Baby Steps Towards Gun Safety Sanity

For days right wing radio has been apocalyptic in its response to the fact that the Obama administration would propose dozens of Gun Safety Initiatives by executive order thus bypassing Congress.  I heard Hannity yesterday for a few minutes. I thought he would burst a blood vessel.

But a look at the list does not indicate anything too radical. From a policy standpoint, I might not have had much issue with Executive Authority. Politically though, with tensions high, it is eminently clear that Congress must initiate and pass legislation for anything dramatic to have credibility. It seems to me Obama has done that. The Executive Authority List could not be more innocuous.

This it seems is typical and par for the course. The president makes his moderate suggestions and proposals. Then the Radio Right goes batsh**, starts screaming Socialism and Marxism, and “He wants to take your guns away” and “Obama is doing an unconstitutional end around because he can’t get done what he wants to do in Congress”, just a complete, fat-pack of lies.

Those who are screaming that this is an unconstitutional usurpation of powers are lying to the public. That is unless you consider the Justice Department sending a letter to gun dealers with precise instructions on how to complete background checks a wild-eyed Neo-Nazi National Socialistic proposal. Judging from some of what we have heard these past few weeks there is no shortage of those that do.

The only item that seems even mildly controversial regards Obamacare regulations which prohibit doctors from talking to their patients about guns in the home. First of all, this is stupid policy. Press reports attribute the prohibition to Harry Reid, the Senate Democratic leader and a former Pro-NRA guy, and the president who did not want the NRA effing up Obamacare. It seems like Obama may want to  nullify through Executive order part of a law that he passed and signed. The right will go bat-sh** over that. Beyond that? Nothing. Even there the language “clarify” seems to leave plenty of wiggle room to do precisely nothing regulation-wise. If Wall Street reform is any guide, those hoping for strict regulation not specifically spelled out in the legislation should not be surprised if that one goes away quietly.

·        Clarify that the health-care law does not prohibit doctors from asking their patients about guns in their homes.

In the larger sense the atmosphere is poisonous. I continue to be amazed that a Right Wing cadre of survivalists, ideologues, and radio hucksters, continue with each passing day to veer closer and closer to rhetoric which is openly hostile to American ideals of Democratic process, without paying any penalty in the court of public opinion.

 The last two weeks has seen a litany of veiled death threats, calls for insurrection, succession, and literal calls to arms, with nary a voice being raised to condemn those that would threaten with violence and insurrection that which cannot be legislated. Liberals and leftists, who call for Massive Civil Disobedience Actions in response to this policy or that, are quite often quite loudly condemned. I remember a host of complaints from moderates and even a few faux-liberals condemning the mess that the Occupy protestors left in the parks. Never mind that catastrophe that the banks unleashed with the perverse  greed, “Look at the mess in Zuccotti.” Oh my, they’re so dirty. In response it’s good to remind people of Don Rumsfeld’s famously arrogant remark regarding the looting and rioting in Iraq after the fall of Saddam: “Democracy is Messy.” Where are all those people now? At what point might we hear Brian Williams echo his condemnation of Trump—“He has driven well past the last exit To relevance”—in response to some of what is out there?

As the rhetoric gets increasingly hot, and the radio right fans the flames, up to and including explaining and justifying the secessionists all we here is crickets in response.  This is not to say there are not strong, vociferous even, voices in support of gun safety measures. There are. But the response to the attacks on small-d democratic principles, however the gun policies shake out, has been largely muted.

Not in terms of his first amendment rights which are absolute, but in terms of shared rules of decency and dialogue what are the limits to what  is being said? By Ted Nugent? Alex Jones? And perhaps most obscenely Larry Ward who suggested that “…Martin Luther King, Jr. would agree with me if he were alive today that if African Americans had been given the right to keep and bear arms from day one of the country's founding, perhaps slavery might not have been a chapter in our history.” Mr. Ward no student of history might be interested to know that learn that Bayard Rustin and Dr. Kings biographies tell similar stories about how Mr. Rustin worked on Dr. King to get him make his commitment to Non-Violence complete and dispose of the guns he once kept in his home. Daddy King, Martin’s father, opposed the idea fervently because King was in such danger after Montgomery.

Perhaps it is unfair to condemn the masses for the rhetorical craziness of the fringe, but moderates on the gun issue have been largely silent. The stage has been turned over to the fringe, and their establishment spokesman, Wayne LaPierre who offered nothing, and who himself seems little disconnected from reality.

The radio right’s effort to cast today’s announcement as a usurpation of Constitutional Powers by the President is designed specifically to feed the anger of the ill-informed and to add to the climate of misinformation. This will not calm the wing-nuts, even though some of them have had to back off their initial statements when publicized in the press, or visited by law enforcement, NRA Board Member Ted Nugent, for example.

People have Free Speech Rights to make their statements, but we are veering into dangerous territory. Those opposed to gun control have only heard hotter and crazier rhetoric swirling in their echo chamber. There is no calm, no explanation of the legislative process. Comprehensive background checks for the 40% of purchases that slip through the cracks through gun shows and private sales and so forth have been branded an un-Constitutional attack on the Second Amendment.

On Mental Health, with two exceptions I think the plan is swing and a miss. At the Federal level, programs which are funded in the millions of dollars cannot be taken seriously, and must be considered what they are: Test or Pilot Programs. That said, perhaps the most critical contribution would be the commitment to complete the Obamacare regs which require Health Insurance to cover Mental Health, as well as considering Mental Health a Medicaid covered illness. Outside of these two proposals I fail to see anything bold or comprehensive on Mental Health. The increasing shortage of spaces for those suffering for mental health challenges will continue to shrink.

Following is the list of the Executive Authority Actions. All of the big stuff—Background checks, Re-defining and banning Assault Weapons and High Capacity Magazines, are reserved for Congressional action.

·        Send a letter to licensed dealers providing guidance on how to run background checks for private sellers.

