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Fix the Debt Q&A didn't turn out the way they expected. The astroturf faux populist group formed by the Catfood Committee and a group of CEOs and billionaires reached out to the actual populace and were exposed, and hilarity ensued. It ramped up again yesterday when somebody created another Twitter account @FixtheDebtQA. It's not clear to me whether it was created within or outside the Fix the Debt organization, in an attempt to cleverly save face, but what it did do was to reignite the party. There are a couple Storify things set up but to see it all for yourself, search the hashtag #FixtheDebtQA.
I'll add a few selections for your enjoyment but go see them all if you can. I have a feeling that this war is not over either. And one rather refreshing thing about this Grand Bargain mess is that instead of Obama and the billionaires wearing people down with their relentless, repetitive attempts at it, the people seem even more angry and willing to figh back even more strongly each time, and without the feckless poppinjay grassroots Left who are still caught in the veal pen, apparently, and not organizing anything against cuts to Social Security and Medicare, or at least nothing significant that I can see.
'Fix the Debt' reaches out on Twitter, gets massively trolled
To the chronicles of misbegotten corporate adventures with social media, we can add a new, sterling event.
The anti-deficit lobbying organization "Fix the Debt" staged a question-and-answer chat on Twitter Thursday. Its goal presumably was to reach America's smartphone-savvy youth with its message that Social Security and Medicare payments to their grandparents are going to land them in the poorhouse a few decades from now.
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A couple of good roundups of the dialogue thus far can be found at the Washington Post's knowmore site and at Liberaland.
Bernie Sanders did an interview with Playboy.
PLAYBOY INTERVIEW: BERNIE SANDERS
PLAYBOY: How do you think the U.S. should view and engage China?
SANDERS: We should do everything we can to avoid a hugely expensive cold war with China similar to what we had with the Soviet Union. We should also do our best, in a respectful way, to support those elements in China fighting for a democratic society. But I vigorously opposed the permanent normal trade relations agreement with China that was pushed by corporate America and supported by many Democrats as well as Republicans. The motive for that agreement was to shut down plants in this country and take advantage of cheap labor in China.
PLAYBOY: You complained recently about ExxonMobil, “They had a bad year in 2009. They only made $19 billion in profit, and they paid nothing in federal income taxes, but they got a $156 million refund from the IRS.”
SANDERS: Bank of America operated 200 subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands. In 2010 it got a $1.9 billion rebate from the IRS. There’s a list of about 15 companies that paid nothing, or very little, in taxes. Many of these institutions—Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase—were actually bailed out by the American people. They were wonderful, proud American companies when they came for their welfare checks from the American people. After the bailout, they suddenly love the Cayman Islands and are parking all their money there. The next time they go broke, they can go to the Cayman Islands for a bailout, not the American people. There’s an estimate out there that we’re losing about $100 billion a year because companies are taking advantage of the tax havens in the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and so on—$100 billion a year!
PLAYBOY: That’s a sizable pile of cash.
SANDERS: Today one out of four major profitable corporations pays zero in federal income taxes. Got that? Today, what corporations are paying into the U.S. Treasury, as a percentage of GDP, is lower than in any other major country on earth. You would think that before you cut health care, education, nutrition or Social Security, you might want to take a hard look at that issue. I mean, am I missing something here?
This is good news.
Sanders Appointed to Budget Conference Committee
The Senate budget protects Medicare while the House version would end Medicare as we know it by providing coupons for private health insurance. Unlike the House budget, the Senate resolution does not repeal the Affordable Care Act, which would prevent more than 20 million Americans from getting health insurance. The House version would eliminate grants for up to 1 million college students while the Senate plan protects Pell grants. The House version would kick up to 24 million Americans off of Medicaid while the Senate budget would protect their benefits. The Senate budget calls for new revenue while the House version would provide trillions of dollars in tax breaks mainly for the wealthiest Americans and profitable corporations offset by increased taxes on the middle class.
The conference committee includes 14 Democrats, 14 Republicans and two independent senators who caucus with Democrats: Sanders and Sen. Angus King (I-Maine).
