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Obama Understands That Presidents Can’t Make Empty Threats

by ShastaSnoddy Posted on October 18, 2015

Mother Jones

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Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank is upset at President Obama’s “passivity” in foreign affairs. Specifically, he’s upset that Obama hasn’t threatened Iran with reprisals for its sham trial of his colleague Jason Rezaian on charges of spying.

I don’t blame Milbank. If I were in his shoes I’d be plenty enraged too. And yet, that still doesn’t make this right:

Obama said … nothing. He didn’t go to the briefing room and make a statement. He didn’t even release a written statement.

….Where was the demand that Iran immediately release Rezaian and the two or three other Americans it is effectively holding hostage? Where was the threat of consequences if Tehran refused? How about some righteous outrage condemning Iran for locking up an American journalist for doing his job? Even if Obama’s outrage came to nothing, it would be salutary to hear the president defend the core American value of free speech.

There are times when presidents should vent a little outrage, and maybe Obama should do it more often.1 But the fundamental truth about threats is that you don’t make them unless you’re willing to carry them out—and that goes double for presidents. If Obama had done what Milbank asked, and then failed to follow up, he’d open himself up to justified contempt. But if he did follow up, he’d be allowing America’s foreign policy to be dictated by the fate of a single person. Like it or not, a president can’t operate like that. He has bigger responsibilities than Donald Trump does.

Since neither of these options is acceptable, all that’s left is to take the course Obama has decided on: say nothing and allow his State Department to work behind the scenes. That’s not very emotionally satisfying, but it’s the right thing to do.

1Though Obama has publicly called for the release of all American prisoners in Iran on more than one occasion. “We are not going to relent until we bring home our Americans who are unjustly detained in Iran,” he said shortly after the Iran nuclear deal was announced. “Journalist Jason Rezaian should be released. Pastor Saeed Abedini should be released. Amir Hekmati, a former sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps, should be released.”

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Obama Understands That Presidents Can’t Make Empty Threats

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Republican Candidates Demand Opening and Closing Statements at Next Debate

by AXDDorothy Posted on October 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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From Alex Isenstadt’s Politico account of a leaked RNC conference call that ended in chaos:

Ken McKay, Chris Christie’s campaign manager, expressed worry about stating his position on an open conference call line, saying that it could expose his campaign to leaks.

I would expect the Christie campaign to understand the need for operational secrecy pretty well, and sure enough, they were apparently the only ones to think about this. And they were right: the entire conversation was immediately leaked.

But here’s the best part: the chaos was over the pressing question of whether candidates would be allowed to give opening and closing statements at the next Republican debate. Seriously. CNBC wants to ditch them, for obvious reasons I think. But the candidates are fuming over this brazen display of disrespect toward their God-given right to give mini-stump speeches on national TV. Rand Paul’s representative put it the most pungently: “If we don’t have opening and closing statements, CNBC can go fuck themselves.”

Trump and Carson later sent a letter to CNBC promising to boycott the debate unless opening and closing statements were allowed.1 The others didn’t go that far, but in a display of their shaky grasp of what what the TV-watching public wants, they did all agree on the crucial need for the viewing audience to hear 30 minutes of tedious speechifying from their own silver tongues. However, that doesn’t mean there was a completely united front on this issue:

Christian Ferry, a representative for Lindsey Graham, who’s been relegated to undercard debates, chimed in. If any of the top-polling candidates didn’t want to participate in the Colorado debate, Graham would gladly take their place.

Atta boy, Lindsey!

1They also want assurances that the debate won’t go longer than two hours. This just goes to show that Trump and Carson can occasionally be right about something.

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Republican Candidates Demand Opening and Closing Statements at Next Debate

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Putin’s War in Syria Not Going Well So Far

by SusanneWPA Posted on October 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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The New York Times reports that Russian jets in Syria are “conducting nearly as many strikes in a typical day against rebel troops opposing the government of President Bashar al-Assad as the American-led coalition targeting the Islamic State has been carrying out each month this year.”

