The Martha Coakley campaign for Governor of Massachusetts has come out with her first ad of the campaign.

It is a good ad. (It could use an audible period at the end of the sentence before the narrator starts talking about the people fighting against her, but that’s a very minor issue, I think.)

She seems to be way ahead in the polls for the primary coming up in early September. I presume this is why she has waited so long to air an ad. I hope she doesn’t wait so long in the general election campaign if she wins the primary.

Naked Capitalism has the book review Summer Rerun: Attack of the Blob – How Professional Democrats and Professional Republicans Ran America Into the Ground.

This is a review of the new book by former Senate staffer and super-lobbyist Jeff Connaughton, Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins. The review is written by Matt Stoller, who writes for Salon and has contributed to Politico, Alternet, Salon, The Nation and Reuters. You can reach him at stoller (at) gmail.com or follow him on Twitter at @matthewstoller

There’s a slate of important books coming out by reformers this year on what it was like to fight, and lose, for better policy during the financial reform fight. Neil Barofsky talked about facing the administration and Wall Street in Bailout, Sheila Bair has written about her experience at the FDIC, and now former Senate chief of staff for reform Senate Ted Kaufman, Jeff Connaughton, has provided his own memoir. Connaughton is not a rube, and doesn’t pretend to be shocked by DC corruption. His whole career is an anomaly, an idealist turned corporate super-lobbyist in the 1990s turned unlikely reformer in 2009. As such, he is uniquely positioned to describe how our political leaders, and which political leaders, think and act.

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Most books on politics with a polemical edge end with some sort of uplifting narrative. The narrative goes, here’s this insurmountable terrible problem, but we can fix it, somehow, somewhere. The Payoff is not like that.
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Sometimes, circumstances and a conscience can intrude at opportune moments. It seems like that’s what happened with Connaughton and his remarkable last two years. And now, he has quit the game, with this book — and perhaps “The Blob”, which may join the vernacular – as his legacy. He tried his best for two years, and it wasn’t enough. The fight is over, and the bad guys won. It’s a sad conclusion for someone like Connaughton, and for all those who fought the good fight over the last four years. But it’s hard to argue he’s wrong.

Finally a book without the obligatory and disappointing final chapter on how to fix the problem.

Naked Capitalism has the article Hillary Clinton: The Goldwater Girl Reveals Herself in an Atlantic Interview.

What was striking about Hillary Clinton’s remarks, which to its credit, the Atlantic reproduced in full, was how often she depicted the US policy of aggression as morally desirable as well as necessary to protect Christians in the US from jihadis. Funny how the officialdom airbrushes out of the picture the fact that Osama Bin Laden explained the reason for his campaign against the US, and his overarching reason was “Because you attack us and continue to attack us.” I’m no supporter of Arab extremists, but the US has long meddled this region, with perilous little finesse or concern for the long-term ramifications. But it’s simpler for politicians like Hillary Clinton to narrow the frame so as to make those who oppose the US look like cartoon bad guys. Consider this section from her interview:

One of the reasons why I worry about what’s happening in the Middle East right now is because of the breakout capacity of jihadist groups that can affect Europe, can affect the United States. Jihadist groups are governing territory. They will never stay there, though. They are driven to expand. Their raison d’être is to be against the West, against the Crusaders, against the fill-in-the-blank—and we all fit into one of these categories. How do we try to contain that? I’m thinking a lot about containment, deterrence, and defeat.

This is almost enough to convince me that it is very unlikely that I could ever vote for Hillary Clinton for President.

However, if you read The Atlantic article Hillary Clinton: ‘Failure’ to Help Syrian Rebels Led to the Rise of ISIS, she almost makes a convincing case. One thing I have to keep reminding myself is that she is presenting the case for her conclusions after filtering out all the facts that would put doubts into the thinking about those conclusions.   She falls too much into the trap of thinking that being in the presence of people (and negotiating with them)  gives you enough insight into understanding what motivates them.  Maybe what helps you disabuse yourself of the idea is to have the experience that I have had in telling people what you think motivates them and then having them explain how far off your assumptions are by them telling you what really motivates them. (Of course, there is no guarantee that what they tell you about their motivations is in fact completely reliable.)

I can imagine one of perhaps the few possible approaches to avoid the trap is to consider all possible motivations. It may be best to devise a strategy that tests the more likely motivations until you find something that seems to work. So far we seem to have found only strategies that lead to disaster.

If our politicians and the voters don’t seem to be able to find a strategy that gets Democrats and Republicans to work together, what chance do we have with people we understand even less?

