Tag Archives: criminal

Opposition to Iran Nuclear Deal Just Keeps Getting Weirder and Weirder

by kx93z6g Posted on July 29, 2015

Mother Jones

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The congressional hearings into the Iran nuclear deal continue apace. Steve Benen points us today to this lovely exchange between Sen. Lindsey Graham and Defense Secretary Ashton Carter:

Graham: Does the Supreme Leader’s religious views compel him over time to destroy Israel and attack America?

Carter: I don’t know. I don’t know the man. I only —

Graham: Well let me tell you, I do. I know the man. I know what he wants. And if you don’t know that, this is not a good deal.

Graham: Could we win a war with Iran? Who wins the war between us and Iran? Who wins? Do you have any doubt who wins?

Carter: No. The United States.

Graham: We. Win.

So there you have it: (a) the Ayatollah unquestionably wants to destroy Israel and attack America, and (b) there is no doubt America would win this war. This sounds like mighty poor strategic thinking on the Ayatollah’s part to me, since presumably he knows as much as Lindsey Graham about the relative military strength of Iran and the United States. But I guess his pesky religious views compel him to commit national suicide anyway.

Now, you might be skeptical that Graham knows the Ayatollah as well as he thinks he does, or knows his religious views in any depth either. But even if we give him the benefit of the doubt on that score, his apparent view of things still doesn’t make sense. If the Ayatollah is as committed to war as Graham thinks, why would he bother with this deal in the first place? According to conservatives (I’m not sure what the CIA thinks these days), Iran is currently less than a year from being able to build a nuclear bomb. So why not just build a few and start the war? It can’t be because the sanctions matter. If war is inevitable thanks to the Ayatollah’s religious views, but America is going to win the war by reducing Iran to a glassy plain, who cares about a few more years of sanctions? Most Iranians are going to be dead a few hours after the war starts anyway.

So….it’s all still mysterious. Conservatives don’t like the deal Obama negotiated. Fine. But we can’t go back to the status quo. If we pull out of the deal, economic sanctions will decay pretty quickly and Iran will have lots of additional money and be a year away from building a bomb. The only other alternative is war. Graham is more open about this than most conservatives, but even he realizes he has to be cagey about it. He can’t quite come out and just say that we should go to war with Iran before they build a bomb. So instead he tosses in an oddly pointless question about who would win a war between Iran and America. Why? Some kind of dog whistle, I guess. Those with ears to hear understand what it means: Graham wants to see cruise missiles flying. The rest of us are left scratching our chins.

It all just gets weirder and weirder. The deal on the table, imperfect as it might be, doesn’t restrict American freedom of action at all. Plus it has a pretty stringent inspection regime and would prevent Iran from building a bomb for at least ten years—probably longer. That’s better than what we have now, so why not go ahead and sign the deal and then use the next ten years to figure out what to do next? What’s the downside?

I can’t really think of one except that it makes a shooting war less likely over the next decade. I call that a feature. I guess Graham and his crowd call it a bug.

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Opposition to Iran Nuclear Deal Just Keeps Getting Weirder and Weirder

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Millennials Living In Their Parents’ Home Is Finally Starting to Taper Off

by DannielFrantz Posted on July 29, 2015

Mother Jones

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Pew has a new report out showing that even five years after the recession ended, more young adults are living with their parents than before the recession. This is despite the fact that unemployment among 20-somethings has dropped dramatically. What’s more, this trend is pretty widespread:

The decline in independent living since the recovery began is apparent among both better-educated young adults and their less-educated counterparts….This suggests that trends in young adult living arrangements are not being driven by labor market fortunes, as college-educated young adults have experienced a stronger labor market recovery than less-educated young adults.

Trends in living arrangements also show no significant gender differences during the recovery. However, in 2015, 63% of Millennial men lived independently of family, compared with 72% of Millennial women. But a similar gender difference existed during the Great Recession, and both young men and young women are less likely to live independently today than they were five years ago.

But the news might not be quite as bleak as Pew suggests. Take a look at the arrows in the chart on the right. The upward trend in living at home continued to rise through 2013, but it finally began to drop a couple of years ago. That’s not surprising since it’s pretty likely that there’s a certain amount hysteresis in this phenomenon; that is, a lag between the economy improving and kids moving into their own places. This might be because wages remained low for several years after the technical end of the recession. It might be because higher debt levels took a while to pay down. It might be that it simply took a few years for recession-induced fear to end. Why move out if you’re not sure the economy is really on a long-term roll?

There’s not much question that 20-somethings of this generation have it worse than my generation, which in turn had it worse than the previous generation. That means the recession hit them especially hard. But if these trends are right, it looks like optimism about work and income is finally starting to slowly improve. It’s not great news, but it’s good news.

