The Debt

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The birther movement will not be silenced - even in the face of facts

The birther movement: immune to facts?

By Alan Silverleib, CNN

April 28, 2011 -- Updated 1534 GMT (2334 HKT)

(CNN) -- Can the "birthers" ever be convinced that Barack Obama was born in America and is eligible to serve as president?

Probably not, according to one prominent psychology professor and other political observers.
Since Obama launched his bid for the White House, a sizable minority of Americans has expressed strong doubts about whether he was actually born in the United States. Over the past few years, the allegation that he was born overseas -- in Kenya or perhaps Indonesia -- has taken on a life of its own, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary.

A recent CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll showed that roughly 25% of Americans -- including over four in 10 Republicans -- believe Obama was definitely or probably not born in the United States.
Earlier this week, CNN released the results of its own investigation into the controversy. Documents and statements from numerous public officials and childhood friends made clear that the president was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961.

On Wednesday, Obama himself addressed the issue, pleading for an end to the distractions of "sideshows" and "carnival barkers."

 

The president yielded to demands from his critics that he release his original long-form birth certificate, filing a special legal request with Hawaiian authorities to release a document that is no longer used for official purposes and ordinarily remains buried in the basement archives of the state health department.

Obama's 2008 release of the more common "live birth certification" -- a short computer-generated form typically used for documentation purposes -- did little to silence the chorus of skeptics.
It remains to be seen whether Wednesday's release will be received any differently. But the early reaction wasn't exactly positive.

One of the main websites pushing the birther claims -- birthers.org -- declared that "forgery or not, now we can debate the true meaning of a natural born citizen."

The U.S. Constitution says only "natural born" citizens can become president -- a vague clause that some members of the birther movement contend disqualifies Obama if he was born outside the United States.
Joseph Farah, editor-in-chief of the conservative website WorldNetDaily.com, said that "we know (Obama's) father was a Kenyan citizen, and that he would therefore confer Kenyan or U.K. citizenship on his son, which would at best make him a dual citizen."

Dual citizenship, Farah asserted, "is not what the Founders had in mind when they coined the phrase 'natural born citizen.'"

Sharon Guthrie, the legislative director for a Texas state representative backing a bill requiring proof of citizenship for presidential ballot access, told the website Slate.com that she was still suspicious.

"What they produced today ... still says certificate of live birth across the top," she said. "We want to see a 'birth certificate.' ... The one that we have that says 'birth certificate' is from Mombassa, Kenya, with his footprint on it. He has still not produced an American birth certificate."

Why the unrelenting skepticism?

Emory University's Drew Westen, author of the "The Political Brain" and an informal advisor to Obama's 2008 campaign, chalked up much of it to Obama's reluctance to immediately rebut the charge more quickly in the presidential race.

"The right wing was attempting to make him 'one of them' as opposed to 'one of us,'" he claimed.
Westen, a professor of psychology and psychiatry, cited what psychologists call the "sleeper effect."
"If you present negative information about someone and it initially goes unchallenged, you might alter some people's conscious beliefs by challenging it later," he asserted. "But they are left with a negative gut-level feeling that doesn't go away."

"Political feelings, once they are strongly held, tend to be resistant to facts. It's just the result of the way our brains work," he said.

Westen mentioned the so-called "Swift Boat" attacks against Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry in 2004, which called into question the senator's service in Vietnam.
Kerry "allowed his honor to be challenged and didn't respond for weeks," Westen said. "When finally he did respond and had definitive evidence that the attacks were untrue, it was too late. People's feelings towards him had already changed. They wouldn't change back by that point."

Along similar lines, Westen told CNN that if staunch Democrats or Republicans are presented with clear evidence of wrongdoing on the part of their party's nominee shortly before an election, they'll come up with "every kind of rationalization to explain it away."

"We fight off information that makes us feel bad and gravitate toward information that makes us comfortable," he said.

Westen also brought up the explosive issue of race, one of the biggest political lightning rods in U.S. history. He insisted the birther movement never would have taken hold with a white president.

It's not fair to call a large segment of today's electorate "1950s-style racists," he said. But some people are "unconsciously prejudiced in a way that predisposes them to not believing that a black man with a funny name could have really been legitimately elected president of the United States."