·        Direct U.S. attorney general to review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun and make recommendations to ensure dangerous people aren't slipping through the cracks.

·        Clarify that the health-care law does not prohibit doctors from asking their patients about guns in their homes.

·        Invest $20 million in fiscal year 2013 to give states stronger incentives to share background data.

·        Hold federal agencies accountable for sharing reliable data with background check system.

·        Require all federal law enforcement agencies to trace all firearms they recover and keep in custody.

·        Propose regulations to ensure law enforcement has access to the database needed for complete background checks to avoid unknowingly returning a gun to an individual who is prohibited from having it.

·        Direct attorney general to work with all U.S. attorneys to ensure adequate resources are focused on preventing gun violence.

·        Publish an annual report on lost and stolen guns.

·        Direct the Centers for Disease Control and scientific agencies to conduct research into the causes and prevention of gun violence.

·        Launch a national responsible gun ownership campaign to promote common-sense safety measures.

·        Review and enhance safety standards for gun locks and gun safes.

·        Direct attorney general to review gun safety technologies.

·        Challenge private sector to develop gun safety technology.

·        Provide incentives for police departments to hire school resource officers through COPS hiring grants.

·        Give schools and other institutions a model for how to develop and implement emergency plans.

·        Share best practices on school discipline.

·        Launch a national dialogue about mental illness.

·        Finalize requirements for private health insurance plans to cover mental health services.

·        Ensure that Medicaid recipients get quality mental health coverage.

Race and Guns In America

Stewart made an excellent point on the Daily Show last night. If you think nothing can be done to curb gun violence, that there are just too many guns, and too many committed Alex Joneses, working in willing collaboration with too many NRA bought and paid for politicians like Harry Reid & Tom Cotton, think again. In the 32 years of its existence when MADD was started by a group of young mothers "with a mission to stop drunk driving", from its tiny beginning in 1980 until today, the rate of drunk driving deaths has declined by nearly 2/3, from 27,000 per year to around 10,000. That is still obviously too many, but what a difference. Drunk driving still accounts for one in three traffic fatalities, but among young people the drop off has been even steeper. That is a stunning (and hopeful) record of success. America did not become a police state to solve this problem, but as Stewart said (paraphrasing here), a thirty year campaign of committed effort to change public attitudes and pass saner, more reasonable, legislation at the Federal, State and Local levels has saved tens of thousands of lives.

By an ironic twist of fate, there are currently about 30,000 deaths every year in the US as a result of gun violence. This is a few thousand more deaths by guns than the number of alcohol deaths at the time MADD launched, but it does seem to frame the problem in similar terms. Tragically, about 2/3 of deaths by guns are suicides. Though the heinous nature of the mass murders by assault rifles catches the world’s attention, FBI statistics show that in 2009 there were 9,146 gun murders. Only a fraction, 348, were the result of shootings with a rifle. Handguns, cheap, easily concealed and trafficked, cause far more death, and scar far more families. They accounted for 2/3 of all gun homicides.   

Gun advocates would have us believe that this shows the fallacy of gun safety efforts. They argue that banning large magazines and assault weapons would barely dent the gun death statistics. The killings in Newtown, they suggest must be tolerated for the joy of their sport, their hobby. This seems to me to be nearly criminally insane (see Alex Jones), but let’s set that aside for a moment.

The same groups continually point to what everyone agrees is an obscene level of gun violence and death in the cities, Chicago in particular, where laws are quite strict. They say, “See? What have your guns laws accomplished there?” They raise a fair point with two qualifications. The first I saw Buzz Bissinger make yesterday. I have been screaming it at my TV for weeks. For all the outrage over Newtown, (the savage and cowardly acts committed there deserve every bit of that outrage), the real horror, the real scandal, committed by the NRA and gun manufacturers, and tolerated by America is the genocide going on in the black community at the hands of cheap handguns.  The second and critical challenge that the NRA comments on Chicago and other urban centers indicates is thatthe killings there show is the crying, literally, need for Federal legislation. We can actually agree with The NRA here. Local laws are inadequate to stop the carnage. But we cannot agree that creates an argument against local legislation. No, No. It actually makes the case for federal legislation. Chicago shows that municipalities and states, even those committed to gun safety, cannot go it alone. NYC mayor Bloomberg has shown through undercover operations and the NYC police department’s  own statistics, that most of the homicides in the city are caused by guns trafficked from states with lenient gun purchases regulations, especially multiple gun purchases and porous background check systems. Gun shows are a big part of the equation that Bloomberg has exposed as a cause of real and specific acts of gun violence in New York.

Forget the spurious arguments about how more people are killed with hammers and ball bats then rifles. True enough, but in both cases the numbers are miniscule. About 500 people are killed a year by rifles, and another 600 year by attack by blunt object. By comparison The FBI says in 2009 there were over 6,000 murders by pistols. But this is a far important statistic, of all the gun deaths, over half the destruction is visited on the homes of African American families.

http://www.bradycampaign.org/facts/gunviolence/factsethnicity

And that is the real obscenity and the insane irony of the moment. The face of gun ownership and 2^nd amendment fervor in America is a white middle aged man supposedly protecting his family from the criminal element, and as Stewart said the threat of a dystopian America under a tyrannical government.  Alex Jones could fairly be described as their poster boy. Gun makers have increased both sales and profits by marketing this image for decades. It is a lie. There are far more pistols in circulation, and they are killing young African Americans at a shocking rate. But to do something about gun violence that will require a much more concerted effort than the palliative act of passing an assault weapons ban. To do something about that violence, America would have to face up to the failure to address race as a root of poverty in our midst. America would have to confront the tragic performance of kids in schools where poverty is a reality and hope is rationed in the smallest of portions. To do something to stop thousands of young black boys being killed every year by guns, America would have to have a confrontation with honesty. Tough one, maybe we ought to just pass the assault weapons ban, background checks, and ban large magazines.

