US Elections

American Daily: June 19, 2013

By Jonathan Bradley in Sydney, Australia

19 June 2013

• The IMF thinks the US should repeal the sequester and abandon steep spending cuts. 

“There are signs that the U.S. recovery is gaining ground and becoming more durable. However, it has a way to go before returning to full strength. The IMF’s advice is to slow down, but hurry up: meaning slow the fiscal adjustment this year—which would help sustain growth and job creation—but hurry up with putting in place a medium-term road map to restore long-run fiscal sustainability,” Managing Director Christine Lagarde said.

• The New Republic interviews the editors of Politico.

The dominant mode of Washington journalism tends to both reflect and entrench the values of its era. The eminent writers and editors of the immediate postwar age, such as James Reston and Ben Bradlee, were often comfortable with the powerful, and that coziness came just as America itself was reaching the heights of its dominance. After Watergate, political journalism took on a more adversarial edge, which had the ironic effect of turning two of its practitioners into actual celebrities, portrayed on the big screen by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman. The Washington of today runs at warp-speed and hums with sound bites, and the current head of the pack, Politico, has only made it go faster.

• What is Politico good at?

I'll tie this all back to immigration...right now I've been arguing the key to immigration is whether mainstream conservatives in the House want it to pass, and that will depend on how they balance out what's good for the party and what's good for them personally. For that, I'd much rather know what Republicans perceive about the electoral effects of passing immigration reform, rather than a good study by a political scientist about the actual effects of immigration reform. And since I'm a careful reader, I don't really care whether reporters mistake House GOP perceptions for reality -- because for this particular question, I want to be in the heads of those Members, and I'm perfectly capable of removing myself from that if I have some other question I want to answer.

• On Glenn Greenwald and his fans.

The bottom line is that there’s an attitude out there that anything bad anyone says about the NSA must be a priori true, and that anything bad anyone says about the NSA must have already been said by Glenn Greenwald, and that anyone who questions Greenwald about anything must be questioning Greenwald about everything, and thus thinks the NSA (and its boss Barack Obama) is swell.

• Will the Hastert Rule derail immigration reform?

Speaker John A. Boehner told his restive conference Tuesday that he doesn’t see “any way” that an immigration bill would come to the House floor without their backing — amid an internal revolt over Boehner’s refusal last week to rule out bringing a bill to the floor that would be passed mostly by Democrats.

• We like American music: Tim McGraw ft. Taylor Swift & Keith Urban, "Highway Don't Care" (2013)

Print This Post 0 Comments

Barack Obama: Foolish liberal or the new Dick Cheney?

By Sinclaire Prowse in Los Angeles, California

19 June 2013

US news programs provide a fascinating exercise in the search for important information among sensationalism. I have watched this play out between the networks with the current hot-topic in the US — government surveillance. Take the following example I viewed one night.

CNN anchor: “Is President Obama the new re-incarnation of Dick Cheney? We will explain more after the break”.

The explanation the anchor went on to provide for this comparison was seriously lacking. It provided a discussion of the similarities between Obama and Cheney without any realistic consideration of the very significant differences. The Obama administration has faced a litany of questions after the NSA leaks, but much of the way the media has portrayed the government has missed a crucial fact — Obama’s insistence on ensuring proper oversight when information-gathering. This fact has been repeatedly enforced by the Obama administration, but skillfully ignored by the media.

The sheer enthusiasm and energy espoused by news anchors ensures this problem remains deep-rooted. Anchors make you want to believe exactly what they're saying. Who could resist those fast, enthusiastic monologues with long, deliberate pauses? It really doesn’t take much digging beneath the surface to realise there is more to most stories than meets the eye.

It makes sense that the broadcasters are selling the story in the most easily digestible, mass-market format. That is, if news is above all considered a business before an indispensible service to the public.

