Catherine Crier's Blog, page 2

Change in Filibuster Rules May Spur Partisan Battle in Congress

Benjamin Franklin’s concern about the function of the Senate, it’s accountability, and the nature of its influence is more important today than when he raised the issue during the Constitutional Convention. More than one-half the nation’s population lives in just ten states, but they have only one-fifth of the votes in the Senate. This means that 12 percent of the U.S. population controls forty-one votes and can immobilize that chamber.

Given the transient character of the population and the changing nature of individual states, it is hard to justify this imbalance. Rules of the Senate, such as the filibuster must be reformed to encourage open debate and actual votes on the nation’s business.

From Politico

GOP warns of shutdown over filibuster

By MANU RAJU

A rule change could prompt a furious GOP revolt. | Jay Westcott/POLITICO

A partisan war is brewing that could bring the government to a screeching halt as early as January — and no, it’s not over the fiscal cliff.

It’s all about the filibuster.

Democrats are threatening to change filibuster rules, in what will surely prompt a furious GOP revolt that could make those rare moments of bipartisan consensus even harder to come by during the next Congress.

Here’s what Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is considering: banning filibusters used to prevent debate from even starting and House-Senate conference committees from ever meeting. He also may make filibusters become actual filibusters — to force senators to carry out the nonstop, talkathon sessions.

Republicans are threatening even greater retaliation if Reid uses a move rarely used by Senate majorities: changing the chamber’s precedent by 51 votes, rather than the usual 67 votes it takes to overhaul the rules.

“I think the backlash will be severe,” Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), the conservative firebrand, said sternly. “If you take away minority rights, which is what you’re doing because you’re an ineffective leader, you’ll destroy the place. And if you destroy the place, we’ll do what we have to do to fight back.”

“It will shut down the Senate,” the incoming Senate GOP whip, Texas Sen. John Cornyn, told POLITICO. “It’s such an abuse of power.”

The push will happen at the start of the new Congress, when Reid will unveil a rules package certain to have some changes to the filibuster. The exact contents of that package have yet to be finalized, as is the decision on whether to invoke the so-called nuclear option — 51 votes — to push it through. But Democratic senators are urging Reid to take steps ranging from the most draconian one of virtually eliminating the filibuster to more piecemeal changes designed to discourage the use of the stalling tactic.

What Reid appears most likely to do is push for an end to the filibuster on so-called motions to proceed, or the beginning of a debate on bills or nominations. If Reid goes this route, senators could still filibuster virtually any other aspect of Senate business, including any movement to end debate and call for a final vote on a bill.

And Reid is strongly considering pushing for other filibuster changes, too — most notably requiring senators to actually go to the floor and carry out an endless talking session, rather than simply threaten them as they do now. Reminiscent of the 1939 movie classic “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” the idea has picked up steam in liberal circles — and its intent is to discourage senators from filibustering, though it would fundamentally change the very nature of the modern Senate.

“We cannot allow the Senate to be dysfunctional by the use of filibusters,” said Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Reid’s No. 2. “We’ve had over 300 filibusters in the last six years — it’s unprecedented. What we’re talking about is very basic — you want to start a filibuster, you want to stop the business of the Senate, by goodness’ sake, park your fanny on the floor of the Senate and speak. If you want to go to dinner and go home over the weekend, be prepared, the Senate is moving forward.”

By and large, Reid and his caucus are on board with this approach — they are furious at what they see as deliberate attempts by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his Republican colleagues to threaten filibusters on even the most routine pieces of legislation or noncontroversial nominations simply to stall President Barack Obama’s agenda.

“They have made it an almost impossible task to get things done,” Reid said.

While several incoming freshmen, including Massachusetts liberal Elizabeth Warren, support changing the rules by a majority vote, it could present a problem for other new Democrats who ran as consensus builders to have to cast a partisan vote on their very first action next year.

“It isn’t a concern just because the Republicans are concerned,” said Rep. Joe Donnelly, the incoming Indiana Democratic senator. “We want to make sure we protect the things that make the Senate unique, so I want to make sure I make the right decision on this.”

Republicans say this is a problem of the Democrats’ own making. They blame Reid for quickly attempting to shut down debate without giving Republicans a chance to offer amendments, even on bills that skip the committee process entirely.

Republicans say eliminating filibusters — even on a piecemeal basis — will undermine the fundamental underpinnings of the Senate as a body designed to operate on consensus and protect the minority party, making the body run like the House, where the majority rules with an iron fist.

“If what [Reid] talks about doing is in fact what he does, … then that reduces that much more leverage of the minority to insist on an open amendment process,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) said. “I worry about it.”

At the start of the 112th Congress, Reid and McConnell — along with Senate Rules and Administration Committee Chairman Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and the top Republican on the panel, Sen. Lamar Alexander — brokered a “gentleman’s agreement” to operate the Senate more openly and avert a filibuster showdown on the floor.

But that process quickly broke down, and Reid later admitted that he made a mistake when he dissuaded Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Tom Udall (D-N.M.) from pushing forward a sweeping filibuster reform package, which they dubbed the “constitutional option.” The procedural squabbling hit fever pitch in October 2011, when Reid forced through a change in the rules to limit the ability of senators to force votes on amendments once a filibuster was defeated.

While the change in the rule did not alter the legislative process substantively, the process employed by Reid outraged Republicans, since he forced through a change to Senate precedents by a 51-48 vote — rather than by two-thirds. While this arcane process is allowed under Senate procedures, it’s rarely employed for fear future majorities would replicate the tactics and work their will over minority rights to stall legislation — something McConnell gravely warned Reid about.

When Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) threatened to employ a similar maneuver in 2005, Democratic critics labeled it as the “nuclear option.”

