Last Call For The Company Men

What happens when you take the worst, win-at-all-costs aspects of "boiler room" era Wall Street, the byzantine "sausage factory" politics of being a Capitol Hill legislative aide, the high-pressure spotlight of billion-dollar professional sports, and the cutthroat "publish or perish" world of academia, and then combine them with the cult of personality of "techbro" Silicon Valley?

Welcome to being a white-collar Amazon employee.

Tens of millions of Americans know Amazon as customers, but life inside its corporate offices is largely a mystery. Secrecy is required; even low-level employees sign a lengthy confidentiality agreement. The company authorized only a handful of senior managers to talk to reporters for this article, declining requests for interviews with Mr. Bezos and his top leaders.

However, more than 100 current and former Amazonians — members of the leadership team, human resources executives, marketers, retail specialists and engineers who worked on projects from the Kindle to grocery delivery to the recent mobile phone launch — described how they tried to reconcile the sometimes-punishing aspects of their workplace with what many called its thrilling power to create.

In interviews, some said they thrived at Amazon precisely because it pushed them past what they thought were their limits. Many employees are motivated by “thinking big and knowing that we haven’t scratched the surface on what’s out there to invent,” said Elisabeth Rommel, a retail executive who was one of those permitted to speak.

Others who cycled in and out of the company said that what they learned in their brief stints helped their careers take off. And more than a few who fled said they later realized they had become addicted to Amazon’s way of working.

“A lot of people who work there feel this tension: It’s the greatest place I hate to work,” said John Rossman, a former executive there who published a book, “The Amazon Way.”

Amazon may be singular but perhaps not quite as peculiar as it claims. It has just been quicker in responding to changes that the rest of the work world is now experiencing: data that allows individual performance to be measured continuously, come-and-go relationships between employers and employees, and global competition in which empires rise and fall overnight. Amazon is in the vanguard of where technology wants to take the modern office: more nimble and more productive, but harsher and less forgiving.

“Organizations are turning up the dial, pushing their teams to do more for less money, either to keep up with the competition or just stay ahead of the executioner’s blade,” said Clay Parker Jones, a consultant who helps old-line businesses become more responsive to change.

On a recent morning, as Amazon’s new hires waited to begin orientation, few of them seemed to appreciate the experiment in which they had enrolled. Only one, Keith Ketzle, a freckled Texan triathlete with an M.B.A., lit up with recognition, explaining how he left his old, lumbering company for a faster, grittier one.

“Conflict brings about innovation,” he said.

And in conflict, there are always winners and losers. In Jeff Bezos's world, lose too much or too often and you're out.  You're micro-managed to within an inch of your limits, and then shoved over that line in order to use the push to fly into success or plummet like Icarus to crash on the rocks below.  Either way, you belong to the company.

While the Amazon campus appears similar to those of some tech giants — with its dog-friendly offices, work force that skews young and male, on-site farmers’ market and upbeat posters — the company is considered a place apart. Google and Facebook motivate employees with gyms, meals and benefits, like cash handouts for new parents, “designed to take care of the whole you,” as Google puts it.

Amazon, though, offers no pretense that catering to employees is a priority. Compensation is considered competitive — successful midlevel managers can collect the equivalent of an extra salary from grants of a stock that has increased more than tenfold since 2008. But workers are expected to embrace “frugality” (No. 9), from the bare-bones desks to the cellphones and travel expenses that they often pay themselves. (No daily free food buffets or regular snack supplies, either.) The focus is on relentless striving to please customers, or “customer obsession” (No. 1), with words like “mission” used to describe lightning-quick delivery of Cocoa Krispies or selfie sticks.

As the company has grown, Mr. Bezos has become more committed to his original ideas, viewing them in almost moral terms, those who have worked closely with him say. “My main job today: I work hard at helping to maintain the culture,” Mr. Bezos said last year at a conference run by Business Insider, a web publication in which he is an investor.

