Canadian takes down GOP, midterm elections, pines for their own Obama

[HT: JC]. Well said, eh!

Unfortunately, it would never occur to our President or the Democrats to brag, they're much too timid for that... because somebody, somewhere doesn't like them!  [Gasp! Shudder!]

Americans don't know how good they have it with Obama

By Richard Brunt

November 10, 2014 | Detroit Free Press

Many of us Canadians are confused by the U.S. midterm elections.

Consider, right now in America, corporate profits are at record highs, the country's adding 200,000 jobs per month, unemployment is below 6%, U.S. gross national product growth is the best of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries.

The dollar is at its strongest levels in years, the stock market is near record highs, gasoline prices are falling, there's no inflation, interest rates are the lowest in 30 years, U.S. oil imports are declining, U.S. oil production is rapidly increasing, the deficit is rapidly declining, and the wealthy are still making astonishing amounts of money.

America is leading the world once again and respected internationally — in sharp contrast to the Bush years. Obama brought soldiers home from Iraq and killed Osama bin Laden.

So, Americans vote for the party that got you into the mess that Obama just dug you out of? This defies reason.

When you are done with Obama, could you send him our way?

Richard Brunt

Victoria, British Columbia

Treasury: Congress must halt foreign tax inversions

You recall I've written about tax inversions recently; they're a crock and they're un-American. Here's Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew's take on what Congress should do to stop this flood of inversions [emphasis mine]:

To make sure the merged company is not merely masquerading as a non-U.S. company, shareholders of the foreign company would have to own at least 50 percent of the newly merged company — the current legal standard requires only 20 percent. This approach is based on a bipartisan law enacted in 2004 and could serve as a basis for a bipartisan solution again. Right now, leaders in Congress have put forward strong legislation that adopts elements of this plan.

For legislation to be effective, it must be retroactive. Current proposals in Congress would apply to any inversion deal after early May of this year. The alternative — legislation taking effect after the president signs it into law — could have the perverse effect of encouraging corporations to act more quickly, negotiate new deals and rush to close those transactions before the bill is enacted. 

And here's Lew's conclusion:

Our tax system should not reward U.S. companies for giving up their U.S. citizenship, and unless we tackle this problem, these transactions will continue. Closing the inversion loophole is no substitute for comprehensive business tax reform, but it is a necessary step down the path toward a fair and more efficient tax system, and a step that needs to be in a place for tax reform to work.

Now it's time for Congress to act.

Close the tax loophole on inversions

By Jacob J. Lew

July 27, 2014 | Washington Post

URL: http://wapo.st/1Anutu4

American Dream is a myth for aspiring middle class

RIP, American Dream [emphasis mine]:

[A]s a sobering New York Times  article last week made clear, America could have a lot to learn by looking to Europe. According to the New York Times, the American middle class – the linchpin of the country's phenomenal postwar economic growth – can no longer call itself the richest in the world. "While the wealthiest Americans are outpacing many of their global peers," says the NYT, "across the lower- and middle-income tiers, citizens of other advanced countries have received considerably larger raises over the last three decades." America's poorest citizens lag behind their European counterparts; 35 years ago, the opposite was true.

Here's how Cohen sums it up:

In the immortal words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, "conservatism makes no poetry, breathes no prayer, has no invention". Its success comes in standing in the path of reform and saying no. With the Republican party currently in charge of the House of Representatives (and unlikely to lose that control in this autumn's mid-term election) there is little reason, unfortunately, to believe that the nearly four-decade decline in the financial standing of the American people will right itself soon. In short, the "choice" that America made to pursue the path of decline will be with us for some time to come.

Kind of makes looking to Europe seem like not such a bad idea.

The American Dream is now just that for its middle classes – a dream

By Michael Cohen

April 26, 2014 | Guardian

URL:  http://gu.com/p/3zyzq

Guerilla class warfare: IRS audits fewer rich, more poor people

Channeling the spirit of my man David Cay Johnston, I'm gonna tell you why this mundane story matters.

See, Republicans in Congress cynically under-fund the IRS year in, year out. So an undermanned, undertrained IRS makes do and does what comes easier, relatively -- auditing people with lower incomes. Because higher-income filers have lawyers and complicated returns and it requires more manpower to check them.  

What this works out to, in reality, is a calculated game of probability by rich filers: if you're wealthy, and you're lawyered up, chances are you'll come away unaudited; and even if you are audited, you'll come away unscathed.  

And so wealth inequality is a double-whammy for the poor and working class: earning so much less, they are still more likely to be audited. 

BECAUSE THAT'S THE WAY THE GOP WANTS IT.  Don't be naive and believe otherwise.

Finally, do I really have to explain how this makes no business sense?  As every auditor knows, you focus your attention on the weakest control points with the highest potential for losses. The potential for losses among poor filers is minimal, almost nil.  

