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News below the surface
Author: Will in Chicago    Date: 2014-04-05 10:08:12

It seems that many news stories don't get released until Friday. As a former news reporter, I learned that sometimes government agencies and large corporations would wait till Friday to release unpleasant news. Or it takes a while for a news organization to firm up a story. So, here is a look at some news stories that did not get released until late in the week or that may have flown under the radar of many people. Much like an iceberg, the true core of many stories is below the surface.

On Friday night, it was revealed by ABC News that a federal grand jury is looking at New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Bridgegate.

ABC News Exclusive: Grand Jury Convened in Christie Bridge Scandal Probe

The U.S. Attorney in New Jersey has convened a grand jury to investigate the involvement of Governor Chris Christie’s office in the George Washington Bridge scandal, ABC News has learned.

Twenty-three jurors convened in a federal courthouse in Newark today to hear testimony from a key staff member, Christie press secretary Mike Drewniak, whose lawyer, Anthony Iacullo, said Drewniak was not a target of the investigation.

"We're here to answer questions and that's what Michael did today," Iacullo said.

The convening of the grand jury is evidence that the U.S. Attorney’s investigation has progressed beyond an inquiry and moved to the criminal phase.


Meanwhile, another possible GOP presidential contender revealed that the GOP proposal to replace the Affordable Care Act will lack some of its most popular provisions. This comes in a week where we learned that 7 MiLLION people signed up for what the GOP derided as Obamacare. More from the Washington Post.

Paul Ryan: Popular parts of Obamacare too costly to keep, alternatives needed
BY AARON BLAKE

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) says in a new interview that it would be too costly for Republicans to reinstate some of the more popular provisions of Obamacare if and when the law is repealed, but that Republicans should look for alternatives.

The former GOP vice presidential nominee was asked on Bloomberg's "Political Capital with Al Hunt" about whether Republicans would keep provisions like requiring coverage for pre-existing conditions, keeping kids on their parents' insurance until they are 26 years old and barring insurance companies from having different rates for those whose jobs include physical labor.

The first two provisions are among the most popular parts of Obamacare, which as a whole is not popular. But Ryan says such provisions would also drive up the cost of insurance too much.

"If you look at these kinds of reforms, where they've been tried before — say the state of Kentucky, for example — you basically make it impossible to underwrite insurance," Ryan said, according to an advance transcript. "You dramatically crank up the cost. And you make it hard for people to get affordable health care."



Think Progress notes that economists were concerned that a 2009 proposal co-sponsored by Ryan would have discouraged employer from offering healthcare insurance and that some 20 million people could have lost their coverage.

Another health care story this week shocked and disturbed me. For many years, many state legislatures, spurred on by conservative activists, have sought to limit access to safe and legal abortions. The Huffington reports that these efforts are now seeing a return of back alley abortions.

The Return Of The Back-Alley Abortion
Laura Bassett

Now, however, Texas and other states are reversing course. State lawmakers enacted more abortion restrictions between 2011 and 2013 than they had in the previous decade, a trend that appears likely to continue in 2014. The Guttmacher Institute estimates that nearly 300 anti-abortion bills are currently pending in state legislatures.

The new restrictions have had a significant impact on women's access to abortion. A Huffington Post survey last year found that since 2010, at least 54 abortion providers across 27 states had either closed or stopped performing the procedure. Sixteen more shut their doors after Texas lawmakers passed some of the toughest abortion restrictions in the country last summer. A federal appeals court upheld two of the new restrictions in a ruling last week.

As a result, researchers and women's health advocates say, women today are resorting to many of the same dangerous methods they relied on in the pre-Roe era: seeking out illegal abortion providers, as Karen Hulsey did, or attempting risky self-abortion procedures.

In 2014, four decades after the Supreme Court upheld a woman's right to choose, pregnant women once again find themselves crossing the border to Mexico and haunting back-alleys in search of medical care


The situation will become worse this fall in Texas, as many abortion clinics will be forced to close this September. Nor is the problem just in the Lone-Star state, as Ohio has also implemented many restrictive laws on access to abortion services.

Much has been written about the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in McCutcheon v. the Federal Election Commission, expanding the amount of money that can be spent by individuals and corporations in elections. Charles P. Pierce of Esquire and John Nichols of the Nation both wrote very thoughtful pieces criticizing the Supreme Court majority. At the end of the week, Paul Blumenthal of the Huffington Post reflected on how the definition of corruption used by the majority could impact future rulings. Chief Justice John Roberts agreed with Citizens United that the only form of corruption that Congress can stop is quid pro quo corruption. This lead Blumenthal to try to figute out where the court majority will go next.

