Out of the Park | Clinton's Speech - Josh Marshall - TPM Editors Blog

The Master of the Game

Out of the Park | TPM Editors Blog: "“This convention is done. This will be the moment that probably re-elected Barack Obama.” — Top Republican strategist and CNN yacker Alex Castellanos just after Clinton’s speech."
video of the speech 
Josh Marshall Live Blogging Bill Clinton's Nomination of Barack Obama for a Second Term
10:37 PM: Still a mystery to me why Republicans spent the last month building Bill up when he’s going to slip them the shiv like no one else.

10:44 PM: “It turns out advancing opportunity and economic empowerment is both morally right and good economics, because poverty and ignorance restrict growth.”

10:53 PM: Brings it back to the key question: Are you better off?

10:53 PM: Folks with a hard copy of the speech tell me it bears little resemblance to what Clinton’s actually saying.

10:56 PM: “I believe it. With all my heart, I believe it.”

10:57 PM: Hard for me even to fathom how much Clinton is relishing this. Like a caged animal let back out for a brief run in the wild. 

11:10 PM: Shorter Bill Clinton: W’w’wait!There’s more!

11:11 PM: Shorter Bill Clinton: Hey, I got a million of these!

11:18 PM: This is starting to remind me of when my Daddy taught me to gut and clean fish. I think we’re at scraping off the scales now.  
(I caught a few snapper blues last Sunday.  I hate scaling the fish. - gwc)

11:22 PM: Okay, I think we’re rising to the finish here. But how can you know?

11:23 PM: Wow, like every great Bill Clinton speech, incredibly long but incredibly good. At post-1988.

Josh Marshall

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Concurring Opinions » The Legitimacy Crisis in Federal Law Clerk Hiring

Concurring Opinions » The Legitimacy Crisis in Federal Law Clerk Hiring: 
by Dave Hoffman

"This week, law professors are encouraged to call federal judges and ask them to pull from an enormous pile of clerkship candidates particular students whose merits might be otherwise obscured.  (Applications were delivered Tuesday to those Judges who are still “on plan“, and interviewing calls are supposed to go out Friday.) Unfortunately, the plan has entirely fallen apart, as wealthy law schools now are more than willing to package applications in the spring and summer.  This unravelling, long-predicted in some quarters, has two pernicious consequences – apart from encouraging judges to take applicants earlier in their law school careers, and consequently increasing the importance of first-year grades."

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The Democratic Party Platform | Democrats.org

The Democratic Party Platform | Democrats.org: "In 2008, Democrats, independents, and many Republicans came together as Americans to move our country forward. We were in the midst of the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, the previous administration had put two wars on our nation’s credit card, and the American Dream had slipped out of reach for too many. Today, our economy is growing again, al-Qaeda is weaker than at any point since 9/11, and our manufacturing sector is growing for the first time in more than a decade. But there is more we need to do, and so we come together again to continue what we started. What follows is our 2012 platform—a declaration of how we plan to move America forward over the next four years and beyond."

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The Neo-Confederate Revolution « Building a Better GOP

I'm a Democrat - but a Chinese democrat - I believe in the yin-yang, that the contending and collaborating male and female impulses are an inherent contradiction in human society.  Can't have one without the other.  That is not centrism, not half-a-loaf is better than no loaf.  It is the idea that the truth in both sides must be recognized and managed successfully.  I think that is why Chris Ladd remains a Republican - despite his knowledge that the GOP is basically a train wreck in slow motion.  Somehow, he believes, we'll get to where we must.  - GWC
The Neo-Confederate Revolution « Building a Better GOP:
by Chris Ladd - GOP Lifer

 "When General Lee handed Grant his surrender and my ancestors went home in defeat, there was reason to believe that one of the great unresolved conflicts over the meaning of the American experiment had been laid to a bloody rest. No, I’m not talking about slavery and no, it did not in fact prove to be the end. The most important original argument over American’s identity was best encapsulated in the competing visions of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton.  Simply put, Hamilton was a proto-capitalist New York banker who wanted to see the country embrace a commercial model.  His vision would require a strong central government to invest in infrastructure and regulation. Jefferson was a Southern plantation owner who wanted a republic of small landholders where each was practically sovereign on his own property.  His model required almost no central government.  It was simple and in the beginning it was dominant, especially in the South"....

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Paul Ryan's Personal Best: Lies, damned lies and gilding the lily

The Armory at 168 Street where records were set and kept

So what was my best time for the half in high school?  Was it really 2:17 outdoors?  Maybe.  I know for sure it was 2:24 the first time I ran it in the winter at Mt. St. Michael's on a board track .  But that best time a year later? Don't have a distinct recollection about that.  But I claim 2:17 as my personal best when reminiscing about Glory Days.  Not that there was much glory.  I was the third string on a championship team, which set the national* indoor schoolboy 220 yard flat track record in the two mile relay.  I think it was 8:01.  I know that Dave Long ran 2:06, and Kevin Lanigan, Bob Bartolini, and Bob Clark each ran under 2:00.
So given that sort of sense about just how much you are willing to gild the lily about your personal best, I find it shocking that fitness freak and VP candidate Paul Ryan has (according to Runner's World) overstated his personal best in a marathon by 1 hour 11 minutes, claiming in an interview that it was "two fifty something", only to be confronted with the fact that his only recorded time was 4:01 in the Grandma Marathon in Minnesota, as a college student.  Twenty years ago.  Memory fades.

Jan. 4, 1964 
Ed Bowes of Manhattan College wins the Met AAU Juniors 3-mile in 14:48.2, breaking the meet record of 14:54.0, set a year earlier by Norb Sander of Fordham. Bowes went on to become the longtime, legendary coach of Bishop Loughlin High School in Brooklyn and director of the annual Loughlin Games and Manhattan College Invitational.

Dr. Sander went on to win a New York City marathon and later became president of the Armory. Meet records were also set that January day by Tom Farrell of St. John’s (2:12.3 1,000 yards) and Charles Mays of the Grand Street Boys (31.4 300y). Farrell made two Olympic finals in the 800, winning the bronze medal in 1968, the same years Mays made the team in the long jump.

