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Free speech for me, but not for thee

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

If you spend much time at left leaning blogs you have no doubt read more than one comment about the tendencies of right wingers to express rather strange ideas about rights. For example, it is a common argument on their part that gay marriage somehow tramples on their right to religious freedom, inasmuch as they apparently feel that their right to that freedom necessarily implies a right to impose their “values”, such as they are, onto others.

Is it good news or bad news that this sort of thing is not unique to the land of the the free, but is apparently widespread? In fact, there are folks abroad who make our Southern citizenry look like pikers in the victimization game. Consider this story, from today’s New York Times.

Apparently, the head of an Italian fashion house had this to say about in vitro fertilization:

Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce have found themselves at the center of a viral social media campaign after the pair criticized in vitro fertilization and nontraditional families in an interview with the Italian magazine Panorama. “I am not convinced by those I call children of chemicals, synthetic children,” Mr. Dolce told the magazine. “Rented uterus, semen chosen from a catalog.”

“The family is not a fad,” Mr. Gabbana added. “In it there is a supernatural sense of belonging.”

Apparently this didn’t sit well with Elton John, who along with his husband has two “synthetic” children. He called for a boycott of the label.

The first reaction of the fashion kings was so breathtakingly shameless it no doubt made Pat Robertson jealous:

Mr. Gabbana struck back against Mr. John on Instagram, calling him a fascist and posting “Je Suis D&G” in an echo of the “Je Suis Charlie” cry after the attack in January on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

That’s right. When Elton John used his freedom of speech to tell one and all he would no longer buy the overpriced crap these guys produce, he was just like the guys who killed those cartoonists for exercising their freedom of speech. But John’s freedom to speak isn’t the issue; the issue, according to Gabbana and Dolce, is their freedom of speech, the only freedom that counts. Like their brethren here in the states, they believe that when they speak, there should be no consequences. (This rule applies only to those on the right; those on the left who speak freely must not only suffer the consequences, but they must shut their mouths.) So, if we bring this thinking a bit closer to home, if I walk into a Bess Eaton and they are showing Fox News, not only must I not protest, I cannot turn around and get my coffee and carbs elsewhere. I must plunk down my money there, or I am depriving Bess Eaton (corporations are people remember) of its right to free speech. And lets not even get into my longstanding one-man boycott of Walmart. I hesitate to speak for the Founders, but I will anyway: Jefferson and Madison would be perplexed.

Lest you think I am misinterpreting their initial defense, consider their frantic attempt to backtrack:

On Monday, Mr. Dolce and Mr. Gabbana tried to stem the backlash. In a statement issued through the company on Monday — the same one he posted on Instagram — Mr. Gabbana said: “We firmly believe in democracy and the fundamental principle of freedom of expression that upholds it. We talked about our way of seeing reality, but it was never our intention to judge other people’s choices.”

So you see, it is about free speech, and apparently also about their right to be completely disingenuous. The offending quote was nothing more nor less than a judgment about “other people’s choices”, but according to Gabbana and Dolce it was nothing of the sort. Orwell would understand, though one doubts he would approve.

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Surprise from the land of the Mormons

Thursday, March 12, 2015

This is truly amazing. From the state that just voted to kill people by firing squad, we have a piece of legislation that is so far ahead of its time that it’s stunning:

With just a point and a click, you can browse a face book of felons, a new government website that will warn of the danger these criminals pose to society.

Only these are not the faces of sex offenders and serial killers. These criminals are mortgage schemers and inside traders, most likely armed with nothing more than an M.B.A. or a law degree.

Their faces will soon appear online courtesy of the Utah Legislature, which on Wednesday approved a measure to build the nation’s first white-collar offender registry, appending a scarlet letter of sorts on the state’s financial felons. The registry — quirky even by the standards of a legislature that this week reinstatedfiring squads as a method of execution — will be replete with a “a recent photograph” of Utah’s white-collar offenders and, in case they try to run or hide, their “date of birth, height, weight, and eye and hair color.”

via The New York Times

Now, I’m waiting for the newspaper stories about towns trying to restrict where they live and how close to a bank or credit union they can go.

