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Cry Scandal |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=10204"><span class="small">Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine</span></a>
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Sunday, 19 May 2013 08:26 |
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Chait writes: "As the investigative phase of the Obama presidency commences in earnest, Republicans are promising that their overriding goal is to proceed cautiously and let the facts speak for themselves."
Rep. Michelle Bachmann speaks at the Unity Rally in Tampa, Florida, 09/01/12. (photo: Eve Edelheit/Tampa Bay Times/MCT)
Cry Scandal
By Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine
19 May 13
 s the investigative phase of the Obama presidency commences in earnest, Republicans are promising that their overriding goal is to proceed cautiously and let the facts speak for themselves. "We have stuff here that's real, so you don't need the distraction of politics to give people an excuse to say we're being silly," a House Republican leadership aide involved in the investigations tells Politico. "Everyone is keenly aware of the overreach risk." Likewise, Charles Boustany Jr., who is helping lead the IRS investigation on the House Ways and Means Committee, tells the New York Times, "I'm being very cautious not to overplay my hand."
Part of this is advertising - if Republicans want the media to take them seriously, and not as crazed partisan witch-hunters, they have to assure the media they are serious and not crazed partisan witch-hunters. But there also seems to be an element of genuine calculation here. Republicans do recall the 1998 midterm election blowback they suffered for impeachment mania. They think a slow, patient investigative process will produce fruitful results.
I happen to think they're wrong about this. While I don't have much sympathy for their goals, as a pure strategic calculation - and my analysis here is completely value-free - I think caution is the wrong play for the Republicans here. They should probably let their freak flag fly.
The explicit assumption of the slow-careful strategy, which is also the implicit assumption of the stories reporting on it, is that more digging will produce harmful news about the Obama administration. "This is just the beginning. I want to emphasize that. We have a lot of work left to do in getting to the root of this," Boustany tells the Times.
That might be true. But what if it's not? What if we've already gotten to the root of it?
Indeed, what we've seen so far is that the stories looked most damaging when they were first reported, and subsequent revelations have made them look less, not more, scandalous. The idea that there is a series of "Obama scandals" took its root last week when ABC reporter Jonathan Karl misleadingly claimed to have seen incriminating White House e-mails, which turned out to have been doctored by House Republicans. An independent report of the IRS found no political direction at all led to the agency's use of a one-sided search program to flag partisan tax-free groups.
Once journalists start to think of an issue as a "scandal," then they assume it will necessarily lead to progressively stronger evidence of wrongdoing. That assumption isn't necessarily true. And the sequence of events that made everybody start to think of a few disconnected stories as "Obama scandals" was mainly an odd and somewhat shaky confluence of events.
If Republicans do manage to unearth some significant misdeeds, then playing it cool and rational will help them build the case to force resignations, impeach the president, or wherever they want to take this. The more likely scenario is that they won't find anything groundbreaking. And then they have to ask themselves how they want to continue to keep the scandal narrative going.
Endless hearings that produce little news won't do. A constant drumbeat of impeachment talk, and browbeating reporters for failing to promote it, is more likely to succeed. The accusations from Republicans are what make the story newsworthy. And they reestablish the boundaries of opinion, so that impeaching Obama becomes defined as the irresponsible right-wing position, but "there's nothing here" becomes the irresponsible left-wing position. The respectable centrist thing to say is that there's definitely something fishy in the administration, even though impeachment seems premature.
You may think that screaming bloody murder over a non-scandal will utterly backfire. I invite you study volumes I to V of the Wall Street Journal editorial page's collection of wild denunciations of massive, unprecedented criminality in the "Whitewater scandal." The scandal, in fact, amounted to nothing in the end. But it did successfully implant an aura of sleaze and wrongdoing. If you're looking to foment a scandal, having the facts on your side is obviously helpful, but it's not necessary. (Republicans should probably stay away from actual impeachment - that part of the lesson of 1998 seems clear enough.)
