Parallel cops

At least four active-duty New York cops were part of the motorcycle gang that terrorized and assaulted a driver in front of his wife and kid last week, and luckily the local prosecutors are hauling them in one by one to face indictments. Some of them are going to use as a defense the claim that they were undercover and looking for illegal behavior, which is both plausible and disturbing.

Disturbing because cops infiltrating violence-prone groups always have to walk a careful line between observing criminal acts and putting a stop to them, thus ending their undercover status. And in this case, at least one is alleged to have actively participated in the assault, which raises the question, To what extent should undercover spying influence the chain of events? This is a burning issue given the frequent use of agents provocateurs now to uncover ‘terrorist’ plots that often would never have come to fruition without the active encouragement of the policing agents themselves.

In the New York biker incident, the issue is particularly germaine given that one of the undercover rowdies, Wojciech Braszczok, turns out to have been a regular spy at the Occupy Wall Street activities as well. It will be interesting to learn more about his role there: for example, did he actively encourage the OWS folks to engage in more confrontational tactics or even provoke the police himself so that they would have an excuse to wade into the crowds and stage mass arrests? There are preliminary hints that this might be so.

Aside from the illicit spying on a constitutionally-protected protest activity, the presence of Braszczok in these various capacities should give us pause given the likelihood of increasing resistance to the pillager/looter state now firmly in the pocket of our banker overlords. What is to prevent these secret agents from simultaneously undermining legitimate protest while tolerating or even protecting and fortifying violent fringe groups that can be turned to convenient use by their bosses? Or do we believe the police to be a neutral force committed to protecting all citizens equally?

We need look no further than the Golden Dawn phenomenon in Greece to see how a society on the verge of complete collapse can open an enormous wedge to racist hate groups or even death squads, and there is plenty of historical precedent to suspect deep penetration by such groups into the security apparatus where they frequently find ideological sympathizers (Colombia and Northern Ireland come to mind).

We should hope and demand that our district attorneys prosecute these crimes fully and impartially and refuse to be intimidated by the many powerful friends of active-duty cops. Letting them off the hook after a driver out with his wife and minding his own business was dragged from his vehicle and beaten on the street would be yet another chilling precedent.

Wacko-wing may get what it wants

(Washington, D.C.) – I wandered down Pennsylvania Avenue Thursday afternoon amidst the abandoned government buildings and forlorn lunch shops just in time to see Obama’s motorcade roar down the concourse in a rather overblown display of security given that hardly anyone was about. It was an apt metaphor for the state of affairs among our governing class—lots of pomp for the benefit of an audience that can’t afford seats.

The attitudes of my acquaintances there range from disgusted to cautiously optimistic, the latter based on the sanguine conviction that Obama ‘has the high ground’. Indeed he does and has always had since his massive victory in 2008. But will he use it? History is quite definitive on that point: no. A novel reversal could be in the offing, but we should be prepared to expect another partial cave-in to Obama’s enemies’ subversive blackmail. I hope, but do not expect, to be wrong.

I am often reminded during both this and many other current debates of the Teabagger/anti-immigrants’ monotonous refrain that the many Mexicans entering visa-less from the south to take up jobs and residence in Alabama and South Carolina are engaged in lawless behavior. ‘What part of illegal don’t you understand?’ was a favorite placard at their indignant rallies. And yet when laws are meant to reflect the will of the majority and are duly passed, enacted and upheld by our three branches of government, all such discussions fly out the window. These people have no interest in the rule of law or the will of the majority.

Obama’s easily intimidated team never wields this particular cudgel to whack back at the profoundly autocratic forces arrayed against him. There seem to be no set rules that the GOP and their wacko-wing cannot breach with imperious glee after loudly claiming to defend constitutional purity. Republican-style health insurance forced down the collective throat? Disavow it and move the goalposts. Elections being lost? Change the qualifications for voting and purge the lists. Obama’s program favored over Romney’s? Stop the operations of government entirely.

Nonetheless and despite massive evidence that no deals can ever satisfy the howling wolves of white Southern reaction, Obama allows himself to be maneuvered into ‘negotiations’ over permission to occupy the presidency with no guarantee that the terms of said permission will remain in force tomorrow. After the Repubs’ clever pounding away at alleged White House obstinacy in refusing to cut deals with the debt-ceiling gun held at all our heads, Obama now hosts the leaders of this neo-secessionist movement and emerges with half a smiley-face.