It wasn't just the fact that the election was held on a Wednesday. There's not much enthusiasm for this candidate. Every possible advantage was given to him. He had piles of money from Wall Street and the 1%, from day one, in the primary. The primary was held very quickly so that the others had little time to build name recognition. The election was held before the general, when Republicans had more motivation to go vote for a statewide election and Christie was afraid of bringing too many Democrats to the polls on his election day. Nevermind that that state is in terrible financial shape and that if not for the Sandy disaster, Christie's failings would have been front and center. Nevermind that it cost the state many millions to hold a separate election, just a few weeks before Christie's election, even though there are 400K people out of work in New Jersey. Christie's budget slashing habits hurt the economy but he's selective about what is important enough to spend money on. There have been elected officials waiting for many years to run for that seat but they were expected to step aside, which will leave a lot of resentment. And it wasn't because Booker had a better chance of keeping the seat for the Democrats. New Jersey hasn't elected a Republican senator since 1972, so a potted plant with a D next to its name was likely to be elected, even without the elaborate advantages that Chris Christie set up for his friend Cory.
But in a primary, Booker had the statewide name recognition and the money early on, so he stepped in and took it from the likes of Rush Holt, a brilliant scientist from Princeton and Frank Pallone, not a favorite of mine, a party machine guy, but who seems to be well loved by his constituents and who has stepped aside more than once for the party when a seat became available. Then you have Rob Andrews, who has been lusting after that seat for more than a decade but that's a long story and he'd be Wall Street's man in Washington too, and the MIC's man too.
That 24% is 24% of registered voters. It's a record low for New Jersey. And Christie just took at least $12 million away from the many people in the state who are hurting right now (we're setting records for that too) in order to make a separate election 20 days before the general. No corruption there! I hope it will cost him in November but Mother Nature kind of decided to reelect him for us and the Dems didn't go all out for our candidate and pretty much conceded that race a year ago, IMHO, though she's a nice woman and would probably make a good governor. It's hard for me to know, since the big party Dems like to pretend that the better half of the state in South Jersey doesn't exist.
New Jersey Senate election turnout was 24%
Choosing Wednesday as an election day was considered confusing since the USA traditionally votes on Tuesdays.
TRENTON, N.J. — A record-low turnout in New Jersey's special election for U.S. Senate is creating heat for Gov. Chris Christie, who scheduled the vote on a Wednesday 20 days before the general election.
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Critics said this week's special election increased the state's election costs by $12 million and that the date Christie picked, which was not a traditional Tuesday election day, suppressed votes.
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Unofficial election results released Thursday show Booker winning with 55% of 1.3 million votes to Lonegan's 44%; six other candidates took the remainder of the vote. Almost 5.5 million were registered to vote in the election.
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Christie hasn't been available for an open press conference in a month. Monmouth University polling director Patrick Murray said the governor wouldn't be able to fend off questions on the election scheduling.
Here's the spin. Disappointing that Charles Blow turns this into something like watching a movie or a series of sporting events. I guess it's a lot more interesting to his readers than the details of what crucial programs are being slated for cuts, economic hits this country is taking due to the warrior president's obsession with austerity, his accomplishment of record inequality, etc. It's much more exciting for him to remain in his own 1% bubble and fantasize about his Sun Tzu president. And notice that everyone wants to talk about the glory and patriotism and civil rights victory of the immigration bill and no one wants to talk about the huge amount of $$ in it for the defense contractors, the concession to even more militarization of the border, the explosive increase in H1B visas which are abusive to everyone involved except the giant, wealthy corporations who lobby with their big $ in Washington for them. Imagine how things would be if they'd spend those lobbying $ on decent jobs instead of on buying Congress.
The President’s Pivot
“Thus it is that in war the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory.”
That quote, from Sun Tzu’s ancient Chinese treatise “The Art of War,” perfectly captures President Obama’s strategic victory over Tea Party members of Congress on the government shutdown and the debt ceiling debate. It also explains his immediate pivot to another topic that Tea Partyers hate and over which their obstinacy is likely to get the party hammered again: comprehensive immigration reform.
This is a brilliant tactical move on the president’s part. And Republicans know it.
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They have been blinded by that anger. The president knows that. And he knows that blind soldiers don’t often win battles. In choosing to pivot to immigration reform, he has created a win-win scenario for himself and the Democrats. Clever, clever.
