Tag Archives: elections

How Many Countries Have Direct Access to All Phone Calls?

by RoderickHaswell Posted on June 6, 2014

Mother Jones

Vodafone is one of the largest telecom companies in the world, with a strong presence in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Here’s what they told us today:

Vodafone said that it had received thousands of requests from 29 countries in the 12 months through March 31. But the report also said that governments in certain countries had direct access to its networks without having to use legal warrants.

In a “small number” of countries, Vodafone said in the report, the company “will not receive any form of demand for communications data access as the relevant agencies and authorities already have permanent access to customer communications via their own direct link.”

Vodafone wouldn’t say which countries have this kind of unrestricted access, but the Guardian takes a guess here.

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How Many Countries Have Direct Access to All Phone Calls?

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Like it or Not, Guantanamo Is Here to Stay

by AntonyDodson Posted on June 6, 2014

Mother Jones

Praise the Lord. Max Fisher has taken on the thankless task of explaining to both left and right why the Taliban prisoner exchange isn’t either of the following:

The first step in a secret plan from the lawless despot Obama to close Guantanamo.
Proof that Obama could have closed Guantanamo all along and that he now he has no excuse not to.

Obama is not going to close Guantanamo. The legal loophole he used in the Bergdahl prisoner exchange—no matter what you think of it—flatly wouldn’t apply to shutting down the entire prison. Plus there’s the fact that Congress would go ballistic if he tried—including plenty of Democrats. Impeachment would go from a fever dream of the tea-party right to a very realistic bipartisan possibility. Finally, there’s frankly never been much evidence that Obama cares all that much. He’d obviously like to shut down Guantanamo, but he just doesn’t feel that strongly about it.

So give it up. Guantanamo will be here through the end of Obama’s presidency, and quite possibly until its last prisoner dies. It’s fanciful to think anything else.

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Like it or Not, Guantanamo Is Here to Stay

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The Week in 15 Photos: Santa Barbara, Maya Angelou, and a Transgender Army Vet’s Big Win

by DustyPocock Posted on May 31, 2014

Mother Jones

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It was a week of mourning and upheaval around the world, beginning with the mass shooting that killed six and injured 13 at University of California, Santa Barbara. A few days later, the nation said farewell to poet Maya Angelou, and at week’s end, VA head Eric Shinseki resigned amid outrage over his agency’s secret healthcare backlogs. Half a world away, turbulent elections in Ukraine fueled political uncertainty and renewed fighting, while in the European Union’s parliamentary elections, far-right parties made unprecedented gains. Here are 15 of the most remarkable photos that captured the week’s events.

Students walk into the sunset after Wednesday’s oceanside memorial to the victims of the Santa Barbara mass shooting. The News-Press/Peter Vandenbelt/AP Photo

Maya Angelou passed away on Wednesday at age 86; just seven weeks earlier, she’d attended her own portrait’s unveiling at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. Paul Morigi/AP Images for National Portrait Gallery

Students in Paris protest the results of the European elections, where the National Front party won a quarter of France’s vote. Lewis Joly/Visual/ZUMA Press

Denee Mallon, a 74-year-old Army veteran, at Albuquerque’s Trans March Thursday; the next day, a government review board granted Mallon’s request to have Medicare pay for her gender reassignment surgery. Craig Fritz/AP Photo

Supporters of Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, Egypt’s former military chief, celebrate his victory in the country’s presidential election, plagued by low turnout and boycotts, on Cairo’s Tahrir Square Thursday. Amr Nabil/AP Photo

A demonstrator protests Thailand’s military coup in Bangkok on Wednesday. Wason Wanichakorn/AP Photo

Glaziers work on the coating of a ledge that juts out from the 103rd floor of Chicago’s Willis Tower on Thursday. One such coating cracked Wednesday night when a family was standing on it. M. Spencer Green/AP Photo

Pope Francis visits the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, with Israeli President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on Sunday. Amos Ben Gersho/APA Images/ZUMA Press

The Soyuz TMA-13M spaceship takes off at the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Thursday, carrying a new crew to the International Space Station. Dmitry Lovetsky/AP Photo

Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki speaks to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans on Friday, a few hours before tendering his resignation. Charles Dharapak/AP Photo

President Barack Obama hugs White House press secretary Jay Carney after announcing that Carney will step down next month. Susan Walsh/AP Photo

Ansun Sujoe, 13, of Fort Worth, Texas, left, and Sriram Hathwar, 14, of Painted Post, New York, celebrate after being named co-champions of the National Spelling Bee on Thursday. Evan Vucci/AP Photo

Tara Cowan demonstrates with other members of Open Carry Texas on Thursday; gun rights advocates are suing the city of Arlington over a ban on distributing leaflets at high-traffic intersections and roads. Tony Gutierrez/AP Photo

Ukrainian President-elect Pyotr Poroshenko, left, with Kiev mayor Vitali Klitschko, announcing that he won’t curb the use of force in battling the pro-Russian insurgency. Efrem Lukatsky/AP Photo

Coffins for members of the Vostok Batallion, a pro-Russian militia, who died in clashes at Ukraine’s Donetsk airport. At least 30 bodies were sent to Russia for burial, raising further suspicions of Russia’s involvement in the conflict. Sandro Maddalena/NurPhoto/Sipa USA/AP Photo

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The Week in 15 Photos: Santa Barbara, Maya Angelou, and a Transgender Army Vet’s Big Win

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Louisiana Republicans Wondering Why Bobby Jindal Doesn’t Call Them Anymore

by LazaroFairweath Posted on May 23, 2014

Mother Jones

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Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has a new health care reform plan, a new political non-profit, and dreams of running for president in two years. But for the time being, he’s still governor of Louisiana.

Sort of.

Even as the legislature wrestles over hot-button issues—including a bill to rein in the Common Core math and English standards and a proposal to prevent parishes from suing oil companies for coastal land loss—the second-term governor has been largely AWOL from Baton Rouge. He’s as likely to pop up at the DC speech circuit (or in an early 2016 primary state) as he is to pick up the phone to hammer out legislation. And according to Louisiana-based investigative reporting site The Lens, Republicans back home are starting to take it personally:

Pearson said he finds Jindal’s detachment “a little disheartening.” The Slidell Republican said he has seen the governor twice this session: on opening day and at a committee chairman’s lunch.

“We have big problems with the budget. It looks like we’re kicking the can down the road for the next one or two years,” Pearson said, adding, “God, it would be nice to see his face on the House floor.

“He’s the governor, the leader of the state. It’s like being on a battlefield and seeing your general to know he’s there and cares about the troops,” Pearson added. “He should want to be here, be engaged. I don’t see any evidence that he is.”

Unease over Jindal’s frequent out-of-state visits has been simmering for a while now among conservative allies. (Previously, The Lens explored the governor’s failure to build to relationships with GOP lawmakers, with more than a dozen on-the-record critiques.) When I profiled Jindal for the magazine in March, I was struck by just how little love was lost between the boy-genius governor and the rank-and-file of his state party. As GOP presidential primary season creeps closer, those tensions aren’t likely to go away.

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Louisiana Republicans Wondering Why Bobby Jindal Doesn’t Call Them Anymore

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Ted Cruz: Conservative Darling. Grandstanding Senator. Campaign-Finance Reform Ally?

by KristinaEllzey Posted on May 1, 2014

Mother Jones

For the first time since the McCutcheon v. FEC decision, the Supreme Court’s latest ruling further rolling back restrictions on the flow of money in American politics, members of the Senate on Wednesday tackled the onslaught of “dark money” washing through 2014 races and the future consequences of McCutcheon. (Short answer: More wealthy Americans pumping more money into political races in 2014 and beyond.)

Retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens headlined Wednesday’s hearing, organized by Sen. Angus King (I-Maine). Stevens took a decidedly progressive tack in his remarks, declaring that “money is not speech” and calling on Congress to write campaign-finance rules that “create a level playing field” for all political candidates. But perhaps the more revealing set of comments came from an unlikely source: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), the self-styled populist always trying, as he reminds us, to “make DC listen” to the little guy.

In short, Cruz, who’s as conservative as they come, may have more in common with the campaign-finance reform crowd than he realizes.