A Class Action Suit Against The 113th Congress By We The People is a petition you might want to sign.

we petition the Obama administration to:

A Class Action Suit Against The 113th Congress By We The People

It is up to the American people to take back our Country from those politicians, who would have as their priorities, political gains/plays; rather than representation of their constituents. Congress is in violation of the Constitution, as this body has been entrusted with sacred fiduciary responsibilities on behalf of the People; sworn an oath; yet is on track to become the least productive Congress in history. Frivolous spending and wasting of taxpayer dollars on a lawsuit against the President; excessive investigations on IRS and Benghazi; and shutting down the Government are additional shortcomings of this body. Such funds/time could be put to better use-Jobs;Immigration Reform; Border Crisis; Gun Control; Mental Health;Economy; Voting Rights etc. Congress should not be above the law.

I don’t know if it is up to Obama to sue, or it is up to us to sue.  Nevertheless a good idea for turn-about is fair play.  I suppose, if Congress can sue Obama, then Obama can sue Congress.

I have been known to mention two experiences in my life that have made me realize there are two kinds of people.  One experience was real, the other imagined.

The real experience came from my years as a software engineer supporting and developing code for the circuit simulation program called SPICE (Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis).

Computer programs are broken down into subroutines.  Each subroutine has parameters which are its inputs and outputs.  In Spice, there was seldom an explanation of what a subroutine was trying to accomplish and seldom an explanation of the meaning of its inputs and outputs.  If you knew either what the routine was trying to do or if you knew the meaning of its inputs and outputs, you would have a much easier time figuring out the missing piece of information.  In the case of SPICE, you would start by making some assumptions about the two missing pieces of information, and then go round and round in circles trying to reconcile the two things.  If you succeeded in finding out what was going on, you frequently realized that your initial assumptions on both what the routine was trying to do and the meaning of its inputs and outputs were quite different from what was actually correct.  Of course the effect was multiplied because to figure out what a subroutine did, you had to figure out what the subroutines inside it did.  You were continually going up and down the hierarchy of subroutines trying to make sense of it all.  In bugs I found and fixed in SPICE, I could frequently detect that the person who wrote the bug didn’t fully realize what the routine was trying to do or what the inputs and outputs were supposed to represent.

What I learned from this experience was that I would never write computer programs in this way and inflict this amount of pain on whomever might have to work with the code I had written. As I saw other people work in this domain, it seemed to me these others took a different lesson.  The lesson they seemed to learn was that the code in SPICE was an example of how a PhD student ought to write code and lesser people should aspire to that same style.

The imagined experience was thinking about the hazing rituals in fraternities.  There too, I expect there were two lessons you could take away from that experience.  The one I took away from imagining it is that I would not like to go through that experience, and I would never want to inflict that kind of punishment on anybody else.  The other lesson I suppose you could learn is that if the people who did it to you could get away with it, you were certainly going to take your turn inflicting this on the next set of initiates.

I suspect that you can see these life lessons and my reactions to them reflected in many of the things I post on this blog.

The Real News Network has the interview Deputy Speaker of Israeli Knesset Calls for Expulsion and Jewish Reoccupation of Gaza.

Here is an excerpt of the more palatable part of the interview.  I leave it to your imagination as to whether or not you want to see and hear the rest.

But beyond that is there’s the genocidal aspect of Feiglin’s remarks. And genocide, incitement to genocide, is incredibly common right now in Israeli political discourse. It’s not just Feiglin. There’s Giora Eiland, who was one of the heads of the Institute for National Security Studies, which consults for the Israeli military. He’s a former national security adviser, someone who’s deeply embedded in the military intelligence apparatus. And today he published a piece in Yedioth Ahronoth, which is the main newspaper in Israel, pretty much calling for genocide in the Gaza Strip, or at least justifying it. He’s basically making the case that there are no civilians in the Gaza Strip because they elected Hamas as Germans elected Hitler. This is the same rationale that Osama bin Laden used to justify the 9/11 attacks and the indiscriminate slaughter of Americans, because they had elected governments which had attacked the Middle East, which had attacked Muslim nations. So you’re hearing this from mainstream figures, not just from crazy old Feiglin, who’s willing winning lots of fans and followers with this kind of rhetoric, who’s really keeping up a public profile

This video is what I was aware of, but did not even want to see when I responded to my cousin Rachel’s Facebook post.

