Ezra Klein writes

Today’s Republican Party thinks the key problem America faces is out-of-control entitlement spending. But cutting entitlement spending is unpopular and the GOP’s coalition relies heavily on seniors. And so they don’t want to propose entitlement cuts. If possible, they’d even like to attack President Obama for proposing entitlement cuts. But they also want to see entitlements cut and will refuse to solve the fiscal cliff or raise the debt ceiling unless there are entitlement cuts.

We've seen this play before.  In March, Sahil Kapur of Talking Points Memo reported

“Democrats cut $500 billion from Medicare in order to pay for ObamaCare,” Lindsay told TPM. “The Path to Prosperity puts that back towards ensuring that Medicare remains sustainable instead of funding the Democrats’ massive government healthcare takeover.”

Republicans used this line of attack ahead of the 2010 elections and reaped the political rewards. But their own budget, for the second year in a row, illustrates that the GOP has no qualms with the Medicare policy they’re excoriating Dems for enacting.

Republicans liked the reduction in Medicare spending in the Affordable Care Act, which did not prevent them from (successfully) bashing Democrats for it in the 2010 mid-term elections, nor Mitt Romney from criticizing Barack Obama for it in the 2012 presidential election.

Still, on Sunday's Meet The Press, the President (his segment taped Saturday) told David Gregory

David, as you know, one of the proposals we made was something called Chain CPI, which sounds real technical but basically makes an adjustment in terms of how inflation is calculated on Social Security. Highly unpopular among Democrats. Not something supported by AARP. But in pursuit of strengthening Social Security for the long-term I'm willing to make those decisions. What I'm not willing to do is to have the entire burden of deficit reduction rest on the shoulders of seniors, making students pay higher student loan rates, ruining our capacity to invest in things like basic research that help our economy grow. Those are the things that I'm not willing to do. And so...

Due to the President's phraseology, two-thirds of the statement is ambiguous.  He might mean that he doesn't want students to bear sacrifice alone or that he doesn't want students to pay higher loan rates at all; similarly, he may intend that basic research not be reduced alone or that he wants no reduction in our capacity to invest in basic research.   But it is clear that he while he doesn't want all the "burden of deficit reduction to rest on the shoulders of seniors," he believes they should assume at least some pain.

Senator Marco Rubio (R-CA), who has his sights set on the White House, wasted no time in exploiting the President's plea for austerity, to be borne by elderly people.  He tweeted "report that GOP insisting on changes to social security as part of fiscal cliff false.   BTW those changes are supported by Barack Obama."  Slightly shorter Rubio:  don't blame us; blame your guy.

Fortunately, word today came late yesterday that Mitch McConnell has dropped his request to include chained CPI (which the President describes as not a cut, just a silly ol' adjustment) to calculate Social Security benefits as part of a short term budget deal.  This is a belated, but significant, gift to virtually all congressional Democrats expecting to run for re-election because the GOP, as Rubio hinted, would have made them own it.  And it's bad policy, as explained by Representative Peter DeFazio (D-OR):

What is a chained CPI? Well, the pointy heads like Mr. Furman who work for President Obama say "we're [...] overstating inflation with the way we adjust, so there's something called 'substitution effect,' so when prices of things go up, you buy something cheaper so that means there isn't inflation."

Well, no. Wait a minute. The think you used to buy is more expensive so you're buying something else. In the pointy head economics world this makes sense. So let's see how this would work for someone on Medicare. Okay, you can't afford your heart bypass so instead you'll say to the doctor "look, I can't afford the copay on the heart bypass, why don't you do a hernia instead?" That's substitution, and in Mr. Furman's world this makes sense.

Now what this would do to seniors on Social Security—we already understate inflation, and seniors haven't gotten a COLA for the lat two years. Tell me the price of prescription drugs and medical care hasn't gone up over the last two years. We need, in fact, a different measure for seniors, for Medicare, for veterans for others who consume more health care and more essentials which the CPI doesn't measure. It just measures junk that people buy. That's all it measures. And they're saying because people will buy cheaper junk we should change the CPI.