Hollywood Reporter blames the failure of "The Fifth Estate" on a lack of interest in Wikileaks and/or Assange. It's hard to know why it's bombing but here's another loss for the Ministry of Propaganda. This time they really went all out with the big name stars. I thought the movie would do well just because of the names, though to be fair, they are names that are better known among the PBS Masterpiece Theater set than across a broader audience. Even so, that's a pretty big and influential audience if you take "Downton Abbey" into consideration. We'll see what the film critics do with it after they went all out for the CIA's baby, "Zero Dark Thirty" and got burned. I'd think they'd be a bit hesitant this time, but film critics are a breed all their own.
It's interesting that Hollywood Reporter doesn't take into consideration at all that the film was well known long before it made it to theaters among a pretty large set, generally younger and/or more plugged in to the tech world, and I don't really know how to categorize the set of people who follow these things. Geeks? Dissidents? Civil libertarians? I don't know but I think the younger generations tend to be more for than against this set whether they are actually fond of Assange or not, and many are not particularly fond of the man but are able to separate the man from the cause. That group of people knew ahead of time that "The Fifth Estate" was a hit piece, a propaganda piece most likely influenced by the Ministry of Propaganda, with a goal of souring a wider public opinion leading up to the government's planned prosecution of Assange. And even more so than "Zero Dark Thirty" or "Argo" it depicts a historical event in a very skewed way. According to Assange, it rewrites history and places Daniel Domscheit-Berg in places and situations in which he had no involvement and even more so Berg's girlfriend. Anyway, I think it's too early to say that the movie is bombing since it just came out but I'm glad to see that, despite the big names, and the huge studios, it's clearly not a box office hit. We'll see if the Academy does a bunch of nominations again, like it did with ZDT. That didn't work out so well either.
Box Office: WikiLeaks Pic 'The Fifth Estate' Bombing Friday
Prospects are grim for Bill Condon's The Fifth Estate, which is doing dismal business at the Friday box office and may not cross $4 million in its North American debut.
From DreamWorks and Participant Media, the movie stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Julian Assange, the controversial founder of WikiLeaks. Insiders close to the project concede that Americans may have little interest in WikiLeaks or its founder.
"The filmmakers were actually, in a way, servicing American foreign policy interests in a rather direct way." The same man, who knows Domscheit-Berg personally, says some pretty interesting things about him. I find myself drawing some parallels between him and Adrian Lamo.
What do Julian Assange's Friends think about The Fifth Estate?
The Fifth Estate (2013) - Insider Access [HD]
The Real Problem
Why is it that I think, when the president was decrying the effect of professional activists who profit from conflict, he probably wasn't talking about these eternal grifters? ...
Fix the Debt, the organization that took flight last year from the very deep pockets of octagenarian Blackstone co-founder Pete Peterson, held an afternoon event at the National Press Club to remind everyone that, crisis averted, the real problem in this country remained our crushing long-term debt. You might think that the fiasco of the past few weeks would have prompted some soul-searching within the organization - after all, its well-broadcast doomsday warnings of a nation drowning in red ink have only helped to feed conservative Republican fury about out of control spending, even as budget deficits steadily decline and the long-term fiscal picture brightens. It is that fury that, as much as anything, drove the brinksmanship over the government shutdown and debt ceiling, but Fix the Debt officials spoke as if they have had no role in bringing us to this point - as if, to the contrary, we arrived at this point precisely because we were not listening to them.
...
This is the real threat to the recovery right here. Not partisan bickering. Not the temporizing in the deal cut last night. Not even Ted Cruz and the members of the monkeyhouse on the other side of the Capitol. It is this permanent class of deficit fetishists and austerian fantasts. These are the people who will wreck lives. These are people who get heard in the White House instead of being told to go pound sand until we elect Paul Ryan to be president. Every time the president mentons the deficit, these guys get their semi-annual woodies and a little bit of actual progressive politics dies again. These are the people whose credentials really should have been revoked last night, if there actually was the kind of Democratic triumph that we're being sold today. Pete Peterson must have bought Purina short. I am so dreading that conference committee.
The GOP Has Surrendered for Now -- But It Will Try More Extortion Soon and Dems Have to be Strong
[I]t’s a mistake for Democrats, liberals especially, to celebrate this deal – because we can still lose.
Let’s be clear: Republicans got something for their bad behavior: tougher income verification requirements for Affordable Care Act subsidies, and a shorter debt-ceiling hike than Democrats said they wanted. And Republicans gave…nothing. They merely did their jobs and reopened the government and averted a global economic disaster. They put down the gun, and they released the hostage. That’s all.
