Why Obama’s Gamble on the Debt Ceiling Depends on the GOP Being More Sane Than it Is
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 15 January 2013
In a pinch, the Treasury could issue IOUs to the nation’s creditors — guarantees they’ll be paid eventually. But there’s no indication that’s Obama’s game plan, either.

 

A week before his inaugural, President Obama says he won’t negotiate with Republicans over raising the debt limit. 

At an unexpected news conference on Monday he said he won’t trade cuts in government spending in exchange for raising the borrowing limit. 

“If the goal is to make sure that we are being responsible about our debt and our deficit - if that’s the conversation we’re having, I’m happy to have that conversation,” Obama said. “What I will not do is to have that negotiation with a gun at the head of the American people.”

Well and good. But what, exactly, is the President’s strategy when the debt ceiling has to be raised, if the GOP hasn’t relented?

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Obama Taps Adviser Who Defended Drone Strikes
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 8 January 2013
Cut Corporate Welfare, Not the Safety Net
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 8 January 2013
If your boat is sinking, do you blame the bird sitting on the railing or on the gallons of water spewing from a gaping hole in the floor?

In Congress’ latest “fiscal cliff” deal that supposedly had to be passed in order to avoid economic calamity, we spent $30 billion on extending unemployment benefits for a year, and $205 billion in corporate tax breaks, subsidies and excessive tax loopholes. Most of these Christmas gifts for corporate America are benefiting major, multi-billion dollar corporations that haven’t paid a dime of US income taxes in years, like GE and Boeing. In other words, taxpayers spent 6 times more on giving free money to companies making record profits than we did to making sure the people who were laid off by these corporations can still feed their families. $205 billion in corporate goodies was okay with Speaker Boehner, but $60 billion in Hurricane Sandy relief apparently wasn’t.

One of the most egregious giveaways included in the New Years Eve fiscal cliff deal negotiated between Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell is an extension of a loophole that allows corporations to book US profits in overseas, tax-free bank accounts. Today, US companies have up to $2 trillion offshored thanks to loopholes like the one in this deal, at the same time Congress is talking about raising the Medicare eligibility age to ...

The Final Battle
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 25 December 2012
If the courts fail us, a gulag state will be cemented into place.

 

Over the past year I and other plaintiffs including Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg have pressed a lawsuit in the federal courts to nullify Section 1021(b)(2) of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). This egregious section, which permits the government to use the military to detain U.S. citizens, strip them of due process and hold them indefinitely in military detention centers, could have been easily fixed by Congress. The Senate and House had the opportunity this month to include in the 2013 version of the NDAA an unequivocal statement that all U.S. citizens would be exempt from 1021(b)(2), leaving the section to apply only to foreigners. But restoring due process for citizens was something the Republicans and the Democrats, along with the White House, refused to do. The fate of some of our most basic and important rights—ones enshrined in the Bill of Rights as well as the Fourth and Fifth amendments of the Constitution—will be decided in the next few months in the courts. If the courts fail us, a gulag state will be cemented into place. 

Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, pushed through the Senate an amendment to the 2013 version of the NDAA. The amendment, although deeply flawed, at least made a symbolic attempt to restore the right to due process and trial by jury. A House-Senate conference committee led by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., however, removed the amendment from the bill last week.

“I was saddened and disappointed that we could not take a step forward to ensure at the very least American citizens and legal residents could not be held in detention ...

Kerry Chosen for U.S. Secretary of State, Hagel Still in Limbo
Taylor
Published: Sunday 23 December 2012
President Barack Obama has selected Senator John Kerry as his next Secretary of State.

U.S. President Barack Obama nominated Massachusetts Senator John Kerry on Friday to succeed Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, calling him “the perfect choice to guide American diplomacy in the years ahead”.

But Obama offered no hints as to whom he will pick for the rest of his national security team, including replacements for Pentagon chief Leon Panetta and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director General David Petraeus (retired), who resigned abruptly last month in the wake of reports of an affair.

The White House reportedly intended to announce its picks for all three posts Friday but backed off, primarily in response to an intense campaign led by prominent neo-conservatives and leaders of the Israel lobby against the possibility of former Nebraska Republican Senator Chuck Hagel as head of the Pentagon.

Hagel, who currently serves as co-chair of the president’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, and like Kerry is a decorated Vietnam War veteran, has come under heavy fire for his outspoken criticism of Israeli policies and the influence of the Israel lobby on Capitol Hill.

Republicans Losing Public Opinion Wars on Fiscal Cliff
Taylor
Published: Thursday 13 December 2012
The Botox Solution
Taylor
Published: Thursday 13 December 2012
Why the Formerly Grand Old Party Needs to Change and Won’t

 

Mitt Romney had hardly conceded before Republicans started fighting over where to head next.  Some Republicans -- and many Democrats -- now claim that the writing is on the wall: demography is destiny, which means the GOP is going the way of the Whigs and the Dodo.  Across the country, they see an aging white majority shrinking as the U.S. heads for the future as a majority-minority country and the Grand Old Party becomes the Gray Old Party.  Others say: not so fast.

In the month since 51% of the electorate chose to keep Barack Obama in the White House, I’ve spent my time listening to GOP pundits, operators, and voters.  While the Party busily analyzes the results, its leaders and factions are already out front, pushing their own long-held opinions and calling for calm in the face of onrushing problems.

Do any of their proposals exhibit a willingness to make the kind of changes the GOP will need to attract members of the growing groups that the GOP has spent years antagonizing like Hispanics, Asian Americans, unmarried women, secular whites, and others?  In a word: no.

Instead, from my informal survey, it looks to this observer (and former Republican) as if the party is betting all its money on cosmetic change.  Think of it as the Botox ...

How the “Fiscal Cliff” Affects States
Amanda Rae
Published: Tuesday 11 December 2012
U.S. “Fiscal Cliff” Talks
Amanda Rae
Published: Tuesday 11 December 2012
The Barack Obama Story
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 4 December 2012
How a Community Organizer and Constitutional Law Professor Became a Robot President

President Barack Obama 

The White House 

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW 

Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear President Obama,

Nothing you don’t know, but let me just say it: the world’s a weird place. In my younger years, I might have said “crazy,” but that was back when I thought being crazy was a cool thing and only regretted I wasn’t.

I mean, do you ever think about how you ended up where you are? And I'm not actually talking about the Oval Office, though that’s undoubtedly a weird enough story in its own right.

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Geithner to Review GOP Fiscal Cliff Counteroffer
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 2 December 2012
Opening Positions on the Cliff Deal: Deja Vu All Over Again
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 30 November 2012
“We need more spending in the short term in order to keep the recovery going, particularly in light of economic contractions in Europe and Japan, and slowdowns in China and India.”

 

So the bidding has begun.

According to the Wall Street Journal (which got the information from GOP leaders), the President’s opening bid to Republicans is:

— $1.6 trillion in additional tax revenues over the next decade, from limiting tax deductions on the wealthy and raising tax rates on incomes over $250,000 (although those rates don’t have to rise as high as the top marginal rates under Bill Clinton)

— $50 billion in added economic stimulus next year

— A one-year postponement of pending spending cuts in defense and domestic programs

— $400 billion in savings over the decade from Medicare and other entitlement programs  (the same number contained in the President’s 2013 budget proposal, submitted before the election).

— Authority to raise the debt limit without congressional approval.

The $50 billion in added stimulus is welcome. We need more spending in the short term in order to keep the recovery going, particularly in light of economic contractions in Europe and Japan, and slowdowns in China and India.

But by signaling its willingness not to raise top rates as high as they were under Clinton and to cut some $400 billion from projected increases in Medicare and other entitlement spending, the White House has ceded important ground.

Republicans obviously want much, much more.

The administration has taken a “step backward, moving away from consensus and significantly closer to the cliff, delaying again the real, balanced solution that this crisis requires,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) in a written statement. “No substantive progress has been made” added House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio).

No ...

In Baseless Persecution of Rice, Republican Reputations Will Sink
Taylor
Published: Thursday 29 November 2012
The opposition to Rice is cobbled together from the remnants of a failed “October Surprise” election gambit.

 

With the Republican right persisting in baseless persecution of Susan Rice, the U.N. Ambassador who may replace departing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, it has left President Obama little choice but to move ahead with her nomination. If he backs away from Rice, in the face of what he has called false accusations against her, that display of weakness would undermine his second term before it begins.

The opposition to Rice is cobbled together from the remnants of a failed "October Surprise" election gambit, which began when Mitt Romney sought to smear the president by using the tragic attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which killed four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens. In the election's aftermath, Senate Republicans have fixated on Rice, whom they accuse of misleading the public in television appearances several days after the Sept. 11 incident.

