Tag: TMC Politics

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Good news for the real left: an eight term House Democrat in the Texas 16th Congressional District went down in flames in a primary against former El Paso City Council representative:

Former city Rep. Beto O’Rourke bucked a nationwide trend Tuesday night by ousting eight-term U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes in the 16th Congressional District race.

In the final tally, O’Rourke beat Reyes by 23,248 votes to 20,427, or 50.5 percent to 44.4 percent.

Nationally, challengers rarely defeat incumbents in primary elections, and only a few exceptions have occurred so far this election cycle.

When the first numbers were posted earlier Tuesday evening — the results of early voting — O’Rourke had a healthy 51.3 percent to 43.3 percent lead, but Reyes was closing the gap as the evening progressed. However, he was not able to garner enough votes to push the race into a runoff election.

Rep. Reyes had the blessing of President Obama and former President Bill Clinton, who personally reaffirmed an endorsement delivered earlier in a video. The voters obviously were ready for real change by voting for O’Rourke who is opposed to the war on drugs arguing that drug laws increase profits for Mexican drug cartels and increase violence, as well as, real job stimulus by supporting government sponsored projects and a full service Veterans Hospital.

Matt Stoller, writing at naked capitalism, had this to say about Reyes’ defeat:

There are many reasons to be happy that Reyes lost.  He is and was an awful Congressman, both stupid and craven.  As Democratic leader of the Intelligence Committee, Reyes did not know the group Hezbollah, and he didn’t know whether Al Qaeda was Sunni or Shia.  Reyes is a proponent of any number of authoritarian policies violating our civil liberties, and he is backed by predator drone cash.  So if you like militarizing, well, everything, then Reyes is your man.  And this has been the trend recently.

So it’s nice to see voters choose peace over war, and an end the war on drugs.  Now that a candidate won a significant race while arguing for drug decriminalization, it’s going to be increasingly more difficult for politicians to avoid debating the issue.  And that’s good.

The 16th CD is located in a heavily Democratic El Paso and since it creation in 1903 has had only one Republican representative who lasted just one term. So, in all probability Mr. O’Rourke will handily defeat his Republican Barbara Carrasco in November holding the seat and moving it left.

Take that Third Way Democrats. This is how you get real change.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

   [I]t is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.

   It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.

~Thomas Paine~, The Age of Reason

During the Bush administration the Democrats were opposed to the unitary executive powers that Bush assumed. When they realized how intrusive the government had becomes post 9/11 with surveillance, warrantless eavesdropping on American citizens, torture, indefinite detention, military commissions, Guantanamo and the general disregard for the rule of law, the Democrats railed against those policies. What happened that all these polices and now, targeted assassinations without due process have become acceptable? It is incomprehensible that under a Democratic president the right wing shredding of the Constitution is reasonable and defended by those who most vociferously opposed it.

In a New York Times Editorial, Andrew Rosenthal wrote this about President Obama’s “Kill Lists” and the use of unmanned drones:

Apologists for the president’s “just trust me” approach to targeted killings emphasize that the program is highly successful and claim that the drone strikes are extraordinarily precise. John Brennan, the president’s counter-terrorism adviser, said in a recent speech that not a single non-combatant had been killed in a year of drone strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And today’s Times article quoted a senior administration official who said that civilian deaths were in the “single digits.”

But it turns out that even this hey-it’s-better-than-carpet-bombing justification is rather flimsy. The Times article says “Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties …It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.”

The logic, such as it is, is that people who hang around places where Qaeda operatives hang around must be up to no good. That’s the sort of approach that led to the false imprisonment of thousands of Iraqis, including the ones tortured at Abu Ghraib. Mr. Obama used to denounce that kind of thinking.

So now just living in a village where the US thinks, there are insurgents, be they really Al Qaeda or just people defending their country from invaders, all men in the vicinity are enemy combatants, the President can have you killed and they can prove their innocence post mortem. As Cenk Uygur stated, “This is deeply immoral”

“Memorial Day weekend brought news of more U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan as The New York Times raises new questions about President Obama’s so-called “Kill List” of terrorists targeted for assassination. An extensive report in Tuesday’s paper looks at the use of targeted attacks to take out terrorism suspects in other parts of the world, an increasingly important part of the government’s anti-terrorism policies that Barack Obama himself has taken personal responsibility for. According to the story, the President approves every name on the list of terrorism targets, reviewing their biographies and the evidence against them, and then authorizing “lethal action without hand-wringing.”