* that was on the wood floor of the 168th Street Armory in upper Manhattan.  Now known as the Armory Track and Field Center, it was probably the only 220 yard indoor flat track in the world.  so maybe the Brooklyn Prep stars should have claimed a world record. - gwc

The Man from Bloomfield Hills

I like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report and Saturday Night Live.  So why not a little more cheap shot humour like this from MoveOn.org

The Republican Party Platform

That government is best which governs least - except when it comes to sex and reproduction. Written in the "official language". - GWC
The 2012 Republican Party Platform

Our no-growth future: Robert Gordon - Northwestern U.

Northwestern University economist Robert Gordon predicts little if any growth for the next few decades.  He reminds my of J.K. Galbraith's New Industrial State.  Nothing in the IT revolution equals railroads, automobiles and the Interstate Highway system.  Makes sense to me but isn't it astonishing that you can communicate effortlessly with friends in China?  When I was in the Peace Corps in Inia 1967 - 1969 aerograms were the best way to stay in touch: thin airmail letters carried by plane.  Now it's email and cell phones. - GWC

Abstract

IS U.S. ECONOMIC GROWTH OVER?  FALTERING INNOVATION CONFRONTS
THE SIX HEADWINDS
Robert J. Gordon (with link to lecture video)


This paper raises basic questions about the process of economic growth.  It questions the assumption, nearly universal since Solow’s seminal contributions of the 1950s, that economic growth is a continuous process that will persist forever.  There was virtually no growth before 1750, and thus there is no guarantee that growth will continue indefinitely.  Rather, the paper suggests that the rapid progress made over the past 250 years could well turn out to be a unique episode in human history.  The paper is only about the United States and views the future from 2007 while pretending that the financial crisis did not

happen.  Its point of departure is growth in per-capita real GDP in the frontier country since 1300, the U.K. until 1906 and the U.S. afterwards.  Growth in this frontier gradually accelerated after 1750, reached a peak in the middle of the 20th century, and has been slowing down since.  The paper is about “how much further could the frontier growth rate decline?”
The analysis links periods of slow and rapid growth to the timing of the three industrial revolutions (IR’s), that is, IR #1 (steam, railroads) from 1750 to 1830; IR #2 (electricity, internal combustion engine, running water, indoor toilets, communications, entertainment, chemicals, petroleum) from 1870 to 1900; and IR #3 (computers, the web, mobile phones) from 1960 to present.  
It provides evidence that IR #2 was more important than the others and was largely responsible for 80 years of relatively rapid productivity growth between 1890 and 1972.  Once the spin-off inventions from IR #2 (airplanes, air conditioning, interstate highways) had run their course, productivity growth during 1972-96 was much slower than before.  In contrast, IR #3 created only a short-lived growth revival between 1996 and 2004.  Many of the original and spin-off inventions of IR #2 could happen only once – urbanization, transportation speed, the freedom of females from the drudgery of carrying tons of water per year, and the role of central heating and air conditioning in achieving a year-round constant temperature.
Even if innovation were to continue into the future at the rate of the two decades before 2007, the U.S. faces six headwinds that are in the process of dragging long-term growth to half or less of the 1.9 percent annual rate experienced between 1860 and 2007.  These include demography, education, inequality, globalization, energy/environment, and the overhang of consumer and government debt.  A provocative “exercise in subtraction” suggests that future growth in consumption per capita for the bottom 99 percent of the income distribution could fall below 0.5 percent per year for an extended period of decades.

Chemerinsky vs. Tamanaha on the Law School Cost Dilemma

There must be someway out of here.  I am reminded of Brecht's mockery "let's dissolve the people and elect another".  For the root of all this is voters embrace of the anti-tax agenda which has paralyzed government - nowhere more than in Prop. 13 land - California.  - GWC
Law Prof's Ideal, Affordable Law School Not Possible in Reality, Chemerinsky Says - News - ABA Journal:

“If you are not going to law school ... what is your alternative path?” asks Erwin Chemerinsky, founding dean of the University of California, Irvine School of Law. “And in purely economic terms, is it better than law school? ... It’s not just monetary ... There are all sorts of exciting things you can do with a law degree.”
Asked about his own economic terms, the highly paid constitutional scholar says, “I wouldn’t have come at half the price. No one is going to take a 50 percent pay cut, no matter how beautiful Orange County is, and no matter how wonderful it is to be part of a new school.”
The two quotes may seem at odds—the ideal of a career bringing more than financial gain, the reality of getting the paycheck now. But they represent the two thorny sides of the debate of law school and its value.
One can hardly blame Chemerinsky for protecting his own. He had a posh teaching gig at Duke University School of Law and a family with four children to support. Still, his blunt statement represents the stark reality to the idealistic aims of law professor Brian Z. Tamanaha, author of Failing Law Schools, which calls for an innovative, top-quality, public-service-minded and affordable (i,.e. less than $20,000 a year) institution as the ideal 21st-century law school.

Tamanaha responds on Balkinization blog:

[Dean Chemerinsky] insists that tuition must be in the $50,000 range if [UC Irvine Law School] is to land in the top 20. On that point, he and I agree. What Dean Chemerinsky does not explain, however, is why it was necessary to create a “top 20” law school. If that was the driving goal, then perhaps Irvine law school should not have been created. There are already about 25 law schools in the “top 20,” three of them in California. 
Dean Chemerinsky knows a great deal more than I do about the economics of running a law school, but I am skeptical of his suggestion that there were only two options: create a “top 20” law school or a “fourth tier” law school. One way to have kept costs down with no significant loss in faculty talent would have been to recruit top professors from excellent law schools with a lower pay scale (Alabama, Florida State, Georgia, North Carolina, William & Mary, etc.) rather than from Harvard, Northwestern and Yale. But he went for the prestige.