All the Tea Partyers who are serious about fiscal health should cheer on  the IRS, because every dollar spent on the IRS  brings in $255 to the U.S. Treasury. Just by enforcing existing tax laws passed by Congress, nothing more. No other government agency can boast of such efficiency!  And so it's time for the TPs to put up or shut up about the IRS, the only government agency that reduces the federal deficit.

U.S. IRS audited fewer wealthy Americans in 2013

By  Patrick Temple-West

March 21, 2014 | Reuters

The U.S. Internal Revenue Service said on Friday that it audited fewer high-income Americans in 2013 than it did in 2012 or 2011, while it conducted more audits of people with no income.

Total audits fell by 5 percent from 2012 to reach the lowest level since 2008 as the IRS said it coped with budget cuts.

For the fiscal year that ended September 30, 2013, the IRS said it audited 24.2 percent of individual tax returns with adjusted gross income of $10 million or more. That was down from 27 percent in 2012 and 30 percent in 2011.

There were also fewer individual tax returns audited in the $5 million to $10 million gross income band, the IRS said.

In total, the IRS audited about 1.4 million individual returns. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said in a statement that budget cuts at the agency have "presented challenges."

Wealthy Americans historically are the likeliest to be audited. The IRS a few years ago started a "Global High Wealth Industry Group" to audit high-wealth individuals more efficiently.

But Congress in January cut the IRS's fiscal 2014 budget by about 4 percent to $11.3 billion.

The funding cuts have forced the IRS to cut the number of customer service representatives it employs during tax season, Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union said in a statement. "Both taxpayers and employees are frustrated."

Last year, audits were done on 6 percent of individual tax returns reporting no gross income, up from 2.7 percent in 2012 and 3.4 percent in 2011.

Let the Post Office be a bank or whatever the market will bear

As Sen. Elizabeth Warren recently wrote:

If the Postal Service offered basic banking services -- nothing fancy, just basic bill paying, check cashing and small dollar loans -- then it could provide affordable financial services for underserved families, and, at the same time, shore up its own financial footing. 

No, this is not just a gimmick to shore up the Post Office's balance sheet, it's about serving underbanked and overcharged Americans, the Little Guys, the ones we're supposed to be worried about (and not the top 20, 10 or 1 percent).  Indeed, as Sen. Warren wrote, "The poor pay more," for basic financial services, which is not only unfair, it's avoidable [emphasis mine]:

According to a report put out this week by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the U.S. Postal Service, about 68 million Americans -- more than a quarter of all households -- have no checking or savings account and are underserved by the banking system. Collectively, these households spent about $89 billion in 2012 on interest and fees for non-bank financial services like payday loans and check cashing, which works out to an average of $2,412 per household. That means the average underserved household spends roughly 10 percent of its annual income on interest and fees -- about the same amount they spend on food.

Back in 2011, I complained that Congress wouldn't let the USPS offer more innovative services to their clients, including banking.  Here we are in 2014, still discussing the same no-brainer idea that has worked in many other countries, including Japan. In fact the U.S. Postal Service had a banking system from 1910 to 1967 with deposits valued at about $30 billion in today's dollars... until Congress shut it down.  

Congress must stop micro-managing the Post Office and let it compete in new lines of business, while using its inherent advantages, such as convenient locations in thousands of small U.S. towns.  

Post Office Banking Could Be the Start of Something Big

By Richard (RJ) Eskrow

February 5, 2014 | Huffington Post

URL: http://huff.to/1ewCh2f

Dem congressmen's hypocrisy on minimum wage

Seldom do I quote the far-right Daily Caller, much less agree with it, but never say never. (HT: AL).  

I tells it like it is, and lets the chips fall where they may. Check it [emphasis mine]:

According to a new study by the Employment Policies Institute (EPI), only four percent of the 210 lawmakers who pledged their allegiance to a bill raising the minimum wage pay their interns.

The Fair Minimum Wage Act would increase the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $10.10 an hour. EPI found that 96 percent of its House and Senate supporters give their interns a minimum wage of zero.

For shame, my liberal comrades!  

Seriously though, I've written before about the institutional elitism of unpaid professional internships. There ought to be a law against them, except in very special circumstances.  If something is worth doing, it's worth paying for; if it's worth paying for, then unpaid interns shouldn't be allowed to do it. They displace people who are looking for jobs but can't afford to work for free.  

Why is it elitist, you ask?  Because only young interns from well-off families can afford to work for free on Capitol Hill to gather up DC connections and pad their resumes.  

Report: Minimum wage hike backers rarely pay interns

By Breanna Deutsch

January 26, 2014 | The Daily Caller 

URL: http://dailycaller.com/2014/01/26/report-minimum-wage-hike-backers-rarely-pay-interns/#ixzz2rblSciKn

Problem solved?: GOP cuts food stamps

In case you weren't paying attention, the House GOP's vote on the annual farm bill showed us two things: 1) food stamps for hungry people are bad; and 2) agricultural subsidies for Congressmen and rich farmers are good. What do those two things tell us?

