Governor Rick Snyder's chief of staff Dennis Muchmore told his boss that the high levels of lead in Flint, Michigan water was the "real responsibility" of the local government officials. Muchmore noted in a September 25 email that former state treasurer Andy Dillon had signed off on Flint's plans to build a water pipeline from Lake Huron, necessitating a temporary switch to the Flint River. In his State of the State speech, Governor Snyder apologized for any state complicity in lead getting into the Flint water supply. A day after giving the speech, Snyder released more than 270 pages on the matter.
When CBS Evening News anchor Scott Walker conducted a lengthy interview with Governor Snyder, Snyder exhibited his lack of knowledge about the leaded water problem: he didn't know how many Flint children had ingested lead; he didn't know how the affected victims would be treated; and he didn't know the extent of the problem. Walker asked a number of tough, pertinent questions, but to my mind, he didn't ask the crucial question of when Snyder became aware of the problem and what steps did he then take.
Although the Republican leadership in Michigan has tried to foist some responsibility for the water problem to the Flint city council, the Flint area's representative in Congress has said that the emergency manager in Flint had 100 percent responsibility for anything that happened in the governance of Flint. The GOP-dominated state legislature and the Snyder administration have made a fetish of appointing emergency managers for cities that they, collectively believe, can't be properly governed locally. This is a paradoxical position to take for a political party that professes to believe that the government closest to the people governs best.
In a referendum, Michigan voters threw out the emergency manager system. Undaunted by this public rejection, the Michigan legislature wrote an even tougher law to restore the emergency manager system. The legislature appropriated $1 million to fund emergency managers, because appropriations are not subject to referendums in Michigan. Governor Snyder and his legislative GOP allies seem to have been students in Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's School of Devious Governmental Management, which specifies that when you run for election you don't tell the citizens what nefarious things you will do when elected and if you are repudiated subsequently by the state's residents, you simply rewrite the offending legislation to achieve the same result.
The toxic Flint River corroded lead pipes, causing lead to be mixed in the water. The problem could have been avoided by putting chemicals in the river. The Michigan environmental department didn't do this, raising the prospect of criminal liability among high state officials, all the way up to the governor.
Tuesday, January 26, 2016
Monday, January 25, 2016
Eyewitness Testimony and Natural-Gas Leaks
I. Eyewitness Testimony Is Highly Unreliable
Eyewitness testimony continues to be used widely and many criminal cases hinge on it exclusively. "Since 1989, a hundred and eighty people have been exonerated of sexual-assault charges in the U.S. Nearly three-quarters of those wrongful convictions relied, in whole or in part, on a mistaken identification by an eyewitness." "Since 2001, DNA testing in Texas has led to more than forty exonerations, a greater number than in any other state. Misleading or inaccurate eyewitness identification was a factor in a vast majority of overturned convictions in those cases." [1] Most law enforcement agencies in Texas had no written policies regarding eyewitness lineups; officers simply relied on old habits.
Tim Cole was convicted of a rape in a Texas court and after he died in prison while being treated for a medical condition, tested DNA evidence excluded him as the rapist. The exoneration of Cole so traumatized the raped victim that she trembled in fear after she worked up the courage to visit Tim Cole's mother.
Tim Cole's tragic conviction and death in prison has led to two changes in Texas law: one is the creation of an advisory panel to recommend how eyewitness testimony should be handled and a second increases the monetary relief for exonerated. Then-Governor Rick Perry acknowledged Judge Charlie Baird's ruling and granted Cole the first posthumous pardon in Texas history.
What should be done in regard to eyewitness lineups? In 1998, Gary Wells, a psychology professor at Iowa State University, was the principal author of a paper suggesting some reforms. Lineups should be "blind," a standard borrowed from scientific experiments. The officer administering the lineup should know nothing about the case, so as to avoid unconsciously influencing the proceedings. In photographic lineups, images should be presented sequentially rather than simultaneously, allowing witnesses to compare each image against their memory, instead of choosing from a group. And witnesses should be told that a lineup may not include the perpetrator. According to Wells, a witnesses's confidence at the moment of identification is far more accurate than a reconstructed assertion at trial, weeks or months later. [2]
II. Natural Gas Leaks Are a Disaster for the Planet
The natural-gas leak ongoing since October, 2015 near Porter Ranch, a suburb of Los Angeles, California, is a harbinger of more such disasters to come. To this point, the leak has cost $12 million in market value, caused 2,292 families to relocate, and led to 4,683 applications to relocate. Besides the monetary cost and the effect on nearby residents, there is an enormous effect on climate warming: one day of the leak warms the climate at a rate equivalent to driving more than 4.5 million cars for a day, or to put it in bovine terms, the ; methane released each day has the same warming effect as 2.2 million cows belching in one day. [3]
The leak at the 60-year-old Aliso Canyon storage facility is a harbinger of other potential leaks. There are more than 400 natural-gas storage facilities fashioned out of former mines and other underground formations that together store some 3.6 cubic feet of natural gas. Regular maintenance at these storage facilities is a rarity, much as this nation is unwilling to rebuild its crumbling infrastructure.