The worst possible outcome is perhaps the most likely: an eventual deal that will be erected on the backs of the most vulnerable, involving the first nicks and cuts at Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, thereby opening the door to many more with the principle well and firmly established by the party of FDR. Obama has stated openly that he seeks this massive betrayal of the New Deal legacy and his own constituency, and only bullheaded antagonism from people who loathe him has prevented him from getting it. Yet his defenders attribute all blame to the bad-guy loonies and refuse to lay any blame at his feet.

How would a more brutal and determined politician (I hate to admit that Hillary Clinton comes to mind) have reacted to this snotty GOP refusal to play by any rules that do not result in them winning? For starters, I cannot imagine that this hypothetical president would have promptly handed over, as Obama did, all threat of unilateral action to defend the ‘full faith and credit’ clause of the Constitution, thereby giving away a powerful tool in the midst of the fight. How interesting would it be to see Obama order government payments to continue (through a half-dozen suggested tactics) in defiance of congressional meddling.

My interlocutors in Washington said that that would trigger an impeachment proceeding from the lower house, but who’s to say that we won’t be seeing one sooner or later anyway? Why not stage a bare-knuckles fight over something worth defending? And in any case, who would win such a showdown? Unfortunately, we’ll never know because the guy in charge hasn’t got a confrontational bone in his body when it comes to his mortal enemies down the street. The only people he’s really willing to go after are the whistleblowers, Yemeni tribespeople and senior citizens trying to avoid a cat-food lunch. That is, us.

Beyond the Bloomberg years

Here in New York there has been a lot of looking back over the 12 Bloomberg years lately as his regime enters its final months. It’s interesting to hear all the perspectives and to note that everyone, without a single exception that comes to mind, has mixed feelings about the guy.

In addition, we can now grasp the political zeitgeist a bit more clearly after the wacky mayoral primary just concluded. It’s a tale of elite disconnect and the usual cluelessness of the powerful.

Bloomberg himself contributed to the reflections with a long interview in New York magazine, the gossipy celebrity-driven weekly that provides far more detail on the rich and famous than anyone should confess to wanting. In it, he outlines why his three terms in office were the best thing that ever happened to the city and also that he’s really great, what, are you stupid or something?

On the positive side of the ledger is the fact that Bloomberg handled the crisis atmosphere of the early years fairly well. He came into office amidst the collective trauma around 9/11 very fresh and with half the city limping back to some sort of normalcy. The local economy could have been in serious long-term trouble given the fears of a repeat attack. It wasn’t a moment for a guy with low self-esteem.

His signature public health initiatives ranged from wildly successful (smoke-free public spaces) to respectable failures (banning super-sized sodas and congestion pricing, i.e., taxing cars at rush hour). His approach is fully in the spirit of the disturbingly dictatorial public health tradition—do it because I said so because it’s good for you. It’s hard to imagine getting cigarettes out of restaurants any other way, and the precedent has been copied all over the world. But while Bloomberg always noticed that people were put off by this approach, he never expressed the slightest understanding for their resistance. It was a pattern repeated in all aspects of his tenure, and we’re now living through the reaction.

For example, policing practices in New York are and have been appalling, and here too Bloomberg just bulldozes forward with his buddy Commissioner Kelly, insisting that Keeping Us Safe justifies any abuse they decide is necessary. It’s the same mentality at work, except that here we’re not dealing with a kid’s 64-ounce Dr Pepper, but rather that same kid’s physical wellbeing and survival. NYPD’s notorious permanent ‘stop & frisk’ dragnets are probably the number one reason that Bill de Blasio will be our next mayor instead of Christine Quinn, and neither Quinn nor Bloomberg ever fully grasped how pissed off people are over it.

Quinn, the current City Council president, was the heavy favorite to succeed Bloomberg, and it’s still a bit amazing that her early commanding lead collapsed so precipitously, landing her in a distant third place in the Democratic primary. As several commentators have pointed out, she played up her technical knowledge, her grasp of city issues and her reasonableness, which policy nerds like me respected. But that same careful approach buried her. It never occurred to her to take the TV cameras and go visit the family of Ramarley Graham, the unarmed 19-year-old whom the cops followed into his Bronx bathroom and shot dead in front of his grandmother. If she had made that call, Kelly would have had a cow, and Quinn might be mayor.

