TODAY'S TOPICS: Israel, Bin Laden Revelations, Chomsky, Greenwald, CA Prisons, Medicare, NY 26th, Deficits, Jobs, Maher

In honor of the revolting and overtly nauseating speech to Congress by Israeli war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu today I thought I'd share this "fake news" article by the Onion that perfectly encapsulates the sheer insanity of the way in which the US treats Israel, and anyone who EVER questions the veracity of their aparteid like treatment of the Palestinians. Enjoy:

Government Official Who Makes Perfectly Valid, Well-Reasoned Point Against Israel Forced To Resign

WASHINGTON—State Department diplomat Nelson Milstrand, who appeared on CNN last week and offered an informed, thoughtful analysis implying that Israel could perhaps exercise more restraint toward Palestinian moderates in disputed territories, was asked to resign Tuesday. “The United States deeply regrets any harm Mr. Milstrand’s careful, even-tempered, and factually accurate remarks may have caused our democratic partner in the Middle East,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in an unequivocal condemnation of the veteran foreign-service officer’s perfectly reasonable statements. “U.S. policy toward Israel continues to be one of unconditional support and fawning sycophancy.” Milstrand, 63, will reportedly appear at an AIPAC conference to offer a full apology as soon as his trial concludes and his divorce is finalized.

California's Prison Industrial Complex

You may have read the good news that the Supreme Court, by a 5-4 decision (Kennedy joined the 4 sane judges), upheld the appellate court ruling that essentially told California to "deal" with its over population problem in state prisons.

The reasoning is not hard to follow. Over the past 30 years (yes...this problem, like so many others, really took off with the Reagan Revolution), in addition to the rise of corporations, the attack on unions, the myth of "free trade", the all out assault on the New Deal/Great Society, tax cuts for the rich (from 74% to 35%), we also have enjoyed a MASSIVE transformation of our sentencing laws and expansion of our prison system.

In the past 30 years we've built 25 new prisons compares to only 3 CSU campuses and 1 new UC campus. This, despite the fact that the cost of building prisons and colleges is about the same...not to mention such important factoids like prison guards make more money than most professors and students at least pay for their room and board - unlike prisoners. Do I need to even mention that generally speaking, its pretty much an understood fact that educating people is preferable to jailing them?

Well, forget all that logic...these were the 80's, 90's and 00's...and the "tough on crime" dementia that became conventional wisdom. See, we were good at building prisons and passing tougher and tougher sentencing laws (i.e. mandatory minimums, 3 strikes,) but what we didn't plan to well for was how to pay for the costs of operating all those prisons. And as prisoners age, their health care needs increase, and you have to pay for those things too.

The result, as David Dayen notes, "On average, one prisoner died every week in California due to inadequate medical care. 160,000 prisoners were packed into jails built for 100,000 (the number is now down to around 147,000). Prisoners slept in common areas and gyms, on makeshift cots. The overcrowding severely restricted rehabilitation and treatment options, and as a result California has the highest incidence of recidivism in the nation. It also forced prison guards into extra duty and overtime work to manage volatile, overcrowded prisons, leading to front-page stories about overpaid corrections officers. But they weren’t really the problem. The overcrowding was."

As with SO MANY of the challenges our state and nation faces, the solutions really aren't that difficult, nor that complicated. One, we could start by legalizing marijuana - 47% of voters indicated their support for it by voting for Prop 19 last year. We could also help end the cycle of recidivism by actually funding parole and rehabilitation programs. Once someone leaves prison, it would make sense for them to not have to return. Investing in programs to get ex-cons back into society and ensure they stay out of trouble is smart - and it frees resources to ensure that parole officers can do a better job tracking people likely to reoffend. 

And of course, REPEAL 3 Strikes (unless violent) and mandatory minimums...and let judges and juries do their jobs. 