Rice's supposed offense was to downplay the likelihood that the attack had been perpetrated by al-Qaida terrorists or their local allies, while underlining the idea that it had been inspired by an anti-Muslim video on the Internet. On ABC News' "This Week," she repeated almost precisely the talking points provided to her by the CIA: Our current best assessment, based on the information that we have at present, is that, in fact, what this began as, it was a spontaneous — not a premeditated — response to what had ...

Bungee-Jumping Over the Fiscal Cliff
Taylor
Published: Thursday 29 November 2012
Earlier this week the Council of Economic Advisers published a report detailing the awful consequences of going over the so-called “fiscal cliff.”

What’s the best way to pressure Republicans into agreeing to extend the Bush tax cuts for the middle class while ending them for the wealthy?

The President evidently believes it’s to scare average Americans about how much additional taxes they’ll pay if the Bush tax cuts expire on schedule at the end of the year. He plans to barnstorm around the country, sounding the alarm.

The White House has even set up a new Twitter hashtag: “My2K,” referring to the extra $2,200 in taxes the average family will pay if all the Bush cuts expire. Earlier this week the Council of Economic Advisers published a report detailing the awful consequences of going over the so-called “fiscal cliff.”

But isn’t this fear-mongering likely to buttress Republican arguments that the Bush tax cuts should be extended for everyone — including the rich? Republicans will say (as they have a thousand times before) that the rich are the “job creators,” so we should tackle the budget deficit by cutting spending rather than raising anyone’s taxes. 

Obama’s only real bargaining leverage comes from the fact that when the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of December, America’s wealthiest will take the biggest hit. The highest marginal income tax rate will rise from 35 to 39.6 percent (for joint filers), and the capital gains rate from 15 to 20 percent.

This will happen automatically if nothing is done between now and then to change course. It’s the default if Republicans won’t agree to anything else. It’s Obama’s trump card.

So rather than stoking middle-class fears about the cliff, the White House ought to be doing the opposite – reassuring most Americans they can survive the fall. To utilize his trump card effectively, Obama needs to convince Republicans that the middle class is willing to jump.

And the middle class can jump ...

White House Rules Social Security Out of ‘Fiscal Cliff’ Talks
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 28 November 2012
White House spokesman Jay Carney said Monday that Social Security is one entitlement program that should be addressed on a “separate track.”

According to White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, Social Security should not be on the table during negotiations over the so-called “fiscal cliff,” the set of spending cuts and tax increases scheduled for the end of the year. Carney rightly noted that Social Security has nothing to do with today’s deficits:

White House spokesman Jay Carney said Monday that Social Security is one entitlement program that should be addressed on a “separate track.”

“We should address the drivers of the deficit and Social Security currently is not a driver of the deficit,” Carney told reporters today.

Lawmakers are trying to craft a deal to prevent the “fiscal cliff” from occurring, and have pulled Social Security and health care programs into the negotiations. But Social Security is statutorily barred from adding to the deficit, and is fully funded for more than two decades, unlike scores of other federal programs. As Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has explained, “Social Security has not added a single penny, not a dime, a nickel, a dollar to the budget problems we have. Never has. And for the next 30 years, it won’t do that.”

One simple change, raising the cap on the payroll tax so that it is applied to more income for wealthier Americans, would ensure Social Security’s funding

Why is the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers Helping the Republicans?
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 26 November 2012
“If the President’s strategy is to hold his ground and demand from Republicans tax increases on the wealthy, presumably his strongest bargaining position would be to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire on schedule come January.”

 

Why is the White House trying to scare average people about the consequences of the “fiscal cliff?”

If the President’s strategy is to hold his ground and demand from Republicans tax increases on the wealthy, presumably his strongest bargaining position would be to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire on schedule come January – causing taxes to rise automatically, especially on the wealthy.

So you’d think part of that strategy would be reassure the rest of the public that the fiscal cliff isn’t so bad or so steep, and that at the start of January Democrats will introduce in Congress a middle-class tax cut whose effect is to prevent taxes from rising for most people (thereby forcing Republicans to vote for a tax cut for the middle class or hold it hostage to a tax cut for the wealthy as well).

But today (Monday) the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers issued a report today warning that if Congress allows the Bush tax cuts to expire January 1and the Alternative Minimum Tax to kick in, the middle class will face sharply-rising taxes.

The result, says the Council of Economic Advisers, could slow consumer spending by 1.7 percent next year, and slow overall economic growth by 1.4 percent. The loss of $200 billion in consumer spending is just about what American families spent on all the new cars and trucks sold in the U.S. in the last year, according to the report. About $36 billion less would be spent for housing and utilities, $32 billion less for healthcare, and $26 billion less for groceries and at restaurants.

This kind of fear-mongering plays into Republican hands.

Lord Help Us - Bosses Gone Berserk
Taylor
Published: Thursday 22 November 2012
Dear Lord, indeed! Please save us from the pathetic pieties of such messianic political bosses.

 

The sky is falling! The end times are upon us! It's all over for America! And it's all because of you execrable voters.

This is the wretched wail of a few corporate chieftains who claim to be somewhere between flummoxed and furious that Barack Obama is back in the White House. With his diabolical Obamacare and tax-the-rich attacks on us wealthy job creators, they moan, this president is out to destroy American business. "There's a tsunami coming," cried one, so we must save ourselves.

How do these trembling titans of free enterprise intend to do that? By firing employees, thus sending a message to workers that voting for Democrats is bad for their health.

"Elections have consequences," exclaimed a Las Vegas boss, after offing 22 workers the day after Obama was re-elected. Echoing this self-serving political ethic, a Georgia owner of an aviation outfit told C-SPAN that his fear of Obamacare made him fire enough workers to exempt his business from providing health care. "I tried to make sure that the people I had to lay off voted for Obama," he noted, spewing spite.

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President Obama Reelected - But Where Is the Pathway to Good Jobs?
Taylor
Published: Thursday 22 November 2012
Four years ago, candidate Obama made a commitment to stand shoulder to shoulder with working people if their rights were ever threatened. That time has come.

 

With Barack Obama’s reelection last night, we witnessed the labor movement once again, as in every successful Democratic presidential race in recent decades, saving the president. Its ground troops and financial backing provided the bulwark to shore up Obama’s lead against Romney. By aiding in Obama's victory, unions helped avert the crisis that the election of Romney/Ryan would have represented—an attack not only on organized labor, but on women's rights and the whole of the social safety net.

But what, in terms of a positive agenda, should working people expect that's different from when President Obama was first elected? After the election of the last two Democratic presidents, organized labor had a clear legislative priority to hand to the successful candidate—the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) in the case of Obama’s first term, and a proposed ban on striker replacement in the case of President Clinton. In both cases, labor waited for the White House to lead on those issues, and that never happened. Neither EFCA nor the striker replacement ban came to pass.

This time around, labor does not have a single marquee piece of legislation that it is rallying around. We already know that any worker-friendly legislation that the White House advances will certainly face a blockade from Congressional Republicans. But that's no excuse for the president to neglect using the bully pulpit to stand in defense of the rights of ...

Bosses Gone Berserk
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 21 November 2012
“With his diabolical Affordable Care Act and tax-the-rich attacks on us wealthy job creators, they moan, this president is out to destroy American business.”

The sky is falling! The End Times are upon us! It's all over for America! And it's all because of you working-class voters.

That's the wretched wail of a few corporate chieftains who claim to be somewhere between flummoxed and furious that Barack Obama is getting another four years in the White House. With his diabolical Affordable Care Act and tax-the-rich attacks on us wealthy job creators, they moan, this president is out to destroy American business.

How are these trembling titans of free enterprise responding? By firing employees, thus sending a message to workers that voting for Democrats is bad for them. "Elections have consequences," exclaimed one Las Vegas boss, who asked for anonymity when he explained on a radio show why he fired 22 workers the day after Obama's re-election.

Echoing this self-serving political ethic, a man who also claimed to be a business owner but wouldn't identify himself other than as "Stu" told C-SPAN that his fear of Obamacare made him fire enough workers to exempt his business from providing health care. "I tried to make sure that the people I had to lay off voted for Obama," he noted.

Then there's Papa John's, the billion-dollar-a-year fast food giant. John Schnatter, the company's CEO and founding "papa," had warned this summer that he'd jack-up the consumer price of the chain's pizza if Obama won, because he wasn't going to eat the cost of assuring health coverage for employees.

Post-election, however, Schnatter decided not to slap his customers, but to smack Papa John's workers instead, by cutting their hours to part-time so he doesn't have to pay for their health coverage. "That's what you do," Schnatter snapped, "you pass on costs."

Frack Fight
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 19 November 2012
There, a loose network of activists is waging a guerrilla campaign not with improvised explosive devices or rocket-propelled grenades, but with zoning ordinances and petitions.