That means a senior, by the time they reach 85 in this brave new world of the chained CPI will get $100 less a month in their Social Security.

When the GOP tried to turn Social Security over to Wall Street in 2004, Digby wrote "if the Democrats end up cutting social security and other vital safety net programs in this round of the ongoing scam, they will have become the biggest dupes in political history."  Similarly, congressional Democrats would become dupes today if they join Republicans in cutting Social Security or, probably, Medicare.  They ought to remember the wise three lemmings (from Stephan Pastis' Pearls Before Swine) when Barack Obama, who himself has run his last race, diplomatically asks them to fall on their sword.

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Another, If Expected, Disappointment

When the House is controlled by Republicans, the White House by an (Eisenhower) Republican, and the Senate Majority Leader is a moderate-conservative Democrat, it shouldn't be surprising that

The Senate on Friday reauthorized for five years broad electronic eavesdropping powers that legalized and expanded the President George W. Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program.

The FISA Amendments Act, (.pdf) which was expiring Monday at midnight, allows the government to electronically eavesdrop on Americans’ phone calls and e-mails without a probable-cause warrant so long as one of the parties to the communication is believed outside the United States. The communications may be intercepted “to acquire foreign intelligence information.”

The House approved the measure in September. President Barack Obama, who said the spy powers were a national security priority, is expected to quickly sign the package before the law Congress codified in 2008 expires in the coming days. Over the past two days, the Senate debated and voted down a handful of amendments in what was seen as largely political theater to get Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) to lift a procedural hold on the FISA Amendments Act legislation that barred lawmakers from voting on the package.

In the end, the identical package the House passed 301-118 swept through the Senate on a 73-23 vote.

The American Civil Liberties Union immediately blasted the vote.

“The Bush administration’s program of warrantless wiretapping, once considered a radical threat to the Fourth Amendment, has become institutionalized for another five years,” said Michelle Richardson, the ACLU’s legislative counsel.

Amendments senators refused to enact included extending the measure for just three years, another one requiring the government to account for how many times Americans’ communications have been intercepted, and one by Wyden prohibiting U.S. spy agencies from reviewing the communications of Americans ensnared in the program.

“The amendment I fought to include would have helped bring the constitutional principles of security and liberty back into balance and intend to work with my colleagues to see that the liberties of individual Americans are maintained,” Wyden said immediately after the vote.

The legislation does not require the government to identify the target or facility to be monitored. It can begin surveillance a week before making the request, and the surveillance can continue during the appeals process if, in a rare case, the secret FISA court rejects the surveillance application. The court’s rulings are not public.

The government has also interpreted the law to mean that as long as the real target is al-Qaeda, the government can wiretap purely domestic e-mails and phone calls without getting a warrant from a judge. That’s according to David Kris, a former top anti-terrorism attorney at the Justice Department.

In short, Kris said the FISA Amendments Act gives the government nearly carte blanche spying powers.

Journalist and civil libertarian Glenn Greenwald reminds us

when seeking the Democratic nomination, then-Sen. Obama unambiguously vowed that he would filibuster "any bill" that retroactively immunized the telecom industry for having participated in the illegal Bush NSA warrantless eavesdropping program.

But in July 2008, once he had secured the nomination, a bill came before the Senate that did exactly that - the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 - and Obama not only failed to filibuster as promised, but far worse, he voted against the filibuster brought by other Senators, and then voted in favor of enacting the bill itself. That blatant, unblinking violation of his own clear promise - actively supporting a bill he had sworn months earlier he would block from a vote - caused a serious rift even in the middle of an election year between Obama and his own supporters.

Critically, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 did much more than shield lawbreaking telecoms from all forms of legal accountability. Jointly written by Dick Cheney and then-Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Jay Rockefeller, it also legalized vast new, sweeping and almost certainly unconstitutional forms of warrantless government eavesdropping.