As for what will actually happen, California now must release 37,000 prisoners from state facilities...some may see the light of day, others will probably just be sent to county jails. Let's hope that won't be the end of it. Brown has an opportunity, as deficit hysteria reigns supreme, to use those concerns to actually implement structural reforms that will save money, improve lives, AND reduce crime.

More Bin Laden Revelations…

Wow...new information has just come to light that REALLY backs up some of my concerns...particularly regarding the extremely strange actions taken by the Bush Administration in response to him, both before 9/11 and after. Briefly, a September 2008 Department of Defense (DoD) inspector general (IG) report, summarizing an investigation made in response to an accusation by a Joint Forces Intelligence Command (JFIC) whistleblower, has indicated that a senior JFIC commander had halted actions tracking Osama bin Laden prior to 9/11. JFIC is tasked with an intelligence mission in support of United States Joint Force Command (USJFCOM).

The report, titled "Review of Joint Forces Intelligence Command Response to 9/11 Commission," was declassified last year, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from Steven Aftergood at the Federation of American Scientists.

According to the narrative in the IG report, a previous JFIC deputy director of intelligence said that the JFIC commander, identified elsewhere in the report as Capt. Janice Dundas, US Navy, "directed him to stop tracking Usama Bin Ladin. The Commanding Officer stated that the tracking of Usama Bin Ladin did not fall within JFIC's mission." At the same time, JFIC analysis of purported Afghanistan "terrorist training camps" was also curtailed, with an explanation that such activities were outside the agency's Area of Operations and "that the issues where [sic] not in JFIC's swim lane."

In addition, the informant's allegations also included charges that the JFIC and specifically DO5, had developed information that the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were the most likely domestic targets of an al-Qaeda attack. 

Gee...its almost as if they knew something was going to happen and intentionally allowed it...just saying...

Truth versus Fiction

"99 percent probably, acts of terrorism around the world...have occurred at the hands of Middle Eastern men who happen to be Muslim advocates of the Islam religion."
-- State Sen. Mike Fair (R-SC), 05/2011 

VERSUS

"In reality, in the last ten years alone, nearly twice as many terrorist plots were hatched by non-Muslim in America than by Muslims."
-- ThinkProgress, 5/18/11

Medicare, Social Security and Elections

I'm sure most of you guys have heard about the rather astonishing dead heat taking place in New York's 26th district today? We're talking about a district that goes Republican, overwhelmingly, every single election...and suddenly, a Democrat has a chance of taking that Congressional seat. The reason appears clear: The GOP has really screwed itself with a lot of seniors that normally vote Republican because of their efforts to end Medicare. 

To back this up, here's yet another poll demonstrating to Democrats to stand STRONG for Social Security too. The question: In order to reduce the national debt, would you support or oppose cutting spending on Social Security, which is the retirement program for the elderly?

Ohio: 16% support, 80% oppose
Missouri: 17% support, 76% oppose
Montana: 20% support, 76% oppose
Minnesota: 23% support, 72% oppose

As the GOP is apt to do, they have, once again, overreached, and now are paying the price. But, before we start popping champagne, we must remember to avoid getting sucked into the Matrix's Dem v. Republican frame...in which, we celebrate when Democrats win, and lament when the GOP does. That's not to say I'm not ecstatic everytime a Republican loses, particularly when its due to voters seeing through the attacks on New Deal/Great Society programs. These are important factors to be sure, particularly in light of the overwhelming, non stop propaganda campaigns against these programs. In fact, you can't watch the corporate news without so called reporters talking about the "need" to cut these programs and the "courage" it takes to do so. I guess my definition of courageous isn't giving tax cuts to the rich to take health care away from seniors, but that's just me I guess. 