 

There’s a war going on that you know nothing about between a coalition of great powers and a small insurgent movement.  It’s a secret war being waged in the shadows while you go about your everyday life.

In the end, this conflict may matter more than those in Iraq and Afghanistan ever did.  And yet it’s taking place far from newspaper front pages and with hardly a notice on the nightly news.  Nor is it being fought in Yemen or Pakistan or Somalia, but in small hamlets in upstate New York.  There, a loose network of activists is waging a guerrilla campaign not with improvised explosive devices or rocket-propelled grenades, but with zoning ordinances and petitions. 

The weaponry may be humdrum, but the stakes couldn’t be higher. Ultimately, the fate of the planet may hang in the balance.

All summer long, the climate-change nightmares came on fast and furious. Once-fertile swathes of American heartland baked into an aridity reminiscent of sub-Saharan Africa. Hundreds of thousands of fish dead in overheated streams. Six million acres in the West consumed by wildfires.  In September, a report commissioned by 20 governments predicted that as many as 100 million people across the world could die by 2030 if fossil-fuel consumption isn’t reduced.  And all of this was before superstorm Sandy wreaked havoc on the New York metropolitan area and the Jersey shore.

Washington’s leadership, when it comes to ...

Five Reasons Why Obama Should Reject the Keystone XL Pipeline
Amanda Rae
Published: Saturday 17 November 2012
“Keystone XL is a means for reckless expansion of the tar sand industry, which is game over for the climate.”

This Sunday, activists are organizing another round of protests at the White House to urge the President to kill the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. This marks the beginning of a new post-election campaign to pressure the Administration to abandon dirty fossil fuel projects. Below is a piece, written by three of the organizations leading the protests: Oil Change International, 350.org, and Bold Nebraska.

As the President kicks off his second term, there has been much chatter about town as to whether or not he will approve the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. Mitt Romney made it clear that he would approve the pipeline on his first day in office—and even went so far as to say he would build it himself if he had too—while the President has emphasized the importance of climate change and renewable energy.

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Ending the Drug War: The Next Serious Step Through the Haze of Comedy
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 17 November 2012
“Barack Obama campaigned for president pledging to respect state marijuana laws and his Justice Department in 2009 issued a memo reiterating that promise. But by 2011, the same Justice Department countermanded that directive and authorized a federal crackdown.”

 

What's next? Amid all the munchie-themed jokes from reporters, political elites and late-night comedians, this remains the overarching question after Coloradans voted overwhelmingly to legalize, regulate and tax marijuana in the same way alcohol is already legalized, regulated and taxed. Since those anti-Drug-War principles are now enshrined in Colorado's constitution, only the feds can stop this Rocky Mountain state — if they so choose. But will they? And should they even be able to?

The answer to the former is maybe. Barack Obama campaigned for president pledging to respect state marijuana laws and his Justice Department in 2009 issued a memo reiterating that promise. But by 2011, the same Justice Department countermanded that directive and authorized a federal crackdown. Now, with the results of the 2012 election, Colorado's Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper has been forced into the awkward position of fighting off the feds in defense of a state constitutional amendment he tried to defeat.

Because of Hickenlooper's cynical contradictions — the beer mogul opposed pot legalization after making millions selling the more hazardous drug called alcohol — he is not trusted by those pushing for a more rational narcotics policy. That distrust only intensified after the election. Instead of acknowledging the seriousness of a Drug War that is unduly arresting thousands and that often disproportionately targets minorities, Hickenlooper reacted to the ballot measure's passage with his own infantile attempt at comedy.

"Don't break out the Cheetos or Goldfish too quickly," he snickered.

Not surprisingly, proponents of the pot initiative, which passed with more votes than either Obama or Hickenlooper have ever received in Colorado, weren't laughing with the governor. They suspect Hickenlooper's recent consultations with ...

White House Petition to Label GMOs Gaining Thousands of Signatures Per Day
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 17 November 2012
“The petition comes as more and more activists have been taking to the streets and labeling GMO-containing products for themselves using printable warning stickers.”

 

In another display of widespread grassroots support for GMO labeling following the suspicious failure of GMO labeling bill Prop 37 in California, a new petition calls upon the Obama administration to require the FDA to label GMOs within consumer products. Growing in popularity each hour, the petition is receiving thousands of signatures per day and currently stands at over 13,390.

The petition comes as more and more activists have been taking to the streets and labeling GMO-containing products for themselves using printable warning stickers.

It seems that the bottom line is that the public will not settle for major corporations dictating what they can and cannot know — especially when it comes to what they are putting into their mouths. As the petition description states plainly on the White House website, corporations have taken over the food supply through patented genetically modified seeds and various extortion methods. And on the economic side, what happens if these juggernauts use their agricultural foothold to secure further profits through charging unknowing consumers exorbitant prices?

The petition description states:

“Corporations have patented our food with GMOs and now control of our food supply… what happens if they decide there is a shortage or raise prices?”

Label GMOs: Monsanto Bankrupting Small Farms, Eliminating Competition

We have seen in the past the numerous ways in which Monsanto takes advantage of small farmers, ultimately ...

Veterans Administration Won’t Talk, Treats Vets Like the Enemy
Taylor
Published: Thursday 15 November 2012
Veterans Affairs has been a troubled agency for decades now, sometimes better, sometimes worse, rarely adequate to meet the need.

 


On October 4, a small group of American veterans went to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in Washington, DC, to talk to officials there about veteran suicides, veteran homelessness, veteran joblessness, and other veteran struggles.   No one from the department would talk to them. 

 

Even the contingent of Homeland Security guards blocking the door wouldn’t explain to the veterans why they couldn’t come in.  So they stayed on the sidewalk in front of 810 Vermont Avenue, a few hundred yards from the White House, and established Occupy Dep’t of Veterans Affairs and they’ve been there ever 

The President’s Opening Bid on a Grand Bargain: Aim High
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 13 November 2012
First, raise taxes on the rich – and by more than the highest marginal rate under Bill Clinton or even a 30 percent (so-called Buffett Rule) minimum rate on millionaires.

 

I hope the President starts negotiations over a “grand bargain” for deficit reduction by aiming high. After all, he won the election. And if the past four years has proven anything it’s that the White House should not begin with a compromise.

Assuming the goal is $4 trillion of deficit reduction over the next decade (that’s the consensus of the Simpson-Bowles commission, the Congressional Budget Office, and most independent analysts), here’s what the President should propose:

First, raise taxes on the rich – and by more than the highest marginal rate under Bill Clinton or even a 30 percent (so-called Buffett Rule) minimum rate on millionaires. Remember: America’s top earners are now wealthier than they’ve ever been, and they’re taking home a larger share of total income and wealth than top earners have received in over 80 years.

Why not go back sixty years when Americans earning over $1 million in today’s dollars paid 55.2 percent of it in income taxes, after taking all deductions and credits? If they were taxed at that rate now, they’d pay at least $80 billion more annually — which would reduce the budget deficit by about $1 trillion over the next decade. That’s a quarter of the $4 trillion in deficit reduction right there.

A 2% surtax on the wealth of the richest one-half of 1 percent would bring in another $750 billion over the decade. A one-half of 1 percent tax on financial transactions would bring in an additional $250 billion.

Add this up and we get $2 trillion over ten years — half of the deficit-reduction goal.

Raise the capital gains rate to match the rate on ordinary income and cap the mortgage interest deduction at $12,000 a year, and that’s another $1 trillion over ten years. So now we’re up to $3 trillion in additional revenue.

Eliminate special tax preferences for oil and gas, price supports for ...

In Obama Win, a Triumph of Community Organizing
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 13 November 2012
Community organizers around the country worked overtime to hand the election to President Barack Obama. Now we need him to stand up for our values and vision.

President Obama’s big win last Tuesday was a victory for the middle class, a rejection of trickle-down economics, and a statement from a new generation of Americans that they are a force to be reckoned with

But most of all, it was a vindication for the much-maligned community organizer.

Remember all those folks on the right who mocked the organizers who work patiently and tirelessly in communities across the country? The way they tried to tar President Obama for passing up lucrative opportunities to instead take a job as an organizer on the South Side of Chicago? Recall, if you can bear it, Sarah Palin

A Deal can be Done on U.S. “Fiscal Cliff” Says Republicans
Amanda Rae
Published: Sunday 11 November 2012
After the Election: Time to Stop Settling for the Lesser Evil
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 11 November 2012
“A far-left charge against those of us who rallied to support the incumbent was that we were fearful and lacked imagination.”

There was a lot less dancing in the streets this Election Day than in 2008, when the nation celebrated the election of the first African-American president. But progressives can nonetheless feel great relief at the re-election of Barack Obama. 

