E.J. Dionne Jr. at The Washington Post discusses The new culture wars:
House Republicans were able to pass without much difficulty a remarkably restrictive bill that would overturn Obama's executive actions on immigration. It was aimed not only at his measures to keep families together but also at a highly popular provision for the "Dreamers" brought to the United States as children.
This is the new culture war. It is about national identity rather than religion and "transcendent authority." It focuses on which groups the United States will formally admit to residence and citizenship. It asks the same question as the old culture war: "Who are we?" But the earlier query was primarily about how we define ourselves morally. The new question is about how we define ourselves ethnically, racially and linguistically. It is, in truth, one of the oldest questions in our history, going back to our earliest immigration battles of the 1840s and 1850s.
Ellie Geranmayeh at
The New York Times writes
Political Sabotage over a Deal with Iran:
During his State of the Union address, President Obama made clear that he would veto any proposals for additional sanctions on Iran. And although officials in Tehran recognize this as a good faith gesture on the part of Mr. Obama, they also remember that a Congressional bill introduced in late 2013 nearly garnered enough support to withstand a similar veto threat. Iranian officials worry that the Obama administration is constitutionally unable to make a durable and ironclad promise of sanctions relief as part of a final deal. With a Republican majority in both chambers of Congress, and House Speaker John Boehner’s invitation to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address Congress for a third time, Iran fears that Mr. Obama’s veto won’t be enough.
At the same time, Iran is at risk of losing the West’s trust. There is a danger that Iran will damage its newfound reputation as a good faith interlocutor by retaliating for the presumed Israeli attack that killed Hezbollah operatives and an Iranian general in Syria last Sunday.
Iran believes the strike was a premeditated Israeli operation targeting a high-level Iranian official. Influential hardliners in Tehran’s security establishment view it as an act of aggression by Israel and demand a direct response.
There are more pundit excerpts below the fold.
Syreeta McFadden at The Guardian writes The struggle for change doesn’t end if Michael Brown's killer faces no charges:
The purpose of leaks by “credible sources” is to manage expectations for the public. So the leak indicating that the Department of Justice will likely not pursue federal civil rights charges against Darren Wilson for the shooting death of Michael Brown is likely a trial balloon to see how the public will react.
I hope that one of those reactions is a demand for police reforms across the board, imposed not only from the top down but also from within.
Justice—which we believe embodies accountability, blame, the restoration of equality, and a repair to some awful wrong between the aggrieved and the aggressor—loses its meaning in circumstances like this. Darren Wilson will probably never have to publicly account for his actions. And this may be a singular setback for the Brown family, even if they can steel themselves to pursue a civil suit for the wrongful death of their son .
We all had grander hopes for US attorney general Eric Holder and Civil Rights Division of the DOJ —among them, that they would resolve our lingering questions from the August shooting that set off 168 days of continuous protests in Ferguson and nationwide. In past high profile cases, DOJ was able to secure convictions for the LA cops who beat Rodney King and the NYPD officers who assaulted Abner Louima – although both these men lived to tell their side of the story. And we had a lot of grand hopes for this administration.
Doug Henwood at
In These Times writes
Union Membership Is Down Again—But It Still Pays To Be a Member:
The Bureau of Labor Statistics is just out with its figures on union membership in 2014. Overall membership, aka density, fell to 11.1% of the workforce, from 11.3% in 2013. The decline was more than entirely the result of slippage in the private sector, down from 6.7% to 6.6%. Public sector density, perhaps surprisingly, rose, from 35.3% to 35.7%. Since private sector employment is more than five times that of the public sector, the private sector decline dominated the public sector’s rise, producing the overall drop. […]
Union status matters for wages: overall, unionized workers earned 27% more than nonunion (measured by median weekly earnings for full-time workers). The effect was especially pronounced for weaker, more discriminated-against demographic groups. The youngest group, aged 16–24, enjoyed a 28% union premium; the advantage declined with each successive cohort, down to 12% for the 65+ set. Women aged 25 and older enjoyed a 27% premium, compared to 15% for men. White men (16 and over) had a 20% union advantage, compared with 32% for white women; for black men, the premium was 29%, compared to 34% for black women; and for Hispanics, it was 44% for men and 46% for women. Asian men were a notable exception, with the unionized earning 5% less than the non-unionized—but Asian women showed a 14% union premium.
It’s no wonder employers hate unions so much. As profoundly flawed as American unions are, they can vastly improve the wages and working conditions for their members.
Ruth Fowler at
Al Jazeera America laments that
American mothers are under attack:
Anywhere else in the Western world, mothers are given a degree of respect and support evident from their treatment in the hospital, the workplace and the home.
Not so in the United States. New mothers are treated more as profit centers for hospitals and burdens for employers than as the linchpin of a healthy society. Instead the U.S. has become fertile ground for those who seek to control not only a woman’s reproductive rights but also her rights as a mother, from the moment of conception until her child becomes an adult.
