The old saying that ‘everyone’s welcome to their own opinions but not their own facts’ seems quaint in today’s political environment. We are a nation divided not only by partisan loyalty and ideology, but also by wildly divergent factual understandings…
Who wants to be forever associated with the EU or Kissinger? No, as with Gandhi, the real honor is being ignored by Oslo
You have to love the Nobel peace prize committee. No, literally you do – I think it's an international law or something. Yesterday, they opted against awarding their honour to one of the most obviously inspiring and extraordinary people of the age, 16-year-old Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai, instead conferring it on the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Still, even Malala's most passionate advocates will concede the committee's decision is an improvement on last year's brave nod to the European Union.
I've certainly got nothing against the entirely admirable OPCW – but then, most of us would tick the "strongly disagree" box as far as chemical weapons go. And despite the immensely valuable and successful job the organisation does, it is, you know, their job. The Nobel committee has awarded the prize to an international agency for being an international agency, and while that doesn't quite constitute bonus-culture-gone-to-Oslo, it feels rather thin on inspiration.
Admittedly, it's better than rewarding someone for what they might ideally end up doing, as seems to have happened with Barack Obama in 2009. But whenever some entity like the EU allows itself to be feted for performing what should be the duties of its office, I can't help thinking of that famously edgy Chris Rock routine about the African American men who brag "about stuff a normal man just does". "They'll say something like, 'yeah, well I take care of my kids'. You're SUPPOSED to, you dumb motherfucker. 'I ain't never been to jail'. Whaddya want? A cookie? You're not supposed to go to jail, you low-expectations-having motherfucker!"
And so with the EU or the leader of the free world accepting plaudits for promoting peace and diplomacy between nations. They're SUPPOSED to promote peace and diplomacy between nations. Whadda they want? A prize?
Yes, seems to be the answer – just as Angelina Jolie has been thrilled to accept a staggering total of humanitarian awards, most inaugurated just for her, when those who toil at the coalface of the problems to which she gives attention between making movies will never be garlanded in a million years.
Of course, it could be worse. In 1996 Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo and Jose Ramos-Horta won the Nobel peace prize for what the committee called "their work towards a just and peaceful solution to the conflict in East Timor" – with the committee bizarrely missing the opportunity to add: "A conflict that, by the way, was a direct result of the actions of our Class of '73 winner, Mr Henry Kissinger. Let's keep it in the family, laureates!"
You would have thought the Kissinger win would have been the autoparodic act that rendered the prize a terminal joke, ushering in as it did a slightly unfair school of thought that says no politico's trophy cabinet is compete unless they've done the double, and scooped both a Nobel peace prize and an invitation to The Hague.
Yet in the peace-giving west, the award remains significantly venerated – a testament, surely, to being a dynamite idea in principle (if you'll forgive the cliched reference to Alfred Nobel's other gift to the world) but a mostly damp squib in practice. Understandably, it is less revered in the sort of countries to which peace tends to be done.
As for Malala, shot not in the line of duty, but in the line of living her 15-year-old life – that ordeal and the thing of wonder she has turned it into were perhaps a little too peace-prizey to win the peace prize. It's not the most enormous surprise. Thanks in large part to the committee making it so, the honour has long been seen as so political that damp-squibbery seems to be increasingly what is regarded as expedient. Perhaps the committee's admiration for Malala was tempered by fretting that giving her the prize could see non-peaceful protests in Pakistan. Add to that its pretensions to nation-building and the rather woolly hope that this will persuade the likes of South Sudan and North Korea to sign up to the chemical weapons treaty, and the OPCW was a shoo-in.
That said, the lesson of Nobel history is that the peace prize committee occasionally finds ways round its most idiotic howlers. Gandhi never won the award – despite being nominated several times – in what is widely regarded as a bit of an oversight, considering he was a textbook case. Thus in 1989, when the prize went to the Dalai Lama, the committee declared that the award was "in part a tribute to the memory of Mahatma Gandhi" – a somewhat excruciating bit of tap-dancing that calls to mind those pontifical pillocks at the academy wheeling out Mr Sidney Poitier to get an honorary academy award in the same year Denzel Washington won best actor and Halle Berry best actress at the Oscars. One suspected a point was being made, though of course the lightness of touch was such that it was impossible to put one's finger on it.
So perhaps, at some distant point in the future, the Nobel committee will find a crass way to play politics at the same time as giving a retroactive nod to Malala – unless she has become president of Pakistan: in which case she'll finally be in the sort of day job that tends to catch their eye.
