StupidiNews!

• Having avoided a life sentence on charges of aiding the enemy, Bradley Manning still faces the possibility of more than a century in prison time in the sentencing phase of his trial.
• In keeping with their deal with Democrats in the Senate, Republicans allowed an up-or-down vote on National Labor Relations Board members, with all five being approved for the first time in a decade.
• The Obama administration is threatening to take $10 million in Race to the Top education grants from Georgia over the state reneging on its 2010 promise to implement teacher merit pay.
• Even before President Obama's speech Tuesday on a corporate tax code reform deal, Republicans already dismissed the notion because they want more tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.
• Happy 55th birthday to NASA, as the space agency celebrates the milestone this week from its humble beginnings in 1958.

Last Call For Hoosier School Grades

Just in case you still thought Republicans gave a damn about fixing schools rather than destroying them and privatizing the ashes or something, meet current Florida state school superintendent Tony Bennett, who recently joined Gov. Skeletor McBatBoy from Indiana, where Mr. Bennett still has a few pieces of embarrassing business to deal with back Indianapolis way.

Former Indiana and current Florida schools chief Tony Bennett built his national star by promising to hold "failing" schools accountable. But when it appeared an Indianapolis charter school run by a prominent Republican donor might receive a poor grade, Bennett's education team frantically overhauled his signature "A-F" school grading system to improve the school's marks.

Emails obtained by The Associated Press show Bennett and his staff scrambled last fall to ensure influential donor Christel DeHaan's school received an "A," despite poor test scores in algebra that initially earned it a "C."

If you're shocked an appalled by this, you really haven't been paying attention to what Republicans are doing to public schools at the state level, have you?  GOP fat cat donor with a shiny charter school wasn't going to get a C grade from the state, no sir.  You buy those politicians, they stay bought.

Though Indiana had had a school ranking system since 1999, Bennett switched to the A-F system and made it a signature item of his education agenda, raising the stakes for schools statewide.

Bennett consistently cited Christel House as a top-performing school as he secured support for the measure from business groups and lawmakers, including House Speaker Brian Bosma and Senate President Pro Tem David Long.

But trouble loomed when Indiana's then-grading director, Jon Gubera, first alerted Bennett on Sept. 12 that the Christel House Academy had scored less than an A.

"This will be a HUGE problem for us," Bennett wrote in a Sept. 12, 2012 email to Neal.
Neal fired back a few minutes later, "Oh, crap. We cannot release until this is resolved."

By Sept. 13, Gubera unveiled it was a 2.9, or a "C."

So Bennett and his GOP buddies retooled the entire state school grading scale just to give a multimillionaire donor's school an A.  Because that, ladies and gentlemen, is how "accountability" works when you're a Republican.  You buy it, then you tell everyone how awesome charter schools are, and how miserable public schools are, and then you have justification to take money from public schools and give it to charter ones, and all the right people make fat stacks of cash.

Meanwhile, let's keep telling ourselves the problem with schools are teachers and poor minority kids and not for-profit raiders like Tony Bennett.

Stuck In The Past, Romney-Style

It's nice to know that if America had elected Mitt Romney, he'd still be arguing over whether or not he made that famous 47 percent quote.  You know, the one on tape.  Apparently, he thinks we forget or something (or that Google disintegrates after 200 days.)  David Corn:

Poor Mitt Romney. He seems unable to come to terms with one of the most significant episodes in his public life: the 47 percent video that undercut his chance of becoming president of the United States.

Sunday's Washington Post featured an article adapted from reporter Dan Balz's new 2012 campaign book, Collision 2012, and the excerpt focused on Romney's take on why he entered the race and why he lost. Toward the end of the article, which was based on a series of interviews Balz conducted with Romney, the twice-failed Republican presidential candidate was forced to confront his 47-percent remarks, and he just couldn't do so forthrightly.

There's a shocker.

[Romney] was in California and said at first he couldn’t get a look at the video. His advisers were pushing him to respond as quickly as he could. "As I understood it, and as they described it to me, not having heard it, it was saying, 'Look, the Democrats have 47 percent, we’ve got 45 percent, my job is to get the people in the middle, and I’ve got to get the people in the middle,'" he said. "And I thought, 'Well, that’s a reasonable thing.'... It's not a topic I talk about in public, but there's nothing wrong with it. They've got a bloc of voters, we've got a bloc of voters, I've got to get the ones in the middle. And I thought that that would be how it would be perceived—as a candidate talking about the process of focusing on the people in the middle who can either vote Republican or Democrat. As it turned out, down the road, it became perceived as being something very different."