I think Republicans made a huge strategic miscalculation on how to fight Obama in the first term. They assumed his policy agenda, and the economic devastation they figured it would bring, would be so unpopular they could oppose him on policy grounds alone. They made little effort to undermine Obama as a political figure. That reservoir of trust has helped Obama enjoy strong personal favorability ratings. If they're smart, they'll get to work on creating a narrative of wrongdoing and sleaze. If they wait for the facts to make the case for them, they may blow their chance altogether.
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When Shall We Talk About the Bodies at the Border? |
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Sunday, 19 May 2013 08:24 |
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Frey writes: "US policymakers have forced deported families to risk death across inhospitable terrain. They need to confront the rising death toll."
The U.S.-Mexico border in Texas. (photo: unknown)
When Shall We Talk About the Bodies at the Border?
By John Carlos Frey, Guardian UK
19 May 13
US policymakers have forced deported families to risk death across inhospitable terrain. They need to confront the rising death toll.
 he only remains left of Alfonso Martinez Sanchez, when his 19-year-old daughter Gladys finally tracked him down, were a jacket, a watch, a key chain and a body so degraded that it could only be identified by his dental records. The 39-year-old butcher, construction worker and father of five had been living in the United States for more than twenty years. One day in March, his wife sent him to the corner store where the family was living in Vista, California, for milk and tortillas. He never came back.
A sheriff's deputy asked Sanchez for his ID, and then arrested him and turned him over to federal agents, who deported him to Tijuana. He connected there with a coyote, who arranged to help him cross the increasingly militarized US border. He was caught and returned three times. The fourth time, he was guided into the remote Arizona desert.
Since the mid-1990s, increased border security has been the cornerstone of US immigration policy. Intimidating border fences were built in urban areas along the Mexican border, diverting migrants into vast, open regions of inhospitable terrain. The plan was referred to as "prevention through deterrence"; policymakers thought that they could make the crossing so inhospitable that hopeful migrants would think twice before attempting the journey.
Channeling migrants away from crowded, urban areas would also make it easier for border agents to intercept the travelers. According to one Border Patrol video from 2009: "They'll move out to the more rural and remote areas ... we now have the tactical advantage and we only need to exploit that advantage." The US government now patrols 651 miles of fence with 18,500 agents, night sensors, heat sensors, motion detectors, black hawk helicopters and unmanned drones at a cost of $11bn a year.
Policymakers succeeded at making the crossing inhospitable. The typical migrant path is now a tangled web of trails leading north from Mexico to Arizona and into the Sonoran Desert - where temperatures can reach 120 degrees, and the desert is filled with snakes, scorpions and smugglers. It has literally become a valley of death. According to research by the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, the number of border crossings has dropped nearly 80% from peak levels a decade ago - but death rates have actually increased. Those who try to cross into the country now are far more likely to die than previously.
What the strategy did not account for was human desperation.
According to a study from the University of Arizona, based on interviews with 1,100 deported migrants over four years, one in four had at least one child back in the United States who was a legal American citizen; one in three considered the United States, not Mexico, to be their home. A significant number of these deportees, like Sanchez, would try again and again, and risk their lives, to be reunited with their American families.
For the past decade I have witnessed this human tragedy first hand. I have interviewed would-be border crossers, and seen corpses in the desert and in the morgues of border counties. I even illegally crossed the US-Mexico border myself, with a smuggler and a group of migrants, walking the Arizona desert for days in 110-degree heat.
Almost 20 years after US policy began forcing migrants through treacherous terrain, thousands of migrants have died on US soil, and the death rate only continues to escalate. For a forthcoming segment for PBS's Need to Know, we spoke with a coroner in Pima County, Arizona, named Dr Greg Hess. When Hess worked as a coroner in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he typically had just one unidentified body per year. Now he has one thousand.