In doing so, the new 2008 law gutted the 30-year-old FISA statute that had been enacted to prevent the decades of severe spying abuses discovered by the mid-1970s Church Committee: by simply barring the government from eavesdropping on the communications of Americans without first obtaining a warrant from a court. Worst of all, the 2008 law legalized most of what Democrats had spent years pretending was such a scandal: the NSA warrantless eavesdropping program secretly implemented by George Bush after the 9/11 attack. In other words, the warrantless eavesdropping "scandal" that led to a Pulitzer Prize for the New York Times reporters who revealed it ended not with investigations or prosecutions for those who illegally spied on Americans, but with the Congressional GOP joining with key Democrats (including Obama) to legalize most of what Bush and Cheney had done. Ever since, the Obama DOJ has invoked secrecy and standing doctrines to prevent any courts from ruling on whether the warrantless eavesdropping powers granted by the 2008 law violate the Constitution.

Mother Jones' Kevin Drum has a different take, arguing

Glenn thinks that liberals have largely given up criticizing this stuff because we now have a Democratic president in the White House rather than George W. Bush, and I suppose that's part of it. But a bigger part, I think, is simply that it's all become so institutionalized. Back in 2004 and 2006, we were outraged because this was all so new. Today, after fighting and losing, it's just part of our brave new world, along with 3-ounce bottles on airplanes, unreviewable no-fly lists, and cops who demand to know what you're up to if you start taking pictures in public places.

As a country, we're now divided into two parts: those who aggressively support things like warrantless wiretapping because they're consumed with fear, and those who don't but have given up trying to fight about it. There's hardly anyone left still willing to tilt at this particular windmill. It's sad as hell.

Yes, liberals for the most part "have given up trying to fight about it" with "hardly anyone left still willing to tilt at this particular windmill."  But that's no act of God.  It's a confluence of a Democrat in the Oval Office- as Greenwald observes- and of having Barack Obama in the White House.

Perhaps President Obama has such an effect in part because the alternatives are so much worse.  Just as in the presidential race the choice was between the incumbent and a more dangerous alternative, so it is that 42 of 45 Republicans voting joined the President they despise and most Democrats in wantonly extending the national security state.  (Check out the east-west geographical split in the roll call vote.)  The GOP, whose tea party faction is obsessed with the Constitution and its Bill of Rights, gave Obama a pass in bypassing the Fourth Amendment.

The faith in Obama as a progressive may stem also from disbelief that the first black President- a constitutional lawyer and community organizer!- possibly could be anything but a child of the left.  Admittedly, the President, despite his actions and some statements to the contrary, periodically nurtures that favorable impression.

The most obvious example is the Affordable Care Act, a Rube Goldberg-inspired initiative whose main virtue is its superiority to the current health care system and considerable superiority to the harsh regimen Republicans dream of.  Union rights are another, inasmuch as the Democratic candidate for President in 2007 once promised (please control your laughter)

And understand this: If American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain when I’m in the White House, I will put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself, I’ll will walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States of America. Because workers deserve to know that somebody is standing in their corner.

When thousands of workers in Wisconsin picketed last year, President Obama couldn't find a pair of comfortable shoes.  But he did, eventually, manage to remark half-heartedly

Some of what I've heard coming out of Wisconsin, where they're just making it harder for public employees to collectively bargain generally, seems like more of an assault on unions.  I think everybody's got to make some adjustments, but I think it's also important to recognize that public employees make enormous contributions to our states and our citizens.

When Governor Scott Walker, who had run roughshod over the rights of middle class, working class, and lower class public employees, faced a recall, President Obama remained silent until the night before the election. Instead, his campaign spokesperson cautioned against expecting her boss to become involved, stating "If you think that the secret weapon here is sending President President Obama, then, you know, I'm pleased that you believe that."