As the president has slowly drawn down American forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, the use of drone attacks to take out senior leaders of al-Qaeda

and the Taliban has become the primary tactic for fighting terrorism overseas. However, it raises a lot of legal and ethical questions about extra-judicial killings of individuals, particularly those who happen to be American citizens…”.

Will Bunch expressed his outrage in his Philadelphia Daily News column

{T]oday the harm that’s caused by raining death from machines in the sky down onto far too many civilians — including someone’s son, brother, or father who wasn’t “up to no good” at all — vastly outweighs any good. Righteous anger over the killing of civilians creates new terrorists faster than the killing of any old ones. As for the morally indefensible position that any male killed in such an attack is “probably up to no good,” isn’t the Obama administration saying the EXACT same thing that George Zimmerman said about Trayvon Martin? [..]

Actually, the similarity with Zimmerman is even greater than I first thought. What he said to the Sanford police dispatcher was that Trayvon Martin “looks like he’s up to no good.” Thank God Zimmerman didn’t have drones, huh?

Some of us on the left, many of whom supported President Obama in 2008, have some very serious issues with this President and those of his supporters who are choosing now to ignore all the horrendous violations of US and International law and the continued trampling of our rights and freedoms, but are now wholeheartedly accepting and defending these policies (Warning: link leads to a right wing Obama 527). They would love it if Obama’s critics would just sit down and shut up.

What has happened to Democrats who were willing to call for not just the impeachment but the arrest and prosecution of both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney? Now Barack Obama has taken those same policies a step further and made them acceptable to his loyal supporters but not to those of us who still hold to the same principles we did eleven years ago.

Cross Posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

For 15 weeks the students in Montreal, Quebec have been boycotting classes and protesting in the streets over the provincial government’s plan to hike university tuition fees by 82 percent over the next seven years. The students have been joined by other Montreal residents, young and old, who are now taking to the streets to protest Bill 78 which imposed draconian fines and measures to end the protests. Every night st 8 PM they take to the streets with pots and spoons, banging and marching in what has now been labeled the “Saucepan Revolution” and not just in Montreal:

People took up the percussive protest Thursday night in several towns and cities including Sorel, Longueuil, Chambly, Repentigny, Trois-Rivieres and even in Abitibi — several hundred kilometres away from the hot spot of Montreal.

They were still loudest in Montreal, where a chorus of metallic clanks rang out in neighbourhoods around the city, spilling into the main demonstrations and sounding like aluminum symphonies.

The pots-and-pans protest has its roots in Chile, where people have used it for years as an effective, peaceful tool to express civil disobedience. The noisy cacerolazo tradition actually predates the Pinochet regime in Chile, but has endured there and spread to other countries as a method of showing popular defiance.

Thursday’s protest in Montreal was immediately declared illegal by police, who said it violated a municipal bylaw because they hadn’t been informed of the route. They allowed it to continue as long as it remained peaceful.

Usually the nightly street demonstrations, which have gone on for a month, have a couple of vigorous drummers to speed them along their route. At the very least, someone clangs a cow bell.

But in the last few days, the pots and pans protest — dubbed the casseroles by observers — have acted like an alarm clock for the regular evening march, sounding at 8 p.m. on the nose in advance of the march’s start.

Occupy Wall Steet has joined in solidarity with the protests and Occupy livestreamer Tim Pool is now in Montreal and covering the protests every night starting about 8 p.m. when the pots and pan bashing begins.

Arrest have exceeded 2500 surpassing the October 1970 crisis when martial law was declared in the city in response to actions by Quebec nationalists. Friday night the student protesters and their allies surpassed them selves marching through the streets in downpours, with high winds and tornado warnings. The event was caught on video and an enterprising videographer set it to the music of local band named Arcade Fire that has now gone viral:

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

This was predictable:

Germany and France clash over eurobonds at summit

French president François Hollande marks his Brussels debut by challenging chancellor Angela Merkel over bailout

A special EU summit marking the debut of France’s President François Hollande saw him challenge Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, on the euro, arguing that the pooling of eurozone debt liability – eurobonds – had to be retained as an option for saving the currency. Merkel has ruled out eurobonds as illegal under current EU law.