And the rebuttal by Chemerinsky:

[A]ll of the goals that Professor Tamanaha identifies in his book – maximizing the opportunity for jobs for our students, especially jobs that will allow students to pay back any loans, best serving the profession and the community – are best achieved if we succeed in being a top 20 law school. Of our initial graduating class from May 2012, 28% secured judicial clerkships, 15 in federal courts around the country and one on a state supreme court. About 40% received offers from major law firms. Some are working at government and public interest jobs. As of this writing, 80% of the Class of 2012 has full time employment. None of this would have been possible if we did not have faculty and students of the caliber of a top 20 law school...had we followed Professor Tamanaha’s advice we could have achieved none of this and would have created a not very good fourth tier law school.

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White House Report on Lost Teacher Jobs - NY Times

New Report Highlights Impacts of Teacher Layoffs, Need to Invest in Education | The White House: 

WASHINGTON, DC – The White House today released a new report that finds that the loss of teachers and other education staff is forcing communities into difficult choices that harm our children’s education and future, including increasing class sizes and shortening school years and days. The report shows that more than 300,000 local education jobs have been lost since the end of the recession – a figure that stands in stark contrast to previous economic recoveries. As a result, the national student-teacher ratio increased by 4.6 percent from 2008 to 2010, rolling back all the gains made since 2000. Increased class sizes have negative consequences for the future of America’s children at a time when education has never been more important to finding a good job and maintaining our competitiveness as a nation. A copy of the full report is attached. 

“This year, several thousand fewer educators will be going back to school. Since 2009, we’ve lost more than 300,000 education jobs, in part, because of budget cuts at the state and local level,” said President Obama. “Think about what that means for our country. At a time when the rest of the world is racing to out-educate America; these cuts force our kids into crowded classrooms, cancel programs for preschoolers and kindergarteners, and shorten the school week and the school year. That’s the opposite of what we should be doing as a country.”

Median household incomes by age

The Times Economix blog posted this excellent graph.  As to increased income for those over 65 that appears to be attributable to decline in home equity and increased numbers of people working past 65, which is a result of the decline in pensions.  Then a real worrier: sharp income decline of those approaching retirement age.  Will those voters shoot themselves in the foot in November and vote for Romney/Ryancare?

Why is Akin Being Asked to Quit? | GOPlifer | a Chron.com blog

Chris Ladd is a rational Republican columnist at the Houston Chronicle.  It gets lonely there in Texas. - gwc
Why is Akin Being Asked to Quit? | GOPlifer | a Chron.com blog: by Chris Ladd

Rep. Todd Akin is right to be angry. Why should he be singled out for punishment just because he made wacky, offensive claims on TV? There’s little fairness in asking him to resign if you’re not going to rein in Rick Santorum, Rand Paul, Michele Bachmann, Allen West and about most of the Republican House freshmen.
Our VP nominee, Paul Ryan, was a co-signer with Akin of a House Bill that would have turned those outlandish claims into federal policy. Is he supposed to resign too? Cornyn is only asking Akin to quit because he’s doomed, we badly need that seat, he may have just torpedoed Romney’s campaign, and up until last night there was still time to replace him somewhat gracefully.Basically, we’re outlining a new party policy. Call it “The Sharron Angle Rule”: You can be as crazy as you want, but only if you might win.

But here is Congressman Todd Akin sticking to his guns even after Romney and Ryan asked him to step down.  But listen carefully.  There's a hedge there.  I think he'll get out of the race.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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Racialization: Michael Tesler’s theory that all political positions come down to racial bias. - Slate Magazine

Racialization: Michael Tesler’s theory that all political positions come down to racial bias. - Slate Magazine: "Even presidential pets were viewed through the same lens. Tesler showed 1,000 YouGov respondents a picture of a Portuguese water dog and asked how favorably they felt toward it. Half saw the dog introduced as Bo Obama, and half as Ted Kennedy’s dog, Splash. (Both political dogs are the same breed, but the picture was of Obama’s.) Those with negative feelings toward blacks thought less of Obama’s dog."

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Private-Market Tooth Fairy Can’t Cut Medicare Cost - Orszag - Bloomberg

Private-Market Tooth Fairy Can’t Cut Medicare Cost - Bloomberg:
by Peter Orszag
"The vast bulk of health-care costs arise from an extremely small share of patients, whose insurance will inevitably bear a substantial share of their expenses. That’s why competition in health care doesn’t work as well as in other sectors, and it’s also why the key to keeping costs to a minimum is to encourage providers to offer better, less costly care in complex cases."
Peter Orszag is vice chairman of corporate and investment banking at Citigroup Inc. and a former director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Obama administration. The opinions expressed are his own.  'via Blog this'

Obama - the peroration litany

This video captures the peroration of President Obama's stump speech.   We see that he uses the litany rather than the Black churchman's call and response.

ACA helps Medicare finances | Center on Budget and Policy Priorities | Health Reform Strengthens Medicare, Doesn’t “Rob” It

CBPP | Health Reform Strengthens Medicare, Doesn’t “Rob” It:
"The 2010 health reform law (the Affordable Care Act, or ACA) has significantly improved Medicare’s long-term financial outlook, as we have previously pointed out.  Recent claims that health reform “robs Medicare” and does not “shore up Medicare’s finances” are flatly false, as the recent report of the program’s trustees shows. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the ACA will reduce Medicare’s projected spending by $716 billion over the 2013-2023 period.  As John McDonough of Harvard’s School of Public Health explains:  “None of these reductions were financed by cuts to Medicare enrollees’ eligibility or benefits; benefits were improved in the ACA.  Cuts were focused on hospitals, health insurers, home health, and other providers.” Medicare’s trustees confirm that health reform has improved the program’s finances:  “The financial status of the HI [Hospital Insurance] trust fund was substantially improved by the lower expenditures" 'via Blog this'

Crossing the Rubicon - hazards of prediction

Julius Caesar

Sixteen months ago I posted this short piece by Josh Marshall - founder of Talking Points Memo of which I am a devotee.  I don't make many predictions.  One - to my daughter shortly after he announced - was that Obama's Presidential campaign would be only a learning experience for him. More recently I predicted that Obamacare would survive the Supreme court challenge.  Here's an older one.  I am very reluctant to join the enthusiasm of the many who are thrilled that we finally have the enemy we want.  Never underestimate your adversary. - GWC