Twitter: @marinahyde
Let us state this unequivocally: false equivalency – the practice of giving equal media time and space to demonstrably invalid positions for the sake of supposed reportorial balance – is dishonest, pernicious and cowardly.
On the other hand, according to the grassroots American Council of Liberty Loving Ordinary White People Propped Up by the Koch Brothers, the liberal media want to contaminate your precious bodily fluids and indoctrinate your children in homosocialism.
Haha, kidding. Of course, there's no such group. But false equivalency in the news has been very much, in fact, in the news lately – thanks to reporting on the US government shutdown that characterizes the impasse as the consequence of two stubborn political parties unwilling to compromise on healthcare. For instance, this was the final paragraph of a Washington Post editorial:
Ultimately, the grown-ups in the room will have to do their jobs, which in a democracy with divided government means compromising for the common good. That means Mr Boehner, his counterpart in the Senate, Harry M Reid (D-Nev), minority leaders Sen Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) and Rep Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) and the president. Both sides are inordinately concerned with making sure that, if catastrophe comes, the other side takes the political hit. In truth, none of their reputations stands to benefit.
Mutually obdurate pols – it's a fetching narrative, since Republicans and Democrats are undisputedly more polarized than they've been in a century, yielding endless posturing and partisan gridlock. Except, the narrative is wrong. The shutdown is not the result of the divide between Republicans and Democrats on Obamacare: that issue has been legislated, ratified by two presidential elections, affirmed by the US supreme court and more than 40 times unrepealed by Congress.
No, the shutdown is the result of the divide between mainstream, center-right Republicans and Tea Party extremists. The latter are wrapped in suicide belts and perfectly willing to blow the GOP and the economy to kingdom come if they can: a) kill Obamacare (as if); or b) guarantee campaign windfalls from likeminded anti-government crackpots.
This is not gridlock. It is a hostage situation.
Others, however, see things differently. In a recent post calling for Obama's impeachment, headlined "Barack Hussein Obama: The New Leader of al-Qaida", the website Tea Party Nation accused the president of treason. As US Representative Virginia Foxx (Republican, North Carolina) warned the House upon passage of Obamacare in 2009:
I believe we have more to fear from the potential of that bill than we do from any terrorist right now in any country.
Haha, not kidding. Those quotations are real – and why not? There has never been a shortage of paranoia in politics. What has changed is the press's willingness to give it oxygen.
As an institution, the American media seem to have decided that no superstition, stupidity, error in fact or Big Lie is too superstitious, stupid, wrong or evil to be disqualified from "balancing" an opposing … wadddyacallit? … fact. Because, otherwise, the truth might be cited as evidence of liberal bias.
Thus do the US media aid and abet Swiftboaters, 9/11 "Truthers", creationists and "Birthers", whose bizarre charge that the president was born overseas required us to believe a conspiracy involving hospital employees and Honolulu newspapers dating to infant Barack Hussein Obama's first day on earth.
Birthers are liars, morons, bigots or some combination of all three, yet, for four years, the press treated them as if they were worthy of consideration, dignifying their delusion by addressing it. Note the equivocating language from this Associated Press dispatch:
So-called "birthers" – who claim Obama is ineligible to be president because, they argue, he was actually born outside the United States – have grown more vocal recently on blogs and television news shows.
Yeah, blogs, TV news shows … and wire reports. Question: what is so difficult about calling bullshit on a lie?
As recently as a week ago, upon the release of the United Nations' latest report on climate change, CBS Evening News led with this:
Another inconvenient truth has emerged on the way to the apocalypse. The new UN report on climate change is expected to blame man-made greenhouse gases more than ever for global warming. But there's a problem. The global atmosphere hasn't been warming lately.
Wow. Juicy stuff – except that Mark Phillips goes on to explain that temperature increases have shifted for the moment to the oceans, and that the UN report was its most apocalyptic to date. Yet, immediately after debunking his own premise, he twice trots out a prominent climate-change skeptic (with no climate-science training) named Benny Peiser and identifies him only as director of a "thinktank". Never mind that his Cambridge Conference Network thinks mainly that climate "debate" is bogus.
Needless to say, the conservative media jumped all over this liberal media vindication of climate denialism. "CBS Stunned By Climate Change 'Inconvenient Truth," headlined CNSNews.com, propaganda organ of the Media Research Council, a founding member of the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy.
On the other hand, denialism is a time-honored tactic to coalesce the haters. In spite of millions of eyewitnesses and archives full of documentation from the perpetrators – not to mention, film footage of the victims – there is no shortage of prominent personages, from David Irving to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who have earned global attention by questioning history. I am pleased to report that, in this rare instance, the press continues to treat them as dangerous wingnuts, and never invokes them for an opposing view on history.