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Fair and balanced reporting on Social Security Disabilty

Monday, March 9, 2015

Dean Baker makes an obvious point, therefore one that those claiming that the Social Security Disability program is abused totally ignore:

Wall Street Journal Soon to Run Piece on Improper Denials of Disability Claims

That’s inevitable, since any fair-minded newspaper that ran a column on improper approvals would surely want to balance it out. For those who missed it, the Wall Street Journal had a column by George Mason economist Mark Warshawsky and his grad student Ross Marchand complaining about a limited number of administrative-law judges who approve disability appeals at a very high rate.

The piece referred back to data from 2008, which showed that 9 percent of Social Security administrative law judges had approval rates of more than 90 percent in a year when the overall approval rate was 70 percent. They conclude that these judges cost the disability program more than $23 billion due to wrongly approved claims.

…

The takeaway is that there are clearly judges who error on the reject side as well as the approval side. It appears that SSA has taken steps to limit unwarranted approvals. It is not clear that measures have been taken to address the problem of judges wrongly denying appeals. We should not want to waste money on undeserving claims, but we also should not want to see workers who are genuinely disabled being denied the benefits for which they have paid. It is far from clear that at present the program errors more in awarding undeserving claims than in denying deserving ones.

via Beat the Press

Of course, the Wall Street Journal will not be publishing a companion piece, as Baker knows so well.

This is something I know a bit about, as most of my legal practice is in this area, and I can assure anyone who wants to listen that the number of wrongly denied claims far exceeds those wrongly granted.

Here’s a bit of the flavor of what we get from the judges who are looking to deny. Among other things, the judge is supposed to assess the claimant’s credibility; what the judge believed, what he or she didn’t believe, and why. Obviously, if a claimant’s overall level of activity is greater than they allege they are capable of, then you can assume they’re stretching the truth a bit. On the other hand, there are some logical leaps that are a bit over the top. I have a case presently in federal court involving a relatively young man with a very bad knee problem. The doctors to whom Social Security sent him for examination actually said he could not do sedentary work, which is the standard for obtaining disability at his age. Such a fidng by the agency’s hand-picked docor is a rare event. But the judge would have none of it, because the claimant couldn’t be believed about the level of his disability. Because why? Here’s why:

The claimant’s allegation of disability based on his medically determinable severe impairments is only partially credible. The claimant told Dr. X that he lived with his two children, ages 4 and 5, and he continued to drive (Exhibit 1F), which implies that he cares for them. At the hearing, the claimant testified that he lives with his younger, 9 year old son and his girlfriend, who works as a manager of a wine and spirits shop. He said that he has a driver’s license, has no car, but drives rarely. The claimant testified that he came to Connecticut in 2009 by airplane. He said that since living in Connecticut, he has traveled to Florida to visit a friend. The claimant testified that he passes time by lying in bed and watching television. He said that he socializes with his girlfriend, but they do not go out. This level of activity is inconsistent with the allegation of total disability. (Doctor’s name X’d for privacy reasons)

Got that? The guy’s knee problems can’t be as bad as he says because he watches TV lying down and he took a plane twice in 5 years. Also, he has a girlfriend, and he takes care of his kids. This reasoning is absurd on its face even if you don’t know that the judge was mischaracterizing the evidence about his childcare, his driving, and his traveling. We are now awaiting word from a federal magistrate about whether watching television lying down really proves that a guy’s knee problem isn’t as bad as he claims.

This is not unusual. This is normal. In fact, even the TV thing is widespread. I’ve had judges say that watching television proves that a client’s mental health problems are not as bad as they claim. Not one has ever explained why the ability to watch television proves a thing about one’s mental health, although, to be fair, it is not as far fetched as the claim that it disproves a knee problem.

Oh, did I mention the case about the lady with a paralyzed stomach who couldn’t havve been as bad off as she claimed because she didn’t get life threatening surgery that was mentioned, but never recommended, by her doctor? And then there was the case…

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Charter School Madness

Sunday, March 8, 2015

The right, be it the religious or corporate variant, is ever so good at making their positions sound like the opposite of what they are. They don’t oppose abortion and birth control; they are “pro-life”; they don’t pass anti-union laws; they pass “right to work” laws. The media, often enabled by people on the left who accept their terminology, lets them get away with it.