Of all of his management notions, perhaps the most distinctive is his belief that harmony is often overvalued in the workplace — that it can stifle honest critique and encourage polite praise for flawed ideas. Instead, Amazonians are instructed to “disagree and commit” (No. 13) — to rip into colleagues’ ideas, with feedback that can be blunt to the point of painful, before lining up behind a decision.

“We always want to arrive at the right answer,” said Tony Galbato, vice president for human resources, in an email statement. “It would certainly be much easier and socially cohesive to just compromise and not debate, but that may lead to the wrong decision.”

What does that say about America when one of its most successful companies has the philosophy of beating failure out of you at all costs, and where debate and agreement is not only frowned upon, but actively and aggressively discouraged?

We who are about to innovate, salute you.

The Clinton E-Mail Story Is Still Nothing

And until she's indicted, like say, Gov. Rick Perry, it's a nothingburger and I'll keep pressing that fact.

F.B.I. agents investigating Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private email server are seeking to determine who at the State Department passed highly classified information from secure networks to Mrs. Clinton’s personal account, according to law enforcement and diplomatic officials and others briefed on the investigation.

To track how the information flowed, agents will try to gain access to the email accounts of many State Department officials who worked there while Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state, the officials said. State Department employees apparently circulated the emails on unclassified systems in 2009 and 2011, and some were ultimately forwarded to Mrs. Clinton.

They were not marked as classified, the State Department has said, and it is unclear whether its employees knew the origin of the information.

So somebody clearly did not handle sensitive information correctly.  That somebody is not Hillary Clinton.

Law enforcement officials have said that Mrs. Clinton, who is seeking the 2016 Democratic nomination for president, is not a target of the investigation, and she has said there is no evidence that her account was hacked. There has also been no evidence that she broke the law, and many specialists believe the occasional appearance of classified information in her account was probably of marginal consequence.

A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton said in a statement on Friday that she “took the handling of classified information very seriously.”

“She always received classified materials in secure settings, either by phone, videoconference, on paper or in person,” said the spokesman, Nick Merrill. “If, however, some material unknowingly ended up somewhere on the State Department’s unclassified email system, we want to continue to be as helpful as possible in getting to the bottom of that.”

But of course, it's not like the media players in this game have a 20 year history of witch hunts against the Clintons or anything.  John Cole notes Ron Fournier (of all people) nailed this earlier this week:

Furthermore, a thorough autopsy of the deleted email might lead to details about other embarrassing topics, such as Benghazi (a GOP fetish), or the intersection of Clinton Foundation donors and State Department business (“Follow the money,” a Democrat close to Clinton told me in March). Though this is pure speculation, her closest allies worry about what might be found. 

That's the whole point of this, to stoke a detailed fishing expedition to look through her email and find some sort of "smoking gun" that ends her presidential run.

That's the entire ballgame, and never forget it for a second.

Code Red Moscow

On Monday in the car on the way home, I heard an NPR story on Kaspersky Labs, the Russian anti-malware firm (which, as NPR host Melissa Block pointed out, is a sponsor of NPR).  The story was a piece about how Kaspersky's ties to Moscow and Vladimir Putin made it something of a boogeyman in the anti-virus world, but that the firm was dedicated to beating viruses.

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST: So the U.S. government doesn't buy from Kaspersky, or other foreign companies, but American consumers can buy whichever anti-virus software they'd like. Joining me to talk about how these computer security companies do their work is NPR tech reporter Aarti Shahani. And, Aarti, let's start with Kaspersky, which, as we mentioned earlier, is a corporate sponsor of NPR News. We heard Corey say that people have raised concerns about the work that this company has done for the Russian security services. Does that mean American consumers should be wary of Russian spying? 

