CBS News has the article Top hacker-turned FBI mole gives dire warning.

This interview is interesting for its insights into the world of hacking and to the issues of internet security. It is also great for busting up some stereotypes that we might have had.

The Daily Kos has the article Dick Cheney Lied about Torture. This is commentary on the Politico article Dick Cheney Was Lying About Torture: The Senate report confirms it doesn’t work. As those of us on the inside knew..

The Daily Kos article highlights a few points from Politico and makes some comments of its own. However, it is not until you read the author’s bio on Politico that you get an inkling of the authority of the article.

Mark Fallon served as an interrogator for more than 30 years, including as a Naval Criminal Investigative Service special agent and within the Department of Homeland Security, as the assistant director for training of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.

Fallon concludes his article with the warning:

Over the coming days, you’ll be hearing numerous torture defenders claim it kept Americans safe. Don’t believe them. Many of us charged with the mission of getting information out of terrorists didn’t resort to using torture. Like many Americans, we didn’t want our government to use torture, and we hope it never does again.

So as an armchair quarterback in this situation, are you going to think you know more about what works and does not work in interrogations than a person who has been a successful negotiator for 30 years and who is making a statement that urges you to be more judicious in your thirst for anything goes style  of interrogation.  Do you think he has an ulterior motive for asking us to be less bloodthirsty than our own natures might incline us to be?  On the other hand, think of what motives Dick Cheney might have for making the claims he does.

The Daily Kos has the article President Obama hosts The Decree on ‘The Colbert Report’.

Here is the video clip that they featured.

The actual interview with Stephen Colbert followed. Here are the two clips that cover that part.

Naked Capitalism has the article NYTimes Dealbook’s Dishonest Salvo at Elizabeth Warren Over Calling Out an Unqualified Nominee for Treasury Post.

The article chose this quote about Warren’s critic from a Gawker story Andrew Ross Sorkin Is Too Credulous For Journalism.

The face of credulity in the media is Andrew Ross Sorkin, hardworking New York Times Wall Street reporter and sometime Wall Street shoeshine boy. You cannot question Sorkin’s work ethic. You cannot question his deep connections on Wall Street. And personally, I don’t even question his sincerity. I do not believe that Andrew Ross Sorkin is a nefarious, scheming, two-faced spy, sent to do the bidding of Wall Street bankers in the halls of the nation’s most important news outlet. I just think he is so dangerously, moronically credulous that his writing constitutes a danger to the public.

The article chose this quote from a Simon Johnson article, Antonio Weiss Is Not Qualified To Be Under Secretary For Domestic Finance.

It’s hard to think of any senior fiscal official from a serious country with qualifications as weak as those of Mr. Weiss.

The conclusion that I draw from this controversy is that Elizabeth Warren must have hit the Wall Street crooks where it really hurts. This is another one of those tests for the American public. Who are you going to believe, your own lying eyes, or the Wall Street propaganda?

The Real News Network has the interview and transcript New Employment Figures in the Shadow of a Fragile Economy.  Here is the YouTube video introduction text.

Economist Richard Wolff explains how the holiday season places folks in temporary, low-paid jobs that keep the economy in a fragile state.

Here is the key starting point for the discussion:

WOLFF: Well, I would always begin by saying it’s good news if there are more people working this month than last month, given the unemployment that has dogged this economy now for pretty much seven years and counting. But I would caution anyone to draw anything like the hyped conclusions coming out of the White House and the Department of Labor.

Intuitively, I have been blogging about the recent economic euphoria in the vein of this interview. Here we have an expert economist putting the meat on the bones of the skeleton of my intuition.

New Economic Perspectives has the article A TWELVE STEP PROGRAM TO RESTORE PROSPERITY: THE BERNIE SANDERS PLAN by L. Randall Wray. This article has a response to each of items that Sanders presented in the video in my previous post Bernie Sanders – An Economic Agenda for America: 12 Steps Forward.

While Wray and I both like Sanders’ plan a lot, the Wray article gives you what the plan would look like if it didn’t have to be watered down for people who haven’t yet learned about the way the monetary system in the United States works.  I also like Wray’s comments about trade policy and tax policy among a bunch of other likable points he raises in the 12 responses.

If you haven’t been following the New Economic Perspectives blog, then some of these comments might blow your mind.