But why? Is it because 6 million murders are more real than legislative intransigence or fossil records or melting ice caps? Or just that some truths carry less political risks than others?
Do the math. Just don't worry too much about where you put the = sign.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2013
[Image via Flickr user striatic, Creative Commons licensed]
While many federal employees and the American public have been negatively affected by the US government shutdown, there is one group of people who can probably take solace: those who need to be held to account for the NSA surveillance scandal. Before…
[Scared male eye spying through a keyhole macro via Shutterstock.com]
Seven days into a government shutdown, and 9 days away from a potentially catastrophic breach of the nation’s debt limit, and the question everyone is asking is: who will blink first? The White House says that it absolutely will not negotiate over…
OK. Plan A didn't quite work as advertised.
Texas Senator Ted Cruz said that if the House Republican majority attached a "defunding" of Obamacare to the continuing resolution (CR) budget, he and his allies would force the Democratic majority in the Senate to pass same and coerce President Obama into signing the repeal of his signature legislation. The Democrats failed to co-operate in this effort.
So now what?
President Obama is insisting that Republicans pass the "clean" continuing resolution – an agreement to keep the present budget going without changes – and the upcoming debt ceiling increase without attaching any budget reforms or changes to Obamacare.
Republicans in the House walked away from Cruz's "everything or nothing" non-negotiable demand and have offered a series of compromise deals: a one-year delay in Obamacare, a one-year delay in the mandate to buy health insurance, the repeal of the tax on medical devices, and a law overturning Obama's Office of Personnel Management ruling that congressional staff would not have to live under Obamacare.
With no agreement, the previous continuing resolution lapsed. The government shutdown, which means that President Obama largely chooses what to fund and what to not fund – subject to rules established (and therefore changeable) by the executive branch: read, the president's appointees.
What does each party want? What do they fear? What is their leverage against the other?
Cruz believed the president feared a shutdown. Obama did fear a shutdown in August 2011 because he was running for re-election in 2012. He gave Republicans a $2.5tn cut in future spending to get past the debt ceiling.
But now, Obama is not running for re-election. It might not be fruitful to assume he is focused on the electoral success of endangered Senate Democrats. He did not overly care about the House Democratic majority he lost in 2010.
Senate Democrats do fear 2014. They do not like the votes they have already cast against repealing the medical devices tax that most Democrats publicly claim to oppose; and their votes opposed to providing funding for furloughed workers, opening the National Park Service and National Institutes of Health, as well as others the GOP will think up and throw at them from the House.
Obama thought the GOP would suffer if the government shut down. But he has gotten caught spending money hiring park police to barricade the World War II Memorial against the "honor flights" that bring 90-year-old vets in wheelchairs to the open-air memorial. This reminds voters of how he lost the earlier sequester fight by saying the budget law would preclude the traditional Easter Egg hunts at the White House.
Then, Obama also closed the White House to tours. The Congress, to highlight his ploy, kept the Capitol open to tours.
Each team was wrong that the shutdown gave them all the leverage.
There is leverage in the sequester, the 2011 law that caps the growth of domestic discretionary and military spending. Many Democrats find those caps smothering. They want them lifted. Republicans fear the unfunded liabilities of the pay-as-you-go entitlement spending that, unchanged, will bring federal spending to 40% of GDP (from 20%) by 2050.
Here, there is a possible trade: a temporary and limited lifting of the sequester to allow some more spending now, in return for reducing some of the $64tn (in present value) of the unfunded liabilities in the future. That future overspending is not sustainable. It will have to be culled back someday. Why not get something here and now in exchange?
The sequester, like Obamacare, is the law of the land. Republicans might trade some more spending today for much less far into the future. Entitlement laws can be changed – as Reagan and the Democrats did to delay the retirement age for social security from 65 to 67, over 24 years. The traditional, and wholly rational, fear that promised spending cuts would evaporate is reduced or even eliminated when cuts are gained through such changes in entitlement law.
Deal?
Two experts on fracking debate the controversial topic with strong — and sometimes opposing — points of view as part of a new collaborative media project.
Fracking is now a flashpoint in debates about climate change, energy policy, and inequality.
AlterNet has partnered with the Nathan Cummings Foundation to produce Summits on Tenth, a new video series featuring conversations that challenge conventional thinking on the issues you care about. In our second installment, “The Striking Challenge of Fracking: Who Does it Benefit and Who Gets Hurt?” Michael Shellenberger of the Breakthrough Institute and Kate Sinding of the Natural Resources Defense Council present strong — and sometimes opposing — points of view on this complicated topic.