AARTI SHAHANI, BYLINE: (Laughter) No. That's really not what it means at all. Kaspersky has millions of users, and their software is a published product, which means that outsiders can reverse engineer it. Plenty of people are pouring over Kaspersky and all the other major anti-virus software trying to find weaknesses so they can be fixed. It's not in the business interest of the company to leave in some obvious backdoors as a favor to hackers, you know, Russian intelligence or otherwise. Researchers in the community would find it and fry them for it. That's pretty much the consensus among the experts I've interviewed.

I thought the timing was rather odd for NPR to go out of its way to say that Kapersky was one of the good guys.  Aarti Shahani's explanation made sense: if nobody trusted Kapsersky, nobody would use the product.

Turns out "not trusting Kaspersky" is a pretty good idea.

Beginning more than a decade ago, one of the largest security companies in the world, Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab, tried to damage rivals in the marketplace by tricking their antivirus software programs into classifying benign files as malicious, according to two former employees. 

They said the secret campaign targeted Microsoft Corp, AVG Technologies NV , Avast Software and other rivals, fooling some of them into deleting or disabling important files on their customers' PCs. 

Some of the attacks were ordered by Kaspersky Lab's co-founder, Eugene Kaspersky, in part to retaliate against smaller rivals that he felt were aping his software instead of developing their own technology, they said. 

"Eugene considered this stealing," said one of the former employees. Both sources requested anonymity and said they were among a small group of people who knew about the operation. 

Kaspersky Lab strongly denied that it had tricked competitors into categorizing clean files as malicious, so-called false positives. 

"Our company has never conducted any secret campaign to trick competitors into generating false positives to damage their market standing," Kaspersky said in a statement to Reuters. "Such actions are unethical, dishonest and their legality is at least questionable." 

Executives at Microsoft, AVG and Avast previously told Reuters that unknown parties had tried to induce false positives in recent years. When contacted this week, they had no comment on the allegation that Kaspersky Lab had targeted them.

 If this is true, Kaspersky may not be spying on you for Putin, but he's just a colossal asshole instead.  Either way, I'm still not using his products.

Last Call For Ground Chuck

Over at Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall makes the case that Sen. Chuck Schumer's opposition to President Obama's Iran nuclear deal disqualifies him as successor to Sen. Harry Reid as leader of the Democrats in the upper chamber.

I say all this with some regret since I’ve always liked Schumer. And I should make clear that I see fidelity to a President of one’s own party - even on an issue central to his presidency - as a non-issue in this case. The issue is that this agreement is a matter of grave importance. And Schumer’s position is wrong. Indeed, what makes it an issue for me is that it is more than wrong. His stated arguments are simply nonsensical and obviously tendentious. In this case, Schumer’s ample brain power stands as an indictment against him. There are plenty of senators who are voting against this deal because of a combination of bellicosity and partisan fervor. And there are a good number of them who either cannot or do not care to apply a real logical analysis of the question at hand. Let’s put that more bluntly, they’re either lazy or dumb. And of course this general point applies to senators on both sides of the aisle. 

But Schumer is neither lazy nor dumb. And that’s why his decision is really unforgivable. 

He argues for instance that even if even if the agreement keeps Iran from building nuclear warheads for a decade (false time frame, by the way), this deal makes things worse because the nuclear Iran ten years from now will be a supercharged Iran made more powerful and bold by sanctions relief. 

This is a stupid argument. 

North Korea remains under strangling sanctions and barely has an economy at all. That has not prevented it from building a robust nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program. Especially if you believe that Iran wants nuclear weapon for doomsday purposes, getting nuclear weapons with a more vibrant economy 10 years from now hardly makes a difference. And, yes, as long as we’re on the point, the ten year time frame is bogus. 

Schumer also calls the 24 days canard “troubling”. Again, here Schumer’s own smarts indicts him. He’s not that dumb. We shouldn’t accept Fox News arguments as legitimate points of argument from someone who aspires to be Senate Majority Leader. 