Recent research has suggested that "natural-gas-gathering facilities alone leak 100 billion cubic feet of methane each year -- more gas that the entire country burns in a day." [4]
ADDENDUMS:
*Oxfam has concluded that 62 people own as much wealth as the the 3.5 billion people at the bottom half of the world's income scale.
*The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the national governmental deficit will rise by $544 billion in 2016. It attributes the increase to the extension of tax cuts last year. Revenues should rise by 4% but spending will increase by 6%. The new deficit will be added to the $18 trillion debt load.
*The nutritional quality of U.S. school lunches has increased 29% since 2012, thanks to the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act. [5]
Footnotes
[1] Paul Kix, "Recognition,: The New Yorker, January 18, 2016.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Justin Worland, "The ongoing California natural-gas leak is a disaster for the planet," Time, January 25, 2016.
[4] Ibid.
[5] "Digits," Time, January 18, 2016.
Eyewitness testimony continues to be used widely and many criminal cases hinge on it exclusively. "Since 1989, a hundred and eighty people have been exonerated of sexual-assault charges in the U.S. Nearly three-quarters of those wrongful convictions relied, in whole or in part, on a mistaken identification by an eyewitness." "Since 2001, DNA testing in Texas has led to more than forty exonerations, a greater number than in any other state. Misleading or inaccurate eyewitness identification was a factor in a vast majority of overturned convictions in those cases." [1] Most law enforcement agencies in Texas had no written policies regarding eyewitness lineups; officers simply relied on old habits.
Tim Cole was convicted of a rape in a Texas court and after he died in prison while being treated for a medical condition, tested DNA evidence excluded him as the rapist. The exoneration of Cole so traumatized the raped victim that she trembled in fear after she worked up the courage to visit Tim Cole's mother.
Tim Cole's tragic conviction and death in prison has led to two changes in Texas law: one is the creation of an advisory panel to recommend how eyewitness testimony should be handled and a second increases the monetary relief for exonerated. Then-Governor Rick Perry acknowledged Judge Charlie Baird's ruling and granted Cole the first posthumous pardon in Texas history.
What should be done in regard to eyewitness lineups? In 1998, Gary Wells, a psychology professor at Iowa State University, was the principal author of a paper suggesting some reforms. Lineups should be "blind," a standard borrowed from scientific experiments. The officer administering the lineup should know nothing about the case, so as to avoid unconsciously influencing the proceedings. In photographic lineups, images should be presented sequentially rather than simultaneously, allowing witnesses to compare each image against their memory, instead of choosing from a group. And witnesses should be told that a lineup may not include the perpetrator. According to Wells, a witnesses's confidence at the moment of identification is far more accurate than a reconstructed assertion at trial, weeks or months later. [2]
II. Natural Gas Leaks Are a Disaster for the Planet
The natural-gas leak ongoing since October, 2015 near Porter Ranch, a suburb of Los Angeles, California, is a harbinger of more such disasters to come. To this point, the leak has cost $12 million in market value, caused 2,292 families to relocate, and led to 4,683 applications to relocate. Besides the monetary cost and the effect on nearby residents, there is an enormous effect on climate warming: one day of the leak warms the climate at a rate equivalent to driving more than 4.5 million cars for a day, or to put it in bovine terms, the ; methane released each day has the same warming effect as 2.2 million cows belching in one day. [3]
The leak at the 60-year-old Aliso Canyon storage facility is a harbinger of other potential leaks. There are more than 400 natural-gas storage facilities fashioned out of former mines and other underground formations that together store some 3.6 cubic feet of natural gas. Regular maintenance at these storage facilities is a rarity, much as this nation is unwilling to rebuild its crumbling infrastructure.
Recent research has suggested that "natural-gas-gathering facilities alone leak 100 billion cubic feet of methane each year -- more gas that the entire country burns in a day." [4]
ADDENDUMS:
*Oxfam has concluded that 62 people own as much wealth as the the 3.5 billion people at the bottom half of the world's income scale.
*The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the national governmental deficit will rise by $544 billion in 2016. It attributes the increase to the extension of tax cuts last year. Revenues should rise by 4% but spending will increase by 6%. The new deficit will be added to the $18 trillion debt load.
*The nutritional quality of U.S. school lunches has increased 29% since 2012, thanks to the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act. [5]
Footnotes
[1] Paul Kix, "Recognition,: The New Yorker, January 18, 2016.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Justin Worland, "The ongoing California natural-gas leak is a disaster for the planet," Time, January 25, 2016.