Meanwhile, de Blasio denounced the rich, made a scene at the closing of a Brooklyn hospital, and showed off his biracial family. It was cheap, theatrical and very effective, which suggests that under the glossy surface that Bloomberg is so proud of, with the new buildings going up everywhere and the improvements in bike lanes, a lot of people are not doing well and are not happy about it. We’re so used to having Bloomberg around as mayor (‘mayor-for-life’ is one of his common nicknames) that it will take some adjustment to start hearing from the relatively unknown de Blasio. The tabloids already have their knives sharpened to feast on him, and the cops are going to be more surly and resentful than at any time since the Dinkins years. Should be interesting.

Flying bullets

The woman who led D.C. cops on a wild chase through downtown Washington apparently was troubled by mental health issues. I know it’s tricky to second-guess police procedures, but we have plenty of precedent in our modern world for seeing that cops reach for the firearms far too quickly before knowing if there is a real danger to them or others.

I will be interested to see if there is any opportunity for questioning whether an unarmed woman carrying an infant in her car really should have been the target of a volley of bullets and whether that was the only proper response to this incident. Raising the question does not mean pre-judging the security forces’ response, but not raising it does. We should insist that such episodes are carefully reconstructed to learn lessons about what level of force is required and to prevent future cases from bringing harm to bystanders, which luckily did not occur this time but often does. (Recall our own Empire State Building shooting last year in which police bullets injured passers-by.)

More likely, no one will dare raise such questions about police action because they were protecting Government Officials from "terrorism".

New Schneiderman suit proves old Schneiderman settlement was phony all along

New York State’s turncoat attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, is gearing up to sue Wells Fargo for mortgage-related fraud, just over a year after one Eric Schneiderman settled with Wells Fargo on mortgage-related fraud based on WF’s promise to be good. What is wrong with this picture?

Here’s the lead paragraph from the NY Times article:

Fielding complaints from borrowers struggling to save their homes, New York’s top prosecutor is preparing a lawsuit against Wells Fargo, accusing the bank, the nation’s largest home lender, of flouting the terms of a multi-billion-dollar settlement aimed at stanching foreclosure abuses.

What the article never asks, of Schneiderman or itself, is how he can justify in retorspect his decision to let the bank off the hook through the so-called 49-state agreement, given the excellent chances that it and others would continue with the rip-offs.

Schneiderman was sitting with a very powerful hand of cards as New York State A-G because he could easily have prosecuted the hustler banks for both civil and criminal penalties, forcing a much needed shake-up in their corporate leadership and probably putting a few of them behind bars—a bracing remedy for fraud that is sadly lacking in the post-collapse scenario.

Instead, he caved to pressure from the White House and in exchange got a cool seat next to Michelle at the state of the union address and appointment to head a phony mortgage fraud investigative commission that has no staff and no offices. In short, he sold out the public interest for personal ambition. Oh, for an Eliot Spitzer when we need one.

The package sold to us at that time was that the banks would come up with a pot of money that sounded like a lot (but which many commentators immediately pointed out was in reality a lot less because it was calculated based on things the banks would do anyway or losses that others would shoulder). In addition, the banks—which, let us briefly recall, had caused the entire world economy to collapse through their reckless gambling—would promise to clean up their act and stop scamming people out of their homes.

As plenty of knowledgeable people pointed out at the time, the banks had very little incentive to do any such thing because behaving was costly while fraud continued to be profitable. Here is what one commentator wrote in April, 2012:

There has been a great deal of discussion of the many deficiencies of the mortgage settlement, but its biggest has gone pretty much unnoticed. It isn’t just that the settlement gives the banks a close to free pass for past predatory, illegal conduct, but it also has such lax servicing standards and weak enforcement provisions so as to give the banks license to carry on with servicing abuses.

[Yves Smith commenting on an analysis by Abigail Field]

And since Schneiderman (and Obama) were failing to extract any real penalties from the banks, the temptation was enormous for them to maintain business as usual—which they then did, as confirmed by the upcoming Wells Fargo lawsuit.