“Then-Sen. Obama thought it would be wrong to make the changes when the Republicans were in the majority; then-Sen. [Joe] Biden thought it was a bad idea when the Democrats were in the minority; and Harry Reid thought it was an awful idea when he was in the minority because he said no one group should be able to run roughshod over the other group,” said Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), No. 4 in GOP leadership.

Other Republicans warn it will further damage an already toxic political climate at a time of monumental economic and budgetary problems.

“This is not the time to create a divisive distraction that Democrats said in 2006 would destroy the United States Senate,” Alexander told POLITICO. “One of the biggest ways to do that, not to [reach a budget deficit deal], is to do what Sen. Reid said in 2006, would be to use the nuclear option to blow up the Senate by trying to change the filibuster rules.”

But Democrats don’t think the changes will prevent the minority from exerting its rights. And if Democrats push through their “talking filibuster” plan, both Barrasso and Coburn say they’d be willing to go to the floor and make their objections heard.

“I’ll filibuster any way I can,” Coburn said. “If you want to filibuster, you ought to be willing to get out and earn it. I don’t have any problems with that.”

© 2012 POLITICO LLC

ICYMI: PoliticsNation with Al Sharpton

When you take anti-choice policies such as Ohio’s heartbeat legislation to their logical extremes, the rhetoric goes way beyond pro-choice or pro-life positions—it endangers the health and welfare of women. We’re not talking about saying “stupid things” (as Bobby Jindal so aptly phrased it), we’re talking about doctors literally allowing women to bleed to death due to fear of prosecution.

On Monday night’s PoliticsNation, I joined Reverend Al Sharpton and Irin Carmon of Salon.com to discuss this and other issues. What are your thoughts on anti-abortion legislation currently being discussed in numerous state legislatures? Watch the following clip from last night and share your thoughts.

From PoliticsNation with Al Sharpton

 

Ohio GOP reviving abortion bill

Republicans in Ohio are reviving a heartbeat bill that would ban all abortions after 6 weeks. It would be the most restrictive ban on abortion in the US. Journalist Catherine Crier and Irin Carmon of Salon.com talk with Rev. Al Sharpton about why the GOP is pushing abortion bills despite voters’ rejection of their platform.

 

Tune In: The Brenner Brief w/ Sara Brenner

I’ll join Sara Brenner at 9:50pET on The Brenner Brief to discuss Patriot Acts and the latest in current events. Be sure to tune in tonight on Blog Talk Radio or check back later for recorded audio!

From The Brenner Brief

Tonight’s “The Brenner Brief” Talk Show: 9-1030pm ET

Tonight from 9-1030pm ET, join us for The Brenner Brief Radio Show — Sara Marie Brenner’s weekly radio talk show!

At approximately 9:20pm ET, Kevin Clark — financial expert and Senior Vice President for Investments with Zichterman & Clark — will join us to discuss the financial state of this nation. Clark is also joining TheBrennerBrief.com as a financial expert and contributor.

Then, around 9:50pm ET, the Emmy and duPont-Columbia Award-winning journalist and the youngest state judge to ever be elected in Texas —Catherine Crier — will be joining us to talk about her book, Patriot Acts, and all of the current events. Crier has an amazing resumé, and we look forward to delving in to many of today’s news stories.

Don’t miss tonight’s show! Listen live between 9-1030pm ET, and call in to speak with the host or the guest. You can also catch the rebroadcasts and podcasts. Show prep from the show will be posted by 11pm ET.

A Perfect Storm of Fear and Unrest in Gaza is Being Live-tweeted

Israel and Hamas are not just fighting a war with rockets and bombs anymore. On Wednesday, both the Israel Defense Forces and Hamas military, Al Qassam Brigades, began live-tweeting their military tactics in an attempt to rally support and communicate with the broader international community.

Is this an isolated example of propaganda in the digital age, or will live-tweeting warfare become the new norm? Read the following article on the Gaza conflict from NBC News and share your thoughts below.

The new propaganda: Armies take war to Twitter in Gaza conflict

By Wilson Rothman, NBC News

[image error]

This “alert” image, shared by the Israel Defense Forces’ Twitter account, is part of the army’s ongoing social-media outreach prorgram.

As Israeli and Palestinian forces clash in Gaza this week, those same armies are engaging in a real-time battle of hashtags and twitpics, trying to win the hearts and minds of watchers around the globe.

Propaganda used to be about full-color posters and dropping leaflets from airplanes. Now, the Israel Defense Forces and the Hamas military Al Qassam Brigades are taking to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr, instantly sharing photos, videos and granular news bites in English, so that they can reach the broadest possible audience.

“What is happening here is that both Israel and Hamas are using social media to communicate over to the other side in the conflict and the broader international community,” Charles Ries, former ambassador to Greece and vice president of the international division of the RAND Corporation, told NBC News.

“Both sides immediately appeal to world opinion to make the case that the other side was depriving it of human rights,” Ries said.

What’s ironic about the Twitter activity is how, on these occasions, the two accounts reply and retweet each other, even though they are run by sworn enemies. Mediators have been unable to get them to talk to each other directly in the real world.

On Wednesday, Israel announced its attack on Gaza via the @IDFSpokesperson Twitter account, saying, “The IDF has begun a widespread campaign on terror sites & operatives in the #Gaza Strip, chief among them #Hamas & Islamic Jihad targets.” The action, labeled #PillarOfDefense, had two main goals, according to the Twitter feed. “To protect Israeli civilians and to cripple the terrorist infrastructure in the #Gaza Strip.” At the same time, the group launched a blog that it would live-update as well.

Though many of the IDF’s early tweets present arguments in support of the military actions, and notified of strikes including a hit on Al Qassam leader Ahmed Al-Jabari, one tweet addressed the rest of Hamas directly:

We recommend that no Hamas operatives, whether low level or senior leaders, show their faces above ground in the days ahead.