It’s the juxtaposition of the two programs that so clearly exposes the party’s agenda. Anti-government ideology can justify even the most vicious cuts to the safety net. It can’t justify the massive socialist scheme that is agriculture policy. And, to be fair, conservative intellectuals generally don’t justify agriculture socialism. But the Republican Party certainly does. The ultraconservative Republican Study Committee recently banned the Heritage Foundation from its meetings because Heritage denounced the GOP’s farm subsidies. There is a grim hilarity here: Republicans punished Heritage for its one technocratically sane position.

The GOP's stance on these two issues also belies their hypocrisy on social spending:

Obama has attacked the GOP farm-subsidy bill for spending too much. Here is the one chunk of social spending where Republicans are not only failing to issue hostage threats to secure the cuts they demand, they are also refusing to cut spending as much as Barack Obama asks. And the program they pick to defend is, on the substantive merits, the most unjustifiable program of any significant scale in the federal budget.

But that's OK, because this wasteful federal spending doesn't go to black ghetto queens: 

It is also one that accrues to disproportionately wealthy and overwhelmingly white recipients. (As opposed to Obamacare, whose beneficiaries are disproportionately poor and non-white.) 

That's really the only thing that matters to Republicans nowadays. Because it's clearly not about the numbers. It's simply a question of: could this federal spending possibly benefit a single brown-skinned person who games the system, no matter how many people genuinely need it? 

More broadly, Republicans' present meme that, If only we could repeal Obamacare and reduce food stamps, our economy would take off!, is completely asinine and without economic merit.  We liberals and Democrats must not let such idiotic thinking go unchallenged as a "credible" policy alternative!

Republicans: We Were Too Nice to the Hungry, But We’ve Fixed That

By Jonathan Chait

September 20, 2013 | New York Magazine

URL: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/09/republicans-we-were-too-nice-to-the-hungry.html

Buchanan: Boehner, stand up to Obama on Syria

It's been a while since I've posted anything by my main isolationist paleo-conservative, Mr. Pat Buchanan. But with the proverbial excrement about to hit the ventilator over Assad's alleged use of chemical weapons, it's about time.  I can't find much to disagree with below.

I could give a shilling about the U.S. or Obama saving face.  The dangerous idea that we must "lead" and intervene everywhere, even where our vital interests are not at stake, or else risking losing our influence, is the road to empire, overreach and collapse.  

Will Boehner Stop Our Rogue President?

By Patrick J. Buchanan

August 30, 2013 | Human Events

The next 72 hours will be decisive in the career of the speaker of the House. The alternatives he faces are these:

John Boehner can, after “consultation,” give his blessing to Barack Obama’s decision to launch a war on Syria, a nation that has neither attacked nor threatened us.

Or Boehner can instruct Obama that, under our Constitution, in the absence of an attack on the United States, Congress alone has the authority to decide whether the United States goes to war.

As speaker, he can call the House back on Monday to debate, and decide, whether to authorize the war Obama is about to start. In the absence of a Congressional vote for war, Boehner should remind the president that U.S. cruise missile strikes on Syria, killing soldiers and civilians alike, would be the unconstitutional and impeachable acts of a rogue president.

Moreover, an attack on Syria would be an act of stupidity.

Why this rush to war? Why the hysteria? Why the panic?

Syria and Assad will still be there two weeks from now or a month from now, and we will know far more then about what happened last week.

Understandably, Obama wants to get the egg off his face from having foolishly drawn his “red line” against chemical weapons, and then watching Syria, allegedly, defy His Majesty. But saving Obama’s face does not justify plunging his country into another Mideast war.

Does Obama realize what a fool history will make of him if he is stampeded into a new war by propaganda that turns out to be yet another stew of ideological zealotry and mendacity?

As of today, we do not know exactly what gas was used around Damascus, how it was delivered, who authorized it and whether President Bashar Assad ever issued such an order.

Yet, one Wall Street Journal columnist is already calling on Obama to assassinate Assad along with his family.

Do we really want back into that game? When John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy explored the assassination option with Fidel Castro, blowback came awfully swift in Dallas.

Again, what is the urgency of war now if we are certain we are right? What do we lose by waiting for more solid evidence, and then presenting our case to the Security Council?

Kennedy did that in the Cuban missile crisis. U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson made the case. And the world saw we were right.

If, in the face of incontrovertible proof, Russia and China veto sanctions, the world will see that. Then let John Kerry make his case to Congress and convince that body to authorize war, if he can.

But if Obama cannot convince Congress, we cannot — and ought not — go to war. The last thing America needs is an unnecessary, unconstitutional war in that God-forsaken region that both Congress and the country oppose.

Indeed, the reports about this gas attack on Syrian civilians have already begun to give off the distinct aroma of a false-flag operation.

Assad has offered U.N. inspectors secure access to where gas was allegedly used. It is the rebels who seem not to want too deep or long an investigation.

