The Progressive Mind

Hope they pass that climate bill in Senate

OldBarn — Sun, 31 Jul 2022 01:52:56 GMT

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Banality of Evil?

DenicCassandra — Sun, 31 Jul 2022 01:45:06 GMT

Great article asking these questions! Contagious Courage; Countering the Banality of Evil

Protecting Our Right to Free Speech Online

DenicCassandra — Tue, 06 Jan 2015 14:08:58 GMT

I hope this works. This is an amazing article about parts of the intense crackdown by the Gov in many forms against our right to information, assembly and free speech - focusing on police monitoring and criminalizing online expression.
WITH POWER OF SOCIAL MEDIA GROWING, POLICE NOW MONITORING AND CRIMINALIZING ONLINE SPEECH

Sad Sacks Russert And Blackwell Concern Troll Economic Gains

LIBertea — Mon, 29 Dec 2014 05:44:51 GMT

Li'l Luke teamed up with right-winger Ken Blackwell to toss a wet blanket on the good economic news.

Well, thank you, Li'l Luke and Ken Blackwell for throwing the wet blanket on the possibility that ordinary Americans might finally see some benefits from our economic recovery.

Is Luke Russert just a troll or clueless or both? During the panel discussion on the soon-to-be dead Meet the Press, Russert decided he should be the contrarian in the room with regard to the economic recovery President Obama is finally getting some credit for.

Chuck Todd's intro to the segment mentions all the things that should have been mentioned on Labor Day when it might have made a difference in the election. Gas prices down, consumer confidence up, growth and job creation at the best it's been since 2003.

Enter Li'l Luke, stage right. "A booming economy would change the dynamic of what Congress can do," Luke opines.

Oh noes! Whatever shall we do?

Placing his derp hat on to cleverly disguise his troll ears, Russert goes on to express his skepticism. "If we have this robust growth what does Hillary do? What do Republicans do?"

Gee, I don't know, Lukie. Maybe we try addressing the disappearing middle class, the amazing wealth and income disparity in the country, and start getting real about what the stock market gains mean to ordinary people.

All of these mean something, after all. Maybe we do tax reform that actually stops penalizing the middle class and starts limiting what billionaires can do. Maybe we quit repealing the Affordable Care Act and fix it instead, so more people can get coverage and have more money to put back into the economy.

It's not like we have to have a crisis to think ahead to the future, after all.

Then it's Blackwell's turn. After replaying some of the Top Republican Stupid Predictions of the year -- like Boehner saying health care will destroy the economy or Romney claiming Obama can't manage economic matters -- Todd asks Blackwell whether Republicans will have to change their rhetoric.

Because Li'l Luke has been so accommodating, there's not much more for Blackwell to add other than the plaintive wail -- "How sustainable are these numbers?"

Well, Ken. They're not sustainable if the Affordable Care Act is repealed and people go back to losing everything because they had the misfortune to be human and fall ill. They're not sustainable if billionaires are allowed to continue offshoring trillions and not paying taxes on them. And they're certainly not sustainable if Dodd-Frank is repealed and the financial geniuses on Wall Street are allowed to do whatever they want to ordinary folks.

It does not bode well for us that the Republican majority in Congress is the largest they've had since the Great Depression. Not at all. So my answer to both of these Sad Sacks is simple: It's sustainable as long as Republicans keep their filthy mitts off the fail-safes that have allowed it to grow.

Will someone just shoot MTP and put it out of its misery? Ken Blackwell? Seriously? And Luke Russert might be qualified to offer an opinion on football stats, but keep him the hell away from economic matters.

Daily Progressive Reads - Oct. 20, 2014

LIBertea — Mon, 20 Oct 2014 18:20:24 GMT

Good morning — and Happy World Statistics Day! It’s probably celebrated by .000012 of the population.

The “Saturday Night Massacre” took place on this date in 1973. Then-Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus resigned in protest of Richard Nixon’s decision to fire special Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox.