Hollande told the dinner of 27 leaders that he wanted to see eurobonds established, while conceding that this would take time, witnesses at the talks said.

Merkel responded that this was nigh-on impossible since it would require changes to the German constitution and around 10 separate legal changes, the sources said.

There was no policy breakthrough at the summit, rather a reiteration by leaders of known positions. Any decisions were postponed until the end of next month after French and Greek parliamentary elections on 17 June.

Illegal? Require changes? Well, they created this mess by changing laws and constitutions, now they need to fix it by changing the laws and the EU constitution. Chancellor Merkel sounds more and more like George W. Bush, “it’s hard work” (read: I don’t want to do this). The Euro Zone nations can’t have their cake and eat it, too. They want Greece to to stay in the Euro Zone but they want them to accept the austerity agreement that the Greeks have clearly rejected.

In a New York Times Op-Ed, Amartya Sen, a Nobel laureate and a professor of economics and philosophy at Harvard, points out that the EU economic crisis is a road to hell paved with good intentions:

There are two reasons for this.

First, intentions can be respectable without being clearheaded, and the foundations of the current austerity policy, combined with the rigidities of Europe’s monetary union (in the absence of fiscal union), have hardly been a model of cogency and sagacity. Second, an intention that is fine on its own can conflict with a more urgent priority – in this case, the preservation of a democratic Europe that is concerned about societal well-being. These are values for which Europe has fought, over many decades. [..]

Europe cannot revive itself without addressing two areas of political legitimacy. First, Europe cannot hand itself over to the unilateral views – or good intentions – of experts without public reasoning and informed consent of its citizens. Given the transparent disdain for the public, it is no surprise that in election after election the public has shown its dissatisfaction by voting out incumbents.

Second, both democracy and the chance of creating good policy are undermined when ineffective and blatantly unjust policies are dictated by leaders. The obvious failure of the austerity mandates imposed so far has undermined not only public participation – a value in itself – but also the possibility of arriving at a sensible, and sensibly timed, solution.

This is a surely a far cry from the “united democratic Europe” that the pioneers of European unity sought.

As David Dayen said, “we’re are essentially in a holding pattern” until the Greek and French Parliament elections on June 17. Please, do not hold your breath for a good solution, no matter what you may think a good solution is. Not everyone is going to be happy at the end of this. Let’s hope it’s the austerians who are unhappiest.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Meet the new “Death Sentence Czar” appointed by President Barack Obama to choose who will be targeted for assassination by unmanned drone without due process

WASHINGTON-White House counter-terror chief John Brennan has seized the lead in choosing which terrorists will be targeted for drone attacks or raids, establishing a new procedure for both military and CIA targets.

The effort concentrates power over the use of lethal U.S. force outside war zones within one small team at the White House.

The process, which is about a month old, means Brennan’s staff consults with the State Department and other agencies as to who should go on the target list, making the Pentagon’s role less relevant, according to two current and three former U.S. officials aware of the evolution in how the government goes after terrorists.

John Brennan,a top CIA aide to George Tenet during the Bush Administration, was President Obama’s choice for CIA Director. He voluntarily withdrew his name because of the controversy over his support of the Bush policies of the torture of terrorist detainees and the governments extraordinary rendition program. Instead the president appointed Brennan as his counter-terrorism chief and now has put him in charge of killing accused terrorists around the world.

Glenn Greenwald reports that Brennan has been caught lying on a number of occasions about the circumstances surrounding some high profile cases.

{..}including falsely telling the world that Osama bin Laden “engaged in a firefight” with U.S. forces entering his house and “used his wife as a human shield,” and then outright lying when he claimed about the prior year of drone attacks in Pakistan: “there hasn’t been a single collateral death.” Given his history, it is unsurprising that Brennan has been at the heart of many of the administration’s most radical acts, including claiming the power to target American citizens for assassination-by-CIA without due process and the more general policy of secretly targeting people for death by drone.

Brennan will be the sole arbiter of who to recommend to President Obama to target for assassination. No evidence presented in court, no judge, no jury, no chance for the victim to defend himself and in total secrecy It has now become extremely easy to have someone killed, all this under the guise of “Change” with the blessing of the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

What is even more disconcerting is the loyalists to this President who defend or conveniently ignore all of the things they decried just a short 4 years ago: Torture, the Patriot Act, warrant-less eavesdropping, rendition, Guantanamo, indefinite detention. All of this is now acceptable under this president. Dick Cheney must be so proud.