Find out what fracking looks like to people from different vantage points and learn about the trade-offs, the dangers, and the future of fracking.
You can watch the highlights of the debate or the full debate below, plus read a series of mini op-eds from diverse thinkers who respond to the debate. You can also read the full transcript of the debate here.
Watch the highlights of the debate:
Here's the full program:
Read responses to the debate:
Phil Radford, Executive Director of Greenpeace
Natural gas is a false hope fuel that is too risky, expensive, and the American people don’t need it--the Fossil Fuel industry of the past, like ExxonMobil and Chesapeake Energy, does.
Natural gas has increased in price by 60% this year compared to this time last year, so the promise of cheap gas was a false promise that will only lock America into another dirty fossil fuel. The American Gas Association says itself that if you want to get fracked gas from places like Ohio you’re paying a price that is more than you pay for solar and wind. Even markets are projecting that natural gas will be cost effective for electricity production. Wind is the cheapest form of new electricity, making up over 9% of TX’s energy mix, and counting, and 25% of Iowa’s. And I’m one of thousands of people across the country who just put solar on my home, and I’m saving 30% on my electric bill. The fracked natural gas supply is now outstripping demand in the US, which is why companies want to export it, but exporting liquified natural gas means more drilling which means more fracking, more air and water pollution, and more unnatural weather disasters. It’s the fossil fuel cycle we must avoid.
All new electricity generating capacity in the United States in January 2013 was renewable energy sources. Renewables were 49% of all new electricity last year. Farmers in Kansas and electricians in North Carolina know that these jobs are real, and they’re here now. This is a way to save the family farm.
We need an energy revolution now. The barriers to clean energy are political, not practical. Once the natural gas boom is officially over, it will no longer be the cheap solution to other fossil fuel pollution energy companies claim it is. We can already see natural gas prices leaping upwards, and that will only continue as the price of extraction, storage, and transport continues to rise.
***
Jonathan Cedar, Chief Executive Officer of BioLite
In the recent Summits on Tenth debate, Kate Sinding condemns fracking by first acknowledging that natural gas is cleaner than coal, but then stating that “better is not good enough.” While I agree with Ms. Sinding that a new generation of CO2 neutral technologies is needed to replace fossil fuels, we should not let our pursuit of the ideal interrupt the practical, implementable, affordable steps available today to minimize CO2 emissions and slow our rapid pace of climate disruption.
Whether we like it or not, global energy demand is continuing to rise and the choice we face today is whether we service that demand with cleaner (not to be confused with clean) or dirtier fuels. Natural gas releases approximately half the CO2 per BTU of energy as coal. Extraction and distribution of natural gas certainly has safety risks for both people and climate, but so do all of the current large-scale alternatives.
Rather than focusing our energy on condemning the cleanest of our admittedly imperfect energy options, we should embrace the replacement of dirty fuels with cleaner ones, while simultaneously creating an economic and regulatory environment that will allow yet cleaner alternatives to emerge.
Today's cleanest energy sources, solar, wind, geothermal and others, do not yet compete at scale economically with low cost fossil fuels. And what's worse, a whole generation of new technologies have not even made it out of the lab for lack of a financially viable future. At the same time, we know that the impacts of climate change will cost the United States and the world at large untold sums. It's time that we price the externalities of dirty energy in the form of a carbon tax and level the playing field to let our markets, along with our government, usher in a new generation of clean energy. But in the meanwhile, we should embrace every improvement towards reduced emissions, no matter if it's still imperfect.
Diane Pitcock, West Virginia Host Farms Program
The debate over natural gas vs. coal seems to focus on the idea that natural gas is a "cleaner" energy source, as alternative to coal burning plants. But is that really the case? Or is it just another dirty fossil fuel that we should be moving away from to seek "greener" alternatives such as solar and wind power?
The industry hype promoting natural gas that we are being fed, by way of a massive public relations campaign on television, radio, and in newspapers, does not realistically show the very real impacts of this type of energy development. Natural gas extraction processes are not clean at all! And it is certainly not the same "fracking" that's been done safely for more than 60 years, as we've been told to believe.
Shale gas drilling involves a newer "fracking" process known as "slick water, high pressure, high volume, horizontal fracking," to be more precise. It poses far greater risk to health and environment. Consider this, in order to do what they do, the industry had to be exempt from key provisions of seven federal environmental laws (the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (otherwise known as Superfund) and the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act).
Living in Doddridge County, West Virginia at "ground zero" of the drilling, I am seeing firsthand the industrialization of our rural communities. The allegations of well water contamination, air quality and health issues, road destruction, erosion, illegal dumping, landowner rights abuses, and quality of life issues associated with extracting natural gas beneath us are staggering! The long term environmental and health impacts have not been adequately assessed ahead of the rush to drill for shale gas.