But Bill Mayer, a Northeastern University political scientist, took issue with the notion of race as the critical component of the birther movement.

"The fact that Obama is black may affect the form of the conspiracy, but probably not the fact that there is a following for this rumor," he told CNN. "Conspiracy beliefs have a long history in American politics."
Mayer cited a range of political conspiracy theories, including claims regarding the Kennedy assassination, involvement on the part of the Clintons in alleged murders, and George W. Bush's supposed knowledge of the 9/11 terror attacks.

Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley noted that, back in the 19th century, questions were raised over the American roots of Andrew Jackson and Chester Arthur.

But it was "nothing like this," he told CNN. "We are now in the age of electronic journalism. ... This has become a ghastly scenario (over) the last month."

Mayer suggested that Obama's release of the long-form birth certificate will "further marginalize those who insist (the matter of his birth) is an open question." Still, he added, "I don't understand why the White House took so long" to put out the document.

Just how long will the controversy drag on? Westen claimed the birther issue will continue to be political fodder until a critical mass of Republican leaders decide it's making the GOP look "foolish" and hurting the party among independent voters.

A spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, released a statement Wednesday claiming that the controversy "has long been a settled issue."

History suggests otherwise.

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Sorrel v IMS Health - Free Speech for Corporations - is that in there?

A variety of bills are being debated in Washington now that would create some new rules for how to handle data and privacy in the digital age.  But in the health care field, a few small states have already passed regulations that spurred a major clash with industry, which reached the U.S. Supreme Court today. The results could foreshadow any data-privacy battles that emerge over digital media and advertising. Today’s oral argument show a majority of justices seem to be sympathetic to industry’s argument that their sales of massive data stores is a form of “free speech” that’s protected under the First Amendment.


The Sorrell v. IMS Health lawsuit began when Vermont passed a law in 2007 that banned data-mining companies, like IMS Health, from selling information about what drugs doctors prescribe without permission. In most states, data-mining companies like IMS Health collect highly detailed records on what each individual doctors prescribe, then sell that information to pharmaceutical companies. Pharma companies then use that data to arm their sales force with heaps of data about individual doctors’ habits; together with specialized software, it’s a system that lets them target the doctors they think will most likely prescribe their new drugs.

Vermont and New Hampshire both passed laws banning this practice, and industry challenged both laws, with different results. In New Hampshire, which is situated in the 1st Circuit, the state regulation was upheld; in Vermont, which is in the 2nd Circuit, industry won the battle. The attorney general of Vermont has appealed the case, and the Sorrell v. IMS Health case will now resolve the issue nationally, one way or another.

The implications go far beyond health care. As Thomas Goldstein, a lawyer representing IMS Health, told NPR today, “if Vermont is right that the collection and manipulation of data isn’t free speech, then the government can regulate it however it wants.”

The transcript [PDF] from today’s argument doesn’t look good for Vermont. Supreme Court watcher Josh Blackman has excerpted some of the choice quotes, and argues convincingly that we’re going to see at least “five solid votes to kill” the Vermont law. Several justices seem persuaded that the states’ regulations interfere with the rights of companies like IMS Health to freely exchange data.

If the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to allow states to regulate information as personal as what drugs doctors prescribe, it’s hard to imagine they’ll look favorably on the other types of data regulations now under discussion. Proposals like the McCain-Kerry privacy bill deal with less invasive—but still controversial—types of data exchanges, such as the ones that allow targeted advertising.
During arguments, Justice Antonin Scalia noted repeatedly that if doctors don’t like the drug companies’ sales tactics, they’re free were free to simply slam the door on them. But the attorney representing the State of Vermont said that wasn’t really a viable solution:

JUSTICE SCALIA: And, and he could achieve the same objective, could he not, by simply refusing to talk to the marketer. When the marketer says, you know, I want to talk to you about a new drug, he says: I don’t talk to drug manufacturers and marketers.
MS. ASAY: He could not achieve the same result, Your Honor. What the record shows is that doctors are particularly concerned about having access to the best information and the most complete information to make decisions for their patients.

If the case ultimately results in a 5-4 vote in favor of corporate free speech rights, it would mirror the results in the controversial Citizens United decision, which President Obama and some Democrats have denounced.