The problem starts with the astronomical cost of maternity care in the U.S. As reported last year by The New York Times, an in-hospital birth can cost as much as $45,000 without insurance. Mothers don’t, however, get their money’s worth. Despite spending more than $98 billion annually on birth, the U.S. has relatively high maternal mortality rates, ranking 50th worldwide.
Rebecca Leber at
The New Republic writes
Mitt Romney and Rand Paul Are Going to Make Climate Change a Real Issue in the GOP Primary:
It took one day for the party of climate change denial to rediscover science—a few of them, anyway. Mitt Romney, who is considering his third presidential run, told a Utah audience, “I’m one of those Republicans who thinks we are getting warmer and that we contribute to that,” arguing for “real leadership” to tackle rising carbon pollution. Then, 15 Republican senators voted in favor of a conservative climate amendment that said "human activity contributes to climate change." One of those senators was Rand Paul.
Granted, that means 39 Republican senators voted against the amendment, including two other potential 2016 candidates, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. But if nothing else, Wednesday's events show that the GOP's position on climate change is in flux. Rather than simply pretending the issue doesn't exist, as most of the 2012 candidates did, Republicans will actually debate climate change in the 2016 primary.
They still have a long way to go, including the Republicans who believe humans are responsible for global warming. What’s more important than affirming the science is whether they have a reasonable plan to address it. Paul and Romney's present and past comments, for instance, suggest they're in no hurry to take action against climate change.
George Zornick at
The Nation blasts Republican Larry Hogan, a supposed moderate, in
New Maryland Governor Opens an Assault on Environmental and LGBT Protections:
But Hogan’s first days in office are proving to be anything but moderate. Rather, a familiar storyline is playing out: the friendly Republican gubernatorial candidate suddenly becomes a hardline conservative governor.
After being introduced by New Jersey Chris Christie at his inauguration Wednesday as someone “who knows how to bring people together,” and after the VIP guests dined on shrimp scampi, crab cakes and grilled chicken, Hogan got to work: he immediately rescinded blockbuster environmental regulations on state coal plants and pollution of the Chesapeake Bay. He also called back regulations designed to protect LGBT Marylanders from healthcare and employment discrimination.
Clyde Prestowitz, who has been involved in high-level trade deals since the Reagan administration, writes at the
Los Angeles Times,
The Trans-Pacific Partnership won't deliver jobs or curb China's power:
Instead of forecasts, let's look at facts. Over the last 35 years, the U.S. has brought China into the World Trade Organization and concluded many free-trade agreements, including one with South Korea three years ago. In advance of each, U.S. leaders promised the deals would create high-paying jobs, reduce the trade deficit, increase GDP and raise living standards. But none of these came true. In fact, the U.S. non-oil trade deficit continued to grow, millions of jobs were offshored and mean household income has hardly risen since 2000. And economists overwhelmingly agree that rising U.S. income inequality is being driven in part by international trade.
Of course, those promoting the TPP know all this, which leads them to make a backup argument, namely that the deal would strengthen security ties between the U.S. and its Asian allies and thereby curb the increasing power and influence of China.
John Light at Grist writes
Obama’s trade agenda is a disaster for the environment, greens warn:
In a State of the Union address that hit most of the right notes on the environment and other progressive issues, Obama pushed one policy that has green groups up in arms: fast-tracking of trade deals. In a letter sent this week to every member of Congress, environmental advocates warned that two particularly far-reaching deals that are in the works could “significantly weaken public health and environmental protections.” The letter was signed by nearly 50 groups.
They warned that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a deal with Asian and Pacific nations, not including China, and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a deal with Europe, contain “rules that would grant foreign corporations the right to sue governments, in private tribunals, over environmental, public health, and other laws and policies that corporations allege reduce the value of their investment.” These agreements also contain “rules that would require the United States Department of Energy to automatically approve exports of liquefied natural gas to countries in the pacts with no analysis to determine whether exporting natural gas is in the public interest.”
Sonali Kolhatkar at
Truthdig writes
‘American Sniper’: American Hero or American Psycho?
“American Sniper” exemplifies a sense of macho, white male braggadocio that is symbolic of all that is wrong with the right-wing, pro-war, pro-gun, bully culture of the United States. Should we really be surprised that both the American public and the Academy are rewarding a film about a man who, judging by his own words, appeared to be a psychotic mass murderer? […]
In a debate that I moderated Tuesday between Kyle’s co-author DeFelice and independent journalist and blogger Rania Khalek on “Uprising,” DeFelice said the movie was true to the book, and that the film crew “did a remarkable job.” But Khalek, who has been one of social media’s foremost critics of the film, has called it “brilliant propaganda that erases U.S. crimes.”