In other words, he tried to pull one over on Dan Balz.  What Romney actually said of course, was:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what… These are people who pay no income tax..."[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

David Corn should know, he was the guy that got the tape and broke the story...and most likely ended Mitt Romney's 2012 run cold.  But he's outright lying to the DC press, because they figure they still won't hold him accountable for his own actions.  They figured we forgot.  We did...we just didn't forget why he lost.

Pope Francis Hits A Home Run

It's things like this that make reading news so rewarding.  With absolutely no warning (it was never on my radar whatsoever) Pope Francis has not only broadly opened up the door to acceptance for gay people, but demonstrates a genuine respect for people in general.  In other words, he just showed something we haven't seen from the religious front in a while.

ABOARD THE PAPAL AIRCRAFT (AP) -- Pope Francis reached out to gays on Monday, saying he wouldn't judge priests for their sexual orientation in a remarkably open and wide-ranging news conference as he returned from his first foreign trip.

"If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?" Francis asked.

Even a jaded old broad like me can appreciate the Pope taking such a stance, and not forcing a cat and mouse game where the answers are carefully extricated, pulled through layers of political spin and carefully placed vagueness.  A question was asked, and he answered it.  Directly, openly, completely and awesomely.  

We may have a Pope who is full of surprises, and some of the compassion and humility that a true leader needs to show for those who look to him for answers.  If nothing else, we can know from this that he is not a puppet, repeating the tried and true responses that deflect nosy reporters.  And for that reason, I have a newfound respect for Pope Francis.  He blasted this one out of the park.

[Zandar's note:  It's good to see Bon back and hopefully you'll be seeing more of her soon.  On the other hand, I trust Pope Francis about as far as he can throw me.]

StupidiNews!

• Seven propane tank plant employees have been hospitalized, as tens of thousands of 20-pound propane tanks detonated as the result of a plant-wide fire.
• NC GOP Gov. Pat McCrory has signed the state's deeply unpopular Republican-crafted anti-choice bill into law, despite campaign promises not to limit abortion access.
• A national FBI child prostitution sweep dubbed Operation Cross Country netted 150 suspects and saved 105 children in several states.
• A "merger of equals" between French advertising giant Publicis and US giant Omnicom would create the world's largest advertising group, worth $23 billion and 20% of the global ad market.
• Time Warner is raising monthly cable modem rates to $5.99, which could generate an extra $150 million yearly from customers for equipment they already have in their homes.

Last Call For City Employee Healthcare

As far as major American cities with employee medical costs are concerned, a bunch of them are looking at putting employees on Obamacare in order to save local taxpayers millions, starting with of course Detroit:

As Detroit enters the federal bankruptcy process, the city is proposing a controversial plan for paring some of the $5.7 billion it owes in retiree health costs: pushing many of those too young to qualify for Medicare out of city-run coverage and into the new insurance markets that will soon be operating under the Obama health care law. 

Officials say the plan would be part of a broader effort to save Detroit tens of millions of dollars in health costs each year, a major element in a restructuring package that must be approved by a bankruptcy judge. It is being watched closely by municipal leaders around the nation, many of whom complain of mounting, unsustainable prices for the health care promised to retired city workers. 

Similar proposals that could shift public sector retirees into the new insurance markets, called exchanges, are already being planned or contemplated in places like Chicago; Sheboygan County, Wis.; and Stockton, Calif. While large employers that eliminate health benefits for full-time workers can be penalized under the health care law, retirees are a different matter. 

That's probably the best way forward for Detroit, frankly.  I don't like it, but it's better than the alternative:  no health care.  And once again, the more people making a success out of exchanges, the more people will use them.  Eventually, we'll be getting to a single-payer model.  But for now, Obamacare's exchanges are going to be where health care is going to go over the next several years.

Picasso Baby Blues

I had a very interesting and enlightening discussion with a good friend over the weekend about Jay Z's new project, Picasso Baby.  Rolling Stone:

Earlier this month, Jay Z gave a impressively Herculean performance in New York City, rapping the Magna Carta Holy Grail track "Picasso Baby" over and over again for six hours straight at the Pace Gallery.

The performance was filmed, and HBO just announced that it will be airing the resulting work, Picasso Baby: A Performance Art Film. The special will debut on Friday, August 2nd at 11 p.m. Eastern time, immediately after the rapper's appearance on Real Time With Bill Maher. In the trailer for the film, Jay Z can be seen interacting with Alan Cumming, Judd Apatow, and the artist Marina Abramovic, who were all spotted at the gallery during the performance. 