Here’s the latest example of Newspeak, from the Boston Globe:

The highly charged charter school debate, waged for years in the Legislature, could soon become a constitutional court fight, launched by three prominent lawyers who believe students in Boston and other urban districts are being denied their right to a quality education.

Paul F. Ware Jr., Michael B. Keating, and William F. Lee, who are partners at three top law firms, say the lawsuit they will file to overturn the state cap on the number of charter schools will break ground on two fronts.

…

“This is, frankly, an issue of civil rights, and this is an issue which the Legislature, for one reason or another, has failed to act on,” said Keating, a past president of the Boston Bar Association. “It is not inappropriate, in those circumstances, to seek judicial relief.”

via The Boston Globe

Yes, you read that right. This is a “civil rights” issue, having nothing whatsoever to do with advancing the interest of the charter school industry. The article says that the lawyers will be basing their case, in part, on an argument that charter schools provide better educations than public schools. It matters not that this is not so, or that there is every reason to believe that charter schools will get even worse as they approach their goal of privatizing public education. It is really hard to see how a business model based on using poorly paid disempowered teachers is likely to result in better educational outcomes, particularly after competing public school systems have been destroyed by the more generously funded, laxly regulated, and lobbyist protected charter schools.

But perhaps I’m overly cynical. Well, no. I smell more than one rat, for it looks like the newly minted governor of Massachusetts is ready to take a legal fall, which may, in fact, be the real motivation for this lawsuit:

The lawyers will name as defendants James A. Peyser, Governor Charlie Baker’s secretary of education, as well as the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. They are being targeted because, as of January, they are responsible for enforcing the law, even though they disagree with it.

Baker is a strong proponent of lifting the cap and Peyser is a nationally known charter school advocate who helped build the charter-school movement in Massachusetts.

Watch for some real vigorous defense of the statute from that duo. Okay, the state’s attorney general is a Democrat, and we might expect her to go her own way but as we’ve learned here in Connecticut, the push to destroy public schools is one of the few areas of bipartisan agreement. In fact, that’s one way of knowing, if you knew nothing more, that it must be a terrible idea. In any event, even if she wants to defend the law, it will be difficult without the cooperation of her client, who would, no doubt, subvert her at every turn.

This case is not about civil rights. It is about shoveling public money into private pockets.

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Deja vu all over again

Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Count me as one that dreads a Hillary Clinton presidency. While she will be better than the alternative, there is no chance that she will be the Franklin Roosevelt we need. Wall Street has had a friend in Obama in the last 6 years, and that will not change under Hillary. Nonetheless, I take no pleasure from the ginned up email controversy, because it 1) won’t appreciably deter Hillary from getting the nomination and 2) is grossly unfair in a manner eerily reminiscent of what are now almost bygone times.

Once again we have the New York Times setting out to destroy a Clinton, and once again the evidence of wrongdoing is remarkably sparse. There’s a full discussion here, from which we learn, among other things:

But after reading the rest of the Times piece with a fine-tooth comb, I found no mention of any specific regulation that was actually violated. And that’s because there wasn’t one: The regulation to which they seem to be referring was signed into law nearly two years after she left the State Department, as USA Today later clarified in an amazing feat of actual journalism:

The laws and regulations regarding the handling of electronic communications among federal agencies has undergone several changes in recent years, including an amendment to the Federal Records Act that President Obama signed into law in November, 2014. The bill requires that e-mails dealing with official matters that are sent from a personal account must be forwarded to an official account within 20 days.
A September 2013 bulletin from NARA suggests federal employees “should not generally use personal email accounts to conduct official agency business.” The bulletin suggests exceptions could be “emergency situations” or on occasions where the employee is contacted through their personal e-mail account.

Both the Federal Records Act amendment and NARA bulletin took effect after Clinton left the State Department in February, 2013.

Now that you know this, carefully read that second section from the original Times piece again and take note of the journalistic sleight of hand: “Her aides took no actions to have her personal emails preserved on department servers at the time, as required by the Federal Records Act.”

Catch that? To actually be damning, the words “at the time” would have to be at the end of the sentence: “Her aides took no actions to have her personal emails preserved on department servers, as required by the Federal Records Act at the time.”