He raised eyebrows, for instance, as he described his vision for America’s campaign finance system. “A far better system,” he said, “would be to allow individual unlimited contributions to candidates and require immediate disclosure.” The unlimited contributions part of that statement is standard conservative fare: If billionaires like Tom Steyer or Sheldon Adelson or Michael Bloomberg want to underwrite their preferred candidates with bottomless dollars, go ahead and let them. But the latter half—”require immediate disclosure”—is significant. It’s a break from GOP leaders including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus who’ve soured on the idea of disclosure. Angus King later said he was so struck by Cruz’s comments that he’d scribbled them down. Might Senate Democrats have an unlikely ally in Cruz if and when the DISCLOSE Act gets another vote?

At the hearing, Cruz went on to assail his fellow members of Congress for caring more about hanging onto their seats than pursuing real legislative solutions. “Our democratic process is broken and corrupt right now because politicians in both parties hold onto incumbency,” he said. “We need to empower the individual citizens.” Funny thing is, that’s what Democrats who support the Government By The People Act and other fair elections programs want as well. Fair elections backers say candidates spend too much time raising money from wealthy individuals, which not only shrinks the field of people who can run for office but arguably makes those candidates who do run more receptive to well-heeled funders. Give candidates a reason to court lots of small donors—say, offering to match donations of $150 or less with six times that in public money—and you expose them to a diverse array of people. Meanwhile, your Average Joe, without his Rolodex full of well-to-do friends, can now mount a competitive bid for office. If Cruz wants to “empower the individual citizens,” fair elections is one way to do it.

Not that Cruz hung around long enough on Wednesday to hear these kinds of ideas. He high-tailed it out of the hearing after delivering his remarks. Maybe he had a fundraiser to get to.

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Ted Cruz: Conservative Darling. Grandstanding Senator. Campaign-Finance Reform Ally?

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Anger at the Plutocracy Isn’t Strong Enough to Make a Big Difference in November

by Veta68O Posted on April 30, 2014

Mother Jones

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Greg Sargent writes today that the Democratic strategy of going after the Koch brothers isn’t about the Kochs per se, but “a gamble on what swing voters think has happened to the economy, and on the reasons struggling Americans think they aren’t getting ahead”:

Dems are making an argument about what has happened to the economy, and which party actually has a plan to do something about it. Today’s NBC/WSJ poll finds support for the general idea that the economy is not distributing gains fairly and is rigged against ordinary Americans….The Democratic case is that the all-Obamacare-all-the-time message is merely meant to mask the GOP’s lack of any actual affirmative economic agenda, and even reveals the GOP’s priorities remain to roll back any efforts by Dems to ameliorate economic insecurity.

….I don’t know if the Dem strategy will work.

I think Sargent’s skepticism is warranted. The problem is that the NBC/WSJ poll he mentions doesn’t find an awful lot of evidence for seething anger. Here are the basic results:

Those are not really huge margins. The first question in particular is one they’ve been asking for two decades, and 55-39 is a very typical result, especially during times of economic weakness.

Given this, and given the extreme difficulty of a party in power taking advantage of economic discontent, will the Democratic strategy of bludgeoning Republicans over their plutocratic leanings work? I doubt it. Specific agenda items like a higher minimum wage, health care success stories, and universal pre-K seem more likely to work. At the margins, a bit of Koch bashing and a few high-profile Wall Street indictments might help a bit too, but only as an added fillip.

Oh, and a nice, short, decisive war against some minor global bad guy would also do wonders. In October, maybe.

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Anger at the Plutocracy Isn’t Strong Enough to Make a Big Difference in November

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Running Away From Obamacare Is a Fool’s Errand

by Cheryle07G Posted on April 23, 2014

Mother Jones

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Are red-state Democrat senators certain losers to Republican challengers in this year’s midterm election? According to recent polling, no. The races are all pretty close. But Greg Sargent points out that these Democrats do indeed have an Obamacare problem:

In Arkansas, 52 percent would not vote for a candidate who disagrees on Obamacare, versus 35 percent who are open to doing that. In Louisiana: 58-28. In North Carolina: 53-35. It seems plausible the intensity remains on the side of those who oppose the law. This would again suggest that the real problem Dems face with Obamacare is that it revs up GOP partisans far more than Dem ones — exacerbating the Dems’ already existing “midterm dropoff” problem.