My friend's argument was that Jay Z was guilty of massive appropriation of culture here, and that the art community was furious with him for doing the full nouveau riche on it.  She's somebody with a couple of art degrees and on the subject she's far more qualified than myself to speak, so I listened.  The inclusion of Marina Abramovic was really deep into shark-jumping territory, she argued, and in his quest for artistic legitimacy, Jay Z has simply blundered into the world of performance art and taken over through his money, not his talent.  She didn't think Jay Z had any methodology in the piece, either, no root in art of the body, no paradigm, just "kids playing dressup."

My counter-argument was that if Jay Z was anyone else but Jay Z, it would be considered a major boost to the world of performance art, and that the guy was far from the only putative art snob dropping ridiculous amounts of money to buy art (in this case, he basically bought himself an HBO special) in order to get the access and power its exclusivity and legitimacy provides.  Why shouldn't a black man who has legitimately made it not push the boundaries of culture?  Jay Z didn't need the art world to become famous, maybe it needs someone like like him to expand it.

But, she rebutted, that's what makes the project so brazenly and transparently shallow.  Everyone can clearly see Jay Z is doing this not for the love of art, but for the sake of that exclusivity, that attention, and that power he's thirsting to receive.  It's culture appropriation in an attempt to become something he's not, and that it's not really that much different from other examples of appropriation, say, if Marina Abramovic went on her next world tour as a performance artist and chose rap as her medium.

My rebuttal was that the judgment of Jay Z has been pretty harsh, especially since the project hasn't aired, and that if say, a white musical artist like Bono or Sting were combining their music with performance art in a gallery, it would be applauded.  We both then agreed to at least watch the special Friday night to see what Jay Z is at least capable of.

What say the rest of you?  Any interest in Picasso Baby?  Is Jay Z and Beyonce's "life as performance art" mode over the last couple of years, meticulously documented and packaged, presented, and dissected really art?  Is it buying legitimacy, or earned?  Is it belittling the world of art, or is it strengthening it?  What role does race play in all of this?

I think it's fascinating, but I want to hear from you guys.

Four Out Of Five, Folks

A new Associated Press economic report finds some pretty grim numbers for the large majority of American workers.

Four out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream.

Survey data exclusive to The Associated Press points to an increasingly globalized U.S. economy, the widening gap between rich and poor and loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs as reasons for the trend.

The AP defines this struggle pretty clearly:

The gauge defines "economic insecurity" as experiencing unemployment at some point in their working lives, or a year or more of reliance on government aid such as food stamps or income below 150 percent of the poverty line. Measured across all races, the risk of economic insecurity rises to 79 percent.

I know I meet that criteria on the first condition, more than a few times (as I expect most of us will), and come very close to qualifying for the second as well (and as a result of the first leading to the second, I came close to the third to boot.)  But here's the food for thought: if income inequality in America really is this bad (and it is) what does that mean for low income voters voting Republican?

Sometimes termed "the invisible poor" by demographers, lower-income whites are generally dispersed in suburbs as well as small rural towns, where more than 60 percent of the poor are white.  Concentrated in Appalachia in the East, they are also numerous in the industrial Midwest and spread across America's heartland, from Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma up through the Great Plains.

More than 19 million whites fall below the poverty line of $23,021 for a family of four, accounting for more than 41 percent of the nation's destitute, nearly double the number of poor blacks.

Nearly 20 million poor whites, many of them right here in my area:  the Ohio/Indiana/Kentucky tristate, as well as other red states in the Midwest.  And overwhelmingly these are the voters that install Republican governments at the state level to make inequality worse, with massive tax cuts for the rich at the expense of programs that go to help these very voters.

They've been taught time and again that the problem is too much government interference in corporate America that's forcing these good, upstanding business giants to lay people off, and besides, it's all the black president's fault.

In 2013 poverty is far less about race than it is simply not being among the one percent, and we're fighting battles over the scraps that the corporations give us.  That's just the way they want it.

StupidiNews!

• The operator of the Spanish train that derailed last week has been charged with 79 counts of homicide as prosecutors charge the driver knowingly took a turn too fast.
• Stanford University Medical School researchers say they have found a Vatican-backed theory of "adult stem cells" to be a fraud.
• Israel has agreed to release 104 Palestinian prisoners in stages in order to get negotiators to the table as Secretary of State John Kerry is moving ahead with Mideast peace talks.
• A heart surgeon in India is able to charge less than $1,600 for heart bypass surgery that would cost over $100,000 in the US.
• The new version of Google's Nexus 7 Android tablet is on shelves today, shipping with major speed and memory improvements over the original.