There’s more, and the entire article is well worth reading. Whatever the rules should have been, Clinton was totally in compliance with what the rules were, and her actions were no different than those of her predecessors, who, being Republicans, of course get a pass.

If you’re old enough, you may recall that the Times set off in hot pursuit of the Clintons in the early 90s, running forever with a trumped up Whitewater controversy, which never was a scandal of any significance whatsoever. The Times took nearly 10 years to engage in a similar level of journalistic incompetence, when it chose to allow Judith Miller to help lie us into war.

So, the article is unfair, but I might even be able to live with that if I thought there was the slightest chance that these baseless attacks might derail Hillary’s candidacy. But that will not happen, for a very simple reason. The Clinton’s have been inoculated against right wing attacks, even if those attacks are pushed in the pages of the New York Times. The frenzied cacaphony of the Clinton haters has become political muzak, noticed only by the true believers who care about stuff like Benghazi. Everyone else ignores the noise, having long since absorbed the fact that the Clinton haters are irrational. The only way to beat Hillary is for some candidate to come along who will catch the imagination of the Democratic electorate, as Obama did in 2008. But that task is doubly hard this time around. Once burned, twice shy and besides, there’s no one out there who seems up to filling the role. Those of us who want Bernie to run, by and large, have no illusions about him winning, though we do think that he’ll get more votes than the smart money believes, thereby pushing the discourse leftward, to about where it was in the radical days of the mid nineties. So, nothing changes, really. We have a political season ahead of us that will feature fawning articles about the likes of the loathsome Jeb Bush, and hatchet jobs on Hillary. What else is new?

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Safe for another year, what a relief

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

It’s hard to convey the inexpressible sense of relief that swept over me when I learned that we had avoided, first for a week, but now a blessed year, a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security. Like everyone else, I was shaking in my boots at the prospect of losing the agency’s protection, even for a minute. Ever since 2001, I’ve felt secure, knowing it was there, sort of like a Big Brother, someone I could count on to provide protection from the terrorists that I feel sure would have gotten me by now, if not for its omnipresence and omniscience. Shame on the Republicans for holding it hostage to their demand that we treat immigrants like sub-human trash; shame on the Democrats for not giving in to those demands. After all, they always have before. All hail Netanyahu, for providing the cover John Boehner needed to allow rationality to prevail in the House, if only for a minute.

Perhaps it’s churlish to point out that in this country reason only prevails when the continued existence of something we may not really need is on the line. The Department of Homeland Security was given its Orwellian name (along with its companion tribute to Orwell, the Patriot Act) in part to aid in keeping Americans in a constant state of terror, the better to keep them distracted while their rights and livelihoods are steadily stripped away. Boehner would feel no pressure at all to step back from the brink if, say, the continued existence of food stamps was on the line. Were I a Republican crazy, the lesson I would take from this is that I picked the wrong target. I would attach the immigration rider to the next food stamp authorization bill, or the next bill funding education. Boehner would back me to the hilt, and Democrats would be forced to “compromise” because they would have none of the leverage they had on Homeland Security funding; that leverage being in the form of a media that, for the most part, (Fox News excepted) pretty much presumed that a DHS shutdown would be a threat to the Republic. That same media would consider starving little kids a mere political issue, with both sides equally to blame, a situation which always seems to call for Democratic surrender.

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A brief history of time

Sunday, March 1, 2015

Posting has been sparse lately.

You’re welcome.

As an added bonus, I must share this, which I found while wandering in Jerry Coyne’s blog, Why Evolution is True.

Unfortunately, Philomena Cunk does not appear to have her own channel, so you must search by name at youtube to find her videos. She is the host of Moments of Wonder. Here’s Episode 1, in which we learn all about time:

I’ve also learned all kinds of things I didn’t know about money and Winston Churchill. And no, I do not think I have a weird sense of humor.

