Sunday Round-Up - November 17, 2013

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from outside the US mainstream media.  Today we look at the Republican stranglehold on Congress, the Euro-recession, war spending and the deficit, The Guardian editor's upcoming appearance before Parliament, and bee colony collapse.

In an article posted on its website on November 11, Rolling Stone magazine takes up the lock on Congress that Republicans have in spite of the growing gap between their policies and the wishes of the majority of the electorate.  Tom Dickinson explains how national Republicans have rigged the game by "waging an unrelenting campaign to exploit every weakness and anachronism in our electoral system.  Through a combination of hyperpartisan redistricting of the House, unprecedented obstructionism in the Senate and racist voter suppression in the states, today's GOP has locked in political power that it could never have secured on a level playing field."  The redistricting of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan is described in some detail.  The vast sum of money spent by Republicans in North Carolina to take over the state legislature in 2010, voter suppression laws, activist judges and the unprecedented use of the filibuster in the Senate are exposed.  And, as Dickinson notes, the Republicans are not done yet.  "In a project with the explicit blessing of Republican National Committee Chairman..., a half-dozen Republican-dominated legislatures in states that swing blue in presidential elections have advanced proposals to abandon the winner-take-all standard in the Electoral College. These states would instead apportion electoral votes by the favored candidate of each congressional district – a method currently practiced by only two, small, homogenous states, Maine and Nebraska. Thanks to the GOP's gerrymandering, such a change would all but guarantee that a Democratic presidential candidate in a big, diverse state like Michigan would lose the split of electoral votes even if he or she won in a popular landslide."

"The EU economy will remain flat in 2013, EU economic affairs commissioner Olli Rehn said on Tuesday (5 November), as he downgraded the bloc's growth forecasts for 2014 and 2015...There was little to cheer for Europe's jobless. Unemployment levels are likely to remain virtually unchanged, although they are forecast to fall from 12.2 percent to 11.8 percent across the eurozone by 2015."   The November 13 EU Observer article should be a reminder to us of how austerity programs implemented to reduce deficits slow recovery from a recession.  The "sequestration" cuts, our own version of misguided austerity, will begin having a greater impact in 2014.  Combine this with the fiscal cliff negotiations and the possibility of another government shutdown and we may be in for an interesting ride leading to the 2014 mid-term elections.

Speaking of the US deficit, a Harvard report out earlier this year put the eventual total monetary cost of the Iraq and Afghan wars as high as 6 trillion dollars - or 35% of the 17 trillion dollars total national debt.  The DNA India website noted that this corresponds to $75,000 for every household in the country.  "There's a sense that we are turning the corner, but unfortunately, the legacy of these wars, because of decision about the way we fought and funded these wars, means we will be paying the costs for a long time to come," [Harvard Professor Linda] Bilmes said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph. "We may be mentally turning the page, but we are certainly not from a budgetary and financial perspective."   As the Congressional budget discussions proceed, it should be helpful to keep in mind this graphic from the National Priorities Project.



 

In the UK, Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger has been asked to appear before Parliament to give evidence regarding the intelligence files leaked by American whistleblower Edward Snowden.  Rusbridger will appear at a meeting of the home affairs select committee amidst rising criticism from British intelligence agencies and Tories.  "Alan has been invited to give evidence to the home affairs select committee and looks forward to appearing next month," a Guardian spokeswoman said.  A New York Times editorial  warns that the freedom of the press so essential to democratic accountability, is being challenged by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government of Prime Minister David Cameron.



Finally, here's an update on the bee colony collapse that's been occurring around the world and threatening to impact fruit and vegetable production.  Ars Technica reported on October 21 that Italian researchers had cut through the complexity of causes that had surrounded the bee colony collapse.  Infections, insecticides and agricultural practices were all thought to be involved.  "Previous toxicology work in mammals indicated that a specific class of insecticides, the neonicotinoids, could influence the activity of genes involved in the innate immune system."  The researchers started by showing that the same is true in insects. Initially, they worked with everyone's favorite fruit fly, Drosophila, showing that the equivalent genes responded in the same ways in the flies. They then showed that the innate immune response isn't activated when these same flies are exposed to an infection.... Various infections may still be doing the ultimate job of killing the bees, but their virulence could be explained by compromised immune function, caused by a combination of insecticide use and agricultural practices. The results will also provide further support for the European Union's attempt to ban the use of neonicotinoid pesticides."  The relationship between insecticides and colony collapse had been legally challenged by Bayer and Syngenta earlier this year.  

