Links, 7/28/11

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Here’s Melissa Harris-Perry talking about the Pew study on net worth from the other day.

Our Dying Economy

Nicholas Shaxson (the author of Treasure Islands) has a post on a probably-doomed attempt by developing countries to have more of a say over international tax policy.

According to Jay Rockefeller, the Republicans shut down the FAA primarily to help Delta ensure its workers never unionize.

A few days ago I linked to an article arguing that Microsoft’s profits largely stemmed from tax avoidance–facilitated in part by their purchase of Skype. Here’s a longer article laying out MS’ tax dodging. It seems like it’d be a useful strategy to lay out how all the companies engaged in the worst kind of tax cheating are doing it because they’re not really doing much as companies anymore.

Our National Security State

Ron Wyden and Mark Udall are basically trying to force Eric Holder and James Clapper to admit that it’s a bad thing to interpret laws–notably, the PATRIOT Act–in ways that the public doesn’t understand. I suspect this won’t make it out of the Intelligence Committee. So I wonder whether Harry Reid will make good on his promise to let them raise it in the full Senate. Me, I think the bill would be more effective if Holder and Clapper each had to write “I will not use smart phones to track innocent Americans’ locations” once for each time they have done so.

ACLU has a new report on secrecy out I plan to return to. In the meantime, Steven Aftergood has some interesting things to say about it.

The Treasury Department says Iran is funneling money to Al Qaeda. I’m more interested in the questions Blake Hounshell raises in reporting the issue, though, than actually convinced Treasury isn’t just making shit up.

Justice and Injustice

A judge just ruled that Shirley Sherrod’s lawsuit against Andrew Breitbart can proceed.

Your Daily Murdoch

Now why do you suppose James Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks were getting briefed by Britain’s Defense Secretary? And does anyone actually believe Murdoch’s top execs haven’t gotten similar treatment here?

It’s not so much that Piers Morgan doth protest too much. It’s that the traditional media is bending over backwards to accept his version of the claim that he never authorized anyone to hack a phone. Not to mention they’re accepting a very carefully parsed answer–Morgan’s “I have never hacked a phone, told anyone to hack a phone, nor to my knowledge published any story obtained from the hacking of a phone” leaves a whole lot of knowledge of hacking on the table.

Apparently, the plan for the cover-up in the UK consists of generalizing the inquiry into journalists’ conduct generally, with a series of seminars about the ethics of journalism, which I presume will ensure that public opinion magically starts to side with Murdoch, not his victims or rule of law.

The Guardian reports that NotW is suspected of hacking the phone of the mother of the girl for whom “Sarah’s Law”–a sex predator transparency law–was named after. It also says Rebeka Brooks gave her the phone! If you saw Brooks’ testimony before Parliament, she used NotW’s championship of Sarah’s Law as PR spin.

Free for All 

Marion Nestle assesses McDonald’s new Happier Meals and finds them unimpressive, largely because they still offer soda. Interestingly, though, it appears Happy Meals aren’t selling like they used to partly because kids are snobbier about toys and partly because the dollar items on McDonald’s menu ends up being a cheaper way to feed kids.

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23 replies
  1. thatvisionthing says:

    “Ron Wyden and Mark Udall are basically trying to force Eric Holder and James Clapper to admit that it’s a bad thing to interpret laws–notably, the PATRIOT Act–in ways that the public doesn’t understand. I suspect this won’t make it out of the Intelligence Committee…”

    Say no more, Orwell’s kicking his heels

  2. MadDog says:

    The letter (4 page PDF) from ODNI’s Director of Legislature Affairs Kathleen Turner to Senators Udall and Wyden makes this statement:

    “…You asked whether communications of Americans have been collected under the FAA and, if so, whether it is possible to count the number of people located in the United States whose communications were reviewed by the government pursuant to the FAA…

    [snip]

    …While it is not reasonably possible to identify the number of people located in the United States whose communications may have been reviewed under the authority of the FAA, I would direct you to the classified reports that have provided to Congress under section 702, which report on, among other things, the number of disseminated intelligence reports containing a reference to a United States person and the number of collection targets that were later determined to be located in the United States…”

    (My Bold)

    Apples and pineapples! Typical National Security State sleight-of-hand!

    The number of “disseminated” intelligence reports containing a reference to a United States person and the number of “collection targets” that were later determined to be located in the United States speaks not at all to the number of people located in the United States whose communications may have been reviewed under the authority of the FAA.

  3. MadDog says:

    And CNN is reporting at this moment (4:43 CDT) that the House vote on the GOP debt plan has been postponed.

    Speaker Boehner ran out of fingers and toes trying to reach the 216 votes needed to pass.

  4. rugger9 says:

    One interesting thing in my paper today [San Jose Mercury News] in the local section was a story about how Third Way was trying to draft a centrist candidate. Titled “A New Way to Elect Our President?”, a group called Americans Elect want ti bring someone [Petraeus?] not touched by the scandals in DC. The group is described as a nonpartisan, nonprofit political startup, well-funded* that will sign in delegates in an online primary to select a P/VP ticket [not from the same party] to run in 2012. They have already set up shop in eight states, now rolling out in CA.