Got that? As many in a day as we do in a month. So how’s that working out? Zack Beauchamp points me to an analysis of the first week of the Russian campaign from the Institute for the Study of War:

The offensive reportedly included reinforcements in the form of “hundreds” of Iranian troops….Quds Force commander Maj. Gen. Qassem Suleimani personally oversaw operations….Direct assistance from Russia in the form of airstrikes “synchronized” with the ground operations.

….Nonetheless, the Syrian regime and its allies have thus far failed to achieve significant gains…. Confirmed reports indicate that pro-regime fighters have seized only six villages and towns…. At the same time, regime forces suffered heavy losses in manpower and materiel in the face of heavy rebel resistance. Free Syrian Army (FSA)-affiliated rebels forces claimed to destroy at least twenty tanks and armored vehicles as well as a helicopter gunship in a “tank massacre” on the first day of the offensive.

….Operations against the Syrian opposition will likely prove harder and slower than anticipated by either Russia or Iran….The foreign allies of the Syrian regime may be forced to expend further financial and military resources in order to preserve their initial gains.

We’ll see how this goes. But both Russia and Syria are all-in on this campaign. Russia is maintaining a sky-high operational tempo along the border between regime territory and rebel territory, and the Iranians are helping out too. Nonetheless, it’s rough going and the Syrians are apparently taking heavy losses. How long can Putin keep this up before his glorious nose-thumbing at the West turns into an exhausting quagmire?

Hard to say. Maybe the rebels are at the end of their rope, and Syrian regime troops will soon break through. I wouldn’t count on that, though.

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Putin’s War in Syria Not Going Well So Far

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Solitary Confinement Coffee May Be The Worst Branding Idea Ever

by NikiPaceecyot Posted on September 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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Jailhouse Coffee

Do prison cells sell? That seems to be the idea behind Solitary Sumatra, an organic, fair trade coffee blend sold by Jailhouse Coffee, a newish small-batch roastery in New York City. The coffee is not made by prisoners or ex-felons and the company’s only connection to incarceration is that, according to its website, “there is a ‘bighouse’ just near the roastery” in Queens.

The 83 marks scratched into the coffee bag far surpass the 15 days the United Nations specifies as the maximum amount of time anyone should spend in solitary confinement. Anything beyond that “constitutes torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.” The Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates that more than 80,000 prisoners are in isolation at a given time in the United States. Some of these are the “worst of the worst,” but many are not. In New York, prisoners have been thrown in the hole for “wasting food” or having an “untidy cell or person.” On Rikers Island, not far from Queens, 16-year-old Kalief Browder spent long stretches in solitary confinement during the three years he spent in pretrial detention for allegedly stealing a backpack. Two years after his release, he committed suicide. Nearly two out of five suicides in prison happen in solitary confinement. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, President Obama, and Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy have spoken out against the excessive use of solitary confinement in this country.

So who thought solitary confinement would make a good branding idea? Is it just hipster irony that makes our prison system’s most extreme aspects somehow cute? Perhaps it’s the Orange Is The New Black effect, a consequence of the popularization and romanticization of prison life. (Like the woman who dressed a girl in an orange jumpsuit and blackface for Halloween last year.)

I couldn’t reach anyone at the company to explain their marketing strategy. So far, they seem to have gotten little flack for their brand, though one person has taken it upon himself to circulate a petition asking the company to change its name. Jailhouse Coffee’s blends also include Solitary Peru, Good Behavior Organic Blend, and Chain Gang Espresso, which harkens to the time when black prisoners were used as free labor across the South.

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Solitary Confinement Coffee May Be The Worst Branding Idea Ever

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Capitalism and Machines Go Together Like Peanut Butter and Jelly

by KendallTrego824 Posted on September 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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James Pethokoukis says that economist Deirdre McCloskey has written “the most powerful defense of market capitalism you will ever read.” It’s based on the chart on the right, which shows the fantastic growth of the world economy since about 1800:

Now, McCloskey does not like the word “capitalism.” She would prefer our economic system be called “technological and institutional betterment at a frenetic pace, tested by unforced exchange among all the parties involved.”