What was that bad behavior exactly? Well, at the Times points out, a lot of it involves pretending to give distressed homeowners loan modifications, but instead repeatedly ‘losing’ the relevant documents that they submit time and again, failing to inform them of the missing papers, charging them late fees, and eventually moving to foreclose on them, which is far more profitable than helping them keep their payments current. Here’s what the article says was included in the original settlement agreement that Schneiderman says Wells Fargo broke:

The settlement guidelines include requirements that banks provide homeowners with a single point of contact and notify borrowers of missing documentation within five days.

Wow, imagine that: banks had to promise in writing not to give people trying to pay their mortage the run-around and to establish an actual person responsible for their entire file, instead of diverting them to a call center in Bangladesh as they fight to avoid eviction. And even that was too much for the financier mafia.

It will be interesting to see if Schneiderman has figured out the Charlie Brown-Lucy game Wells is playing with him or whether he will ‘settle’ yet again, extract a desultory fine and let the banksters get right back in the game of torturing homeowners further for a few extra bucks.

Obamacare a boost for people with HIV

One group that is particularly eager for Obamacare to get underway is people living with HIV and AIDS.

According to HHS data, only some 13 percent of people with HIV are privately insured, and 24 percent have no coverage at all. One of the Catch-22s that has arisen with the advent of effective medication for HIV is that people face barriers to obtaining care from qualified providers because they are not “sick enough” for disability or poor enough for Medicaid and are simultaneously barred from insurance due to restrictions for those with pre-existing conditions.

Obamacare opens up avenues for them to be covered during the period, which can last decades, in which they are healthy enough to work and live normal lives. This should end the perverse incentive many face to become ‘professional patients’ by reducing their income to zero and essentially becoming wards of the state given that many care programs exist for the indigent.

‘It will prolong life potentially by decades for literally hundreds of thousands of persons’, said the National Minority AIDS Council in its brief in support of Obamacare to the Supreme Court.

Speech-making then and now

I’ve just finished reading Livy on the Romans’ war with Hannibal, including his accounts of the speeches by Roman or enemy commanders to their troops or to each other or those by supplicants addressing the Senate on behalf of their defeated cities. What’s striking is how similar these speeches are to the UN oratory recorded yesterday. In each case, Livy’s speakers line up careful arguments to buttress their respective cases, edit history shamelessly, trumpet their own good intentions and boast about representing civilization and decency, denounce the perfidy of their counterparts, and absolutely never admit to having nasty ulterior motives, such as imperial conquest, plunder and long-term tribute—which are what’s really behind most of the conflicts.

Now let’s examine Iranian president Hassan Rouhani’s speech side by side with Obama’s. The equivalent of modern Iran back in the days that Livy describes (cerca 200 BCE) would be a minor regional power on the outskirts of what was quickly becoming the Roman Empire, something like Bithynia in present-day Turkey or a redoubt in Gaul still beyond the reach of Julius Caesar (who showed up 150 years later). It would be a polity with long-standing hostility to Roman encroachment but relatively vulnerable and nervous about its neighbors, most of whom would love to subdue them.

Rouhani, like the Bithynian kings, knows that he is in a weak position militarily and wants to avoid war. But he also wants not to cede too much nor accept Roman domination. His discourse, then, includes glowing descriptions of humanity’s search and hope for peace in an atmosphere of, as he repeats, ‘fear’. There are many observable dangers he enumerates (and recall that his audience is the leadership of the entire world): fear of war, of ‘deadly confrontation’, of poverty, of resource destruction and, of course, fear of ‘neglect of morality’. He praises dialogue over conflict, moderation over extremism, and celebrates his own country as a cozy model of democracy, wisely omitting any mention of the election before his own, which probably was won by a candidate unacceptable to the clerical oligarchy.

Nonetheless, it’s an effectively soothing speech in which Rouhani draws in all countries as sharing in the ‘vulnerability’ that the current state of international relations has created. He calls it a ‘global and indivisible phenomenon’, which is a way of saying, ‘Don’t think an attack on us will be a free ride for everyone else’.

Rouhani, as the weaker player, encourages his listeners to value equality among nations and eschew the use of force:

At this sensitive juncture in the history of global relations, the age of zero-sum games is over, even though a few actors still tend to rely on archaic and deeply ineffective ways and means to preserve their old superiority and domination. Militarism and the recourse to violent and military means to subjugate others are failed examples of the perpetuation of old ways in new circumstances. . . . there is no guarantee that the era of quiet among big powers will remain immune from such violent discourses, practices and actions. The catastrophic impact of violent and extremist narratives should not – in fact, must not – be underestimated.