Congress is in the midst of considering an immigration reform bill that demands more of this deadly deterrent strategy - $4.5bn more - as a condition for any path to legalization for the estimated 11 million immigrants currently living in the country without working papers. The legislation would make "securing the border" a trigger before any of these established immigrants can apply for legal status. That trigger could easily become a death sentence for hundreds more mothers and fathers of American children.
Sanchez had crossed the border with another migrant, an agricultural worker who survived the ordeal. His last words to his traveling companion were: "I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I want to get back to my kids. I have to make it with my kids." His daughter, Gladys, says she thinks about those words every day, thinks about him dying, by himself, in that lonely, hostile desert.
Lawmakers have debated the issues of border security and illegal immigration for decades. In the meantime, over 5,000 migrant bodies have been recovered on US soil. It is time for the human toll of sealing the border to enter that debate.
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America Needs Denmark's "Solidarity System" |
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Saturday, 18 May 2013 13:04 |
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Sanders writes: "In Denmark, social policy in areas like health care, child care, education and protecting the unemployed are part of a 'solidarity system' that provides strong opportunity and security for all citizens."
Sen. Bernie Sanders thinks we can learn a lot from Denmark. (photo: AP)
America Needs Denmark's "Solidarity System"
By Senator Bernie Sanders, Reader Supported News
18 May 13
oday in the United States, unemployment is too high, wages and income are too low, people are struggling to find affordable health care and the wealth and income gap is growing wider. Millions of working families are finding it hard to make ends meet and maintain a dignified standard of living.
In Denmark, social policy in areas like health care, child care, education and protecting the unemployed are part of a "solidarity system" that provides strong opportunity and security for all citizens. Danes pay high taxes, but in return enjoy a quality of life that many Americans would envy.
Denmark is a small, homogenous nation of about 5.5 million people. The United States is a melting pot of more than 315 million people. No question about it, Denmark and the United States are very different countries. But are there lessons we can learn from the social model in Denmark? If you're interested in the answer, please attend one of a series of town meetings that I am holding throughout Vermont this weekend with Danish Ambassador Peter Taksoe-Jensen. On Saturday, the ambassador will join me for town meetings at 1 p.m. at Burlington City Hall and at 7 p.m. at the Brattleboro Museum in Brattleboro. On Sunday, join us at 10:30 a.m. at Montpelier High School in Montpelier. Admission is free, questions and comments are encouraged.
Health care in Denmark is universal, free of charge and high quality. Everybody is covered as a right of citizenship. The Danish health care system is popular with patient satisfaction much higher than in the United States. In Denmark, every citizen can choose a doctor in their area. Prescription drugs are inexpensive. They're free for those under 18 years of age. Interestingly, despite their universal coverage, the Danish health care system is far more cost-effective than ours. They spend about 11 percent of their GDP on health care. We spend almost 18 percent.
When it comes to raising families, Danes understand that the first few years of a person's life are the most important in terms of intellectual and emotional development. In order to give strong support to expecting parents, mothers get four weeks of paid leave before giving birth. They get another 14 weeks afterward. Expecting fathers get two paid weeks off, and both parents have the right to 32 more weeks of leave during the first nine years of a child's life. The state covers three-quarters of the cost of child care, more for low-income workers.
At a time when college education in the United States is becoming increasingly unaffordable and the average Vermont college graduate leaves school more than $28,000 in debt, virtually all higher education in Denmark is free. That includes not just college but graduate schools as well, including medical school.
In a volatile global economy, the Danish government recognizes that it must invest heavily in training programs so workers can learn new skills to meet changing workforce demands. It also understands that when people lose their jobs they must have adequate income while they search for new jobs. If a worker loses his or her job in Denmark, unemployment insurance covers up to 90 percent of earnings for as long as two years. Here benefits can be cut off after as few as 26 weeks.
It is no secret that in our country many people are living under great stress. They work long hours with relatively little time off. In fact, a growing number of businesses provide no vacation and can force workers to work long and irregular shifts. In Denmark, adequate leisure and family time is considered an important part of having a good life. Every worker in Denmark is entitled to five weeks of paid vacation plus 11 paid holidays.