Across the frontier in Gaza, a Twitter feed representing Al Qassam presented the other side of the story, quickly seizing on the #GazaUnderAttack hashtag to rally social-media supporters. It confirmed the death of Al-Jabari and other casualties, announced that the group was shelling Israeli military bases, and then directed its own threat to Israel — by way of @IDFSpokesperson:

@idfspokesperson Our blessed hands will reach your leaders and soldiers wherever they are (You Opened Hell Gates on Yourselves)

The tweets continued throughout Wednesday and Thursday, and as violence escalated, the IDF and Israeli tweeters picked up the #IsraelUnderFire hashtag.

But reams of scrolling text is not the point of these campaigns. The true impact comes when you click a link. A 10-second video of an IDF assassination of a Hamas military leader was viewed hundreds of thousands of times, despite a brief — and accidental — takedown by YouTube. A link to a photo of a dead baby makes the nightmare real like no Life magazine spread ever could, mostly because it was delivered overnight.

Many observers have noted that these two Twitter accounts have served up information more quickly than mainstream news outlets. However, the content in the tweets show that while propaganda may be confused with news, it is not news.

“There have been cases of falsified video or video and pictures that are stripped of context and posted on YouTube or Instagram or Flickr,” Neal Ungerleider, a former Middle East correspondent who reports on the intersection of defense and technology, told NBC News. ”You can’t identify where it came from and that’s a big issue right now.”

A link to one of the Al Qassam feed’s most horrific images appeared with no attribution or accompanying text. Sharp-eyed Twittizens quickly noted that the horrific image was first published in October — and came from Syria.

The IDF, for its part, has turned propaganda postering into a real-time affair. In its stream of Twitter images — along with a press shot of army officers departing from a helicopter — are a full-color illustration of a family in the crosshairs (“Israeli civilians are Hamas’ target”) and an all-caps “ALERT” saying that “rockets were fired into Israel.”

As many tech publications have noted, social media companies that are quick to yank hate speech and inappropriate content posted by American 15-year-olds aren’t censoring videos, images — and even threats — coming from these governments, even if they breach the terms of service. (An excellent look at this conundrum was presented by Joseph L. Flatley in The Verge.)

Whatever the ramifications for Twitter, YouTube and the rest, it’s clear that the battling armies benefit from this new level playing field. For example, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. has been making rounds of media outlets, but the same airtime is rarely given to a Hamas spokesman. In the cyber world, the two don’t necessarily need traditional media to make their points.

Media-savvy Israel may gain traction as well, said Michael Makovsky, foreign policy director of the Bipartisan Policy Center. ”My guess is that the Israelis also would find it effective to skirt traditional media and to get the message out unfiltered,” Makovsky told NBC News. ”There might be a view that historically the Israelis haven’t always gotten a fair shake from mainstream media around the world.”

It’s not the first time this sort of thing has happened — Ungerleider cites the tension between the Kenyan army and the Islamic Al-Shabaab group in Somalia that occasionally surfaces on social media — but it is the biggest example yet of an increasing trend.

With all of the social-media chatter, it can be hard for those located thousands of miles from the Middle East to remember that there’s a real war on.

Ungerleider, who now writes for Fast Company, and lived in southern Israel at the time of the last Gaza conflict in 2009, recommends looking past the propaganda and connecting with civilians, many of whom are also posting using the #GazaUnderAttack and #IsraelUnderFire hashtags.

“For ordinary Americans trying to make sense of the conflict, look at the civilians who don’t have agendas, showing themselves running down stairs to a shelter,” he told NBC News. “They’re just talking about life during wartime.”

— With reporting from NBC News’ Ayman Mohyeldin in Gaza and Suzanne Choney

 

BP Pleads Guilty to Criminal Misconduct, Negligence in Gulf Oil Spill

More than two years after the explosion of Deepwater Horizon, which killed 11 workers and released 210 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, BP has plead guilty and settled all claims with the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission for $4.5 billion, which amounts to the largest criminal fine in U.S. history. The settlement will take the existing charge against earnings up $3.9 billion to nearly $42 billion.

Corporations must pay the real costs of their operations—what they use and abuse on the taxpayer’s dime. Supporting free enterprise is more than loosening the reins; it includes tightening them when private power acts in ways that are harmful to the nation. What do you think about this afternoon’s BP oil spill settlement?

From The Huffington Post

BP Oil Spill Settlement Announced

By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN

NEW ORLEANS — Two men who worked for BP during the 2010 Gulf oil spill disaster have been charged with manslaughter and a third with lying to federal investigators, according to indictments made public Thursday, hours after BP announced it was paying $4.5 billion in a settlement with the U.S. government over the disaster.

A federal indictment unsealed in New Orleans claims BP well site leaders Robert Kaluza and Donald Vidrine acted negligently in their supervision of key safety tests performed on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig before the explosion killed 11 workers in April 2010. The indictment says Kaluza and Vidrine failed to phone engineers onshore to alert them of problems in the drilling operation.

Another indictment charges David Rainey, who was BP’s vice president of exploration for the Gulf of Mexico, on counts of obstruction of Congress and false statements. The indictment claims the former executive lied to federal investigators when they asked him how he calculated a flow rate estimate for BP’s blown-out well in the days after the disaster.

Earlier in the day, BP PLC said it would plead guilty to criminal charges related to the deaths of 11 workers and lying to Congress.

“This marks the largest single criminal fine and the largest total criminal resolution in the history of the United States,” U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said at a news conference in New Orleans.

Holder said the settlement and indictments aren’t the end of federal authorities’ efforts and that the criminal investigation is continuing. Holder says much of the money BP has agreed to pay will be used to restore the environment in the Gulf.