Print This Post 0 Comments

Chicago can't catch a break

By Jonathan Bradley in Sydney, Australia

18 June 2013

[Photo by Flickr user Zol87]

Things were all good a week ago. The New York Times had a cheerful story headlined "Chicago Tactics Put Major Dent in Killing Trend":

A year after this city drew new attention for soaring gun violence and gang bloodshed, creating a political test for Mayor Rahm Emanuel in President Obama’s hometown, Chicago has witnessed a drop in shootings and crime. Killings this year have dipped to a level not seen since the early 1960s.

So far in 2013, Chicago homicides, which outnumbered slayings in the larger cities of New York and Los Angeles last year, are down 34 percent from the same period in 2012. As of Sunday night, 146 people had been killed in Chicago, the nation’s third-largest city — 76 fewer than in the same stretch in 2012 and 16 fewer than in 2011, a year that was among the lowest for homicides during the same period in 50 years.

In recent months, as many as 400 officers a day, working overtime, have been dispatched to just 20 small zones deemed the city’s most dangerous. The police say they are tamping down retaliatory shootings between gang factions by using a comprehensive analysis of the city’s tens of thousands of suspected gang members, the turf they claim and their rivalries. The police are also focusing on more than 400 people they have identified as having associations that make them the most likely to be involved in a murder, as a victim or an offender.

Seven days later:

We're halfway through one of the least-deadly years in recent Chicago homicide history, but here's a reminder that summer is just getting started: at least 41 were shot and 7 killed in Chicago this weekend. And while city gun violence typically doesn't get as much attention as other mass shootings, especially in more affluent neighborhoods, the Chicago story fits into the bigger national conversation on gun control, just slightly more than six months after the Newtown shootings shook the issue into the spotlight.

This weekend was the most violent so far [this year] in the city, but not the most deadly: eight died in Chicago during the last weekend in January. The Chicago Tribune has a sweeping feature report on the weekend's toll on the city. Victims this weekend include Kevin Rivera, a 16-year-old who tried to flee gunmen on his bike; Ricardo Herrera, 21; Todd Wood, 40, who was killed in a mass shooting at a club (two others were wounded); Cortez Wilberton, 31; Jamal Jones, 19; and Antwon Johnson, 24, who was shot by police

Police try to maintain a positive spin in the Tribune story, with the paper quoting spokesman Adam Collins as saying "There's going to be good days, and there's going to be bad days, which is why we've been calling this progress, not victory." But as the Times story noted, summer has only just begun, and homicides increase in warm weather.

Chicago escapes the more hellish associations other Midwestern cities like Detroit get saddled with because its dysfunction is sequestered within neighbourhoods on the rundown south and west sides. Unlike other rust belt towns, large parts of the city are prosperous, even wealthy. But read something like this Sunday Times magazine feature, and these distinctions seem less meaningful:

Read More

Print This Post 0 Comments

American Daily: June 17

By Jonathan Bradley in Sydney, Australia

17 June 2013

• Do social conservatives still control the GOP?

For proof, you needed only pay a visit this week to a conference put on by the Faith and Freedom Coalition. Ironically, or defiantly, titled the "Road to Majority Conference," it attracted a star-studded line-up of GOP pols, from potential presidential candidates Rand Paul and Marco Rubio to rabble-rousers like Donald Trump and Sarah Palin. The Faith and Freedom Coalition is headed by Ralph Reed, who you may remember from his glory days with the Christian Coalition in the 1990s or the Abramoff scandal of the last decade; he was last seen, in 2012, assuring the evangelicals that their hard work was going to win the election for Mitt Romney. The group claims to have sent 23 million pieces of campaign mail last year.

• Why it's a problem for Obama to approach policy as a father of teenage daughters. 