Americans truly committed to ending gun violence might ask where in all this talk about the fiscal cliff and tax breaks for millionaires is there any dialogue about the need to improve the performance of children in districts with high degrees of poverty, or to do something to cut joblessness in the African community which runs twice that of whites. America truly committed to ending gun violence might want to challenge their own deep seated—but never mentioned in polite society beliefs—that “those people just don’t want to help themselves” and so mostly deserve what they get. What they get and America gets is a genocidal epidemic of African American gun violence deaths all out of proportion to their demographic place in America.

Martin Luther King famously said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” The effective 30-year campaign that Mothers Against Drunk Driving has waged resulted in a stunning and in many ways hopeful decline in driving fatalities caused by alcohol. MADD;s efforts are proof positive that Dr. King was right. Will it take 30 more years for America to take sane and necessary steps to curb gun violence?

Club for Growth's Personal Congressman: Tom Cotton

Politico ran a story this morning (The ‘Hell No’ Caucus) and focused on the newly minted Republican Congressman from the Arkansas’ 4^th CD, Harvard graduate Tom Cotton.

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/01/behind-the-curtain-the-hell-no-caucus-85872.html

Cotton was down 40% in the polls before the unregulated Superpac, Club for Growth, decided to make him a star with $300,000 in donations. The article focuses on process issues such as the fact that this is the way these groups work now, picking candidates early in the primaries and riding them to electoral victory. It goes onto explain this is where the tires hit pavement when it comes to getting anything through this recently installed (elected is perhaps too strong a word) Congress. Nowhere do they address the absurdity of the election, or why a small group of billionaires would chose to anoint and elect their very own congressman, legally and on the up and up of course.

The Club for Growth was started by WSJ Economist Stephen Moore, and a couple of Wall Street bankers.  PayPal founder, Facebook investment billionaire, and Hedge Fund Manager, Peter Theil,  is the Club’s biggest contributor this year. The gay and socially liberal philanthropist plucked down nearly $1 million of the $20 million raised in this election cycle to support a raft of conservative candidates including Ted Cruz, Richard Mourdock, and Steven King who famously said that “Gays wouldn’t face discrimination if they didn’t wear their sexuality on their sleeves” and “Gay Marriage is Socialism”. The story in Politico and its subsequent coverage on Morning Joe piqued my interest because both stated that Mr. Cotton was down 40% in the polls before Club for Growth came along. In electoral terms that's sort of non-existent. Surprisingly missing was any context or understanding about where Club for Growth got its money and why they would want to fund such an obscure candidate. Nor did MJ or Politico mention that the gay rainmaker-- through Club for Growth-- supported a slew of homophobic candidates, who nonetheless align with his desire to keep more of his money.

I thought how nice? Mr. Thiel has a personal butler, maid, masseuse, and Congressman. 27% of the children in Mr. Cotton’s CD are living lives of poverty. We can only assume that their families share Mr. Thiel’s main concerns and those of his rich friends for lower taxes (especially and specifically for the rich), smaller government (which provides services on which the poor survive), and a shrinking deficit. Mr. Cotton has stated he would have voted against Plan B, Boehner’s ill-conceived plan to raise taxes on billionaires like Thiel. Cotton, we are told, stands four-square against gun control of any kind. In fairness it was reported so does 90% of his district. He wants the path to citizenship for undocumented immigrant workers to stretch as many miles as possible, and plans to vote against the debt ceiling increase unless there is adequate evidence that substantial numbers of poor people in his district will lose their healthcare, food support & school lunches, and Pell Grant access to college. There are 70 Congressional districts, out of 435, with a higher percentage of people in Poverty than the Arkansas 4th, but his election really did makes me wonder, anew, why poor people in the South so consistently vote against their economic interest.  Enter Mr. Thiel, the Club for Growth, and now Citizen’s United. Hooray for democracy!

The twitterverse is awash in comments regarding the over-the-top-finger-pointing-in-your-face-threatening-batshit-crazy interview gun nut and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones gave to Piers Morgan.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2013/01/the-deport-piers-morgan-creator-blows-up-on-cnn-153577.html#.UOuPFew6IZ4.twitter

 It was inescapable and mesmerizing. But that is just carnival distraction. The real action is the Arkansas 4^th where a couple of billionaire’s invested lunch money in buying a congressman who will actually see that the crazy conspiracies espoused by wing-nut Jones find a voice in what John Boehner called in his Speaker’s acceptance speech, “The People’s House”. What a hoot! He cries all the time. How did he deliver that line without laughing? It’s all sort of depressing, the money talk as backdrop as to whether the president should be taking millions from private donors and large corporations to fund the people’s inauguration of the President. There is a lot of buying and selling going on and neither side is clean or even close.

Then my friend, Pete, brought this little nugget to my attention. Tom Cotton is of that particular right wing “club” that still will not accept that Iraq was NOT the cause of 9-11, a fact so well documented as being false it's amazing it still warrants a ¼” of type face.  Here’s the exchange… From Monday [!]:

BLITZER: But you don’t believe that Iraq had anything to do with al Qaeda or the attack on 9/11?

 COTTON: The evidence is inconclusive there, but I know that Saddam Hussein was widely believed by all western intelligence agencies, not just the United States, but western European countries not in a rush to war, to have weapons of mass destruction. Our sanctions regime was beginning to crumble and we couldn’t be able to contain Saddam Hussein if we hadn’t confronted him at the time.

Cotton is an Iraqi vet (Support the Troops!) and described in the Politico piece as one of the new freshman who sees compromise as dirty word and he has the financial wherewithal to believe that despite what those in his district may think, all thanks to Mr. Thiel and his rich friends.  

