[mpen-dayton4] FW: "America Must Choose: What Role..." & "What to Learn in College..." & "...Make the TPP text public" & "...US Made Mistake in Invading Iraq" and more

FYI.   Best, Munsup

P.S. "He who dares not offend cannot be honest" - Thomas Paine
P.P.S. Please reply back to me with 'unsubscribe' on the subject line if you no longer want to receive my e-Newsletters. The convenient link to unsubscribe is no longer available due to security reasons.

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·           FW: America Must Choose: What Role Will It Play in the World?

·           FW: Tax Policy

·           FW: What to Learn in College to Stay One Step Ahead of Computers - NYTimes.com

·           FW: Medicare compromise in TPP deal

·           FW: Stand with Donna Edwards: Make the TPP text public

·           FW: Stop the TPP: Make a call to Steny Hoyer

·           FW: Eliz. Warren is Right to Be Concerned – Politico

·           FW: US and al Qaeda are sometime buddies

·           FW: Ben Carson: US Made Mistake in Invading Iraq

·           FW: FAIR: "NYT Scrapes the Bottom to Argue 'Democrats Pulled Too Far Left'"

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From: LinkedIn Pulse
Subject: America Must Choose: What Role Will It Play in the World?

America Must Choose: What Role Will It Play in the World?

Ian Bremmer, Author of "Superpower"

Here's the good news for Americans who hear nothing but bad news about the world beyond our borders. Our country has less foreign policy influence than it used to, but America itself is not in decline.

 

 

From: albert baca
Subject: FW: Tax Policy
To Sir Richard but contains useful information for everyone, especially Republicans.
During your working life you were a government auditor so you are obviously familiar with numbers. So you shouldn't have any trouble understanding the article.

https://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/01/15/1357922/-How-I-Converted-My-Republican-Co-Worker-on-Tax-Policy

HOW I CONVERTED MY REPUBLICAN CO WORKER ON TAX POLICY

By Idontknowwhy
Thu Jan 15, 2015

In a typical water fountain discussion my conservative republican co-worker raised the issue of his 2014 taxes and how unfair our tax system is when he has to pay 28% to the feds on his six figure income while so many people paid nothing.   I agreed with him that our taxes were unfair and said it was much worse than he realized.   As he knows me as a "liberal" my instant agreement took him by surprise and led him to ask how it was worse.

Rather than answer directly I asked him several questions.   (The numbers here are representative but not actual).   The conversation went like this:

What's your annual income?   $100K.   What are your expenses, you know mortgage, clothes, food, transportation, kids college savings, health insurance, retirement, rainy day savings if any, and other necessities?   After some thought he estimated around $50K.

What about other expenses like your annual vacation, kids sports, music lessons, occasional dining out, movies, bowling, cable TV, phones etc?   Again after a little thought he said around $10K.

Do you think you live a meager, dignified or extravagant lifestyle?   Dignified, definitely not extravagant.   Do you agree people who work for a living deserve to live in dignity?   Of course.   Ok, so for you to live in dignity it costs you around $60K a year out of your $100K salary leaving about $40K net income after expenses right?   Yes.

So you said your fed taxes are 28% or $28K right?   Yea.   Property taxes?   $8K.   State, local & sales taxes?   $4K.

So that's how your income goes each year, $60K to live in dignity the other $40K in taxes, that's actually 40% you're paying in taxes isn't it?   Yea, thanks for making it worse than I thought it was.

Your net income after the cost of living in dignity is $40K and all of that goes to taxes, sucks doesn't it?   So in reality you are paying 100% of your net income in taxes aren't you?   You can afford to get by with dignity but after that the government takes everything don't they?   F-yea!

Now think about a guy who makes a million, the cost of living with dignity costs him the same $60K, or 6%, and say he pays 39.5% in taxes he gets to keep 54% ($540,000) of his post cost of living net income while you get to keep nothing.   The millionaire pays about a 40% tax rate while you pay 100% after accounting for the cost of living.

A puzzled look of comprehension mixed with what looks like fear of losing his religion appears on his face as he begins to see where I am going with this.