Stat of the day: 84.8 percent — the share of Russia’s wealth held by the top 10 percent of households, giving the country the largest wealth gap in the world, according to Credit Suisse’s Global Wealth Report. The US ranked seventh, with 74.6 percent of its wealth held by the top 10 percent.

Modern poll-tax –> You’ve probably heard by now that the Supreme Court ruled early Saturday morning that Texas could enforce its voter ID law despite a previous judicial finding that it was “enacted with a racially discriminatory purpose.” HuffPo’s Braden Goyette looks at Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s blistering dissent.

Related –> Sheryl Gay Stolberg reports for the NYT that Democrats are desperately trying to get African-American voters to turn out for the midterms. They think that control of the Senate depends on it but “the one politician guaranteed to generate enthusiasm among African-Americans is the same man many Democratic candidates want to avoid: Mr. Obama.”

Potential good news –> Public Health Agency of Canada scientists donated an experimental Ebola vaccine to the World Health Organization, which will begin clinical trials with the drug later this month. Hannah Thibedeau has the story for CBC News. AND: The University of Chicago’s Harold Pollack writes in Politico that despite some early missteps, the US public health system is working pretty well. BUT: The NYT’s Kevin Sack, Jack Healey and Frances Robles look at the “21 days of fear and loathing” those suspected of having Ebola face in quarantine. ALSO: pediatrician Russell Saunders writes at The Daily Beast that groundless Ebola panic has taken over his small clinic.

Big case –> At Salon, Heather “Digby” Parton looks at the ramifications of a key case that the Supreme Court will hear this term: Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project could effectively gut the Fair Housing Act’s already limited powers. AND: At The New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin speaks with Barack Obama about his judicial legacy.

White-on-white violence –> Melanie Plenda reports for The Daily Beast that rioters in New Hampshire clashed with police on Saturday night and Sunday morning as “parties celebrating the annual Keene Pumpkin Festival turned into violent chaos.” On Twitter, activists used the incident to highlight issues with the media’s coverage of protests in Ferguson, Missouri.

Very, very strange –> Oakley, Michigan, is a tiny town of 290 people with a 100-strong “reserve police force” that’s partly funded by anonymous donors. For 10 years, the village council has ignored FOIA requests to release the names of the officers, and when they finally voted to comply, “a high profile Detroit lawyer” sent the council letters warning that doing so would risk bringing attacks on the officers by the Islamic State. Jason Ditz has the details of the story — first reported by the Saginaw News – for AntiWar.com.

“The game is rigged!” –> During her first stop in a three-state tour to get out the vote for her fellow Dems, Elizabeth Warren delivered what WaPo’s Paul Kane described as “a speech that was a mix of professorial lecture and progressive call to arms.”

“Fiercest fighting in days” –> Took place in the besieged Syrian town of Kobani over the weekend, according to The Irish Times, as IS militants re-entered the city despite stepped up US airstrikes. AND: The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that 10 civilians were killed in airstrikes on Saturday. Via: Reuters. AND: At The American Interest, Henri Barkey writes that what has become an epic defense by outgunned Kurdish forces may become “a defining moment of nationhood and identity” for Kurds living in Syria, Turkey and elsewhere.

Sixty-four years and counting –> Troops from North and South Korea exchanged gunfire across their border for 10 minutes over the weekend, according to the BBC. It was the latest in a series of skirmishes over the past month, but “it is not clear if the increasingly frequent clashes are the actions of local soldiers in a tense situation, or part of a wider provocation by either side.”

“A mobilization of Swedish ships, troops and helicopters unseen since the Cold War” –> Tensions between Moscow and the EU over the former’s intervention in Ukraine continue to rise, and the Swedish military “hunted suspected Soviet submarines along its coast with depth charges” over the weekend. Niklas Pollard has the story at Ha’aretz.

“Their struggles” –> Jezebel’s Nell Scovell compares the memoirs of 17-year-old Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel Peace Prize recipient who was shot by the Taliban for advocating that girls attend school — and Bristol Palin.