It didn’t seem to matter anymore that, two years prior to that, Obama had invoked his daughters in a very different context. When reporters asked him why he was opposed to making the morning-after pill available to all ages without a prescription, he replied, "I will say this, as the father of two daughters. I think it is important for us to make sure that we apply some common sense to various rules when it comes to over-the-counter medicine." If you’re confused about why, when it comes to this particular issue, an avowedly pro-choice president sounds like a Bible Belt patriarch, join the club. And when it comes to the sexuality of teen girls, Obama’s talking points have been nearly identical to those of his conservative predecessor: Father knows best.

• Florida is making its execution process quicker and easier. 

That’s not enough for the Florida legislature. It recently became the first in the country to pass a bill requiring the pace of executions to speed up. It’s called the Timely Justice Act, and it sets a deadline of 30 days for the governor to sign a death warrant once an inmate’s appeals become final—that is, after at least one round of state and federal appeals, and after a review by the governor for clemency. And once the governor signs the warrant, the Timely Justice Act says the execution must occur within 180 days. Scott signed the bill into law late Friday.

• A conservative case for prison reform.

In the past several years, there has been a dramatic shift on crime and punishment policy across the country. It really started in Texas in 2007. The state said no to building eight more prisons and began to shift nonviolent offenders from state prison into alternatives, by strengthening probation and parole supervision and treatment. Texas was able to avert nearly $2 billion in projected corrections spending increases, and its crime rate is declining. At the same time, the state’s parole failures have dropped by 39 percent.

• Was the impact of campaign donations on the 2012 election overhyped?

A lot of political commentary, particularly that emanating from the combination of journalists, politicians, and activists he calls the “campaign finance community,” claimed that the growth of Super PACs and other well-heeled political organizations in the wake of the Citizens United case would overwhelm the voters’ voice. Yet despite unprecedented sums spent by these groups on behalf of Mitt Romney and many Republican congressional candidates, the votes ended up going almost exactly as we would have otherwise expected.

• We like American music: Prince, "Controversy" (1981)

Print This Post 0 Comments

Patriotic cookies

By Sinclaire Prowse in Los Angeles, California

17 June 2013

After returning to the US for the first time in few years, I was reminded about the intense strength of American patriotism. I’m not merely talking about the American flags hanging off each and every house and restaurant, or the pictures of President Obama hanging in airports — these are to be expected of America.

It is those exertions of patriotism that seem to be in bad taste which can shock most foreigners. Take, for instance the box of cookies I found today selling for $3.99 at a Ralph’s superstore — sure to instill the daily dosage of patriotism into every American!

While I was without doubt caught laughing out loud when I spotted this in aisle five, I also recognise that there is a serious lineage to be considered in determining what informs the bizarre production of national pride statements printed on cookie boxes. I am reminded of the wonderful quote by American essayist Agnes Repplier, which manages to encapsulate exactly why American nationalism has developed into such a powerful "brand."

Of all the countries in the world, we and we only have any need to create artificially the patriotism which is the birthright of other nations.

(The Atlantic, 1916)

This quote manages to articulate a very important point which is often forgotten when people criticise the crass and uncouth nature of American patriotic sentiment. It is unfortunate that these manifestations of American patriotism are sometimes made in bad taste and give off this impression. Love for one’s country is quite profound and not at all based upon shallow sentiment.

Print This Post 0 Comments

This week in America: June 14, 2013

By Jonathan Bradley in Sydney, Australia

14 June 2013

According to the HuffPo–Pollster polling aggregator, President Barack Obama has an approval rating of 47.0 per cent, with 47.9 per cent disapproving. The unemployment rate is 7.6 per cent. The Purge is number one at the box office, the number one song on the Billboard Hot 100 is "Blurred Lines" by Robin Thicke featuring T.I and Pharrell, and the number one album is Queens of the Stone Age's Like Clockwork. Game two of the NBA finals was the highest-rated TV program last week and Inferno by Dan Brown is at the top of the New York Times Best Seller list.