No time to let up now...…

The corporation and its shareholders don't pay taxes on their gross income like you do, just post cost of business (living) expenses.   Is it right you pay taxes on your gross income while they only pay on the net income?   If a company makes $10 million in gross income and pays 35% on $1 million net profit it paid 35% on its profit while you paid 100%.   The corporation paid just 3 ½% of its gross income while you paid 40% of your gross income.   Blank stare…

The kid born with the silver spoon stock portfolio who doesn't earn any income from working for a living only pays 28% tax on his capital gains profit on his multi-million annual income and the billionaire hedge fund manager only pays 15% tax on his carried interest profit of $100 million while you pay 40% on your total income and 100% on your $40K post cost of living income.

The look of being screwed over is now his…

I ask - you think you got it bad?   How about your neighbor who only makes $80K?   If his taxes are like yours, basically 40% of his gross is $32K.   So from his $80K he's left with $48K to live on.   If living with dignity costs $60K and we only leave him with $48K to live on aren't we taking his dignity?   How would you feel if you were him?   Your neighbor's post cost of living income is just $20K and he is being taxed $32K… over 150% tax rate and we take away his dignity while we are at it.   No vacation, no diners out, no movies, no niceties, no dignity - he also has to decide to cut retirement savings or the kids college funds or both.

Is that empathy I see on his face now???

While he's actually listening I ask.   Do we tax wealth in the U.S.A.?   No.   We don't?   No.   What is your biggest asset?   My house.   Besides your house your only family assets are cars which depreciate away over time and retirement and college savings that will be spent in due course?   Yea.   So your entire family wealth is really your house isn't it?   Yea.   How much is it worth?   $200,000.   Ok, so your $200,000 wealth is property taxed @ $8K?   Yea.   A 4% tax on your wealth?   I guess so.

So a guy has a $Billion in total wealth including a $10 million house also pays 4% property taxes on his house or $400.000 in total wealth taxes, .04% of his $billion Vs the 4% of your $200K you pay.

Nodding agreement, silence and contemplative thought, time to walk away.

To actually have a reasoned conversation with this individual, who often falls back on sound bites and ad hominem attacks, was satisfying.   To see the look on his face as he realized he's been hoodwinked - priceless :)

To quickly run the numbers:

On the post cost of living net income the Billionaire hedge fund manager pays 15% on his "carried interest", the unemployed millionaire trust fund kid pays 28% on his "capital gains" income, the guy who earns a million dollar salary for actual work pays 40%, you who make $100K pay 100% and the poor slob that makes $80k pays 150% which he can't afford so we take his dignity.   Corporations may pay 3.5% on their gross income while you pay 40% on yours.   You pay a 4% wealth tax while the Billionaire pays a .04% wealth tax.

Originally posted to Idontknowwhy on Thu Jan 15, 2015 at 09:08 AM PST.
Also republished by Daily Kos Classics.

 

 

From: Jim
Subject: What to Learn in College to Stay One Step Ahead of Computers - NYTimes.com

Pretty good article: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/24/upshot/what-to-learn-in-college-to-stay-one-step-ahead-of-computers.html?hpw&rref=technology&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1

What to Learn in College to Stay One
Step Ahead of Computers

MAY 22, 2015
Economic View
By  ROBERT J. SHILLER

Computers and robots are already replacing many workers. What can young people learn now that won't be superseded within their lifetimes by these devices and that will secure them good jobs and solid income over the next 20, 30 or 50 years? In the universities, we are struggling to answer that question.

Most people complete the majority of their formal education by their early 20s and expect to draw on it for the better part of a century. But a computer can learn in seconds most of the factual information that people get in high school and college, and there will be a great many generations of new computers and robots, improving at an exponential rate, before one long human lifetime has passed.

Two strains of thought seem to dominate the effort to deal with this problem. The first is that we teachers should define and provide to our students a certain kind of general, flexible, insight-bearing human learning that, we hope, cannot be replaced by computers. The second is that we need to make education more business-oriented, teaching about the real world and enabling a creative entrepreneurial process that, presumably, computers cannot duplicate. These two ideas are not necessarily in conflict.

Credit John Ueland

Some scholars are trying to discern what kinds of learning have survived technological replacement better than others. Richard J. Murnane and Frank Levy in their book "The New Division of Labor" (Princeton, 2004) studied occupations that expanded during the information revolution of the recent past. They included jobs like service manager at an auto dealership, as opposed to jobs that have declined, like telephone operator.