Soon thereafter Obama, recognizing that he had to appear interested, tweeted (no cameras, please) "It's Election Day in Wisconsin tomorrow, and I'm standing by Tom Barrett. He'd make an outstanding governor. -bo."

Thanks, Bo. I hear all Portugese Water Dogs in Wisconsin supported Barrett.   And he failed to "stand by" Barrett because there would have been cameras.  Transformation apparently complete, the man who once promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet now claimed less influence than a ward boss, labor official, corporate executive, or your next-door neighbor.

There always is just enough from Barack Obama to convince supporters it could be worse, and would be, with the other guys (or gals).   But the PPACA, drone signature attacks, labor rights, FISA re-authorization,  efforts to cut earned benefits, indifference to the poor, climate change, and abuses in the financial industry: the list goes on and on.  And on.    He might as well say "hey, it's not like I'm a Democrat or anything."



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Good Luck With That


Demetry Smirnov apparently purchased a .40 caliber handgun from a private seller in Seattle through the website of Oklahoma-based Armslist, LLC.  While interstate arms sales are illegal, federal law does not require a background check for private gun sales, and neither does Illinois or most states.  The family of Jitka Vesel two days before the massacre in Newtown, Ct. filed against Armslist a wrongful death suit which charges

Jitka Vesel, 36, was shot 11 to 12 times by Smirnov in the parking lot of the Czechoslovak Heritage Museum in Oak Brook, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. Smirnov, a Canadian resident, had stalked her after she rebuffed his romantic overtures, according to Vesely. Smirnov, now serving a life prison sentence without parole, paid an extra $200 for the gun that had been listed for $400 because he couldn’t buy it legally.

Firearms now can be purchased over the Internet, as was the case in the brutal murder of Vesel,  or at gun shows without a background check of the purchaser   Efforts by states or the federal government to require a check of the criminal involvement or mental health of an individual buying a lethal weapon have been consistently, routinely, and vigorously opposed by the Criminal Enabler Cartel more commonly known as the National Rifle Association.

The speech by NRA Executive Vice-President Wayne LaPierre on December 21, in which he attributed the deaths resulting from shooting sprees at schools to everything but guns or bullets, is widely considered to have been a public-relations disaster. No less an expert than GOP wordmeister Frank Luntz, often considered to be a messaging genius, responded in part

I don’t think the NRA is listening.I don’t think they understand most Americans would protect the Second Amendment rights and yet agree with the idea that not every human being should own a gun, not every gun should be available at anytime, anywhere, for anyone. At gun shows, you should not be able to buy something there without any kind of check whatsoever.

Since the horror at Sandy Hook Elementary School, pro-gun Democratic and Repub legislators alike have called for a consideration of gun-control measures or at least a "conversation" and pundits everywhere have speculated that, finally, measures may be taken to combat gun violence.

If it were only so.    In a poll conducted December 19-22, "Americans" were asked by Gallup, "What is your overall opinion of the National Rifle Association, also known as the NRA- is it very favorable, mostly favorable, mostly unfavorable, or very unfavorable?"   Only seven percent offered no opinion, while 54% (21% very, 33% mostly) were generally favorable.  

That's a mere 39% looking unkindly upon an organization which supports the gun show loophole and allowing terrorists to board airplanes; and which opposes granting law enforcement the right to obtain and exchange data that helps them enforce federal, state and local gun laws; or requiring owners to report if their gun has been lost or stolen; or requiring states to share records of individuals ineligible to buy firearms because of criminal record or mental health problems.

When asked specifically about individual gun control proposals, respondents are not nearly as pro-gun.  By analogy, however, when asked about cutting Social Security benefits, the public is adamantly opposed, notwithstanding the favorable response to the more general concept of reducing "entitlements."    And the same Republican House and nominally Democratic President who are targeting Social Security will have to summon a lot of courage to offend the NRA and a public which, inexplicably or otherwise, seems to like it.