The image of the European honey bee is from Wikipedia.

Democracy - The What's Left of It Edition (Part 2)

This is the second post on the state of our democracy.  In the July 31 post, I listed my personal choices of the #10 through #6 threats to American democracy.   To wit: (10) Wealth disparity, (9) Misinformed citizenry, (8) Government spying, (7) Special interest money, (6) Political attack ads.  Concluding the countdown, here are the top five attacks on democracy in this country.

#5 - The Filibuster

The 60 vote requirement to break a Senate filibuster is the equivalent of 9 stolen elections.  Instead of the majority needing 51 votes to pass legislation, they need 60.  The filibuster's original purpose - preventing the hasty but perhaps unwise action of the majority - has been distorted and abused in an unprecedented fashion in the past several years after the election of Barack Obama. When first conceived, the filibuster required Senators to actually speak about the legislation under consideration. The primary purpose of the now non-talking filibuster as wielded by Senate Republicans today has been to block Presidential nominations (both judicial and executive) and to block legislation supported by the majority of the American people (e.g., universal background checks for gun purchases). Since Republicans lost the Senate in 2006, there have been 425 cloture motions. Cloture motions only represent the attempts to break the filibuster. Sometimes the majority will not even get that far. The Senate can change its own rules. Eliminating the filibuster altogether would be the right (democratic) thing to do. Failing that, there should be limits placed on debate. Senators need to talk to the issue and after a given number of hours of debate be required to give an up or down vote.

#4 - Congressional district gerrymandering

 

One man/woman, one vote, right? Well, thanks to the magic of gerrymandering of Congressional districts by state legislatures, that isn't always the case. Boundaries are often redrawn to give an advantage to the party in power in the state. Republicans have been excellent at it, taking full advantage of the most recent census and their victories in the 2010 elections. As noted on the PolicyMic website: "The Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) has an agenda. It has been costly but its goal is simple: Get more congressional seats without actually winning them. This wildly undemocratic goal has been successfully pursued in seven states: Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Virginia, Florida, and Ohio." In the current version of the 113th do-nothing Congress, Republicans hold a 34 vote majority. Yet nationwide, Republican House candidates received fewer votes than the Democrats in the 2012 elections. So how did they end up with ~54% of the House seats when they had less than 50% of the vote? I've created this chart from the PolicyMic post that goes some way towards explaining it.

State	Dem Popular vote	Rep Popular vote	House seats Dems	House seats Reps
North Carolina	51 pct	49 pct	4	9
Michigan	52 pct	47 pct	5	9
Wisconsin	51 pct	49 pct	3	5
Pennsylvania	50.65%	49.34%	5	13
Florida	48 pct	52 pct	10	17
Ohio	47 pct	53 pct	4	12
Virginia	49 pct	51 pct	3	8

For these seven gerrymandered states, Republicans were awarded 73 House seats; Democrats, 34 - a 39 vote margin when the popular vote was nearly evenly split.

The next step in the Republican plan is to try to pass "electoral college" legislation in states they control but which have typically voted for Democrats in national elections. This scheme would award electoral votes according to who wins the Congressional district rather than the popular vote across the state. Had this been the case in 2012 with the gerrymandered districts, we would be talking about President Romney's policies today even though Obama received more than 50% of the popular vote nationwide.