The successful occupations, by this measure, shared certain characteristics: People who practiced them needed complex communication skills and expert knowledge. Such skills included an ability to convey "not just information but a particular interpretation of information." They said that expert knowledge was broad, deep and practical, allowing the solution of "uncharted problems."

These attributes may not be as beneficial in the future. But the study certainly suggests that a college education needs to be broad and general, and not defined primarily by the traditional structure of separate departments staffed by professors who want, most of all, to be at the forefront of their own narrow disciplines. But this old departmental structure is still fundamental at universities, and it is hard to change.

Consider the controversy at Harvard College over the Program in General Education, whose antecedents date to 1946. The program requires Harvard undergraduates to take courses devised to prepare them for a broad range of issues in life after college. But critics have said that the program is not succeeding, and that many professors who participate in it teach only their own department's scholarly material, without attention to wider aims.

Prof. Louis Menand of Harvard, in a May 5 statement, argued that an education focused on narrow academic disciplines was inadequate: "Less than 20 percent of our students go on to get Ph.D.s," he said. Many students end up in the business world, broadly construed, not in academia.

In a separate May 5 statement, Prof. Sean D. Kelly, chairman of the General Education Review Committee, said a Harvard education should give students "an art of living in the world."

But how should professors do this? Perhaps we should prepare students for entrepreneurial opportunities suggested by our own disciplines. Even departments entirely divorced from business could do this by suggesting enterprises, nonprofits and activities in which students can later use their specialized knowledge.

Many of these issues have arisen in my own academic life. My teaching has changed over the decades. I try to make it more useful in confronting issues of creativity and morality in the work world.

When I arrived at Yale in 1982, there were no undergraduate courses in finance. I started one in the fall of 1985, and it continues today. Increasingly, I've tried to connect mathematical theory to actual applications in finance.

This seems laughable in its nonchalance. The speed and breadth which computers and IT are taking over the jobs of both the high school and...

Human Comprehension Technology-- not robots that replace humans-- but new tools that empower all humans to excel and do amazing things that...

Since its beginnings, the course has gradually become more robotic: It resembles a real, dynamic, teaching experience, but in execution, much of it is prerecorded, and exercises and examinations are computerized. Students can take it without need of my physical presence. Yale made my course available to the broader public on free online sites: AllLearn in 2002, Open Yale in 2008 and 2011, and now on Coursera.

The process of tweaking and improving the course to fit better in a digital framework has given me time to reflect about what I am doing for my students. I could just retire now and let them watch my lectures and use the rest of the digitized material. But I find myself thinking that I should be doing something more for them.

So I continue to update the course, thinking about how I can integrate its lessons into an "art of living in the world." I have tried to enhance my students' sense that finance should be the art of financing important human activities, of getting people (and robots someday) working together to accomplish things that we really want done.

Like Harvard and other colleges and universities, Yale has been struggling with the broad issues for a very long time. It once experimented with an undergraduate business program, to prepare students for life beyond college, but shut down that program in 1954. In the 1960s, during the Vietnam War, antipathy to the business establishment increased. According to the former Yale Graduate School dean John Perry Miller, in his book "Creating Academic Settings" (J. Simeon Press, 1991), there was open "hostility" to the idea of business-oriented education at Yale.

Nonetheless, Yale produced many fine businesspeople. But because of this hostility, Yale did not start a business school until 1976, and even then denied that it was just a business school: Instead of offering a Master of Business Administration, it initially conferred only the more idealistic-sounding Master of Public and Private Management. Before 1976, the university had a great economics department, imbued with a lofty sense of pure theory and mathematics, but it was not focused on practical business education.

The developing redefinition of higher education should provide benefits that will continue for decades into the future. We will have to adapt as information technology advances. At the same time, we must continually re-evaluate what is inherently different between human and computer learning, and what is practical and useful to students for the long haul. And we will have to face the reality that the "art of living in the world" requires at least some elements of a business education.

ROBERT J. SHILLER is Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale.

 

 

From: Monique Teal; Daily Kos
Subject: Medicare compromise in TPP deal

Earlier this month, something happened that no one expected: Democrats were able to slow down the progress of Fast Track trade authority for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) by blocking a key test vote.

But Congress could now be on the verge of passing a rotten compromise package that would pay for Trade Adjustment Assistance for displaced workers with $700 million in cuts to Medicare funding.