Crossing the Rubicon | Talking Points Memo

It wasn't much, the narrow river that marked the border between Italy and Gaul.  but Caesar was told not to cross it.  He did and you remember his name, not the guy who lost.  Josh Marshall says that today's vote to embrace the Paul Ryan `let's end Medicare budget' -  by all but six House Republicans is a fateful, no turning back day.  
The Republican Party has just gotten carried away by their hostility to government and celebration of private enterprise.  It's a popular idea.  Nobody likes to go to the DMV.  But private enterprise also makes us very nervous.  Downsizing, plant closings, higher  health insurance deductibles, real estate bubbles and crashes - all make people worry.  "And now they want to take away Medicare" is the line the Republican Party just handed to the Democratic Party.  They have crossed the Rubicon. April 11, 2011

Ryan Roundup: Everything You Need to Know About Chairman Ryan’s Budget - CBPP

I suppose this is the sort of thing Ayn Rand had in mind.  The deserving thrive, the weak don't.  So Paul Ryan has put it all on paper. There is a lot more in this CBPP round-up, but these two charts give you the basic idea of what this "bold, brave, serious thinker" has in mind.  I guess among other things, we'll have deep thinkers on Mirror of Justice the Catholic Legal Theory blog explaining how Ryan, a celebrant of "individualism and capitalism" over "collectivism", and a self-proclaimed Ayn Rand devotee, is really very Christian. - GWC
Off the Charts Blog | Center on Budget and Policy Priorities | Ryan Roundup: Everything You Need to Know About Chairman Ryan’s Budget: "Below is a compilation of the CBPP analyses and blog posts on the budget that House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan proposed, and the House of Representatives passed, in March.  At the bottom of the compilation, we also list the Center’s analysis of the Ryan “Roadmap” budget plan."
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Sea Ice Retreats in the Northwest Passage : Image of the Day

Sea Ice Retreats in the Northwest Passage : Image of the Day: Acquired July 17, 2012, and August 3, 2012, these natural-color NASA satellite images show the retreat of sea ice from the Parry Channel in the Northwest Passage.  The Canadian Ice Service reported that ice cover in Parry Channel began to fall below the 1981–2010 median after July 16, 2012, and the loss accelerated over the following two weeks. On July 23, the percentage of ice cover in the channel was roughly 67 percent, compared to the median of 80 percent. On July 30, ice cover was roughly 33 percent, compared a median of 79 percent.

August 3, 2012

July 17, 2012

What You Need to Know About Premium Support — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Now that Romney has embraced physically what he embraced verbally - privatiszation of Medicare and Social Security, abandonment of Medicaid by making it a matter of federal aid to state-designed programs - it;s time to learn what Ryan proposes. - GWC
What You Need to Know About Premium Support — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: "The budget resolution that House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) will unveil this week is expected to include a Medicare premium support proposal fashioned by Ryan and Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR).  Although billed as a kinder, gentler form of premium support, the Ryan-Wyden plan has the same basic features as earlier premium support proposals.[1] The Ryan-Wyden plan would shift substantial costs to Medicare beneficiaries rather than protect them from cost increases, in part because the payment that beneficiaries would receive to help them buy coverage would likely fail to keep pace with health care costs.  The plan also would likely lead to the gradual demise of traditional Medicare by making the pool of Medicare beneficiaries smaller, older, and sicker — and increasingly costly to cover.  Finally, the plan would produce few budgetary savings beyond those that the health reform law calls for, since both plans have the same target growth rate for Medicare costs.  The Ryan-Wyden plan is similar to Newt Gingrich’s 1995 proposal that, according to Gingrich, would have caused traditional Medicare to “wither on the vine.” " 'via Blog this'

The Fox News Wink: Is Obama "Gay"? or "Gay Gay"? - The Daily Beast

David Frum, a leading spokesman for rational Republicanism (speechwriter for George W. Bush), explains the bizarre set of beliefs embraced by the sub-culture of right wing chain emails, such as that which falsely claims that President Obama has ordered that those who present the flag at veterans' funerals say that they represent not the President but rather the Secretary of Defense. - GWC
The Fox News Wink: Is Obama "Gay"? or "Gay Gay"? - The Daily Beast: 
by David Frum

"On Fox News' "The Five," moderator Greg Gutfeld offered up this comment in a jokey yuck-yuck tone: "Obama is now out of the closet … he's officially gay for class warfare." Speaking of opening the closet, Gutfeld's comment exposes something important that many observers miss about this campaign and the way Fox News covers it: It's very important to understand that for Fox viewers, Fox is only the most visible part of a vast alternative reality. Fox's coverage of the news cannot be properly understood in isolation, but only in conjunction with the rest of that system—and especially the chain emails that do so much to shape the worldview of Fox viewers. You cannot "get" Gutfeld's joke unless you "get" that a large part of his audience ardently believes that Obama is in fact gay, that his marriage is a sham, and that Mrs. Obama leads a life of Marie Antoinette like extravagance to compensate her for her husband's neglect while he disports himself with his personal aides. Don't believe me? Just as an indicator, try this:....  Google: obama + gay + "reggie love""

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Text of the 2012 amendments to the ABA Model Rules

August 2012 Amendments to ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct  
Comments by Andrew Perlman, Reporter are HERE
Summary HERE

ABA Ethics 20/20 Commission resource page: 2012 resolutions and reports
Rule 1.6

Rules 1.18 and 7.3, and 7.1, 7.2 and 5.5

Rules 1.1, 5.3 and 5.5

Rule on Practice Pending Admission and Comment to Rule 5.5

Rule for Admission by Motion

Rule 1.6 and Rule 1.17

Comment paragraph [3] to rule 4.4 was also amended as follows:

[3] Some lawyers may choose to return a document or DELETE electronically stored information unread, for example, when the lawyer learns before receiving it the document that it was inadvertently sent to the wrong address. Where a lawyer is not required by applicable law to do so, the decision to voluntarily return such a document or DELETE electronically stored information is a matter of professional judgment ordinarily reserved to the lawyer. See Rules 1.2 and 1.4.
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Guns - as American as cherry pie

Guns don’t kill crowds of innocent people; maniacs with easy access to military-grade weapons do