At any rate, what is FAR MORE important than just this race, or just whether people see through Ryan's proposals to end Medicare, its about whether the President and the Democratic leadership will seek to "meet them in the middle", and cut those programs AT ALL!! Remember, we must take the long view, and look at trendlines...if you do that, the fact is the GOP has made major progress and strides by getting a DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENT to keep talking about the need to "reform entitlements' (aka "cut"). So forgive me if I don't dance a jig because we don't appear ready to end Medicare...what I'll be watching is whether the GOP has tricked the Dems again by going so extreme that "moderate" is now cutting those programs, but not ending them. We not only CAN'T allow any cuts, we should be arguing for expansion of each.

Let's remember that every other industrialized country in the entire world not only provides health care for its seniors, but health care for everyone. Yet, here we are, "debating" with Republicans whether we can afford health care for our seniors? We’ve got 40,000 Americans under the age of 65 who die every year, because they can't afford to see a doctor when they're sick. And now they want to extend that to the most infirmed, most victimized, sickest part of the population, our senior citizens, so that more will die.

Just look at the Ryan plan…it calls for $3 trillion in individual and corporate tax cuts over the next decade, all of which are to be offset by the elimination of tax deductions, except Ryan does not identify a single tax deduction that he wants to eliminate. While Ryan will be touting his plan for adding another $3 trillion to the debt with more tax cuts for the wealthy, and increasing the cost of Medicare to the American people by $34 trillion. Can you imagine the cost to seniors to be thrown out on the open health insurance market? Hell, we don't even know they would cover seniors due to the pathetically small penalties they might incur for denying consumers coverage due to pre-existing conditions. Again, what is astounding is that we're even having this discussion...what's the next debate we're going to have??? Whether tran fats are healthier than vegetables?

Let's remember what this is ALL really about: corporations seeking cheap labor....and that makes the senior citizens particularly vulnerable to their plans, because the senior citizens don't work. So from the perspective of the owners of this country, they're useless. As Alan Grayson noted, "But senior citizens still do vote and they voted in huge numbers in the last election, because the Republicans lied to them, and they told them that the Democrats wanted to take away their Medicare. Now they see that the Democrats are the only ones protecting their Medicare, and Republicans are out to destroy it. 

There’s a reason why we call Medicare “an entitlement.” It’s because you're entitled to it. It’s not Medicare any more if you are not entitled to it any more. They want to take away the privilege of Medicare. They want to take away the right to Medicare, and replace it with a piece of paper they know will not be enough to cover the costs of care. And that’s how malevolent they really are."

Deficits...and Jobs

What is especially absurd about trying to balance the deficit by cutting Medicare is that its the economic crisis that was caused by the collapse of the housing bubble that is the main reason that we have large deficits today. In fact, what led to the surpluses in the 90's wasn't just Clinton's tax increases on the wealthy, in fact, that was a secondary reason. The PRIMARY reason the budget went from deficit to surplus in the '90s was the unexpected drop to 4 percent unemployment at the end of the decade.

In other words, we SOLVE THE DEFICIT BY INVESTING IN JOBS! That's where you get the tax revenue. Here's the evidence: Our nation has seven million fewer jobs today than it did when the Great Recession began in December 2007, "by far the worst performance of job generation following any of the dozen recessions since the 1930s," USA Today reports. That's a lot of taxpayers we don't have anymore.

One of the few honest assessments of the current jobs market was offered by Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute:

At this point, coming out of a recession this deep, we should be getting unambiguously huge growth, of 300,000 to 400,000 [new jobs] a month,” said Heidi Shierholz, a labor economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “And it’s just nowhere near that.” She concluded: “We’re still in a rocky place.”

The job market is admittedly improving for some, but it’s not improving quickly enough for millions of jobless, especially the long-term unemployed. In April, the ranks of the unemployed who have been out of work for 99 weeks or more increased by 21,000 to a record 1,920,000. That equates to 14.5% of all unemployed.Other long-term unemployed fared a little better in April compared to March. Those out of work for 26 weeks or more decreased from 5.839 million from 6.122 million in March. But their percentage of the overall unemployment rate remained elevated at a near record level of 43.2%. The percentage of those out of work for more and 52 weeks increased from 31.5% to 32.8% of all unemployed.