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Millennials Living In Their Parents’ Home Is Finally Starting to Taper Off

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Health Care Spending Growth Will Rise a Bit Over the Next Decade, But Only a Bit

by silvermega-1959 Posted on July 29, 2015

Mother Jones

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By coincidence, a new article in Health Affairs confirms an offhand guess I made a few days ago. I wrote, “I happen to think the slowdown in medical costs is real, and will continue for some time (though not at the extremely low rates of the past few years).” The Health Affairs researchers write: “Recent historically low growth rates in the use of medical goods and services, as well as medical prices, are expected to gradually increase. However, in part because of the impact of continued cost-sharing increases that are anticipated among health plans, the acceleration of these growth rates is expected to be modest.”

As the Wall Street Journal notes, this is is similar to what Medicare actuaries have been saying for a while:

The actuaries again Tuesday pointed to the stronger economy and aging population as the main factors in shaping Medicare’s future spending.

Prescription-drug spending, long a target of warnings from the insurance industry, drew particular attention from the actuaries, who pointed to a big rise in spending growth there as costly new specialty drugs such as Sovaldi, for hepatitis C, came on the market in 2014. Spending growth on pharmaceutical products jumped by 12.6% in 2014, up from 2.5% in 2013….In all, health care will comprise about a fifth of the U.S. economy by 2024, and the growth rate will exceed the expected average growth in gross domestic product by 1.1 percentage points.

So: good news or bad news? The bad news is that health care spending keeps increasing steadily. It’s currently about 17 percent of GDP and will increase to about 20 percent of GDP over the next decade. The good news is that this is slow growth: only about 1.1 percent higher than overall economic growth. Any other time in the past 30 years we would have killed for a growth rate that low.

There’s probably no way to avoid health care costs growing at least a little faster than the rest of the economy. We keep making advances, and our revealed preferences are pretty clear on at least one point: we value health care highly and are willing to pay more for it even at the expense of other items. That probably won’t be true forever, but it’s true for now.

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Health Care Spending Growth Will Rise a Bit Over the Next Decade, But Only a Bit

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Added Sugar Is Your Enemy, Not Aspartame

by CharlieRodgers Posted on July 27, 2015

Mother Jones

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Why does anyone still choose sugared sodas over artificially-sweetened sodas? One reason is taste. If you don’t like the taste of aspartame or saccharin, then that’s that. Another reason might be a rare medical condition that makes you allergic (or worse) to certain artificial sweeteners.

But that probably accounts for only a small fraction of the people who continue to drink sugared sodas. The rest are most likely convinced that artificial sweeteners are bad for you. But they’re wrong. It’s sugar that’s bad for you. Aaron Carroll brings the research:

One of the oldest artificial sweeteners is saccharin. Starting in the 1980s, Congress mandated that any product containing it be accompanied by the following: “Use of this product may be hazardous to your health. This product contains saccharin, which has been determined to cause cancer in laboratory animals.”….There was a problem, though. This link has never been confirmed in humans….Based on these newer studies, saccharin was removed from the carcinogen list in 2000. But by that time, opinions were set. It did little to make anyone feel safe.

….Aspartame was introduced in the United States around the time that saccharin began taking a beating….But in 1996, a study was published in The Journal of Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology titled “Increasing Brain Tumor Rates: Is There a Link to Aspartame?” Most people ignored the question mark….There were any number of problems with this logic….Because aspartame was approved in 1981, blaming it for a rise in tumors in the 1970s seems impossible. Finally, much more comprehensive studies couldn’t find links….A safety review from 2007, published in Critical Reviews in Toxicology, found that aspartame had been studied extensively and that the evidence showed that it was safe.

….But what about sugar?….Epidemiologic studies have found that even after controlling for other factors, one’s intake of added sugars is associated with the development of type 2 diabetes, with a 1.1 percent increase in prevalence for each can of sugar-sweetened soda. A study following people for an average of more than 14 years published last year in JAMA Internal Medicine found that those in the highest quintile of added sugar consumption had more than twice the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease than those in the lowest quintile, even after controlling for many other factors.

Anyway, that’s what science says. Unfortunately, science also says that presenting facts to people almost never changes their minds. In fact, it can do just the opposite as people respond defensively to the notion that they’ve been wrong for a long time. So I suppose no one reading this is actually going to switch to diet sodas. Instead they’ll cherry-pick studies that support their previous point of view. Or claim that all the studies exonerating artificial sweeteners are funded by big business and not to be trusted. Or perhaps make an outré claim about how aspartame interacts with gluten and animal fat to produce….something or other.