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A Criminal's Best Friend


Erica Goode and Sheryl Gay Stolberg of The New York Times report that neither President Obama nor his immediate predecessor has been able to get a director for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Drugs confirmed in six years.  Additionally

the agency’s ability to thwart gun violence is hamstrung by legislative restrictions and by loopholes in federal gun laws, many law enforcement officials and advocates of tighter gun regulations say.

For example, under current laws the bureau is prohibited from creating a federal registry of gun transactions. So while detectives on television tap a serial number into a computer and instantly identify the buyer of a firearm, the reality could not be more different.

When law enforcement officers recover a gun and serial number, workers at the bureau’s National Tracing Center here — a windowless warehouse-style building on a narrow road outside town — begin making their way through a series of phone calls, asking first the manufacturer, then the wholesaler and finally the dealer to search their files to identify the buyer of the firearm.

About a third of the time, the process involves digging through records sent in by companies that have closed, in many cases searching by hand through cardboard boxes filled with computer printouts, hand-scrawled index cards or even water-stained sheets of paper.

As children would have put it decades ago, you have three guesses who is behind forcing a critical law enforcement to employ 1970s technology... and the first two guesses don't count.   Goode/Stolberg explain

In an age when data is often available with a few keystrokes, the A.T.F. is forced to follow this manual routine because the idea of establishing a central database of gun transactions has been rejected by lawmakers in Congress, who have sided with the National Rifle Association, which argues that such a database poses a threat to the Second Amendment. In other countries, gun rights groups argue, governments have used gun registries to confiscate the firearms of law-abiding citizens.

Apparently, though, it's never too late to warn liberals don't touch our guns.   The Second Amendment project director at the right-wing, pseudo-libertarian Independence Institute maintains “We don’t have an automated database of everybody who’s had an abortion or of anyone who owns controversial books."

Having an automated database of everyone who has undergone an abortion would be slightly odd when he have no such record of everyone who has undergone an abortion- nor of anyone who has had a colonoscopy, CAT scan, or tracheotomy.  We do, however, have one of individuals waiting for organ transplants because it facilitates the preservation of life.  

There is only one reason we don't have that database for people who possess a weapon whose purpose is to kill. (And, yes, if kept for personal protection the owner needs to be willing to use it if necessary.)  It would allow us to preserve life and would discomfort  the Criminal Enabler Cartel, less accurately known as the National Rifle Association.



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The Pro-Life View Of God As Killer


Last month the Irish Times reported

Two investigations are under way into the death of a woman who was 17 weeks pregnant, at University Hospital Galway last month.

Savita Halappanavar (31), a dentist, presented with back pain at the hospital on October 21st, was found to be miscarrying, and died of septicaemia a week later.

Her husband, Praveen Halappanavar (34), an engineer at Boston Scientific in Galway, says she asked several times over a three-day period that the pregnancy be terminated. He says that, having been told she was miscarrying, and after one day in severe pain, Ms Halappanavar asked for a medical termination.

This was refused, he says, because the foetal heartbeat was still present and they were told, “this is a Catholic country”.

She spent a further 2½ days “in agony” until the foetal heartbeat stopped.

The dead foetus was removed and Savita was taken to the high dependency unit and then the intensive care unit, where she died of septicaemia on the 28th.

An autopsy carried out by Dr Grace Callagy two days later found she died of septicaemia “documented ante-mortem” and E.coli ESBL.

Soon after this story was reported, Salon's Mary Elizabeth Williams wrote

This is what happens when a nation drags its concept of God into medical decisions. This is what happens when doctors are cruelly thwarted in doing the job of saving people. And that’s why if you ignore the health and safety of women and you call yourself “pro-life” you are nothing but a sad, sick joke. As Irish Parliament member Clare Daly ruefully pointed out this week, “An unviable fetus … was given priority over the woman’s life.” 