As Dean Baker notes, "The Congress, the Obama administration and most media outlets are silent about long-term unemployment. How do they reconcile the fact that 244,000 jobs were created, but 21,000 additional workers have been unemployed for more than 99 weeks? How do they put on a happy face when a near record 5.893 million or 43.2% of all unemployed workers have been jobless for more than 26 weeks? How do they rationalize their cheerful statements of job improvements with the facts that job creation is very weak considering the trillions of dollars pumped into the economy to support Wall Street and fund tax breaks? 

How do they high-five the economic recovery when the labor force participation rate — the share of people over age 16 who are either working or actively seeking work — is at a low rate of 64.2%, a rate not seen since 1985? They can’t. They generally ignore the issue; long-term unemployment is the elephant in the economic recovery room."

The Phantom Menace: GOP'S Attack on Democracy

This is a depressing topic, but I think you all must be made aware of it. I've talked a lot in the past about the difference between the ACTUAL threat of election fraud (yes, it still exists), versus the PHONY threat of voter fraud. The voter fraud (as if our nation's problem is people want to vote more than once, rather than not at all) red herring is actually a method utilized by the GOP to justify making it HARDER for poor and minorities to vote (the democratic base). A brilliant strategy...and horrifically evil. This is why ACORN had to be taken out...they registered so many such voters.

So, the Center for American Progress has detailed this GOP campaign, state by state:

At a time when states are struggling to close record budget deficits and grappling with important issues on everything from education to health care, Republican-led state legislatures across the country have fixated on a problem that doesn't exist, but is politically advantageous: voter fraud. Although voter fraud is exceptionally rare and, when it does occur, is usually the result of confusion rather than malicious intent, Republicans have used the crisis atmosphere to advance laws that require voters to present certain approved forms of identification before they can cast their ballots. In this legislative session, at least thirty-seven state legislatures are considering or have considered voter ID or proof of citizenship legislation. 

As ThinkProgress has documented, these laws disenfranchise millions of voters and disproportionately affect key progressive constituencies, including seniors, college students, minorities, and low-income voters. Although voter ID laws cost states millions to implement, Republican governors and state legislatures have often pushed them through as "emergency measures" that demand expedited consideration for the sake of the budget. As Campus Progress first reported, the original prototype bill for voter ID legislation was drafted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a conservative organization linked to the billionaire Koch brothers. In the run up to the 2012 election, these bills have a clear partisan intent and are predicted to depress voter turnout, in addition to robbing millions of citizens of their fundamental right to have a voice in the democratic process.

A SOLUTION IN SEARCH OF A PROBLEM: The allegation of widespread voter fraud is, of course, a Republican myth. During the George W. Bush administration, the Justice Department launched an exhaustive investigation of voter fraud – and turned up only 38 cases nationwide between October 2002 and September 2005, of which only 13 resulted in convictions. In 2007, New York University's Brennan Center for Justice researched Republican charges of voter fraud and found that, "It is more likely that an individual will be struck by lightning than that he will impersonate another voter at the polls." One article in a South Carolina paper astutely called voter fraud "the phantom menace" and "a non-existent threat." Yet to hear Republicans tell the tale, voter fraud is a massive epidemic so threatening to our democracy that it's necessary to disenfranchise millions of Americans in order to secure the "integrity of the ballot box." Of course, making it more difficult for minorities, college students, the elderly, and the poor to vote does precisely the opposite -- it weakens our democracy, depressing turnout and making election results less representative of the people's will. In short, the only fraud being perpetrated is the allegation of voter fraud.