The environmental researchers and journalists would be well served to visit these heavily drilled areas of rural America to get "the rest of the story." It's not a pretty picture.
Anthony R. Ingraffea, Ph.D., P.E.. Dwight C. Baum Professor of Engineering, Weiss Presidential Teaching Fellow at Cornell University
Mr. Shellenberger says, "Well, I think what we’re dealing with is an energy transition. So we’re – the United States — is in the process of transitioning, or it could be even further, away from coal and towards natural gas." He is about 5 years out-of-touch with reality: The US has been in the process of a transition: it is transitioning away from coal, and natural gas, and oil and towards green renewables. His statements about gas being good for renewables is, well, insulting. He is completely behind the times on his criticisms of wind and solar availability (has he read our recent papers in Energy Policy on the capability to completely replace all fossil fuels for all energy needs in New York and in California with an assortment of renewables? Clearly, Kate has as she exhibits in her rebuttal remarks). He, like many "environmentalists" are ABC: anything but coal. I agree with the "but coal" part of that mantra, but not with the "anything." Natural gas can be greenwashed, but it is still a fossil fuel, and I strongly agree with Kate when she says "But it’s not clean enough, either to meet the climate imperative or because of the substantial impacts that it does have in terms of its production."
Kate is also exactly correct when she asks if shale gas is "...just yet another exploitation of a fossil fuel, one that brings with it significant impacts in the communities where it’s extracted and one that may further delay us from meeting the climate imperative that we all face." I would not have left that as a question, I would have stated it as fact.
Also, Mr. Shellenberger says, "So one thing to keep in mind, between 1990 and 2010, gas production increased 40 percent and yet methane leakage from overall gas production declined 10 percent." Wrong on the latter. Nobody knows what the actual leakage rate is — that is the subject of post-policy-statement ongoing research, as he knows.
Finally, I am concerned that Mr. Shellenberger tosses out fossil fuel industry talking points as if candy to kids, but is way behind on their factual bases. The most important of these is the reverse of his so-called transition from coal to methane for electricity generation: has he noticed this reversal in the past few months, as methane prices have edged up, coal use has begun to rise, and with exportation of our "home grown energy source" as LNG [liquified natural gas] on the horizon and its concomitant further increase in methane cost here, the US will soon be back to more coal at home. The methane industry will be laughing all the way to the bank.
America's streets are looking more and more like a war zone. Last week, in a small county in upstate New York with a population of roughly 120,000 people, county legislators approved the receipt of a 20-ton Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle, donated by the US Defense Department to the county sheriff.
Between the Armored Personnel Carriers locking down main streets in major American cities – mimicking our MRAPs in Afghanistan – or Special Weapons and Tactics (Swat) and Special Forces units canvassing our country, if we're not careful, this militarization of our domestic policing will make-over America, and fast.
Here's how it all happened. A little-known Pentagon program has been quietly militarizing American police forces for years. A total of $4.2bn worth of equipment has been distributed by the Defense Department to municipal law enforcement agencies, with a record $546m in 2012 alone.
In the fine print of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 1997, the "1033 program" was born. It allows the Defense Department to donate surplus military equipment to local police forces.
Though the program's existed since the 1990s, it has expanded greatly in recent years, due, in part, to post-9/11 fears and sequestration budget cuts. The expanse, however, seems unnecessary given that the Department of Homeland Security has already handed out $34bn in "terrorism grants" to local polices forces – without oversight mind you – to fund counter-terrorism efforts.
Additional militarization, then, deserves congressional attention as the program is harmful and must be scaled back for a number of reasons.
First, the program is transforming our police into a military. The results of such over-militarized law enforcement are apparent from the dispersion of Occupy protesters in Oakland to the city-wide lockdown in Boston. As retired police chief Norm Stamper stated to the Associated Press:
We make a serious mistake, I'm convinced, in equipping domestic law enforcement, particularly in smaller, rural communities, with this much military equipment.
Tanks, grenade launchers, armored vehicles, and assault rifles are just a few of the items that have been transferred from military control to municipal police forces. Law enforcement agencies need only to arrange and pay for shipment in order to receive the items of their choice (pdf). One particularly egregious example is found in South Carolina, where Richland County's sheriff acquired a tank with 360-degree rotating machine gun turrets. Sardonically, the vehicle has been named "the Peacemaker".
