Author Archives: CaseyYZQswynlze

The Clinton Foundation Sure Is a Great Charity

by CaseyYZQswynlze Posted on September 24, 2016

Mother Jones

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When it comes to charity, Dylan Matthews is pretty hardnosed. To earn his approval, a charity better focus on truly important problems and be damn good at it. So how about the Clinton Foundation? After starting out as a skeptic, he says, “I’ve come to the conclusion that the Clinton Foundation is a real charitable enterprise that did enormous good.” In particular, he praises the Clinton Health Access Initiative, which helped lower the cost of HIV drugs and saved untold lives. But there’s a catch:

And—perhaps uncomfortably for liberals and conservatives alike — it is exactly the kind of unsavory-seeming glad-handing and melding of business and politics for which Bill and Hillary Clinton have taken years of criticism that led to its greatest success….The deals made required buy-in from developing governments. The person tasked with getting that buy-in was a former US president with existing relationships with many of those people. Bill Clinton essentially used his chumminess with foreign politicians and pharmaceutical executives, the kind of thing about the Clinton Global Initiative that earns suspicious news coverage, to enlist their help in a scheme to expand access to HIV/AIDS drugs.

I don’t get it. Why should this make anyone feel uncomfortable? Lots of people have star power, but very few have star power with both rich people and foreign leaders. Bill Clinton is one of those few, so he chose a project that (a) could save a lot of lives, (b) required buy-in from both rich people and foreign leaders, and (c) was right at the cusp where an extra push could really make a difference.

I can’t even imagine why anyone would consider this unsavory, unless they’ve lived in a cave all their lives and don’t understand that glad-handing and chumminess are essential parts of how human societies operate. Matthews may be right that many people feel uneasy about this, but I can’t figure out why. It sounds like Clinton chose to do something that his particular mix of experience and character traits made him uncommonly good at. That’s pretty smart.

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The Clinton Foundation Sure Is a Great Charity

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The Biggest Cyberattack Against the US in Recent History Just Keeps Getting Worse

by CaseyYZQswynlze Posted on September 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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On the eve of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s first state visit to Washington, DC, the Obama administration released alarming new numbers about one of the biggest computer hacks in American history—traceable, officials say, to China—a move that could potentially heighten tension ahead of the historic meeting.

The Office of Personnel Management announced that it had substantially underestimated the number of people whose fingerprints were stolen during the attack earlier this year. About 5.6 million of 21.5 million federal employees, contractors, applicants, and others had their fingerprints stolen during a hack of the OPM’s background check databases, the agency reported Wednesday morning. That figure is higher than the 1.1 million previously reported.

An interagency group including the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Defense are reviewing how the fingerprint information could be used in nefarious ways, but it downplayed the immediate impact. “Federal experts believe that, as of now, the ability to misuse fingerprint data is limited,” the agency said in a statement issued Wednesday morning, as President Barack Obama and a host of dignitaries hosted Pope Francis at the White House. “However, this probability could change over time as technology evolves.”

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The Biggest Cyberattack Against the US in Recent History Just Keeps Getting Worse

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87 Reasons To Rethink the Death Penalty

by CaseyYZQswynlze Posted on May 4, 2015

Mother Jones

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Stanley Griffin was deemed intellectually disabled when he was 16. He scored an abysmal 65 on an IQ test, which put him among the lowest 1 percent of Americans in terms of his intellectual capacity. (An average score is 100.) He was spelling and doing math on a third-grade level. His school designated him mentally retarded and put him in special ed. He even competed in the Special Olympics.

As Griffin grew older, he had trouble finding and holding any job. It took him seven tries to finally pass the test required to drive a semi truck, and when no one would hire him even then, he resorted to manual labor. But his contractor brother wouldn’t let Griffin use power tools because he couldn’t manage them properly; Griffin was oblivious to danger, too, and would walk dangerously close to the backhoe. He tried, and failed, to master simple plumbing—even a Denny’s application proved overwhelming. His mental deficiencies left him unable to live alone, pay bills, or even purchase his own clothing because he would get so flummoxed by the math.

Somewhere along the way, Griffin began getting into trouble and having run-ins with the law. In 1990, at age 25, he was tried and convicted for burglary and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and sentenced to 20 years in prison. He served 12, but things only went downhill after his release. He ended up homeless, and finally, in 2012, Griffin was convicted of strangling to death 29-year-old Jennifer Hailey in College Station, Texas, and violently assaulting her 9-year-old son, who had witnessed her murder. He was tried and found guilty. The prosecutor asked for the death penalty and the jury obliged.

There is little question Griffin should have been locked away. At the same time, he should never have been a candidate for the death penalty. The Supreme Court has twice ruled that it is unconstitutional to execute people who are intellectually disabled—a polite alternative to “mentally retarded”—regardless of the nature of their crimes. Their “diminished capacities,” the court further noted, made such defendants far less likely to be deterred by the threat of death, which is one of the few remaining justifications for capital punishment.

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87 Reasons To Rethink the Death Penalty

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