Do you have to be a friggin' moron to line up for that hard right money? Herman “999, and what was the question?” Cain, Rick  (Snobs want college for their children) Santorum, Murdock (rape theologian), Akin (rape scientist), West (80 congressman are commies), the unfortunately named Joe Walsh, Steve King, this fool??? The list goes on and on and on and on. Even Dick Armey is not right enough for the group he founded, Freedomworks. Then beyond that the papers and net are filled with stories about how all these right wing talkers are living off the skim. That includes Beck, Limbaugh, Dick Morris, and that is before you get to the rest who just live off the books, radio and TV shows they market to a fearful angry white male mass audience that follows them and which would be utterly destroyed if any shred of truth reached them.

If this is what democracy looks like, holy shit are we in trouble! Holy shit are we in trouble!!!

Uncivil Liberties

With a tip of my capto my childhood friend , Mike B, who has been as far off the gird as sanity and modern living would allow for years. I have thought of him, and what I often perceived to be his sort of irrational fear, many times over these past few weeks.

On Dec-29, the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) released a trove of FBI materials they secured as a result of a Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) request regarding FBI surveillance of the NONVIOLENT Occupy Protests across the United States. The PCJF report indicated the FBI surveillance started a month before the Zuccotti Park encampment in lower Manhattan. The documents were heavily redacted, indicating that far more remains to be revealed. Even so it is clear and beyond that the FBI was coordinating and working closely with the Department of Homeland Security, The New York Stock Exchange and other business interests, as well as state and local police and the Public Safety Department on colleges and universities across the country to subvert, infiltrate and investigate the constitutionally protected Occupy protesters. Paranoia and extremism were such that criminal investigations were initiated in more than one city before the legal and constitutionally protected protests even took place. In moves that recall the illicit communications between Jim Crow southerners and the FBI, banks and other financial institutions were advised of impending (non-violent) protests. It’s hard to comprehend how such communications became part of the FBI code of responsibility, but 9-11 was such a jolt to the National Security apparatus that new norms of unconstitutional behavior sprung up in all sorts of locations. The Joint Terrorism Task Force held meetings in Anchorage to investigate Occupy Anchorage, and federal, state, and local law enforcement groups responsible in part for tracking terrorist activities in Tampa, Jacksonville, Richmond, Milwaukee, Memphis, Denver, Birmingham, and Jackson also met to track Occupy activities in these cities.

On Dec-31 President Obama signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). It authorizes $662 billion in defense spending for FY 2013, up from $300 billion in 2001. Beyond the reckless and ridiculously unconstrained spending, the act also authorizes indefinite detention-- without trial or hearing-- by the military of any individual, foreign born or American, suspected of terrorist activities. The US military is prevented from engaging in Civilian Law Enforcement as a result of the Posse Comitatus Act, which was passed in 1878 and updated in 1981. However, the NDAA subverts that limitation or rather it continues that subversion. While it should be noted that Obama has publicly disagreed with these provisions, and did so again in his signing NDAA statement, it should also be noted that this is the second time he has raised similar objections, threatened vetoes, and then quietly signed. The President doth protest too little, and in retrospect, not very sincerely. Moreover, neither the Department of Justice nor the Department of Defense has shied from taking advantages of the questionable provisions.  

The synchronicity of these two events should be raising alarm bells, particularly in the so called mainstream liberal media, but neither story has garnered much press attention. The love child of a narcissistic rapper and an unrepentant media whore gathers far more pixel attention. Taken in combination we have a so called liberal administration allowing or encouraging the definition of the domestic terror threat to be expanded to include nonviolent protests at large financial institutions at nearly the precise time that the NDAA continues “the legal authority to keep people suspected of terrorism in military custody, indefinitely and without trial.” People talk about the slippery slope, but to me this looks more like a ski jump, where workers filling in planks from top and from bottom have just met somewhere in the middle.

In another area of concern for the just passed NDAA, language inserted to protect government whistle blowers backed by Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) was eviscerated by the Presidents signing statement for the legislation. Obama indicated he intends to ignore that portion of the law which would have created some space for protection for 12 million federal workers.

The case of Bradley Manning is perhaps the most noteworthy case of the outright hostility that the Obama Administration has shown towards anyone who attempts to get stories into the press that would paint America or the administration in a bad light. Mr. Manning, who turned 25 in December, has been held by the US military since May of 2010, about 2-1/2 years. The, then 22 year old, private is believed to be the government “official” responsible for the massive leak of documents which were later made available on the Wikileaks website. Though no longer confined so desperately, Manning was held in solitary confinement during lengthy stretches since his arrest. The conditions he faced rub right up against any fair definition of torture, not to mention the Geneva Conventions. He was kept often naked, in a 6 X 12 cell, without windows, or visible access to anyone, even other prisoners. After an altercation with guards in Jan-2011, which very possibly could have been caused by the extreme and inhumane nature of his incarceration, he had all his clothes removed. The cell was lit 24-7. He has been forced to stay awake, sometimes forced standing, in his cell, which was often kept brightly lit so as to prevent rest. A State Department spokesman, Phillip Crowley, who criticized the treatment, was forced to resign. 

In a December article in Rolling Stone, reporter Jeff Tietz reported that 80,000 prisoners in US jails currently reside in Supermax solitary confinement similar to what Mr. Manning endured. Psychiatrists point out that signs of mental affect can be seen in nearly all inmates incarcerated in such circumstances for longer than 90 days. Researcher and Psychiatrist, Terry Kupers who interviewed nearly 1,000 Supermax inmates, was quoted in the article as saying “I never found anyone who wasn’t damaged by the experience.” In Manning’s case this is punishment, probably in violation of the Geneva Conventions on torture, without conviction.