Finally he notes that the deal only makes sense if you believe that Iran will become more moderate and less belligerent under the deal. Again, a bad faith argument. 

I think there are actually good reasons to think the consequences of the deal may lead to that outcome. To at least grant that this is a possibility one need only look at the fact that the Iranian reformers we allegedly love are all for it and the hardliners in the regime are all against it. But the deal is actually more important if you have the most dire read of the regime and its future. If you do think the worst, is it better to put in place what is unquestionably the most rigorous inspections and surveillance regime ever devised or leave the Iranians entirely free to start building nuclear weapons immediately? The answer to this question is so blindingly obvious it really ends the debate.

Marshall continues shredding Schumer's arguments al length in the second half of his piece, but that last sentence is the heart of the argument.  If Schumer is going to be this blatant about putting his own neck ahead of the fate of his party, then he does not deserve to be a leader in his party.

So no, I don't believe that Chuck Schumer should be the leader of the Dems after Harry Reid retires. Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin immediately comes to mind as someone who should get the job (if Barb Mikulski wasn't retiring after 30 years.) But as Marshall says, Schumer has disqualified himself totally at this point.

If he will do this to save his neck now, when he is leader, he will sell out the country to benefit himself.  Senate Dems should take note.

Rated G For Gore

It's one thing for the sitting vice president to throw out a trial balloon and consider running for the Oval Office.  But for the guy that lost (and won, and then lost for winning) 15 years ago, the notion that Al Gore has any shot is just ridiculous.

Supporters of Al Gore have begun a round of conversations among themselves and with the former vice president about his running for president in 2016, the latest sign that top Democrats have serious doubts that Hillary Clinton is a sure thing.

Gore, 67, won the popular vote in the 2000 election and has been mentioned as a possible candidate in every contested Democratic primary since then. He instead spent much of the 2000s focused on environmental campaigning and business ventures. He has largely slipped out of public view in more recent years.

But in recent days, “they’re getting the old gang together,” a senior Democrat told BuzzFeed News.

“They’re figuring out if there’s a path financially and politically,” the Democrat said. “It feels more real than it has in the past months.”

The senior Democrat and other sources cautioned not to overstate Gore’s interest. He has not made any formal or informal moves toward running, or even met with his political advisers about a potential run.

A member of Gore’s inner circle asked to be quoted “pouring lukewarm water” — not, note, cold water — on the chatter.

Ugh.

No, no, no, no, no.  If you wanted to portray the Democrats as a bunch of bed-wetting losers with no confidence in Hillary, Bernie or even Joe Biden, then "Al Gore 2016?" stories are the perfect vehicle.  Even if this is 100% fabricated, it still makes the Democrats look like they're in full panic mode, without a viable candidate at all except for the guy that lost in 2000 to the Supreme Court. If it's a media play to bait Gore, he needs to be smart enough not to fall for it.

Granted, there would be some measure of revenge versus Jeb, but it's hard to portray yourself as the party that cares about America's future when you're literally fighting the same battles of 15 years ago.

This is a horrible idea, and while I respect Al Gore as a statesman and climate change activist, he had his chance at the Oval Office and blew it.  Gore would alienate the Hillary voters, the Bernie voters, and the Draft Biden folks to boot.  Yes, Democrats needs a wide-ranging discussion on issues and the future of the party.  No, Al Gore is not the future of the party.

Yeesh.

Chris-ed Off At The World

Things aren't going so well for NJ GOP Gov. Chris Christie's presidential run.  Turns out things are a lot worse for him back home in Trenton.

A majority of New Jersey’s registered voters said Gov. Chris Christie (R) should resign from his post as he ramps up his presidential campaign, according to a poll released Thursday.

Fifty-four percent of voters want Christie to step down while 41 percent said he should continue to run New Jersey as he seeks the Republican presidential nomination, according to the poll from Rutgers-Eagleton. 