That’s life, I guess. However, I suggest that you swamp Professor Carroll’s inbox with all these insights instead of bothering me with them. He’s the expert after all. Or, just switch to water. Then you won’t have to worry about it.

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Added Sugar Is Your Enemy, Not Aspartame

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Republicans Is Weird, Summer 2015 Edition

by KishaLeatherman Posted on July 25, 2015

Mother Jones

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No, this isn’t about Donald Trump. It’s about Sen. Mike Lee of Utah—who plans to offer yet another amendment to repeal Obamacare, but this time with a special super-duper secret sauce added to the upcoming highway funding bill:

Lee said he will try to re-offer the Obamacare repeal as a special amendment that is directly related to highway funding. Under Senate rules, amendments that are directly related, or germane, to the underlying legislation can pass with just 51 votes.

Lee knows that the chair of the Senate is likely to reject his logic that Obamacare repeal is germane to highway funding, so he plans to use the nuclear option. That means he will formally object to the ruling of the chair, which requires a 51-vote simple majority — then he plans to move on to the coveted simple majority vote.

….If his plan works, Lee gets to tell his supporters that he’s responsible for a major vote to kill the health care law he reviles. The House voted to repeal the law in February, so the two chambers could then theoretically conference the bills — leaving it up to Obama to veto a bill to kill his own signature policy achievement.

So the plan is simple: have Republicans declare ex cathedra that repeal of Obamacare is germane to highway funding, and then pass Lee’s amendment with 51 votes. It’s brilliant! All that’s missing are the sharks with lasers attached to their heads!

Aside from being mind-numbingly stupid1, it also won’t work. Democrats will just filibuster the entire highway bill, or else they’ll vote for it and then Obama will veto the entire mess. Result: Obamacare stays in place but our highways continue to crumble into dust. Nice work, Senator! It’s good to see that the Republican Party remains committed to the sober, responsible kind of leadership that makes our great nation the envy of the world.

1It’s times like this that I regret the recent banishment of “retarded” from polite conversation. Because I think we all know that it’s the word that really fits here.2

2Though I suppose there’s no reason to insult the developmentally disabled by comparing them to Mike Lee.

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Republicans Is Weird, Summer 2015 Edition

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BREAKING: James Holmes Found Guilty in Aurora Massacre Trial

by ShelliHollars Posted on July 16, 2015

Mother Jones

Three years after he killed 12 people and injured 70 more in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, a jury has found James Holmes guilty of first degree murder.

The jury concluded that Holmes was not legally insane at the time he committed the crimes, despite evidence of mental illness. Holmes’ mental state will come into play again in the penalty phase of the trial, in which jurors will hear testimony and decide whether he is eligible for execution.

Which raises the question: How crazy is too crazy to be executed? Here’s how capital defense lawyer and occasional Mother Jones contributor Marc Bookman put it in a remarkable essay with precisely that title:

There is no simple answer to this question. State courts across the country have struggled to define “intellectual disability” (also known as mental retardation) since 2002, when the Supreme Court ruled that retarded people are exempt from capital punishment. The high court has also banned the execution of anyone who was under 18 at the time of his crime, but no court has ruled that severe mental illness makes a person ineligible for the death penalty.

The Supreme Court’s latest foray into the issue involved the case of Scott Louis Panetti, another Texas death row inmate. Panetti, a diagnosed schizophrenic who killed his in-laws, defended himself in court wearing a purple cowboy suit. As if that weren’t enough, he asked to subpoena Jesus, John F. Kennedy, and the pope. While the justices didn’t offer any clear standard on how crazy is too crazy, they suggested that severe mental illness might render someone’s “perception of reality so distorted” that he cannot be constitutionally executed.

As it stands, a person cannot be put to death if he or she is deemed “insane,” but that’s a narrow legal distinction. Whether at trial or on the eve of execution, an insanity defense hinges on a defendant’s inability to connect his crime with the consequences. Absent that connection, neither deterrence nor retribution is served by execution. As the legal scholar Sir William Blackstone put it more than 200 years ago, madness is its own punishment.

Almost every state now utilizes some version of what is known as the M’Naghten Rule. Daniel M’Naghten, an Englishman, was put on trial in 1843 for fatally shooting a civil servant he apparently mistook for the prime minister. He had delusions of persecution, and a number of doctors testified that he was unable to hold himself back. When the prosecution produced no witness to say otherwise, M’Naghten was found not guilty by reason of insanity. He spent most of the rest of his life at the State Criminal Lunatic Asylum in London’s Bethlem Royal Hospital, which locals pronounced “Bedlam.”