Daily Progressive Reads - Big Mistakes Led to Ebola Transmission in US

LIBertea — Thu, 16 Oct 2014 14:48:19 GMT

Good morning — and Happy Boss’s Day! Fun fact: Patricia Bays Haroski was working for her father when she registered the date with the US Chamber of Commerce in 1958.

Boneheaded moves –> The CBS Dallas affiliate reports that the second nurse to have a confirmed case of Ebola was cleared to fly across the country despite having a low fever. AND: Dianna Hunt reports for the Dallas Morning News that health care workers didn’t wear protective suits for two days before the confirmation of Thomas Eric Duncan’s diagnosis. ALSO: A community college in Texas is refusing to admit students from any country where there has been a confirmed case of Ebola, even those that have the disease well under control. Perhaps they haven’t heard that one of those countries is the United States. At The Daily Beast, Abby Haglage calls it a “new low” in “Ebola racism.”

Unconstitutional –> Arkansas’ highest court struck down the state’s voter ID law on Wednesday. According to the AP’s Andrew DeMillo, the ruling was based on language in the state’s constitution. ALSO: Ed Kilgore writes at TPM about how Republicans justify their “voter fraud crusade” despite a mountain of solid evidence that in-person voter fraud is essentially a non-issue.

Beyond the raw numbers –> HuffPo’s Paul Blumenthal says that huge amounts of dark money are flowing into a small handful of pivotal Senate races.

“Fantrum” –> Florida Gov. Rick Scott refused to take the stage for a debate with former Gov. Charlie Crist because he was outraged that Crist had a small fan beneath the podium. After several awkward moments, Scott relented. Aviva Shen has more at ThinkProgress.

Gloomy –> A new WaPo/ ABC News poll finds a pessimistic electorate, with Democrats getting their lowest favorable marks in 30 years, and Republicans even less popular. But the good news for the GOP is that their base still appears more likely to vote on November 4.

Doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results –> Mark Mazzetti reports for the NYT that while the CIA “has run guns to insurgencies across the world during its 67-year history — from Angola to Nicaragua to Cuba” — an internal agency study “found that it rarely works.” The study led to the Obama administration’s hesitation to arm Syrian rebels.

“Into the arms of the cartels” –> Kate Kilpatrick reports for AJA that our streamlined deportation policy for undocumented immigrants apprehended near the border “increasingly places desperate and penniless deportees into the hands of ruthless criminal organizations eager to prey on them.”

Game-changer? –> Lockheed Martin revealed the details of the world’s first compact fusion reactor, a potential revolution in energy production. Guy Norris has (lots of) details at Aviation Week.

Droned –> A Yemeni man whose nephew and brother-in-law were killed in a US drone strike is suing the German government for “complicity” ny allowing US forces to launch drone strikes from an air base in Germany. Frank Jordans reports for the AP.

Viral –> The entire Internet was amused by a viral video of Michelle Obama rocking out with a turnip. Thankfully, a few weeks ago, the good folks at Vox explained the cultural reference for those not hip to the latest musical trends.

Daily Progressive Reads - October 14, 2014

LIBertea — Tue, 14 Oct 2014 22:09:08 GMT

Good morning — and a Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms in Belarus!

The Cuban Missile Crisis began on this date in 1962, when a U-2 spy plane spotted Soviet missiles being installed in Cuba. Martin Luther King won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, and in 1982 Ronald Reagan announced that he was launching a “war on drugs.”

Stat of the Day: $10 million — the estimated daily cost of US operations against the Islamic State (IS), according to the Pentagon. As Linda Bilmes reports for the Boston Globe, that doesn’t include “veterans’ benefits, depreciation of equipment, humanitarian aid, covert action, and paying (as the US frequently does) for the military efforts of our coalition ‘partners.’”

Getting what they paid for –> At ProPublica, Theodoric Meyer reports that a document accidentally made public reveals how dark money secretly funneled through a nonprofit “helped get favorable mining legislation passed” in Wisconsin.