 

A far-left charge against those of us who rallied to support the incumbent was that we were fearful and lacked imagination. I plead guilty. I was fearful of energized conservatives eager to have the country run by an asset-stripping vulture capitalist. I was fearful of the vast waves of SuperPAC money that flooded Pennsylvania, where I live, with ads crucifying anyone who would challenge the goodness of the coal industry. 

 

Probably because of my lapsed subscription to the Weekly Standard, I received a robo-call last week from Dick Morris, urging me to donate money to his favorite cause: none other than the infamous group Citizens United. Conservatives, Morris’s recorded voice intimated, not only had a chance to oust Obama; they had an opportunity to “decimate the radical left.” At that point, I was concerned that we had become fearful too late. 

 

At the same time, I do not have illusions about what the White House will deliver in the next four years. Those who refused to vote for Obama may have been wrong if they argued that “there is no difference” between the two main parties, but they are surely correct that the Democrats have pushed dangerously to the right and that the left is hitched to them at its peril. 

 

I supported voting for Obama on the grounds that social movements are stronger when they can battle against tepid centrists in office than when forced into rear-guard battles against elected conservatives with a rabid desire to attack unions, ...

The Next Game of Economic Chicken: Not on the Deficit But Over Taxing the Rich
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 11 November 2012
“The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office on Thursday warned that the automatic tax increases and spending cuts scheduled to start in January amount to too much deficit reduction, too soon.”

With the election behind us I had hoped we’d get beyond games of chicken. No such luck.

But first you need to understand that the game of chicken isn’t about how much or when we cut the budget deficit. Or even whether the upcoming “fiscal cliff” poses a danger to the economy.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office on Thursday warned that the automatic tax increases and spending cuts scheduled to start in January amount to too much deficit reduction, too soon. They’d put the economy back into recession, and push unemployment to about 9 percent. But the CBO also warned of an economic crisis ahead if the United States doesn’t stem the growth of the nation’s exploding deficit.

Get it? Reduce the budget deficit too quickly, and we’re in trouble. But fail to address the deficit, and we’re also in trouble.  It’s really a matter of timing. That’s why I think any deal should include a trigger mechanism that begins to cut spending and raise taxes when the economy has two consecutive quarters of 6 percent unemployment or less, and 3 percent annualized growth or more.  

In reality, though, the upcoming game of chicken isn’t about any of this. It’s over the clearest issue President Obama and Mitt Romney fought over: whether taxes should be raised on the rich.

Democrats and Republicans are now maneuvering to maximize their bargaining leverage when they sit down next year to decide this.

On Friday the President called on called on Congress to immediately make permanent the tax cuts for Americans who make less than $250,000 a year, while at the same time allowing tax rates to rise for wealthy Americans — and then making those rates part of a broader deal next year.

The President knows congressional Republicans won’t agree, but he ...

Tavis Smiley & Cornel West on Election, Why Calling Obama Progressive Ignores His Record
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 9 November 2012
At a time when one in six Americans is poor, the price tag for combined spending by federal candidates — along with their parties and outside groups like super PACs — totaled more than $6 billion. Together, West and Smiley have written the new book, “The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto.” Both Tavis and Smiley single out prominent progressives whom they accuse of overlooking Obama’s actual record. “We believe if [Obama] is not pushed, he is going to be a transactional president and not a transformational president,” Smiley says.

As the most expensive presidential election in U.S. history comes to an end, broadcaster Tavis Smiley and professor, activist Dr. Cornel West join us to discuss President Obama’s re-election and their hopes for a national political agenda in and outside of the White House during Obama’s second term. At a time when one in six Americans is poor, the price tag for combined spending by federal candidates — along with their parties and outside groups like super PACs — totaled more than $6 billion. Together, West and Smiley have written the new book, "The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto." Both Tavis and Smiley single out prominent progressives whom they accuse of overlooking Obama’s actual record. "We believe if [Obama] is not pushed, he is going to be a transactional president and not a transformational president," Smiley says. "We believe the time is now for action and no longer accommodation… To be the most progressive means you’ve taken some serious risk. And I just don’t see the example of that." West says that some prominent supporters of Obama "want to turn their back to poor and working people. It’s a sad thing to see them as apologists for the Obama administration in that way."

Now the Work of Movements Begins
Taylor
Published: Thursday 8 November 2012
“People organized around this country, fighting for a more just, sustainable world. Now the real work begins.”

The election is over, and President Barack Obama will continue as the 44th president of the United States. There will be much attention paid by the pundit class to the mechanics of the campaigns, to the techniques of microtargeting potential voters, the effectiveness of get-out-the-vote efforts. The media analysts will fill the hours on the cable news networks, proffering post-election chestnuts about the accuracy of polls, or about either candidate’s success with one demographic or another. Missed by the mainstream media, but churning at the heart of our democracy, are social movements, movements without which President Obama would not have been re-elected.

President Obama is a former community organizer himself. What happens when the community organizer in chief becomes the commander in chief? Who does the community organizing then? Interestingly, he offered a suggestion when speaking at a small New Jersey campaign event when he was first running for president. Someone asked him what he would do about the Middle East. He answered with a story about the legendary 20th-century organizer A. Philip Randolph meeting with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Randolph described to FDR the condition of black people in America, the condition of working people. Reportedly, FDR listened intently, then replied: “I agree with everything you have said. Now, make me do it.” That was the message Obama repeated.

There you have it. Make him do it. You’ve got an invitation from the president himself.

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Romney Unzipped, Blunt Talk to Bundlers
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 7 November 2012
“Had any CEO -- especially a bold, venture capitalist and quarter-billionaire who hates high taxes -- plus a Mormon -- ever come closer to seizing the White House?”

Note: Professional ethics, if not bodily safety, entails keeping the source for this putative concession draft as secret as Mitt keeps his top bundlers (fundraisers), tax returns, offshore accounts, et al. Romney deviated from Barack Obama, George W. Bush and John McCain by refusing to identify his deepest pockets, sources so terrified of publicity the details of all meetings remain hush-hush.   

 

My true Americans:

 

Even if we fall short in the end, think what first-time, historic thresholds we've established: a self-made, self-effacing finance guy nearly dislodged Mr. Silver-tongued, Minority-loving, Incumbent Populist. One more week -- and one less darn super-storm -- and who knows?   Even Reagan might have lost if Carter had a hurricane behind him.

 

Of course, hats off it to any hustler who outscores my accomplished operation, even if one idiot advisor brought up Etch-a-Sketching. Heck, we'd have gotten plastered without being all things to all voters. So unselfishly, I agreed that neither my past nor principles would stand in the way of winning. I make no apology, however, for identifying that slothful 47% of yokels. I knew all along Obama only had to patch 3% liberals to the 47% losers to reach his gullible majority.  

 

But look how close we came, an outsider taking on huge odds and the two slickest incumbents to ever come down the pike, Obama and Bill Clinton. Had any CEO -- especially a bold, venture capitalist and quarter-billionaire who hates high taxes -- plus a Mormon -- ever come closer to seizing the White House? Never, and President Ryan in 2016 will acknowledge this breakthrough by naming me ambassador to France, or Treasury secretary, oh, Federal Reserve chiefdom would do.       

 

Election Takeaway for Fossil Fuel Industry: Money Can’t Buy You Love
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 7 November 2012
“The fossil fuel industry went all in on this election. By mid-September, oil, gas, and coal companies had spent more than $150 million on campaign ads.”

Americans have returned a clean energy champion to the White House, but they didn’t stop there. All the way down the ticket, voters overwhelmingly favored candidates who support clean energy, clean air, and strong public health safeguards.

This is victory for everyone who likes to breathe clean air and drink clean water, and it is a resounding defeat for polluters and the dirty agenda they tried to sell to voters.

The fossil fuel industry went all in on this election. By mid-September, oil, gas, and coal companies had spent more than $150 million on campaign ads. Texas oil barons handed over $10 million to Governor Romney in one week alone—the week before he released his energy plan. By the time all the checks are tallied, the amount spent by dirty energy companies will be well over $200 million.

And yet the fossil fuel industry has little to show for it. Oil, gas, and coal companies spent $20 million to defeat Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), but he won anyway. He ran on his record of supporting renewable power and environmental protections and voters rewarded him for it.

They did the same thing in the New Mexico Senate race. Fossil fuel companies opened their checkbooks for Former Representative Heather Wilson, a pro-drilling, anti-climate action candidate. But voters preferred Representative Martin Heinrich and the fact that he made clean energy and climate action a central part of his campaign.

In Virginia, fossil fuel companies and other outside interests spent heavily to take a senate seat away from the Democratic Party. Voters weren’t buying it. They elected Former Governor Tim Kaine who has a long history of standing up for clean air and public health safeguards.

It turns out my mother was right: money can’t buy you love. If you can’t buy it for $200 million, then it’s not for sale.