Thus was coined a word we associate with chaos—and it was chaos that ensued when M’Naghten was acquitted and the public took the verdict poorly. What emerged amid the outcry was the generally applied law that an insanity defense would only be available to someone who cannot understand the “nature and quality” of his act.

In a more recent piece focusing on the Panetti case, staff reporter Stephanie Mencimer digs deeper into the high court’s thinking, and demonstrates in a followup analysis why it is so difficult, once a case gets to this stage, to reverse momentum toward a verdict of death.

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BREAKING: James Holmes Found Guilty in Aurora Massacre Trial

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Hillary Clinton’s Big Economic Speech Abridged to 500 Words

by RileyAustin Posted on July 13, 2015

Mother Jones

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Hillary Clinton gave her big economic speech today. As is my wont, I plowed through the transcript and excerpted only those parts that are actual policy proposals. This is sometimes a judgment call, but I think I got most of them. I didn’t include any vague prescriptions that she promised to explain in detail in later speeches.

By my count, Hillary’s laundry list includes 26 specific proposals, some with more detail than others. Not bad, even for a Clinton. So for those of you who aren’t interested in the blah blah blah, and just want the meat, here’s the Reader’s Digest version of the speech, condensed to about two minutes of reading time.

Let me begin with strong growth.

….Empower entrepreneurs with less red tape, easier access to capital, tax relief and simplification…. business tax reform to spur investment in America, closing those loopholes that reward companies for sending jobs and profits overseas….comprehensive immigration reform….infrastructure bank that can channel more public and private funds, channel those funds to finance world-class airports, railways, roads, bridges and ports….greater investments in cleaner, renewable energy right now.

….Fund the scientific and medical research that spawns innovative companies and creates entire new industries….breaking down barriers so more Americans participate more fully in the workforce — especially women….family-friendly policies….fair pay and fair scheduling, paid family leave and earned sick days, child care are essential to our competitiveness and growth.

….Beyond strong growth, we also need fair growth.

….We have to raise the minimum wage and implement President Obama’s new rules on overtime….crack down on bosses who exploit employees by misclassifying them as contractors or even steal their wages….defending and enhancing Social Security….encourage companies to share profits with their employees….reforming our tax code….Buffett Rule….closing the carried interest loophole….the decline of unions may be responsible for a third of the increase of inequality among men….we have to get serious about supporting workers.

….Every 4-year old in America should have access to high-quality preschool in the next ten years….80% of your brain is physically formed by age of three….intervention to help those often-stressed out young moms understand more about what they can do and avoid the difficulties that stand in the way of their being able to get their child off to the best start….reviving the New Markets Tax Credit and Empowerment Zones to create greater incentives to invest in poor and remote areas.

….The third key driver of income alongside strong growth and fair growth must be long-term growth.

….A new $1,500 apprenticeship tax credit….reform capital gains taxes to reward longer-term investments that create jobs more than just quick trades….Make sure stock buybacks aren’t being used only for an immediate boost in share prices….Empowering outside investors who want to build companies but discouraging “cut and run” shareholders who act more like old-school corporate raiders.

….Serious risks are emerging from institutions in the so-called “shadow banking” system….I will appoint and empower regulators who understand that Too Big To Fail is still too big a problem….ensure that no firm is too complex to manage or oversee….prosecute individuals as well as firms when they commit fraud or other criminal wrongdoing….when the government recovers money from corporations or individuals for harming the public, it should go into a separate trust fund to benefit the public.

And the obligatory paean to bipartisanship and comity:

….You know passing legislation is not the only way to drive progress. As President, I’ll use the power to convene, connect, and collaborate to build partnerships that actually get things done. Because above all, we have to break out of the poisonous partisan gridlock and focus on the long-term needs of our country.

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Hillary Clinton’s Big Economic Speech Abridged to 500 Words

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Big Banks Plead Guilty to Collusion, But Fines are Pocket Change

by BeatrizKingsmil Posted on May 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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Five of the planet’s biggest banks have finally been forced to plea guilty to collusion charges in the foreign exchange market:

The Justice Department forced four of the banks — Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays and the Royal Bank of Scotland — to plead guilty to antitrust violations in the foreign exchange market as part of a scheme that padded the banks’ profits and enriched the traders who carried out the plot….Underscoring the collusive nature of their contact, which often occurred in online chat rooms, one group of traders called themselves “the cartel,” an invitation-only club where stakes were so high that a newcomer was warned, “Mess this up and sleep with one eye open.” To carry out the scheme, one trader would typically build a huge position in a currency and then unload it at a crucial moment, hoping to move prices. Traders at the other banks agreed to, as New York State’s financial regulator put it, “stay out of each other’s way.”