Abortion is illegal in the Republic of Ireland but, responding to the death of Halappanavar, legislation is being prepared to codify a 20-year Supreme Court ruling that a woman has the right to terminate a pregnancy if her life is endangered.  The nation's Roman Catholic Church, however, is not given to doubts, or the humility of uncertainty.  Its bishops immediately accused the government of encouraging the "intentional killing of the unborn."  Without referring to the horrid death which precipitated the furor in the Republic, Cardinal Sean Brady delivered his Christmas message and ratcheted up the controversy when

He urged people to tell politicians that no government was entitled to remove that right from an innocent person.

The Archbishop of Armagh said the country was now approaching what would "prove to be a defining moment regarding Ireland's attitude to respect and care for human life".

He continued: "Public representatives will be asked to decide whether a caring and compassionate society is defined by providing the best possible care and protection to a woman struggling to cope with an unwanted pregnancy or by the deliberate destruction of another human life.

"I hope that everyone who believes that the right to life is fundamental will make their voice heard in a reasonable, but forthright, way to their representatives."

Cardinal Brady said politicians needed to be reminded "that the right to life is conferred on human beings, not by the powerful ones of this world, but by the Creator."

A minimum of ten percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage, obviously the vast majority not by choice of the woman.   Apparently, then- according to the Archbishop's logic- once the Creator confers life on human beings, He snuffs it out in at least ten percent, and possibly as much as 25 percent, of cases.  

The irony in the message delivered by the leading prelate of the Republic of Ireland is not limited to condoning the death of a 31-year-old woman in the name of "life."   Cardinal Brady's lack of compassion is clear enough, and not uncommon in fanatics.   But the greater irony may be, in assuming abortion ends a life created by God, that the Archbishop implies that the same Creator ends the life of a baby when He so chooses.



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Gergen, Among Many



Reviewing one of the recent commentaries from silly, yet well respected CNN Senior Political Analyst David Gergen, Digby comments

Yes, it's true that the Republicans are a little bit wacky but that's not the real problem. The roadblock is that the president just has not agreed to hurt enough people for the elite centrist pundit's taste. And that's after the president agreed to throw Social Security on the pyre despite the fact that Social Security contributes nothing to this allegedly deadly deficit. 

I am no fan of the Tea Party. But I don't think they are the real problem. They are, after all, doing what their voters want them to do, however ill-advised that might be. No, our real problem is David Gergen and his ilk.

The font of Washington Wisdom had written

And that's a big part of the problem -- no one can be confident that our national leaders are still capable of governing responsibly. And in the process, they are putting both our economy and our international reputation at risk.

President Barack Obama had rightly hoped that the elections would clear the air; they haven't. If anything, the recent squabbling over the federal budget has injected fresh poison into relationships and dimmed prospects for other bipartisan agreements in the next few years, starting with hopes for a "grand bargain"in 2013.

The President insists he remains an optimist, but if he and Republicans can't agree on how to bring the nation's finances under control -- something fundamental to the welfare of the country -- why should we have faith they will succeed on other important issues like energy, education, immigration and gun safety?

As the blame game heats up, Republicans are sure to pay the biggest price with the public. It was bad enough that they lost the message fight, letting themselves be painted as protectors of the wealthy. But it was inexcusable when they revolted against House Speaker John Boehner in his search for a way forward: that only reinforced a narrative that the Grand Old Party has fallen hostage to its right wing -- a narrative that already exacted a huge price in the fall elections.

Most voters -- I am among them -- believe the country needs a center-right party but will not support an extremist party.

President Obama is certainly not blameless in these financial talks. Early on, he overplayed his hand, alienating rank-and-file Republicans. Like Boehner, he has been more accommodating recently, offering concessions on taxes and entitlement spending that narrowed the negotiating gap between the parties, even as his leftward allies fretted.

Still, Boehner has a point in arguing that what Obama now has on the table comes nowhere close to what the he was advocating in the election season: a ratio of 2.5 dollars in spending cuts to 1.0 dollars in tax increases.