The day of reckoning comes more than two years after the nation’s worst offshore oil spill. The settlement includes nearly $1.3 billion in criminal fines – the biggest criminal penalty in U.S. history – along with payments to certain government entities.

“We believe this resolution is in the best interest of BP and its shareholders,” said Carl-Henric Svanberg, BP chairman. “It removes two significant legal risks and allows us to vigorously defend the company against the remaining civil claims.”

The settlement, which is subject to approval by a federal judge, includes payments of nearly $2.4 billion to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, $350 million to the National Academy of Sciences and about $500 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC accused BP of misleading investors by lowballing the amount of crude spewing from the ruptured well.

London-based BP said in a statement that the settlement would not cover any civil penalties the U.S. government might seek under the Clean Water Act and other laws. Nor does it cover billions of dollars in claims brought by states, businesses and individuals, including fishermen, restaurants and property owners.

Holder also said a civil lawsuit will go ahead in February seeking billions more in civil penalties.

A federal judge in New Orleans is weighing a separate, proposed $7.8 billion settlement between BP and more than 100,000 businesses and individuals who say they were harmed by the spill.

BP will plead guilty to 11 felony counts of misconduct or neglect of a ship’s officers, one felony count of obstruction of Congress and one misdemeanor count each under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Clean Water Act. The workers’ deaths were prosecuted under a provision of the Seaman’s Manslaughter Act. The obstruction charge is for lying to Congress about how much oil was spilling.

The penalty will be paid over five years. BP made a profit of $5.5 billion in the most recent quarter. The largest previous corporate criminal penalty assessed by the U.S. Justice Department was a $1.2 billion fine imposed on drug maker Pfizer in 2009.

Before Thursday, the only person charged in the disaster was a former BP engineer who was arrested in April on obstruction of justice charges. He was accused of deleting text messages about the company’s response to the spill.

Exchanging Our Mammoth Defense Industry for a Smaller, Cheaper, Stronger Military

Throughout President Obama’s first term, he kept Bush’s military leaders in charge of our defense and instituted a surge in Afghanistan. He also took out more terrorists in his first year than Bush did in his entire second term and is progressing on reducing nuclear weapons—one of Reagan’s most fervent wishes, and yet, daily he is proclaimed a socialist or worse.

Our global military presences requires both a powerful federal government and a mammoth defense industry. When big defense companies become indispensable, we should not be surprised at their political clout. What do you think of President Obama’s plan to reduce our huge industrial and military machinery of defense in exchange for a smaller, cheaper, stronger military?

From Bloomberg Businessweek

A Smaller, Cheaper, Stronger Military

By Paul M. Barrett

“Gentlemen, we have run out of money. Now we must think.” Winston Churchill said that. Or maybe it was the Nobel-winning physicist Ernest Rutherford. Whatever its provenance, the quip provides a good starting point for discussing the future of American military spending. The U.S. has not, of course, “run out of money” for troops and tanks. Instead, President Obama and Congress have decided that in light of yawning deficits and the end of twin decade-long wars, the nation needs to spend smarter. The administration earlier this year laid out a deficit-conscious defense strategy. It included a $525 billion budget request for fiscal 2013, excluding war costs. The plan trimmed the Defense Department’s projected spending increases over the next decade by $487 billion.

Slowing the rate of growth of military spending is not the same as cutting it. The Obama plan, which Republicans in Congress agreed to, provides for future year spending increases of 1.7 percent in 2014 and 2.2 percent in 2015. Travis Sharp of the Center for a New American Security has crunched the bigger numbers: For the period from 2013 to 2022, Obama would allocate a total of $5.75 trillion to defense. The president spelled out a sensible, if vague, three-part strategy that presumably he’ll now pursue in his second term:

• Maintain superiority. Traditionally, civilian and military leaders have boasted of being able to win two major regional conflicts (MRCs) simultaneously. Military wonks, though, “have long debated whether this standard was anything more than a figment of DoD’s imagination used to justify large defense budgets,” Sharp writes in a new paper published in the Journal of International Affairs. “The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have intensified these doubts.” Obama’s plan doesn’t abandon the two-MRC standard, but it revises it to “win-spoil.” That means having the ability to win one comprehensive campaign while spoiling a second adversary’s ambitions with a more-tailored intervention, such as the overthrow of Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi. This allows the slimming of ground forces such as those needed to fight simultaneously in Iraq and Afghanistan. For the Army, the Obama plan would reduce active-duty troops from 562,000 to 490,000, approximating pre-Sept. 11 head counts. Some of these reductions are possible because of technology, such as the use of unmanned drones for battlefield surveillance.

• Pivot to Asia. While the U.S. has obsessed about the Middle East, China has modernized its military and expanded its ambition to dominate economically vital sea lanes. In response, Obama has begun to shift naval and other resources to the Asia-Pacific theater with the goal of maintaining a balance of power and preventing the Chinese from cowing allies such as Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Singapore. The Pentagon has announced plans to bolster weapon systems aimed at denying China (and Iran) the ability to block U.S. access to their regions. These include new attack submarines, improved missile defenses, and cyberweapons.

• Scale back in Europe. Without abandoning NATO allies, the U.S. has an opportunity to economize in the absence of the threat of a Russian invasion. To strengthen partnerships with allies not only in Europe but also in the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, the U.S. increasingly will rely on joint training exercises and special operations. The idea is to stay engaged in a more flexible way.

Here’s the catch: Obama can’t simply march ahead with this plan unless he and Congress undo the across-the-board “sequestration” set to take effect automatically in January. Those cuts would roughly double the Obama reductions for the next decade. Assuming Washington does pull back from the fiscal cliff, there’s another hazard: The many lawmakers who have military contractors or bases in their districts will fight to unravel the military budget deal the previous Congress struck with Obama.