The Economist

h/t James Fallows

Construction Worker Falls Down Elevator Shaft at Fordham Law School Jobsite in NYC | Digital Wires from ENR.com | News McGraw-Hill Construction

Construction Worker Falls Down Elevator Shaft at Fordham Law School Jobsite in NYC | Digital Wires from ENR.com | News McGraw-Hill Construction: The New York Post 
By Antonio Antenucci ; Jessica  Simeone; Larry Celona 


Preliminary reports are that the worker was wearing a harness which was not properly fastened.  The New York City Buildings Department has imposed a full stop work order at the site.  It issued three violations against the construction manager, Gotham Construction, which is responsible for safety under state and federal law. 
A hardhat barely survived a 75-foot plunge down an elevator shaft July 16 at the construction site of Fordham Law's new law school and dormitory complex. Anastassios Intzeyiannis, 41, was doing masonry work at 158 W. 62nd St. shortly after 11 a.m. when he lost his balance."


Mr. Intezeyiannis died on July 26, leaving his wife of two years Randi Intezeyiannis.  Rev. Joseph McShane, S.J. President of the University issued a statement mourning the worker's death.  A memorial service is planned by the University. 

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Blake's Jerusalem sung at Olympic Opening Ceremony

William Blake was, as Van Morrison sings, an enemy of empiricism, the atomic and nuclear age.  The rhetorical question "Was Jerusalem builded here among these dark satanic mills?" made his great poem Jerusalem the Labor Party anthem.  So it was a delight to learn it had been sung by a boy in the opening ceremony of the London Olympics.  That version is not yet available, so here is another.

Louisiana - P.D.'s turn down 400 felony cases

As we near the 50th anniversary of Gideon v. Wainwright public defenders across the country are struggling with inadequate funds in an adverse economic environment due to state austerity budgets. The latest is in Cacasieu County, Louisiana. The PDO there announced "Beginning today, the office will withdraw from about 400 felony conflict cases to which it is currently appointed and work with the judges to assign new counsel from the private bar. "  The consequence of the shift from full-time public defenders to assigned private counsel is often dire.  PD's have demonstrably superior results compared to assigned counsel. - GWCh/t John Steele, Legal Ethics Forum

BATON ROUGE – On Friday, July 27, 2012, the Calcasieu Public Defenders' Office ("PDO"), which serves the 14th Judicial District, will be forced to implement a restriction of services due to funding shortfalls. The right to counsel is guaranteed by the U.S. and Louisiana Constitutions.

LPDB received only 80% of its FY 13 budget request. While the Legislature did approve a modest increase in assessed special court fees (Act 578), the bill was opposed by the Louisiana District Attorneys Association, and the fee was reduced by half, from a $20 increase to a $10 increase, in response. As a result, Act 578 no longer produces enough revenue to avoid service restrictions in all districts. The Calcasieu PDO projects that the passage of Act 578 reduced its FY 13 budget shortfall from more than $450,000 to $240,000.

The LPDB Restriction of Services Protocol (promulgated March 20, 2012) requires that public defenders' offices restrict services in the manner least harmful to the continuation of public defense services within the district. The Calcasieu PDO, with approval from LPDB, has determined that the least impactful service restriction involves reducing the number of attorneys with whom it contracts to represent conflict clients from six attorneys to two. Beginning today, the office will withdraw from about 400 felony conflict cases to which it is currently appointed and work with the judges to assign new counsel from the private bar. Moving forward, the office will identify new counsel for conflict cases when the remaining two felony conflict attorneys have reached ethical workload limits. The private bar's contributions are pro bono; there are no funds to compensate attorneys for their direct representation.

The Calcasieu PDO's two remaining conflict attorneys will handle the most serious of the felony conflict cases appointed to their office per established protocol, and the remaining cases will be assigned to the private bar. The Calcasieu PDO will provide training, resources and other appropriate support to attorneys from the local bar who are appointed to represent eligible indigent clients, but who may not be particularly familiar with criminal law.

Since early spring, the Calcasieu PDO has communicated its anticipated funding shortfall to its criminal justice agency partners and has been working closely with the judiciary in the district to ensure that the service restriction is managed effectively. In early 2012, the office made a number of other internal office changes to slow its expenditures, including a hiring freeze, salary freeze, moving its offices to reduce its lease expenses, forgoing technology upgrades, and forcing staff to pay their own bar dues. The Calcasieu PDO has exhausted every effort to avoid appointments of the bar members, though the district public defender office, with support from LPDB, is aggressively pursuing additional revenues to ensure that the office's dependence on the private bar is as brief as possible.

The Calcasieu PDO is appointed to approximately 6,000 new cases each year. These cases are handled by 15 full-time lawyers, 1 part-time lawyer, 3 full-time investigators and 8 support staff. The Calcasieu PDO is currently under class-action litigation alleging the unconstitutional assistance of counsel (Anderson v. State) and is the second office in the state to be forced to restrict services in 2012 due to inadequate funds.

Medicaid saves lives, Supreme Court undermines Medicaid expansion

Chief Justice John Roberts, backed by Justices Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer, reached one appalling conclusion in NFIB v. Sebelius:  that the federal government's ability to provide for the general welfare is sharply limited.  It may not require states to provide Medicaid health insurance to those at up to 133% of the federal poverty line.  Governors like Paul LePage of Maine who practice the "why should I pay for your health care" politics of resentment have made grandstanding statements that they will not expand medicaid, or even drop out entirely, as did Rick Perry of Texas.