Sign the petition from CREDO and Daily Kos to Democratic leaders in Congress: Stop the sneak attack on Medicare.

The Trade Adjustment Assistance program, originally implemented in 1974, provides training, benefits and job-placement assistance to American workers whose jobs are offshored or eliminated because of import competition. But paying for Trade Adjustment Assistance by raiding Medicare would put our country's most vulnerable senior citizens at risk.

The proposal currently being considered to fund Trade Adjustment Assistance includes an extension of the sequester on Medicare payments into the second half of 2024, which amounts to a $700 million cut to Medicare funding. While this isn't a direct cut to Medicare benefits, it could still have devastating effects for America's seniors.

We've stopped backdoor cuts to our vital social safety net programs before–and with strong grassroots pressure, we can do it again.

Sign the petition from CREDO and Daily Kos to Democratic leaders in Congress: Stop the sneak attack on Medicare.

 

From: The National Memo on behalf of Donna Edwards
Subject: A message from one of our sponsors: Stand with Donna Edwards: Make the TPP text public

I want you to read the text of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), because if you had the same chance I have as a member of Congress to sit down and go through the critical chapters word-by-word, you would see how bad a deal it is.

But right now, the Administration won't make the text public. They want to keep it secret, and just want Congress to give the Administration broad authority to "Fast Track" this awful deal for American workers.

I won't let them. I'm standing strong and joining progressive leaders like Sherrod Brown, Elizabeth Warren, and Democracy for America in asking the President to release the full text to the American public. Will you join me?

Add your name and ask the President to release the full text of the TPP.

It sounds simple, doesn't it?

Let the American people get a good look at the deal before their Representatives have to vote on it.

I know it's a bad deal for American workers, but you shouldn't just have to trust me -- you should be able to read it for yourself.

Ask President Obama to release the full text of the TPP. You deserve to know what's in the deal.

 

 

From: tbacane
Subject: Fw: Stop the TPP: Make a call to Steny Hoyer

We must stop the TPP proposal.  Any agreement made in secret where even our elected Representatives have little or no ability to read this agreement is unacceptable.  What little we do know is that working Americans would be competing with foreign workers making pennies per hour.  That means corporations would be moving jobs to those countries for the heap labor cost, and the fact that the environmental and health standards in most of those countries are not viable.  Stop TPP now before it's too late!  WAKE UP AMERICA!!!

-----Forwarded Message-----
From: Murshed Zaheed; Deputy Political Director, CREDO Action from Working Assets
Subject: Fw: Stop the TPP: Make a call to Steny Hoyer

Stop the TPP: Make a call to House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer.

Opposing Fast Track is our best chance to stop the TPP – an overwhelming majority of Democrats are already on the record in opposition. But Congressman Steny Hoyer, one of the leading Democrats in the House of Representatives, is working to pass a new Fast Track bill. Make a call to his office today to ask him to publicly oppose Fast Track and help stop the TPP.

Click below for a sample script and the number to call:

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a secretive trade deal being negotiated behind closed doors by the governments of a dozen countries (including ours) colluding with corporate interests.

The first stage in the plan to pass the TPP is a big push by President Obama and the Republican-led Congress to pass Fast Track trade authority, which would short-circuit the typical legislative process when trade deals like the TPP come up for a vote.

Thanks to your activism, we were able to slow down the Fast Track bill's progress in the Senate. But, the main fight to stop the TPP remains in the House.

According to our allies in Washington, Congressman Steny Hoyer – the Democratic Whip in the House of Representatives – is working behind the scenes to lobby fellow Democrats to support Fast Track for the TPP. We need to pushback and turn up the pressure on Congressman Hoyer today.

Call Congressman Steny Hoyer and ask him to publicly announce his opposition to Fast Track and the TPP. Click here for the number to call and a sample script.

Fast Track trade authority would allow the president to sign a trade deal before Congress has an opportunity to approve it.

Then the president could send it to Congress with a guarantee that it will get an up-or-down vote within 90 days.

Fast Track would mean there would be no meaningful hearings, limited debate and absolutely no amendments to the deal – or "implementing legislation" that would rewrite wide swaths of our domestic laws. And there would be tremendous pressure on Congress to rubber-stamp anything the president signs.