Generations clash –> In Ferguson, Missouri, veterans of the civil rights movement called for “healing,” but that message wasn’t well received by younger activists who accused them of offering nice words but no concrete plan to bring about change. Chris McGreal reports for The Guardian. AND: Over the long weekend, more than 50 people were arrested in renewed protests in Ferguson, including Cornel West and several members of the clergy. Matt Pearce reports for the LAT.

Call off the anti-voting crusade –> At TNR, Alec MacGillis offers the GOP four good reasons why.

Will policymakers listen? –> The Pentagon issued a report on Monday concluding that global warming poses “immediate risks” to US national security. According to NBC News, the military sees climate change as a “threat multiplier,” as “rising seas and increasing numbers of severe weather events could exacerbate the dangers posed by threats ranging from infectious disease to terrorism.”

Fearmongering works –> Another poll, this one by ABC News and the WaPo, finds that two-thirds of Americans are worried about a widespread Ebola epidemic in the US “despite repeated assurances from public officials that the country’s modern health-care and disease-surveillance systems will prevent the type of outbreak ravaging West Africa.” AND: At Yahoo News, Chris Moody writes that two members of Congress who visited Liberia before the first deaths were reported have a view of the outbreak starkly different from that of their colleagues.

Islamic State –> Loveday Morris reports for the WaPo that the militants seized the third Iraqi army base in Anbar Province in as many weeks “as Iraqi forces in the region appeared close to collapse despite US-led airstrikes.” AND: After a brief lull, heavy fighting in Kobani, Syria, resumed on Monday, as two suicide bombers detonated explosives in the city. CBS and the AP have the latest. ALSO: At FP, Gopal Ratnam and John Hudson report that some of the countries included on the US list of coalition partners aren’t happy to be named as such. ALSO, TOO: Reuters reports that the Turkish Air Force has bombed Kurdish militants within its borders who are “furious at Ankara’s refusal to help protect their kin in Syria.”

“The likeliest explanation is access to firearms” –> Real Clear Science headlines a report from Alex Berezow that to “end the suicide epidemic,” we have to “make guns harder to get.”

Home again –> The US military has had a “secretive robotic spacecraft” in Earth orbit for the past 22 months, and Irene Klotz reports for Reuters that they plan on landing it at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California today.

Your childhood nightmares realized –> Time reports that “creepy clowns brandishing weapons are taking to the street late at night” in several California towns.

Daily Progressive Reads - October 13, 2014

LIBertea — Mon, 13 Oct 2014 18:28:44 GMT

Good morning — Happy Indigenous Peoples’ Day to our friends in Seattle, and Happy Columbus Day to everyone else! The holiday was established in 1906, 54 years before the discovery of archeological evidence proving that he was only the second (or third) European explorer to “discover” the Americas. It’s a wonder we still celebrate his accomplishment: he lost two of the three ships he set sail with in 1492, was later arrested for gross mismanagement of the Spanish settlement on Hispaniola, and insisted until his death that he’d actually landed in East Asia.

Long haul –> TPM’s Josh Marshall notes there’s an increasing likelihood we won’t know which party will control the Senate next year until December — or even January — due to close races that could lead to runoffs in two states and a couple of possible independent winners who could caucus with either party. ALSO: While it looked like Republican Joni Ernst was pulling away from Democrat Bruce Braley in Iowa, according to the latest Des Moines Register poll, that race has now become a toss-up.

Deadly budget cuts –> Sam Stein reports for HuffPo that Francis Collins, the head of the National Institutes of Health, says we would have a vaccine for Ebola by now if not for a series of cuts to the agency’s research budget. AND: The CDC confirmed a second case of Ebola: a health care worker who treated patient zero at a Dallas hospital. Reportedly, the nurse was wearing protective gear, but a so-far-unexplained “breach of protocol” occurred. Via: MoJo. AND: Laurie Garrett, author of a seminal book on public health systems, Betrayal of Trust, dissects “five myths” about Ebola in WaPo. ALSO: Michael Specter writes about Ebola’s “fear factor” in The New Yorker, noting that just “a few irrational decisions and some irresponsible statements” can have a major impact on a society.