The Republican governors stance is particularly appalling in light of the Harvard School of Public Health's newly published study showing that Medicaid expansion to cover childless adults in Mississippi and Maine has already markedly improved the health of its beneficiaries. The authors conclude:

Medicaid expansions were associated with a significant reduction in adjusted all-cause mortality (a relative reduction of 6.1%). Mortality reductions were greatest among older adults, nonwhites, and residents of poorer counties. Expansions increased Medicaid coverage, decreased rates of uninsurance, decreased rates of delayed care because of costs , and increased rates of self-reported health status of “excellent” or “very good”

Profs. Timothy Jost and Sara Rosenbaum explain in an accompanying op-ed in the New England Journal of Medicine that

the Medicaid expansions are accompanied by 100% federal funding for the first 3 years, phasing down to 90% by 2020. The ACA offers no other means for covering adults with incomes below 100% of the poverty level. Resisting states effectively intensify the huge uncompensated care burden faced by their hospitals, deprive other health care industry players of important revenues, and keep their medically underserved communities from receiving an enormous economic infusion. Indeed, there is good evidence that overall, the changes in Medicaid will save, rather than cost, money.5 And residents of states that do not expand will still be paying federal taxes to cover the expansion in states that do expand.

Given the clear language of the Court's decision, the July 10 letter [from the Department of Health and Human Services] permits states to decide whether to accept funding to support the Medicaid expansion for newly eligible adults as a group or to reject it and with it hundreds of billions of dollars in much-needed federal assistance.

But some states may press the administration to interpret the expansion as a simple state option, allowing them to cover some portion of the expansion group and not others. This approach has no support in the law and would invite states to leave the most vulnerable members of the expansion group — adults without children — exposed to the worst sort of discriminatory exclusion. The administration may be pressured to enter into negotiations with each state, using its waiver authority. The ACA specifically amended the Medicaid waiver process to ensure that it was used for genuine research, not political horse trading. One can only hope that the states will come to their senses and we all will be spared the spectacle of federal and state governments struggling over the lives and health of the poorest among us.

Lazy mendacity watch: Romney said what? - Jonathan Bernstein

Lazy mendacity watch: Romney said what? - PostPartisan - The Washington Post: 
By Jonathan Bernstein 
Mitt Romney really dropped some whoppers in his conversation with Larry Kudlow on CNBC today. Ready? First: It’s one thing to argue that the stimulus didn’t work; granted, it goes against the consensus of economists, but there’s nothing particularly dishonest about that. But to pretend that there was no stimulus at all? That Obama simply ignored the economy in his first months of office? Here’s Romney:

"Well, I think the president made an error coming into office and deciding that the economy would take care of itself and he focused his energy on a series of liberal plans that he and his friends have been working on for years; take over the health care industry, a massive regulation of financial services in this country, trying to impose unions where employees don't want them, a new energy policy, slowing down the leasing of federal lands for the production of oil and gas."

What Romney said the president did do goes from questionable to outright false: Calling the Affordable Care Act a takeover of the health-care industry gets it wrong, and the president (much to the dismay of labor) did not devote any energy to changing union rules — while the idea that Dodd-Frank constitutes “deciding that the economy would take care of itself” is, well, odd indeed. But forget all that: Romney is here flat-out lying about what Obama actually did coming into office, which was to propose a massive stimulus bill.

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THE NEXT DEBT CRISIS: Educational Debt « The Belly of the Beast

The bill for the epochal shift to students of the cost of post-high school graduation is not just coming due - it is mounting.  Even land-grant colleges - a great democratic initiative - have gotten pricey.  And the farther down the chain you go the poorer the prospects for those who incur educational debt.  Now even the top of the chain- law school - is showing that the price of anti-tax sentiment is too high to be born by most law graduates. - GWC
THE NEXT DEBT CRISIS « The Belly of the Beast: 
by Steven J. Harper
"One of the next big bubbles is educational debt. A recent article in The New York Times notes that it exceeds one trillion dollars — more than total consumer credit card debt. Meanwhile, according to The Wall Street Journal, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reports that for those aged 40 to 49, the percentage of educational debt on which no payment has been made for at least 90 days has risen to almost 12 percent. Sadly, history will view these as the good old days."

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Pennsylvania admits: no cases of voter fraud

Viviette Applewhite - plaintiff

It has become an article of modern conservative faith that Democrats are practitioners of voter fraud.  This presumably happens in those reputedly late reporting Democratic (and Black) precincts of Chicago, Philadelphia, and other cities.  Thirty years ago when James Florio ran for Governor of New Jersey the Republican National Committee tapped a racist Newark pol Anthony Imperiale to organize a "ballot security task force" to suppress the Black vote.  That yielded a permanent injunction against the RNC issued by federal District Judge Dickinson Debevoise.  The consent order was recently upheld by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

The most recent efforts to hold down urban votes are legislative voter ID requirements.  In the ACLU's lawsuit challenge to Pennsyvania's law, Applewhite v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the state has now admitted in a stipulation that it knows of no cases of fraudulent voting - not in Pennsylania, not anywhere.

NJ Supreme Court Blocks Law Increasing Judges Pension and Health Benefit Contributions

New Jersey, like most states, responded to the protracted recession by cutting expenses.  The Democrat-controlled legislature, spurred by the voluble Governor Chris Christie, increased pension and health benefit contributions for all public employees. When the Assignment Judge in Trenton  accepted a state constitutional challenge by a sitting trial judge Christie erupted.  He denounced it as a self-serving act by "432 cliquey judges".  The State Supreme Court certified the appeal, bypassing the Appellate Division.  Now by a 3-2 vote (with Chief Justice Stuart Rabner abstaining) the court in DePascale v. State of New Jersey, has upheld the challenge, relying on the 1947 Constitution which says that a judge's salary shall not be "diminished":

Chapter 78 increases the amount that all public employees must contribute to their pension and health care insurance plans.  That law does not discriminate between justices and judges and other public employees, but the State Constitution does.  The Framers of the Constitution prohibited the Legislature from diminishing the salaries of sitting justices and judges -- not other public employees.  The Framers did so to protect the independence of the judiciary and to ensure that it remained a separate and equal -- not subordinate -- branch of government.  

The Framers recognized the unique role that the judiciary plays in our tripartite form of government.  Because one of the core functions of the judiciary is to serve as the guardian of the fundamental rights of the people -- rights nshrined in the Constitution -- the judiciary, at times, must restrain legislative initiatives or executive actions that may threaten those rights and violate the Constitution.  By barring the 4Legislature and executive from diminishing the salaries of sitting justices and judges, the Framers intended to prevent those branches from placing a chokehold on the livelihood of jurists who might be required to oppose their actions.  The constitutional restraint on diminishing judicial salaries is not for the benefit of judges, but for the benefit of the public.  