Naked Capitalism has the article Why Piketty is s Defender of Neoclassical Economics and an Enemy of Egalitarianism. I quote the article in its entirety below, and then show the video around which the article revolved.

Yanis Varoufakis, in an interview by Andrew Mazzone, offers a cogent, damning criticism of Thomas Piketty’s theory, such as it is, of inequality. Varoufakis contends that not only is Piketty’s theory (as opposed to his empirical work) weak and unworkable, it also ignores the true drivers of inequality in a capitalist system, such as differences in bargaining power. Varoufakis contends that Piketty was more interested in coming up with an explanation that would fit a neoclassical framework and thus be well received by mainstream economists than one that would help make the world better by providing real insight into the problem. The inadequate theory leaves Piketty with redistribution as his only possible solution, and he suggests a sketchy,poorly conceived a wealth tax.

The is a lively and provocative talk.

Going back to read the words in the article, I do agree with the value of what the article highlights. However, my impression of the interview by the time I came to the end was the following:

The value of this talk was in the last three minutes or so. What was important was the idea that the process needed to be fair, but the outcome was not something you could control in detail. The rest of it was frustrating because of the generality of it. For instance there was a discussion of three points made by Piketty, the first was deemed a tautology, the second was of some value, and the third was also dismissed. There was no discussion of what the three points were and why their description of them was true. I have read the entire book, but I cannot recall what were the three points they were talking about.

The discussion in the last few minutes of how Nozick destroyed Rawls’ thesis by asking a simple question was very informative. The fear that the same thing would happen to Piketty as what happened to Rawls was also a lesson well worth learning. I also valued the insight by Varoufakis of what was right and what was wrong with Libertarian philosophy. In essence the focus on process is right, the thought that unfettered capitalism was a fair process was wrong.

Much of the rest of the discussion was useless to me. I can’t pass judgment on how useful it was to anybody else, because I cannot know what prior knowledge someone else brings to listening to this discussion.

I cannot predict how you might view this 36 minute talk, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you were wondering what was so lively and provocative about most of it.

The Daily Kos has the post Missouri AG Confirms Michael Brown Grand Jury Misled by St. Louis DA.

The background of this situation is that Lawrence O’Donnell reported that after reviewing the transcripts of the Darren Wilson Grand Jury, his analyst discovered that Assistant District Attorney’s working for Bob McCullough gave the Jurors an outdated copy of Missouri Law that all that was required for an Officer to use deadly force is their “reasonable belief” that there was a threat.

In 1985 the Supreme Court amended this law to include a “probable cause” requirement under Tennessee v Garner and the Jury wasn’t informed of this until 3 months later just before their deliberations, nor even at that time was the difference and relevance of this explained to them clearly.

Here is the video of Lawrence O’Donnell that is the subject of the article.

After reading this and seeing comments about this, I came to realize that a lot hinges on the difference between “reasonable belief” and “probable cause”. I emphasize this, because I hadn’t paid enough attention to these words when I first read the article.

Originally, I would have thought that the two were reasonably similar. Perhaps a reader who is trained in the law can explain the difference.

I think that remembering this discussion is going to be important in judging whatever else you may read or hear about this and other similar cases.

I did a Google search of probable cause vs reasonable belief.

One article I found was Definitions Of Probable Cause Vs. Reasonable Suspicion.

According to the Supreme Court, probable cause to make an arrest exists when an officer has knowledge of such facts as would lead a reasonable person to believe that a particular individual is committing, has committed or is about to commit a criminal act. The officer must be able to articulate the facts and circumstances forming the basis for probable cause.
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Reasonable suspicion is a standard established by the Supreme Court in a 1968 case in which it ruled that police officers should be allowed stop and briefly detain a person if, based upon the officer’s training and experience, there is reason to believe that the individual is engaging in criminal activity. The officer is given the opportunity to freeze the action by stepping in to investigate. Unlike probable cause that uses a reasonable person standard, reasonable suspicion is based upon the standard of a reasonable police officer.

I am still mulling this over to see if I really understand the difference between the two. Every time I think I have it, the difference starts to escape me.

I also found the Police Magazine article Probable Cause and Reasonable Suspicion.