LOCKING THE BALLOT BOX:  Yesterday, South Carolina became the tenth state to adopt voter identification legislation. Texas will likely become the eleventh this week or next when Gov. Rick Perry (R) signs the bill presented to him on Monday. Earlier this month, the Florida legislature passed a "sweeping rewrite" of state election law at "head-spinning speed." Governor Rick Scott (R) is expected to approve the legislation when it reaches his desk. Facing an unprecedented recall effort, Wisconsin Republican have been trying to hustle through their own voter ID bill that will go into effect immediately – a clear sign they are scared of the upcoming elections. 

The speed at which the state's bill is advancing has alarmed the board that overseas elections, whose director commented, "There has been no time for the careful evaluation and vetting needed to ensure the best options for voters and election officials is enacted." And even though New Hampshire's voter ID bill has not yet become state law, illegal signs have appeared at some polling stations demanding voters show ID before they vote. While dramatically restricting access to the ballot box through ID requirements, Republicans have also successfully limited or prohibited early voting and other provisions intended to make it easier for the most vulnerable citizens to vote. In Florida, a state that implemented early voting as a reform to "prevent embarrassments like the 2000 election," the voter ID bill under consideration would cut the time for early voting from fourteen days to eight.  

In South Carolina, Gov. Haley and her Republican allies insisted on a "clean" version of the bill that would not allow early voting. One publication noted that passing a voter ID bill without early voting demonstrates a clear "partisan bias." On Tuesday, Senate Democrats  in Wisconsin spent nine hours proposing amendments to the voter ID bill, including an amendment to ensure the disabled community's ability to vote absentee. Republicans shot down every motion. While these measures will be disastrous for minority voting rights, they've already been good for some political careers. A South Carolina Republican was named "Legislator of the Year" for his relentless efforts over three years to pass voter ID legislation.

VIDEO SECTION

Bill Maher's latest New Rules segment...

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/bill-maher-face-ripper-monkey-2012

ARTICLE SECTION

Obama and the Israel Lobby, By Glenn Greenwal

A FEW CLIPS:

This week's hysterical, reality-deprived reaction to President Obama's pronouncements on the Israel/Palestine conflict genuinely provoked laughter on several occasions.  That happened when I thought of the intense controversy triggered by publication of Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer's The Israel Lobby, which examined the "loose coalition of individuals and organizations who actively work to steer U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction," a coalition driven by "a core consisting of organizations whose declared purpose is to encourage the U.S. government and the American public to provide material aid to Israel and to support its government's policies, as well as influential individuals for whom these goals are also a top priority."  This week's events underscore how remarkable it is that that book's argument was demonized as some sort of radical, hateful conspiracy tract rather than treated as what it was: a statement of the bleeding obvious (albeit a brave one, given that discussions of that reality had previously been taboo).  

SNIP

This is one area where I think President Obama deserves support and some modest credit.  From the start of his administration -- from appointing George Mitchell as his envoy to  demanding a settlement freeze in the West Bank -- the White House has appeared to recognize that tongue-wagging subservience to the Israeli Government is a counter-productive policy.  Of course, the movement away from such blind support has been extremely slow and cautious -- Obama was silent in the wake of the attack on Gaza, supportive after the flotilla assault, and recently vetoed a thoroughly uncontroversial U.N. Resolution calling for a settlement freeze -- but there have been signs of a genuine desire to push the Israelis in a direction they plainly do not want to go.

I don't believe Obama is guided in these efforts by any principled concern or moral empathy for the plight of Palestinians or the injustice of the 45-year-old occupation; it seems clear that he isn't ever driven by considerations of that sort.  But what he is, at least compared to the prior President, is a competent technocrat, a more calculating imperial manager, able to rationally assess costs and benefits with a ruthless analytical stoicism.  And Obama has been surrounded by top advisers -- such as Gen. James Jones and David Petraeus -- who clearly recognize, and have publicly said, that the festering Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and the (obviously accurate) perception in the Muslim world that the U.S. enables Israel, is harmful in numerous ways to U.S. interests in the region.  Especially with largely anti-Israel Arab public opinion starting to supplant easily manipulated, U.S.-serving Arab tyrants, it is vital -- for what the U.S. government perceives to be its interests in the region -- that Israel reach a peace agreement, and that in turn requires that the U.S. use its leverage to pressure Israel to do things it plainly does not want to do.