In another case Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times reporter James Risen has been under constant threat from the Federal Government and the Obama justice department since 2008. He wrote a book called State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration. In the Book Risen documents several incidents at the Bush CIA. As with the Reagan CIA, the intelligence agency under Bush often seems to have operated outside the limits of government oversight and constitutional control. In one particular incident, according to Risen, the CIA planted notes detailing nuclear weapons components, altered to set back the Iranian nuclear efforts. Risen reports that the plan backfired horribly. The mistakes, caught by the Russians and corrected, actually helped advance the Iranian nuclear effort. It is specifically to try to limit the foolhardy and sometimes crazy schemes of field operatives and their Washington political leaders that there is Congressional oversight of the COA and the National Security apparatus. For his efforts at exposing the folly of the previous administration Risen has twice been subpoenaed by the Justice Department and ordered to divulge his sources. He has refused. The CIA agent, who the Federal government accuses of leaking confirmation to Risen, is currently under indictment. His name is Jeffrey Sterling. The justice department has repeatedly petitioned the judge in the case to force Risen to testify.

The similarities between Risen, Manning and the heroic Daniel Ellsberg are striking, just as the Wikileaks case now draws clear lines back to the Pentagon Papers case of the early 70’s, especially as it pertains to the cost of exercising our 1^st amendment rights.  On June-13, 1971 the NY Times began publishing what came to be known as the Pentagon Papers, the secret and dirty history of American involvement in Vietnam made possible by Pentagon analyst Daniel Ellsberg who leaked the Defense Department documents. After three articles in the series were published, the United States Justice Department sought and received a restraining order preventing further publication. Two weeks later, on June-30, 1971, the Supreme Court ruled in an enduring and critical 1^st amendment case that publication could continue and the public’s right to know outweighed the political and National Security concerns stated by the Nixon administration. Liberals applauded. Ellsberg was vilified and hounded by Nixon’s henchmen, up to and including the sanctuary of his psychiatrist’s office. The 30^th anniversary of the case in the summer of 2011 was revisited with great joy and reverence for enduring American principles and values. If only some shred of the importance of the truth that the Pentagon papers revealed had survived 9-11, perhaps Americans might feel differently about 25 year old Bradley Manning. While we are right to celebrate yesterday’s victory, we do so in an environment apparently far more lawless constitutionally.

On Jan-02 the Huffington Post reported that a federal judge “Rejected The New York Times' bid to force the U.S. government to disclose more information about its targeted killing of people it believes have ties to terrorism, including American citizens.” The American Civil Liberties Union and the NY Times had filed Freedom of Information Act requests for documents specifically relating to the drone attacks which resulted in the deaths of three American citizens. The judge in the case notes that “…the Constitution’s guarantee of due process is ironclad”, but then goes onto to cite competing legal doctrine. The net effect of the ruling is to turn the judge’s own words on their head. Due process rights are anything but guaranteed and there is no public right to know when constitutional decisions of that scope are executed or denied. 

The definition of this effort—How far to go and how to get there—has been led by Obama’s counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan, a holdover from the Bush CIA. In a Washington Post article in October, Brennan was interviewed about his efforts to craft a counter terrorism strategy that would outlive his and Obama’s time in office. The article makes clear that though there is substantial inter-agency review, ultimately the final call on what goes to the president is Brennan’s and the final call on who will live and who will die is the President’s. The NY Times FOIA case came up because the President signed off on the execution of American citizen’s, who it appears were members of Al Qaeda. Two people make the final call when drones are sent to kill. Obama and Brennan. Liberals can apparently live with that because one of the two is Obama. Not so long ago it would have been Bush and Cheney. I wonder how many liberals have bothered to consider that?

On January-01, the New York Times reported that “…the Obama administration has embraced rendition — the practice of holding and interrogating terrorism suspects in other countries without due process — despite widespread condemnation of the tactic in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.” It is believed that the polices of rendition and extra-judicial drone attacks are a direct response to the Congressional limitations placed on the President restricting the transfer of inmates from Guantanamo to civilian courts and justice. Some argue that given their limited options the two practices, both of which are assaultive to Constitutional practice and American values, are the only choice for this administration.

Taken in whole and in conjunction with a raft of other policies of the Obama administration it is an arguable point as to whether or not Obama chooses to assualt American Constitutional values or does it by default. The end result cannot be considered unclear though. This administration makes all the right sounds on Civil Liberties, but in action and deed, they have contributed to and in some cases extended the Bush Doctrine. Said doctrine was extremely hostile to the American Constitution domestically. Internationally in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and elsewhere Bush’s doctrine resulted in the outright violation of International law as well as treaties to which the United States was a signatory if not an outright sponsor.

This is one are area where blaming the legacy of their predecessor and the hand they were dealt holds neither truth nor absolution for the Obama administration. It appears that the torture visited upon Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi bin al-Shibh has made a fair trial and the prosecution for their roles in the crimes of 9-11 an impossibility. The legal maneuvers seemed destined to carry on in Guantanamo until they both die. That is Bush and Cheney’s legacy: Justice denied for two of the most heinous and evil humans to ever soil the face of the earth, which, as it turns out, will also be justice denied for the survivors and victims of 9-11. But to the extent that Obama perpetuates the policies that Bush initiated the unjust outcomes are no longer just Bush’s legacy of immorality. They are his too. And ours..

Gun nuts run amok claiming they need weapons to protect themselves from a tyrannical government. Conservative commentators blather on about Liberty and Tyranny, and Let Freedom Ring, and endless declarations of 2^nd amendment right to our guns bullsh**. But they have at best stood in in silence as American’s right to trial by jury and to confront their accusers have been willed away under threat of a terroristic enemy which can no longer be well defined or identified. Save for Rand Paul and a few other No-Govenrment zealots the right has been silent in the face of this attack on the Constitution. The “White dove of freedom” sailed into a wall of fear and paranoia as the Obama administration squandered the rights of American Citizens. Nonviolent protests, whether in response to corruption on Wall Street, or a police shooting in Anaheim, or working conditions and wages at Wal-Mart stores,  have been in Obama’s America with full regalia paramilitary police presence designed to intimidate and deter constitutionally protected speech. Americans retain a near mystical attachment to our Constitution, Bill Of Rights and the soaring language of the preamble: “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” But in practice under and threat of terrorism, and the immense power of large corporate institutions it has become increasingly unclear which of our liberties, if any, are real and enshrined and which, by fiat of our leaders, have been determined to be uncivil.