That means these ...

Dear Republicans, This is Not Your Parents’ White House
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 7 November 2012
“According to unofficial exit polls published yesterday night by CNN the white- and male-electorate represented the only two voting blocs that favored your ticket.”

Dear Republicans,

 

You needed this defeat, and very badly. Over the last four years—arguably much longer— you seem to have forgotten that white, heterosexual, pro-corporate, god-fearing, married men are not the only people who live and vote in this country. Last night’s election demonstrates in unimpeachable terms that your entire political strategy is obsolete, exclusive, and supremely shortsighted, a fact that we leftists have known for far too long.  We’re happy to have confirmation.

 

According to unofficial exit polls published yesterday night by CNN the white- and male-electorate represented the only two voting blocs that favored your ticket. You won the white vote by 18 percent and the male vote by nearly 10 percent. The Obama/Biden ticket, by contrast, won nearly every other social demographic. With a quickly diminishing white electorate (77 percent in 2000, 72 percent today), you need to be open to coalition building and legitimate political compromise that benefits a far larger swath of the citizenry.

 

Your opponents won the African American vote by 85 percent, the Latino vote (the fastest growing segment of our population) by 40 percent, the Asian vote by 50 percent, the women’s vote by 10 percent, the under-64 vote by 10 percent, and the “moderate” vote by 14 percent. 

Willingness to coalition build means not consigning 51 percent of the U.S. population—women— to three-ring binders. A willingness to coalition build means supporting an organization like Planned Parenthood that performs 750,000 breast exams and 770,000 pap tests annually to women nationwide.  Coalition ...

Romney Most Likely to Break "Day-One" China Currency Pledge
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 5 November 2012
Romney’s Latest Lie, His Former Lies, and Why We Must not Put Liars in the White House
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 31 October 2012
“Ryan’s plan includes the same $716 billion of savings but gets it from turning Medicare into a voucher and shifting rising health-care costs on to seniors.”

Over the weekend, Romney debuted an ad in Ohio showing cars being crushed as a narrator says Obama “sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China. Mitt Romney will fight for every American job.”

In fact, Chrysler is retaining and expanding its Jeep production in North America, including in Ohio. Its profits have enabled it to separately consider expanding into China, the world’s largest auto market.

Responding to the ad, Chrysler emphasized in a blog post that it has “no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China.”

“They are inviting a false inference,” says Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert on political advertising.

This is only the most recent in a stream of lies from Romney. Remember his contention that the President planned to “rob” Medicare of $716 billion when in fact the money would come from reduced payments to providers who were overcharging — thereby extending the life of Medicare? (Ryan’s plan includes the same $716 billion of savings but gets it from turning Medicare into a voucher and shifting rising health-care costs on to seniors.)

Remember Romney’s claim that Obama removed the work requirement from the welfare law, when in fact Obama merely allowed governors to fashion harder or broader work requirements?  

Recall Romney’s assertion that he is not planning to give the rich a tax cut of almost $5 trillion, when in fact that’s exactly what his budget plan does? Or that his budget will reduce the long-term budget deficit, when in fact his numbers don’t add up? 

And so on. “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers,” says Neil ...

Living Apart: How the Government Betrayed a Landmark Civil Rights Law
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 30 October 2012
Has integration really ever been attempted?

 

A few months after Congress passed a landmark law directing the federal government to dismantle segregation in the nation's housing, President Nixon's housing chief began plotting a stealth campaign.

The plan, George Romney wrote in a confidential memo to aides, was to use his power as secretary of Housing and Urban Development to remake America's housing patterns, which he described as a “high-income white noose” around the black inner city.

 

The 1968 Fair Housing Act, passed months earlier in the tumultuous aftermath of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, directed the government to “affirmatively further” fair housing. Romney believed those words gave him the authority to pressure predominantly white communities to build more affordable housing and end discriminatory zoning practices.

Romney ordered HUD officials to reject applications for water, sewer and highway projects from cities and states where local policies fostered segregated housing.

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Warren Goes to Washington: The Historic 2012 Election in Retrospect
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 26 October 2012
“An unapologetic liberal one who had proven she would not back down to powerful Republicans in Congress or kowtow to Democrats who prefer to soft-pedal the criticism of the greed-is-good philosophy that led to the Great Recession of the past five years.”

 

The key political race in the country every four years is typically the run for the White House, but the historic election of 2012 was different.  Massachusetts was at the heart of the difference.

 

The most important election that year was for a US Senate vacated when Senator Edward ("Teddy") Kennedy died three years ago – between Elizabeth Warren, a true Democrat of the venerable FDR variety, and Scott Brown, said to be a moderate Republican of the venerable "I Like Ike" ilk.   Here's why.

 

Elizabeth Warren was the exact opposite of everything that was wrong with Washington and Wall Street and the radical Republicans who inexplicably selected Mitt Romney as their standard bearer.  Warren was the anti-Romney in every sense of the word.

 

Romney's background smacked of privilege and money.  He was a card-carrying member of the Lucky Sperm Club.   Warren was born into an ordinary working class family.  As such, she had no connections in high places, no family name, and no fortune to propel her to the top of any profession.  Nobody who knew anything about Warren doubted her achievements or suggested that she was a "legacy" at Rutgers (where she earned her law degree) or Harvard (where she taught law).

 

Why was Warren's background so important?  Precisely because it defined who she is, explained where she is coming from, and gave voters the best guarantee money can't buy that she means what she says. 

 

Imagine that!  A candidate for high office who means what she says.  An unapologetic liberal one who had proven she would not back down to powerful Republicans in Congress or kowtow to Democrats who prefer to soft-pedal the ...

Dark Money and Citizens United: What Obama and Romney Would and Wouldn’t Do About it
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 24 October 2012
“The president has also floated a Constitutional amendment to address Citizens United — an idea that’s currently politically impossible.”

With campaign finances limits rendered nearly meaningless, election spending is on pace to set records. Where does each presidential candidate stand on how to regulate money in politics?

President Obama talks about changes but hasn’t instituted many. He favors legislation that would require disclosure of donors to dark money nonprofits. The president has also floated a Constitutional amendment to address Citizens United — an idea that’s currently politically impossible. Yet advocates point out Obama hasn’t even instituted campaign finance measures that he could do on his own using executive power.   

Mitt Romney has mostly stayed mum. His campaign doesn’t have an official position paper on campaign finance and wouldn’t answer questions. When asked, Romney has said he favors removal of contribution limits to candidates, as a way to bring money from outside groups back into campaigns. He has also said he favors donor disclosure but hasn’t signaled support of specific legislation.

Here are the details:

President Obama

Obama supports the DISCLOSE Act, a bill that would require disclosure of donors to politically active nonprofits, which are currently funded with anonymous money. In July, the bill

Obama Narrowly Beats Out Romney
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 23 October 2012
Before the Election was Over, Wall Street Won
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 23 October 2012
Banks trump citizens, and absent severe reconstruction of the banking system, the cycle will absolutely, unequivocally continue.

 

Before the campaign contributors lavished billions of dollars on their favorite candidate; and long after they toast their winner or drink to forget their loser, Wall Street was already primed to continue its reign over the economy.

For, after three debates (well, four), when it comes to banking, finance, and the ongoing subsidization of Wall Street, both presidential candidates and their parties’ attitudes toward the banking sector is similar  – i.e. it must be preserved – as is – at all costs, rhetoric to the contrary, aside.

Obama hasn’t brought ‘sweeping reform’ upon the Establishment Banks, nor does Romney need to exude deregulatory babble, because nothing structurally substantive has been done to harness the biggest banks of the financial sector, enabled, as they are, by entities from the SEC to the Fed to the Treasury Department to the White House.

In addition, though much is made of each candidates' tax plans, and the related math that doesn’t add up (for both presidential candidates), the bottom line is, Obama hasn’t explained exactly WHY there’s $5 trillion more in debt during his presidency, nor has Romney explained HOW to get a ...

Clinton Criticizes Voters for Not Appreciating the Great Economy He’s Given Them
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 22 October 2012
“This is an economy where people are losing their homes and being evicted from their apartments.”

 

Bill Clinton is undoubtedly the greatest politician of his generation. He is also a thoroughly reprehensible character.

Last week he had the gall to complain to people in Wisconsin about “impatient voters.” According to news account, at an Obama rally in Green Bay he said:

"This shouldn't be a race … The only reason it is, is because Americans are impatient on things not made before yesterday and they don't understand why the economy is not totally hunky-dory again."

This is infuriating for two reasons. First, Clinton uses the term “impatient” like he is describing people waiting for their dinner to be served at restaurant. That’s not the story of the current economy. The story of the economy is people who do not have jobs or do not have jobs that give them enough hours or a high enough wage to allow them to pay their bills each month.