Our leaders should ask themselves. If we are stampeded into this war, whose interests are served? For it is certainly not Assad’s and certainly not America’s.

We are told Obama intends to hit Syria with cruise missiles for just a few days to punish Assad and deter any future use of gas, not to topple his regime. After a few hundred missiles and a thousand dead Syrians, presumably, we call it off.

Excuse me, but as Casey Stengel said, “Can’t anybody here play this game?”

Nations that start wars and attack countries, as Gen. Tojo and Adm. Yamamoto can testify, do not get to decide how wide the war gets, how long it goes on or how it ends.

If the United States attacks Damascus and Syria’s command and control, under the rules of war Syria would be within its rights to strike Washington, the Pentagon and U.S. bases all across the Middle East.

Does Obama really want to start a war, the extent and end of which he cannot see, that is likely to escalate, as its promoters intend and have long plotted, into a U.S. war on Iran? Has the election in Iran of a new president anxious to do a deal with America on Iran’s nuclear program caused this panic in the War Party?

If we think the markets reacted badly to a potential U.S. strike on Syria, just wait for that big one to start. Iran has a population the size of Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq combined, and sits astride the Straits of Hormuz through which the free world’s oil flows.

And who will be our foremost fighting ally in Syria should we attack Assad’s army? The Al-Nusra Front, an arm of al-Qaida and likely successor to power, should Assad fall.

Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.

We don't negotiate with terrorists

"We don't want to detonate a bomb in Washington. We really don't!  So why are you threatening to make us detonate a bomb? Just give us what we want and everything will be fine."

If a member of al Qaeda said this to President Obama trying to get his demands met, we would call it what it was: terrorism.

It's a sad attempt at nifty rhetoric (see article below) and nobody's going to fall for it. 

So think: that's just what the GOP Congress is threatening -- to shut down the federal government unless Obama agrees to de-fund a law that was passed by Congress and upheld by the Supreme Court.  

That's not "checks and balances" stuff, folks. Such tactics were not written into the Constitution or ever anticipated by the Founding Fathers. That's political terrorism.  And the hostages are you and I.

Like I said before, for Democrats' political fortunes, I hope the GOP tries to hold us hostage to nullify a law passed by Congress because it will backfire on Republicans. But for America's sake, for our economy's sake, I hope the GOP wises up and steps back from the brink. 

Cruz: Ignore Media, GOP ‘Can Win’ Defunding Obamacare Argument

By Katrina Trinko

August 21, 2013 | National Review

URL: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/356332/cruz-ignore-media-gop-can-win-defunding-obamacare-argument-katrina-trinko

Two (OK, three) simple ways to fix U.S. politics

Sometimes I fear people don't get the point of my sarcasm.  So I'm going to say something very important, very simply.

Two reforms would solve most of the political problems in our federal government. If these reforms were employed at the state level they would work, too, but not as well:

1. Public financing of campaigns, and shorter campaign seasons.  Actually, this one reform by itself would solve just about every intractable political problem in America the natural, non-invasive way.  The way conservatives say they like to solve problems: by letting nature take its course.

Publicly financed campaigns would immediately neutralize the power of Wall Street, the NRA, Big Coal, Big Oil... but also much of the political power of labor unions.  On balance though it would be good for our country, and good for progressive ideals, to get all the money out of politics and let a real contest of ideas -- and People Power -- determine the political winners.  I'd graciously accept the outcome of a stand-up fight like that, win or lose.  

Also, shortening campaigns and taking money out of politics would free up about 90 percent of our elected officials' time.  They would have time to actually think about governing, instead of who's nest they should feather, whom to pay back, avoid pissing off, etc.

Conservatives always hark back to the time of our Founding Fathers.  Well, the Founding Fathers didn't have to start running for office 2-3 years ahead of time by forming "exploratory committees" whose main job was to test their electability with the media and big-money donors. Our founders didn't have to spend all their time in office raising money, or drop out of a close race because their opponent managed to raise more money.  

If we went back in time and tried to explain these present-day realities to Thomas Jefferson or George Washington, they would probably have a stroke after tearing up the Declaration of Independence.

Enough said on that.

2. Make Congressmen accessible.  If reform #1 were passed then #2 would probably not be necessary, it would happen naturally, but just in case, Congress could pass a law making congressmen accessible to any of their constituents, including lobbyists.  Yes, lobbyists!  I'm not against lobbyists.  I'm all for them. But a lobbyist's effectiveness and his access to power should not be determined by the size of his wallet, that's all.  

Thanks to the Internet, it's more than possible to set up a normal online appointment system to meet with one's congressman, even if you had to wait a few weeks.  Heck, we could even mandate that Congressional offices should operate like the DC DMV: visitors get in line before office hours start, take a number, wait their turn, and if they don't get called they come back the next day.