Even some of the president’s political allies are readying for that battle. United Autoworkers President Bob King released an open letter the day before the election, warning that proposed cuts to the M1 Abrams tank program “would result in the loss of thousands of good-paying manufacturing jobs across the United States.” On the Republican side, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (Calif.) and Senators Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and John McCain (Ariz.) have signaled for months that they plan to resist any attempt to take a big chunk out of the Pentagon budget.

The coming arguments about how much to put in the Pentagon’s pocketbook obscure more difficult, and potentially costly, strategic questions that don’t have a simple line in the budget. If partners in Europe and Asia won’t step up to new challenges, the burdens on a cash-strapped U.S. will grow. Spending alone will not defuse the threatening impulses of Iran or North Korea. In other words, now we must think

The bottom line: Obama’s plan to reduce projected defense spending by $487 billion over the next decade will face challenges even from Democrats.

Barrett, an assistant managing editor and senior writer at Bloomberg Businessweek, is author, most recently, of GLOCK: The Rise of America’s Gun.

 

I bid thee a solemn, yet joyous Veterans Day.

They fought fearlessly for our national pride. They served till the last breath. We salute and respect the spirit that binds our nation together.

In honor of those who have and are serving in our armed forces, thank you for protecting our people and country, and a Happy Veterans Day to all those who have cared, not for themselves, but for the nation.

From The Huffington Post

Veterans Day Is for Remembering — And for Looking Ahead

By James Wright

Veterans Day is an occasion to pause and do what we should do everyday — remember those who have served and sacrificed. This year, coming on the heels of a national election, we also need to resolve to address some tasks ahead.

The president and Congress will need to determine just how to draw down our forces in Afghanistan. They must define the nation’s military objectives for those forces who will serve there over the next two years. They must also do far more to support those who return.

This is also time to consider how the United States will remember those who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan — and memorialize the now more than 6,600 who have died in those two wars. These veterans themselves and the families of those who were lost should have the primary voice in determining the form of national memory.

The form and voice of memorializing have varied significantly over the years. Following WW I there was a great emphasis on “living memory” — public facilities and infrastructure. Since WW II the focus has been more on physical memorials — but each of the three national memorials completed in this period has had a quite different theme.

This Veterans Day we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the National Mall. Today the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a national treasure, visited by over three million people annually. In 1979 Jan Scruggs, a Vietnam veteran, proposed a memorial honoring those who had sacrificed there. It moved forward remarkably quickly and in 1982 it was dedicated. But quickly does not mean it moved easily: 30 years ago critics found it somber and unheroic. Ross Perot led criticism of the memorial and Tom Wolfe wrote in the Washington Post that the memorial was “a tribute to Jane Fonda” and to antiwar activism.

The Vietnam Memorial broke from the iconic, heroic, memorial pattern by remembering the individual lives that were lost. Of course most local monuments dating from the 19th century featured the names of those who had been lost in the wars. For many in 1982 the model of the ideal memorial was the Marine Corps Memorial a few miles away in Arlington, a Felix de Weldon statue based upon the Joe Rosenthal photograph of the Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima in 1945.

This Marine Corps Memorial did not mention the 22,000 Marine casualties on the island — including 6,000 dead. It did not indicate that three of the six men raising the flag later died on Iwo Jima. Critics of the Maya Lin design persuaded Secretary of the Interior James Watt to approve the Vietnam Memorial only upon the condition that the site would also include a statue and an American flag. Frederick Hart who created the “Three Infantrymen” statue had studied with de Weldon.

In the early 1980s some Korean War veterans proposed a memorial for their forgotten war. In 1986 Congress approved fundraising for a site on the Mall, across from the Vietnam Memorial. General Joseph Stillwell was the chair of the group of veterans who planned memorial. He did not live to participate in its dedication in 1995. The Korean War veterans sought to remember all who had served, as well as the 36,000 who had died in that theater. Col William Weber, a leader of the Koran Veterans group, said “It’s not a memorial of grief. It’s a memorial of pride.” Black granite walls display sandblasted images of men serving in Korea. The memorial features nineteen figures walking through a field. Their expressions show the faces of men in combat. The wall at the end of this grouping memorializes those who died in that war. Currently there is sentiment on the part of many Korean War veterans to add the individual names of the fallen at the site.

The last of the three modern war memorials created is that of WWII. It is ironic that it was the last completed given that it was the first war — and it was of a scale that finally engaged nearly all Americans and was concluded with a clear sense of victory. In 1987 Roger Durbin a veteran of the Battle of the Bulge proposed a memorial to the war. It took six years for Congress to authorize the memorial and 17 years to complete it. Durbin did not live to see the memorial. Neither did eleven million other WW II veterans. At the groundbreaking for the Memorial, war hero Senator Bob Dole said his generation was moving “from the shade to the shadows.”

The WW II Memorial is more traditional than the other two post war memorials on the Mall. The Vietnam Memorial honors sacrifice and the Korean War Memorial evokes the experience of war. The WW II memorial records the triumph of democracy. It remembers successful campaigns and victories. Four thousand gold stars, each representing 1,000 Americans who died, symbolize the cost of those victories.

This Veterans Day is a good time to initiate a conversation about a memorial to those veterans who have fought our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, our longest wars. We still do not have a monument to WWI and its 53,000 battle deaths. The last living veteran of WWI, Frank Buckles, hoped to see such a memorial. He died in February 2011. We can do better than this. Jan Scruggs and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund intend to honor these latest comrades in the interim in the new Education Center.

