Tag Archives: intelligence

Obama Takes a Good Half Step Toward an Unequivocal Ban on Torture

by GloryGibbbrq Posted on November 12, 2014

Mother Jones

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It’s worth mentioning that the Obama administration has finally decided to take a more expansive view of where torture and “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” is banned:

The Obama administration, after an internal debate that has drawn global scrutiny, is taking the view that the cruelty ban applies wherever the United States exercises governmental authority, according to officials familiar with the deliberations. That definition, they said, includes the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and American-flagged ships and aircraft in international waters and airspace.

But the administration’s definition still appears to exclude places like the former “black site” prisons where the C.I.A. tortured terrorism suspects during the Bush years, as well as American military detention camps in Afghanistan and Iraq during the wars there. Those prisons were on the sovereign territory of other governments; the government of Cuba exercises no control over Guantánamo.

Why exclude black sites? Administration officials apparently say this is just a “technical matter of interpretation, underlined by concerns that changing the jurisdictional scope could have unintended consequences, like increasing the risk of lawsuits by overseas detainees or making it harder to say that unrelated treaties with similar jurisdictional language did not apply in the same places.”

I can….almost buy that. Lawyers and diplomats get pretty hung up on stuff like this. Nonetheless, I’d be a lot happier if Obama could be a little more Bush-like here, and simply overrule the legal eagles and insist on a clear and unequivocal policy. It’s hard to believe there isn’t a way to do that which wouldn’t somehow wreck a bunch of other treaties at the same time.

So two cheers for doing the right thing. But not three.

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Obama Takes a Good Half Step Toward an Unequivocal Ban on Torture

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The Case Against Postal Banking

by DaltonHauslaib Posted on November 12, 2014

Mother Jones

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Dean Baker thinks the Washington Post is wrong to imply that the postal service hasn’t been aggressive about improving its productivity. Agreed. Then this:

The other point is that the Postal Service could improve its finances by expanding rather than contracting. Specifically, it can return to providing basic banking services, as it did in the past and many other postal systems still do. This course has been suggested by the Postal Service’s Inspector General.

This route takes advantage of the fact that the Postal Service has buildings in nearly every neighborhood in the country. These offices can be used to provide basic services to a large unbanked population that often can’t afford fees associated with low balance accounts. As a result they often end up paying exorbitant fees to check cashing services, pay day lenders and other non-bank providers of financial services.

Color me skeptical. I know this sounds like a terrific, populist idea, but I can think of several reasons to be very cautious about expansive claims that the USPS is uniquely situated to provide basic banking services. Here are a few:

What’s the core competency that would allow USPS to excel at banking? The Inspector General says that “the first and possibly most important factor is the sheer ubiquity of the Postal Service.” In other words, they have lots of locations: 35,000 to be exact. But who cares? Physical real estate is the least compelling reason imaginable to think an organization would be great at basic banking. After all, you know who else has lots of branches? Banks. Even after years of downsizing, there are nearly 100,000 branch banks in the United States.
What else? The Inspector General suggests “trust and familiarity with the postal ‘brand.'” Meh. Americans trust McDonald’s too. That doesn’t mean they’d flock to do their banking there. This kind of thing reminds me of hundreds of really bad marketing presentations I’ve attended in my lifetime.
When you say “postal banking,” most people think about small mom-and-pop savings accounts. But that’s not really what the postal service has in mind. The IG report focuses more on (1) payment mechanisms (i.e., electronic money orders), (2) products to encourage savings, and (3) reloadable prepaid cards. The first is fine, but not really “postal banking.” The second is problematic since even the IG concedes that the reason poor people tend not to save is “largely due to a lack of disposable income among the underserved.” That’s quite an understatement, and it’s not clear what unique incentives the postal service can offer to encourage savings among people who have no money to save. That leaves prepaid cards—and maybe a good, basic prepaid card sponsored by the federal government is a worthwhile idea. But that’s really all we have here.
Finally, there’s the prospect of providing very small loans. But as much as we all loathe payday lenders, there’s a reason they charge such high rates: they also have high rates of default. The postal service can charge less only by (a) losing money or (b) providing loans only to relatively good customers. If you read the IG report, they basically recommend the latter. It’s not clear to me that this is truly an underserved niche.
Yes, other countries have postal banking services. But these were mostly established long ago, before commercial banking became ubiquitous. It may have been a good idea half a century ago, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea now.

If the government wants to provide basic banking services for the poor, it’s not clear to me why USPS should do it. They have literally no special competence at this, and the motivation behind it is to provide a revenue stream that offsets losses from mail services. That’s just dumb. Why on earth should public banking services subsidize public mail services? They have nothing to do with each other.

If we really want some kind of government-sponsored basic banking service, we should simply create one and partner with commercial banks to offer it. If this is truly profitable, banks will bid to host these accounts. If it’s not, the subsidies will show up directly in the annual budget accounts. That’s the way it should be.