If you don't know what I'm talking about then try to get a personal meeting with your elected congressman or senator.  Go ahead.  Even if you voted for him, even if you kicked him a few bucks last election, chances are the best you'll do is a meeting with his chief of staff.  In most cases you'll get an unpaid, pimply faced intern in an ill-fitting suit.  Because you simply cannot talk to congressmen in most cases unless you are a big-money donor or political insider. Objectively speaking, congressmen would be crazy if they spent most of their time listening to their constituents; that's no way to get elected nowadays.  

3. And if we really wanted to slam the door on corruption and conflicts of interest, then Congress could pass a Non-Revolving Door Act to forbid congressmen or their staffers from working for any lobbying firm, or any company that directly benefited from legislation that the congressman voted for while in office, for a period of 5 to 10 years.  

We cut science funding at our peril

Not good:

The US still leads in biomedical research spending, and output measured by research publications, but it has been declining for over a decade. Funding for the NIH is now down to 2000 levels, taking inflation into account. NIH funding was doubled under presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton; it should be doubled again.

Worse, its budget has been slashed by another 10 per cent for the second half of this year under "sequestration", the US's austerity programme. And things are going to get worse. Sequestration will lead to an additional 9 per cent cut next year in overall government spending, and the non-profit Coalition for Health Funding reports that the House of Representatives is considering NIH cuts of a further 19 per cent, stopping work in progress and shutting down new ideas.

Additional cuts will also strike the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the finger in the dyke against new pandemics – there is abad one fulminating right now in the Middle East. The CDC is in the process of cutting virtually all of its funding to schools of public health for research on epidemic preparation.

Thanks, Tea Parties!

Apocalypse soon, if we keep on cutting science

By Andrew Feinberg

August 5, 2013 | New Scientist

URL: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21929280.200

Census tool shows how gerrymandered you are

Folks, here's a neat little tool.  

With this site from the U.S. Census and a little arithmetic, I am able to see, for example, that my home Congressional district is 92 percent white, (and 3.6 percent black); 70 percent of residents identify their ancestry as "American," English, Irish or German; 18 percent are over the age of 60; and 40 percent of residents are over 45.  

No wonder the GOP doesn't even need to campaign there!   

Find out how slanted toward one party your district is here.

UPDATE (08.12.2013):  This graphic from Mother Jones says it all, how badly Republicans have stacked the electoral deck:

My Congressional District (113th Congress)

Powered by The American Community Survey

U.S. Census Bureau

URL: http://www.census.gov/mycd/?eml=gd

Robinson: Love or hate him, we should thank Snowden

Great point by Robinson:

This month, the office of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper issued a public statement announcing that the secret Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court has renewed the government’s authority to collect “metadata” about our phone calls. This was being disclosed “in light of the significant and continuing public interest in the . . . collection program.”

Isn’t that rich? If the spooks had their way, there would be no “continuing public interest” in the program.  We wouldn’t know it exists.

Aren't we all glad we know about this program, even if some of us happen to support it?  Personally, I don't understand how Snowden's revealing the program compromised U.S. intelligence.  No names were leaked, no agents put in danger.  

Moreover, the DOD-NSA's domestic spying program continues unchanged and unabated... which kind of undermines the argument that Snowden's whistle-blowing damaged the program. Usually, unsavory clandestine operations are cancelled or revamped once they are exposed, since they rely on secrecy.  These domestic spying programs don't rely on secrecy, just brute force collection of all our electronic communications.

In NSA leaks, Edward Snowden performed a service

By Eugene Robinson

July 30, 2013 | Washington Post

Edward Snowden’s renegade decision to reveal the jaw-dropping scope of the National Security Agency’s electronic surveillance is being vindicated — even as Snowden himself is being vilified.

Intelligence officials in the Obama administration and their allies on Capitol Hill paint the fugitive analyst as nothing but a traitor who wants to harm the United States. Many of those same officials grudgingly acknowledge, however, that public debate about the NSA’s domestic snooping is now unavoidable.

This would be impossible if Snowden — or someone like him — hadn’t spilled the beans. We wouldn’t know that the NSA is keeping a database of all our phone calls. We wouldn’t know that the government gets the authority to keep track of our private communications — even if we are not suspected of terrorist activity or associations — from secret judicial orders issued by a secret court based on secret interpretations of the law.

Snowden, of course, is hardly receiving the thanks of a grateful nation. He has spent the last five weeks trapped in the transit zone of Sheremetyevo Airport outside Moscow. Russian officials, who won’t send him home for prosecution, wish he would move along. But Snowden fears that if he takes off for one of the South American countries that have offered asylum, he risks being intercepted en route and extradited. It’s a tough situation, and time is not on his side.

You can cheer Snowden’s predicament or you can bemoan it. But even some of the NSA’s fiercest defenders have admitted, if not in so many words, that Snowden performed a valuable public service.

This month, the office of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper issued a public statement announcing that the secret Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court has renewed the government’s authority to collect “metadata” about our phone calls. This was being disclosed “in light of the significant and continuing public interest in the . . . collection program.”