In a section that could be extracted directly from Livy, Rouhani complains that the idea of a ‘civilized center and uncivilized peripheries’ is discriminatory and propagandistic and provides cover for the inflation of the ‘Iranian threat’, which he says,

. . . has been employed as an excuse to justify a long catalogue of crimes and catastrophic practices over the past three decades. The arming of the Saddam Hussein regime with chemical weapons and supporting the Taliban and Al-Qaida are just two examples of such catastrophes.

Yeah, how about those two examples? Kinda hard to deny that they were not good outcomes, even for the ‘civilized’ central power. The far-flung kingdoms that would eventually fall under the grip of Rome argued in a similar vein—not that it preserved their freedom.

Rouhani winds up his discourse with an expression of support for the ‘ballot box’ as the only way to resolve conflicts and a reminder that military threats against Iran have been a constant. He even signs off with a reference to the Christian psalms and the Torah in a nod to ‘tolerance’, one of his favorite themes throughout. (No atheists, however.)

Now, let’s look at Obama’s perorations, which lasted over twice as long (5500 words v/s 2600 by Rouhani—the man is long-winded). He immediately starts the discussion on a different footing and uses a completely different principle: not the equality of nations nor the need to find peaceful resolution of conflicts, but how to ‘enforce rules of behavior’. We’ll hear more about ‘enforcement’ later.

First, however, Obama has to dispatch some uncomfortable details, the quicker the better. So we hear about the winding down of America’s most recent wars (no mention of UN permission to wage them, BTW), the ‘limited’ use of drones that we’re now making sure only hit bad meanies (‘near certainty of no civilian casualties’), and yet another promise to close Guantánamo.

Obama also said he’s ‘begun to review’ how snooping on people like Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff should be handled in the future—a virtual confession that only the Snowden revelations would have changed that habit.

With those embarassments out of the way, Obama can get back to more comfortable territory: Syria. This situation permits him, as the representative of the military power, to argue that peaceful conflict resolution is all well and good, but it can’t work all the time. Ergo, sometimes we are just simply forced to use all these weapons—but for strictly civilizing and humanitarian purposes.

This rhetorical sleight of hand relies heavily on the standard cant usage of the term ‘international community’, as if there were such a thing. This phrase pops up when the hegemonic power wants to pretend not to be acting in its own naked self-interest but as part of a large coalition of right-minded folks. At the sound of this phrase, put your wallet in a locked drawer and place your head between your knees.

Obama quickly insists that ‘the international community’ must now act rather than ‘standing callously by’ when children are gassed to death. Killjoy historians may recall that this was not U.S. policy when Saddam Hussein used gas against Iranian troops and Kurdish civilians—but he was our guy then and ‘standing callously by’ was therefore okay. When the imperial power has to strike, Livy-like historians will always step up to provide the rhetorical juice.

So now we are back to the enforcement that Obama mentioned in his first paragraph: the Syrians are official bad guys, so someone has to act. To the surprise of all, Obama volunteers America to be that someone.

What follows is the most disingenuous section of Obama’s speech.

. . . my preference has always been a diplomatic resolution to this issue. And in the past several weeks, the United States, Russia and our allies have reached an agreement to place Syria's chemical weapons under international control and then to destroy them.

Blocked by lack of support for military action, Obama is now reduced to insisting that the Assad regime has to go one way or another. The rest of the speech, covering two topics for another 3000 words, quickly loses any remaining credibility as it pretends to be about some fantastical Israeli-Palestinian deal that no one in that room could possibly have taken seriously, including Obama himself. That makes his comments about Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions rather hard to take seriously as well.

Obama winds up at long last with a quick reiteration of his enforcement principle, i.e., ‘meaningful sanctions for those who break the rules’, not including us (see, Invasion of Iraq). Then there’s that old ‘international community’ again, which in certain moments, may ‘need to acknowledge that the multilateral use of military force may be required to prevent the very worst from occurring.’

Or as Scipio Africanus might have said, ‘We had to destroy Carthage in order to save it’.