I’m not yet convinced that this is a good idea to begin with, but I could be persuaded. However, if it is a good idea, there’s honestly no reason to get the postal service involved in this. We already have a Treasury Department, and we already have a commercial banking industry. They truly do have core competencies in offering financial services. Why not use them instead?

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The Case Against Postal Banking

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Negotiating With Republicans != Negotiating With Tea Partiers

by KlaraGuzm Posted on November 7, 2014

Mother Jones

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Megan McArdle was pretty unimpressed with President Obama’s press conference following the Democrats’ midterm defeat. “No one reasonable expected the president to grovel,” she says, but surely he could have adopted a more conciliatory tone?

Most notably, of course, he said he would take executive action on immigration by year’s end unless Republicans passed a bill. It’s certainly a bold negotiating tactic: You can do what I want, or I’ll go ahead and do what I want anyway. This is how you “negotiate” with a seven-year old, not a Senate Majority Leader.

I’m not sure that isn’t what Obama thinks he’s doing….But Mitch McConnell is not a seven year old….McConnell is not the proverbial Tea Party extremist who won’t negotiate; he’s an establishment guy, known as a strategist and a tactician, not an ideologue (which is why the Tea Party isn’t that fond of him). In short, he’s someone who can make deals. Responding to McConnell’s rather gracious remarks about finding common goals by announcing that you know what the American public wants, and you’re going to give it to them no matter what their elected representatives say, seems curiously brash. It might chill the atmosphere today when he sits down with congressional leaders.

I wonder if Obama even knows how to negotiate with Republicans….

I’m not here to defend Obama’s negotiating record. I’d rate it higher than McArdle, probably, but it’s obviously not one of Obama’s strong suits. Still, she’s rather pointedly ignoring the elephant in the room here.

As near as I can tell, Obama has regularly demonstrated the ability to negotiate with Mitch McConnell. Not perfectly, and not without plenty of hiccups, but they can do business when the incentives are strong enough. In fact, they did do business on immigration reform. A year ago the Senate passed a comprehensive bill 68-32. Here’s what Obama said about McConnell on Wednesday:

My interactions with Mitch McConnell, he has always been very straightforward with me. To his credit, he has never made a promise that he couldn’t deliver. And he knows the legislative process well. He obviously knows his caucus well — he has always given me, I think, realistic assessments of what he can get through his caucus and what he can’t. And so I think we can have a productive relationship.

The unnamed elephant in the room, obviously, is John Boehner and the tea party caucus in the House. Boehner has repeatedly shown that he can’t control his own caucus and can’t deliver a deal of any sort. That’s not because either Obama or Boehner are incompetent negotiators, it’s because the tea partiers are flatly unwilling to compromise in any remotely constructive way. So when Obama adopts a combative tone on immigration, it’s aimed at Boehner, who really does have the miserable job of trying to ride herd on a bunch of erratic and willful seven-year-olds—as he himself has admitted from time to time.

Does Obama know how to negotiate with Republicans? Sure. Does he know how to negotiate with tea party extremists? Hard to say. But then again, even John Boehner hasn’t figured out how to do that. Perhaps Obama’s playground style hit-them-over-the-head approach is about as good as it gets.

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Negotiating With Republicans != Negotiating With Tea Partiers

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Chart of the Day #2: Wage Growth Is Still Lousy

by DamienVxmvkqoot Posted on November 7, 2014

Mother Jones

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In my post earlier this morning about jobs growth, I mentioned that wage growth continues to be stuck at about zero after accounting for inflation. This probably deserves a chart of its own to make it clear what things look like, so here it is: wage growth after inflation since the recovery began in 2010. As you can see, real wages have been bouncing along slightly above and slightly below zero for four years now. If you use alternate measures of inflation, the trend is even worse.

This is the basic lay of the land. Yes, the economy is improving and jobs are becoming more plentiful. But most of us have seen our pay stagnate for four years and counting. That’s one of the reasons the public mood remains so sour.

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Chart of the Day #2: Wage Growth Is Still Lousy

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A Hobbyist Whose Workshop Sits Among the Cypress Trees

by Myrna Posted on September 16, 2014

While some people golf to unwind, Matt Conn, an environmental consultant, restores his wetland, pouring in hours and money putting his pastime somewhere between hobby and obsession. Read this article: A Hobbyist Whose Workshop Sits Among the Cypress Trees

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A Hobbyist Whose Workshop Sits Among the Cypress Trees

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Marijuana Legalization Seems to Be Working Out….So Far

by MiloTQBHoozqo Posted on August 8, 2014

Mother Jones

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Here are a few typical headlines I’ve seen recently about Colorado’s legalization of marijuana:

Washington Post: Since marijuana legalization, highway fatalities in Colorado are at near-historic lows

Vox: Marijuana legalization didn’t stop Colorado’s decade-long decline in teen pot use

HuffPo: If Legalizing Marijuana Was Supposed To Cause More Crime, It’s Not Doing A Very Good Job

There’s a phrase missing from all of these: “so far.” I hope that pot legalization turns out great and every other state eventually follows the lead of Colorado and Washington. But honestly folks, it’s early days yet. Legalization almost certainly has long-term dynamics and feedback effects that we simply won’t know about for years. What happens during the first few months is all but meaningless. Even if the stories themselves are more nuanced, this ought to be reflected in the headlines too.