Judge: Army GI in WikiLeaks illegally punished

Jan-08-2012

FORT MEADE, Md. (AP) — An Army private suspected of sending reams of classified documents to the secret-sharing WikiLeaks website was illegally punished at a Marine Corps brig and should get 112 days cut from any prison sentence he receives if convicted, a military judge ruled Tuesday.

Army Col. Denise Lind ruled during a pretrial hearing that authorities went too far in their strict confinement of Pfc. Bradley Manning for nine months in a Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va., in 2010 and 2011. Manning was confined to a windowless cell 23 hours a day, sometimes with no clothing. Brig officials said it was to keep him from hurting himself or others.

Lind said Manning's confinement was "more rigorous than necessary." She added that the conditions "became excessive in relation to legitimate government interests."

Manning faces 22 charges, including aiding the enemy, which carries a maximum sentence of life behind bars. His trial begins March 6.

The 25-year-old intelligence analyst had sought to have the charges thrown out, arguing the conditions were egregious. Military prosecutors had recommended a seven-day sentence reduction, conceding Manning was improperly kept for that length of time on highly restrictive suicide watch, contrary to a psychiatrist's recommendation.

Lind rejected a defense contention that brig commanders were influenced by higher-ranking Marine Corps officials at Quantico or the Pentagon.
Manning showed no reaction as Lind read her decision. He fidgeted when the judge took the bench to announce her ruling, sometimes tapping his chin or mouth with a pen and frequently glancing at his attorney's notepad, but those movements tapered off during the hour and 45 minutes it took the judge to read the lengthy opinion.
Mike McKee, one of about a dozen Manning supporters in the courtroom, said he was disappointed. He called the ruling "very conservative," although he said he didn't expect the charges to be thrown out.
"I don't find it a victory," McKee said. "Credit like that becomes much less valuable if the sentence turns out to be 80 years."
Jeff Paterson of the Bradley Manning Support Network, which is funding Manning's defense, said the sentencing credit "doesn't come close to compensating Bradley" for his harsh treatment.
"The ruling is not strong enough to give the military pause before mistreating the next American soldier awaiting trial," Paterson wrote in an email.
Lind ruled on the first day of a scheduled four-day hearing at Fort Meade, near Baltimore.
The hearing is partly to determine whether Manning's motivation matters. Prosecutors want the judge to bar the defense from producing evidence at trial regarding his motive for allegedly leaking hundreds of thousands of secret war logs and diplomatic cables. They say motive is irrelevant to whether he leaked intelligence, knowing it would be seen by al-Qaida
Manning allegedly told an online confidant-turned-informant that he leaked the material because "I want people to see the truth" and "information should be free."
Defense attorney David Coombs said Tuesday that barring such evidence would cripple the defense's ability to argue that Manning leaked only information that he believed couldn't hurt the United States or help a foreign nation.
Manning has offered to take responsibility for the leaks in a pending plea offer but he still could face trial on charges such as aiding the enemy.

The Crescent, Okla., native is accused of leaking classified Iraq and Afghanistan war logs and more than 250,000 diplomatic cables while working as an intelligence analyst in Baghdad in 2009 and 2010. He is also charged with leaking 2007 video of a U.S. helicopter crew gunning down 11 men, including a Reuters news photographer and his driver. The Pentagon concluded the troops acted appropriately, having mistaken the camera equipment for weapons.

Manning supporters consider him a whistleblower whose actions exposed war crimes and helped trigger the pro-democracy Arab Spring uprisings in late 2010.

___(equals)

Associated Press writer Ben Nuckols at Fort Meade contributed to this story.

Looking for the Fiscal Cliff Truth

At the end of this piece I posted Robert Reich’s solid liberal criticism of the deal which passed the Senate last night. The fiscal cliff plan faces an uncertain future in the House. I still support the deal. These are not good times, and these are not terribly wise men. If the goal of establishment Republicans was to scare the shit out of the rest of us by exposing how absolutely over-the-moon-yahoo-howl crazy the hard right TP members are so that we would be softened up for a less appealing deal, it worked brilliantly.

Reich mentions the extension of unemployment insurance, but the 5 year extension of the 2009 expansion of tax breaks for low-income Americans: the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Child Tax Credit, and the American Opportunity Tax Credit are also significant support for the poor. There was, however, no new stimulus money which lengthens the Republicans ability to see that the recovery will continue to be painfully slow and painfully jobless.

Not sure what fix was included on the Alternative Minimum Tax bit that is critical for an increasing number of “middle income” families especially in high wage states like New York where I live.

No deal was struck on the debt limit, so another cliff looms ominously and almost immediately. The US is already beyond its legal limit and Treasury is deciding who not to pay so bondholders stay in line.

Entitlement reform was not addressed. The Inflation indexing Obama previously Ok’d was pulled back. The firestorm of criticism from the left over such a modest measure does not bode well for real reform. The proposal would have saved $149 billion over 10 years by slowing annual cost-of-living increases for various programs, including Social Security. According to the USA Today, “Based on estimated inflation, in 2014 an average monthly Social Security benefit for someone retiring now would be $1,260 under the new formula, instead of $1,263 under the existing formula. By 2022, the average benefit would grow to $1,462 a month, $39 less than it would be under current law.” 

On the upside, extending the Medicare eligibility age to 67 was also withdrawn. Considering the modest movement on taxes and the uncertainty about Medicaid budgets in the future, extending the age,  it  seems to me, would have been uniquely unfair and eminently dangerous for millions approaching the retirement cliff. More on that later.

All of this deficit talk is dishonest to a certain extent and the main reason for the dishonesty is Medicare, Medicaid, and Healthcare inflation.