Swat teams, furthermore, are no longer found only in large, high-crime areas. Instead, even small rural towns now have the equipment to arm their own paramilitary units. Investigative reporter Radley Balko estimates that around 150 Swat raids are performed every day in the United States.
Second, the program encourages waste. Never mind, for a moment, that neither the Defense Department nor the Homeland Security Department has been audited – the only two unaudited government departments incidentally. Any waste from the 1033 program, then, has gone unnoticed thus far.
Municipalities' stockpiles have grown exponentially with billions of dollars' worth of weaponry and equipment they simply do not need. This giveaway has created a shopping frenzy among law enforcement officials keen to scoop up equipment before someone else does.
Take a look at these examples. A small town in Georgia without a body of water acquired boats and scuba gear. The same town ordered a shipment of bayonets, which is now collecting dust. In Texas, a town of only 835 residents received more than $3m worth of equipment, including deep-fat fryers, televisions, and playground equipment. The stories abound.
Authorities often claim that the program assists local law enforcement without incurring costs for taxpayers. Yet the program requires that localities accept equipment "as is", meaning that taxpayers foot the bill (pdf) for all repairs, storage, or maintenance of the growing stockpile. Thus, the arms race ignited by these policies is as wasteful and costly as it is dangerous.
Lastly, the program's lack of oversight is irresponsible. Indeed, the amount of unaccounted for weapons, fraud, and abuse is alarming. Officially, state coordinators are required to ensure that local law enforcement agencies keep full inventories (pdf) of the equipment they receive, and the localities must report any missing equipment and return any that is unused. But in practice, federal and state authorities infrequently check – if ever – to ensure that inventories are up to date. Effectively, then, it is the recipients of weapons who are left to regulate themselves. The results have been disastrous.
For example, a sheriff in Illinois was accused of lending the assault rifles, which he got through the 1033 program, to his friends. Meanwhile, a firearms manager in North Carolina pled guilty to selling his on eBay. Worse, 11 districts in Indiana were completely suspended from the program because of the high volume of weapons they lost. And a county in Arizona acquired $7m worth of weapons and Humvees before giving them to unauthorized persons and attempting to sell them to boost their budget.
The lack of oversight is appalling. State coordinators admit that they conduct very few in-person inspections. In New York, the state is apparently outsourcing the majority of their inventory work to a part-time, unpaid intern. And in Mississippi, it took six years before federal authorities discovered that a state office, which was ineligible for the program, had received $8m worth of equipment, despite the fact that the Defense Department is supposed to review the program every two years. The Pentagon program cannot continue in this manner. Congress should acknowledge the failure of this program and permanently ban military-grade weaponry, armored vehicles and aircraft from transfer to municipal police forces. If the Defense Department is to continue to lend surplus equipment to localities, it must vastly tighten oversight and ensure that no item go unaccounted for. On-site inspections must be frequent and consequences for noncompliance should be severe.
If America is concerned about helping its police forces prevent violence, there are more cost effective ways of doing that. Since we know that cities and states with lower levels of violence have higher levels of education, healthcare coverage and economic opportunity, and lower levels of poverty and income inequality, that is where we should be investing taxpayer dollars.
But when local police forces carry assault weapons and patrol America's main streets with tanks and drones, the lines blur between the military and law enforcement. The growing militarization of the United States appears to be occurring at home as well as abroad, a phenomenon which is troublesome and sure to continue without decisive action. Scaling back the 1033 program is a much-needed start and would cast some light on the blurring line between military forces and the local police who are meant to protect and serve.
To a casual observer of American politics the ongoing government shutdown and prospect of a cataclysmic debt default in the next two weeks may look like just another round of "DC dysfunction" between two parties hopelessly polarized and ideologically divided. It's not. While the government shutdown is nominally about the Republican crusade against Obamacare, the issues at stake are far bigger than one law or even one president or one Congress. In reality, the psychodrama playing out in Washington is about the future of democracy in America.
And no, I'm not exaggerating. Unless the GOP's brand of extortion politics is thwarted, America's democratic institutions will be so badly subverted that the nation will simply find itself in the position of staggering from one manufactured crisis to another with potentially both political parties threatening economic and political Armageddon if they don't get their way. That is, quite simply, no way to run a democracy and it's why the only option facing President Obama and the Democratic party is to win this showdown and force the GOP to concede defeat.
It's important to understand at the outset that US democracy, for all of it many flaws, is one based on the idea of political compromise. In a system with so many obstacles to legislative outcomes – two houses of Congress, a separate executive branch and tons of minor obstruction points in each institution – there really is no other way to get things done.
