Detroit Has Just Begun To Fight
Braced to Remake Itself, Detroit First Awaits Challenges to Bankruptcy Eligibility [NY Times]: "Before Detroit can start remaking itself in bankruptcy court, there is a basic question that stands in its way: Does it even qualify? That might seem like an odd notion in a place wrestling with an estimated $18 billion debt. But unions, creditors and retirees are expected to file formal objections to Detroit’s eligibility for bankruptcy protection before a Monday deadline, the opening of a legal fight over whether the largest municipal bankruptcy in the nation’s history should proceed."
Politico's Hadas Gold explains why Detroit is the right's perfect piñata: "In one place, conservative pundits have found a symbol of everything they charge is wrong with the left’s policies. Welcome to Detroit - the latest bull’s eye for commentators on the right who have zeroed in on what they see as the three evils of liberalism, neatly condensed within city limits: Unions run amok pillaging the city’s coffers; corrupt Democratic politicians with no Republican in power since the 1960s; and a failed big-government welfare state."
Grace Lee Boggs declares that Detroit has just begun to fight: "I‘ve been a Detroiter for 60 years and this is the first time in my experience that so many different organizations with different ideologies and personalities have recognized that the time has come when we must join together to resist and defeat the growing counter-revolution. This counter-revolution is very unprincipled, very dangerous and taking many forms, Therefore its defeat will take a lot of cooperation, courage, and principled struggle. Rooted in race, and the search for the American Dream, it began at the end of World War II when white people moved to the suburbs to escape blacks in cities like Detroit where whites were becoming the minority. Taking with them their schools, their businesses and their taxes, they impoverished the cities and attracted the attention and money of extreme right-wingers like the Koch brothers."
Sequester Still Stings
Head Start eliminated services to 57,000 children in U.S. as a result of sequester [Washington Post]:"Head Start programs across the country eliminated services for 57,000 children in the coming school year to balance budgets diminished by the federal sequester, cutting 1.3 million days from Head Start center calendars and laying off or reducing pay for more than 18,000 employees, according to federal government data scheduled for release Monday."
U.S. Workers Are Grounded by Deep Cuts [NY Times]: "Geological visits to monitor volcanoes in Alaska have been scaled back. The defense secretary is traveling to Afghanistan two times a year instead of the usual four. For the first time in nearly three decades, NASA pulled out of the National Space Symposium, in Colorado Springs, even though representatives from France, Germany and China all made the trip. Five months after gridlock in Washington triggered the deep spending cuts known as sequestration, much of the United States government is grounded."
GOP v. Obamacare
Obama to GOP: Health insurance is now a 'right.' Is he right? [CS Monitor]: "In a forceful defense of government-supported healthcare, President Obama on Saturday called health insurance a fundamental 'right' that Republicans are trying to deny the American family. The debate about whether health insurance is a right, or even a privilege, has been going on for decades. Mr. Obama, in fact, used the word during the 2008 presidential debates, and has made similar arguments hence."
Media Matters' Oliver Willis catches Grover Norquist pretending Republicans haven't fought health care reform implementation: "Conservative activist Grover Norquist falsely claimed that 'nobody is keeping anybody out' of the Affordable Care Act and that 'the idea that Republicans have not been trying to help is wrong.' Norquist's rhetoric ignores Republican efforts to delay implementation of the program, attempts to repeal the law, and activist campaigns discouraging enrollment. In fact, Republicans and conservatives have made multiple attempts to discourage adoption of the program by citizens."
Paul Krugman says the GOP's biggest problem with Obamacare is that it's going to work: "I guess that after all the years of vilification it was predictable that Republican leaders would still fail to understand the principles behind health reform and that this would hamper their ability to craft an effective political response as the reform’s implementation draws near. But their rudest shock is yet to come. You see, this thing isn’t going to be the often-predicted 'train wreck.' On the contrary, it’s going to work. ...This achievement will represent a huge defeat for the conservative agenda of weakening the safety net. And Republicans who deluded their supporters into believing that none of this would happen will probably pay a large personal price. But as I said, they have nobody but themselves to blame."
Debating the GOP's Future
The GOP’s 2016 debate mantra: Less is more [Washington Post]: "The Republican National Committee’s decision to exclude CNN and NBC from the 2016 primary debate process is about Hillary Rodham Clinton, right? Only partly. The more important takeaway from the whole saga is that party leaders know they desperately need to limit the number of debates in 2016. And the step the committee took Friday allows the national party tighten its grip over a process that, in the eyes of many Republicans, cost the GOP in 2012. Just ask RNC Chairman Reince Priebus. 'The fact of the matter is I’ve got to protect this party and our nominees. We don’t want a whole lot of 23 debate rounds like we’ve had before,' Priebus said Sunday on ABC’s 'This Week With George Stephanopoulos.'"
Zeke Miller explains why Iowa could decide the future of the GOP: "If you want to see the battle for the future of the Republican Party, look no further than the first state on the 2016 nominating calendar. Iowa has become a proving ground for the Republican Party’s various ideological wings. As Chris Christie and Rand Paul duke it out on foreign policy, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz battle over immigration reform. It’s the struggle in the state that will in many ways shape the future of the GOP. Indeed, the fight for the heart and soul of the Republican Party in Iowa is in many ways a proxy for the national party’s struggle for its identity. In particular, the state has become a test case for how the Republican Party incorporates a growing libertarian contingent."
The Daily Beast's Myra Adams asks if Republicans can win 270 electoral votes in 2016 ... or ever: "There is no doubt that Senator [Rand] Paul is gaining traction among the conservative Republican base—for whenever two or more conservatives are gathered together in His name (Ronald Reagan, that is) Paul is always mentioned as someone who could lead the charge to take back the White House. Also, let me state that the concept of nominating someone more conservative than ever in 2016 is a foregone conclusion among the Republican base. ...As I continue to ask the question 'What Republican can win 270 electoral votes in 2016?' there are no good answers, because ... three obstacles serve as cement barriers blocking the GOP from the White House driveway."
Detained in Britain
Britain Detains the Partner of a Reporter Tied to Leaks [NY Times]: "The partner of Glenn Greenwald, the journalist for The Guardian who has been publishing information leaked by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden, was detained for nine hours by the British authorities under a counterterrorism law while on a stop in London’s Heathrow Airport during a trip from Germany to Brazil, Mr. Greenwald said Sunday. Mr. Greenwald’s partner, David Michael Miranda, 28, is a citizen of Brazil. He had spent the previous week in Berlin visiting Laura Poitras, a documentary filmmaker who has also been helping to disseminate Mr. Snowden’s leaks, to assist Mr. Greenwald. The Guardian had paid for the trip, Mr. Greenwald said, and Mr. Miranda was on his way home to Rio de Janeiro."
Glenn Greenwald calls his partner's detainment "a failed attempt at intimidation": "If the UK and US governments believe that tactics like this are going to deter or intimidate us in any way from continuing to report aggressively on what these documents reveal, they are beyond deluded. If anything, it will have only the opposite effect: to embolden us even further. Beyond that, every time the US and UK governments show their true character to the world - when they prevent the Bolivian President's plane from flying safely home, when they threaten journalists with prosecution, when they engage in behavior like what they did today - all they do is helpfully underscore why it's so dangerous to allow them to exercise vast, unchecked spying power in the dark."