N.B. Greenwald provides links to two amazing exchanges by Charles Davis that demonstrate the twisted logic used by Obama fanatics to either justify or ignore Obama’s policies.  

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

That $2 billion failed London Whale has burgeoned up to a hefty $7 billion:

The crisis at JP Morgan escalated yesterday as it emerged its trading losses in London could rise to as much as $7bn (£4.5bn) and the US bank cancelled a share buyback. Fears were growing that the losses could spiral from an initial $2bn, which was declared on 10 May, as JP Morgan struggles to unwind the massive bets made by the so-called “London Whale” trader Bruno Iksil. [..]

The main index on which Mr Iksil’s credit default swaps trades were based has calmed down in recent days, which suggests that JP Morgan has decided to trade out of its positions gradually rather than take one massive hit. Mr Dimon originally said the bank would deal with the positions to “maximise economic value”. But there is a danger in taking the long view. Mr Iksil was betting on the credit-worthiness of corporate America and if that starts to fall JP Morgan’s losses could mount further.

But in the meantime, Dimon decided to suspend the $15 billion stock buy back:

Two months after announcing a $15 billion share buyback program, JPMorgan Chase reversed course on Monday, saying it was halting the repurchases after the bank’s multibillion-dollar trading loss. [..]

Mr. Dimon said the bank intended to keep its dividend of 30 cents a quarter unchanged. Bank officials have repeatedly emphasized that the company has no plans to reduce it despite the trading loss. Initially estimated by the bank at $2 billion, the trading loss on credit derivatives now stands at more than $3 billion, according to traders and regulators. [..]

The decision to halt the repurchases – a move the company said it made on its own, not at the behest of regulators – sent JPMorgan’s shares sliding again Monday, closing at their lowest level since late last year.

As the losses from London Whale increase and Dimon’s reputation as the “saviour” of JP Morgan is tarnished, the calls for better and tighter regulations for banking increase. That’s the problem faced by the Senate Banking Committee as they consider the “Volker Rule”. As David Dayen pointed out today the rule should not so complex that it just creates more loopholes:

The Fail Whale trades showed that massive, as-yet unregulated risk still exists in our financial system, with the potential to bring down the economy once again and trigger massive taxpayer bailouts. Since the Administration already passed a law that was supposed to deal with that, they’re scrambling to restore what little of value existed in those laws. [..]

The article intimates that independent regulators have authority over writing things like the Volcker rule, and that the White House and the Treasury Department have limited ability to ensure that the rule properly follows from the legislative mandate. Given that a senior Administration official told reporters just yesterday that the losses at JPMorgan Chase would “inform… how the ultimate contours of the Volcker ruler come out-make sure that it is strong,” it’s clear that not even the Administration believes that. They appointed the regulators, and Treasury has plenty of control over almost everything related to Dodd-Frank. If they want a stronger Volcker rule, they’ll get it.

But will the Banking Committee come out with strong, simple rules regulating the gambling that banks are doing with depositor funds? There is a lot of doubt considering that not only are the Senators on the banking committee “financed” by the banks and lobbied heavily, a former lobbyist for JP Morgan Chase, Dwight Fettig is the staff director for the Senate Banking Committee. As our friend watertiger at Dependable Renegade observed “Well, isn’t that conVEEEEENient”:

The Senate Banking Committee is responding to outrage over the news that J.P. Morgan lost some $3 billion in customer money because of a risky trading strategy. The committee is preparing for two hearings with regulators, and Senator Tim Johnson (D-SD), chair of the committee, is hoping that Jamie Dimon will testify in the near future. “Our due diligence has made it clear that the Banking Committee should hear directly from JPMorgan Chase’s CEO Jamie Dimon,” Johnson said in a statement last week.

Luckily for Dimon, the professional staff in charge of managing the banking committee will be quite familiar to him and his team of lobbyists. That’s because the staff director for the Senate Banking Committee is none other than a former J.P. Morgan lobbyist, Dwight Fettig.

In 2009, Fettig was a registered lobbyist for J.P. Morgan. His disclosures show that he was hired to work on “financial services regulatory reform” and the “Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2009″ on behalf of the investment bank. Now, as staff director for the Senate Banking Committee, he will be overseeing the hearings on J.P. Morgan’s risky proprietary trading.