What made this last week significant is that it underscores how politically difficult such an undertaking is for any American President: precisely because of the obsessive, relentless Israel Lobby that Walt and Mearsheimer invented in their conspiratorial, bigoted heads.  If even the tiniest step provokes the backlash that we saw this week, imagine the domestic political upheaval which a true effort would engender. 

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/05/22/israel/index.html

Osama bin Laden’s Death: There is Much More to Say, by Noam Chomsky

A FEW CLIPS:

It might be instructive to ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush's compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic (after proper burial rites, of course). Uncontroversially, he is not a “suspect” but the “decider” who gave the orders to invade Iraq -- that is, to commit the “supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole” (quoting the Nuremberg Tribunal) for which Nazi criminals were hanged: in Iraq, the hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, destruction of much of the country and the national heritage, and the murderous sectarian conflict that has now spread to the rest of the region. Equally uncontroversially, these crimes vastly exceed anything attributed to bin Laden.

To say that all of this is uncontroversial, as it is, is not to imply that it is not denied. The existence of flat earthers does not change the fact that, uncontroversially, the earth is not flat. Similarly, it is uncontroversial that Stalin and Hitler were responsible for horrendous crimes, though loyalists deny it. All of this should, again, be too obvious for comment, and would be, except in an atmosphere of hysteria so extreme that it blocks rational thought.

Similarly, it is uncontroversial that Bush and associates did commit the “supreme international crime,” the crime of aggression, at least if we take the Nuremberg Tribunal seriously. The crime of aggression was defined clearly enough by Justice Robert Jackson, Chief of Counsel for the United States at Nuremberg, reiterated in an authoritative General Assembly resolution. An “aggressor,” Jackson proposed to the Tribunal in his opening statement, is a state that is the first to commit such actions as “Invasion of its armed forces, with or without a declaration of war, of the territory of another State….” No one, even the most extreme supporter of the aggression, denies that Bush and associates did just that.

SNIP

It is also worth thinking about the name given to the operation: Operation Geronimo. The imperial mentality is so profound that few seem able to perceive that the White House is glorifying bin Laden by calling him “Geronimo” -- the leader of courageous resistance to the invaders who sought to consign his people to the fate of “that hapless race of native Americans, which we are exterminating with such merciless and perfidious cruelty, among the heinous sins of this nation, for which I believe God will one day bring [it] to judgement,” in the words of the great grand strategist John Quincy Adams, the intellectual architect of manifest destiny, long after his own contributions to these sins had passed. Some did comprehend, not surprisingly. The remnants of that hapless race protested vigorously. Choice of the name is reminiscent of the ease with which we name our murder weapons after victims of our crimes: Apache, Blackhawk. Tomahawk,…  We might react differently if the Luftwaffe were to call its fighter planes "Jew" and "Gypsy".

The examples mentioned would fall under the category “American exceptionalism,” were it not for the fact that easy suppression of one’s own crimes is virtually ubiquitous among powerful states, at least those that are not defeated and forced to acknowledge reality. Other current illustrations are too numerous to mention. To take just one, of great current significance, consider Obama’s terror weapons (drones) in Pakistan. Suppose that during the 1980s, when they were occupying Afghanistan, the Russians had carried out targeted assassinations in Pakistan aimed at those who were financing, arming and training the insurgents – quite proudly and openly. For example, targeting the CIA station chief in Islamabad, who explained that he “loved” the “noble goal” of his mission: to “kill Soviet Soldiers…not to liberate Afghanistan.” There is no need to imagine the reaction, but there is a crucial distinction: that was them, this is us.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/05/21-4