[4] Ibid.
[5] "Digits," Time, January 18, 2016.
Sunday, January 24, 2016
Short Subjects That Help Define Our World
1.) Conflating Terrorism and Drugs
There is a little known provision in the 2006 Patriot Act that established a new crime, known as narco-terrorism, committed by violent offenders who had one and in terrorism and the other in the drug trade. Russell Hanks, a U.S. diplomat, called the legislative action "the manipulation of weak-minded people, in weak countries, in order to pad arrest records." One investigator said that narco-terrorism had become an "expedient way for the Drug Enforcement Administration to justify its existence." [1]
These cases. when brought to trial, rely almost exclusively on evidence gleaned from sting operations and has fueled skepticism among counter-terrorism and national-security officials about the extent to which terrorists engage in the drug trade.
2.) Black Lives Matter and the Free Speech "Fallacy"
"A movement rooted in the rejection of police violence diversified, launching campaigns to combat a broad range of perceived injustices, from gender inequality toe the minimum wage to housing and education policy." "As the movement began to branch out from purely honoring the victims of police brutality to raising awareness about perceived injustices in all sorts of social systems, that name [Black Lives Matter] attracted new groups of allies." St. Louis law professor Justin Hansford says it was "the emphasis on gender, identity and social inequality [that] helps explain why Black Lives Matter's agendas are spreading to college campuses." [2]
Success has created a new set of challenges and charges. Wesleyan University's student government slashed funding for the school newspaper after it published a column critical of Black Lives Matter. At Smith College, a group associated with Black Lives Matter barred members of the media from attending unless they pledged solidarity. [3]
There is a broader dimension to what one Time reporter calls the "fallacy of 'free speech'." "The campus revolts just keep coming, as students go to ever greater lengths to defend their rights not to be upset." This has gone to school administrators' labeling texts with 'trigger warnings' to help students "avoid having to read about difficult topics like racism or rape." [4]
3;) Education Won't Cure Inequality
"First of all, education has not proven to be the poverty cure-all that many hoped it would be. In face, the United States has already increased educational attainment levels substantially over the past four decades, but poverty rates and inequality have not noticeably fallen." "The share of poor Americans with high school and college degrees has risen steadily. But poverty rates have increased throughout the nation." "Graduation rates for U.S. college students remain fairly low; a vast increase in the number of students entering college would probably send those rates even lower." [5]
4.) Work-Life Balance
"Work-life balance is a perpetually hot topic, with 40% of full-time Americans workers logging more than 50 work hours, according to a 2014 Gallup poll." "People who work 11-hour days or longer are 67% more likely to develop heart disease than those who work seven or eight hours a day." [6]
5.) Gun Rights Trump Gun Control
A November 2015 Washington Post-ABC News poll found that only 46% think that new gun laws to reduce gun violence are more important than protecting gun rights -- down from 52 % in 2013. But upwards of 85% support expanding background checks for the four in ten gun sales that occur online or at gun shows.
Since Sandy Hook, six states: Connecticut, Colorado, Delaware, New York, Washington and Oregon have expanded background checks. [7]
6.) Young Boy Fatally Shot
The 6-year-old killed by what are called "city marshals" in Marksville, Louisiana was hit by five bullets, mostly in the head. After the boy's father stepped out of the car, a total of 18 bullets were fired. The father was standing with his arms upraised, caught by the released video.
There is a little known provision in the 2006 Patriot Act that established a new crime, known as narco-terrorism, committed by violent offenders who had one and in terrorism and the other in the drug trade. Russell Hanks, a U.S. diplomat, called the legislative action "the manipulation of weak-minded people, in weak countries, in order to pad arrest records." One investigator said that narco-terrorism had become an "expedient way for the Drug Enforcement Administration to justify its existence." [1]
These cases. when brought to trial, rely almost exclusively on evidence gleaned from sting operations and has fueled skepticism among counter-terrorism and national-security officials about the extent to which terrorists engage in the drug trade.