Iraq and Afghanistan veterans need to tell us how they want our nation to remember their wars and how to memorialize those who died in these conflicts. There is no clear model. And perhaps they will want to move beyond granite and marble. But the human face of these wars needs to become part of our nation’s memory — wars do have real human costs. Forgetting wars is bad history. Forgetting sacrifice is irresponsible history.

James Wright, a former Marine, is president-emeritus and professor of history at Dartmouth College. He recently published Those Who Have Borne the Battle: A History of America’s Wars and Those Who Fought Them (Public Affairs Books).

 

Presidential Election 2012: Protecting Our Long-Term National Interests

In 2008, Republicans suffered a major political defeat while Democrats crowed and claimed a mandate from the voters. Two years later, the parties traded places again. The GOP declared that liberalism has been rejected and promised a conservative agenda that would put the nation back on track. Unfortunately, the political narrative this election cycle has been one in which both parties have been guilty of misreading the general-election voters.

In establishing our Constitutional Republic, the Framers realized that the whole was greater than the sum of its parts, and their crowning achievement was to make a vigorous democratic process, not partisan ideology, our constitutional mandate. As you go to the polls today, remember to take a step back and vote for who you think will best protect our long-term national interests: the Constitution and our democratic principles. Read the following article on the most influential factors going into Election Day, share your thoughts, and—most importantly—VOTE!

From CNN Politics

Margin of error: Two candidates, two journeys, one race of lost dreams

By Tom Foreman, CNN

Washington (CNN) – When the race is done, the balloons have wilted, and the confetti has been swept up, Campaign 2012 may be marked more by its failures than its triumphs.

But here’s the starkest failure in these final days before the vote: Neither candidate has made a convincing enough argument for his presidency to break free of the margin of error in the polls.

No matter who is elected, close to as many Americans will have voted against him as for him.

Sure, Barack Obama has generally stayed a point or two ahead of his rival in most battlegrounds, but despite his mighty pushes and the advantage of the bully pulpit he has rarely done any better. And Mitt Romney, while he has managed to relentlessly nip at the president’s heels like a dog chasing a car (as opposed to one riding on top), he has never been able to decisively bridge the gap from “also ran” to “front runner.”

The most recent CNN Poll of Polls — an average of 10 national polls — has Obama just one point ahead of Romney, 48%-47%. The latest CNN/ORC survey in the battleground state of Ohio has Obama up 50%-47%, and in Florida by just one point, 50%-49%. Both results are well within the polls’ margin of error of plus or minus 3.5%.

And if both parties are not haunted by the ever-growing mob of voters calling themselves independents, they ought to be.

At least Dr. Rita Kirk at Southern Methodist University thinks so. She is director of the Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility. “Independent isn’t a party,” she says. “It just means ‘none of the above.’ People are not really satisfied with either party.”

Romney’s difficulties in breaking through the margin of error have been well documented: a slow start that allowed the White House to paint his strongest positive, his business experience, as a negative; a clumsy trip overseas; and more than one stumble that helped build the caricature of an out-of-touch fat cat. Note to future campaigners: Working class folks have a little trouble relating to a guy who proposes $10,000 bets.

Being pulled from the right

But perhaps a deeper part of Romney’s trouble dates back to Obama’s single biggest humiliation since taking office.

Two years ago this month, Republicans ripped control of the House of Representatives from the Democrats, seized new ground in the Senate, and captured 10 extra governorships in what appeared to be a resounding rejection of the White House agenda. A subdued Obama called it a “shellacking,” admitting in a masterpiece of understatement, “Some election nights are more fun than others.”

The Republican charge up Capitol Hill, however, was not led by party purists. The flags of the tea party waved high over the Democratic trouncing, and created a whole new road for GOP presidential hopefuls such as Romney. The uncompromising tea partiers made it clear they would get behind only someone who paid the toll of a hard and unmistakable turn to the right, especially on fiscal matters.

And as Kirk puts it, “A candidate (who makes that turn) stands very little chance of getting back to the center in time for the general election.”

Was he ever ‘severely conservative’ enough?

Romney was always an awkward fit. He had a hard time embracing the far right with enthusiasm, and the right felt the same about him. That is one reason why the nomination process dragged on so long, as the faithful tried to make it work with Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum.

But Romney was not just wrestling with philosophical differences.

“Something else that pulls candidates away from the middle is money,” says assistant professor Georgia Kernell at Northwestern University’s Department of Political Science, where she is a fellow in The Institute for Policy Research. She notes that Romney’s now infamous “47 percent” comment was almost certainly spurred by the need to appeal to right-wing donors at that fundraiser.

“He didn’t have to say it,” Kernell says, “but it certainly made (his message) more powerful.” The same might be said about candidate Barack Obama’s similar stumble four years ago when he privately told donors that rural voters “cling to their guns or religion.”

Kernell believes the Republican nominee, all things considered, has walked the tightrope well. “I actually think Romney did a great job using the first debate to position himself back in the middle.”

It all came at a price. His vacillation between the right and center has allowed Team Obama to pelt him with accusations of flip-flopping and a schizophrenic candidacy, leaving Romney unable to crawl out of the margin-of-error trench.

A president marginalized

Obama did not have to tack nearly as far left as he would have if he were fighting other Democrats for the nomination this year, and undeniably he had some accomplishments to carry into the election. Health care reform was upheld by the Supreme Court. The war in Iraq was concluded and Afghanistan is winding down. As Vice President Joe Biden loves to say, because of Barack Obama, “Osama Bin Laden is dead, and General Motors is alive.”

Despite all that, the president, too, has spent the campaign in a marginal spot, right alongside Romney. His enemy is the economy, or as Kernell puts it, “Unemployment hasn’t gone down;” at least not down to the 5% range Obama himself promised early in his term when he was touting the stimulus.