Last Call For Hannity And Rush

And finally, the end may be near for the radio hatemongers on the right, done in by the most implacable foe of all...

...capitalism.

In a major shakeup for the radio industry, Cumulus Media, the second-biggest broadcaster in the country, is planning to drop both Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity from its stations at the end of the year, an industry source told POLITICO on Sunday. 

Cumulus has decided that it will not renew its contracts with either host, the source said, a move that would remove the two most highly rated conservative talk personalities from more than 40 Cumulus channels in major markets.

The decision comes after negotiations between Cumulus and Premiere Networks, the division of Clear Channel that distributes Limbaugh and Hannity's shows, broke down due to disagreements over the cost of the distribution rights, the source said. Cumulus is known to drive a hard bargain on costs, and Clear Channel is known to seek top dollar for big names. 

As industry insiders caution, Cumulus and Clear Channel have come to the brink before during contract negotiations only to resume talks. But the source told POLITICO that Clear Channel was unlikely to reduce the cost for distribution rights to a level that would satisfy Cumulus.

Another major win for Angelo Carusone, the Media Matters crusader who went after Glenn Beck's advertisers and got him off the air.  He's been going after Rush and Hannity's advertisers, and without the ad revenue, Clear Channel is forced to raise rates on distributors.  And they're not going to pay for a damaged product that could cost them listeners and advertisers to boot.

Hitting Hannity and Rush in the wallet has been the most effective strategy so far.  We need to keep it up.

Motor City Bailout Is Out Of Gas

Having not bailed out any other municipality that has declared bankruptcy, the Obama administration isn't about to make an exception for Detroit.

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on Sunday defended the administration’s decision not to help bail out Detroit, saying that the city would need to negotiate its own resolution with creditors.

“Detroit’s economic problems have been a long time in developing. We stand with Detroit trying to work through how it approaches these issues,” said Lew in an interview on ABC’s “This Week.”

But he added that “when it comes to the questions between Detroit and its creditors, that’s really something that Detroit is going to have to work out with its creditors.”

Lew’s comments come one week after Detroit became the largest municipality in American history to declare bankruptcy.

Labor unions have pressed the administration to intervene and provide a federal bailout to help protect the pensions of city workers and retirees. The AFL-CIO on Friday called for an “immediate infusion of federal assistance.”

I don't know why the AFL-CIO is trying to put President Obama in an impossible position.  They have to know a bailout is politically and most likely legally impossible.  So why are they screaming for President Obama to produce the impossible?

The real problem here is the Michigan GOP, Gov. Rick Snyder, and the odious Emergency Manager laws that unconstitutionally forced Detroit into bankruptcy and disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of Detroit voters.  There's your actual person to blame, folks.  Not President Obama.

Nobody's talking about that aspect of this story, and that's criminal.

Last Call For Hometown Disaster

Some pretty brutal flooding in the part of North Carolina where I grew up this weekend:  Catawba County and my hometown of Hickory got up to 12 inches of rain since Friday night, and that's put a lot of people and places I grew up with in a hell of a lot of danger as the Unifour area is facing record flooding.

Hickory Mayor Rudy Wright declared a state of emergency, telling residents to stay indoors and away from flooded roads and washed-out bridges.

“This is a time for all of us to be very careful and patient,” Wright said. “The cleanup is going to take a while.”

Heavy rain pushed into the Charlotte area early Saturday afternoon, when a nearly stationary weather system dumped more than 12 inches of rain in some parts of Catawba, western Lincoln and northern Cleveland counties.

Some 50 to 60 roads were closed in Catawba County, and at least six were expected to remain closed for at least three months, the Hickory Daily Record reported.

The heavy rain sent large volumes of water into streams and creeks that feed into the Catawba River. High Shoals Lake in Catawba County was a foot above full level Saturday evening, and the water level rose nearly 5 feet between 4 a.m. and 2 p.m. 

ZandarDad says he and ZandarMom are fine, but things are pretty bad in low-lying areas, including one of the streets I used to live on being completely washed out.  He hasn't seen anything this bad since Hurricane Hugo came inland and drew a line from Charleston to Charlotte to Hickory back in '89.  It could be months before some roads are open again, and bridges have been pretty badly damaged along the Catawba River and Lake Hickory.  States of emergency have been declared, and I hope the federal government comes through.