But when voters were told about efforts by the Democratic legislature to oust the governor, 45 percent said Christie should be "forced" to resign whereas 52 percent said he should remain in his post. 

This comes after Wednesday’s poll from Rutgers-Eagleton that said more than half of New jersey residents would describe Christie as “arrogant” and would not describe him as “presidential.”

Ouch.

Old enough to remember when Chris Christie was actually relevant to national GOP politics.

Now he'll be lucky to keep the job he has.  Even that 45% of New Jersey voters that agree with the Democratic state legislature that Christie should step down is an awfully high number for an extremely unpopular governor.

Good luck with those last couple of years in your job, Chris.  You're going to need it.

StupidiNews!

• NOAA's Climate Prediction Center finds that this year's El Nino in the Pacific Ocean may be the strongest recorded, which could mean the West Coast is in for a rough fall and winter.
• A Louisiana man has been charged under the state's hate crime statute for defacing an abortion clinic earlier this month.
• On the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII, Japanese PM Shinzo Abe admitted"immeasurable damage and suffering" but he stopped shot of saying Japan needed to continually apologize.
• Greek lawmakers have approved an 86 billion euro bailout package under stiff terms from European creditors, a move that could trigger early elections this fall.
• HBO will premiere and fund the next five years of Sesame Street while PBS will show the new episodes nine months later for free on public TV stations.

Last Call For Youngstown Burning

When we say that black lives matter, and black people get the response "But what about..." or "Why not support..." or "Yes but it's also about..." I shake my head, because as long as incidents like this keep happening, everything else in our lives is secondary.

A  Youngstown, Ohio woman says she is in fear for her life after she moved her business into a new neighborhood where she has been threatened and harassed — and her truck was burned by vandals. 

The New York Daily News reported that 40-year-old Nicole Rhodes has been targeted because she is a black woman opening a business in a mostly-white neighborhood. 

The harassment began about three weeks ago with a note taped to the door of Rhodes’ beauty school and salon, which she is moving into an old school building on Mt. Vernon Avenue that her family has owned for three years. 

“We don’t want you here black b—-,” the note said. “Don’t get burnt up in there.”
Then on Monday, she came outside to find her 2006 Ford pickup ablaze. 

You have to understand that we're fighting to survive in a country where being black itself is enough to incite dangerous and sometimes deadly violence against us.  It's not that I don't care about drones or civil liberties or Gitmo detainees or Income inequality, I do.  I recognize those are important issues.

But racism in this country directly interferes with my ability to address those issues.  When a police officer can summarily execute someone for being black, my priorities as a black man have to start with this issue, self-preservation, above everything else.

“This can’t be real. This just can’t be real,” Rhodes said in an interview with the Daily News on Wednesday. “It just cannot be this serious. Black skin just can’t be this serious. Black skin just can’t make you go destroying property.” 

Fire investigators concluded that the blaze was deliberately set and are investigating the threats and fire as hate crimes. 

Youngstown Fire Department Investigator Alvin Ware told WKBN-27, “There’s something going on.” 

Rhodes said she has put up 16 surveillance cameras around the property and will not be intimidated into opening her business somewhere else.

And let's be honest here, black history is replete with examples of programs for correcting economic injustice independent of addressing racism, where racism in applying these crept in and these programs were used as a bludgeon against us to keep us down. Economic injustice and racism are deeply related, but they are separate issues.  I'm seeing a lot of talk about how we need to fix economic injustice.  I'm not seeing candidates tell me "we're going to work on racism."

So as long as people are willing to commit arson against a black woman in 2015 for the crime of being a black woman, everything else has to take a back seat, folks.  You can accuse Black Lives Matter of being a "single issue" group all you want to, but the reality is that if you're dead, you can't do much of anything useful.

Self-preservation wins.  It has to.  But for the grace of God I am not a hashtag.

The Moderate John Kasich Strikes Again

Sick of hearing how John Kasich isn't considered a far right GOP reactionary just because he doesn't scream on national TV.  His policies are just like the rest of the party of bad science and corporate interests.

Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) is the rare GOP presidential candidate who has acknowledged that climate change is a real problem requiring us to “protect” the “creation that the Lord has given us.” But just days after earning plaudits for his relatively moderate-sounding approach in Thursday’s GOP presidential debate, Kasich adopted a climate-change denialist approach on Sunday.

On NBC’s Meet the Press, host Chuck Todd called Kasich one of the “big winners of Thursday’s debate,” and praised him for an “impressive performance for the supportive crowd” in his home state and read a Time magazine quote comparing him to Pope Francis.

Kasich distanced himself from the Pontiff on economic issues and environmental ones. “I think that man absolutely affects the environment, but as to whether, what the impact is… the overall impact — I think that’s a legitimate debate.”

He then added: “We don’t want to destroy people’s jobs, based on some theory that is not proven.”

The new climate denier position: yes, man-made global warming exists, the thousands of scientists who are telling us it's a global problem are just confused I guess, and besides, the richest, most exceptional country on Earth can't afford to do anything about it.

Just like we can't afford to do anything about roads, schools, the electrical grid, guns, water mains, bridges, jobs programs, education, and everything else.

Until it's too late, of course.

President Carter Has Cancer

Jimmy Carter is 90 years old and is still going strong, leading international initiatives through his Carter Center.  He's been a strong voice for world peace and a tireless advocate for Habitat For Humanity, among other charities and NGOs. It pains me then to hear that this true example of an American statesman, having served his country for more than 40 years, is now facing the specter of cancer.

"Recent liver surgery revealed that I have cancer that now is in other parts of my body," Carter said in the statement released by the Carter Center. "I will be rearranging my schedule as necessary so I can undergo treatment by physicians at Emory Healthcare."

The statement makes clear that Carter's cancer is widely spread but not where it originated, or even if that is known at this point. The liver is often a place where cancer spreads and less commonly is the primary source of it. The statement said further information will be provided when more facts are known, "possibly next week."

Carter announced on Aug. 3 that he had surgery to remove a small mass from his liver.

Good wishes poured in on social media after Carter's announcement, while President Barack Obama said he and first lady Michelle Obama wish Carter a fast and full recovery.

"Jimmy, you're as resilient as they come, and along with the rest of America, we are rooting for you," Obama said in a statement.

Jimmy Carter has the resume of ten lesser people combined, a Nobel Peace Prize, countless hours as America's global diplomat emeritus, and a new memoir.  Now he faces this challenge.

"Our thoughts and prayers go out to President Carter," said Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society.

"There's a lot we don't know," but the first task likely will be determining where the cancer originated, as that can help determine what treatment he may be eligible for, Lichtenfeld said. Sometimes the primary site can't be determined, so genetic analysis of the tumor might be done to see what mutations are driving it and what drugs might target those mutations.

"Given the president's age, any treatments, their potential and their impacts, will undoubtedly be discussed carefully with him and his family," he added.

Age by itself does not preclude successful cancer treatment, said Dr. Lodovico Balducci, a specialist on treating cancer in the elderly at the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa. Much depends on the patient's "biological" age versus his actual years, he said.

"A man 90 years old normally would have a life expectancy of two or three years, but Jimmy Carter is probably much younger than that" in terms of his function, Balducci said. "If he tolerated liver surgery I imagine he has a relatively good tolerance" to other treatments that might be tried. For example, Moffitt has developed a scoring system to estimate how well an older person would tolerate chemotherapy, and the risk of serious side effects.

The first task is to determine if the cancer is curable, "which is unlikely with metastatic cancer," or if it is possible to meaningfully prolong the life through further surgery or other treatments, Balducci said. "Cancer in a 90-year-old is a serious problem, but that does not mean a 90-year-old cannot benefit from treatment."

Here's wishing Jimmy well.

