n2doc

n2doc's Journal

October 23, 2015

Navy poised to promote powerful admiral who illegally punished suspected whistleblowers

The Navy is poised to promote the admiral in charge of its elite SEAL teams and other commando units even though Pentagon investigators determined that he illegally retaliated against staff members whom he mistakenly suspected were whistleblowers.

Rear Adm. Brian Losey was investigated five times by the Defense Department's inspector general after subordinates complained that he had wrongly fired, demoted or punished them during a fruitless hunt for the person who had anonymously reported him for a minor travel-policy infraction, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

After conducting yearslong investigations that involved more than 100 witnesses and 300,000 pages of emails, the inspector general upheld complaints from three of the five staff members. In each of those cases, it recommended that the Navy take action against Losey for violating whistleblower-protection laws, the documents show.

The Navy, however, dismissed the findings this month and decided not to discipline Losey, a preeminent figure in the military's special operations forces. Between 2005 and 2007, Losey was commander of Naval Special Warfare Development Group - the Virginia Beach-based unit known as SEAL Team 6 that has killed terrorist targets such as Osama bin Laden. Losey now leads the Naval Special Warfare Command and has served in Afghanistan, Iraq, Panama, Bosnia, Somalia and other conflict zones.

more

http://hamptonroads.com/2015/10/navy-poised-promote-powerful-admiral-who-illegally-punished-suspected-whistleblowers

October 23, 2015

Elizabeth Warren: We Helped the Big Banks. Why Not Puerto Rico?

Elizabeth Warren had a message for the Obama administration today: Be as creative in finding a solution for the 3.5 million American citizens in Puerto Rico as you were in protecting bank profits after the 2008 crisis.

The issue arose in a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing on Thursday morning about the island commonwealth, which owes $73 billion in debt it cannot repay. A large chunk of the debt is owned by so-called “vulture funds” that picked it up at a discount. The creditors want Puerto Rico to find the funds to pay them off by drastically cutting services and selling assets, guaranteeing continued economic recession for the island’s inhabitants.

Late Wednesday, the Obama administration released a “Roadmap for Congressional Action” to deal with the debt crisis. It included allowing Puerto Rico to obtain bankruptcy protection, which is currently barred by U.S. law. But the report adamantly stated that, while administration officials are working closely with the Puerto Rican government, “there is no set of administrative authorities that can fully address and resolve this crisis… only Congress can provide the critical tools Puerto Rico needs to restructure its debt.”

The hearing gave Warren an opportunity to respond. Antonio Weiss, a counselor to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and one of the administration’s leading point people on the debt crisis, gave testimony at the hearing. Warren and Weiss have a history. He was initially nominated to serve in the No. 3 position at Treasury, but after Warren criticized his lack of regulatory experience and Wall Street ties — Weiss spent 20 years as an investment banker at Lazard — he withdrew his nomination, taking the counselor position instead. This hearing was the first time Warren and Weiss have appeared together in public since his withdrawal.

more
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2015/10/22/Elizabeth-Warren-We-Helped-Big-Banks-Why-Not-Puerto-Rico

October 23, 2015

Friday Toon Roundup 2: The Rest

Speaker/house

Biden

Trump

Koch

Texas

Bibi

Gambling

Canada

Syria

War

October 23, 2015

Friday Toon Roundup 1: Benghazigate!!!!

October 22, 2015

Sad, sexless, lonely: This is the real Paul Ryan/Ayn Rand vision for your life

...But this whole incident is a reminder that what is wrong with Ryan’s libertarian-inflected conservatism goes far deeper than mere hypocrisy. In fact, I’d argue that Ryan isn’t really a hypocrite at all, but that this move to preserve his family time is a perfect distillation of the Ayn Rand-constructed worldview he has, where all the goodies are reserved for the elite and the rest of us can go hang. And by “goodies,” I don’t just mean NFL tickets and first class plane tickets every weekend. Increasingly, the Republican worldview is one where even basic things like love, connection, and other basic human needs are being reclassified as privileges that should only be available to the wealthy.

Take, for instance, the great paradox of the so-called family values set, where they claim to be “pro-life” but also refuse to do a damn thing to take care of the lives they insist women bring into the world whether they like it or not. Republicans across the country are shuttering abortion clinics with pointless red tape. Now that they’ve come so far on eliminating access to legal abortion, they’ve turned their attention to cutting off access to affordable contraception and other non-abortion sexual health care, repeatedly calling for the elimination of funding that goes to pay for non-abortion services at Planned Parenthood. They have also waged war on the HHS for requiring that insurance plans cover contraception like they do other preventive health care services. If you take a look at the big picture, it’s clear that the end goal here is to make non-procreative sex a privilege available only to those who can pay cash for it.