2.) Black Lives Matter and the Free Speech "Fallacy"
"A movement rooted in the rejection of police violence diversified, launching campaigns to combat a broad range of perceived injustices, from gender inequality toe the minimum wage to housing and education policy." "As the movement began to branch out from purely honoring the victims of police brutality to raising awareness about perceived injustices in all sorts of social systems, that name [Black Lives Matter] attracted new groups of allies." St. Louis law professor Justin Hansford says it was "the emphasis on gender, identity and social inequality [that] helps explain why Black Lives Matter's agendas are spreading to college campuses." [2]
Success has created a new set of challenges and charges. Wesleyan University's student government slashed funding for the school newspaper after it published a column critical of Black Lives Matter. At Smith College, a group associated with Black Lives Matter barred members of the media from attending unless they pledged solidarity. [3]
There is a broader dimension to what one Time reporter calls the "fallacy of 'free speech'." "The campus revolts just keep coming, as students go to ever greater lengths to defend their rights not to be upset." This has gone to school administrators' labeling texts with 'trigger warnings' to help students "avoid having to read about difficult topics like racism or rape." [4]
3;) Education Won't Cure Inequality
"First of all, education has not proven to be the poverty cure-all that many hoped it would be. In face, the United States has already increased educational attainment levels substantially over the past four decades, but poverty rates and inequality have not noticeably fallen." "The share of poor Americans with high school and college degrees has risen steadily. But poverty rates have increased throughout the nation." "Graduation rates for U.S. college students remain fairly low; a vast increase in the number of students entering college would probably send those rates even lower." [5]
4.) Work-Life Balance
"Work-life balance is a perpetually hot topic, with 40% of full-time Americans workers logging more than 50 work hours, according to a 2014 Gallup poll." "People who work 11-hour days or longer are 67% more likely to develop heart disease than those who work seven or eight hours a day." [6]
5.) Gun Rights Trump Gun Control
A November 2015 Washington Post-ABC News poll found that only 46% think that new gun laws to reduce gun violence are more important than protecting gun rights -- down from 52 % in 2013. But upwards of 85% support expanding background checks for the four in ten gun sales that occur online or at gun shows.
Since Sandy Hook, six states: Connecticut, Colorado, Delaware, New York, Washington and Oregon have expanded background checks. [7]
6.) Young Boy Fatally Shot
The 6-year-old killed by what are called "city marshals" in Marksville, Louisiana was hit by five bullets, mostly in the head. After the boy's father stepped out of the car, a total of 18 bullets were fired. The father was standing with his arms upraised, caught by the released video.
The FBI's Portland Problem
The FBI's Portland Problem
Nerly 15 years after Somali-born American citizen, Sheikh Mohamed Kariye's initial arrest, both he and his Portland community continues to be the subject of intense interest from the government's counter-terrorism apparatus. In July 2015, prosecutors moved to strip Kariye of his citizenship, claiming that he lied to immigration authorities about his alleged prior affiliation with terrorist groups. Since then, Kariye has ping-ponged among institutions which have been trying to deport him to Somalia, without success thus far.
"Dig beneath the surface of the government's portrait of Kariye; however, and it's possible to see him as a case study in the way that domestic counterterrorism operations since 9/11 have singled out Muslims for intensive surveillance and selective prosecution, based on things they've said, people they've known, and things they would do in the future." As-Saber is one of the largest mosques in the Pacific Northwest. and those who attend the mosque have been subjected to intense surveillance. The mosque's leader is on a no-fly list and his his daily actions are closely watched by counterterrorism agents.[1]
Some 47,000 people are on the no-fly list, a subset of a larger watch list of "known or suspected terrorists," called the Terrorist Screening Database. According to documents obtained by The Intercept, the U.S. government acknowledges that more than 40 percent of those on the watch list have " no recognized terrorist affiliation." Marc Sager, a former CIA officer, [says] "More fundamentally, the government's predictive judgments are necessarily unreliable and the risk of error associated with them is extremely high." [2]
Footnotes
[1] Zoe Carpenter, "The FBI's :Portland Problem," The Nation, January 4, 2016.
[2] Ibid.
Nerly 15 years after Somali-born American citizen, Sheikh Mohamed Kariye's initial arrest, both he and his Portland community continues to be the subject of intense interest from the government's counter-terrorism apparatus. In July 2015, prosecutors moved to strip Kariye of his citizenship, claiming that he lied to immigration authorities about his alleged prior affiliation with terrorist groups. Since then, Kariye has ping-ponged among institutions which have been trying to deport him to Somalia, without success thus far.
"Dig beneath the surface of the government's portrait of Kariye; however, and it's possible to see him as a case study in the way that domestic counterterrorism operations since 9/11 have singled out Muslims for intensive surveillance and selective prosecution, based on things they've said, people they've known, and things they would do in the future." As-Saber is one of the largest mosques in the Pacific Northwest. and those who attend the mosque have been subjected to intense surveillance. The mosque's leader is on a no-fly list and his his daily actions are closely watched by counterterrorism agents.[1]
Some 47,000 people are on the no-fly list, a subset of a larger watch list of "known or suspected terrorists," called the Terrorist Screening Database. According to documents obtained by The Intercept, the U.S. government acknowledges that more than 40 percent of those on the watch list have " no recognized terrorist affiliation." Marc Sager, a former CIA officer, [says] "More fundamentally, the government's predictive judgments are necessarily unreliable and the risk of error associated with them is extremely high." [2]
Footnotes
[1] Zoe Carpenter, "The FBI's :Portland Problem," The Nation, January 4, 2016.