StupidiNews!

• A set of massive explosions at a chemical storage facility in the Chinese port city of Tianjin has killed at least 44 and injured hundreds more.
• Ohio voters will be able to vote on legalizing marijuana in November, as Secretary of State Jon Husted has certified the more than 300,000 ballot signatures to confirm a ballot initiative.
• Islamic State is claiming responsibility for a deadly truck bombing at a marketplace in the Sadr City neighborhood of Baghdad, killing 76 and injuring more than 200.
• Nigerian militia members ambushed and killed 17 Boko Haram militants near the village of Lahou in northeastern Nigeria.
• Networking giant Cisco Systems is warning customers of attacks on critical networking equipment by replacing legitimate firmware with maliciously altered malware.

Last Call For A Company Of Record

The reaper of technology eventually comes for all companies, and those who can't stay ahead of the scythe get cut down sooner or later.

Columbia House – the mail-order music and movie membership club known for selling multiple CDs (eight, for example) for a penny – just couldn’t make it work in the digital age: Its owner filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in New York on Monday, according to Rolling Stone.

In the ‘90s, Columbia House was highly popular and brought in profits of $1.4 billion in 1996. But by 2010, the company had backed out of the music business, unable to compete against MP3s and streaming sites and focusing instead on DVD sales. 

By 2014, revenue had fallen to $17 million. And while the Columbia House membership is still 110,000 strong, about $63 million is owed to over 250 creditors, Rolling Stone says.

“This decline is directly attributable to a confluence of market factors that substantially altered the manner in which consumers purchase and listen to music, as well as the way consumers purchase and watch movies and television series at home,” Glenn Langberg, director of Columbia House's parent company, wrote in court documents, according to The Wall Street Journal.

And no, I never had a Columbia House subscription, although when I was younger, Dad got a bunch of CDs from them and then canceled his subscription early to keep the CDs.  The people who didn't read the fine print, well, they had to pay for those CDs, often those they didn't want, every month. Think of it as Netflix or GameFly, only for music.  Just goes to show you that a billion dollar empire can turn into a multi-million dollar mess the next day.  Progress is a harsh mistress, and there are always going to be losers as well as winners.

Executive Indecision On Gitmo

In the past, President Obama has proposed closing Gitmo only to run into the long knives of Democrats who refuse to let him actually do the job.  This time, Lame Duck Outta F*cks Obama(tm) is trying to use the executive branch to get the job done, and wouldn't you know it, the Justice Department is now saying "Wait a minute here..."

A renewed push by the White House to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has been bogged down by an internal disagreement over its most controversial provision — where to house detainees who will be brought to the United States for trial or indefinite detention, according to U.S. officials. 

The White House had intended to provide lawmakers with a new road map for shuttering the facility — a top priority for President Obama’s remaining time in office — before lawmakers went on their August recess. 

As part of the plan, the administration had considered sending some of the 116 detainees remaining at the prison to either a top-security prison in Illinois or a naval facility in Charleston, S.C. 

But during a recent video teleconference among top administration officials, Scott Ferber, senior counsel to the deputy attorney general, said the Justice Department could not support the use of the federal prison in Thomson, Ill., according to the officials, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. 

Ferber said the Justice Department had made a public commitment in 2012 when it purchased the facility from the state of Illinois that it would not relocate detainees to Thomson. Then-Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. told the Senate Judiciary Committee: “We will not move people from Guantanamo, regardless of the state of the law, to Thomson. That is my pledge as attorney general.” 

Holder’s commitment, made during sworn testimony, was apparently overlooked by officials when the most recent plan was drawn up. 

Thomson is no longer being considered, and the White House is again looking at other federal facilities, officials said. 

“Funding for Thomson prison was approved based on the understanding that no detainees from Guantanamo would be held there, and therefore, Thomson is not part of those discussions,” a senior administration official said. 