However, in Kentucky, the numbers are a bit different: 46 percent would not vote for a candidate who disagrees with them on the law, while 39 percent say the opposite — much closer than in other states. Meanwhile, Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear — the most outspoken defender of Obamacare in the south — has an approval rating of 56-29.

I’m keenly aware that I’ve never run for dogcatcher, let alone had any experience in a big-time Senate race. So my political advice is worth zero. And yet, polls like this make me more, not less, invested in the idea that running away from Obamacare is a losing proposition. Electorates in red states know that these Democrats voted for Obamacare. Their opponents are going to hammer away at it relentlessly. It’s just impossible to run away away from it, and doing so only makes them look craven and unprincipled.

The only way to turn this around is not to distance yourself from Obamacare, but to try and convince a piece of the electorate that Obamacare isn’t such a bad deal after all. You won’t convince everyone, but you don’t need to. You just need to persuade the 5 or 10 percent who are mildly opposed to Obamacare that it’s working better than they think. That might get the number of voters who would “never” vote for an Obamacare supporter down from the low 50s (Arkansas, Louisiana, North Carolina) to the mid 40s (Kentucky). And that might be enough to eke out a victory.

Needless to say, this works best if everyone is pitching in. And surely this is the time to start. The early website problems have been resolved and the initial signup period has been a success. Conservative kvetching has taken on something of a desperate truther tone, endlessly trying to “deskew” the facts and figures that increasingly make Obamacare look like a pretty successful program. There are lots of feel-good stories to tout, and there are going to be more as time goes by. What’s more, the economy is improving a bit, which always makes people a little more sympathetic toward programs that help others.

Obamacare isn’t likely to be a net positive in red states anytime soon. But it’s not necessarily a deal breaker either. It just has to be sold—and the sellers need to show some real passion about it. After all, if they don’t believe in it, why should anyone else?

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Running Away From Obamacare Is a Fool’s Errand

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Millennials Shunned Hillary in 2008. Her Shadow Campaign Won’t Let It Happen Again.

by AthenaRucker Posted on April 15, 2014

Mother Jones

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When Hillary Clinton narrowly lost the Democratic nomination in 2008, there was one key voting bloc that derailed her presidential bid: college students and young adults, who threw their support behind Barack Obama. Ready for Hillary, the primary super-PAC paving the way for a Clinton 2016 campaign, is already hard at work to make sure history doesn’t repeat itself should she decide to enter the race.

The group brought in former Obama campaign youth vote coordinator Rachel Schneider to oversee outreach to voters ages 16 to 30, with a particular focus on those still in school. Schneider has spent the last few months traveling around the country to set up satellite organizations on college campuses with the goal of attracting all of the best student organizers to Clinton’s side before any other Democrat launches a presidential campaign. Earlier this year, she swung through Missouri and South Carolina. Last week, Schneider toured New Hampshire’s main colleges, and she’s scheduled to visit Iowa next week, where she’ll meet with students from the University of Iowa, Iowa State University, Drake University, and the University of Northern Iowa.

There are now 33 Students for Hillary groups nationwide. So far they’re recruiting the most die-hard activists to prepare for next fall, when they’ll blitz new students during orientation to build Hillary’s army. “I’ve been focused on identifying students on campuses who are interested in being part of this movement from the ground floor,” Schneider says. For Democratic-leaning students interested in a career in politics it’s a no-brainer: leading a Students for Hillary group will position them as prime contenders for low-level jobs in Clinton’s actual campaign.

“It’s pretty neat to sort of rally around this person even without them having stated intentions to run,” says Monica Diaz, president of the Iowa State University College Democrats, who’s in discussions with Schneider about setting up a Students for Hillary group at her school. “I hope we can rally up enough people to push her to run, and by starting this early, I think we can.”

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Millennials Shunned Hillary in 2008. Her Shadow Campaign Won’t Let It Happen Again.