#3 - SCOTUS' Citizens United ruling on corporate "free speech"

SCOTUS' infamous Citizens United decision gave corporations the status of persons - at least as far as freedom of speech goes. The decision eliminated the ban on political spending by corporations and unions. As summarized on the Center for Public Integrity's webpage on the subject: "The Citizens United ruling, released in January 2010, tossed out the corporate and union ban on making independent expenditures and financing electioneering communications. It gave corporations and unions the green light to spend unlimited sums on ads and other political tools, calling for the election or defeat of individual candidates." A companion ruling several weeks later in Federal court (SpeechNow.org) decided that limits on individual contributions to groups that make independent expenditures are unconstitutional. It further allows non-profits and so-called "social welfare organizations" ( aka 501(c)(4)), such as business leagues, to keep their donor lists secret. And what was the result? "The 2012 election was the most expensive and least transparent presidential campaign of the modern era." The flood of super-PAC and "social welfare group" money was astounding. And it was mainly spent in opposition to candidates. 266 Super-PAC's spent $546.5 million dollars during the 2012 Presidential election cycle. More than half of the Super-PAC money ($290 million) was spent trying to defeat just one candidate - Barack Obama. Then there is the "dark money" from social welfare organizations and non-profits. Dark money is so-named because unlike PAC's, these organizations do not have to reveal their donors. Overall, dark money spent on the 2012 elections totaled $300 million. The financing of election campaigns is totally out-of-control thanks to these Supreme Court and lower court rulings. Several states have begun working on a Constitutional Amendment that would overturn Citizens United. This appears to be the only way out of the morass - both on a national and state level. It's obvious that there will be no relief from the current Supreme Court, who saw fit in their wisdom to overturn a 100 year-old Montana law limiting individual campaign contributions in February 2012.

#2 - SCOTUS destroys the Voting Rights Act

This has been previously blogged (June25, 2013 SCOTUS: R.I.P. Voting Rights Act) so I'll just sum up a few salient points here. Justice Ginsburg's dissent said it well: "The sad irony of today’s decision lies in its utter failure to grasp why the VRA has proven effective," Ginsburg wrote. "The Court appears to believe that the VRA’s success in eliminating the specific devices extant in 1965 means that preclear­ance is no longer needed." The provision has proven "enormously successful" in increasing minority registration and access to the ballot and preventing a "return to old ways," Ginsburg said. Even in jurisdictions where discrimination may not be overt, "subtle methods" have emerged to diminish minority turnout, such as racial gerrymandering. With the House in Republican hands and Mitch "Mr. Filibuster" McConnell leading the Senate Republicans, Sections 4 and 5 will not be rewritten by Congress in the foreseeable future. The decision has unleashed what MoJo blogger Kevin Drum describesas a "GOP feeding frenzy". The North Carolina legislature recently passed the worst voter suppression law in the country. For a complete listing of the provisions of this incredible attack on the right to vote see Ari Berman's post on the Moyers & Company website.  Berman's post points out that "Six Southern states have passed or implemented new voting restrictions since the Supreme Court’s decision last month invalidating Section 4 of the VRA, which will go down in history as one of the worst rulings in the past century."  The right to vote is the most fundamental and distinguishing feature of a democracy. A constitutional Amendment guaranteeing all citizens the right to vote is needed if we are to ensure democracy's survival.

And the #1 threat to American democracy is....state voter suppression laws.

For the most part, Republican voter suppression laws did not succeed in the 2012 elections - certainly not in their main objective: to defeat Barack Obama.  Aimed at denying the vote to traditionally Democratic voters, these laws were a combination of overly restrictive voter ID laws, reductions in early voting days, limitations on voter registration drives, and elimination of or severe restrictions on provisional balloting - what happens when you show up at the wrong polling place. These throw backs to the now unconstitutional poll taxes of yesteryear were overcome by a combination of judicial action in state and Federal courts and executive action (enforcing Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act) and a massive turnout effort on the part of Democrats. And a good thing they were. Based on the Brennan Center for Justice's October 2011 analysis, the laws in place by year end 2011 would have made it "significantly harder for more than five million eligible voters to cast ballots in 2012." States implementing these restrictive voter ID and registration laws "will provide 171 electoral votes in 2012 – 63 percent of the 270 needed to win the presidency." This figure of 171 electoral votes was revised upwards to 189 in a March 2012 update.  Democracy escaped Republican clutches this time but in 2014 and 2016, we may not be so fortunate. North Carolina recently enacted the most restrictive voting law in the country in the aftermath of SCOTUS' gutting of the Voting Rights Act.   (If you haven't gone to the Moyers & Company website, here's another chance - North Carolina really has passed a most incredible law.)  Five other Southern states have done likewise.  And if someone without Obama's drawing power and organizational savvy becomes the Democratic candidate, the laws will certainly have their desired effect. The best short-term hope to blunt this blatant attack on voting rights will be the Administration's challenging of the voter ID laws. They'll need to spend a lot more effort on this now that SCOTUS has effectively destroyed the Voting Rights Act .
 