    *Something seems mighty fishy about this. Anyone have time to dig into who is behind the $$$?

    I’m curious because a campaign like this is the only way that the conservatives can regain the WH, either by drawing off Obama voters or by getting a favored son elected in the jostle. Silly Billy** was elected in just this kind of scenario, when Perot drew off Bush supporters.

    ** FWIW, I know the RW Wurlitzer liked to call Clinton “Slick Willie”. In CA that nickname properly refers to Willie Brown, who actually managed to make himself Speaker of the Assembly when the GOP was in majority, and the most astute legislator I’ve ever seen in tweaking the levers of power in Sacramento. The GOP guys that voted him in were summarily punished in the next elections, of course.

  5. MadDog says:

    @MadDog: Continuing on with more National Security State sleight-of-hand in Turner’s letter (4 page PDF) to Senators Udall and Wyden:

    “…Finally with respect to the FAA, you asked whether any significant interpretations of the FAA are currently classified. As you are aware, opinions of the FISA Court usually contain discussions of particular intelligence sources, methods, and operations and are therefore classified…

    …Nonetheless, working with the Department of Justice, we are reviewing FISA Court opinions to see if there are portions that can be declassified and released to the public…”

    No, sorry Kathleen Turner, but FISA Court opinions are not the entire universe of classified opinions regarding the FAA that Senators Udall and Wyden were asking about.

    Read their fookin’ letter (2 page PDF) again!

    They were asking for all “significant interpretations of the FISA Amendments Act [that are] currently classified”! Not just FISA Court opinions!

    How about those OLC and other DOJ classified opinions regarding the FAA? The only response regarding those has been crickets!

  6. rugger9 says:

    @rugger9:

    Re: Americans Elect
    Nothing in the very slick website about funding sources, smells like a Koch or Gramm or Rove op to me. They even have a Silver Star Iraq veteran fronting it (for now) combined with lots of testimonial stuff like any paid programming schtick. Supposedly grass roots….

    RW for sure…

  7. rugger9 says:

    @MadDog:

    Of course there will be the obligatory “oh THAT was part of it TOO? We’ll have to spend another year redacting it all” non-response. And the courts will let the USG do it.

  8. emptywheel says:

    @rugger9: It is funded by a hedgie. Look it up w/Tom Friedman’s name, you’ll find the name of the hedgie in question.

  9. Jim White says:

    @emptywheel: And if they put Petraeus up, I can’t wait to dust off all my old posts on the ass-kissing little chickenshit, and especially to point out Scahill’s work showing Petraeus and Cheney teamed up to skirt the rule of law and chain of command.

  10. rugger9 says:

    @Jim White:

    I’ll race ya. He’s too political to be sidelined for long, and CIA he has access to all kinds of oppo research stuff. Obama really messed up putting him there.

  11. rugger9 says:

    @MadDog:

    We could do something like the Palin baby name generator or the birth certificate generator algorithms from the last year, only this one is the FOIA excuse generator.

  12. rugger9 says:

    @emptywheel:

    Friedman is the one for whom the unit is named (= six months from his frequent pronouncements about how critical or decisive the next six months were, F.U. for short), and is considered “Very Serious” by the beltway, I guess for the lip growth because Krugman regularly flays his theories for the dreck that they are. But, what does a Nobel Economist know?

    If Friedman is involved, it’s a Koch-style [if not Koch-funded] op for sure, since he’s very tied into the RW Wurlitzer as well as the Israel lobby, and avoids offending either.

    So, does the third party scenario doom Obama in 2012, given how crazy the GOP is in the contenders list now? Recall how in CT in 2006, Ned Lamont beat Joe LIEberman in the D primary, only to have Rove and the GOP support “independent” LIEberman over their own candidate (the name escapes me), and that’s why LIEberman has been taking it out on the Ds ever since, even while caucusing with them.

  13. emptywheel says:

    @Jim White: yeah, but at this point, we’ll have Hoover running against either Multiple Choice Mitt or a clown.

    Petraeus might stand a chance, whether he deserves to or not. Besides, he gets to play at CIA in the meantime. I’m sure that experience wouldn’t help a campaign’s oppo at all!

  14. P J Evans says:

    @rugger9:
    The LA Times was reporting on it too. The wingers were saying ‘look at all the Democrats who are involved’ and I’m looking at who they are ans saying ‘it’s another centrist/’Third Way’ astroturf group’.

  15. prostratedragon says:

    @rugger9:

    Oh I don’t know, what with NewsFlop having gone all gimpy, second-best beats nothing at all. Maybe WH had a heads-up.

  16. Bob Schacht says:

    EW, you wrote,
    “I think the bill would be more effective if Holder and Clapper each had to write “I will not use smart phones to track innocent Americans’ locations” once for each time they have done so.”

    The trick there is in the word “innocent,” because, you see, we know they are guilty already or we wouldn’t have needed to track them! Guilt first, trial later, if needed! If they were really innocent, we wouldn’t be tracking them! /s

    Bob in AZ

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