….The guilty pleas, which the banks are expected to enter in federal court later on Wednesday, represent a first in a financial industry that has been dogged by numerous scandals and investigations since the 2008 financial crisis. Until now, banks have either had their biggest banking units or small subsidiaries plead guilty.

….As part of the criminal deal with the Justice Department, a fifth bank, UBS, will plead guilty to manipulating the London Interbank Offered Rate, or Libor, a benchmark rate that underpins the cost of trillions of dollars in credit cards and other loans.

The total fine is about $5 billion, and it’s about damn time this happened. Unfortunately, I assume that a billion dollars each is basically pocket change that’s already been fully reserved on their balance sheets. Needless to say, not a single dime of this will hit the actual people running the banks, who couldn’t possibly be expected to know that any of this stuff was going on. They were too busy drinking their lunches and remodeling their corner offices to know what a few rogue traders on the 23rd floor were doing. The Times confirms that life will go on as usual:

For the banks, though, life as a felon is likely to carry more symbolic shame than practical problems. Although they could be technically barred by American regulators from managing mutual funds or corporate pension plans or perform certain other securities activities, the banks have obtained waivers from the Securities and Exchange Commission that will allow them to conduct business as usual. In fact, the cases were not announced until after the S.E.C. had time to act.

It’s good to be king.

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Big Banks Plead Guilty to Collusion, But Fines are Pocket Change

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Breaking: Freddie Gray’s Death Is Ruled a Homicide. All 6 Officers Will Face Criminal Charges.

by WalkerB27aru Posted on May 1, 2015

Mother Jones

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All six Baltimore police officers involved in the death of Freddie Gray, the 25-year-old who died in police custody last month, sparking tense protests, will face criminal charges. The announcement was made by Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby during a press conference Friday morning. The various charges include manslaughter, murder, and assault:

Mosby told reporters that Gray’s death has been ruled a homicide and that the knife found on Gray during a search was “not a switchblade,” as Baltimore police previously alleged, and its possession was therefore “lawful under Maryland law.”

Officer Caesar Goodson Jr., who was driving the police van that Gray was transported in after his arrest, was charged with second-degree murder, along with manslaughter, assault, and misconduct charges. If found guilty, he could face up to 63 years in prison, according to the Baltimore Sun.

“To the people of Baltimore and the demonstrators across America, I heard your call for ‘no justice, no peace,'” Mosby said on Friday. “To the youth of this city, I will seek justice on your behalf.” Watch the announcement below:

This post has been updated.

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Breaking: Freddie Gray’s Death Is Ruled a Homicide. All 6 Officers Will Face Criminal Charges.

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40,000 Maryland Ex-Cons May Soon Get Their Voting Rights Back

by EloiseQ42rlu Posted on April 14, 2015

Mother Jones

A national, bipartisan effort to roll back restrictions on felon voting rights could soon take a big step forward in Maryland. Earlier this month, the Maryland legislature passed a bill that would restore the right to vote to felons immediately after release from prison. Currently, Maryland is one of 20 states that bars felons from voting until they have completed prison time, parole, and probation.

The bill currently sits on the desk of Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican who has backed criminal justice reform. If enacted, the law would make it easier for 40,000 Maryland residents with past convictions to exercise their voting rights, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. Myrna Pérez, the center’s deputy director, says that “We’re at a unique moment in time. The country recognizes that the criminal justice system needs reform.”

Felon voting rights, Pérez says, should be a natural area of focus for improving the justice system. “There’s no law enforcement or deterrent justification for disenfranchising people after their release,” she explains. “Research and evidence shows that you’re less likely to recidivate if you can vote… In entire communities, when adults can’t vote, they raise children that can’t vote.” The law was introduced by first-term Delegate Cory V. McCray, a Baltimore Democrat who served ten months in a juvenile correctional facility after being arrested for drug dealing as a teenager.

The conventional wisdom on the subject has held that Republicans are hurt by reforms like Maryland’s; many of the people who will have an easier path to the ballot box come from working-class and minority constituencies that skew Democratic. That likely will not stop Hogan from signing the bill, and it has not deterred other Republicans: GOP presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has pushed for voting rights restoration in Kentucky, and he introduced a bill that would ease voting restrictions on the federal level.

Pérez is skeptical that expansion of voting rights would hand either party an advantage. She points out that in Florida, where reform was implemented under former Gov. Charlie Crist, the GOP has done just fine. “It’s very hard to say that a policy like Maryland’s would hand the state to Democrats,” she says. There is a “real openness among people of both parties to consider the issue.”

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40,000 Maryland Ex-Cons May Soon Get Their Voting Rights Back

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