The Roberts Court Tees Up The End Of Campaign Finance Reform In Its Latest Ruling

And it's not just the soft-money ban that could be reviewed under this new standard. The reasoning behind limits on direct corporate and union contributions to candidates and political parties could also be called into question.

The history of the Roberts Court on campaign finance regulation is one of small steps. Like a small-ball baseball team, the Roberts Court tends to avoid the home run, but seeks to put a runner on base and then slowly move that runner into scoring position.

Before the Citizens United decision, for example, the court issued a ruling in Wisconsin Right to Life v. FEC that began to chip away at the arguments against corporate-funded independent spending. In McCutcheon, the court did the same thing by extending the narrower corruption standard of Citizens United to certain contribution limits.

Ultimately, there is no reason to believe that any campaign contribution limit is safe before the Roberts Court. So far, the court hasn't upheld any argued before it. Now that contribution limits are viewed under the narrower corruption standard, Roberts just needs the right case to send the runner home.


I view the entire concept of corporate personhood as in error, as I do not believe that a non-sentient creation that only exists when incorporated in a court room should not have the same rights as a human being. Instead, this Supreme Court majority is to my mind creating a superior class of person -- the corporation. It cannot die naturally, cannot be jailed and is generally more powerful politically than individuals. Is it any surprise that there was a story last year in the NY Times called Corporations Find a Friend in the Supreme Court.

I do not use the "F" word lightly, but I will use it. This has too many parallels to what I have seen elsewhere in the GOP. It seems that the majority on the Supreme Court and the GOP believe in the superiority of corporations at the expense of labor unions and average individuals. I will refer the reader to Laurence W. Britt's article Fascism Anyone? and ask how much of what we see in today's GOP does not recall such nationalistic regimes as Suharto in Indonesia or Francisco Franco in Spain. (I hate to be brutal and I do not make such accusations lightly.)

Lest I leave the reader in a sense of despair, there was some good news this week which did not get a lot of coverage. The U.S. economy has overcome a major hurdle, as reported in the Huffington Post and elsewhere.

Nancy Pelosi: We've Finally Filled The George Bush Jobs Hole
By Michael McAuliff and Arthur Delaney

WASHINGTON -- The latest jobs report contained a politically important fact for Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) -- America finally replaced the jobs lost from the "Bush economic policies," the House minority leader said Friday, blaming Republicans for the slow pace of recovery.

Pelosi's declaration came shortly after the Labor Department announced the U.S. economy added 192,000 jobs in March, in the latest sign of ongoing job growth too tepid to bring down the unemployment rate. But private payroll employment did pass a milestone Democrats wanted to commemorate.

"I have to note that today we have replaced all of the jobs lost under the Bush economic policies and recession that that took us into," Pelosi told reporters on Capitol Hill. "It's taken this long to build back from that."

Pelosi was referring to the fact that private-sector payroll employment reached 116 million in March, beating its December 2007 peak of 115.9 million, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The Great Recession started at the end of 2007 and officially ended halfway through 2009. Since then, growth has remained steady, but weak.


One might ask what many of these stories have in common. I would argue that there is a theme of the powerful acting in their own self interest or on behalf of the few at the expense of the many. I beleive that this comes from many places. For some it is a belief that only a small minority are worthy of leading society. Others may view it necessary to impose their principles, whether derived from their faith or Ayn Rand, upon others.

Such an attitude is utterly undemocratic but fairly common among today's conservatives. Indeed, there is a contempt for such concepts as society and community. The following quote by Margaret Thatcher can be taken as almost a motto of conservatives throughout the world.

"I think we've been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it's the government's job to cope with it. 'I have a problem, I'll get a grant.' 'I'm homeless, the government must house me.' They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There's no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation."


Thatcher's remarks remind me of a quote from the economist John Kenneth Galbraith:
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.


In the end, I view such efforts to rule over others, rather than to represent people in a representative democracy to be foolish and destructive. I am reminded of a quote by Canadian writer and comedian John Rogers.

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged . One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

We have a choice as a nation and a world. Do we build societies where all people are treated with dignity and that power is used not to serve the interests of the few but for the common good. (Thatcher would deny that there is really much common good, but there are many who view her and Ronald Reagan as disasters for their respective countries whose legacy still continues to wreck damage long after each of these politicians breathed their last.) Morally, I oppose the attitudes of Ryan, Christie and those who would restrict he rights of others and serve the needs of the few. While many might despair, there are those who are working in many causes to build a better world. Already, we see people pushing to improve the ACA, to reform campaign financing, to end corporate personhood, and to ensure that the rights of women to safe and legal abortions are protected. Others are fighting against climate change, poverty and in building better communities in our country and around the world. So, rather than despair, have hope and find someway to make a difference. You will find that you are not alone.




 

2 comments (Latest Comment: 04/06/2014 13:36:51 by velveeta jones)
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