This is an economy where people are losing their homes and being evicted from their apartments. It is one where people can’t afford medical care or decent food and clothes for their kids. That is not story of impatience; it’s a story of real suffering.

It’s perhaps not surprising that Clinton can’t understand this reality. This is a guy who commented about his multi-million dollar book deal and six-figure speaker’s fee that he had never been financially secure until he left the White House.

Of course this is crap by any reasonable definition of “financially secure.” Clinton was guaranteed a pension of almost $200,000 a year, plus health care coverage, the day he left the White House. This would have put him far into the top 1 percent of retirees even if he never earned another ...

For Sale: The White House
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 17 October 2012
“The AAPC has also demonstrated that we will remain vigilant in guarding political speech and defending our profession from unwarranted infringements.”

 

 

No doubt about it:  If Willard Mitt Romney wins on November 7 it will be a watershed in American history – the first time a candidate and his rich backers clearly bought a presidential election.  No one with a passing familiarity with the facts or a scintilla of common sense can argue otherwise.  Anyone so inclined is urged to do a quick internet search using these key words: 1) Citizens United; 2) Super Pacs; and 3) 501(c)(4) organizations.

 

Next, check out the American Association of Political Consultants (AAPC) and the rise of for-profit enterprises that specialize in campaign strategy and tactics, especially the use of attack ads, disinformation, and propaganda.  Start with "The Lie Factory"(Jill Lepore,The New Yorker September 24, 2012) , a trenchant piece of journalism about "How politics became a business" starting in the 1930s.   Then go and have a look at AAPC's website where you will learn, "…the cornerstone of the American Association of Political Consultants is ethical conduct in campaigns by political professionals.  The AAPC has also demonstrated that we will remain vigilant in guarding political speech and defending our profession from unwarranted infringements."  Presumably, the latter is defined to include limits on campaign contributions and regulations aimed at re-injecting sanity into our elections. 

 

NPR's Peter Overby, who recently reported on how big money and secrecy (mega-contributions from undisclosed donors) are shaping this election (October 15), revealed how the business of politics has, for all practical purposes, been turned into a racket (like, say, bootlegging and prostitution in the 1930s) and the shadowy individuals who operate behind the scenes are little different from racketeers like ...

Obama Order Protects Intelligence Community Whistleblowers
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 15 October 2012
“The order is meant to address longstanding concerns that whistleblowers in the intelligence agencies lacked legal protections like those available to employees of the Department of Defense and other federal agencies.”

 

President Barack Obama signed an executive order last week creating new protections for national security and intelligence community whistleblowers, effectively sidestepping a congressional impasse provoked by the reservations of congressional Republicans.

The order — formally known as "Presidential Policy Directive 19" and signed by Obama out of public view on Oct. 10 and without a White House announcement — directs intelligence agencies to establish procedures for the protection of employees reporting waste, fraud and abuse.

The order is meant to address longstanding concerns that whistleblowers in the intelligence agencies lacked legal protections like those available to employees of the Department of Defense and other federal agencies.

The new order bans retaliation against whistleblowers in the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and other intelligence organizations. Until now, these agencies were not specifically prohibited from retaliating against whistleblowers. 

A House bill aimed at improving protections for most federal employees, known as the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act and passed by that chamber in September, lacked the safeguards ordered by Obama. Angela Canterbury, from the Washington, D.C. watchdog group Project on Government Oversight, said House Republicans had narrowed the bill’s focus due to worries that its provisions might encourage Wikileaks-type disclosures of sensitive information.

She called this a "red herring," explaining that by protecting those with security clearances who want to blow the whistle on wrongdoing at intelligence agencies, a new law could have encouraged them to “use safe internal channels.” The Senate has yet to take up its own version of the bill.

In the meantime, ...

The Cost to Educate a President
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 12 October 2012
“The political views of Mitt Romney and Barack Obama have been evaluated and dissected by hundreds of websites and countless political pundits.”

As Election Day looms, voters across the country are deciding which of the two candidates will get their vote. The political views of Mitt Romney and Barack Obama have been evaluated and dissected by hundreds of websites and countless political pundits. We’ve seen the two candidates debate on TV and approve countless commercial messages. We’ve heard their talking points and read their plans. However, we wanted to know how they got so smart.

To read more please visit DegreeJungle.com

Loyalty’s for Chumps on the Street: Bankers’ Man in 2008, Obama’s been Dumped by the Money Men
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 12 October 2012
“Obama, after winning the presidency, repaid all that campaign largesse, appointing bank industry lackeys and executives to top positions.”

 

One thing you can say about the financial industry. It has no sense of loyalty.

Back in 2008, most of the biggest contributors to presidential candidate Barack Obama were financial companies. According to the campaign fund tracking website Open Secrets, after the $1.65 million donated by a political action committee (PAC) for the University of California, the next biggest contributor was a PAC for the giant bank, Goldman Sachs, whose employees ponied up a reported $1 million. Right up there among the top contributors to the Obama campaign that year were two other of the nation’s top banks too: JP Morgan Chase, whose employee PAC gave $809,000, and Citigroup, which gave $737,000. Two more big banks, UBS and Morgan Stanley, as well as General Electric, which less than a year later bought a bank to enable itself to benefit from the government’s largesse in doling out billions of “rescue” dollars under the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), were among Obama’s top 20 campaign donors, handing over $533,000, $512,000 and 530,000 respectively to support his election.

Obama, after winning the presidency, repaid all that campaign largesse, appointing bank industry lackeys and executives to top positions. He made Timothy Geithner, who as head of the New York Federal Reserve branch during the Bush administration, had ignored the scandalous derivatives scandals that brought on the financial crash, his Treasury Secretary, and Lawrence Summers, who as Treasury Secretary under President Bill Clinton, had pushed for the deregulation of derivatives, and for allowing banks to merge with investment banks, and who during the Bush years earned millions as a consultant to the hedge fund industry and from speaking fees provided by Wall Street banks, got the post of head of Obama's Council of Economic Advisors. Meanwhile, GE's chairman and CEO, ...

Drone Wars, Perhaps Futile and Criminal, Still Not Campaign Issue
Taylor
Published: Thursday 11 October 2012
Meanwhile the international drone market is booming.

 

When it comes to pilotless drones armed with air-to-ground missiles, the United States acknowledges that its counterterrorism strategy includes using terrorist techniques as part of the “war” on terror.   Some of these attacks on civilians are widely understood to be war crimes, but the Obama administration refuses to reveal White House lawyers’ memos defending the legality of executive execution.

Currently and controversially, the United States is the only country in the world known to be actively waging drone warfare -- the remote aerial killing of people who may or may not be identified, who may or may not be hostile, and who have no way to appeal for a stay of the execution they don’t even know is coming their way.  

Some call the drone war a “moral black box” that reflects badly on American ethics. 

The Pressure is on Biden for a Comeback
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 8 October 2012
The Romney Debacle: A Comic Tour de Force
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 7 October 2012
“Here’s the most premeditated, studied, nearly content- and personality-free campaign that money can buy imploding because Mitt’s an epic fail at retail politics, a crashing, burning, non-stop, unforced gaffe machine.”

Fans of gallows humor must delight in the mounting farce that is Mitt Romney's campaign. Could his cavalcade of confusion blunder on, even get worse? Common manners might restrain gleeful cries when derision is this easy -- but have we celebrated a more appealing, richer punching bag in years? Recall that GOP power brokers once dreaded calamity from Perry, Santorum, Bachmann or Gingrich -- yet Romney, with marvelous irony, turns out to be the rank amateur.   

  

Here's the most premeditated, studied, nearly content- and personality-free campaign that money can buy imploding because Mitt's an epic fail at retail politics, a crashing, burning, non-stop, unforced gaffe machine. Imagine, squandering ten years and billions of even richer folks' money only to shoot yourself in the foot, with jaw-dropping repetition. This qualifies as neither melodrama nor tragedy but high farce, and I await Mitt's latest attempt at redemption: ham-fisted debate "zingers." Besieged, this second least charming GOP politician (after Donald Trump) has decided to polish up his comic timing. Oh, lord of misrule, let it be.   

  

Second, inadvertent comic narrative: Mr. Obama remains the luckiest politician in our history, undeterred by his endless quest for higher office (and luckless in only one imprudent House run). This master of retail politics (however deficient in vision, leadership or governance) looks to cruise home, as if all is forgiven. So the president had awful tunnel vision about economic dilemmas; delivered neither hope nor change, nor redirected addictions to endless wars and shameless defense spending; so there's little reform (even worsening) to the civil-legal-judicial abuses inherited from neo-con, anti-constitutional overkill. Obama as Bush III is no joke, but let that bide. 