We cannot let Congressman Hoyer jump ship on Fast Track. If he supports it as the second leading Democrat in the House of Representatives without any accountability, it could send a signal to Democrats in the House that the bill is suddenly safe to get behind.

Call Congressman Steny Hoyer and ask him to publicly announce his opposition to Fast Track and the TPP. Click here for the number to call and a sample script.

It's the job of Congress to fully vet trade deals and ensure they work for everyone, not just giant corporations. And it would be deeply irresponsible for Congress to pass Fast Track right before a push to force approval of the TPP.

Call Congressman Hoyer and ask him to publicly announce his opposition to Fast Track and the TPP. Click below for the number to call and a sample script.

http://act.credoaction.com/call/TPP_hoyer_2015/?t=6&akid=14494.1363962.gTAXLh

Click below for a sample script and the number to call:

 

 

From: khalfani718
Subject: Eliz. Warren is Right to Be Concerned – Politico
From CLG News...  -

I've Read Obama's Secret Trade Deal. Elizabeth Warren Is Right to Be Concerned. | 19 May 2015 | "You need to tell me what's wrong with this trade agreement, not one that was passed 25 years ago," a frustrated President Barack Obama recently complained about criticisms of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). He's right. The public criticisms of the TPP have been vague. That's by design--anyone who has read the text of the agreement could be jailed for disclosing its contents...So-called "cleared advisors" like me are prohibited from sharing publicly the criticisms we've lodged about specific proposals and approaches. The government has created a perfect Catch 22: The law prohibits us from talking about the specifics of what we've seen, allowing the president to criticize us for not being specific.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/05/tpp-elizabeth-warren-labor-118068.html#.VV_Vt-vEOEM

PRIMARY SOURCE
Lead image by Getty.

"You need to tell me what's wrong with this trade agreement, not one that was passed 25 years ago," a frustrated President Barack Obama recently complained about criticisms of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). He's right. The public criticisms of the TPP have been vague. That's by design—anyone who has read the text of the agreement could be jailed for disclosing its contents. I've actually read the TPP text provided to the government's own advisors, and I've given the president an earful about how this trade deal will damage this nation. But I can't share my criticisms with you.

I can tell you that Elizabeth Warren is right about her criticism of the trade deal. We should be very concerned about what's hidden in this trade deal—and particularly how the Obama administration is keeping information secret even from those of us who are supposed to provide advice.

So-called "cleared advisors" like me are prohibited from sharing publicly the criticisms we've lodged about specific proposals and approaches. The government has created a perfect Catch 22: The law prohibits us from talking about the specifics of what we've seen, allowing the president to criticize us for not being specific. Instead of simply admitting that he disagrees with me—and with many other cleared advisors—about the merits of the TPP, the president instead pretends that our specific, pointed criticisms don't exist.

What I can tell you is that the administration is being unfair to those who are raising proper questions about the harms the TPP would do. To the administration, everyone who questions their approach is branded as a protectionist—or worse—dishonest. They broadly criticize organized labor, despite the fact that unions have been the primary force in America pushing for strong rules to promote opportunity and jobs. And they dismiss individuals like me who believe that, first and foremost, a trade agreement should promote the interests of domestic producers and their employees.

I've been deeply involved in trade policy for almost four decades. For 21 years, I worked for former Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt and handled all trade policy issues including "fast track," the North American Free Trade Agreement and the World Trade Organization's Uruguay Round, which is the largest trade agreement in history. I am also a consultant to various domestic producers and the United Steelworkers union, for whom I serve as a cleared advisor on two trade advisory committees. To top it off, I was a publicly acknowledged advisor to the Obama campaign in 2008.

Obama may no longer be listening to my advice, but Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren might as well be. Warren, of course, has been perhaps the deal's most vocal critic, but even the more cautious Clinton has raised the right questions on what a good TPP would look like. Her spokesman, Nick Merrill, said: "She will be watching closely to see what is being done to crack down on currency manipulation, improve labor rights, protect the environment and health, promote transparency and open new opportunities for our small businesses to export overseas. As she warned in her book Hard Choices, we shouldn't be giving special rights to corporations at the expense of workers and consumers."

On this count, the current TPP doesn't measure up. And nothing being considered by Congress right now would ensure that the TPP meets the goal of promoting domestic production and job creation.