Follow the money –> NYT reporter James Risen reports on the years-long effort to trace billions of dollars of missing cash sent from the US to Iraq in the early stages of the American occupation, a trail that led ultimately to a mysterious bunker in Lebanon.

“Deadly force, in black and white” –> An analysis by ProPublica‘s Ryan Gabrielson, Ryann Grochowski Jones and Eric Sagara finds that “young black males in recent years were at a far greater risk of being shot dead by police than their white counterparts – 21 times greater.”

How’s that supposed to work? –> Texas Attorney General (and leading gubernatorial candidate) Greg Abbott filed a brief claiming that his state’s ban on same-sex marriage reduces out-of-wedlock births, according to Lauren McGaughy of The Houston Chronicle. AND: Alaska will put that… theory to the test after becoming the latest state to see its marriage discrimination law declared unconstitutional. Steve Quinn reports for Reuters.

You get what you pay for –> CNET reports that a comedy club in Barcelona, Spain, is experimenting with the use of facial recognition software to charge patrons on a per-laugh basis.

Study: Most Americans Want Wealth Distribution Similar to Sweden

LIBertea — Sat, 04 Oct 2014 16:17:43 GMT

Americans generally underestimate the degree of income inequality in the United States, and if given a choice, would distribute wealth in a similar way to the social democracies of Scandinavia, a new study finds.

For decades, polls have shown that a plurality of Americans -- around 40 percent -- consider themselves conservative, while only around 20 percent self-identify as liberals. But a new study from two noted economists casts doubt on what values lie beneath those political labels.

According to research (PDF) carried out by Michael I. Norton of Harvard Business School and Dan Ariely of Duke University, and flagged by Paul Kedrosky at the Infectious Greed blog, 92 percent of Americans would choose to live in a society with far less income disparity than the US, choosing Sweden's model over that of the US.

What's more, the study's authors say that this applies to people of all income levels and all political leanings: The poor and the rich, Democrats and Republicans are all equally likely to choose the Swedish model.

But the study also found that respondents preferred Sweden's model over a model of perfect income equality for everyone, "suggesting that Americans prefer some inequality to perfect equality, but not to the degree currently present in the United States," the authors state.

Recent analyses have shown that income inequality in the US has grown steadily for the past three decades and reached its highest level on record, exceeding even the large disparities seen in the 1920s, before the Great Depression. Norton and Ariely estimate that the one percent wealthiest Americans hold nearly 50 percent of the country's wealth, while the richest 20 percent hold 84 percent of the wealth.

But in their study, the authors found Americans generally underestimate the income disparity. When asked to estimate, respondents on average estimated that the top 20 percent have 59 percent of the wealth (as opposed to the real number, 84 percent). And when asked to choose how much the top 20 percent should have, on average respondents said 32 percent -- a number similar to the wealth distribution seen in Sweden.

"What is most striking" about the results, argue the authors, is that they show "more consensus than disagreement among ... different demographic groups. All groups – even the wealthiest respondents – desired a more equal distribution of wealth than what they estimated the current United States level to be, while all groups also desired some inequality – even the poorest respondents."

The authors suggest the reason that American voters have not made more of an issue of the growing income gap is that they may simply not be aware of it. "Second, just as people have erroneous beliefs about the actual level of wealth inequality, they may also hold overly optimistic beliefs about opportunities for social mobility in the United States, beliefs which in turn may drive support for unequal distributions of wealth," they write.

The authors also note that, though there may be widespread agreement about income inequality, there is no agreement on what caused it or what should be done about it.

"Americans exhibit a general disconnect between their attitudes towards economic inequality and their self-interest and public policy preferences, suggesting that even given increased awareness of the gap between ideal and actual wealth distributions, Americans may remain unlikely to advocate for policies that would narrow this gap," the authors argue.