This week at American Review, I interviewed the Centre's lecturer in US politics and foreign policy Adam Lockyer about the US government's announcement that it would supply arms to the rebels in Syria. Earlier in the week, Richard C. Longworth touted the successes of a new generation of Midwestern mayors, Robert A. Manning looked at the successes and challenges arising from this past weekend's "shirtsleeves summit" between Barack Obama and Xi Jinping, and James Fallows wondered how wise was NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden's decision to seek refuge from the US government in Hong Kong.

On the blog, I celebrated the announcement that Major League Baseball would hold two opening day games in Sydney, sketched out some of my problems with Baz Luhrmann's adaptation of The Great Gatsby, looked at the business and Australian angles to the NSA story, and highlighted Glenn Beck's odd choice of props at a recent free speech event. Meanwhile, Luke wondered why Republicans haven't been making more of a Medicare tax that forms part of the Obamacare package.   

Among the work of US Studies Centre academics and experts this week includes Marc Palen's defence of Texas governor Rick Perry after he vetoed a protectionist "Buy Texan" law, and a Niki Hemmer piece decrying the Obama administration's support for the surveillance state:

In pointing to the balance between security and liberty, Obama continued, "We're going to have to make some choices as a society."

Many Americans thought they had already made those choices when they voted for Obama in 2008. Seven years into the war on terror and the expansive surveillance state it spawned, civil libertarians in the US were thrilled to hear candidate Obama speak out in support of personal privacy and government transparency.

In casting their ballots for the constitutional law professor, Obama voters thought they were choosing a civil rights advocate who would build a durable set of rules to safeguard their rights. Instead they got a politician who would build a legal framework to safeguard government power.

For more Centre updates, you can like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, or subscribe to our newsletter. You should also like American Review on Facebook and follow it on Twitter.

Weekend reading material:

• Is "fortress unionism" the future of labour in America?

What is the relevance of all this to today? Well, Taft-Hartley isn’t going anywhere. Its land mines still detonate. And it still defines the legal and political context in which labor must operate as it tries to map out a strategy for the future. An aggressive organizing strategy, of the sort labor attempted when John Sweeney took the helm of the AFL-CIO, just doesn’t work because the smart union strategists can’t compensate for a mostly (though not entirely) uninterested working class. But labor can, without undertaking lengthy and expensive campaigns to organize new sectors, work to buttress the areas in which it is already strong, extend its alliances with other progressive groups, and even train the worker leaders of tomorrow. I call this “Fortress Unionism,” and I believe it’s labor’s best play until the day arrives, if it ever does, when the workers themselves militantly signal that they want unions.

• What does a court decision against Fox Searchlight mean for the future of unpaid internships?

But whatever your moral leanings, a judge on Tuesday confirmed what intern advocates have been alleging for years: a lot of these programs are illegal.

 

Judge William Pauley, who sits on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, ruled that Fox Searchlight’s use of interns in the production of the movies “Black Swan” and “500 Days of Summer” violated minimum wage and overtime laws, and that those interns can file a class action against the studio.

• Want to get away with leaking in Washington? Be an important and influential person.

Secrets are sacrosanct in Washington until officials find political expediency in either declassifying them or leaking them selectively. It doesn’t really matter which modern presidential administration you decide to scrutinize for this behavior, as all of them are guilty. For instance, President George W. Bush’s administration declassified or leaked whole barrels of intelligence, raw and otherwise, to convince the public and Congress making war on Iraq was a good idea. Bush himself ordered the release of classified prewar intelligence about Iraq through Vice President Dick Cheney and Chief of Staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby to New York Times reporter Judith Miller in July 2003.

• Did changes to California's electoral system actually weaken the influence of the major parties?

I suppose reformers can take credit for helping to bring about greater competition in primaries. But it also appears to be the case that the top-two system has strengthened the hand of party leaders. Candidates recognize the value of the endorsement, and they're willing to pay a price, perhaps ideologically, to win it.

• How is the geography of American craft beer changing?