[2] Ibid.
Volkswagen's Blood Crimes and Polling on Cuba
I. The Blood Crimes of Volkswagen
The records from a British war-crimes tribunal held in Helmstedt in 1946 that tried several of Volkswagen's employees for killing by willful neglect, show that Volkswagen executives -- not Nazi officials -- oversaw the murder of hundreds of infants. Its executives were killers. In a letter dated January 11, 1942, Adolf Hitler ordered the Reichsfuhrer-SS ad the head of the German police to provide the workforce from the concentration camps to Volkswagen plant at Wolfsburg and Ruhen. He ordered that it be done "immediately."
According to historical records, as early as June 1940, Volkswagen had already begun using forced labor. "Because of the scarcity of men as the war dragged on, many of the g Polish and Russian women -- an estimated 1,500 Poles and 4,000 to 5,000 Russians -- whom the Nazis had brought to the factory." "The death tolls mounted with as many as 30 children dying every month -- until he end, when the number of deaths rose to 60 in the worst months." [1]
"The dead infants weren't really buried. They were wrapped in toilet paper and stacked in the nursery's bathroom, where they would sometimes lie for days before being carted away by an undertaker." [2]
Volkswagen has never issued taken responsibility for the deaths at Wolfsburg and Ruhen, agreed to compensate the mothers for their losses, or even offer an expression of sympathy.
II. Polling on Cuba
A Pew poll taken in January 2015, shortly after the breakthrough in relations between the United States and Cuba, found that 66 percent of registered voters supported lifting the embargo; after the official restoration of diplomatic ties in July 2015, a CBS News survey showed that 81 percent of Americans -- including 71 percent of Republicans -- supported lifting all sanctions on travel.
The State Department estimates that in the first five months of 2015, some 51,458 U.S/. citizens traveled to Cuba, a 30 percent increase over the same period in 2014. [3]
Footnotes
[1] Neal Gabler, "Suffer the Little Children: The Blood Crimes of Volkswagen," The Nation, January 4, 2016.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Peter Kornbluh, "17D Plus One," The Nation, January 4, 2016.
The records from a British war-crimes tribunal held in Helmstedt in 1946 that tried several of Volkswagen's employees for killing by willful neglect, show that Volkswagen executives -- not Nazi officials -- oversaw the murder of hundreds of infants. Its executives were killers. In a letter dated January 11, 1942, Adolf Hitler ordered the Reichsfuhrer-SS ad the head of the German police to provide the workforce from the concentration camps to Volkswagen plant at Wolfsburg and Ruhen. He ordered that it be done "immediately."
According to historical records, as early as June 1940, Volkswagen had already begun using forced labor. "Because of the scarcity of men as the war dragged on, many of the g Polish and Russian women -- an estimated 1,500 Poles and 4,000 to 5,000 Russians -- whom the Nazis had brought to the factory." "The death tolls mounted with as many as 30 children dying every month -- until he end, when the number of deaths rose to 60 in the worst months." [1]
"The dead infants weren't really buried. They were wrapped in toilet paper and stacked in the nursery's bathroom, where they would sometimes lie for days before being carted away by an undertaker." [2]
Volkswagen has never issued taken responsibility for the deaths at Wolfsburg and Ruhen, agreed to compensate the mothers for their losses, or even offer an expression of sympathy.
II. Polling on Cuba
A Pew poll taken in January 2015, shortly after the breakthrough in relations between the United States and Cuba, found that 66 percent of registered voters supported lifting the embargo; after the official restoration of diplomatic ties in July 2015, a CBS News survey showed that 81 percent of Americans -- including 71 percent of Republicans -- supported lifting all sanctions on travel.
The State Department estimates that in the first five months of 2015, some 51,458 U.S/. citizens traveled to Cuba, a 30 percent increase over the same period in 2014. [3]
Footnotes
[1] Neal Gabler, "Suffer the Little Children: The Blood Crimes of Volkswagen," The Nation, January 4, 2016.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Peter Kornbluh, "17D Plus One," The Nation, January 4, 2016.
Friday, January 22, 2016
Planned Parenthood and Poverty, Infrastrcture Spending and More
I. PP Clinic Shooting and a Doctored Video
Ruth Marcus, a Washington Post columnist, has made the case that Republicans "deserve some blame" for the shooting at Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado. Republican politicians who fueled the overwrought and underreported controversy over selling body parts have some measure of responsibility." Marcus adds: ""This, [the video on selling body parts] is, literally, a manufactured issue, cobbled together from doctored videotape and overheated accusations. The organization's activities have been so mischaracterized, and the practice of providing fetal tissue so overblown and so manipulated by lawmakers and politicians, (sic) that blame for the ensuing violence falls more heavily on them." [1]
The federal government funded fetal remains for research purposes to the tune of $76 million in 2014. Stopping such funding will impede research on diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and Down syndrome.