The buck stops on the President's desk, so that ordinarily one would expect him to take the lead in these final days before January 1. For reasons that are still unclear, he instead chose in his press statement late Friday to toss responsibility for negotiations next week into the laps of Congressional leaders.

They are putting both our economy and our international reputation at risk, says the eminent font of Washington Wisdom.  (The exemplars of Washington Wisdom always put down Washington; it establishes their SERIOUSNESS and bipartisan bonafides.)      No deal and everyone falls off the cliff.  That was, in the way of the elite of the field, immediately after Gergen remarks

What in the world is gripping Washington?  Everywhere one turns- from finances to guns to nominations- there is madness in the air.

With time rapidly running out, efforts have collapsed to reach a major agreement on federal spending and taxes before year's end, and both Congress and President are leaving town for the holiday.  At best, they will return next week and construct a small bridge over the "fiscal cliff"; at worst, they won't.  But who knows?

The temptation is to suggest that no one better embodies that "madness in the air" than David Gergen.   But that would be giving him too much credit.    Digby ponders

Either they don't know that going over the fiscal cliff will go a long way toward closing this deadly deficit they fear so much or they just want to ensure that the deficit is closed on the backs of the poor, the old and the sick. I'll let you decide if these people are really stupid or just selfish and cruel.

I vote "selfish and cruel." Gergen- who is 70- won't have to subsist on Social Security to get by in his later years.  He is neither a construction worker, plumber, or retail clerk pulling down minimum wage and at the mercy of her employer.  Individuals such as himself can go on working forever expounding on the great issues of the day for a living.   And he surely knows that by terms of the Budget Control Act of 2011 set to go in to effect on January 2, the Bush-era tax cuts are rescinded and federal spending bludgeoned.  In approximately ten years, spending would be cut approximately $1.2 trillion and revenues increased by roughly the same, lowering the dreaded deficit substantially.  Yet, the fellow who so wants "the nation's finances (to be brought) under control" believes inaction (defined as failure to reach bipartisan agreement) represents "madness in the air."

The problem (among many) is that President Obama often has seemed anxious to please the Village.   Gergen characteristically advocates on guns "a national conversation to see what can be sensibly done," tracking closely the position of the President, who always is in favor of "a national conversation," and had been silent on the issue until the events at Sandy Hook Elementary.   (Even now the President echoes Gergen's fealty to the Supreme Court's faulty interpretation of the Second Amendment.)  It would be refreshing to see the President reject the conventional, wrongheaded  wisdom of the Establishment in favor of the sentiments of the people who actually advocated, worked for, or at least voted for, his re-election.  But unlikely.


                                       

                                                  MERRY CHRISTMAS


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Just Another Guest Worker Program



A press release of the American Federation of Teachers reports a righteous decision in Nunang-Tanedo et al. v. East Baton Rouge Parish School Board in which

A federal court jury late Monday ordered Universal Placement International of Los Angeles and its owner and president, Lourdes Navarro, to pay $4.5 million to the 350 Filipino teachers they lured to teach in Louisiana public schools following Hurricane Katrina and forced into exploitive contracts after arriving in the United States through the federal guest worker program. 

The verdict in the class-action lawsuit follows a two-week trial in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in Los Angeles. The case was filed on behalf of the teachers by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the American Federation of Teachers, and the Covington & Burling law firm. 

"This groundbreaking verdict affirms the principle that all teachers working in our public schools must be treated fairly, regardless of what country they may come from," said AFT President Randi Weingarten. "The outrageous abuses provide dramatic examples of the extreme exploitation that can occur, even here in the United States, when there is no proper oversight of the professional recruitment industry. The practices involved in this case—labor contracts signed under duress and other arrangements reminiscent of indentured servitude—are things that should have no place in 21st-century America." 

Mary Bauer, legal director for the Southern Poverty Law Center, said, "The jury sent a clear message that exploitive and abusive business practices involving federal guest workers will not be tolerated. This decision puts unscrupulous recruitment agencies on notice that human beings—regardless of citizenship status—cannot be forced into contracts that require them to pay illegal fees."