Or perhaps “fantastically successful liberalism, in the old European sense, applied to trade and politics, as it was applied also to science and music and painting and literature.”

Or simply “trade-tested progress.”

I am a considerable fan of capitalism by nearly any standard (aside from the current Republican Party one, which essentially holds that you’re a socialist if you believe in any regulation of large corporations at all). So sure: capitalism or free market exchange or whatever you want to call it certainly deserves plenty of credit here.

But was it the main driving force of the post-1800 economy? McCloskey says the Great Expansion wasn’t the result of “coal, thrift, transport, high male wages, low female and child wages, surplus value, human capital, geography, railways, institutions, infrastructure, nationalism, the quickening of commerce, the late medieval run-up, Renaissance individualism, the First Divergence, the Black Death, American silver, the original accumulation of capital, piracy, empire, eugenic improvement, the mathematization of celestial mechanics, technical education, or a perfection of property rights.” Those had existed for a long time. Rather, it’s the fact that European elites “came to accept or even admire the values of trade and betterment.”

But does that seem right? I don’t know much about China or India—and I might be wrong about Europe too—but I’ve always thought that trade and commerce were also relatively free during, say, the height of the Roman Empire. The landed elites made a lot of money in trade, and if merchants weren’t quite pillars of society, they were hardly social lepers either. The legions were routinely used to protect trade routes. Corruption was endemic, but tariffs and regulations on trade were fairly mild. The pursuit of wealth was respectable, and accounting practices were sophisticated.

Is that right? Maybe I’m woefully misinformed. But it seems like the big difference between AD 0 and AD 1800 wasn’t so much attitudes toward trade as it was the obvious thing that McCloskey left off her list: machines. As long as humans and animals were the only source of power, there was a limit to how much wealth could be generated. But if the Romans had invented steam engines and electrification, we’d all be speaking Latin today and arguing about what made Roman culture so special.

This is something that’s been a subject of academic study for a long time, and I hardly expect to break any new ground here. But while a respect for fairly free trade might be a prerequisite for exponential economic growth, the example of Rome suggests that more than that is needed. The truly interesting question, then, is: why did 18th century Europeans invent machine power but 1st century Europeans didn’t?

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Capitalism and Machines Go Together Like Peanut Butter and Jelly

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Raw Data: Here’s How Black Kids Are Really Doing in School

by PhilippSweetappl Posted on September 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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Bob Somerby is pretty ticked off at the way our “journalistic elites” cover black kids. In particular, he’s ticked off at liberals who seem to care only about black kids getting shot, and conservatives who care only about promoting scare stories that make our public schools look as horrible as possible:

You will never see those people ask how black kids are doing in school. The reason for that seems abundantly clear:

None of those people care!

Just for the record, this is what score gains in math look like over the past twenty years. You’ll see these data nowhere else.

Twenty years?!? How about 40 years? I’ve got that for you right here, courtesy of the NAEP long-term assessment, which has used a similar test for over four decades precisely so that it’s possible to make reasonable long-term comparisons. On the math test, black kids have improved their performance significantly: by 36 points at age nine, 36 points at age thirteen and 18 points at age seventeen. If we use the usual rule of thumb that ten points equals one grade level, that looks pretty good. And the gap between white scores and black scores has shrunk as well.

So maybe our schools are doing pretty well, after all? Maybe so. But at the risk of being a wet blanket, I’ll point out one thing that makes all these score gains a little less uplifting: Since 1990, 17-year-old black kids have made no gains in math at all—and the story is the same in reading. Over the past 25 years, younger black kids have improved by one or two grade levels, but those gains are completely washed out by age 17. There may be good explanations for this. School reforms haven’t hit high schools yet. A lower dropout rate means there are more mediocre kids still in school at age 17. Maybe, maybe, maybe. But one way or another, nothing matters unless our kids are doing better by the time they finish school. Until we figure out how to keep high school from being the black pit that it apparently is, none of the score gains in lower grades really matter much.