If you're back in my old neck of the woods, guys, keep safe.

What The Loss Of Section 5 Means

As Joey Fishkin at Balkinization points out, the real losers with the elimination of Section 5 are local and county races in pre-clearance states where there was nobody but the DoJ looking over the shoulders of voting officials.  Take the example of school board elections in Beaumont, Texas:

This is a convoluted tale, as these tales often are. But in brief, three candidates who lost in the last election to three of the four black school board members are trying to get a state court to oust those three black incumbents and install them (the losing candidates) instead. The losing candidates pulled off a sneaky, and rather brazen, subterfuge: they filed candidate papers for a special election that had not yet been announced, and then subsequently convinced a state court that state law required ordering the election, with a retroactive filing deadline that had already passed. Since the three black incumbents did not file candidate papers—understandably, since no election had been called for their seats, and they are only halfway through their terms—the non-black challengers say the court should just install them, the challengers, as winners by default.  

Now, with Section 5 in place, the DoJ shut that nonsense down.  Section 5 is now gone.  Guess what that means?

What a difference a couple of months makes. Today, because “things have changed in the South,” Beaumont is out from under Section 5. Consequently, the federal court has just declared that it lacks any jurisdiction over this dispute.  It has sent the case back to state court, where the non-black candidates have renewed their mandamus motion for a court order ousting the black incumbents and installing themselves as the new school board.

And there's basically nothing to stop them.  Three duly-elected black school board members are simply going to be thrown off the board because white people can now get away with it.  The argument is that what the DoJ did to make elections fair in Beaumont is now 100% illegal, so those elected under those standards should be tossed from office.

This will happen in states across the South, which is why Section 3 is now so vital...because what Republicans mean when they say "Voter ID" is "Voter Suppression".

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• Cleveland kidnapping suspect Ariel Castro will receive life plus 1000 years in prison, without the possibility of parole, in a plea deal to avoid the death penalty.
• On the 60th anniversary of the agreement that ended the Korean War, North Korea staged a huge military parade in Pyongyang's main square.
• The US will transfer two Gitmo detainees back to Algeria as the Pentagon official in charge of detainee policy at the prison announced his resignation on August 31st.
• A recall of GM's India-exclusive Tavera SUV has led to the firings of several GM employees in the division.
• Turns out a 21-year old man whose computer was infected with a fake FBI ransomware virus believed it, turned himself into the cops, and is now facing real child pornography charges.

The Kroog Versus The GOP's Last Stand

How terrified are Republicans that Obamacare will work?  Terrified enough to threaten to shut down the government.  Paul Krugman:

Leading Republicans appear to be nerving themselves up for another round of attempted fiscal blackmail. With the end of the fiscal year looming, they aren’t offering the kinds of compromises that might produce a deal and avoid a government shutdown; instead, they’re drafting extremist legislation — bills that would, for example, cut clean-water grants by 83 percent — that has no chance of becoming law. Furthermore, they’re threatening, once again, to block any rise in the debt ceiling, a move that would damage the U.S. economy and possibly provoke a world financial crisis. 

Yet even as Republican politicians seem ready to go on the offensive, there’s a palpable sense of anxiety, even despair, among conservative pundits and analysts. Better-informed people on the right seem, finally, to be facing up to a horrible truth: Health care reform, President Obama’s signature policy achievement, is probably going to work. 

The wing of the GOP that actually wants to win elections, specifically, is terrified.  They're now seeing the extremist wing of the GOP that would rather burn the country to ashes juggling flaming torches in a fireworks factory while standing on an oil-soaked tightrope.  They stopped giving a damn the second President Obama got re-elected.  For them, it's about enacting bloody revenge against the people who made Obama's second term possible:  women, working-class parents and their families,  African-Americans and Latinos, and the Millennial generation.

Since these are the groups that will be helped by Obamacare, Obamacare has to go: long-term it's the end of the GOP.  But the wingers are willing now to shut the government down in order to stop it.  Let's be clear here:

It's a bluff.

The corporate interests that control Washington will never allow the government to be shut down.  The resulting chaos will cost them billions and they know it.  They will take the GOP out rather than lose 10, 11, 12 figure sums.  So no, the government won't blow up, and the debt ceiling will be raised.

That puts the GOP in a tough position:  if they somehow do pull the plug, they're done.  If they don't, they're done.  How much damage will they do to America before they grind to a halt?

We're about to find out.