Isn’t that rich? If the spooks had their way, there would be no “continuing public interest” in the program. We wouldn’t know it exists.

The new position espoused by President Obama and those who kept the NSA’s domestic surveillance a deep, dark secret is that of course we should have a wide-ranging national debate about balancing the imperatives of privacy and security. But they don’t mean it.

I know this because when an actual debate erupted in Congress last week, the intelligence cognoscenti freaked out.

An attempt to cut off funding for the NSA’s collection of phone data, sponsored by an unlikely pair of allies in the House — Justin Amash, a conservative Republican, and John Conyers, a liberal Democrat, both from Michigan — suffered a surprisingly narrow defeat, 217 to 205. The measure was denounced by the White House and the congressional leadership of both parties, yet it received bipartisan support, from 94 Republicans and 111 Democrats.

The Amash-Conyers amendment was in no danger of becoming law — the Senate would have killed it and, if all else failed, President Obama would have vetoed it. But it put the intelligence establishment on notice: The spooks don’t decide how far is too far. We do.

A recent Washington Post-ABC News poll showed that three out of four Americans believe the vacuum-cleaner collection of phone call data by the NSA intrudes on our privacy rights.  At the same time, nearly three-fifths of those surveyed said it was “more important right now” to investigate possible terrorist threats than to respect privacy. A contradiction, perhaps? Not necessarily.

It is possible to endorse sweeping and intrusive measures in the course of a specific investigation but to reject those same measures as part of a fishing expedition. At the heart of the Fourth Amendment is the concept that a search must be justified by suspicion. Yet how many of those whose phone call information is being logged are suspected of being terrorists? One in a million?

Equally antithetical to the idea of a free society, in my view, is the government’s position that we are not permitted to know even how the secret intelligence court interprets our laws and the Constitution. The order that Snowden leaked — compelling a Verizon unit to cough up data on the phone calls it handled — was one of only a few to come to light in the court’s three decades of existence. Now there are voices calling for all the court’s rulings to be released.

We’re talking about these issues. You can wish Edward Snowden well or wish him a lifetime in prison. Either way, you should thank him.

MB360: Record-high delinquency of student loans

I don't necessarily agree with MB360 that student loan debt is a "bubble" in the sense that speculation is driving up prices beyond any underpinning value.  A few weeks ago, Law professor Charles J. Reid explained why:

Student loans, however, are not like this, for the simple reason that they are non-dischargeable in bankruptcy. They are not a bubble and cannot become one. What they can become -- and show increasing signs of actually becoming -- is an anchor that is sinking the fortunes of an entire generation.

But just because they're not a bubble doesn't mean these levels of indebtedness are not extremely worrying. They are.  These delinquency rates mean that graduates are not getting the kinds of jobs they thought they would get thanks to their expensive degrees.  If higher education is not the key to employment and higher income, then what is?  So far, our nation does not have another answer.

The most delinquent loan of them all: Student debt delinquencies at record levels on the eve of rates doubling. Half of college graduates working in jobs where their degree is not required.

By mybudget360 

June 30, 2013

If the news for college graduates couldn’t get any better.  Our woefully motivated millionaire Congress is unable to figure out what is necessary to stop the doubling of interest rates on student debt.  While the Fed can turn on a dime to rectify zero percent interest rates for member banks, trying to help the youth of the nation well, that is just too hard to do.  Milling around through the data I found that for the first time in history, student debt had the highest delinquency rate of all household debts.  This is a big deal given that Americans now carry over $1 trillion in student debt and most of it is in the hands of the young.  At the nucleus of this argument is that people are going into too much debt to finance their educational pursuits.  Collecting tips at the Olive Garden is not exactly going to payoff that $50,000 in student debt.  How is it that the Fed can subsidize big banks with zero percent rates so they can speculate in real estate and other ventures while college graduates are now faced with the doubling of interest rates?

Half of college graduates not utilizing degree

Part of the problem is the voting power (or lack of it) from younger Americans.  Many simply do not vote.  And the baby boomer cohort is guiding many policies through elected officials although they only serve a tiny pizza slice of the baby boomers at that.  So with that said, the voice of the young is largely drowned out by big business and higher education has turned into a very lucrative private-public venture.  With that as our backdrop, half of college graduates are not utilizing their increasingly more expensive degrees:

Half of recent college graduates are either unemployed or underemployed.  And recently many have given up on pursuing careers where their degrees would be utilized and have taken up other jobs.  Other jobs that would have gone to lower skilled workers.  And of course, these workers get pushed down into a lower level of the economic ladder.  And what a shocker that as we go into the various levels of Dante’s Economic Inferno we find that 47.7 million Americans are on food stamps.