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No surprises here: O’Reilly’s lies no problem for the folks at Fox

Monday, February 23, 2015

Yesterday, I argued that Bill O'Reilly would survive his exposure as a liar in the Brian Williams tradition. I take great pleasure in pointing out when I am right, so I am doing that now. The rules are different for Folks at Fox. O'Reilly's bosses are standing behind him, for exactly the reasons that I speculated they would:

Fox News is sticking by its boy even as a parade of Bill O'Reilly's former CBS colleagues come forward to say that his accounts of “war zone” and “combat situation” reporting are false. The tally of O'Reilly's embellishments keeps growing; in fact, one 2008 interview prompted one of O'Reilly's former CBS colleagues to complain at the time that O'Reilly's version of the story didn't match with reality

…

But for true believers, this is all just evidence that liberals are out to get O'Reilly, and his angry denials are The Truth. Seven of his former colleagues and contemporary press reports are lying, O'Reilly is to be trust. With Fox News executives sticking by him, this shouldn't damage O'Reilly much in the fictional world where he spends most of his time.

via Dailly Kos

According to the New York Times, which has now gotten around to covering the story:

Mr. O’Reilly said he would settle the dispute on his show, “The O’Reilly Factor,” on Monday. He also has invited former CBS News employees to appear on his show to discuss the controversy.

Now, you may think that O'Reilly is deviating from the script I wrote, for I suggested that the denials should be non-stop, but that in no case should one subject oneself to questioning. Surely, he runs a substantial risk by inviting CBS News employees to appear on his show. Don't believe it. He will either a) find former CBS employees, who now work at Fox; b) invite people on to his show who have no direct knowledge; or c) not let them get a word in edgewise once they're on the air.

In the end, he'll survive, with his reputation burnished among the faithful. In his position, all he need do is stick to his story, show up for work, and wait until the story grows old. As I said, there are different rules for folks on the right. They never have to take responsibility for their own actions, they never have to admit they were wrong, and they are allowed to be as hypocritical as they please.

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War hero O’Reilly shows Brian Williams how it’s done

Sunday, February 22, 2015

If you are not a devoted blogaholic you may not even know that Bill O'Reilly is facing criticism for having lied about his journalistic combat experience. His lies rivaled if not surpassed Brian Williams wildest fantasies, claiming, for instance, that while covering the Falklands War hundreds of miles away from the Falklands someone pointed an M16 at his head. . And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Needless to say, none of it is true. It isn't even truthy.

But the world is different for Fox news types, or, I should say, for right wingers generally. Right wing politicians are all deeply religious, which, for some reason, means they can keep their offices after getting caught with their pants down and diapers on with prostitutes, while Democrats like Eliot Spitzer have no choice but to resign. The mainstream media hasn't totally ignored the story, but if it's been in the Times, for instance, it hasn't exactly commanded the space they devoted to Brian Williams.

But, who knows, had Brian Williams followed the O'Reilly playbook, he might not be sitting out a suspension. There are only two rules. First, never admit that you lied, regardless of the evidence. Simply repeat over and over that everything you said was true. A corollary to this is to avoid talking to anyone who will actually follow up and confront you with the facts. Second, attack your attackers. Now, this playbook is a little easier to follow if your audience consists of Fox viewers, who are more than ready to believe that they are being victimized by the same forces of liberalism that O'Reilly is attacking. But it is an effective strategy even when you don't have the benefit of a brain dead base. Williams should have at least tried it.

So you heard it here first, or maybe first. O'Reilly will sail through this. And if he doesn't then I never said he would and anyone who says different is a right wing ideologue bent on destroying all that is good in the world.

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Republican woman breaks into mostly male winners circle

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

A rarity: a woman beats the odds, and appears to qualify for more than honorable mention at the Darwin Awards. Not surprisingly, she's a Republican:

A low-level Republican official in Michigan was adjusting a gun in her bra holster last month when she accidentally shot herself to death, local newspapers reported.

Christina Bond, 55, shot herself in the eye in St. Joseph, Mich., on New Year's Day, the Kalamazoo Gazette newspaper reported in January. Although investigators at the time said the death was accidental, it wasn't until Wednesday that the St. Joseph Public Safety Department explained to the Gazette how the event unfolded.

Bond “was having trouble adjusting her bra holster, couldn't get it to fit the way she wanted it to,” St. Joseph Public Safety Director Mark Clapp told the newspaper. “She was looking down at it and accidentally discharged the weapon.”

Given her age, she probably couldn't have done much harm to the gene pool going forward, but you never know.

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