NYT says “It’s Torture!”

The NYT today published an obituary for a deceased American fighter pilot who was captured by the Chinese:

Harold E. Fischer Jr., an American Flier Tortured in a Chinese Prison, Dies at 83... From April 1953 through May 1955, Colonel Fischer — then an Air Force captain — was held at a prison outside Mukden, Manchuria. For most of that time, he was kept in a dark, damp cell with no bed and no opening except a slot in the door through which a bowl of food could be pushed. Much of the time he was handcuffed. Hour after hour, a high-frequency whistle pierced the air. [...] Under duress, Captain Fischer had falsely confessed to participating in germ warfare.
So - when the Chinese do it it's torture. When the US do it it's "harsh interrogation". We expect more consistency of our major news organizations. We expect more of our own government. It's time to call for a special prosecutor, Mr. Attorney General. [via Glenn Greenwald, and Andrew Sullivan]

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In honor of Maine, and Gay Marriage

This week marks another turning point in gay rights (go Maine, and we're hoping New Hampshire's Governor signs, too). A little reminder that there is still a lot of opposition from certain quarters, but with friends like John Stewart I'm certain things will continue to work out!

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The GOP are for Healthcare reform! Honest!

Frank Lutz, in yet another sterling example of Republican doublespeak, calls on the GOP to 'support Healthcare Reform". Only one problem with that statement - the GOP has absolutely no proposals to reform healthcare. Not one! The only perspective he offers is how to sound like you are for reform, yet offer no proposal of your own. From the article:

“You simply MUST be vocally and passionately on the side of REFORM,” Luntz advises in a confidential 26-page report obtained from Capitol Hill Republicans. “The status quo is no longer acceptable. If the dynamic becomes ‘President Obama is on the side of reform and Republicans are against it,’ then the battle is lost and every word in this document is useless. “Republicans must be for the right kind of reform that protects the quality of healthcare for all Americans. And you must establish your support of reform early in your presentation.” Instead, Luntz says Republicans should warn against a “Washington takeover” of health care, and insist that patients would have to “stand in line” with “Washington bureaucrats in charge of healthcare.”
That would be instead of standing in line waiting for a 'for profit' bureaucracy to determine your fate. As it currently stands, the current proposals are too limited, since none of the current proposals on the table include single-payer, as used in most of the developed world. In fact, at recent senate hearings physician activists in favor of single payer were removed from the chamber and arrested for interrupting the proceedings, while the committee went on to hear solely from industry lobbyists in favor of industry-based solutions. [via Politico]

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The myth of the American Elite

I came across a wonderful post at firedoglake today, a few days after it posted. Dean Baker, writing about the Fiat-Chrysler merger, highlights the growing disparity between so called 'knowledge workers' and the blue-collar manufacturers who have so often been at the sharp end of outsourcing. As he states

The media coverage of the auto bailouts has focused on the need for union autoworkers to take big pay cuts, causing them to once again miss the real story. The Fiat-Chrysler deal shows that the pay problem is at the top, not the bottom. At the end of the day, the new Chrysler is still likely to be producing most of its cars in the United States. What the new company will be getting from abroad is technology and top management. [...] While this story of the US becoming a high skills center in the world economy may have been comforting to the elites, and was widely promoted by economists and the news media, there was never much truth to it. Highly skilled professionals did well in recent decades not because they succeeded in international competition, but rather because they were largely sheltered from it.
Over the past ten years those elites have gained in accelerating salaries and in a lower tax burden (see also my earlier post on the rich/poor tax divide) while the blue collar workers wages have largely stagnated, and fallen behind in real terms. As Baker says
If we compare wages for assembly-line workers in Europe and the United States, there would not be much difference between the pay of UAW members and their counterparts in Europe. However, there would be a very large difference between the multi-million dollar pay packages of the top executives at the US companies and their European counterparts. The pay gaps persist among the more highly paid engineers and management personnel.
The remaining differences are that European workers do not need to reserve a significant portion of their weekly wage to cover healthcare costs, that they receive many more vacation days (between four and eight weeks for most Europeans), and that their supervisors, engineers and management are not a world apart in terms of salaries, benefits, and lifestyles.

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Growing opposition to Obama’s Tax Haven clampdown

Opposition to President Obama's plans to close the fiscal loophole of Tax Haven's is under increasing pressure from business, lobbyists, and the media. You can be sure many Senators and Congressmen, worried about their campaign contributions in the run up to 2010, will be conveying this sense of alarm to the President. Bloomberg ran with a story this morning, quoting some very influential Democrats including Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, Representative Joseph Crowley, a Democrat on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, and Senator Barbara Boxer. This latest attack follows a lot of negative, primarily republican generated, commentary since last Monday, including the expected outrage from the Republican caucus and their media friends (particularly Fox). One of the most telling, however, was a seemingly innocent comment from CNBC's Erin Burnett, during an interview on Morning Joe last week. She basically said that 'avoiding taxes' is a perfectly acceptable and legal practice and is basically the fault of our 35% corporate tax rate. To Ms Burnett, and all of the other people who think that tax avoidance is perfectly acceptable, I'll share another quote that I discovered while following this story - posted on a discussion thread

"My Lords, of recent years much ingenuity has been expended in certain quarters in attempting to devise methods of disposition of income by which those who were prepared to adopt them might enjoy the benefits of residence within this country while receiving the equivalent of such income without sharing in the appropriate burden of British taxation. Judicial dicta may be cited which may point out that, however elaborate and artificial such methods may be, those who adopt them are "entitled" to do so. There is, of course, no doubt they are within their legal rights, but that is no reason why their effort, or those of the professional gentlemen who assist them in the matter, should be regarded as a commendable exercise of ingenuity or as a discharge of the duties of good citizenship."

Lord Simon, L.C., Latilla v Inland Revenue Commissioners (1943)
Video and more details after the fold

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