My response to the article she posted was the following:

Rachel,

I could give you a list of Israeli behavior similar to the Gazans, and we could discuss whether or not there was any moral equivalence. However, the answers wouldn’t matter because we would be asking the wrong question.

I am not looking for ways to stoke or justify the hate between the two sides.

I am trying to find ways to bring a just peace.

As sure as it seems that neither side can trust the other to be peaceful, I think about South Africa. I am sure the Afrikaners felt the same way about the black Africans that they suppressed as the Israelis feel against the Palestinians and the retribution that would result if the other side ever got power. The world was amazed when this expected outcome did not happen in South Africa. Perhaps the same good result could be brought about in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. We should be looking for ways to make this happen instead of wallowing in our mutual hate.

I often think of your Grandfather (and my uncle) Sam. If he could survive and rise above what he suffered in WW II, then the least we can do in honor of his memory is to try to be as good as he was in how he handled his feelings and showed in his behavior.

I guess my only justification for this post is to urge all sides to stop and think before you go any further down this road.

If Israel succeeds in the goals discussed in this video, it will be impossible for me to be “proud” of that accomplishment, to put it mildly.

Sharon reminded me that one of her brothers essentially committed suicide over what he saw and did in Viet Nam, the details of which we can’t even imagine. It is crazy to even contemplate the effect on our own soldiers of what they were asked to do ahead of contemplating the effect on the people they did it to. However, if that’s what it takes to make the public wake up, then maybe that is what has to be said.

Maura Healey’s campaign website has the article Healey Unveils Comprehensive Housing Plan

Healey’s plan has received widespread support from some of the state’s top housing experts, including Elyse Cherry, CEO of Boston Community Capital.

“Maura Healey has helped lead the fight to combat predatory lending and protect Massachusetts homeowners facing foreclosure and housing discrimination,” said Cherry. “She’s also the experienced consumer advocate in the race. So it’s no surprise that Maura has such a comprehensive plan to promote housing opportunities in Massachusetts. She has my enthusiastic support.”

This is the kind of proactive leadership I am looking for in the Candidates I support and will vote for.  I wonder how many people in Massachusetts realize what far reaching impact an Attorney general can have.

Thanks to Jacob Ryan for posting this on his Facebook page.

You may have seen the headlines about corporate inversions.  I think The New York Times article, White House Weighs Actions to Deter Overseas Tax Flight, clarifies what this is all about.

The Obama administration is weighing plans to circumvent Congress and act on its own to curtail tax benefits for United States companies that relocate overseas to lower their tax bills, seeking to stanch a recent wave of so-called corporate inversions, Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew said on Tuesday.

Thanks to Elizabeth Warren for urging President Obama to take action and for highlighting this issue on her Facebook page.

It is very important to get this issue before the public in a way that is easy to understand.  I think this article does it for me.  I hope people understand that the countries that are making these deals are stealing our tax money.  All these companies will have to do is to establish a mail drop in the receiving country.  The companies pay a substantial fee to the receiving country and the receiving country has to provide absolutely no costly benefits in return.  Of course it is a good deal for everyone except the true home country that provides the infrastructure, legal system, and security that these companies depend on, but would rather not pay for.  What are they going to do when they suck their home country dry? They’ll probably do the same thing that bankers do who suck their companies dry with bad loans while feathering their own nests with fat bonuses.  They’ either retire quite comfortably, thank you very much, or they will go on to pull the same stunt at a new company or country.

Once guys like Mitt Romney figured out how to use debt to strip assets out of a company, it was probably only a matter of time until someone figured out how to use debt to avoid taxes in the way mentioned in the article.

By the way, corporations don’t only use money from their customers and employees to pay corporate taxes.  Competition for business, if anti-trust laws were enforced, would put limits on this behavior with respect to cutomers.  Corporations can get money from their stock holders by reducing dividends and using the money saved to pay the corporate taxes.  As far as getting money from their employees, they could get it from the excessive executive pay rather than from the minimum wage workers if only our personal and corporate income tax structure was fairer.

The Intercept has the article Cash, Weapons and Surveillance: the U.S. is a Key Party to Every Israeli Attack.

Over the last decade, the NSA has significantly increased the surveillance assistance it provides to its Israeli counterpart, the Israeli SIGINT National Unit (ISNU; also known as Unit 8200), including data used to monitor and target Palestinians. In many cases, the NSA and ISNU work cooperatively with the British and Canadian spy agencies, the GCHQ and CSEC.

Make of this what you will.  One thing I do wonder is whether the President has control over NSA or the NSA has control over our President.