Most voters have been willing to blame the legacy of the Bush years, and the president has encouraged that thinking at every juncture, reminding anyone who will listen that he inherited the worst recession since the Great Depression.

An unwilling participant in his own reelection

But his reelection team clearly knew “It could be worse” was not much of a campaign slogan, so over the summer they steadily shifted to a divide-and-conquer strategy.

Gone is “No Drama Obama” — the apparently easygoing man who went into the White House promising to bring warring political parties to the table of peace and prosperity. In his place is a much tougher talking candidate who misses no chance to savage the Republicans, to ridicule Romney as a “bull****er,” and like his opponent, to bend the truth until it breaks. “They’re ignoring the fact checkers,” Kirk says of both Obama and Romney.

The president, clearly much happier preaching Hope and Change in 2008, has seemed at times an unwilling participant in his own reelection. At the Democratic Convention, critics widely saw Bill Clinton’s speech as superior, Joe Biden’s as more passionate, and the president’s as acceptable at best.

The first debate with Romney brought even more concern for Democrats. President Obama sat looking down much of the time and seemed alternately angry, bored, or disengaged. His showing was so lackluster even faithful fans wondered whether he really wanted the White House anymore.

Perhaps that is why he too, aside from one brief surge in August, has been unable to establish a commanding lead. Despite his consistently strong personal popularity, he’s had to cling for his political life to every vote he can scrape up within the margin of error.

More money, less unity

Neither candidate can say his deadlocked fate in the polls is because people have not heard his message. No other election has ever seen so much money raised and spent to win the White House — latest estimates have the 2012 campaign costing, all in, as much as $6 billion.

All those ads, all those TV interviews with the candidates and their surrogates, all the debates and bus trips. They’ve each had their chances to break out over and over again. Yet neither has been able to get the job done.

They may have, however, accomplished another task. Although they each gave lip service to the idea of us all being in this together, the divisiveness of the race itself seems to have hardened opinions even more in red and blue America.

In the end, it remains to be seen if there will be a president of the United States.

Sure, someone will win the office, but arguably both campaigns have done all they can to make sure the country will be anything but united. If Obama wins, the stalwarts of red America may hunker down in their “bitterness,” simply enduring the next four years while awaiting the next chance to storm the castle. If Romney wins, the faithful of blue America may feed on their fury and do to the other party’s president exactly what they accuse Republicans of doing to theirs; obstructing his every plan.

Kernell likes to think not. She believes the very political partisans who’ve helped lead the country to this point may lead it back to more conciliatory days, if only for cynical reasons. “The economy is going to turn around,” she says, “and they’re all going to want to claim some responsibility.”

Kirk, however, believes those better days may be a longer time coming. “I think leadership will emerge. I just don’t think it has yet.”

Maybe, she suggests, the candidates once had ideas of a great, unifying moment — of a nation coming together to confront its common issues in this campaign, but along the way those dreams were lost in the margins.

Our Multinational Fast Food Corporations are Dodging Billions in Taxes

Not only is the overconsumption of fatty, salty, and sugar-laden foods literally killing us, our multinational fast food corporations are dodging billions in taxes; earning enormous profits through franchising fees, then diverting the profits to overseas operations where they can’t be taxed by the U.S.

Consumerism is the mantra; insidious marketing is everywhere. Fast food chains providing cheap food stuffs to Americans who can afford little more ignore both the physical welfare of our citizens and the fiscal health of our country. Read the following articles and share your thoughts.

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From Crooks and Liars

How Fast-Food Chains Dodge Billions In Taxes Using Loopholes

By Susie Madrak

Fast food companies are dodging billions of dollars in taxes by registering their products as “intellectual property” and by diverting profits offshore. So the next time you’re biting into a Big Whopper, know that you’re making their headquarters in Switzerland very happy! Via Think Progress:

Technology companies have mastered the use of schemes involving low-tax foreign countries in order to avoid billions of dollars in American taxes each year. Now, fast food chains like McDonalds, Burger King, and Subway are doing the same.

When the companies create a product, like Burger King’s Whopper hamburger, they can classify it as intellectual property. Franchises then pay a fee to the company to sell the product and use the company logo. But instead of collecting the fees in the United States, where the intellectual property filings were created, Burger King, McDonalds, and other chains often house the fees in other low-tax countries in order to save millions of dollars, as Reuters’ Tom Bergin reports:

In Burger King’s case, the IP was created in the United States, home of the Whopper. But the fee the European units pay to use it goes to Burger King’s main European office in Zug, Switzerland. There the effective tax rate could range from 2 percent to 12 percent, according to Thierry Boitelle, tax partner with law firm Bonnard Lawson in Geneva.Zug-based Burger King Europe GmbH retains the payments, a Burger King spokesman said. Had the fee been remitted to the United States it would have faced a tax rate of 35 percent to 39 percent.

McDonalds and Burger King each have overseas headquarters in Switzerland. Subway sends most of its overseas profits to Curacao, a low-tax haven in the Caribbean. Coffee-chain Starbucks also utilizes the intellectual property loophole to help reduce its corporate tax rate— Reuters reported that it successfully avoided millions of pounds in British taxes last year. The companies’ tax rates differed: Starbucks paid 31 percent in the U.S. but just 13 percent overseas; Burger King also paid 13 percent on overseas income, while McDonalds paid 20 percent.

 

 

GOP Voter Fraud Accusations, or “The Wolf Who Cried Wolf.”

Over the past few months, Republican Party members have been tied to numerous reports alleging voter registration misconduct. Despite GOP claims that voter fraud is a widespread issue, the case for its effect on the 2012 election may have slowly become a story of “The Wolf Who Cried Wolf.”

The expansion of voting rights is essential to our democratic electoral process. Republican attempts to impose limitations on the franchise of Americans citizens have been repeatedly shot down by courts, so shady, even illegal suppression tactics are growing.