Even as production remains concentrated in traditional craft-beer regions, it is surging in the South and elsewhere. The pioneering “microbreweries” of the seventies and eighties—among them Anchor Brewing, New Albion Brewing, Sierra Nevada Brewing, and the Boston Beer Company—were mostly founded in California and New England. Current trends reflect this history: twenty-seven of the country’s fifty largest craft breweries are located in California, Oregon, New England, or the Mid-Atlantic (with eleven in the Golden State alone). Five of the remaining twenty-three are in Colorado—the same number that can be found in the entirety of the former Confederacy. (If you switch to the “breweries per 500,000 people” view, it becomes clear that per-capita craft-brewery density in the South is the lowest in the country.) But from 2011 to 2012, annual production grew faster in the South than just about anywhere else, with the fastest-growing producers including Alabama (first out of all fifty states), Tennessee (fifth), Florida (seventh), and Kentucky (eighth). Other rapidly growing producers include Minnesota, Nevada, and Oklahoma.

We like American music: Dead Prez, "Hip-Hop" (1999)

Print This Post 0 Comments

Interview: Adam Lockyer on Syria

By Jonathan Bradley in Sydney, Australia

14 June 2013

The news earlier today was that the US would be supplying weapons to the rebels in Syria, dragging the county ever closer to another conflict in the Middle East. To make sense of it, I talked to the Centre's defence expert, Adam Lockyer. Our discussion is up at American Review. A sample:

So is the US able to hand the weapons over and hope for the best or is giving weapons to the rebels going to drag the US in further?

So what the United States will probably do first of all is just to supply small arms and ammunition to the rebels. This is not going to really drag the United States into the conflict. They're gonna hand these weapons over, they're pretty simple, they're not very sophisticated, they'll make their way to the front line. They're unlikely though to radically swing the momentum of the battle. What will change the momentum, change the tide, will be things that will negate the advantages of the government: they will be anti-aircraft missiles and they will be anti-tank missiles. Now, they're far more sophisticated, they'll require the rebels to be trained up before they're able to effectively deploy them. Now that means the United States is more likely to have to send out their own trainers, their own advisors, and although initially they'll only be located in either Turkey or in Jordan, and over time, there's always this temptation to become a slippery slope where those trainers and advisors may need to go across into Syria to more effectively deploy them, and then we're on to a very, very dangerous path.

Print This Post 0 Comments

American Daily: June 13, 2013

By Jonathan Bradley in Sydney, Australia

13 June 2013

• The South China Morning Post interviews Edward Snowden.

Snowden said that according to unverified documents seen by the Post, the NSA had been hacking computers in Hong Kong and on the mainland since 2009. None of the documents revealed any information about Chinese military systems, he said.

• Snowden almost certainly did not commit treason.

It seems obvious that Snowden’s actions don’t qualify as levying war against the U.S. “All the levying war cases require an assemblage of men and force,” Larson explains. “I’ve never heard of a levying war prosecution that was just about releasing some documents.”

• To what extent can the surveillance state be trusted?

There are valid policy grounds for some of the surveillance state, and I don't think I'm naïve about the threats against the United States. That said, a major personal legacy of 21st century American foreign policy f**k-ups is that I can't give these agencies or their political masters the benefit of the doubt. Threats have been overhyped and intelligence has been spectacularly wrong. Without much greater efforts by the intelligence community, the Obama administration, and Congress to restore trust in these institutions, that doubt will only grow.

• Should director of national intelligence James Clapper be permitted to keep his job?

This is crucial. We as a nation are being asked to let the National Security Agency continue doing the intrusive things it’s been doing on the premise that congressional oversight will rein in abuses. But it’s hard to have meaningful oversight when an official in charge of the program lies so blatantly in one of the rare open hearings on the subject. (Wyden, who had been briefed on the program, knew that Clapper was lying, but he couldn’t say so without violating the terms of his own security clearance.)

• Could Obama be doing more to push the Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership along?

