Month: April 2015

Creating Russia as Europe’s number one enemy through NATO military ties and provocation is part of the New Deal to make Europe an economic entity of US and UK corporations and its banking systems. Europeans are slowly waking up to the secret TTIP negotiations to sellout labor, food  and environment laws and regulations.

The Hague: TTIP must not undermine our democracy and legal system

The trade agreement between the European Union and the United States, TTIP, should not “undermine our national legal system and the Dutch democracy.” This is contained in a motion of Christian Union MP Gert-Jan Segers that was adopted by a large majority of the House this afternoon.

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Who whispers the lies! Stop TTIP and secret negotiations (Photo EPA / Wolfgang Kumm)

Social Democrats – Labor parties – in Brussels reject the controversial TTIP treaty

The Labour Party is against the big TTIP trade treaty that the European Union and the United States want to close, if it’s not fundamentally altered. With this sharp position the party turns directly against its own minister Ploumen (foreign trade) which is involved in the negotiations on behalf of the Netherlands on this major treaty, which should lead to an “economic NATO.”

The Labour delegation in the European Parliament even sees no salvation more TTIP. “There are currently a lot of economic problems,” said MEP Agnes Jongerius in NRC Handelsblad. “Ensuring that you can wonder if that can be solved.”

[No mention of the extreme high unemployment and the corruption in the Eastern European nations that were fast-tracked into the EU political fold! These states are also the trouble-makers in animosity against Russia. Remember Rumsfeld and his “new Europe” willing to place a missile shield of interceptors … against an attack by Iran! What a bs from Washington. – Oui]

According Jongerius can Europe “an even larger internal market” not to, given the problems that the EU already has with freedom of movement and social exploitation. MP Jan Vos believes that the social contracts that are not typical for Europe “can simply be exchanged for an ill-trade agreement with the US.” There should in his opinion much better guarantees come under more social policy field, the environment and animal welfare.

The deal

Together the US and EU account for around €22 trillion in annual trade, almost half of the world total. By opening trade further, this could boost global GDP by 0.6% a year or more if knock-on effects on productivity are included. And the effects would be even bigger if the deal eliminates permanent trade barriers, such as customs and taxes, which is also being negotiated.

Currently EU and US businesses pay trade tariffs to sell their products in each other’s markets. TTIP would remove these. It would also reduce costs from duplication, where businesses must meet US and EU standards that are often similar but different.

Dancers in the dark – EU’s opaque trade negotiations with US | New Europe |

(Sept. 2014 ) – The European Ombudsman, Emily O’Reilly, has launched a public consultation in relation to the transparency of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations.

This public consultation takes place in the context of her strategic investigation into TTIP transparency (against the Council and the Commission) which she opened in July 2014. In her letter to the Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso, Emily O’Reilly said: “the Commission seems to be encountering significant delays in replying to what appear to be numerous and broad-ranging requests for public access to documents relating to TTIP. Concerns have also been raised in relation to privileged access being given to certain external stakeholders and to the unauthorised disclosure of documents in certain instances.”

To say that negotiations around the TTIP are conducted in an opaque manner is an understatement. Documents are impossible to obtain, even by MEPs, strategies are kept secret, while the negotiators are not accountable to national governments.

Ag interests urge science-based standards for EU trade negotiations

CHEVY CHASE, Md., Oct. 1, 2014– Several agriculture groups reiterated their priorities for removing trade barriers to U.S. goods in the European Union during the seventh round of Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP) negotiations at the National 4-H Youth Conference Center in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

Stakeholder groups representing several aspects of the U.S. and EU economies involved in T-TIP presented their concerns and priorities during the Stakeholder Forum.

Frances Smith, and adjunct fellow with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said the U.S. system has a more transparent approach than the EU when it comes to publishing regulatory proposals and asking for public comments. “The EU system uses the precautionary principle, which allows populist beliefs to evade the science-based rules,” Smith said.