From The Huffington Post

GOP Voter Fraud Accusations Suddenly Blowing Up In Their Faces

By Dan Froomkin

Republican officials, who have used hysteria about alleged voter fraud as an excuse to support measures that disproportionately block Democratic voters, are furiously trying to distance themselves from a growing number of GOP voter registration drives that either submitted false applications or threw away authentic ones.

The incidents might have been overlooked if not for the GOP’s clamorous campaignto restrict registration drives, purge voter rolls, roll back early voting, and pass voter ID laws that opponents point out have the effect of depressing the vote among minorities, the poor and other generally Democratic constituencies.

As one Southern California alt-weekly put it, it’s turning into a story of “The Wolf Who Cried Wolf.”

The latest drama began to unfold on Oct. 17, when the manager of a Tuesday Morning discount store in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley saw a man throwing a garbage bag into the store’s private dumpster. Inside the bag was a file folder containing eight completed Virginia voter registration forms.

The manager described the man to Rockingham County sheriff’s deputies, who the following day arrested Colin Small, 23, a voter registration drive contractor for the Virginia GOP — and charged him with eight felonies and five misdemeanors related to the destruction and disclosure of the applications and obstruction of justice.

A few weeks earlier, the GOP had been under fire following reports of suspicious registration applications that had been submitted in 10 Florida counties by a company run by Nathan Sproul, a Republican operative who has long been trailed by allegations of voter fraud. The Republican Party paid Sproul’s company, Strategic Allied Consulting, about $3 million this year for registration drives in five swing states: Colorado, Florida, North Carolina, Nevada, and Virginia.

In Palm Beach County, Fla., alone, about 100 questionable voter registrations were flagged, more than half of which involved changing a voter’s party affiliation to Republican or independent. Discrepancies were also found in North Carolina.

And a viral video uploaded to YouTube in late September showed a young woman who worked for Strategic Allied Consulting registering voters in Colorado and admitting that she was only looking for Republicans. “Well, I’m actually trying to register people for a particular party. Because we’re out here in support of Romney, actually,” the woman said.

Given Sproul’s history, it could hardly have come as a surprise to his GOP employers that his canvassers would generate spurious applications.

And yet, because every bit of the process of voting has now become so politically supercharged, once the allegations of voter registration fraud became public, the Republican National Committee and its state chapters quickly severed their ties with Sproul.

“We’ve made it clear we’re not doing business with these guys anymore,” Sean Spicer, the RNC communications director, told Michael Isikoff of NBC News. “We’ve come out pretty strong against this kind of stuff — and we have zero tolerance for this.”

As for Small, who was first hired by Sproul’s group, the RNC this week simultaneously denied he was working directly for them and announced that he’d been fired.

On Friday, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus told HuffPost’s Amanda Terkel: “If it’s true, the guy should be punished. He was fired, and he should have been fired. There’s no tolerance for this stuff.”

Republican Party of Virginia Chairman Pat Mullins released a statement saying Small’s actions were “a direct contradiction of both his training and explicit instructions given to him.”

Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, by contrast, issued her own statement, calling Small’s arrest just another example of “a concerted effort by the RNC and its allies to win the game by rigging it altogether.”

And three Democratic congressmen from Virginia on Tuesday sent a letter to the Justice Department requesting “a multi-state investigation to determine if a pattern of voting registration irregularities related to Strategic Allied Consulting are connected and constitute a broader conspiracy of voter registration fraud.”

The frequency of allegations “would seem to suggest something more than the isolated acts of ‘a few bad apples,’” they wrote.

Voter registration fraud is different, way more common and considerably less threatening to democracy than actual voter fraud. Registering Mickey Mouse to vote is easy, and a far cry from actually casting a fraudulent ballot.

The main reason voter registration fraud is so common is that canvassers are sometimes rewarded based on how many applications they submit — which can incentivize padding. That’s what happened fairly frequently with Acorn, the community group that Republicans demonized as a fraud factory after it successfully registered over a million mostly inner-city residents before the 2008 election — with some imaginary and dead people mixed in.

Priebus himself recently cited the example of Acorn to support his argument that “Democrats know they benefit from election fraud.”

But Acorn, unlike Strategic Allied Consulting, actually self-reported its canvassers’ suspicious applications — which it was legally obligated to submit nonetheless. The ones from Sproul’s groups, on the other hand, were spotted by election officials.

And the Colorado video, combined with the fact that the suspicious Palm Beach applications featured so many party switches, suggest that Sproul’s group might have added a new wrinkle: rewarding its canvassers for applications from Republicans or independents, but not from Democrats.

What none of that explains, however, is what might have motivated Small — who, after all, didn’t submit fraudulent applications; he’s charged with throwing out legitimate ones.

Because Virginia doesn’t register people by party, “it’s not possible to tell a party affiliation just by looking at the voter registration form,” said state board of elections spokeswoman Nikki Sheridan, ruling out one potential answer.

The eight applicants varied in age, and the rural area where they live is overwhelming white, ruling out two more.

So as it turns out, although county officials won’t confirm it on the record, the most likely possibility may be that Small was throwing the applications away because he’d waited longer than the statutory 15 days after he collected them to turn them in, and was afraid of getting in trouble.

Virginia’s guidelines for voter registration drives clearly state that failure to turn in completed applications within 15 days can lead to prosecution for a misdemeanor.

Small, although he was released from jail not long after his arrest, could not be reached for comment.

Sheridan, from the state board of elections, said that the eight applications found in the dumpster were processed by local officials that same day.

As it turned out, three of the applicants were already registered, and one was rejected on account of a felony conviction. But four of them will now be newly on the voter rolls in November.