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GOP Senate Candidate: "I Have Big Boy Pants on Every Day”

by CorneliusJarvis Posted on April 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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At a closed-door meeting last year at the North Carolina General Assembly building, Thom Tillis, the state speaker of the house and frontrunner in the GOP primary to take on Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan in November, clashed with Republican activists and legislators who claimed that Tillis was blocking conservative legislation to bolster his chances in the Senate race. In a contentious exchange that was caught on tape, Tillis and a fellow Republican tried to put their disagreements behind them before stumbling into an argument over whether Tillis was wearing “big boy pants”:

Unidentified speaker: Sometimes in the heat of the moments things are said that maybe could be better stated had we had time to think about what we’re gonna say. But sir, I think it’s time now for us to put this behind us, put our big boy pants on and say okay we—

Tillis: I understand that, I understand that, but I have big boy pants on every day, with all due respect. That’s why I’m sitting in this room trying to solve this problem. That was fine up to this point, I think that kind of comment’s not really showing respect.

This is funny, because who says “big boy pants”? (Besides Florida Dem Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, who used the term to diss Mitt Romney.) But the context is significant. At one point, according Chuck Suter, a North Carolina conservative activist who was in the meeting and posted the clip, Tillis slammed his chair into the table and began to walk out of the room before returning to finish a point. The chair-slam can be heard on the tape.

Tillis, whose campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment, held the meeting to clear the air after Republican state Rep. Larry Pittman, who was also in attendance, criticized Tillis in a speech. The question of whether Tillis is conservative enough hasn’t gone away. Heavyweights including Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Americans for Prosperity have endorsed one of Tillis’ rivals, Greg Brannon, an OBGYN who runs a chain of crisis-pregnancy clinics. The most recent survey of the primary from Public Policy Polling showed Tillis well short of the 40-percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff.

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GOP Senate Candidate: "I Have Big Boy Pants on Every Day”

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This Is Bigger News Than Bobby Jindal’s Health Care Plan

by SelinaPEQq Posted on April 3, 2014

Mother Jones

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Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal made another effort to jump back into the upper tier of 2016 Republican presidential wannabes on Wednesday, releasing a 26-page plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with…something else. Jindal’s plan includes things like block grants for Medicaid, an elimination of the employer subsidy for insurance, and the ability to purchase insurance across state lines—basically the same things conservatives have been pushing for years. (Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan’s 2015 budget, unveiled one day earlier, also calls for block grants.) As I reported in the most recent issue of Mother Jones, it’s only the most recent in a string of efforts by Jindal to elevate his sagging national profile to its previous heights.

But while he was pushing a hypothetical agenda for his hypothetical presidency, thinks weren’t going so well in Louisiana:

Louisiana’s House Education Committee voted down legislation that sought to scrap the Common Core education standards and replace them with a not-yet-developed set of academic benchmarks and assessments. The committee’s vote was 12-7.

Gov. Bobby Jindal submitted a green card—indicating support—for State Rep. Brett Geymann’s legislation to the House Education Committee, after several weeks of being circumspect about the his views on Common Core. But no one from Jindal’s staff testified on the bill and his spokesmen did not respond to media requests for information about why he backed Geymann’s legislation.

Jindal originally supported the implementation of the Common Core standards, a set of defacto national math and English standards approved by 46 states in 2009. But the standards became a lightning rod for conservative activists, who considered it a government takeover of local schools (or worse). So when the backlash came to Louisiana last year, he changed his tune. Sort of. Jindal argued that Louisiana shouldn’t take orders from Washington, and after a long period of indecision, quietly signaled his support for Geymann’s bill, which would have put the state’s tests on hold and form a 32-person committee for further study. It’s not quite hitting control-z on the entire program, but it would certainly be a step away from the original plan. But that attempt at damage control is dead for now, and so instead of being able to tell voters about how he reined in Common Core, Jindal is stuck with it.

That might not be on the 2016 radar yet, but given how despised the Core is among grassroots voters in Iowa, Florida, and South Carolina, it’s potentially a much bigger deal than a boilerplate white paper.

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This Is Bigger News Than Bobby Jindal’s Health Care Plan

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