II. Defunding Planned Parenthood Will Increase Poverty
1. Poor women are six times more likely to have an unplanned birth than well-off women, partly because healthcare is expensive.
2. Planned Parenthood serves mostly poor women: 79% have incomes at or below 150% of the poverty line and 75% go there for contraception.
3. Without contraception and abortion access, poor women fall deeper into poverty, starting the whole cycle over. Women denied an abortion are three times more likely to fall into poverty. [2]
III. Clinton and Sanders on Infrastructure Spending
Hillary Clinton would increase infrastructure spending by $275 billion, with $250 billion coming from direct public funding and $25 billion coming from the creation of an infrastructure bank. Bernie Sanders has proposed spending which is much more in line with the estimate of the civil engineer's association of the need to spend at least $3 trillion spread over a four-year period.
During the 1980s, civil engineers were proposing spending of $1 trillion to bring the nation's infrastructure to their standards. Even accounting for inflation, the fact that the most recent estimate of $3 trillion is a reflection that, except for the building and repair of highways, which has a separate revenue stream,. the U.S. has hugely neglected its bridges, water pipes, sewer lines, filtration plants, fuel lines, repair of city streets and other rebuilding needs that will make for a more productive and safer society.
ADDENDUMS:
* Alabama loses its fight to cut off Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood clinics and agrees to pay $51,000 in legal fees.
*The Hill publication reports that 73 more companies back President Obama's climate agenda.
*By December 2014 at the latest, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's office knew about the dash-cam video of the fatal shooting of a teenager named McDonald, according to NBC Chicago. This disclosure should help the cause of the many Chicagoans who are demanding the resignation of Mayor Emanuel.
*In a 2010 poll, 30% of respondents said there was a racial problem in the United States. Early in 2015, a similar poll found 50% saying there was a racial problem. A December 2015 PBS/Marist poll found 60% believing there was a racial problem. There is no evidence for the cause or causes for this doubling of those who see racism as a problem, yet it is hard to not identify law enforcement as a major cause, given the many instances of excessive use of force, the code of silence among fellow officers and the failure of the judicial system to punish officers who engaged in gross misconduct, ranging from killing unarmed citizens on down.
*Although the U.S. Congress won't touch gun control with a 10-foot pole, 18 states have passed tougher gun buyer background check laws and nine states have adopted laws to keep guns out of the hands of known domestic abusers. The Connecticut governor's move to bar anyone whose name appears on the government's terrorist watch list from buying a gun is being considered by several other states. [3]
Footnotes
[1] Ruth Marcus, "Republican politicians deserve some blame for the Planned Parenthood shooting," The Washington Post, December 1, 2015.
[2] Bryce Covert and Mike Konczal, "Born, Not Free," The Nation, January 11/18, 2015.
[3] Diane Dimond, "States doing what Congress won't on gun control laws," The Albuquerque Journal, January 9, 2016.
Ruth Marcus, a Washington Post columnist, has made the case that Republicans "deserve some blame" for the shooting at Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado. Republican politicians who fueled the overwrought and underreported controversy over selling body parts have some measure of responsibility." Marcus adds: ""This, [the video on selling body parts] is, literally, a manufactured issue, cobbled together from doctored videotape and overheated accusations. The organization's activities have been so mischaracterized, and the practice of providing fetal tissue so overblown and so manipulated by lawmakers and politicians, (sic) that blame for the ensuing violence falls more heavily on them." [1]
The federal government funded fetal remains for research purposes to the tune of $76 million in 2014. Stopping such funding will impede research on diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and Down syndrome.
II. Defunding Planned Parenthood Will Increase Poverty
1. Poor women are six times more likely to have an unplanned birth than well-off women, partly because healthcare is expensive.
2. Planned Parenthood serves mostly poor women: 79% have incomes at or below 150% of the poverty line and 75% go there for contraception.
3. Without contraception and abortion access, poor women fall deeper into poverty, starting the whole cycle over. Women denied an abortion are three times more likely to fall into poverty. [2]
III. Clinton and Sanders on Infrastructure Spending
Hillary Clinton would increase infrastructure spending by $275 billion, with $250 billion coming from direct public funding and $25 billion coming from the creation of an infrastructure bank. Bernie Sanders has proposed spending which is much more in line with the estimate of the civil engineer's association of the need to spend at least $3 trillion spread over a four-year period.