The above chart is rather sobering because many recent graduates are leaving school with high levels of debt.  Incomes for many of these graduates are not justifying the sky high rates of tuition at many schools.  Education is still a worthy venture and that is why people continue to go into high levels of debt for this.  Yet our banking system has been rather obsessed with one sector of our economy since the tech bubble burst in the early 2000s.  Real estate has seemed to dominate every big decision in the last decade to the detriment of creating an economy where millions of jobs are added to meet this more educated workforce.  That has clearly not happened.  Colleges are not going to turn their back on willing students with fresh loans in hand.  And I suppose that is the point.  Easy access to debt is like an aphrodisiac for the industry.  Go to any college campus and you will see palatial stadiums and massive buildings.  Do Olympic sized pools make people discover cures for modern diseases quicker?

What is even more troubling is that the underemployment rate for recent college graduates has trended up in the last few years while the overall unemployment rate has fallen:

No, we are not looking at a chart of Spain or Greece but a chart of US recent graduates.  A large part of the decline in the unemployment rate has come because the civilian employment population ratio continues to lower:

While many older Americans have dropped off the radar, many recent graduates simply do not have this option.  Many over the last few years have clearly opted to take on jobs that are underutilizing their degrees.  Does that mean they overpaid for their education?  $1 trillion in student debt seems to give us an answer that not only did many overpay, they didn’t even have the funds to afford it in the first place.  Higher tuition would make more sense if wages were also rising but that doesn’t seem to be the case with the new batch of graduates.  And many are falling into student debt quicksand and are unable to pay the loans they now have.

The most delinquent of them all

Student debt before the 2000s hit was typically a safe financial bet.  Delinquencies on student debt reflected this.  Today, we now find ourselves at the precipice of another bubble with student debt having the highest delinquency of any form of household debt:

You can see this rate doubling only in the last few years.  Keep in mind this is occurring without the potential doubling of student loan interest rates.  Rates are set to go from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent if Congress does not act.  Amazingly, they are able to act quickly when it comes to the interest of large banking but to help the young in our nation?  No, let us go on holiday break and see what happens.

The rising delinquency rates are simply the last straw in the student debt bubble.  This is a bubble.  When you have prices soaring without any underlying economic change, you have a big problem on hand.  Keep in mind that what you can afford and the price of something are fully disengaged since the government will lend pretty much whatever is necessary to go to school.  If the cap was $100,000 a year, you can rest assured you will have some for-profits cropping up with $100,000 a year degrees.  Record delinquencies and half of recent graduates working in jobs where a massively expensive degree is not being used does not bode well for higher ed at the moment.  No one has a crystal ball on how this will play out but you can rest assured that something is going to give.  You don’t need a college degree to figure that one out.

Voting Rights ruling was 'legislating from the bench'

I don't often comment on Supreme Court decisions because they are so blatantly political to me, albeit dressed up in pomp and black robes as something serious, deliberative and solomonic.  As my Uncle T., a lawyer and dyed-in-the-wool conservative, once told me, he can't see much that's legal or constitutional in the way the Supreme Court operates.  I tend to agree with him.  

It's because they are all utterly political appointees, justices whom the appointing President thinks he can rely on to interpret the Constitution with a particular ideological bent, the facts be damned.  Most of the time the Supreme Court's majority can't wait for certain controversial cases to hit their docket so that they can affect the political direction of our country.

That said, I think the SCOTUS went way too far on Tuesday by striking down Section 4 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.  This time they clearly usurped the powers of Congress.

The power of Congress vested in them by the Constitution is not the power to be right, it's the power to be wrong. One can argue that Congress was wrong to overwhelmingly uphold the Voting Rights Act "coverage formula" in 2006, but then it was wrong with serious bipartisan conviction: 390-33 in the House and 98-0 in the Senate.  Congress provided 15,000 pages of documentation in 2006 to show that voter discrimination was still happening in the jurisdictions that the coverage formula designated for pre-clearance.

This week the U.S. Supreme Court said to hell with that.  The high court majority went beyond the Constitution to examine what it felt were facts on the ground that made the law unnecessary.  I'm sorry, but that's not the high court's job.  We have lots of unnecessary and stupid laws.  That's Congress's prerogative to make them; it's our job every 2 years to vote out the bums to replace or repeal them.  What the "anti-activist judges" majority did on Tuesday was to "legislate from the bench," pure and simple.  In doing so they are were not only hyper-partisan, they werehypocrites against their own judicial philosophy!

Even so, those facts on the ground are debatable, even without study, therefore the SCOTUS should not have so cavalierly struck down a law passed by Congress. What do I mean, without study?  Well, the majority said that the Voting Rights Act has clearly achieved its goal, therefore it was no longer needed. Yet one could argue that without it, racial discrimination against minority voters could easily spring up again.  This possibility is certainly imaginable, and certainly not possible to exclude, logically, yet the Supreme Court majority did just that and excluded it.  "We know everything's going to be fine from now on," they basically said.  

Also, Chief Justice Roberts said the SCOTUS "warned" Congress in 2009 to update the formula by which it determines a history of voter discrimination, and that with case of Shelby County [Alabama] v. Holder hitting the court's docket in 2013 without any action by Congress, the high court had no choice but to strike down the law.  But think about that for a second.  We have an historically gridlocked Congress and Republican majority that wants the Voting Rights Act to remain struck down... but wasn't dumb enough, politically, to offer up a bill to do so.  