She said genetically modified foods, biotechnology and pesticides are some of the top contentious issues in negotiations with the EU, along with chemicals and pharmaceutical devices. Instead of trying to converge regulations in the face of many sensitive issues and varying approaches, Smith suggested the trading parties attempt “mutual recognition,” which would ensure all parties have their own safety procedures in place, but that they come to similar results.

Heartland Institutes took over where Competitive Enterprise Institute left-off  

Why has Monsanto “Quit” Europe? The Answer is ISDS in TAFTA/TTIP

The battle to bring GM food to Europe has been fiercely fought for years.  Most assumed it would be continue to rage for many more. Which makes this recent announcement extremely surprising.

In fact, the issue of GM crops is likely to be one of the biggest sticking points in the TTIP negotiations. The US side is insisting that “Sanitary and Phytosanitary ” (SPS) measures must address GM foodstuffs, with the European side adamant that it won’t drop its precautionary principle.

 So how might that apparent contradiction be resolved?  A recent meeting on SPS gives a clue …

Heartland Institute is a Terrorist Organization
BooMan by Steven D  on Mon May 7th, 2012

Guess who claimed that climate change scientists are just like Charles Manson, the Unabomber and Fidel Castro? Our good friends at the Heartland Institute, a notorious conservative think tank that promotes denial that man-made global warming is behind climate change: Here’s one image of the billboards they were running …

Heartland Institute compares belief in global warming to mass murder | The Guardian |

○ The Heartland ads are not the only climate change messages to go wrong
○ Heartland Institute documents reveal strategy of attacks against climate science
○ US biggest climate skeptic receives money from `eco-friendly’ BP – report

See my previous diaries:
○ Anglo-American Values Don’t Fit Europe, Time to Protest NATO Aggression
○ Trade Pacts – Oligarchy in Action, US Not Really a Democracy
○ TTIP Treaty to be Signed – Super NAFTA Undermines Democracy

I have now read the indictment of New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez in its entirety. It’s not fun reading. To be honest, though, I spent most of the time cringing but still wondering whether or not what I was learning really constituted a crime or crimes.

It looks like Menendez is clearly guilty of filing false financial disclosure forms, so he has a criminal problem no matter what. There’s one count that has to do with causing pilots to make illegal communications with air traffic control that I never found an explanation for, so I can’t really offer any analysis of that.

Most of the indictment focuses on four areas: helping expedite travel visas for the girlfriends of a friend and donor, advocating in favor of enforcement of the friend and donor’s contract with a port in the Dominican Republic, pushing back on a Medicare fraud case filed against this same friend and donor, and financial contributions and gifts from this friend and donor that are supposed to constitute bribery.

The details are unseemly, to say the least, but we should also look at this within the proper context. The donations were not illegal in and of themselves, but only as part of an alleged quid pro quo arrangement. It’s scandalous that one rich individual can legally give so much money to a U.S. Senator, but that’s an indictment of our campaign finance laws, not of Senator Menendez.

The question should be what a senator is legally entitled to do for a friend, regardless of whether or not that friend routinely fills their coffers with cash. I say this because it is clear that Bob Menendez and Salomon Melgen were more than mere acquaintances or political allies. Menendez spent much of his vacation time with Melgen, and presumably not just because Melgen provided free accommodations. Can you not call up your friend, the senator from New Jersey, and ask him to help make sure your girlfriend can get an entry visa to visit the United States? Is it a crime for a senator to inquire about a contract at a foreign port on behalf of a friend?

These are the arguments than the senator will be making in court, and working against him will be the financial contributions and gifts his friend bestowed on him, the timing of those gifts, and the fact that Menendez sought to hide those gifts by filing false disclosure statements.

On the other hand, most of what Menendez did he did in plain sight by communicating or having his staffers communicate with other government agencies like the Departments of Health and Human Services and Homeland Security.

Do other senators not do the same on behalf of people who are both friends and big donors?

