chose to flag the carbon footprint of our food: The guidelines are ultimately about people's relationship with food, and the deterioration of the environment's health is a blow to our food security. "Meeting current and future food needs," the committee notes, will depend on changing the way people eat and developing agricultural and production practices "that reduce environmental impacts and conserve resources."
David Sirota at
In These Times writes
Why Did Gov. Chris Christie Settle New Jersey’s Pollution Lawsuit Against Exxon Mobil?:
Last week, Republican Gov. Chris Christie’s administration settled New Jersey’s long-standing environmental lawsuit against Exxon Mobil Corp. for pennies on the dollar. For a decade, the state had been seeking $8.9 billion in damages for pollution at two refineries in the northern part of the state, and yet Christie’s top officials abruptly proposed closing the case for just $225 million.
In the aftermath, as environmentalists express outrage and legislators move to block the settlement, the question on many observers’ minds has been simple: Why did Christie settle?
One possible answer is just as simple: money—more specifically, campaign cash.
According to federal records, Exxon Mobil has donated more than $1.9 million to the Republican Governors Association since Christie’s first run for governor in 2009. That includes $279,000 during Christie’s election and reelection races, and also another half million when he chaired the organization in 2014. Additionally, one of Exxon’s law firms in the New Jersey case has also made $30,000 worth of donations to the RGA since 2013.
E.J. Dionne at
The Washington Post writes in
The Senate’s 47 percent that Republicans are playing the hypocrite when it comes to the letter sent to the Iranian leadership that 47 of them signed. They criticized, as did Dionne at the time, three Democratic members of Congress who went to Iraq 13 years ago to forestall a war they thought was a terrible idea. They were Mike Thompson of California, David Bonior of Michigan and Jim McDermott of Washington. McDermott was particularly outspoken:
Writing at the time in the pro-war Weekly Standard, Stephen F. Hayes called them “The Baghdad Democrats” and said: “What apparently didn’t concern the congressmen was the damage their trip might do abroad to any U.S.-led effort to deal with Saddam.” [...]
In fact, it is utterly baffling that champions of this letter would even bring up McDermott and his colleagues. For one thing, many of the very same people who denounced the Democratic trio are now praising the letter. Hayes, for example, in an article posted last week headlined “A Contrived Controversy,” said the letter, offered by “patriotic senators,” was “a fact-based, substantive argument, in public, about a matter of critical importance to the national security of the United States.”
Chris Hedges at
TruthDig has praise for
The Most Dangerous Woman in America:
Kshama Sawant, the socialist on the City Council, is up for re-election this year. Since joining the council in January of 2014 she has helped push through a gradual raising of the minimum wage to $15 an hour in Seattle. She has expanded funding for social services and blocked, along with housing advocates, an attempt by the Seattle Housing Authority to allow a rent increase of up to 400 percent. She has successfully lobbied for city money to support tent encampments and is fighting for an excise tax on millionaires. And for this she has become the bête noire of the Establishment, especially the Democratic Party.
The corporate powers, from Seattle’s mayor to the Chamber of Commerce and the area’s Democratic Party, are determined she be defeated, and these local corporate elites have the national elites behind them. This will be one of the most important elections in the country this year. It will pit a socialist, who refuses all corporate donations—not that she would get many—and who has fearlessly championed the rights of workingmen and -women, rights that are being eviscerated by the corporate machine. The elites cannot let the Sawants of the world proliferate. Corporate power is throwing everything at its disposal—including sponsorship of a rival woman candidate of color—into this election in the city’s 3rd District.
Sawant’s fight is our own.
Paul Krugman at
The New York Times writes about inequality in
Israel’s Gilded Age:
Why did Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel feel the need to wag the dog in Washington? For that was, of course, what he was doing in his anti-Iran speech to Congress. If you’re seriously trying to affect American foreign policy, you don’t insult the president and so obviously align yourself with his political opposition. No, the real purpose of that speech was to distract the Israeli electorate with saber-rattling bombast, to shift its attention away from the economic discontent that, polls suggest, may well boot Mr. Netanyahu from office in Tuesday’s election.
But wait: Why are Israelis discontented? After all, Israel’s economy has performed well by the usual measures. It weathered the financial crisis with minimal damage. Over the longer term, it has grown more rapidly than most other advanced economies, and has developed into a high-technology powerhouse. What is there to complain about?
The answer, which I don’t think is widely appreciated here, is that while Israel’s economy has grown, this growth has been accompanied by a disturbing transformation in the country’s income distribution and society. Once upon a time, Israel was a country of egalitarian ideals — the kibbutz population was always a small minority, but it had a large impact on the nation’s self-perception. And it was a fairly equal society in reality, too, right up to the early 1990s.