The text of the TPP, like all trade deals, is a closely guarded secret. That fact makes a genuine public debate impossible and should make robust debate behind closed doors all the more essential. But the ability of TPP critics like me to point out the deal's many failings is limited by the government's surprising and unprecedented refusal to make revisions to the language in the TPP fully available to cleared advisors.

Bill Clinton didn't operate like this. During the debate on NAFTA, as a cleared advisor for the Democratic leadership, I had a copy of the entire text in a safe next to my desk and regularly was briefed on the specifics of the negotiations, including counterproposals made by Mexico and Canada. During the TPP negotiations, the  United States Trade Representative (USTR) has never shared proposals being advanced by other TPP partners. Today's consultations are, in many ways, much more restrictive than those under past administrations.

All advisors, and any liaisons, are required to have security clearances, which entail extensive paperwork and background investigations, before they are able to review text and participate in briefings. But, despite clearances, and a statutory duty to provide advice, advisors do not have access to all the materials that a reasonable person would need to do the job. The negotiators provide us with "proposals" but those are merely initial proposals to trading partners. We are not allowed to see counter-proposals from our trading partners. Often, advisors are provided with updates indicating that the final text will balance all appropriate stakeholder interests but we frequently receive few additional details beyond that flimsy assurance.

Those details have enormous repercussions. For instance, rules of origin specify how much of a product must originate within the TPP countries for the resulting product to be eligible for duty-free treatment. These are complex rules that decide where a company will manufacture its products and where is will purchase raw materials. Under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 62.5 percent of a car needed to originate within NAFTA countries. In the US-Australia Free Trade Agreement, it was lowered to 50 percent. It further dropped to 35 percent in the US-Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS). In essence, under our agreement with Korea, 65 percent of a car from South Korea could be made from Chinese parts and still qualify for duty-free treatment when exported to the U.S.

That fact is politically toxic, and for that reason, we should expect the TPP agreement to have higher standards. But will it reach the 62.5 percent NAFTA requirement? Or will it be only a slight improvement over KORUS? Without access to the final text of the agreement, it's impossible to say.

State-owned enterprises may, for the first time, be addressed in the TPP. But, once again, the details are not clear. Will exemptions be provided to countries like Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore, all of which could be heavily impacted by such a rule? What will be the test to determine what is or is not acceptable behavior? Will injury be required to occur over a substantial period of time, or will individual acts of non-commercial, damaging trade practices be actionable? Again, it's impossible to say for sure.

Advisors are almost flying blind on these questions and others.

Only portions of the text have been provided, to be read under the watchful eye of a USTR official. Access, up until recently, was provided on secure web sites. But the government-run website does not contain the most-up-to-date information for cleared advisors. To get that information, we have to travel to certain government facilities and sign in to read the materials. Even then, the administration determines what we can and cannot review and, often, they provide carefully edited summaries rather than the actual underlying text, which is critical to really understanding the consequences of the agreement.

 

 

From: James Lucas
Subject: US and al Qaeda are sometime buddies

CONFIRMED: US "OPERATION ROOMS" BACKING AL QAEDA IN SYRIA
By Tony Cartalucci; Global Research

May 11, 2015 US policy think-tank Brookings Institution confirms that contrary to propaganda, US-Saudi "moderates" and Turkey-Qatar "Islamists" have been coordinating all along.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/confirmed-us-operation-rooms-backing-al-qaeda-in-syria/5448712

 

 

From: Ben Carson
Subject: Ben Carson: US Made Mistake in Invading Iraq

It was a mistake for the United States to invade Iraq in 2003, Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson says, insisting he'd have "gotten rid of the problem of Saddam Hussein some other way."

In an interview with The Hill last Wednesday, the retired pediatric neurosurgeon said President George W. Bush's wrong decision was worsened by the nation's ultimate lack of a "long-term strategy."

"I've said definitively that I was never in favor of going into Iraq," Carson told The Hill, reiterating a position he has publicly held since at least 2013.

"Since we did go in, the big problem is that we didn't secure victory there, and that's a huge problem."

"I would have gotten rid of the problem of Saddam Hussein some other way," he said. "When you go into a situation with so many factions and such a complex history, unless you know what you're doing or have a long-term strategy, it just creates more problems."

Carson did not elaborate on how exactly he would have toppled the Iraqi leader without boots on the ground, telling The Hill only: "There are a lot of ways to get rid of people."