Alex Cockburn - the great polemicist is dead

Alex Cockburn could write.  As he said, James Fallows notes, "I can write better than anyone who writes faster and faster than anyone who writes better."  Professional discipline and a preference for understatement make me no polemicist.  But the world needs them and Alexander Cockburn, son of the great Brit Red journalist Claud Cockburn, was a brilliant one.  During his Village Voice years I waited for the new issue, picked it up asap, and went straight for Cockburn.  

The English have been speaking English longer than we have and they write it better.  Alex skewered the hypocrisy of the cold warriors, the passivity of the Times, and the conniving of the war makers.  He was revolted by the hypocrisy of Christopher Hitchens who I also detested, with a brilliant obit that made the essential point: that Hitchens stood on its head the maxim "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable"

He did not hesitate to name names when criticizing the Israeli occupation of the west bank, a font of rationalization that is still bearing bitter fruit for the Jewish national liberation movement.  Reagan's duplicity was a favorite target, especially during the Iran Contra eruption of lying and cheating.

Colin Moynihan at the Times, Michael Tomasky, Ed Kilgore, and, of course, James Fallows have all done well in their recollections.

PrawfsBlawg: In Praise of Praising Legal Aid Lawyers

PrawfsBlawg: In Praise of Praising Legal Aid Lawyers:
by Brooks Holland, Gonzaga Law School

"A brief essay on Forbes.com has made the rounds this week, In Praise of Legal Aid lawyers. The piece focuses on criminal defense legal aid lawyers, and why society should appreciate their work. The essay doesn't add anything too unfamiliar to this discussion. But it effectively and efficiently makes the case to both lawyers and non-lawyers for valuing public defenders--as evidence by all my current and former public defender friends on Facebook who posted and re-posted this link."

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Gun control after Colorado: will anyone have the courage to say it?

Site of the Aurora massacre

Many friends of mine "believe" in the right to have a gun.  It is a gut, somewhat paranoid, feeling of right.  Sometimes linked to self-defense, or protection from government tyranny.  But let's look at the odds.  How are they used?  Killing wives and girlfriends is at the top of the list, followed  by robberies and mass murders like the Dark Knight massacre in in Colorado.  The Supreme Court has bought into all of this.  Will anyone now have the courage to say it's madness and delusion?

The know-it-alls are already pronouncing the futility of law - that even the most restrictive gun laws would not have stopped this (let's name names: David Brooks and Eugene Volokh).  And there will be more massacres: the Brady campaign has this 62 page list of mass shootings since 1965 (not yet including Aurora).  Of course there are a lot of guns.  That doesn't mean that more guns don't add to the danger.  If a "well regulated militia is essential to the security of a free state" then where are the regulations?  Why assault weapons?  Why not limit purchases?  Why not ask why so many in America - and have the courage to give an honest answer?  Frankly I do not feel my freedom is enhanced by the fact that so many citizens have guns.
Update: The Monkey Cage cites a Gallup poll as evidence of declining gun ownership:
 

Trial Judge to Appeals Court - Review Me - NYTimes.com

Earlier this year - in Lafler v. Cooper the Supreme Court observed that incompetent advice that led a defendant to spurn a plea offer entitled the now convicted criminal to a remedy. In Padilla v. Kentucky (2010) the court found that defendant was entitled to vacate his conviction because the "consequences of Padilla’s plea could easily be determined from reading the removal statute, his deportation was presumptively mandatory, and his counsel’s advice was incorrect." All this reflects the reality that prosecutors not judges effectively run the criminal courts. One of the most powerful wedges is insistence on the waiver of right of appeal as a condition of accceptance of a plea offer. The Times commented today on the excessive power that the practice places in the hands of prosecutors. - GWC

Trial Judge to Appeals Court - Review Me - NYTimes.com: 

"Earlier this year, an opinion for the Supreme Court by Justice Anthony Kennedy noted a stunning and often overlooked reality of the American legal process: a vast majority of criminal cases — 97 percent of federal cases, 94 percent of state cases — are resolved by guilty pleas. “Criminal justice today,” he observed, “is for the most part a system of pleas, not a system of trials.” In this context, the recent rejection in a federal district court by Judge John Kane of a plea bargain deal between a defendant and federal prosecutors is truly startling. Judge Kane rejected the deal in part because the defendant waived his right to appeal to a higher court"

The Times editorialists observe further:

In a sample of almost 1,000 federal cases around the country, agreements included waivers about two-thirds of the time and more often in some places. Every federal appeals court has ruled that in general waivers are enforceable as part of the efficient administration of justice.
Some standard parts of waivers are outrageous, keeping defendants from appealing even if they become convinced that they received inadequate counsel to accept a defective plea agreement where the sentence was not lighter or where the prosecutor wrongly withheld evidence. Any defense lawyer or prosecutor who asks a defendant to sign a waiver ruling out appeals on those grounds is protecting himself.

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Five Delusions About Our Broken Politics - Thomas E. Mann & Norman J. Ornstein - The American Interest Magazine

Five Delusions About Our Broken Politics - Thomas E. Mann & Norman J. Ornstein - The American Interest Magazine: "Finding an American who does not think our politics are dysfunctional is much harder these days than finding Waldo. Approval of Congress hovers around 10 percent, limited, John McCain often jokes, to “paid staff and blood relatives.” Of course, Congress rarely enjoys a high approval rating, even when things are operating well. But to the two of us, with more than 42 years each of experience immersed in the corridors of Washington at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, this dysfunction is worse than we have ever seen it, and it is not limited to Capitol Hill. The partisan and ideological polarization from which we now suffer comes at a time when critical problems cry out for resolution, making for a particularly toxic mix. It is not going to be easy to find structural fixes to our problems because many of them flow from an increasingly corrosive culture, not just from institutional breakdowns.
We have many ideas for significant reforms and other changes, but before we can consider remedies for our political dysfunction, we need to rid ourselves of much seductive wishful thinking. Here are five bromides to avoid:"