One court decision they quoted said the following:

“Articulating precisely what ‘reasonable suspicion’ and ‘probable cause’ mean is not possible. They are commonsense, non-technical conceptions that deal with the factual and practical considerations of everyday life on which reasonable and prudent men, not legal technicians, act. As such, the standards are not readily, or even usefully, reduced to a neat set of legal rules.” (Ornelas v. U.S.)

The best conclusion the article could come up with was:

“Probable cause” means reasonably reliable information to suspect there is a “fair probability” that a person has committed a crime, or that a search will reveal contraband or evidence. “Reasonable suspicion” is a strong suspicion, even if based on less information of a less-reliable nature, that a person is involved in criminal activity or may be armed and dangerous.

I think the point of the article is that you would be completely justified if you were still confused.

Here is what President Obama had to say about the Employment Situation in November as posted on the White House Facebook page.

“Over the first 11 months of 2014, our economy has created 2.65 million jobs. That’s more than in any entire year since the 1990s. Our businesses have now created 10.9 million jobs over the past 57 months in a row and that’s the longest streak of private-sector job growth on record.” —President Obama: http://go.wh.gov/43es9V

On Facebook, I remarked:

For the millions of people who are working part time but want to work full time, and the millions of people for whom these new jobs don’t pay anywhere near what their old jobs paid, and for the still unemployed, are they supposed to be excited enough about this to come out and vote in the next election?

This continued tone deafness on the part of the President is what is losing him many supporters. What are the suffering people supposed to think, when the President seems to continue to believe that the situation they are living just does not exist?

Every time the President holds one of these news conferences, he loses thousands of former supporters. I have always been a strong proponent of the President speaking more often about what he has accomplished, but these appearances cannot continue to only tout what is in the imagination of the President, but what is totally missing from what the people see in their own lives.

The link posted above goes to a White House web site page The Employment Situation in November. this page highlights five key points in the day’s report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

I gave them the following feedback on that page.

In the key points, where is the recognition of all the part-time employees who want to work full time? Where is the recognition that these newly created jobs do not pay nearly as much as the lost jobs? Where is the recognition of the people who still cannot find work?

All this pretending that the news is great without any recognition of what is not great is a sure way to turn people off. No wonder so many voters failed to come out in the last election in support of the President’s “accomplishments”

New Economic Perspectives has the article Jeffrey Sachs Channeled His Inner Bill Black – and Obama and Holder Ignored Him Too by William K. Black.   The article quotes from the appearance by Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Columbia University at The  31st Annual Monetary & Trade Conference
in Partnership with Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business: Fixing the Banking System for Good, Wednesday, April 17, 2013, Pennsylvania Room at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, 100 N. Sixth Street Philadelphia, PA 19106.

Jeffrey Sachs: ‘Well, thank you very much for saying it and practicing it. I do believe – by the way, I’m just going to end here because I’ve been told I have to run to the U.N. in fact right now – I believe we have a crisis of values that is extremely deep, because the regulations and the legal structures need reform. But I meet a lot of these people on Wall Street on a regular basis right now. I’m going to put it very bluntly. I regard the moral environment as pathological. And I’m talking about the human interactions that I have. I’ve not seen anything like this, not felt it so palpably. These people are out to make billions of dollars and nothing should stop them from that. They have no responsibility to pay taxes. They have no responsibility to their clients. They have no responsibility to people, counterparties in transactions. They are tough, greedy, aggressive, and feel absolutely out of control, you know, in a quite literal sense. And they have gamed the system to a remarkable extent, and they have a docile president, a docile White House, and a docile regulatory system that absolutely can’t find its voice. It’s terrified of these companies.

For those who don’t know Jeffrey Sachs, William Black quotes the following from the article Jeffrey Sachs Calls Out Wall Street Criminality and Pathological Greed.

Jeffrey Sachs, Columbia professor and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia, is a controversial figure for his neoliberal stance on macroeconomics and his role in promoting the use of “shock therapy” in emerging economies. But it is also important to recognize that criticism from a connected, respected insider has more significance than that of someone like Bill Black, who has made a career of taking on bank fraud but has never reached a top policy-making level.

Now, perhaps you get the point of why I am so disappointed in our “docile president”.  It may even be worse than what we have been hearing from Elizabeth Warren and William Black.  You should also read what Sachs had to say about the Clintons.