They’re also getting a promise of formal negotiations over the budget. Now that should happen anyway, so that’s not a big deal. But Democrats have spent the last month on GOP turf: conceding that they must talk about deficit reduction, with pious nods to Saints Simpson and Bowles and now, yuck, Blessed Leon Panetta — and that they’re open to everything. And most of them mean it.
The Real Problem
Why is it that I think, when the president was decrying the effect of professional activists who profit from conflict, he probably wasn't talking about these eternal grifters? ...
Fix the Debt, the organization that took flight last year from the very deep pockets of octagenarian Blackstone co-founder Pete Peterson, held an afternoon event at the National Press Club to remind everyone that, crisis averted, the real problem in this country remained our crushing long-term debt. You might think that the fiasco of the past few weeks would have prompted some soul-searching within the organization - after all, its well-broadcast doomsday warnings of a nation drowning in red ink have only helped to feed conservative Republican fury about out of control spending, even as budget deficits steadily decline and the long-term fiscal picture brightens. It is that fury that, as much as anything, drove the brinksmanship over the government shutdown and debt ceiling, but Fix the Debt officials spoke as if they have had no role in bringing us to this point - as if, to the contrary, we arrived at this point precisely because we were not listening to them.
...
This is the real threat to the recovery right here. Not partisan bickering. Not the temporizing in the deal cut last night. Not even Ted Cruz and the members of the monkeyhouse on the other side of the Capitol. It is this permanent class of deficit fetishists and austerian fantasts. These are the people who will wreck lives. These are people who get heard in the White House instead of being told to go pound sand until we elect Paul Ryan to be president. Every time the president mentons the deficit, these guys get their semi-annual woodies and a little bit of actual progressive politics dies again. These are the people whose credentials really should have been revoked last night, if there actually was the kind of Democratic triumph that we're being sold today. Pete Peterson must have bought Purina short. I am so dreading that conference committee.
The GOP Has Surrendered for Now -- But It Will Try More Extortion Soon and Dems Have to be Strong
[I]t’s a mistake for Democrats, liberals especially, to celebrate this deal – because we can still lose.
Let’s be clear: Republicans got something for their bad behavior: tougher income verification requirements for Affordable Care Act subsidies, and a shorter debt-ceiling hike than Democrats said they wanted. And Republicans gave…nothing. They merely did their jobs and reopened the government and averted a global economic disaster. They put down the gun, and they released the hostage. That’s all.
They’re also getting a promise of formal negotiations over the budget. Now that should happen anyway, so that’s not a big deal. But Democrats have spent the last month on GOP turf: conceding that they must talk about deficit reduction, with pious nods to Saints Simpson and Bowles and now, yuck, Blessed Leon Panetta — and that they’re open to everything. And most of them mean it.
Hat tip dharmafarmer:
Sequestration still matters
House and Senate lawmakers reacted this year to the sequester’s impact on defense spending, but did little about domestic programs. Democrats talked about domestic impact, but they acted on defense. ...
There was endless publicity of the impact of the fiscal 2013 defense sequester that cut $42.7 billion out of about $528 billion, including money from overseas operations such as Afghanistan. Training was cut, ship movements reduced, troop numbers lowered.
Less attention went to the $38.7 billion that was cut out of $489 billion in fiscal 2013’s non-defense spending. ... For the fiscal 2014 budget, both houses of Congress took care of defense, pushing numbers far above the BCA cap. ...
Sen. Mary Landrieu (La.) put her finger on how Democrats look at the problem in a Sunday floor speech.
“The House,” she said, “is willing to take the sequester ... but what they do — which is very disingenuous and what the Democrats will not be for — is basically take the lower number overall, but keeping defense at a very high number, and therefore cutting the heck out of everybody else.”
Mitch McConnell Says There Will Be No More Shutdowns
The day after Congress voted to end the government shutdown, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell declared there would be no repeat of the shutdown that he didn't want in the first place. "A government shutdown is off the table," McConnell told The National Review. "Weâre not going to do it." In raising the debt limit and opening the government on Wednesday night, Congress set December 13 as the deadline for Democrats and Republicans to come to a budget agreement. Government funding runs out January 15. But those deadlines won't bring another crisis, he said. ...
The second edition of the budget fight in January and February will be similarly bitter, and McConnell said the focus should not be on Obamacare â as Cruz and his allies demanded â but on locking in the sequestration level spending of the Budget Control Act. "Keeping the BCA levels is a huge success, and I know because Democrats hate it," McConnell said.