  

Officials Reject Notion of “Cooking the Books” for Unemployment Report
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 6 October 2012
On Social Security, if Not Now, When?
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 6 October 2012
“There are two disturbing problems with Axelrod’s statements.”

 

Many centuries ago, the Jewish scholar Hillel posed a question that is as prescient as any Nostradamus prophecy: "If not now," he asked, "when?" It's a rhetorical query many of us contemplate during the high holy days, which concluded last month. And after a revealing comment by President Obama's top political aide, it's a question that now haunts Social Security.

The remark in question came during last week's debate about fiscal issues on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." In an otherwise forgettable conversation, things became newsworthy when the conversation turned to Obama's position on Social Security reforms. At that point, the president's consigliere, David Axelrod, responded not with a clear position, but instead by trying to halt the conversation.

"I'll tell you what, when you get elected to the United States Senate and sit at that table, we'll have that discussion," he told the panel.

When pressed, Axelrod insisted that the election season meant no debate should proceed. "This is not the time, he said. "We're not going to have that discussion right now."

There are two disturbing problems with Axelrod's statements. First and foremost is his suggestion that a Social Security policy debate should only be conducted between White House officials and U.S. senators — not between all government officials and the general public. It's a fundamentally elitist idea that evokes notions of smoky back rooms and secret deals. Not only that, it both contradicts basic notions of civic engagement and confirms Americans' fears about a government that wholly disregards the citizenry.

Along the same lines is Axelrod's insistence that even if we were to have a public debate about Social Security, we somehow shouldn't "have that discussion right ...

What Can Activists Learn From Romney’s ‘47 Percent’?
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 26 September 2012
“Consider then-candidate Obama’s description of working class people in Pennsylvania, made in the heat of the 2008 campaign.”

For Democrats caught up in the race for U.S. presidential power, Mitt Romney’s description of “the 47 percent” is a great chance to pile on. Here is a super-rich Republican showing his contempt for the working class, many people are thinking — let’s make the most of it!

But sometimes the “caught in the act” statements of politicians are worth more than a quick dismissal. Consider then-candidate Obama’s description of working class people in Pennsylvania, made in the heat of the 2008 campaign. He told people in a San Francisco fundraiser that small-town Pennsylvania voters “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them” to explain their economic frustrations.

The two remarks are different. Romney’s is contemptuous, while Obama’s is only condescending. As someone brought up working class, I can tell the difference; I voted for Obama because I’ve been condescended to a lot in my life, and that doesn’t stop me from making reasoned choices. I’ll vote for him again. But my point here is that both remarks reveal the striking lack of agency that is assigned by leaders of political parties to the working class.

What made Obama’s remark condescending was that he made it as a leading Democrat. If the Democratic Party had been fighting for the agency of working class people, then the labor movement would be so strong that we would now be enjoying full employment, universal health care, and low or no college tuition. The financial sector would have been too regulated to throw us into the current recession, and if it somehow had done so anyway, the priority in 2008 and 2009 would have been Main Street, not Wall Street.

In other words, the economic frustrations that Obama linked to certain cultural expressions in small-town Pennsylvania were exacerbated by his own party. His remark ...

Boykinism
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 26 September 2012
“Americans respect Islam as a religion of peace.”

First came the hullaballoo over the “Mosque at Ground Zero.”  Then there was Pastor Terry Jones of Gainesville, Florida, grabbing headlines as he promoted“International Burn-a-Koran Day.”  Most recently, we have an American posting a slanderous anti-Muslim video on the Internet with all the ensuing turmoil.

Throughout, the official U.S. position has remained fixed: the United States government condemns Islamophobia.  Americans respect Islam as a religion of peace.  Incidents suggesting otherwise are the work of a tiny minority -- whackos, hatemongers, and publicity-seekers.  Among Muslims from Benghazi to Islamabad, the argument has proven to be a tough sell.

And not without reason: although it might be comforting to dismiss anti-Islamic outbursts in the U.S. as the work of a few fanatics, the picture is actually far more complicated.  Those complications in turn help explain why religion, once considered a foreign policy asset, has in recent years become a net liability.

Let’s begin with a brief history lesson.  From the late 1940s to the late 1980s, when Communism provided the overarching ideological rationale for American globalism, religion figured prominently as a theme of U.S. foreign policy.  Communist antipathy toward religion helped invest the Cold War foreign policy consensus with its remarkable durability.  That Communists were godless sufficed to place them beyond the pale.  For many Americans, the Cold War derived its moral clarity from the conviction that here was a contest pitting the God-fearing ...

Picking Ryan Has Done Little to Win Voters
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 25 September 2012
Chicago Teachers’ Strike Offers a Street-Level Lesson in Democracy
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 21 September 2012
“Nowhere was this more clear than when the 800-member House of Delegates — empowered teacher representatives from each CPS school — called a two-day timeout to carefully review the tentative agreement that had been initialed by the Chicago Teachers Union leadership on Sunday.”

 

A few hours before the Chicago teachers’ strike was suspended on Tuesday, I had a chance to chat with Mary Zerkel, a colleague and longtime antiwar campaigner at the American Friends Service Committee, whose daughter attends a Chicago public school. Mary had been on the picket line every day since the strike began on September 10, and when we talked she had just returned from a “Parents 4 Teachers” march to the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) headquarters, where teachers and their allies tried to deliver 1,000 postcards to CPS CEO Jean-Claude Brizard supporting the strikers’ demands. Though Brizard did not appear — and no one else from CPS bothered to come down to collect the bundles of messages — Zerkel’s enthusiasm was not dampened. For her, this was another exercise in people power — one more small step in a long campaign to save the soul of public education in Chicago and, quite possibly, the nation.

For Zerkel, this week of picketing, meetings and downtown marches and rallies was a bracing experience of democracy. Nowhere was this more clear than when the 800-member House of Delegates — empowered teacher representatives from each CPS school — called a two-day timeout to carefully review the tentative agreement that had been initialed by the Chicago Teachers Union leadership on Sunday. The devil is in the details, and this agreement, being more devilishly detailed than many, warranted a thorough going-over.

Democracy is not snapping fingers. It is sometimes slow and messy and doesn’t always follow the plan. This, however, does not seem to be Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s take on the democratic process. When the delegates decided to take their time to get clear on what the union was gaining — and what it was giving up — the mayor’s lawyers briskly strode into court on Monday morning looking ...

Feast of Fools
Taylor
Published: Thursday 20 September 2012
How American Democracy Became the Property of a Commercial Oligarchy

 

[A longer version of this essay appears in "Politics," the Fall 2012 issue of Lapham's Quarterly; this slightly shortened version is posted at TomDispatch.com with the kind permission of that magazine.]

 

All power corrupts but some must govern. -- John le Carré

The ritual performance of the legend of democracy in the autumn of 2012 promises the conspicuous consumption of $5.8 billion, enough money, thank God, to prove that our flag is still there. Forbidden the use of words apt to depress a Q Score or disturb a Gallup poll, the candidates stand as product placements meant to be seen instead of heard, their quality to be inferred from the cost of their manufacture. The sponsors of the event, generous to a fault but careful to remain anonymous, dress it up with the bursting in air of star-spangled photo ops, abundant assortments of multiflavored sound bites, and the candidates so well-contrived that they can be played for jokes, presented as game-show contestants, or posed as noble knights-at-arms setting forth on vision quests, enduring the trials by klieg light, until on election night they come to judgment before the throne of cameras by whom and for whom they were produced.

Best of all, at least from the point of view of the commercial oligarchy paying for both the politicians and the press coverage, the issue is never about the why of who owes what to whom, only about the how much and when, or if, the check is in the mail. No loose talk about what is meant by the word democracy or in what ways it ...

A Sane Foreign Policy for a New Era
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 17 September 2012
“Leading with fists is the way large brawlers with little brains settle disputes. We have tried that approach for the past eight years.”

During his first term in office, President Obama has sent mixed messages and tried to appease his implacable critics on the right while greatly disappointing many of his friends on the left. It's no secret: Obama's indecisiveness and failed attempts to woe the rabid right (in the deficit debate debacle, for example) has disappointed moderates and progressives, as well as his liberal base. So far, Obama has appeared in the guise of a tragic figure, would-be leader who lacks the mettle to lead. Many hoped that the 2008 election would be a turning point, that Obama would abandon an over-reliance on military muscle in favor of a more traditional reliance on diplomacy, one that would restore our badly damaged reputation in the world. Here are six keys to a more sane and sensible - and less self-defeating - foreign policy.


First, give peace a fighting chance before chancing a fight. Leading with fists is the way large brawlers with little brains settle disputes. We have tried that approach for the past eight years. It worked out very well if you happened to be a friend of George Bush or one of Dick Cheney's cronies. If so, chances are you were also a big defense contractor, beltway bandit, or revolving door lobbyist on the most corrupt corridor in America, otherwise known as K-Street. For the rest of us, whether we know it or not, it was an unmitigated disaster.