During the 1980s, civil engineers were proposing spending of $1 trillion to bring the nation's infrastructure to their standards. Even accounting for inflation, the fact that the most recent estimate of $3 trillion is a reflection that, except for the building and repair of highways, which has a separate revenue stream,. the U.S. has hugely neglected its bridges, water pipes, sewer lines, filtration plants, fuel lines, repair of city streets and other rebuilding needs that will make for a more productive and safer society.
ADDENDUMS:
* Alabama loses its fight to cut off Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood clinics and agrees to pay $51,000 in legal fees.
*The Hill publication reports that 73 more companies back President Obama's climate agenda.
*By December 2014 at the latest, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's office knew about the dash-cam video of the fatal shooting of a teenager named McDonald, according to NBC Chicago. This disclosure should help the cause of the many Chicagoans who are demanding the resignation of Mayor Emanuel.
*In a 2010 poll, 30% of respondents said there was a racial problem in the United States. Early in 2015, a similar poll found 50% saying there was a racial problem. A December 2015 PBS/Marist poll found 60% believing there was a racial problem. There is no evidence for the cause or causes for this doubling of those who see racism as a problem, yet it is hard to not identify law enforcement as a major cause, given the many instances of excessive use of force, the code of silence among fellow officers and the failure of the judicial system to punish officers who engaged in gross misconduct, ranging from killing unarmed citizens on down.
*Although the U.S. Congress won't touch gun control with a 10-foot pole, 18 states have passed tougher gun buyer background check laws and nine states have adopted laws to keep guns out of the hands of known domestic abusers. The Connecticut governor's move to bar anyone whose name appears on the government's terrorist watch list from buying a gun is being considered by several other states. [3]
Footnotes
[1] Ruth Marcus, "Republican politicians deserve some blame for the Planned Parenthood shooting," The Washington Post, December 1, 2015.
[2] Bryce Covert and Mike Konczal, "Born, Not Free," The Nation, January 11/18, 2015.
[3] Diane Dimond, "States doing what Congress won't on gun control laws," The Albuquerque Journal, January 9, 2016.
Wednesday, January 20, 2016
Fear Defining U.S., The Inversion Threat, and the Friedrichs Case Threatt
I. Fear Defining the U.S.
As Stephen Kinzer recently wrote in the Boston Globe, "Fear is becoming part of our daily lives. Yet it is not justified by reality. The true terror threat inside the United States is a fraction of what many Americans want to believe." We are rapidly becoming, in Kinzer's words, "the United States of Panic!"
"The brain ;is capable of detecting a threat, processing it, and initiating a response without our ever becoming consciously aware of the grizzly bear lurking just beyond the trees." "The feeling of fear occurs when a threat detected by our non-conscious systems and rises to the level of consciousness." "Fear, as an emotion, is considerably less useful to an organism's survival than the system that identifies and responds to threats in the first place." [1]
The relevance of what has been written above is that fear of an outside threat is responsible for a large share of our national government budget being spent on building and maintaining our national security state, with the Pentagon getting the lion's share of that spending. On the domestic front, an inordinate amount of state and local spending is devoted to dealing with our fear of crime and the attendant high cost of incarceration.
I. The Inversion Threat
Inversion is the practice of U.S.-chartered corporations fleeing the United States to establish their headquarters in other countries to take advantage of lower corporate taxes. Inversion, at one time, was exceeding rare, as according to the Congressional Research Service, there was just one in the nineteen eighties, whereas there have been more than fifty in the past decade.
Two features of U.S. tax policy make inversion attractive: a relatively high corporate tax rate and what's called a worldwide global tax system -- U.S. corporations have to pay that tax in all their global income. U.S. corporations are estimated to be holding more than $2 trillion abroad. "Since so much of what comprises earned income remains abroad and untaxable, we raise only a small amount of revenue from our global system. At the same time, the fact that these foreign earnings are in exile encourages inversions, so companies can get access to all that locked-up cash and a lower tax rate thereafter." "Investing abroad is more attractive and easier than ever before, and capital is more mobile." [2]
The drug giant Pfizer is the most recent example of a U.S. corporation in the process of establishing its headquarters overseas -- in Ireland in this case. More than 60 percent of Pfizer's income comes from abroad and most of its employees work abroad as well. [3]
There is a crucial fallacy in the general assumption that US.-based corporation pay a higher corporate income tax than corporations chartered in the rest of the countries defined as developed. The reason for this is that U.S. corporations get many tax breaks that are not given to corporations based in the rest of the developed world.
III. The Friedrichs Case Threat
The 1997 Abood v. Detroit Board of Education Supreme Court ruling provided the bedrock constitutional analysis and recommended structure for public sector unionism for nearly 40 years. Its reversal would trigger an earthquake in the U.S. labor relations. If the Friedrichs case now before the U.S. Supreme Court were to exempt workers who don't want to join a union from any obligation to pay union dues or fees, it would create a massive free-rider problem for unions that would kill their capacity to represent their union members. Why pay for something when you can get its services for free? Such a ruling would unravel tens of thousands of contracts governing public sector unions.