Now surely the Republican House will not offer up a new bill now to update the pre-clearance formula that would require the DOJ's approval for any changes in state's voting laws.  (If you think they will, the Supreme Court needs to ban that medical marijuana you're smoking).  And the GOP majority's inevitable inaction in the coming weeks/months -- I would love it if they proved me wrong -- will prove just how absurd was Justice Roberts' utterly political premise for usurping the will of Congress in 2006 that was the law of the land.  

Furthermore, the majority cited states' rights (federalism) as its main justification for striking down the will of Congress.  However, Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act allows individual counties in affected states to "bail out" of the law if they can prove there is no recent history of racial discrimination against voters, as dozens of counties have since 1967.    

All that constitutional stuff aside, I agree with Dr. Martin Luther King that the arc of history bends toward justice... and obviously I agree with the U.S. Census that the arc of demography bends towards a non-white U.S. majority.  Politically, in the long run, this conservative SCOTUS decision -- and the inevitable inaction from a GOP-majority House that will follow it -- will be good for Democrats.  

I predict that this SCOTUS decision and Congress's almost certain failure to respond, combined with Republicans' likely continued inaction on immigration reform, will spur minority turnout rates in 2014 that will exceed 2012.  Republicans are showing once again they just can't get out of their rut... as they shoot themselves in the foot that's stuck in that rut.  

How FISA law became unconstitutional

One terrorist act and one amendment at a time, that's how.  Argues law professor Laura Donahue:

To the extent that the FISC sanctioned PRISM, it may be consistent with the law. But it is disingenuous to suggest that millions of Americans’ e-mails, photographs and documents are “incidental” to an investigation targeting foreigners overseas.

The telephony metadata program raises similar concerns. FISA did not originally envision the government accessing records. Following the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, Congress allowed applications for obtaining records from certain kinds of businesses. In 2001, lawmakers further expanded FISA to give the government access to any business or personal records. Under section 215 of the Patriot Act, the government no longer has to prove that the target is a foreign power. It need only state that the records are sought as part of an investigation to protect against terrorism or clandestine intelligence.

This means that FISA can now be used to gather records concerning individuals who are neither the target of any investigation nor an agent of a foreign power. Entire databases — such as telephony metadata — can be obtained, as long as an authorized investigation exists.

President Obama is taking a lot of heat right now for the NSA's spying on us and rightly so.  But let's not let Congress off the hook.  They passed these laws.  They could pass a law to outlaw PRISM tomorrow, if they wanted to.  

NSA surveillance may be legal — but it’s unconstitutional

By Laura K. Donohue

June 21, 2013 | Washington Post

URL: http://wapo.st/14n90zT

Matt Miller: Both parties are bad, m'kay

So says Matt Miller:

A Republican House doesn’t explain why President Obama’s last jobs plan only proposed to put 1 to 2 million Americans back to work when at least ten times more need a full time job. Republican madness can’t explain why Obama artfully slams the GOP on student loan interest rates while touting a plan that would leave tuitions and debts still higher a decade from now. Republican lunacy can’t explain why the White House often brags about having enacted universal health coverage, a goal aides boast has eluded presidents for a century, when Obama has done no such thing — at least 20 to 30 million people will still be uninsured when the dust clears (from a law I support).

In short, Republican nihilism and intransigence — huge problems, so please don’t arrest me, false equivalency police! — can’t explain the Democratic ambition gap. In fact, it’s not clear that anything in my depressing inventory above would be meaningfully different if the GOP had vanished or capitulated. Rare instances aside, this means Democrats aren’t offering ideas equal to the magnitude of our problems. Republicans, meanwhile, can’t even see what the problems are.

"False equivalence?"  He said it, not me.  Methinks the pundit doth protest too much.  

Nothing "would be meaningfully different if the GOP had vanished or capitulated?" What is the point of that ridiculous hypothetical sentence?  

Democrats need to be more "ambitious?"  OK, with that I agree.  But such ambition starts at the top, with President Obama.  In Congress there are guys like Bernie Sanders, Alan Grayson, John Conyers, Barbara Lee... and many, many more.  Obama has his activist base from 2008 and 2012 that after the election he's promptly forgotten, twice.  He has troops to rally but he ignores them.

Instead, Obama would prefer to seek compromise with GOP Congressmen who hate his guts and, thanks to natural migration and unnatural gerrymandering, "The average Republican district is 75 percent white and GOP congressmen overall represent 6.6 million fewer minorities in 2012 than they did in 2010."  District by district, state by state, the GOP Congress has no motivation to compromise with our Compromiser-in-chief.

The great American political gridlock

By Matt Miller

June 5, 2013 | Washington Post

URL: http://wapo.st/15IxLrM