But it’s also clear that Republicans really don’t want the people who are cut off from reproductive health services to have children, either. It’s not just that Republicans continually resist any efforts to make family and maternity leave available, even though getting leave is absolutely necessary for women who are giving birth and need to retain their jobs so they can feed their children. Paul Ryan is a big advocate for cutting food stamps, arguing that people need to work more if they want to eat. The only solution Ryan ever has for anything afflicting ordinary people is a demand that they work more hours, full stop, no debate about it.

In Paul Ryan’s America, you aren’t allowed to take care of your babies, but you aren’t supposed to have birth control or abortion to prevent babies, either. So what, exactly, are you supposed to do?

...

You can’t have sex without making babies and you can’t have babies until you’re privileged enough to take care of them without any help or family leave. That’s the vision Republicans have of life for the rest of us: Sad, sexless, and lonely, with no children or even romantic partner to share our lives. Which is just as well, because the only purpose to our lives is to work overtime for very little pay to make our bosses—and their beautiful, pampered families—even richer. (But hey, if you work hard enough, maybe you’ll one day make enough money to earn that sex and family life! Probably not, but keep plugging!) Paul Ryan isn’t a hypocrite for rubbing our nose in the fact that he has a lovely home life that he would deny to so many people. Reminding us that he’s a have and you are have-nots is what a self-appointed Galtian Übermensch is supposed to do.

the rest
http://www.salon.com/2015/10/22/sad_sexless_lonely_this_is_the_real_paul_ryanayn_rand_vision_for_your_life/

October 22, 2015

'New Era of American Prosperity': Sanders Calls for Free Higher Ed for All

by Deirdre Fulton,

"It is time to build on the progressive movement of the past and make public colleges and universities tuition-free in the United States," presidential candidate Bernie Sanders wrote in an op-ed on Thursday, saying such a move would "be the driver of a new era of American prosperity."

"In my view, education is essential for personal and national well-being," Sanders declared, elaborating on a key aspect of his populist platform. "We live in a highly competitive, global economy, and if our economy is to be strong, we need the best-educated workforce in the world. We won’t achieve that if, every year, hundreds of thousands of bright young people cannot afford to go to college while millions more leave school deeply in debt."

In his call to make higher education free for all, Sen. Sanders (I-Vt.), who is seeking the White House as a Democrat, noted that public colleges and universities are tuition-free in countries including Finland, Denmark, Ireland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and Mexico. "They're free throughout Germany, too," he wrote, "and not just for Germans or Europeans but to international citizens as well."

"Governments in these countries understand what an important investment they are making," he continued, "not just in the individuals who are able to acquire knowledge and skills but for the societies these students will serve as teachers, architects, scientists, entrepreneurs and more."

more

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/10/22/new-era-american-prosperity-sanders-calls-free-higher-ed-all

October 22, 2015

Can We Stop Pretending That Ben Carson Is Running for President?

As he quietly suspends his campaign to hawk books, one has to wonder: Is this guy serious?

BY: JASON JOHNSON

There was a time when running for president was actually a money-losing venture.

In fact, over the last 30 or so years, most presidential candidates (including some who actually won) ended up with tremendous debts after the campaign. Being in the red during and after a campaign was so common that paying off a former opponent’s campaign debt was seen as a benevolent form of political stunting. (Thanks, Obama!) But all of that has changed since Citizens United in 2010. Thanks to super PACs and enforcement mechanisms flimsier than tissue paper, running for president can now become a ridiculous money grab if you’re willing to put in the time.

So can we please start to differentiate between those people running for president and those out to get a quick buck and some inflated speaking fees? And we can start with one of the most egregious perpetrators of this new political fraud: Ben Carson.

Very quietly, about two weeks ago, Carson actually suspended his campaign for president. I know that most people probably didn’t notice because they were reeling from a week of Carson lecturing on how to survive a volcano, high-fiving the Confederate flag and dropping dimes on wealthy Popeye’s chicken cashiers, but this did actually occur. There is some nuance to this; essentially, Carson just dropped a new book, A More Perfect Union: What We the People Can Do to Reclaim Our Constitutional Liberties, and will go on tour to promote it. To avoid violating campaign-finance rules, Carson, ABC initially reported, was suspending his campaign activities until the next televised debate on CNBC Oct. 28.

Whether this amounts to his stopping his campaign entirely (unlikely) or scaling back campaign activities to promote a book (much more likely), it speaks to the same problem: How seriously can you take a candidate for president of the United States who takes time out of a campaign to hock books? How could any job, or responsibility, outside of your family and health be important enough for you to scale back your efforts to become leader of the free world? Either you don’t know what this job really entails or you’re not serious about the job, and my guess is the latter.

more
http://www.theroot.com/articles/politics/2015/10/can_we_stop_pretending_that_ben_carson_is_running_for_president.html?wpisrc=topstories