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Raw Data: Here’s How Black Kids Are Really Doing in School

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Freddie Gray Hearings Open Amid Police Clashes

by AmbroseCawthorn Posted on September 2, 2015

Mother Jones

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Hearings in the case against six Baltimore police officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray began this morning against an all-too-familiar backdrop of police confrontations with protesters.

The first pretrial hearing of the case, involving six officers charged in Gray’s death in police custody, opened with victories for the prosecution, as a judge denied motions to dismiss the case and to recuse the state’s attorney. Outside the courthouse, protesters clashed with police. People on the scene described police grabbing women, harassing members of the press, and restricting sidewalk access to the courthouse. Netta Elzie, a prominent black activist, also tweeted an account of Kwame Rose, another black activist and Baltimore resident, being hit by a police car and promptly arrested.

Inside the court, Circuit Court Judge Barry Williams denied motions to recuse State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby from the case and to dismiss charges because of alleged prosecutorial misconduct on behalf of Mosby. Defense attorneys for the six officers, who face charges ranging from involuntary manslaughter to second-degree assault, argued that Mosby should recuse herself, citing her relationship to the Gray family’s attorney and her husband’s position as a city councilman as reasons for a conflict of interest.

This story will be updated as it develops.

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Freddie Gray Hearings Open Amid Police Clashes

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Marijuana industry struggles with devastating wildfire season

by LaurenSylvester Posted on September 1, 2015

Marijuana industry struggles with devastating wildfire season

By on 1 Sep 2015commentsShare

The burners may have left for Black Rock City, but there’s still a lot burning on the West Coast. From Central Washington’s blazes to the wildfires ravaging the tinderbox we call California, the Pacific Coast is on fire. Across the U.S., wildfires have claimed over 8 million acres of land. When combined with water restrictions and severe drought, the fires can be devastating — especially for anyone whose livelihood depends directly on the land. Which brings us to another type of burner: weed farmers.

While some growers haven’t been affected by the fires, “others haven’t been so fortunate,” writes Madeleine Thomas (a former Grister!) over at Pacific Standard. In Northern California, many budding bud operations are starting to feel the burn:

Timothy Anderson, the purchasing manager for Harborside Health Center, a medical marijuana dispensary based in Oakland, California, says most of his suppliers are located in the lower end of the the Emerald Triangle, an area comprising three counties at the tip of Northern California. The Emerald Triangle’s economy is largely dependent on marijuana growers, who have a reputation for producing some of the country’s best bud, including sought-after strains like Mendocino Purps and Humboldt Headband.

Some of Anderson’s suppliers haven’t been able to get their product to market due to road closures. Others are situated in the midst of the blaze’s danger zone, but, according to Anderson, remain reluctant to leave their farms to nature’s mercy just yet. Evacuating runs the risk of losing a farm not only to wildfire, but to neglect. No one is around to check key irrigation lines or reservoirs, he says—daily reminders that the state is still in the midst of one of the worst droughts in memory. Water isn’t just a lifeline for most marijuana growers these days; it’s also a luxury.

“I had one of my contract farmers, with whom we work with very closely, who lost an entire farmstead,” Anderson says. “He lost a house, a barn, an outbuilding, and had to lay off his employees at that facility for the season as well.”

East of the Cascades in Washington, where the dry climate is a double-edged sword (“prime not only for weed farming, but also for massive wildfires,” writes Thomas), the story is much the same. And as the poorly contained fires creep closer and closer to weed fields, growers have begun to voice concerns about the indirect effects of the wildfires, as well. Residual smoke can seep into a marijuana plant’s flowers — altering the smell and taste of the weed — and light-blocking smoke and haze can cause plants to flower early, triggering the need for an early harvest.

A burning marijuana field won’t get you high, though, unless you’re standing right at the edge of one and actively “gulping up smoke.” In which case, you know, it might be time to look at your choices.