I agree with Yves Smith in her NYT op-ed opinion that “for starters, reinstate Glass – Steagall”:

Preventing blow-ups like the JPMorgan “hedge” that bears no resemblance to any known hedge isn’t difficult. What makes preventing it difficult is that banks that exist only by virtue of state-granted charters – and more recently, huge transfers from the public – have persuaded public officials and regulators that they have a God-granted right not just to high levels of profit but also high levels of employee and executive compensation. [..]

Maybe it’s time to recognize that these firms are too big and in too many complex businesses to be managed. Jamie Dimon was touted as a star who could supervise a sprawling firm running huge risks, and he fell short because no one can do the job adequately. A less disaster-prone financial system requires more simplicity and redundancy. Re-instituting Glass-Steagall or other variants on the narrow banking theme isn’t a full solution, but it would make for a good start.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

The economic crisis in Europe and the austerity response to it which has spread from Greece to other countries in Europe has dominated the news now for weeks. This past weekend the leaders of the G-8 met at Camp David where it was the main topic for discussion. While President Obama’s statement that encourages stimulus and growth as solutions to the EU problem, he did not discount austerity as one of the driving policies that has extended the downturn and caused social upheaval in Greece and now Spain. The reporting in the traditional mainstream media has been particularly lacking ion balanced analysis and, in some cases, some pretty sloppy and biased reporting.

William K. Black, an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, former litigation director for the Federal Home Loan Bank Board and a white-collar criminologist, takes reporters at the New York Times task for their profound ignorance on covering Europe’s financial, social, and political crises. He explains why they are so wrong:

Economists have known for roughly 75 years that adopting austerity in response to recession or depression will make the economic crisis grow and last far longer.  Austerity is to economics as bleeding was to medicine. [..]

The NYT article focuses on Alexis Tsipras, the Greek political leader whose party rose to prominence by promising to reject the loan-for-austerity program that the disgraced former Greek government agreed to at Berlin’s diktat. The article’s theme is that Tsipras is endangering all of Europe by demanding an end to austerity being imposed on Greece.  The reporters write, as if it were undisputed fact, that Tsipras has started “a high-stakes game of chicken with Europe’s leaders.”  But that reverses the facts.

The game that Berlin designed required the Greek to agree (1) to drive their economy off a cliff into a deepening Great Depression through increased austerity, (2) to force an enormous reduction in working class wages, (3) to sell Greek islands to private parties, and (4) to give up other aspects of sovereignty so that hostile, foreign, and private entities such as the IMF and the ECB could monitor its governmental actions.  The Greeks are now refusing to commit economic, political, and social suicide.  The Germans are demanding that they drive off the cliff because “a deal is a deal.”

If Greece were to drive off the cliff by adopting greater austerity it would likely destroy the EU.  Austerity would force Greece into a deepening depression, eventually lead to a default on Greek sovereign debt, and tear Greece apart.  Austerity has already generated a substantial neo-Nazi party in Greece.  Few Americans recall the Greek civil war between the right and the left that began in World War II and continued for several years after the war or the post-war coup.  Greeks recall the civil war and the coup and fear their resumption.  Proponents of the Berlin Consensus already have blood on their hands because of the suicides engendered by mass unemployment, small business failures, and hopelessness.  If the Berlin Consensus sparks a civil war or coup it could be fatal to the EU.

The EU crisis was also the topic of a heady discussion on this Sunday’s Up with Chris Hayes. Prof. Black was joined on the “Uppers” panel by Betsey Stevenson, former chief economist for the Obama Labor Department, Karl Smith, assistant professor of economics and government at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and MSNBC policy analyst Ezra Klein.

Mr Hayes’ assessment of the political situation in Greece was challenged by a commenter at his blog. Carol P Christ wrote with regards to the political and social responses to the crisis:

Since you are a member of the Progressive Left, you might reconsider calling Syriza the ‘far” Left in comparison to ‘far’ right Golden Dawn. There is no comparison between the 2. Syriza is a coaliton of parties to the left of centrist PASOk and to the “right” of KKE the Communist Party. You might be voting for them if you were in Greece, but you surely would NOT be voting for Golden Dawn. There is NO “comparison” between the 2. Continuing to compare the 2 parties makes it seem that all Greeks are irrational. There is nothing irrational about voting for Syriza. [..]