Dennis Auerbach, lead attorney on the case from Covington and Burling, praised the perseverance of the Filipino teachers. "We are very pleased with the verdict in this case and proud to have stood by these brave teachers as they finally obtained justice," he said. 

Other Background Information: 

The teachers began arriving in the United States in 2007 as part of the H-1B guest worker program. Administered by the U.S. Department of Labor, H-1B visas permit foreign nationals with special skills to work in the United States for up to six years. Most teachers paid the placement service about $16,000—several times the average household income in the Philippines—to obtain their jobs. 

Nearly all the teachers had to borrow money to pay the massive recruiting fees. The recruiters referred the teachers to private lenders who charged 3 to 5 percent interest per month. Teachers were forced to pay these exorbitant fees because they had already made substantial investments that would not be returned. The recruiters confiscated their passports and visas until the teachers paid. 

In addition to paying up-front fees, the teachers also were forced to sign away an additional 10 percent of the salaries they would earn during their second year of teaching. Teachers who resisted signing the contracts were threatened with being sent home and losing the thousands of dollars they already had paid. Those contracts were declared illegal and unenforceable by the court as part of this case.

Approximately 20% of the 700,000 workers in information technology in the U.S. are here on an H-1B visa.   While supporters of the program argue that it allows imporation of workers with unique talents, that need can be met by the O (for "outstanding") visa program, which has no quotas.

But the claimed shortage of skilled technical workers has little basis in reality.  Robert Oak of The Economic Populist has found

There were 614,636 Bachelors, Masters and Doctorate degrees awarded to U.S. Citizens and green card holders in 2011, yet there were only 145,930 jobs gained in all of STEM in 2011. In other words, the United States already produces far more STEM than can be employed....

Even before the recession, less than a third of S&E degree holders were working in areas requiring or even closely associated with their degree. A full 65% of STEM graduates were in other occupations after just two years of graduating. By 2011, 53% of all college graduates couldn't either find any job or a position in their field of study.

And Dan Rather last year explained

Over the past year, Dan Rather Reports has done a series of programs about the foreign labor force brought here by a vast array of U.S companies ostensibly to do jobs they can't find Americans to fill. Using an alphabet soup of special temporary work visas, employers have imported millions of foreign workers -- from hotel housekeepers to farm laborers to software engineers. It's part of the federal guest worker system and it's perfectly legal.

Most people --- including guest workers -- might assume that if a U.S. company decides to sponsor a person to come here on work visa, they must have tried to hire an American first. But that's not the necessarily the case. According to U.S. Department of Labor, a guest worker visa known as H-1B for "specialty occupations" especially tech workers -- may be issued "even when a qualified U.S. worker wants the job." In fact, the bulletin notes, "A U.S. worker can be displaced from the job in favor of the foreign worker."

Guest workers have little leverage to complain about wages or working conditions because unlike citizens or legal permanent residents, they are dependent on their employers not just for their paycheck, but also for their immigration status. If they lose their job, they may lose their right to be in the country. Despite laws requiring H-1B employers to pay guest workers what's known as a "prevailing wage," the cost savings offered by visa-holders are an open secret in the tech world.

As the graph (below) from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities indicates, there were, as of October, approximately ten unemployed persons for every available job.   Even in the STEM field, there is a surplus of qualified workers, yet the disinformation industry and their political allies are hard at work convincing Americans that other Americans aren't up to the task, that they need more training or education or a better work ethic.  In the Louisiana case, it was teachers who, even at the time of Katrina, were likely in surplus.

Foreigners lured into the U.S.A. by unscrupulous outfits like Universal Placement International are at particular risk of being exploited.   But native-born workers who find salaries and benefits lagging also are exploited, even if they don't have the Southern Poverty Law Center to look out for their interests.  

                                                  MERRY CHRISTMAS



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