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West Coast Weed Farms Are Lighting Up

, Pacific Standard.

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Marijuana industry struggles with devastating wildfire season

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Let Us Now Praise Passionate Politics

by ShadRix5723 Posted on September 1, 2015

Mother Jones

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German Lopez notes the reaction in some quarters to the recent shooting of a Texas deputy sheriff:

Despite any solid leads and facts about the motives in the shooting of 10-year deputy veteran Darren Goforth, some conservative media outlets and local law enforcement officials have already settled on the real culprit: Black Lives Matter.

….Fox News’s Elisabeth Hasselbeck later wondered aloud on air why Black Lives Matter isn’t considered a “hate group.” Bill O’Reilly was more blunt, concluding the movement was indeed a “hate group.”

….It’s not just Fox News — other reports painted narratives that put Black Lives Matter and police as inherently in conflict. A CNN report, for instance, described Black Lives Matter’s advocacy as “anti-police rhetoric.” What does it say about American society that advocating for black lives and ending racial disparities in the criminal justice system would qualify not as pro-equality but as anti-police?

This is hardly a surprise. Nor is it limited to conservatives. Liberals frequently fault anti-abortion rhetoric when someone kills an abortion clinic worker or anti-government rhetoric when someone shoots up an IRS office.

That won’t stop, but it should. People and groups have to be free to condemn abortion or police misconduct or anything else—sometimes soberly, sometimes not. And it’s inevitable that this will occasionally inspire a maniac somewhere to resort to violence. There’s really no way around this. It’s obviously something for any decent person to keep in mind, but it doesn’t make passionate politics culpable for the ills of the world. We can’t allow the limits of our political spirit to be routinely dictated by the worst imaginable consequences.

This is no apology for obviously incendiary speech. If you get on your soapbox and tell your followers to kill the pigs or murder the child murderers, then you bear a share of blame for what happens next. That’s both common sense and legal reality.

But we also need common sense toward speech that’s less immediately incendiary but still fiery or angry—or both. This is where change, liberal and conservative alike, comes from. It’s sadly inevitable that in a country of 300 million, even the minuscule fraction that fears change enough to go on a killing rampage amounts to a lot of people. But it’s neither a good reason to rein in our political vigor nor a good reason to blame passionate engagement in politics for every related tragedy. That way lies atrophy and rot.

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Let Us Now Praise Passionate Politics

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Fragile Global Economy Is Starting to Crack Up

by JoellenHepler Posted on August 24, 2015

Mother Jones

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I woke up a little late this morning, but maybe that turned out to be a good thing. The Dow Jones plunged a thousand points within minutes of opening, but by the time I saw the news it had already recouped about half of that loss:

You can probably guess what triggered this:

The stock drop was fueled by what China’s state media is already calling “Black Monday,” in which markets there recorded their biggest one-day plunge in eight years amid growing fears over an economic slowdown.

On Friday, China reported its worst manufacturing results since the global financial crisis, a new sign of woe for the world’s second-largest economy, which surprised investors earlier this month by announcing it would devalue its currency. China’s benchmark Shanghai Composite index has fallen by nearly 40 percent since June, after soaring more than 140 percent last year.

Markets around the world are crashing, and as usual that means seeking safety in the good old US of A:

Investors stampeded into relatively safe assets such as U.S. government bonds, the Swiss franc and the yen. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note dropped below 2% during Asian trading and recently was 1.976%, the lowest level since April.

….“A lot of markets abroad have seen a low amount of liquidity so investors are turning to the U.S. market to hedge,” said Jeffrey Yu, head of single-stock derivatives trading at UBS AG….While the selloff began as an emerging markets story, with China’s stock market offering very little liquidity to investors due in part to technical stock-trading halts, investors have had to turn to the most liquid market to sell, which is the U.S., Mr. Yu said.

Now can we finally get a statement from the Fed saying that they no longer have any immediate plans to raise interest rates? Please?

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Fragile Global Economy Is Starting to Crack Up

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