That has dramatically changed in just the past few years. It's not that compromise was always achievable in the past (the failure to break the Southern block on civil rights legislation is an obvious example), it's that the search for common ground has simply been thrown asunder, replaced instead by extortion politics.
For example, traditionally, raising the debt limit has been something of a pro forma exercise in Congress, done multiple times (sometimes begrudgingly) to ensure that the federal government can continue to issue debt and thus pay its obligations. But beginning in 2011, the Republican party came to see the debt limit as a tool for what they could not accomplish either at the ballot box or through the legislative process – namely an instrument for political blackmail.
The result was a set of protracted negotiations between Congress and the White House in the summer of 2011, all conducted with the prospect of debt default (which would occur if the debt limit was not raised) hanging over the head of official Washington.
The result was the Budget Control Act, a pernicious piece of legislation that trimmed the federal budget by billions of dollars and led to sequestration – a set of mandatory spending cuts that has hamstrung the economic recovery and caused untold and unnecessary distress for millions of Americans. Unsatisfied with just that policy outcome, Republicans are now upping the ante – and using not just the debt limit but also the budget to get their way.
Once upon a time, government shutdowns occurred because both parties could not agree on budgetary priorities. Ironically, that isn't even the issue today as both sides have agreed on the basic parameters of a continuing resolution to fund the US government. Rather this is about Obamacare, which Republicans have been unable to thwart though the legal, elective or legislative process (and satisfy their goal of denying healthcare coverage to millions of Americans). So now Republicans are holding the federal government as a hostage to get Democrats to agree to any possible concession that would weaken Obamacare. First their goal was fully defunding the legislation; then it was delaying it a year; now it appears to be repealing certain parts of the bill, including the employer subsidies for their own congressional employees' health care coverage (because nothing says compassionate conservatism like screwing over your own employees to make a political point).
But the GOP brinkmanship over Obamacare is nothing compared to what they are asking for this year in return for raising the debt limit. Unlike 2011, when they were demanding a dramatic reduction in government spending, they are now insisting on the full implementation of their policy agenda.
No, I'm not exaggerating.
Here are the GOP's demands for extending the nation's debt limit and preventing an economic catastrophe that would derail the fragile US recovery, likely spark a recession and fundamentally weaken America's economic competitiveness and in turn, national security: One year debt limit increase-Not a dollar amount increase, but suspending the debt limit until the end of December 2014 (similar to what we did earlier this year). -Want the year-long to align with the year delay of Obamacare.
One year Obamacare delay
Tax reform instructions-Similar to a bill we passed last fall, laying out broad from Ryan Budget principles for what tax reform should look like. -Gives fast track authority for tax reform legislation.
Energy and regulatory reforms to promote economic growth-Includes pretty much every jobs bill we have passed this year and last Congress-All of these policies have important positive economic effects.-Energy provisions: Keystone Pipeline, Coal Ash regulations, Offshore drilling, Energy production on federal lands, EPA Carbon regulations-Regulatory reform: REINS Act, Regulatory process reform, Consent decree reform, Blocking Net Neutrality
Mandatory spending reforms-Mostly from the sequester replacement bills we passed last year-Federal Employee retirement reform-Ending the Dodd-Frank bailout fund-Transitioning CFPB funding to Appropriations-Child Tax Credit Reform to prevent fraud-Repealing the Social Services Block grant
Health spending reforms-Means testing Medicare-Repealing a Medicaid provider tax gimmick-Tort reform-Altering disproportion share hospitals-Repealing the Public Health trust Fund
As Jonathan Chait points out, this is basically Mitt Romney's economic agenda. If that name doesn't ring a bell, Romney is the Republican presidential candidate who lost last year's presidential election by around 5 million votes. What Republicans are doing here is basically saying to the president (the guy who won by 5 million votes) "implement our policy agenda or we will cause a catastrophic debt default".
That isn't governing. It isn't democracy. It's a shakedown.
That Republicans would even risk the possibility of default to get their way should, in an ideal world (or at least one in which Americans paid more than passing attention to their government), invalidate their credentials as a political party. Since that's unlikely to happen, the only appropriate course of action for President Obama and the Democrats to take is not simply to resist the Republican's ransom demands, but, in fact, to force them to cave in and pass a clean debt limit extension.
If they don't, Republicans will do it over and over and over again. Just as they are doing it again right now after they got a quarter loaf from the president in 2011. Moreover, what reason would there be for Republicans to ever moderate their politics? They wouldn't even need to win presidential elections. As long as they could hold on to their majority in the House (a majority lubricated by gerrymandered and polarized districts that encourage Republicans to take even more radical positions to appeal to their conservative supporters), they could simply hold the country hostage every couple of years to get their way.