But even Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who dissented in the Citizens United case, seemed skeptical of the Vermont regulation. She questioned why the state didn’t go for an opt-out system—assuming doctors were OK with the targeted drug sales—rather than an opt-in one which would require them to specifically authorize it.
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Excessive rhetoric on Social Security and Obama’s budget plan

By Glenn Kessler

(Alex Wong/Getty Images)

“My argument with him [President Obama] is when he says ‘88 percent of the budget we’re not going to touch, reform or fix and we’re still going to solve our problems’ is an absolute falsehood. The fact is you can’t have Medicare out of the equation, you can’t have Medicaid out of the equation. And we can’t borrow the money, the $2.6 trillion that we’ve stolen from Social Security, in the international financial market without making Social Security sustainable.”
— Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), April 24, 2011
These are tough words on NBC’s “Meet The Press” from the junior senator from Oklahoma — who is personally close to the president despite disagreeing with him on virtually every public policy issue.
First, Coburn claims that Obama, in his budget speech on April 12, took 88 percent of the budget off of the table from any kind of reform. Second, he asserts that “we’ve stolen” $2.6 trillion of Social Security funds and that the money can’t be borrowed from the financial markets without major changes.
Coburn is a member of the so-called “Gang of Six” — three Senate Democrats and three Republicans looking for a budget compromise — but this is strong language. What’s he talking about?

The Facts

Let’s deal with Social Security first. The figure that Coburn mentioned — $2.6 trillion — refers to the money that has been placed in the Social Security trust fund. This is a difficult and complex subject that politicians frequently exploit, so please be patient.

Using the loaded word “stolen,” Coburn suggests that the trust fund is a fiction, or as some politicians assert, “worthless IOUs.”
John Hart, a spokesman for Coburn, said: “The language isn’t strong at all. If a person shoplifts with the intention of returning merchandise that is still shoplifting. That’s precisely what Congress has done with the trust funds. Politicians, of course, promise they will pay back the money they’ve stolen but we can only make good on that promise if we can borrow to do so.”
IOU, however, is just another way of saying bond. These bonds are backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government. No president or Congress would risk defaulting on these bonds because it would ruin the nation’s financial standing.
The bonds are a real asset to Social Security and Medicare, but — here’s where it gets complicated — they also represent an obligation by the rest of the government. Like any entity that issues debt, such as a corporation, the government will have to make good on its obligations, generally by taking the money out of revenue, reducing expenses or issuing new debt. The action taken really depends on the resources available at the time. There is nothing particularly unusual about this, except that the U.S. government is better placed to make good on these obligations than virtually any other debt-issuer.
Coburn presumably understands this. He recently wrote an article in which he approvingly quoted a statement from a White House budget office report written during the Clinton administration. Note the word “redeemed”: “They [the bonds] are claims on the Treasury that, when redeemed, will have to be financed by raising taxes, borrowing from the public, or reducing benefits or other expenditures.”
(Democrats who suggest redeeming those bonds will be painless or that Social Security is not adding to the deficit are making the exact opposite mistake. There is no free lunch when it comes to Social Security.)
Incidentally, it would have been very difficult for the government to have simply parked this money in the bank without affecting the financial markets. So the excess money generated by Social Security has been spent on other government activities and helped mask the overall size of the deficit. Coburn voted for some of those spending bills. To his credit, he did say “we’ve stolen” — including himself among the offenders.
There was a brief period — at the end of the Clinton administration — when the government generated so much money that the surplus was used to pay down the debt, in effect “a lockbox” of the funds. But that surplus disappeared with the advent of recession, war and sweeping tax cuts during the Bush administration. If the extra Social Security money had not existed, then the government would have had to borrow the $2.6 trillion in the public markets, in which case the overall debt would be the same.
Coburn’s assertion that Obama is walling off “88 percent” of the budget from “touch, reform or fix” is also a stretch. Obama never actually said anything close to that, but Hart said that Coburn based this statement on the fact that Obama’s proposed “debt failsafe” trigger in 2014 would require across-the-board spending cuts if certain debt targets were not reached — except for Social Security, low-income programs or Medicare benefits.
However, those programs are estimated to be less than 50 percent of the budget in 2014. Hart says Coburn was talking about the size of the programs far in the future, beyond 2025, and that “the long term projections matter because our unwillingness to deal with our long term debt problem is spooking the international financial community.” But it is a bit of rhetorical bait-and-switch to cite such a speculative figure as if it was established fact.
Moreover, Obama’s health-care law already is implementing cuts in Medicare (which many Republicans campaigned against) and Obama in his speech he would “build” on those cuts with other cost-saving measures in Medicare. Obama also said he would seek “more efficiency and accountability’ from Medicaid, the health-care program for the poor. That certainly sounds like Obama would touch the programs, if not “reform or fix.”