U.S. labor law already requires that any union certified as the collective bargaining representative of a group of workers must equally represent and service all of those workers -- dues-paying members and non-paying non-members alike. This compromise, which places an obligation on unions to represent all workers in the unionized company but allows the union to deduct fees form the paychecks of non-members, has served the nation satisfactory for a good long time, may be overturned by a Supreme Court often characterized by ruling on ideological considerations.
The Abood ruling has been upheld in at least five subsequent rulings, although in the last ruling, Justice Samuel Alito expressed a wish to revisit Abood.
Footnotes
[1] Simon Wolfe Taylor, "Fear Itself," The Nation, January 11/18, 2016.
[2] James Surwiecki, "Why Firms Are Fleeing," The New Yorker, January 11, 2016.
[3] Ibid.
[4] The Friedrichs Threat," The Nation, January 25/February 1, 2016.
As Stephen Kinzer recently wrote in the Boston Globe, "Fear is becoming part of our daily lives. Yet it is not justified by reality. The true terror threat inside the United States is a fraction of what many Americans want to believe." We are rapidly becoming, in Kinzer's words, "the United States of Panic!"
"The brain ;is capable of detecting a threat, processing it, and initiating a response without our ever becoming consciously aware of the grizzly bear lurking just beyond the trees." "The feeling of fear occurs when a threat detected by our non-conscious systems and rises to the level of consciousness." "Fear, as an emotion, is considerably less useful to an organism's survival than the system that identifies and responds to threats in the first place." [1]
The relevance of what has been written above is that fear of an outside threat is responsible for a large share of our national government budget being spent on building and maintaining our national security state, with the Pentagon getting the lion's share of that spending. On the domestic front, an inordinate amount of state and local spending is devoted to dealing with our fear of crime and the attendant high cost of incarceration.
I. The Inversion Threat
Inversion is the practice of U.S.-chartered corporations fleeing the United States to establish their headquarters in other countries to take advantage of lower corporate taxes. Inversion, at one time, was exceeding rare, as according to the Congressional Research Service, there was just one in the nineteen eighties, whereas there have been more than fifty in the past decade.
Two features of U.S. tax policy make inversion attractive: a relatively high corporate tax rate and what's called a worldwide global tax system -- U.S. corporations have to pay that tax in all their global income. U.S. corporations are estimated to be holding more than $2 trillion abroad. "Since so much of what comprises earned income remains abroad and untaxable, we raise only a small amount of revenue from our global system. At the same time, the fact that these foreign earnings are in exile encourages inversions, so companies can get access to all that locked-up cash and a lower tax rate thereafter." "Investing abroad is more attractive and easier than ever before, and capital is more mobile." [2]
The drug giant Pfizer is the most recent example of a U.S. corporation in the process of establishing its headquarters overseas -- in Ireland in this case. More than 60 percent of Pfizer's income comes from abroad and most of its employees work abroad as well. [3]
There is a crucial fallacy in the general assumption that US.-based corporation pay a higher corporate income tax than corporations chartered in the rest of the countries defined as developed. The reason for this is that U.S. corporations get many tax breaks that are not given to corporations based in the rest of the developed world.
III. The Friedrichs Case Threat
The 1997 Abood v. Detroit Board of Education Supreme Court ruling provided the bedrock constitutional analysis and recommended structure for public sector unionism for nearly 40 years. Its reversal would trigger an earthquake in the U.S. labor relations. If the Friedrichs case now before the U.S. Supreme Court were to exempt workers who don't want to join a union from any obligation to pay union dues or fees, it would create a massive free-rider problem for unions that would kill their capacity to represent their union members. Why pay for something when you can get its services for free? Such a ruling would unravel tens of thousands of contracts governing public sector unions.
U.S. labor law already requires that any union certified as the collective bargaining representative of a group of workers must equally represent and service all of those workers -- dues-paying members and non-paying non-members alike. This compromise, which places an obligation on unions to represent all workers in the unionized company but allows the union to deduct fees form the paychecks of non-members, has served the nation satisfactory for a good long time, may be overturned by a Supreme Court often characterized by ruling on ideological considerations.
The Abood ruling has been upheld in at least five subsequent rulings, although in the last ruling, Justice Samuel Alito expressed a wish to revisit Abood.
Footnotes
[1] Simon Wolfe Taylor, "Fear Itself," The Nation, January 11/18, 2016.
[2] James Surwiecki, "Why Firms Are Fleeing," The New Yorker, January 11, 2016.
[3] Ibid.
[4] The Friedrichs Threat," The Nation, January 25/February 1, 2016.
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