Category: Issues of the Day

“WASHINGTON — The First Amendment protects hateful protests at military funerals, the Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday in an 8-1 decision.”

NYTimes.com

A worse line would be if the Court ruled against the First Amendment, but still . . .

Timothy Noah writes about Saudi Arabia:

No public criticism is permitted of the country’s monarchical rule, there is no penal code, and women are not permitted to drive. A continuing system of male guardianship prevents women from traveling overseas, undergoing certain kinds of surgery, and appearing in a government office without first receiving the consent of a male family member. Male guardians have complete freedom to rape or otherwise physically abuse their female charges; domestic violence is not illegal. Religious freedom is virtually nonexistent.

Do you think more freedom would be good in Saudi Arabia? Are you willing to pay for it at the pump? How much? $4 a gallon? $5? $6? $10?

Last year, the government deported 393,000 people, at a cost of $5 billion. Since 2007, felony immigration prosecutions along the Mexican border have surged 77 percent; nonfelony prosecutions by 259 percent. In Ohio last month, a single mother was caught lying about where she lived to put her kids into a better school district; the judge in the case tried to sentence her to 10 days in jail for fraud, declaring that letting her go free would “demean the seriousness” of the offenses.

So there you have it. Illegal immigrants: 393,000. Lying moms: one. Bankers: zero. The math makes sense only because the politics are so obvious. You want to win elections, you bang on the jailable class. You build prisons and fill them with people for selling dime bags and stealing CD players. But for stealing a billion dollars? For fraud that puts a million people into foreclosure? Pass. It’s not a crime. Prison is too harsh. Get them to say they’re sorry, and move on. Oh, wait — let’s not even make them say they’re sorry. That’s too mean; let’s just give them a piece of paper with a government stamp on it, officially clearing them of the need to apologize, and make them pay a fine instead. But don’t make them pay it out of their own pockets, and don’t ask them to give back the money they stole. In fact, let them profit from their collective crimes, to the tune of a record $135 billion in pay and benefits last year. What’s next? Taxpayer-funded massages for every Wall Street executive guilty of fraud?

Above from a provocative piece from Matt Taibbi — Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail. Fascinating.

Not one spokesman for a labor union present on the Sunday morning talk shows to discuss the situation in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin’s Democratic state senators went into hiding to deprive the Republican majority of the quorum they need to pass Walker’s agenda. The Senate majority leader, Scott Fitzgerald — who happens to be the brother of the Assembly speaker, Jeff Fitzgerald — believes the governor is absolutely right about the need for draconian measures to cut spending in this crisis. So he’s been sending state troopers out to look for the missing Democrats.

The troopers are under the direction of the new chief of the state patrol, Stephen Fitzgerald. He is the 68-year-old father of Jeff and Scott and was appointed to the $105,678 post this month by Governor Walker.

From Gail Collins.

“There are three things you need to know about the current budget debate. First, it’s essentially fraudulent. Second, most people posing as deficit hawks are faking it. Third, while President Obama hasn’t fully avoided the fraudulence, he’s less bad than his opponents — and he deserves much more credit for fiscal responsibility than he’s getting.”

So Paul Krugman begins Willie Sutton Wept, his 787-word column today.

You should read it, if only to irritate a certain member of this blog’s commentariat.

Us.

• 44% of Social Security recipients don’t know that it is a government program
• 40% of Medicare recipients don’t know that it is a government program
• 43% of Pell Grant recipients don’t know that it is a government program
• 43% of unemployment insurance recipients don’t know that it is a government program
• 42% of veterans benefits recipients don’t know that it is a government program
• 25% of food stamp recipients don’t know that it is a government program
• 53% of student loan recipients don’t know that it is a government program
• 60% of those taking the mortgage income tax deduction don’t know that it is a government program

Keep Your Government Hands Off My Government Programs!

“One of the more visceral details of the account involves the late Judge John M. Roll who died while apparently saving the life of Ronald Barber, a Giffords staffer. After Loughner shot Barber, Judge Roll grabs the injured man and attempts to guide him to safety while shielding Barber with his own body.”

Salon.com

It’s an atrocity.

There’s a difference.

President Harry S. Truman, in his State of the Union Address:

We must spare no effort to raise the general level of health in this country. In a nation as rich as ours, it is a shocking fact that tens of millions lack adequate medical care. We are short of doctors, hospitals, nurses. We must remedy these shortages. Moreover, we need–and we must have without further delay–a system of prepaid medical insurance which will enable every American to afford good medical care.

• Federal taxes are the lowest in 60 years, which gives you a pretty good idea of why America’s long-term debt ratios are a big problem. If the taxes reverted to somewhere near their historical mean, the problem would be solved at a stroke.
• Income taxes, in particular, both personal and corporate, are low and falling. That trend is not sustainable.
• Employment taxes, by contrast—the regressive bit of the fiscal structure—are bearing a large and increasing share of the brunt. Any time that somebody starts complaining about how the poor don’t pay income tax, point them to this chart. Income taxes are just one part of the pie, and everybody with a job pays employment taxes.
• There aren’t any wealth taxes, but the closest thing we’ve got—estate and gift taxes—have shrunk to zero, after contributing a non-negligible amount to the public fisc in earlier decades

Felix Salmon

He’s got a chart.

“McCain’s like one of them Japanese soldiers living on Okinawa in 1949, still fighting ’cause he doesn’t realize the war ended a long time ago.”

The man is an embarrassment to himself and the nation.

Excerpt from a good essay about Don’t Ask Don’t Tell at Salon.com:

Muller, a native of the Franklin County town of Ozark (pop. 3,500), spent parts of two years in Afghanistan as a bomb technician, disabling booby traps and IEDs before a superior officer’s implacable hostility to the “open secret” of his homosexuality led to his honorable discharge.

If there’s a more critical or dangerous job in today’s Army than defusing bombs, it’s hard to think what it might be. The fact that he’s still alive is all the testimony one needs to Muller’s skill and courage. For the nation to lose his services on account of an irrational prejudice is simply a damn shame. There’s really not a whole lot more to say about it.

Excerpt from a long rant by Mark Morford —

See, we’ve been going about this invasion-of-privacy thing all wrong. From Bush’s illegal wiretapping to Facebook’s wily account settings, the panic over personal privacy has been, until now, mostly about data — your home address, credit card number, PIN, SMS chats, your filthy lawn appearing on Google street views, that sort of thing. It’s all vague and rather abstract; we can’t actually feel anything.

But this is different. This is literal. Nothing, apparently, sets us off more than some unhappy TSA worker — an increasingly unenviable job, you gotta admit — yanking you out of line and giving you the delightful option of getting your entire body X-rayed from ass to nipple, or being groped all over in case you might be carrying something explosive in your pants.

Is that not amazing, by the way? That a solitary “Christmas underwear bomber” has now changed the complexion of the entire country and inconvenienced tens of millions with a single failed attempt? Yes, all this groping is because of one guy, and he’s not even Justin Bieber. How incredible is that? Who says an individual can’t make a difference? Who says the terrorists haven’t already won?

You will remember it was also one single failed attempt that causes us all to remove our shoes.