As I said at the top, Menendez is clearly guilty of filing false disclosures and, as part of that, he accepted illegal gifts in the form of free air travel and hotel accommodations that he only belatedly paid for. He has a big problem.

But the other 99 senators must be looking at this indictment with great concern. Our system is rotten, but most of what Menendez is accused of doing is certainly not unique to him.

What I am willing to say is that the people of New Jersey should be very displeased with how Bob Menendez prioritized his job. He spent a tremendous amount of time looking out for the interests of his close friend, a person who had clearly defrauded the Medicare system, and he should have been spending that time helping more humble and ethical people who were actually his constituents.

I guess the State Department is happy today to be able to say that Harry Reid is retiring. When asked if he would spend his post-Senate career as a lobbyist, Reid was somewhat undiplomatic.

“I’d rather go to Singapore and have them beat me with whips.”

That pretty much encapsulates my love/hate relationship with Harry Reid. He’s a character.

I’m going to hold my fire on Senator Bob Menendez for a little bit, despite my dislike for his politics, my low opinion of his ethics, and the fact that I haven’t been this unsurprised by an indictment since Vince Fumo finally, at long last, got his comeuppance. Yeah, I don’t like him much but that doesn’t mean that I am going to start spewing about his obvious guilt before I have even read the prosecutor’s case against him.

Having said that, I don’t like to see people bend over backwards to avoid stating the obvious, which is that the New Jersey Democratic Party, and the Hudson County machine in particular, are embarrassing sewers of corruption, and have been for all of our lives.

I much prefer how Olivia Nuzzi just comes out and says it.

For every Menendez or [former Gov. Jim] McGreevey, there are dozens other small-ball crooks and creeps populating New Jersey’s public offices. [Bob] Ingle told me what has struck him most about the type of corruption most commonly seen in the Garden State is how “how small the amount of bribery or thievery these people will be involved in.”

New Jersey is a blue state that has basically no choice but to cough up the occasional Christie Todd Whitman or Chris Christie because the Democrats are not good trustworthy public servants. When the Democrats try to find someone untarnished by bribes, they wind up tapping Goldman Sachs executives like Jon Corzine who promptly show that small-ball crooks are preferable to real professionals.

So, setting aside my anger with Menendez over his positions on Iran and Cuba, I’m mad at him simply for rising to the top of the Hudson County machine and forcing the whole state party’s apparatus to rally to his defense today.

I’d like to indict the whole system, but I’ll wait to look at the details before I approve the specific indictment of Menendez.

I know there are wide swaths of the country where this is normal but I still am stopped short when I come across people who believe in Hell. It’s so infantile. It’s stunted, like someone who breathed gas fumes as an infant and never developed a normal mental capacity. Hell is a useful concept, and we all experience our own private hells of mourning, loss, addiction, disappointment, anxiety, or just bad luck. Much of this is unavoidable, at least for most of us. We’re all broken or breakable. But believing in Hell as a geographical place like Santa’s North Pole? That’s a torment of your own making. It’s so unnecessary.

You know, we all worry about things, but the promise of forgiveness is supposed to be the salvation for this kind of anxiety. When you’re saved, you’re saved. And if that isn’t enough for you then Christianity isn’t going to be your salvation. In cases like this, the belief in Hell is its own hell.

The Iowa caucuses and NH presidential primary.

Childhood memories are always a bit fuzzy, and kids tend not to interpret news all that well.  So, maybe my recollection of a time when the first-in-the-nation, NH presidential primary was considered a joke, or at best irrelevant, is incorrect.  It seemed to be accepted as a ritual of no importance that happened every four years.  Suddenly in 1968, that primary was accorded a measure of respect because the results in the Democratic Party were deemed shocking.  A sitting Democratic President won by only seven points!

Politically, 1968 was one of the more historically relevant election years.  To appreciate some of why that was a quick look back at presidential primaries and the NH quadrennial ritual.