Obama’s proposed budget is available on line. The entire thing with loads of tables and accessible understandable numbers can be uploaded in basic excel format.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals

Medicare spending which averaged $240 billion per year in Bush’s first term, and $350 billion in his second, increased to an average of $462 billion in Obama’s first term. In Obama’s second term, through 2017, Medicare expenditures are projected to be an average of $586 billion per year.  That’s a 140% increase over the term of two Presidents. Each four year period now brings Medicare increases equal to what America spends on Education and what that represents is a vast transfer of the nation’s wealth from the young to the elderly of which it should be noted I will very soon become a charter member. In total spending for the Department of Health and Human Services which also includes Medicaid spending for the poor is projected to increase from $870 billion year in 2012 to $1.2 trillion in 2017.

By comparison defense spending, while still ridiculously high, is projected to be reduced from $688 billion to $560 billion in the same period. Education spending, which increased dramatically under Obama from around an average of $87 billion in the bush years to an average of $111 billion in Obama’s first term, is projected to level off at roughly that level through 2017. All agency spending at the federal level excluding Defense, Veteran’s (which includes significant healthcare spending), and Social Security, is projected by the Obama administration to go from $1.5 trillion in 2012 to $1.7 trillion in 2017. This is less than the rate of inflation and these outlays cover all other government functions form the Department of Homeland Security to our investments in infrastructure and education to parks, the EPA, and Government Administration. Everything.

Since discretionary government spending, excluding healthcare, is essentially unchanged, and per year healthcare expenditures are projected to increase by about 20% beyond the rate of inflation, some reform or cost containment MUST be a minimum requirement of any serious deficit reduction proposal.

Paul Ryan’s budget which passed repeatedly in the House before the election did not shy from that challenge. He proposed to cut Medicaid by 1/3. While it’s fair to say that this was a cut in the rate of growth, in combination with Medicare changes the effect on the middle class and poor would be devastating. Medicaid is not just a program for the poor. Medicaid spending is a lifeline of government support for millions of middle class families with special needs kids or parents requiring nursing home care.

FY 2012 Medicaid spending is projected to be $275 Billion. The Kaiser Foundation projects that to increase to $486 in 2022. Ryan would have capped that growth at $323 billion. In total Ryan’s plan cuts nearly $800 billion from the president’s projected Medicaid expenditures from 2013 to 2022, a 24% reduction. After that the cuts average 30% per year. When those cuts are combined with an increase in the age at which Medicare is available an America with millions of over-60 citizens without any medical insurance will become a stark reality.

Already deeply concerned about piecing together their basic income in the years after 55 when employers find reasons not to hire, if the Republican plan were enacted Americans would add the anxiety of receiving and paying for Healthcare. The Republicans argue that the Government ought not be responsible for the medical care its citizens receive. They argue that Americans know best how to contain costs and get the required doctoring. During Harry Reid’s last election battle, his opponent went so far as to suggest that America ought to go back to the barter system (with actual chickens as payment!?) to pay for care. She argued that would bring prices down in a hurry. As with so many other things the Republicans seek to return to a time that did not exist in any real sense. To the extent that even a fraction of it could be recreated, practicality and technology prevents even the hint of reminiscence. But that does not prevent their pitiful, moronic, nostalgia.

 

As we have already seen, the Republican scheme writ large would mean that most would wait for the dire circumstances for which emergency rooms are the last and perhaps only solution. With Medicare out of reach until 67, Medicaid, which would be cut dramatically, would not be an option either.

Republicans have argued that the states will administer the programs more cost effectively and so reach more people, but far too many will certainly abandon that promise. Dozens of states have already announced their intention to opt out of the Medicaid expansion contained in Obamacare. Despite the fact that the Federal Government assumes all the costs for the first three years, these states opted out sighting the costs for this coverage in the years that follow.  The Obama Administration estimates that a 3% increase in state health spending is all that would be required to cover 17 million lower income Americans. What might we expect in states like Texas, with its high rates of desperately uninsured, when the Federal Government no longer  insists on coverage for the poor and block grants out its responsibility?

Republicans plans which actually contained no cuts in Medicare speeding for ten years were not sincere. In their hearts Republicans know that Americans now view Medicare and in the broader sense Healthcare as their right and expect the Government to provide it. After all they had the opportunity to overturn Obamacare in this last election and chose not do it. Moreover, Tea Party protestors with signs reading “Government Keep Your Hands Off My Medicare” and “Don’t Steal from Medicare to Support Socialized Medicine” are not urban legend and can be easily googled.  The Ryan Budgets were political documents designed to garner small wedges of voters at the polls. Only the most rigorous stooges on the right, people like the Koch brothers, Limbaugh, and Hannity, actually believed in all of the claptrap and even some of them seem to find found the rhetoric intolerable. No Republican they said wanted to throw Grandma in the street. I actually believe that that was true. No sane and decent person would want to see the calamity of such impoverishment. Rather the goal is to just not recognize the results of programs they espouse.

The Republican plan embodied in the Ryan budget failed. For all the talk of gridlock in Washington and the abject failure to lead that we have seen by Boehner and the House Republicans, it will fall to Democrats to lead if there any hope for progress. Reasons for hope in that regard are not great.

The Center of Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that the Bush era tax cuts for Americans earning more than $250,000 per year will cost the Federal Treasury about $100 billion per year through 2022, though the numbers grow dramatically in the out years. By comparison the FY 2012 deficit will be $1 trillion, so in plain terms taxes alone will not come close to dealing with the structural deficits. Seldom mentioned is the fact the spending cuts which would not crush the economy, sending millions into poverty, are also inadequate to close the gap.  As noted total discretionary spending, excluding healthcare and the military, will be $1.5 trillion this year.

Yesterday’s deal, which exempted incomes below $400,000 for individuals and $450,000 for couples filing jointly, took a lot of that money off the table. The Estate Tax was also locked in for the foreseeable future as were with only small enhancements taxes for dividends and capital gains. This takes more another chunk off the table. Romney will no longer pay 14% of his income in taxes, but he will not pay 20% and he will continue to pay far less than his housekeep or his grandchildren’s teachers. 