'Brand America lost in shutdown, public patience ran out'
Food Stamp Outage Highlights Problems With Privatization of Public Services
Over the weekend, low-income shoppers in 17 states were unable to use their electronic food stamp debit cards. In this reporter's neighborhood in downtown New Orleans Saturday evening, rumors swirled around grocery store cash registers and street corners. Was the government shutdown to blame? Did the deadlock in Washington mean nutritional assistance was gone for good?
The public soon learned that government shutdown was not to blame. Xerox, a private company that state welfare agencies had contracted for computing services, admitted that a "routine test" caused a computer glitch that temporarily shut down the Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) system in Louisiana, Ohio, Michigan and 14 other states.
It turns out that the EBT incident is not the first screwup under Xerox's watch. Affiliated Computer Services (ACS), a subsidiary of Xerox since 2000 that specializes in privatizing government administrative services for the most economically vulnerable Americans, has taken heat in the past for siphoning excessive fees from welfare recipients, mismanaging Medicaid payment systems, and failing to complete multimillion dollar contracts for public agencies.
For the first time since the 1960s, majority of public school students in 17 states are low-income
For the first time since the 1960s, a majority of the children in public schools in the South and West of the United States come from families living below, at or not far above the poverty line, according to a new study. The study’s findings are part of a trend that is set to continue across the nation.
While the percentage of low-income students in public schools has grown across the nation over the last 20 years, there are now 17 states in which they represent the majority. Thirteen of those states are in the South; four are in the West.
The report, which was released this month by the Southern Education Foundation (SEF), a nonprofit group supporting education improvement, also found that schools with the largest proportion of low-income children spent the least in support of students.
NY Federal Reserve Examiner Fired After Submitting Critical Report of Goldman Sachs
Jeremy Scahill Talks About Glenn Greenwald Website
Jeremy Scahill spoke out for the first time on Thursday about the much-hyped website he is launching with fellow journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras.
News of the site, which does not have a name yet, leaked on Tuesday, when BuzzFeed reported that Greenwald was departing the Guardian to help run the new venture. It soon emerged that eBay founder Pierre Omidyar was backing the site, and that Scahill and Poitras would be a part of it. (Omidyar is also the founder of Honolulu Civil Beat, which is partnering with The Huffington Post on its HuffPost Hawaii site.)
UN expert calls for increased transparency over armed drones
The report examines the thorniest issues in the US’s covert drone campaign – although it does not refer directly to the US. Heyns explores civilian harm, ‘double-tap’ strikes, sovereignty and the consent of other nations, accountability, and the pillars of the US’s legal justification for using armed drones in Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia, where it is not on a formal war footing.
He cautions that drone technology lowers the bar for lethal action, making it ‘easier for States to deploy deadly and targeted force on the territories of other States’.
Hina Shamsi of the American Civil Liberties Union said: ‘Once again, a top UN rights official has confirmed that the international legal framework restricting the use of lethal force is clear and doesn’t need to change, but that the ease with which lethal drones can be used threatens that framework and the right to life. Violations of law and the right to life are real under the US targeted killing program, and the precedent it is setting for other countries such as China, Russia, or Iran is a very dangerous one, which the U.S. may well come to regret.’
U.S. Weapons and Arms Parts Continued to Flow to Egypt After June Coup & Deadly Crackdown
Action
October 26th, 2013 in Washington, D.C.
A Rally Against Mass Surveillance
Right now the NSA is spying on everyone's personal communications, and they’re operating without any meaningful oversight. Since the Snowden leaks started, more than 571,000 people from all walks of life have signed the StopWatching.us petition telling the U.S. Congress that we want them to rein in the NSA.
On October 26th, the 12th anniversary of the signing of the US Patriot Act, we're taking the next step and holding the largest rally yet against NSA surveillance. We’ll be handing the half-million petitions to Congress to remind them that they work for us -- and we won’t tolerate mass surveillance any longer.
12pm Eastern, Saturday October 26th
Gather at Columbus Circle in front of Union Station, then march to the Capitol Reflecting Pool
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Blog Posts and Tweets of Interest
The Evening Blues
And here's that attempt at a party makeover that I've been talking about.
More Tunes
Avi Avital plays Vivaldi Mandolin Concerto in C Major