The 2003 Iraq invasion issue has dominated the headlines since Jeb Bush defended the decision by his brother, then-President George W. Bush, to invade the country. 

The former Florida governor and likely GOP presidential candidate days later said he wouldn't have made the same decision had he known about the flawed intelligence on which it was based.

In The Hill interview, Carson also said he supports some parts of the Patriot Act, though he says the National Security Agency's bulk phone data collection is a violation of the Fourth Amendment — weighing in on a debate that has been raging in Congress over whether to reauthorize the law.

"I think some aspects of the Patriot Act are wise, so you don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but certainly in terms of the Fourth Amendment, the unwarranted mining of data from citizens is a violation," Carson told The Hill.

"I totally oppose that. Our authorities can get a warrant any time they want. If they need it in the middle of the night, they can get it, no problem."

Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul, who has also announced a presidential bid, conducted a filibuster against reauthorization.

Bush and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie have defended the data collection as necessary to thwart terrorists.

 

 

From: FAIR <fair@fair.org>

Subject: NYT Scrapes the Bottom to Argue 'Democrats Pulled Too Far Left'

NYT Scrapes the Bottom to Argue 'Democrats Pulled Too Far Left'

The New York Times illustrated Peter Wehner's piece with a stretched-out donkey. A load of bull would have been more appropriate. (graphic: Matt Chase)

"Have Democrats Pulled Too Far Left?" asks a New York Times op-ed (5/27/15). Because this question is always answered affirmatively by corporate media, you don't even have to note that the author, Peter Wehner, "served in the last three Republican administrations" to know that the answer is going to be yes.

Despite the predictable thesis, however, the column still manages to surprise with its degree of intellectual dishonesty. Wehner's thesis is that Barack Obama has "moved to the left" compared to "centrist New Democrat" Bill Clinton. But whenever Wehner makes a claim that can be checked—that isn't simply empty rhetoric, like his assertion that Obama "has often acted as if American strength is a problem"—again and again it turns out to involve some numbers game.

Take Wehner's claim that while Clinton

endorsed a sentencing policy of "three strikes and you're out,"…Obama's former attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., criticized what he called "widespread incarceration" and championed the first decrease in the federal prison population in more than three decades.

You'd never know from that that the federal prison population is 48 percent bigger under the "left" Obama than it was when centrist Clinton left office.

"Mr. Clinton lowered the capital-gains tax rate; Mr. Obama has proposed raising it," Wehner says. Clinton lowered the rate capital gains were taxed at to 20 percent; under Obama it went up—to 20 percent.

"Mr. Clinton cut spending and produced a surplus," writes Wehner. "Under Mr. Obama, spending and the deficit reached record levels." From 1993 through 2000, Clinton reduced the US budget imbalance as a proportion of US GDP by 6 percentage points; from 2009 through 2014, Obama reduced it by 7 percentage points.

Wehner adds as "another bellwether" the fact that Hillary Rodham Clinton "is decidedly more liberal than she and her husband once were." One example of this: "She has remained noncommittal on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the free-trade agreement that has drawn ire from the left"—but which has been strenuously pushed by Barack Obama, though Wehner does not acknowledge this as evidence of Obama's centrism.

But perhaps the most deceptive part of Wehner's op-ed is when he blames Obama's supposed shift to the left for the failing fortunes of the Democratic Party:

After two enormous losses by Democrats in the 2010 and 2014 midterm elections, Republicans control the Senate and the House of Representatives. There are currently 31 Republican governors compared with 18 for Democrats…. The Obama years have been politically good for Mr. Obama; they have been disastrous for his party.

Surely Wehner remembers that after the first half of Clinton's first term, Republicans controlled both the House and the Senate for the remainder of his administration—exactly as happened under Obama. There were 30 Democratic governors when Clinton took office, and 19 when he left; there were 29 when Obama took office, and currently there's 18.

It's true that Obama has been been bad news for his party—but as FAIR has long pointed out, that's true of Clinton as well. An honest appraisal of the administrations of both Clinton and Obama, with their emphasis on deficit-cutting and corporate-friendly trade deals, reveals both Democrats to be establishment centrists—and centrist politics, contrary to what the punditocracy would have you believe, do not have a particularly winning record at the ballot box.

 

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