The American Political System Will Correct Itself
Third Party to the Rescue
A Constitutional Amendment to Balance the Budget
Term Limits
Full Public Financing of Elections

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Torts Today: An Existential Crisis for Law Schools - NYTimes.com

Torts Today: An Existential Crisis for Law Schools - NYTimes.com: 'via Blog this'

Obama ad: Romney and America the Beautiful

I think this is a brilliant propaganda piece by the Obama campaign.  I suppose there will be criticism but not worth paying any mind.  (Compare Willie Horton and Swift Boating). - GWC

Federal Judge Richard Posner: The GOP Has Made Me Less Conservative : It's All Politics : NPR

Judge Richard Posner's "law and economics" approach drives me nuts.  His "pragmatism" long struck me as valueless - and therefore arbitrary.  But lately he is making more sense.  Nina Totenberg reports.- GWC

 Federal Judge Richard Posner: The GOP Has Made Me Less Conservative : It's All Politics : NPR:

by Nina Totenberg
 "Judge Richard Posner, a conservative on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, has long been one of the nation's most respected and admired legal thinkers on the right. But in an interview with NPR, he expressed exasperation at the modern Republican Party, and confessed that he has become "less conservative" as a result." 'via Blog this'

Roberts’ crafty victory - Koppelman - Salon.com

The battle over the nature of the power of the federal governments is reaching an acute stage.  At issue is whether a conservative majority can impose southern 18th century conceptions of the power of the federal government.  Andrew Koppelman, in typically lucid fashion, explains that it is not the anti-labor Lochner Era but the Supreme Court's post Civil War betrayal of the federal power to overcome the effects of slavery that is the closest analogy of the now blunted conservative drive to declare unconstitutional the Obama health care reforms. - GWC

Roberts’ crafty victory - Salon.com:
by  Andrew Koppelman
Northwestern University Law School

"In the recent, extraordinary leak about the internal deliberations of the Supreme Court in the healthcare case, Jan Crawford reports (while leaving ambiguous whether this comes from her leakers) that Chief Justice Roberts was worried about the lack of existing doctrinal support in the challengers’ case. “To strike down the mandate as exceeding the Commerce Clause, the court would have to craft a new theory, which could have opened it up to criticism that it reached out to declare the president’s healthcare law unconstitutional. Roberts was willing to draw that line, but in a way that decided future cases, and not the massive healthcare case.”" 'via Blog this'

Cincinnati Judge rejects plea for more funds for capital defense

Average capital defense cost

The average taxpayer-funded cost to represent those charged in death-penalty cases in Hamilton County in Fiscal Years:

2006 – $15,112;
2007 – $23,111;
2008 – $24,918;
2009 – $32,196;
2010 – $14,630;
2011 – $20,553;
2012 – $16,760.

Source: Ohio Public Defender

Cincinnati civil rights lawyer Bob Newman is on a mission to increase funding for capital defense.  In Hamilton County, Ohio death penalty defense layers are paid$4/hour with a cap of $22,500.  Newman has gained the support of the Ohio Prosecutors Association but five judges have turned him down.

Judge orders defender aid - Luzerne County, PA

In April the ACLU filed suit on behalf of the Luzerne County Public Defender which had sharply limited its intake because of inadequate funding of indigent defense in the scandal-plagued Pennsylvania county. GWC
Judge orders defender aid: "WILKES-BARRE – Finding that the Luzerne County Public Defender’s office is “approaching crisis stage,” a county judge on Friday ordered the county to provide adequate funding, but he stopped short of dictating how much money or staff needs to be added. Senior Judge Joseph Augello also ordered Chief Public Defender Al Flora to immediately resume representing all indigent defendants who qualify, ending a policy Flora implemented in December that limited the types of cases the office accepted."

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How Much Difference Does the Lawyer Make? The Effect of Defense Counsel on Murder Case Outcomes | RAND

My experience as a Public Defender pool attorney in Newark from 1979 - 1983 taught me that New Jersey's statewide, adequately funded Office of the Public Defender made the common view "get a lawyer not a public defender" a tragic error if acted upon.  The PD's astounding record in death penalty cases proved it beyond doubt.  [Of 228 death penalty trials (1982 - 2007) 60 were sentenced to death, 57 death sentences were reversed on appeal. 9 condemned men remained on death row when the Legislature’s Study commission recommended repeal in 2007. No one was executed from reinstatement to the day the Legislature repealed capital punishment in December 2007, replacing execution with life imprisonment without parole. See the 2008 symposium - `Legislation, Litigation, Reflection, and Repeal].  But that is isolated and anecdotal evidence.
The Rand Corporation authors systematically measure the difference in Philadelphia which has a perpetual contact with the Defenders Association of Philadelphia.  This makes the situation in Philadelphia much superior to the rest of Pennsylvania - the only one in the country to provide no state funding for indigent defense.  In the upcoming 50th Anniversary year of Gideon v. Wainwright we need to defend the defenders.  - GWC
h/t John Steele, Legal Ethics Forum
How Much Difference Does the Lawyer Make? The Effect of Defense Counsel on Murder Case Outcomes | RAND:
by James M. Anderson and Paul Heaton
Abstract
One in five indigent murder defendants in Philadelphia are randomly assigned representation by public defenders while the remainder receive court-appointed private attorneys. The authors exploit this random assignment to measure how defense counsel affect murder case outcomes. Compared to appointed counsel, public defenders in Philadelphia reduce their clients' murder conviction rate by 19% and lower the probability that their clients receive a life sentence by 62%. Public defenders reduce overall expected time served in prison by 24%. 

They find no difference in the overall number of charges of which defendants are found guilty. When they apply methods used in past studies of the effect of counsel that did not use random assignment, they obtain far more modest estimated impacts, which suggests defendant sorting is an important confounder affecting past research. To understand possible explanations for the disparity in outcomes, they interviewed judges, public defenders, and attorneys who took appointments.

 Interviewees identified a variety of institutional factors in Philadelphia that decreased the likelihood that appointed counsel would prepare cases as well as the public defenders. The vast difference in outcomes for defendants assigned different counsel types raises important questions about the adequacy and fairness of the criminal justice system.

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