The “austerity” programs of the EU and banking systems have already destroyed our economy. To blame immigrants as Golden Dawn does is illogical. To ask voters to reject the terms of the second austerity package which is leading to massive unemployment and daily failures of small businesses is by no means irrational.

The Green Party is also against the austerity packages. And we are not “irrational” either.

The dualistic thinking of the west (ironically a legacy of Plato) leads to the demonization of the “other” as irrational. Unfortunately Greece has been portrayed as the “irrational” other within Europe for some time now.

Greece does need to change, but punishing the poor and middle classes is not a “rational” policy. [..]

Let me add that the European union and the Euro should not be confused. The Euro has only been in existence for 11 years. England with one of the largest economies in Europe is not a member of the Euro, nor is Sweden. They are still part of Europe and the European Union.

In Greece the Euro led to a massive rise in prices (a cup of coffee from $1 to $3-5, etc.) without a concomitant rise in wages. For example a tour bus driver makes E700 a month and a radiologist E1400, wages that are near poverty level in the US. depending on family size. Yet the cost of living is as high or higher than in the US, thanks to the price rises that the Euro brought. Gasoline is over $10 a gallon. Sales tax is 23%.

The European Union is a good thing, but the Euro was driven more by market forces and the desire to sell goods freely in Europe, than by a concern for world peace, the environmental protection, or any of the other good things the European Union is working on.

The Euro has not been a good thing for Greece, in my opinion.

(I have taken the liberty of posting most of Ms. Christ’s comments because I think they go straight to the heart of the misrepresentation that is taking place in the traditional news media.)

In another article at the New Economic Perspective, Prof. Black reports that the former head of the European Central Bank (ECB), Jean-Claude Trichet, thinks that by giving European politicians the power to declare a sovereign state bankrupt and take over its fiscal policy it would salvage the euro. To quote Prof. Black, “austerians have decided that since democracy is the problem, imperialism is the answer.”

Nor are fixing the problems of the euro a solution for the austerians:

Trichet, however, says that answer is impossible:  “For the European Union, a fully fledged United States of Europe where nation states cede a large chunk of fiscal authority to the federal government appears politically unpalatable, Trichet said.”  Democracy remains the stumbling block, but Trichet has an answer to that problem – crush democracy.  He proposes that the EU:

   “[T]ake a country into receivership when its political leaders or its parliament cannot implement sound budgetary policies approved by the EU. The action would have democratic accountability if it were approved by the European Council of EU heads of states and the elected European Parliament, he said.”

Of course, the “sound budgetary policies” he means are the suicidal, and failed policies of trying to balance the budget during a Great Recession.  He does not understand even now that a nation in a severe recession cannot simply decide to run a budget surplus.  It can try to do so, by cutting spending or raising taxes, but those policies are likely to reduce already sharply inadequate public and private sector demand, which increases unemployment, increases demand for public services, and reduces government revenue – all factors likely to increase the budget deficit.  I am sure that the Greeks will consider the loss of their sovereignty at the hands of hostile foreign powers who openly sneer at the Greek people to represent the epitome of “democratic accountability.”

And what was the reaction of Berlin to Trichet’s policy to force suicidal austerity on the Greeks and bleed their economy while removing their sovereignty and right to democratic rule?  You know the answer.

As Prof Black so aptly noted that that austerity is “a policy where you’re handed a gun and told to shoot yourself. Eventually people say, ‘Now exactly why should I do that?’. [..]

Whether Greece is the good or the bad, the policy is stupid.”

The United States is not Greece. It has its own sovereign currency and a bond market which it controls. We do not need to follow the EU and shoot ourselves with austerity.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

 The National Defense Authorization Act passed the House  a vote of 299 – 110. It passed without the bipartisan amendment that was proposed by Reps. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) and Justin Amash (R-Mich.)  which would have prohibited indefinite detention without due process . It failed by a vote of 243 – 173.  House Republicans piled on the fear factor with accusations that the amendment and its supporters were “soft on terrorist”. Adam Serwer recounts in his article in Mother Jones how Smith and Amash were accused of having “[collaborated on a nefarious plot to undermine national security”:

“Rep. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.) accused the lawmakers of wanting to “coddle terrorists,” while Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Tex.) warned that under an amendment they’d introduced, “as soon as a member of Al Qaeda sets foot on US soil, they hear you have the right to remain silent.” National Review’s Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor who has never heard of a same-sex marriage supporting, pro-financial regulation liberal who wasn’t secretly a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, wrote that their proposal was the result of “libertarian extremists” teaming up with liberals with an “obsession” with giving “more rights” to “mass murderers.” ”

We now know that there are 231 paranoid delusion Republicans in the House that no longer believe in the rule of law or the Constitution of the United States:

“As Smith pointed out during yesterday’s floor debate, the Fifth Amendment says no “person” shall be deprived of liberty without due process of law. It doesn’t say “citizen,” and the text of the Constitution uses both words enough that it’s clear the framers understood the difference. “Your beef is with James Madison,” Smith told Thornberry on Thursday. So keep in mind, when Republicans like Rooney say that Smith and Amash want to “coddle terrorists,” they’re not necessarily talking about some heavily armed Al Qaeda fighter in Kandahar. They’re potentially talking about you.”

Besides passing without the Smith/Amash amendment, the $642 billion bill breaks a deficit-cutting deal with President Barack Obama and restricts his authority in an election-year challenge to the Democratic commander in chief. The bill also calls for construction of a missile defense site on the East Coast that the military opposes, and bars reductions in the nation’s nuclear arsenal. Against the request of the Chamber of Commerce and business community, strong GOP allies, the Republicans passed an amendment limiting funds for institutions or organizations established by the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea:

“The chamber supports Senate ratification of the Law of the Sea Treaty “because it would provide clear legal rights and protections to American businesses to transit, lay undersea cables, and take advantage of the vast natural resources in and under the oceans off the U.S. coasts and around the world,” executive vice president R. Bruce Josten said in a statement. He noted that the Defense Department supports the treaty.

Tea party Republicans and other conservatives have expressed concerns about the treaty impinging on U.S. sovereignty.”

President Obama has threatened to veto this bill, not for the lack of the restriction on indefinite detention but mainly because of restrictions on the implementation of the New START treaty; limits on reductions for the U.S.’s nuclear arsenal; and new restrictions on the transfer of Guantanamo detainees. Moreover, the White House objected to the overall size of the bill, which surpasses President Obama’s request by $3.7 billion and exceeds the Budget Control Act spending caps by $8 billion. I’ll believe that when it happens.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Which European leader is serious about economic recovery?

Merkel gives self and ministers pay rise

Merkel, her ministers and their parliamentary secretaries of state will see their wages rise in three stages between now and August 2013, until they all get 5.7 percent more. It is the first pay raise that the German cabinet has taken in twelve years. [..]

She has been the chief advocate of austerity in the eurozone during the debt crisis, earning her criticism from some quarters, notably Greece and more recently France, whose new leader Francois Hollande wants to focus on growth.

As opposed to this:

France Hollande: Ayrault government takes pay cut

France’s new government has held its first cabinet meeting and announced a 30% pay cut for President François Hollande and all his ministers.

A campaign promise, the cut reduces Mr Hollande’s monthly salary from 21,300 euros to 14,910 (£12,000; $19,000).

The cut contrasts sharply with predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy’s decision to increase his pay on entering office.

Austerity?

H/t Chris in Paris @ AMERICAblog

Up host Chris Hayes outlines the prominent news stories of the week after Americans Elect’s third-party presidential candidate nomination process fell through despite the group’s $35 million budget.

Chris and his guests discussed a proposal created by Republican strategists, and commissioned by TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts, which calls for revived attacks on President Obama’s relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Also, Steve Coll, author of Private Empire: Exxon Mobil and American Power talked about corporate power, and Wisconsin State Senator Lena Taylor (@sentaylor) discussed the Wisconsin recall vote of Gov. Scott Walker. Plus, Chris’s Story of the Week focused on JP Morgan Chase’s reported $3 billion loss this quarter and the single “London Whale” trade that caused it.

Chris was also joined by Chrystia Freeland (@cafreeland), editor of Thomson Reuters Digital; Alexis Goldstein (@alexisgoldstein), Occupy Wall Street activist and former Wall Street information technologist; and Bhaskar Sunkara (@el_bhask), editor of Jacobin Magazine (@jacobinmag)

This is an Open Thread. Let us know what you now know.