A major goal of the progressives in 1911 was a push for primaries. By July 12th, at least six states had passed legislation for delegates to the national convention to be chosen in primaries: North Dakota, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Oregon, New Jersey, and Florida.

There were thirteen Republican Party direct primaries in 2012 (NH wasn’t one of the thirteen), and it must have been wild with Roosevelt, Taft, and La Follette all in contention.  Wilson won the nomination on the 46th ballot at the DNC convention that year.

There were seventeen presidential primaries in 1916 with NH and Minnesota being first on March 14th.  The next time a presidential primary was held in Minnesota was in 1952; thus was born the tradition of NH  as first.  Unchallenged for the first thirty years because electors and not candidates appeared on the NH ballot until 1952 or perhaps inertia is the explanation.  The second Tuesday in March for the NH primary remained the first-in-the-nation until 1996.

…the 1996 [NH] Legislature tightened the law once more by providing the primary would be held “on the Tuesday at least seven days immediately preceding the date on which any other state shall hold a similar election, whichever is earlier.” In 1996, because some other states had moved their primaries up to February 27, New Hampshire’s Secretary of State set the date of February 20 for the election.

By then the NH primary was not only first but had come to play an outsized role in the nominating process.  The reason for that had less to do with the shocking 1968 Democratic Party primary results and more to do with progressive changes in the Democratic Party that were promulgated by the 1968 presidential election.

WaPo on the Iowa caucus

So how did it get the enormous gift of kicking off the presidential primary process year after year after year?

David Redlawsk: By accident, is the answer. It’s sort of a funny story. In 1972, the revised Democratic rules coming out of the 1968 debacle required that notice be given of caucuses and primaries that would select party delegates. Prior to that, party bosses could schedule primaries without telling anyone. But the new rules required a 30-day requirement. Iowa’s system has four parts — the caucus, then the county convention, then the congressional district conventions, then the state conventions — so, to give a 30-day notice for all of them, Iowa had to start advertising early.

The second part, the state convention, is normally held in June. In 1972, they looked and found there were no available hotel rooms in Des Moines on the planned weekend. So they pushed the convention back. And that meant they had to push the caucuses back. And that’s how they ended up in January, in front of New Hampshire. It was not a plan, and in 1972, it made no difference. Edmund Muskie spent about a day there. But in 1976, Jimmy Carter’s campaign noticed Iowa was first and decided to invest some time. He ultimately came in second to uncommitted, but his win got him attention, and ultimately helped him get to the White House.

In the 1988 and 1992 elections for the Democratic Party nomination, it was NH and not Iowa that became important.  Hence the 1996 move by the NH legislation.  By then both of these small states had also seen the amount of money and national attention that flowed into their states by virtue of being “first-in-the-nation.”  Claims were made that IA is an accurate microcosm of the nation and therefore,  is perfect for being “first-in-the-nation.”  But just in case anyone got the idea that that may not be true:

EK: And how has Iowa retained it? You would think that some other state, desirous of the same power Iowa has, would just leapfrog it.
DR: Iowa’s two parties realized very early on that this was advantageous, so they agreed to hold their caucuses on the same day. And then they wrote into Iowa law that the caucuses must be the first event.

Little tails wagging big dogs and the big dogs don’t mind this at all.  Progressivism and democratic principles be damned.

Maybe it’s time for progressives to accept that “fix it and forget it” can’t work here.  Power and wealth will always find a way to get back as close to the old status quo as possible.

Rick Klein makes an observation:

“The culture wars are raging again, bringing the predictable splits. Democrats say one thing; Republicans – including all of the potential 2016ers — say another, reflecting real divisions among voters. But there’s something missing on the GOP side: some of the biggest voices in the business community. Leading the way in criticizing the new Indiana law and its cousins in other states are titans of the corporate world: Apple, Walmart, Marriott, Eli Lilly, even Indiana’s Chamber of Commerce.”