The last-minute dispute is another sign of the many difficulties plaguing the White House’s attempt to make good on Obama’s promise to close the military detention facility before he leaves office in 2017.

So the first and obvious choice for relocation of Gitmo detainees is 100% out of the picture.  That leaves the Naval Brig at Charleston, something that I don't think Gov. Nikki Haley, Charleston area Representative Mark "Appalachian Trail" Sanford, or Sens. Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott are going to actually support this in any way.

Gitmo detainees are the ultimate NIMBY problem, and putting them in a red state will probably cause packs of crazed Islamophobes to show up with rocket launchers and storm the place anyway, not to mention the endless screaming about "OBAMA'S TERROR ATTACK ON AMERICA" headlines during the 2016 election.

So unless another blue state steps up and does the job, this still isn't happening, no matter how much Gitmo needs to be closed.

The Clinton College Conundrum

Hillary Clinton's new plan this week to invest in higher education and tackle student loan debt is ambitious, bold, and comprehensive.

It also has zero chance whatsoever of becoming law.

At the heart of the plan, dubbed the New College Compact, is an incentive program that would provide money to states that guarantee "no-loan" tuition at four-year public universities and community colleges. States that enroll a high number of low- and middle-income students would receive more money, as would those that work with schools to reduce living expenses. Because Pell grants, a form of federal aid for students from families making less than $60,000, are not included in the no-debt calculation, Clinton anticipates lower income students could use that money to cover books, as well as room and board. 

Although Clinton doesn't mention the word "free" in her proposal, the basic foundation is the same as legislation Sanders introduced in May that would eliminate tuition at four-year public colleges through federal investment. But instead of taxing Wall Street transactions as Sanders has proposed, Clinton would close tax loopholes to pay for her plan.

A senior Clinton campaign official said the candidate would reinstitute Ronald Reagan-era cuts on itemized tax deductions for high-income families. The $350 billion would cover all facets of the far-reaching proposal over 10 years. More than half of the total would be used to increase state investment in higher education, a third would cover the cost of lowering the interest rates on student loans and the rest would support the other initiatives. 

To improve the nation's 60 percent college graduation rate, Clinton would offer grants to schools that invest in child care, emergency financial aid and other interventions to boost completion. Students entering college are older and have more family responsibilities than those a generation ago, yet many institutions have been slow to respond to their needs. Investing in on-campus support systems could help, as could Clinton's proposal to allow federal student aid to be used for online career training programs offering badges or certificates, rather than degrees. 

Among the many policy proposals included in the compact are ideas that liberal and conservative lawmakers have agreed on, including simplifying the application for financial aid and consolidating student loan repayment plans. Clinton is also backing a controversial bipartisan proposal to have colleges pay a portion of the debt when students default on school loans, and planning to use the proceeds to pay for some of her initiatives.

This is an amazing reform of our higher education system to make it affordable and effective for a new generation.

And every single Republican will work to destroy the plan, so unless the white paper on this includes a detailed plan to get Democrats elected at the state level to reverse gerrymandering, so that Dems can win back the House and get 60 solid votes in the Senate, not one single Clinton initiative will ever become law under her administration.

It's up to her to articulate her plan to win back Congress.

Same goes for Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley, or you're just wasting my time and my vote.

StupidiNews!

• Seven people have been injured after a US Marine Corps helicopter crashed off the coast of Okinawa, with the Japanese Coast Guard confirming all 17 crew members were rescued.
• A new study finds one in nine American adults suffer from chronic, daily pain and one in seven suffer severe levels of pain.
• The Arlington, TX police officer who shot and killed 19-year old unarmed black man Christian Taylor has been fired for "exercising poor judgment".
• Hillary Clinton will hand over her private email server used during her time as Secretary of State to DOJ investigators looking into whether classified emails were mishandled.
• Harvard professor and Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig is exploring a presidential run in 2016 as a Democrat, running on voting rights and campaign finance reform.