Norton and Ariely's survey was carried out on 5,522 respondents in 47 states in December of 2005. The results are to be published in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science.

Daily Progressive Reads - October 1, 2014

LIBertea — Wed, 01 Oct 2014 15:32:00 GMT

Good morning! On this date in 1957, “In God We Trust” first appeared on American currency. In a Cold War-inspired effort to differentiate the US from its “Godless” Soviet rival, Congress had made the phrase the official motto of the United States the previous year.

Stat of the day: 96 percent — A new study from the Department of Veterans Affairs’ brain repository in Bedford, Massachusetts, found that 76 of 79 deceased NFL players showed signs of degenerative brain disease.

Don’t panic –> The CDC confirmed the first case of Ebola in the US. Elahe Izadi, Mark Berman and J. Freedom du Lac report for WaPo that the unidentified victim developed symptoms four days after traveling from Liberia to Dallas. Ebola has spread rapidly in Africa after overwhelming under-resourced health care systems, and doesn’t pose a major threat in the US.

New war is already awful –> Michael Isikoff reports for Yahoo News that the White House has acknowledged that the “strict standards President Obama imposed last year to prevent civilian deaths from U.S. drone strikes will not apply” in Syria and Iraq. As many as a dozen civilians, including women and children, were killed when an “errant cruise missile destroyed a home for displaced civilians.” AND: The Turkish military is ramping up its defensive positions as Islamic State fighters approach its border. Justin Sink also reports for The Hill that British forces launched their first airstrikes in Iraq on Tuesday. ALSO: An analysis by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments estimates that the campaign has cost the US between $780 and $930 million through September 24. Their conservative estimate is that it will likely run between $200 and $320 million per month for the duration.

“…Relies heavily on analysis from a very ideological law professor” –> A third Republican-appointed federal judge ruled that people in the ACA exchanges run by the feds aren’t eligible for Obamacare’s subsidies. Ian Millhiser reports for ThinkProgress that the judge’s legal reasoning was full of holes. Six federal judges have so far seen it differently, and the case will likely be decided by the Supreme Court.

Mother Earth’s children –> A report released on Tuesday by the World Wide Fund for Nature finds that “wildlife numbers have plunged by more than half in just 40 years as Earth’s human population has nearly doubled.” (AFP, via The Raw Story)

How about a little good news? –> NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio is fulfilling a campaign promise by raising the city’s “living wage” from $11.90 to $13.13 per hour, and expanding the (limited) number of workers who are covered by the ordinance. Erin Durkin has details at the NY Daily News.

AWOL –> A drug case may be dismissed after Darren Wilson, the Ferguson police officer who shot Michael Brown, failed to show up in court for a hearing. According to Robert Patrick at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Wilson’s lawyers say he won’t attend any court proceedings this year, and a half dozen other cases may be jeopardized by his absence.

High cost of cheap bigotry –> A new study finds that LGBT-Americans have lower incomes and face more financial stress and poverty in states with anti-gay laws than in more tolerant ones. NBC News’ Miranda Leitsinger reports.

A Supreme Court for the “powerful and privileged” –> Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick speaks to Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California–Irvine School of Law, about his new book, The Case Against the Supreme Court. He argues that SCOTUS has consistently “failed, throughout American history, at its most important tasks, at its most important moments.”

A contrarian view –> At Politico Magazine, Bill Scher argues that if Republicans win control of the Senate in next month’s elections, their internal conflicts will play out in the glare of a presidential campaign with disastrous results for the party. AND: FiveThirtyEight’s forecast model gives the GOP a 58.3 percent chance taking control of the chamber.

Always read the fine print –> AFP reports that several Londoners agreed to terms and conditions for the use of free Wi-Fi that included handing over their first-born children. The “stunt” was actually an experiment designed to reveal “the total disregard for computer security by people when they are mobile.”