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Marijuana Legalization Seems to Be Working Out….So Far

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Quote of the Day: Wall Street Judge Left With "Nothing But Sour Grapes"

by ElizbethCardwel Posted on August 7, 2014

Mother Jones

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A few years ago, federal district judge Jed Rakoff refused to approve an SEC settlement with Citigroup over charges that they had deliberately offloaded toxic mortgage securities into a special fund so that they could make money by betting against their own customers. Rakoff objected partly because he thought the SEC’s proposed fine was too small—”pocket change,” he called it—but mostly because there was no public reckoning of what Citigroup had done. Not only weren’t they required to admit wrongdoing, they weren’t required even to admit the bare facts of what they had done.

Sadly for Rakoff—and for the public—an appeals court overruled him, basically saying that the SEC had full discretion to reach any settlement it desired, and the judge’s only real role was to make sure it wasn’t tainted by collusion or corruption. Earlier this week, Rakoff backed off:

They who must be obeyed have spoken, and this Court’s duty is to faithfully fulfill their mandate.

….Nonetheless, this Court fears that, as a result of the Court of Appeal’s decision, the settlements reached by governmental regulatory bodies and enforced by the judiciary’s contempt powers will in practice be subject to no meaningful oversight whatsoever. But it would be a dereliction of duty for this Court to seek to evade the dictates of the Court of Appeals. That Court has now fixed the menu, leaving this Court with nothing but sour grapes.

Quite so, and the SEC’s long tradition of issuing wrist slaps to big Wall Street firms—and withholding all the details of their corruption from the public—is now safe once again. Apparently that kind of thing is only for the little people.

Of course, Congress could intervene, giving the SEC more manpower and demanding more accountability, but that’s not going to happen either. After all, sometimes people say mean things about Wall Street firms. Surely that’s punishment enough?

Via Michael Hiltzik, who has more at the link.

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Quote of the Day: Wall Street Judge Left With "Nothing But Sour Grapes"

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Voter Fraud Literally Less Likely Than Being Hit By Lightning

by Eve6nx7b Posted on August 6, 2014

Mother Jones

Justin Levitt has been tracking allegations of voter fraud for years. “To be clear,” he says, “I’m not just talking about prosecutions. I track any specific, credible allegation that someone may have pretended to be someone else at the polls, in any way that an ID law could fix.” So far, he’s found 31 cases representing around 200 individuals. If every one of them turns out be a genuine case of fraud, that’s a fraud rate of:

Of course, Levitt might be off by an order of magnitude. Or maybe even two or three orders of magnitude. That would put the fraud rate at 0.02 percent. On the other hand, these are just allegations. If past performance holds true, nearly all of them will turn out to be clerical mistakes, which means we’re back to 0.00002 percent. This compares to many thousands of voters who have been turned away from the polls for lack of ID in just the past few years.

Also worth noting: every single one of these cases involves just one or a few people. There’s not a single credible case in the past 15 years of any kind of organized voter impersonation scam of the kind that might actually affect the outcome of an election. There’s just no there there.

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Voter Fraud Literally Less Likely Than Being Hit By Lightning

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The Safest Job in the Country: Member of Congress

by MariamBeauregar Posted on August 6, 2014

Mother Jones

In the wake of tonight’s elections, Geoffrey Skelley of Sabato’s Crystal Ball tweets:

Remaining incumbents look good to make it to November, so 303/306 incumbents have won renomination this cycle….Should clarify: HOUSE incumbents are now 303/306 in renomination tries; SENATE incumbents are 19/19. So 322/325 overall.

Yep, Americans sure are disgusted with Congress. An electoral rebellion is right around the corner.

On a related note: Given this year’s microscopic incumbent failure rate of 0.92 percent, Eric Cantor must really be feeling crappy these days. I sure hope K Street showers him with enough lobbying money to assuage his pain.

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The Safest Job in the Country: Member of Congress

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Lotus Watching in LA

by CESKatheri Posted on August 4, 2014

Mother Jones

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I spent the afternoon up in LA with my mother, and she wanted to go over and check out the new, rejuvenated Echo Park along with its new, rejuvenated lotus plants. It’s a little late in the season to see them in all their glory, but they’re still blooming. See here for the rather remarkable backstory about how the lotuses, once thought dead and gone forever, were brought back to life.

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Lotus Watching in LA

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