Many of the problems affecting our democracy are rooted in our election laws and the way we finance public elections. Under the current system, money wins elections. Period. Public financing of all Federal elections has no chance of being enacted for now.  Nor is there any chance of bi-partisan reform of existing laws passing the obstructed 113th Congress. So, in the meantime, we need to take our gains, limited as they are by the Citizens United decision, and defend our rights, as difficult as it may be, wherever we can. In the end, it may be down to a constitutional amendment to protect the right to vote - this most basic right of a citizen of a democracy.

The Fiscal Cliff (and other) Follies

The markets reacted positively yesterday (Dow up 300 points) when the so-called fiscal cliff was finally averted. The dreaded fiscal cliff was and continues to be a self-imposed crisis. It's closely related to last year's Republican-manufactured “debt ceiling crisis” that briefly threw the markets into a downward spin. The centrists who control the Democratic Party today have apparently swallowed the Republican nonsense that the most important problem facing America is the national debt. It's not. The most important economic problem facing America today is the continuing high unemployment and underemployment.

The fiscal compromise was finally approved by the Republican-controlled House. The Senate shamed them into it by overwhelmingly approving it. The compromise raises revenues by discontinuing the income tax break for people earning more than $450k/yr (almost double Obama's going in position). It basically kicks the can down the road two months – when additional battles on the sequestering of funds will take place. If the Republican foot dragging on the compromise is any indication, you can bet the military-industrial-political complex will fight the defense cuts that are in play. And if the lack of cooperation in the fiscal cliff negotiations shown by Republicans is any indication, you can bet that the debt ceiling will again become another ridiculous fiasco at about the same time. Geithner's special steps on the debt run out about then. In any case, we'll get an early indication of how much the Republicans intend to obstruct progress on things beneficial to the average American when Biden's task force on gun violence presents its recommendations to Congress. It will be particularly interesting to see what they do on the reinstatement of the assault weapons ban. 

It took Republican Governor Christie of New Jersey to call out House Republicans, and in particular John Boehner for failing to call for a vote on the $60 billion relief bill for Sandy victims already approved by the Senate. As ABC reported, "Do your job and come through for the people of this country," Christie pointedly said about Boehner. The bill "could not overcome the toxic internal politics of the House majority," Christie said. It had the desired effect – Republicans scrambled to reassure voters that they would vote on $9 billion within days and consider the remaining $51 billion by mid January.

President Obama also has a lot to answer for. As reported in the Huffington Post: “President Barack Obama signed the [$633 billion] National Defense Authorization Act of 2013 on Wednesday, despite his own threat to veto it over prohibitions on closing the Guantanamo Bay prison camp....Civil liberties advocates had roundly criticized the bill over Guantanamo and a separate section that could allow the military to indefinitely detain American citizens on suspicions of supporting terrorism. “ There was no way Congress would have overridden his veto. They would have revoted on the ridiculously overbloated military budget without those provisions. Maybe Obama was just worn down by the fiscal cliff negotiations but this does not bode well for his second term.

Finally just a word about what may be one of the bigger threats to our democracy – gerrymandering (aka redistricting) of House Congressional districts. Talk about the will of the people. With a Congressional approval rating barely registering in double digits for much of 2012, 94% of House incumbents were reelected to office in the 2012 elections – and Republicans, because they are now better at gerrymandering  than Democrats, retained firm control of the House.  From  the Think Progress website: “Based on current tallies, Democrats now lead Republicans 59,343,447 to 58,178,393 in total votes cast for their House candidates — meaning that the American people preferred Democrats over Republicans by nearly a full percentage point of the total vote. Yet, despite clearly losing the popular vote, Republicans will control nearly 54 percent of the seats in the House in the 113th Congress.”  The scary thing is that there is no end in sight to Republican control of the House and their "safe" districts.  Unless the average Republican voter wakes up to what is happening (or more accurately not happening) because of this, we are in for more of the same until the next census in 2020.