Recently the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) found that the Danish people rank among the happiest in the world among some 40 countries that were studied. America did not crack the top 10.
Are there lessons that we can learn from the social model in Denmark? You be the judge. Please join us on Saturday in Burlington or Brattleboro, or Sunday morning in Montpelier.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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Obama Must Make Fighting Climate Change National Project |
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Saturday, 18 May 2013 13:00 |
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Cole writes: "President Obama, like George H. W. Bush, has a problem with the 'vision thing.' And that is the reason for which he is being dogged by critics and 'scandals.'"
President Barack Obama appears in front of a bank of solar panels at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, Nevada. Nellis has North America's largest solar photovoltaic power plant. (photo: Getty Images)
Obama Must Make Fighting Climate Change National Project
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment
18 May 13
 resident Obama, like George H. W. Bush, has a problem with the 'vision thing.' And that is the reason for which he is being dogged by critics and 'scandals.' He presides over a huge bureaucracy and things will go wrong in it, for which he will be blamed if he allows others to control the narrative. Moreover, it is always possible to depict perfectly ordinary decisions by bureaucrats as somehow outrageous.
Thus, there was no cover-up in Benghazi, but all governments would want to be careful about how talking points were shaped in the aftermath of a crisis (if anything the one most responsible for the insistence that crowd reaction against an Islamophobic film was part of the Benghazi story was Republican David Petraeus, then head of the CIA).
The IRS scrutiny of Tea Party groups applying for tax exempt charitable status derived from a legitimate concern at the more than doubling of such requests after the Citizens United ruling, and a suspicion that the groups were backed by Republican billionaires intending to use them for politics, not charity. It may be that the scrutiny was sometimes invidious, but it is not obvious on the surface as to whether the bureaucrats actually did anything out of the ordinary (left wing requests for tax exempt status were flat; if they had suddenly doubled presumably they would have attracted attention, too.)
But these minor bureaucratic issues only crowd in to dominate the headlines because politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. Obama should be making the headlines, should be setting a coherent national agenda. He offered to drive the USA Bus for another four years. But where is he taking us? Not clear.
The president needs a national project, like John F. Kennedy's moon landing. It needs to be something that doesn't depend primarily on Congressional legislation or funding. The Tea Party will give him bupkes. It needs to be something that the Executive Branch can push successfully.
Obama seems to me in some ways never to have overcome his background as a community organizer and then a senator, never to have gotten beyond thinking of himself as a facilitator and consensus-builder. The great tragedy of Barack Obama is that he does not rule in times of consensus but of intense polarization.
There is no obvious external enemy posing a credible threat to the security of the United States. It is better not to have such an enemy, but when there was one, as in the Cold War with the Soviet Union, it fostered more national willingness to compromise. There are always deep fissures in American society, but sometimes it is easier to deal with them than others. It is not clear to me that the Civil Rights movement could have succeeded if WASP elites had not been afraid of pushing African-Americans into the arms of the Communists. Certainly, the US accepted decolonization in Algeria and elsewhere out of fear that if the old European empires did not let go, you would have dozens of Vietnams.
Of course, it would be even better if the world as a whole faced a threat that would foster international cooperation as well as more willingness to compromise at home. Ronald Reagan, whom Obama admires, sometimes whimsically wished for an alien invasion from outer space, to bring unity between the capitalist and communist worlds by creating a common threat.
Oh, wait, the world does confront such a menace. Some 97% of refereed papers on climate in the past 20 years accept that human beings are contributing to climate change. Since the study covers 1991 to 2011, likely the consensus would be even more overwhelming if it were just 2000 to 2011, by which time the science had clarified some anomalies. In 2011, the consensus was at 98% even by the very conservative criteria of the studies. In short, we're causing global warming and scientists are not in any doubt about it.