Tax reform, in which rates fall in ways designed to embolden economic activity while simultaneously increasing government revenue still hold out some hope of passage, but it is unclear what factors would motivate the two sides to come to the middle closer to each other. Enlightened political self-interest has been replaced with mutually assured destruction. Gamesmanship and macho posturing prevail in both parties. At long last are there no adults left in the room? Compromise, even when miniscule in scope, is a dirty word. The restructuring of Social Security inflation adjustments noted above is a case in point. Neither side feels they need give because the other side has relented so little. Still the Republicans want lower rates (for corporations also), and everyone wants more revenue, so some tax reform may be possible. 

But the 800 pound gorilla is Healthcare and it threatens not only to eat lunch programs for schoolchildren and housing for our neighbors, but also to savage almost every other government program. Healthcare eats up 17% of GDP while the next closest industrialized nation (and economic competitor) is only 11%.  The American system is wildly expensive, and my great fear is that its quasi-public/private structure is locked in or nearly so. Everyone in Washington knows that a single payer system would be more cost effective and save the kind of money that needs to be saved. Well, maybe not everyone, but the vast majority of Democrats and a sizable chunk of fearful but honest Republicans. Physicians support Single-Payer by 60%+ majorities. When the Healthcare debate was raging in 2008, Americans supported it by near identical margins. So, one might ask, why was it withdrawn by Obama so early in the negotiations? The short answer is he knew it had no chance of passage. Single payer would actually be a Government take-over of Healthcare. It would mandate preventive care (which would save money) and unleash a wave of cost recalculations, all of which would weaken the grip of the Healthcare/ Insurance syndicate on the United States fiscal budget and the Congress.

Without Healthcare cost containment the hole in the Federal budget will continue to widen. The Republican plan would have lessened the burden of those costs by forcing them from the public ledger and into the private sector. That said, these plans would not reduce the overall costs or lessen their drag on the economy, which truly is the reason that Republican plans cannot be considered serious. Once Americans figure that their out of pocket would maintain or grow, they would quickly turn on any such proposal that came under lengthy and public review. A deregulated private sector plan would unleash further inflationary pressure, and would create a Healthcare underclass more pronounced and desperate than even exists now. In absence of any cost containment the real burden the country faces, that is the amount of GDP invested in keeping the country healthy, would continue to escalate. With Republicans in firm opposition, and the recent fiscal cliff battle notwithstanding, the Democrats malleable and far sighted only to the extent they can see the next election, there is not much to hope for in terms of a solution.

But this much should be clear, neither party is firmly committed to deficit reform. Or at least nether part can claim that without reform of healthcare costs. The Republicans propose solutions that even they know will not withstand electoral review at the polls over the long run, and the Democrats propose a little tinkering around the edges which promises little hope in the area of cost containment. Centrists reforms like Obamacare are demagogued as “Socialism” and reforms which extend the life of entitlement programs like the seven-year extension of Medicare contained the PPACA  come under similar criticism. You may recall Paul Ryan’s endless recitation of the $700 billion in Medicare cuts contained in his own budget.

Both parties are guilty of demagoguery on Medicare. Seniors vote and apparently are easily frightened. Too bad more young people don’t. Their voices, though more pronounced in the last two elections cycles than in previous elections, are a minimum down payment on this dialogue on debt. Until we can finally have an honest discussion on the escalating costs of healthcare and the parallel transfer of the nation’s wealth to the senior class the deficits will keep exploding. For all the talk we have experienced in these past months about deficit reduction, which let’s face it only became a Republican mantra when they lost control of the nation’s purse strings, much of what we are hearing is silliness. A progressive Mr. Rogers faces off against a heavy breathing Darth Vader, all of it captured on the screen. And it looks so real. Too bad it’s not. There is no fortress to protect. Our political leaders gambled it away long ago.

Robert Reich writes: “The deal emerging from the Senate is a lousy one. Let me count the ways:

 1. Republicans haven’t conceded anything on the debt ceiling, so over the next two months – as the Treasury runs out of tricks to avoid a default – Republicans are likely to do exactly what they did before, which is to hold their votes on raising the ceiling hostage to major cuts in programs for the poor and in Medicare and Social Security.

 2. The deal makes tax cuts for the rich permanent (extending the Bush tax cuts for incomes up to $400,000 if filing singly and $450,000 if jointly) while extending refundable tax credits for the poor (child tax credit, enlarged EITC, and tuition tax credit) for only five years. There’s absolutely no justification for this asymmetry.

 3. It doesn’t get nearly enough revenue from the wealthiest 2 percent — only $600 billion over the next decade, which is half of what the President called for, and a small fraction of the White House’s goal of more than $4 trillion in deficit reduction. That means more of the burden of tax hikes and spending cuts in future years will fall on the middle class and the poor.

 4. It continues to exempt the first $5 million of inherited wealth from the estate tax (the exemption used to be $1 million). This is a huge gift to the heirs of the wealthy, perpetuating family dynasties of the idle rich.

 Yes, the deal finally gets Republicans to accept a tax increase on the wealthy, but this is an inside-the-Beltway symbolic victory. If anyone believes this will make the GOP more amenable to future tax increases, they don’t know how rabidly extremist the GOP has become.

 The deal also extends unemployment insurance for more than 2 million long-term unemployed. That’s important.

 But I can’t help believe the President could have done better than this. After all, public opinion is overwhelmingly on his side. Republicans would have been blamed had no deal been achieved.

 More importantly, the fiscal cliff is on the President’s side as well. If we go over it, he and the Democrats in the next Congress that starts later this week can quickly offer legislation that grants a middle-class tax cut and restores most military spending. Even rabid Republicans would be hard-pressed not to sign on.