The Pinocchio Test

Coburn’s rhetoric on Social Security is not warranted by the facts. There were certainly consequences to using the Social Security surplus on tax cuts and government programs, and it is appropriate to discuss the choices Americans now face as a result of those decisions (which Coburn supported). But it does not help the public discourse on the debt to claim that the Social Security money was “stolen.”
Coburn’s claim that Obama is leaving 88 percent of the budget untouched is also not supported by the facts. His figure is speculative and, in any case, Obama did propose changes in Medicare and Medicaid.

Clarence Thomas failed to report wife's income, watchdog says

Clarence Thomas failed to report wife's income, watchdog says

By Kim Geiger, Washington Bureau

January 22, 2011

Reporting from Washington —

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas failed to report his wife's income from a conservative think tank on financial disclosure forms for at least five years, the watchdog group Common Cause said Friday.

Between 2003 and 2007, Virginia Thomas, a longtime conservative activist, earned $686,589 from the Heritage Foundation, according to a Common Cause review of the foundation's IRS records. Thomas failed to note the income in his Supreme Court financial disclosure forms for those years, instead checking a box labeled "none" where "spousal noninvestment income" would be disclosed.

A Supreme Court spokesperson could not be reached for comment late Friday. But Virginia Thomas' employment by the Heritage Foundation was well known at the time.

Virginia Thomas also has been active in the group Liberty Central, an organization she founded to restore the "founding principles" of limited government and individual liberty.

In his 2009 disclosure, Justice Thomas also reported spousal income as "none." Common Cause contends that Liberty Central paid Virginia Thomas an unknown salary that year.

Federal judges are bound by law to disclose the source of spousal income, according to Stephen Gillers, a professor at NYU School of Law. Thomas' omission — which could be interpreted as a violation of that law — could lead to some form of penalty, Gillers said.

"It wasn't a miscalculation; he simply omitted his wife's source of income for six years, which is a rather dramatic omission," Gillers said. "It could not have been an oversight."

But Steven Lubet, an expert on judicial ethics at Northwestern University School of Law, said such an infraction was unlikely to result in a penalty. Although unfamiliar with the complaint about Thomas' forms, Lubet said failure to disclose spousal income "is not a crime of any sort, but there is a potential civil penalty" for failing to follow the rules. He added: "I am not aware of a single case of a judge being penalized simply for this."

The Supreme Court is "the only judicial body in the country that is not governed by a set of judicial ethical rules," Gillers said.

A spokesman for the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, which oversees the financial disclosures, could not be reached Friday night to comment on what actions could be taken. In most cases, judges simply amend their forms when an error is discovered.

"Without disclosure, the public and litigants appearing before the court do not have adequate information to assess potential conflicts of interest, and disclosure is needed to promote the public's interest in open, honest and accountable government," Common Cause President Bob Edgar wrote in a letter to the Judicial Conference of the United States.

The allegation comes days after Common Cause filed a letter requesting that the Justice Department investigate whether Justices Thomas and Antonin Scalia should have disqualified themselves from hearing a campaign finance case after they reportedly attended a private meeting sponsored by Charles and David Koch, billionaire philanthropists who fund conservative causes.

In the case, Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, the court ruled that corporate and union funds could be spent directly on election advertising.

The Koch brothers have been key supporters of the group Americans for Prosperity, which spent heavily in the 2010 midterm election and claims a nonprofit tax status that allows it to avoid disclosing its donors.

Clarence Thomas has been the lone justice to argue that laws requiring public disclosure of large political contributions are unconstitutional.

A Supreme Court spokesperson later said that Thomas dropped by the private event, but that Scalia did not attend.

kim.geiger@latimes.com

Tom Hamburger in the Washington bureau contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/23/supreme-court-justice-clarence-thomas-wifes-income_n_812697.html?ir=Business

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