Obama has sometimes struck grace notes in his speeches about the climate change threat. But since his style is apparently to try to make everyone happy, he has also gone on about clean coal and the desirability of exporting US natural gas, and he hasn't taken a stand on hydraulic fracturing. He has behind the scenes thrown money at green energy research, and wants to throw more, but only in ways that don't risk deeply upsetting Big Oil and Big Gas. He has had the EPA start actually applying the law against dirty coal plants, though because of toxic emissions, not C02 poisoning. It is not clear whether he will follow through on this initiative, which does threaten some dirty coal plants with closure.
Obama could do himself a lot of good by announcing an ambitious national goal on carbon emissions, and then using the EPA, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Energy, and other bodies of the Executive branch to press for it. The US is emitting 5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide annually. That is a crime against humanity, more dangerous than all terrorism, all the atrocities, all the wars, all the epidemics in the world. Obama could simply say that by 2020 our goal is to cut that amount in half, to 2.5 billion metric tons, and to work with China, India and other nations to achieve the same halving in their countries.
Having such a goal would be useful, even if it is unrealistic, because the goal would then tell you what the policy should be in each case. Obviously, the EPA should strictly apply the Clean Air Act so as to close as many coal plants as possible as quickly as possible.
Obviously, building new solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric and other clean energy installations to replace the coal plants will be an expense. But a national effort of that sort could well be what we need to recover from the 2008 crash, instead of moping along in the economic doldrums for two decades the way Japan has. It could be for the teens of the 21st century what World War II was to the Great Depression.
Obama couldn't just announce the goal without getting people on his side. He'd have to use the bully pulpit of the presidency to convince people of the reality of the threat. He needs to campaign on the coast in Alabama and Mississippi and let people know that the Gulf will rise and the weather will become more extreme if we don't do this. He needs to tell fishermen all around the vast US coast that an acid ocean produced by absorbing CO2 could kill off half of fish species over the next century or two. He needs to warn the Southwest of a dust bowl, and New York of a whole string of storm surges.
The business community is for the most part in no doubt about the dangers of climate change. But the 2000 large US corporations interlock on many levels and everyone is afraid to admit that suddenly, overnight, trillions of dollars in petroleum, gas and coal reserves are worthless. What would that do to the stock market? To businesses like automobiles, construction and others that are intertwined with hydrocarbons? Obama would have to go to them and promise to work for a smooth transition. Getting his GOP enemies to offer corporate welfare to get everyone over the hump and actually turn Exxon Mobil into a green energy company should be child's play once he insists that the great Hydrocarbon bubble has already burst.
The science is not in doubt. The direness of the consequences is not in doubt. The danger to the Republic is palpable. The solutions are obvious and available. Here is the one area where public policy undoubtedly could do enormous good for people's lives.
Barack Obama was given an opportunity to be the most powerful man in the world at a time of the most perilous global threat to human life in 200,000 years. He needs to lead on this issue. By taking a strong stance, by campaigning in the hustings, by serving as the Great Educator, he can bring the pain and the pressure to the Hill that will make them cooperative. He can find common ground with threatened groups at home and with other Powers abroad. God knows Europe needs a reason to spend government money and jump start the Mediterranean economies, and this program, pushed via NATO and the EU, could finally put a stake through the heart of austerity. The end result would be rapidly falling energy prices over the next two decades via research support, a boon to European and world economic growth and prosperity. The consensus Obama seeks cannot come about from seeking consensus, but rather from setting forth a powerful, game-changing agenda that will force his enemies to risk public opprobrium or join in his struggle.
Frankly, I do not know if Obama has it in him to be this bold, this confrontational, this innovative. But if he does not take this step, historians will look back on his presidency as eight years of treading water, of fiddling while Rome burned, of a fruitless quest for a chimerical consensus. And his presidency, without a mooring, will suffer the death of a thousand cuts, as screw-ups in the lower bureaucracy are blamed on him and a crescendo built that takes away the Senate in 2014, leaving him with a lonely veto as his only, miserable, tool of government as he declines into lame duck irrelevance.
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