Presidential leadership can't magically conjure up congressional votes for things members of Congress don't want to support. But vocal presidential leadership can make a difference in terms of mobilizing the people working in the executive branch. The managers at any agency are operating at any given time under any number of guidelines from up top, pressures from lobbyists, and requests from Congress. Actions that clarify what the real priority hierarchy is can make a difference. Is this sort of harmonization something the administration really wants to see happen, or was it just something thrown into a State of the Union address and then siloed off into the U.S. trade representative's docket?

• We like American music: J-Kwon, "Tipsy" (2004)

Print This Post 0 Comments

MLB comes to Sydney

By Jonathan Bradley in Sydney, Australia

13 June 2013

Great news for those of us who are in Australia and enjoy American sports:

International season openers aren't new for Major League Baseball. But in 2014, the sport will literally extend its reach further than ever before when the Los Angeles Dodgers and Arizona Diamondbacks square off in Australia.

The historic two-game series will be held March 22-23 at the Sydney Cricket Ground, MLB and the Major League Baseball Players Association jointly announced Wednesday.

Good for Major League Baseball! And for any Australians skeptical of the entertainment value of baseball, I reckon you should think about going to this. I'm not much of a sports guy at all, but I enjoy baseball games; they have a relaxed languor such that being at the ballpark is as much a part of the experience as the actual action on the field is. It's kind of like being at a picnic with the added bonus that there's a game going on in the background. Which, by the way, I do not say to denigrate the sport itself. It's entertaining, but only part of the live baseball experience.

Print This Post 0 Comments

American Daily: June 12, 2013

By Jonathan Bradley in Sydney, Australia

12 June 2013

• Will civil libertarianism play a part in the 2016 primaries?

In some ways, it may prove invigorating to have a political debate that does not break down all that neatly into the usual partisan camps. And because they create as many fractures across the parties as between them, the recent N.S.A. disclosures might not have all that much effect, for instance, on Mr. Obama’s approval ratings or the Congressional elections next year.

But there’s the possibility that surveillance policy could become a major issue in the 2016 primaries, as elites in each party defend themselves against rank-and-file voters who are critical of their judgment.

• Google wants to be allowed to reveal what information it gives the US government. 

Assertions in the press that our compliance with these requests gives the U.S. government unfettered access to our users’ data are simply untrue. However, government nondisclosure obligations regarding the number of FISA national security requests that Google receives, as well as the number of accounts covered by those requests, fuel that speculation.

We therefore ask you to help make it possible for Google to publish in our Transparency Report aggregate numbers of national security requests, including FISA disclosures—in terms of both the number we receive and their scope. Google’s numbers would clearly show that our compliance with these requests falls far short of the claims being made. Google has nothing to hide.

• What chance of claiming asylum does Edward Snowden actually have?

For someone to qualify for asylum under international law, he or she has to meet one of the requirements for an asylum-seeker. That means, according to Georgetown Law fellow Laila Hlass, “a well-founded fear of persecution in their home country due to race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion.” While Snowden may have been motivated by his opinion, any U.S. legal case against him would likely hinge more on the fact of his leaks than whatever beliefs drove them. (Put another way, if someone sabotaged a U.S. drone base and was indicted for destruction of property, he would have a tough time claiming he’s being persecuted specifically for his opposition to drones.) And Snowden would have a tough time claiming he’s being persecuted for his race or religion.

• What the changing face of the National Mall says about America's self-image.

I hadn't previously been able to see the WWII and Korea Memorials; I also hadn't seen the King Memorial, although I had seen FDR already ... When I first visited Washington, none of those were there. The Mall was defined by Washington and Lincoln and, although he's off to the side and only visible from a small area, by Jefferson; what's more, it's defined by Congress, on the other end from Lincoln, and then the White House, also only visible from a small area.

• Which states have the most ideologically extreme politicians?

• We like American music: Maceo, "Nextel Chirp" (2005)

Print This Post 0 Comments