Jimmy Carter On America’s Lack Of Functioning Democracy

The Article: Jimmy Carter May Actually Be Right This Time in Forbes.

The Text: Former President Jimmy Carter, who in certain circles is often accused of being downright anti-American – not to mention anti-Israel – told a gathering of the Atlantic Bridge in Atlanta this week that the United States no longer has a functioning democracy. I’m sure Republicans hearing the news were aghast at the remark and his additional comments defending NSA leaker and traitor Edward Snowden stating he is providing everyone with “beneficial” information and not in the least the criminal some would suggest.

Carter routinely demonstrates through his public comments why his was a failed Presidency. To this very day, he shows how outside of the mainstream he is on a range of issues. Sounds like another Nobel Prize winner I hear opining out there, but I digress.

I could very easily criticize Carter for his comments as I have little use for activist former Presidents who make a living criticizing the nation they once were given the honor to serve. But in this instance, I think Carter is making a point that is important for all of us. Our democratic process is buckling. Our Republic is weakening. Contrary to Carter’s point, though it’s not the NSA’s fault or that of the U.S. intelligence community. It’s also not the fault of a government desperately trying to balance fighting enemies both foreign and domestic who are employing rapidly-changing technology to perfect their craft. For the conservatives out there, it’s not the fault of Obamacare or immigration proposals or the buttressing by Progressives of the entitlement state.

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2013: A Year Of Political And Weather-Related Extremes

The Article: More Heat, Drought and Floods in 2013 by Christa Marshall in The Scientific American.

The Text: Global average temperatures in June were the fifth highest on record, as above-average heat conditions continued a multidecade streak, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported yesterday.

June marked the 340th consecutive month — a span of time more than 28 years — that global temperatures surged above the 20th century average, according to the agency.

“The last below-average June temperature was June 1976 and the last below-average temperature for any month was February 1985,” NOAA said in a release.

At the same time, it is too early to determine whether the stifling heat wave bringing misery to much of the eastern United States for the past week is unusual.

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Capitalism’s Greatest Threat Is One Republicans Ignore

The Article: The Huge Threat to Capitalism That Republicans Are Ignoring by Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic.

The Text: Over the weekend, the New York Times published a jaw-dropping story about how Wall Street investment banks are slyly manipulating commodities markets to make billions at the expense of consumers.

Is that description too abstract? Here’s the lead example:

Hundreds of millions of times a day, thirsty Americans open a can of soda, beer or juice. And every time they do it, they pay a fraction of a penny more because of a shrewd maneuver by Goldman Sachs and other financial players that ultimately costs consumers billions of dollars.

The story of how this works begins in 27 industrial warehouses in the Detroit area where a Goldman subsidiary stores customers’ aluminum. Each day, a fleet of trucks shuffles 1,500-pound bars of the metal among the warehouses. Two or three times a day, sometimes more, the drivers make the same circuits. They load in one warehouse. They unload in another. And then they do it again.This industrial dance has been choreographed by Goldman to exploit pricing regulations set up by an overseas commodities exchange, an investigation by The New York Times has found. The back-and-forth lengthens the storage time. And that adds many millions a year to the coffers of Goldman, which owns the warehouses and charges rent to store the metal. It also increases prices paid by manufacturers and consumers across the country. Tyler Clay, a forklift driver who worked at the Goldman warehouses until early this year, called the process “a merry-go-round of metal.”

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The Republican Congress Is Testing A New Form Of Radicalism

The Article: Anarchists of the House by Jonathan Chait in New York Magazine.

The Text: A few months ago, Eric Cantor was ready to bring his latest brainchild, the “Helping Sick Americans Now” bill, to the House floor. The move was pure Cantor—a smarmy, ultrapartisan ploy. The bill proposed to eliminate funds the Obama administration needs to set up and run the health-care exchanges that are the central mechanism in the health-care law, but then Cantor’s bill would use those funds to help a handful of sick people get health insurance. There was no chance this, or anything like it, would be signed into law, as Obama obviously would not agree to tear down a program to insure millions of Americans in return for insuring a tiny fraction of that number. It was a message vote whose purpose was “embarrassing Obamacare,” as one conservative activist gloated, by forcing Obama to deny immediate aide for the uninsured. As a soulless exercise in disingenuous spin, it was well conceived.

It failed, however, because a crucial faction of ultraconservative House Republicans threatened to vote against it. The trouble was that Cantor’s bill purported to “fix” Obamacare rather than eliminate it. “Why the hell do we want to fix it?” complained conservative pundit Erick Erickson. “We should want to repeal it.” Since they have already voted 37 times to repeal Obama­care, one might think that the House Republicans’ appraisal of the law’s general merits had been made sufficiently clear. But just the pretense of working to improve the law, even while actually crippling it, offended the right. In the face of unmoved conservative opposition, Cantor had to pull his pet bill from the floor. It wound up embarrassing the House Republicans, not Obama­care.

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Don’t Like School? Move To Utah!

The Article: Utah lawmaker calls for an end to compulsory education by David Edwards in The Raw Story.

The Text: A Republican lawmaker in Utah is calling on his state to put an end to the requirement that children go to school.

On Tuesday, Deseret News flagged a Friday article posted to state Sen. Aaron Osmond’s blog where he says that Utah “should take a close look at repealing compulsory education.”

Osmond argues that requiring children to attend school has caused some parents to “completely disengage themselves from their obligation to oversee and ensure the successful education of their children.”

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