“There are few signs that corporate leaders’ splits with the political right will last permanently, or matter for things like campaign contributions. But it’s instructive to see how things are lining up in this fight. It’s as if big slices of corporate America are glimpsing a demographic and ideological future ahead of their political counterparts.”

I think we’re in danger of being too simplistic when we assign certain Democrats to the “Wall Street” camp, including Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton, and cast them as enemies of the more populist camp represented currently by Senator Elizabeth Warren. But there isn’t much doubt that the Clintons (both Hillary and Bill) have decent relationships with corporate America. If corporate America feels like Hillary is probably going to be the next president, they’ll be more interested in influencing her and mollifying the populist impulses in the party than in attacking and alienating her.

To be sure, there will be some ideologues and hard-right business/culture warriors and Fox News addicts in the corporate world who will spend many millions of dollars trying to elect the Republican nominee, but these things are a matter or proportion and percentages. Clinton should have a wide driving lane with plenty of space to give a wink and a nod to Wall Street when she feels the need to speak in Warrenesque tones.

Probably the main attraction of Jeb as a Republican champion is that he will blunt this potential for Clinton to divide the business community from the holy rollers.

Ed Kilgore went on a bit of a rant this morning after reading Timothy Carney’s piece in the Washington Examiner. Specifically, Kilgore was very impatient with the idea that conservatives are trying to sue for peace in the Culture War and should therefore be treated more honorably.

All this weepy talk of being attacked while trying to surrender also misses the even more obvious point that conservatives are hardly impotent politically; they do sorta control Congress and a majority of states.

So no, there’s no real “surrender” going on here, and Lord knows conservatives aren’t withdrawing from political combat; otherwise Carney would have punctuated his long whine by quitting his job. What they are doing is better understood as a strategic retreat: unable to outlaw or (increasingly) even to stigmatize gay behavior as a matter of law, they’re working to protect private discrimination. It’s what a big part of their constituency expects of them, and it’s the obvious next front—not some sort of Appomattox—in the culture wars.

Carney’s piece is just latest in an emerging genre which can basically be described as a plea not to be defined as bigots and relegated to the same ash heap of history where segregationists currently reside. They are not bad people; they are just following their religious teaching and consciences. We ought to be able to respect them even if we ultimately defeat them on the political battlefield.

What they say they want is no longer victory, which they reluctantly acknowledge is no longer possible. They say that they are willing to accept their defeat with a degree of dignity, but they ought to at least be able to continue to follow their own sense of right or wrong without being insulted, marginalized or, especially, dragged into court to explain themselves.

It’s this sense that they’re being defined out of respectable society and classified as thought criminals that leads them to complain that they are now the ones being discriminated against. So, when we compare the Indiana religious freedom bill to the Jim Crow laws, we’re really playing right into their worst anxieties.

So, we have to listen to them whine and plead to be treated with a modicum of respect. And that’s precisely what Kilgore is in no mood to grant them.

In fact, Kilgore goes right for the most sensitive spot, retelling the history of the Jim Crows wars and ensuing battles over desegregation. But there’s a reason that Kilgore does this, and it’s because the battle is so far from over.

So why all the phony claims that cultural conservatism is folding its tent as a political force? There are a lot of reasons, but the most basic is probably this: if and when the Cultural Right fully gains power via a Republican Party that still is entirely in its thrall, the idea that it has come back from the brink of extinction gives its leaders greater flexibility about how and where to execute the counter-revolution, and its followers the satisfaction of a divinely ordained vindication—and then sweet vengeance.

It’s been noted in a variety of places over the last few days that there is a mighty disconnect between the way Indiana Governor Mike Pence has been compelled to back down and the support he’s received from all the Republican candidates for the presidency. If a battle has been lost in Indiana, it is still being waged with full vigor among those who hope to win the hearts, minds, and financial contributions of the Republican Party’s base.

What this ought to mean is that the Republican Party is headed for a magnificent reckoning with the voters in November 2016.

But that is not assured.