This debate is not your garden-variety political crisis. It's the battle for the long-term viability of American democracy, and it's a battle that the Democrats simply must win even if it means risking default.
And no, I'm not exaggerating.
It’s widely understood that the government has been shut down by a relatively small number of Republican lawmakers who represent deeply red districts. They’re insulated from public opinion at large. They don’t fear a general election loss to a…
The Lone Star state isn't blue yet. A big push for Wendy Davis' guv race takes resources from more winnable red-leaning states
Those who have followed my writing know that I don't think Wendy Davis has a very good chance of being elected governor of Texas. She trails in early polling, there hasn't been a major Texas Democratic statewide officer holder in 20 years, and the state's demographic changes indicate a landscape that is much further away from being competitive than many Democrats argue. But there's more to it than that: Davis' campaign could have bad ramifications for Democrats outside of Texas.
Many Democrats want to argue that even if Davis doesn't win, it's worth competing in the state. I don't disagree. You never know what's going to happen in any election, and any organizing efforts are likely to hasten (even if not greatly) the chance of a Democrat winning down the road.
The issue is that resources are always limited. Sure, there are mega donors who will donate to every candidate they can. There are also volunteers who will hit the ground in Texas. There are, however, plenty of donors who will pick and choose their campaigns. There are folks who might go down to Texas to help Davis, when they could be somewhere else.
The dollars and volunteers spent for Davis lessens the opportunity that they be spent in other places. That's a problem for Democrats given that they have a real opportunity to make major gubernatorial gains in 2014.
Democrats are far better positioned to regain control of the governor's mansions in Florida, Maine, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina. All these states have had at least one poll come out over the past year indicating that a Democrat led in the race for governor, which cannot be said about Texas.
Florida and Pennsylvania are major swing states in presidential elections. Democrats in Florida could use the governor's powers to block some very conservative legislation passed by the state's legislation, while Democrats in Pennsylvania won't have to listen to their governor's homophobic remarks. Democrats hold large early leads in both states with very unpopular governors.
Maine's Governor Paul LePage has made comments that you'd expect from a deeply red state, not one from the blue state of Maine. He only won last time because of a three-way contest, which will again be the case this year. The Democrats are favored, yet will need to ensure the independent candidate Eliot Cutler doesn't give LePage a second term.
Michigan Governor Rick Snyder is well below 50% against an unknown opponent in this bluish state. His approval rating is well below 50%. I know Democrats would love to take out the governor who signed right to work into law in the ultimate labor state of Michigan.
South Carolina is most intriguing because there it's the ultimate southern state. There aren't any major demographic changes happening in South Carolina, though Republican Governor Nikki Haley has struggled to keep approval rating above water. She only won by 5pt in 2010, even as Republicans won big time nationally.
Democrats also want to hold seats in Arkansas, Connecticut, and Illinois. Polls indicate that those races won't be easy to won, but they are all more competitive than Texas is.
Republicans would absolutely love the effort and money that would have gone to any one of the eight states above go to Texas. They know that Texas won't be competitive for at least 10-20 years, if demographic voting patterns hold. No amount of money will change that significantly, while money could alter one of the states mentioned here.
Indeed, Democrats seem to have sort of fantasy on Texas that I can only describe as a naive childhood crush on a pinup when the nice girl next door yearns for attention. Democrats continuously pledge to make Texas blue, though the math just isn't there. They do when there are other states that are far more for the taking.
The gap between how Georgia and the country votes is shrinking by the day, as the percentage white people make up in Georgia is dropping fast. It's the reason why Michelle Nunn is competitive in a Senate race in the Peach State. President Obama lost the state by only single digits, unlike Texas.
Arizona is a state where the growing Latino population has at least made it possible for Democrats to win statewide. There has actually been a Democratic governor in the past ten years. Richard Carmona only lost a Senate race there by 3pt in 2012, and Democrats actually control a majority of the state's House's seats. None of this can be said for Texas.
Overall, Texas and Wendy Davis' efforts in the state are not just the fun type of tease for Democrats, but one that are probably taking resources out from other states. Making an effort in every state is important, though when Twitter hashtags like "Stand with Wendy" are dominating it may be too much of a good thing.
Democrats have a real chance to win back the majority of governorships in 2014, and they have the ability to take advantage of the changing demographic tides in Arizona and Georgia. The question is whether or not Wendy Davis and Democrats in Texas will get in the way.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2013
Today is the 100th anniversary of the federal income tax, which was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson on October 3, 1913. To mark the occasion, Moyers & Company caught up with David Cay Johnston, who has probably forgotten more about our tax…
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