Second, avoid unilateralism like the plague because that what it is. The United States was plagued by the protracted war in Vietnam as the old Soviet Union was plagued by the war in Afghanistan. As we know, that "plague" killed (or contributed greatly to the demise of) the once-mighty Soviet empire. The perpetrator became the victim of its own misguided use of force. A formidable arsenal of nuclear weapons could not save the patient. And it was the economic, as well as the social and political consequences, of unilateral armed intervention ...

Two Cheers for the Fed, but Thumbs Down for Moody’s and the Deficit Hawks
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 16 September 2012
“A smaller portion of American adults is now working than at any time in the last thirty years.”

With deficit hawks circling overhead, the responsibility for creating jobs has fallen by default to Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve. Last week the Fed said it expected to keep interest rates near zero through mid 2015 in order to stimulate employment.

Two cheers.

The problem is, low interest rates alone won’t do it. The Fed has held interest rates near zero for several years without that much to show for it. A smaller portion of American adults is now working than at any time in the last thirty years.

So far, the biggest beneficiaries of near-zero interest rates haven’t been average Americans. They’ve been too weighed down with debt to borrow more, and their wages keep dropping. And because they won’t and can’t borrow more, businesses haven’t had more customers. So there’s been no reason for businesses to borrow to expand and hire more people, even at low interest rates.

The biggest winners from the Fed’s near-zero rates have been the big banks, which are now assured of two or more years of almost free money. The big banks haven’t used  the money to refinance mortgages – why should they when they can squeeze more money out of homeowners by keeping them at higher rates? Instead, they’ve used the almost free money to make big bets on derivatives. If the bets continue to go well, the bankers will continue to make a bundle. If the bets sour, well, you know what happens then. Watch your wallets.

The truth is, low interest rates won’t boost the economy without an expansive fiscal policy that makes up for the timid spending of  consumers and businesses. Until more Americans have more money in their pockets, government spending has to fill the gap.

On this score, the big news isn’t the Fed’s renewed determination to keep interest rates low. The big news is global ...

How the Gov’t Talks About a Drone Program it Won’t Acknowledge Exists
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 14 September 2012
“Administration officials regularly celebrate the drone war’s apparent successes— often avoiding details or staying anonymous, but claiming tacit credit for the U.S.”

 

Drones have become the go-to weapon of the U.S.’s counter-terrorism strategy, with strikes in Yemen in particular increasing steadily. U.S. drones reportedly killed twenty-nine people in Yemen recently, including perhaps ten civilians.

Administration officials regularly celebrate the drone war’s apparent successes— often avoiding details or staying anonymous, but claiming tacit credit for the U.S.  

In June, a day after Abu Yahya Al-Libi was killed in Pakistan, White House spokesman Jay Carney trumpeted the death of “Al Qaeda’s Number-Two.”  Unnamed officials confirmed the strike in at least ten media outlets. Similarly, the killing of U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki by a CIA drone last September was confirmed in many news outlets by anonymous officials. President Obama called Awlaki’s death “a tribute to our intelligence community."  

Just last week President Obama spoke about drone warfare on CNN, saying the decision to target individuals for killing rather than capture involves “an extensive process with a lot of checks.”  

But when it comes to details of that process, the administration clams up.

The government

The Great Deregulator
Taylor
Published: Thursday 13 September 2012
Obama has followed the examples of Summers and Geithner instead of those of Warren and Harris, and that is what has made the election a tossup as voters continue to suffer in an economy that Democrats as well as Republicans wrecked.

 

Bill Clinton bears as much responsibility as any politician for the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and the wild applause for his disingenuous speech at the Democratic National Convention last week is a sure sign of the poverty of what passes for progressive politics.

Do those convention delegates, and the fawning media that were wowed by the former president’s rhetorical seductions, not recall that just before he left office Clinton signed off on the game-changing legislation that ended the sensible rules imposed on Wall Street during the Great Depression? It was Clinton who cooperated with the Republicans in reversing the legacy of FDR’s New Deal, opening the floodgates of unfettered avarice that almost drowned the world’s economy during the reign of George W. Bush. 

How convenient to ignore the Financial Services Modernization Act, which Clinton signed into law to summarily end the Glass-Steagall barrier against the commingling of investment and commercial banking. Do the Democrats not remember that Citigroup, the first too-big-to-fail bank made legal by the law Clinton signed, became the $15 million employer of Robert Rubin, the Clinton treasury secretary who led the fight for the law that legalized the creation of Citigroup? Or that Citigroup—led by Sanford Weill, to whom Clinton gave one of the souvenir pens he used to approve that onerous legislation—went on to be a major player in the subprime mortgage swindles and had to be bailed out with more than $50 billion of taxpayer funds?

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Prison Privatization and the Efficiency Myth
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 11 September 2012
A revolving door is inefficient, so too is cronyism.

 

 

In 2010—the most recent year for which reliable records exist—privately owned and/or operated prisons held 128,195—or roughly eight percent— of the 1,612,395 total state and federal prisoners in the U.S. The figure of 1.6 million, mind you, doesn’t include populations residing in municipal jails, as an additional 700,000 individuals languish in local facilities. 

On the federal level exclusively, 28,462—or thirteen percent— of the federal Bureau of Prison’s (hereafter ‘the Bureau’) 218,081 inmates are housed in privately managed facilities around the country. Although many rightly decry the Bureau’s burgeoning inmate populations since 2000, a striking number of influential prison policy analysts still fail to notice that of the sixteen privately managed Bureau facilities more than half (ten, to be precise) were awarded contracts beginning the 1990s.  That the Bureau began contracting in earnest with private corrections companies in the mid-1990s matters, and here’s why.

Correctly periodizing the Bureau’s affiliation with private management firms is critical for de-naturalizing the dusty assumption that privatization can be trusted as a policy solution for its ability to generate efficient markets.  That is, properly contextualizing the rise of the Bureau’s private contracts assails the most popular claims made by apologists of privatized corrections. Devotees of business-model punishment often assert that 1) privatization introduces competition into an otherwise public monopoly thereby enhancing services throughout the system while lowering the overall cost and 2) that private prisons can provide the same or better services at a lower cost ...

Cuts on Spending to be Released by White House Next Week
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 8 September 2012
Super PAC Appeal, Give Until It ‘Feels Good’
Taylor
Published: Thursday 6 September 2012
Pro-Obama super PAC raises $10 million.

 

Super PAC fundraiser Paul Begala climbed atop a table and told a roomful of VIP donors that “giving until it hurts” isn’t good enough.

“I want you to give until it feels good,” he said, because it will “really hurt” to wake up Nov. 7 with Republican Mitt Romney on his way to the White House.

The high-profile Democratic operative was addressing donors at a cocktail party in downtown Charlotte Tuesday, just blocks from the convention hall where Democrats unveiled a platform that condemns big-money politics.

If elected, Romney and his fellow Republicans will “repeal the 20th century,” Begala told the room.

Begala was one of President Bill Clinton’s chief strategists and is now a top adviser to Priorities USA Action, a super PAC that is seeking to re-elect President Barack Obama.

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Defyin’ the Ever-lovin’ Lyin’ Blitz
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 5 September 2012
“Beware: Ryan is smoother, slicker and more treacherous than the Palin Ninny, the miscast starlet who never overcame (or realizes to this day) her appearance in the wrong movie.”

Fancy Liar's Poker? Why not Liar's Politics? This week, faint-hearted journalists crept from quasi-permanent stupor to broadcast Paul Ryan's astonishing duplicity. That spectacle raises this shocking question: is Romney's truth-averse mission to lie himself into the White House, or did corporate media draw a clear line separating consensual truth from compulsive fibbing? Wasn't it Oscar Wilde's jest that few journalists could distinguish a bicycle accident from the end of civilization? 

  

Can you recall an emptier, worse run, more cringe-worthy Convention, where fatuous speechifying simply interrupted low-class sniping, low-class even for Rethuglicans? Fortunately, neither nominee is better at lying than proposing improvements for 95% of domestic inhabitants. Instead of Mitt's bizarre PR "job tour" to stimulate growth, why not a small feint towards a "truth tour"? Who figured truthiness would outshine this nonsense?   

  

Beware: Ryan is smoother, slicker and more treacherous than the Palin Ninny, the miscast starlet who never overcame (or realizes to this day) her appearance in the wrong movie. Fortunately, V.P. candidates don't win elections, even when seemingly more genuine than his ticket mate (how could he seem less?). The mystery remains why an unpopular, distrusted campaign, with the base in tow and desperate to reach the information-averse undecideds, fired blank cartridges at party fanatics, not substance at decisive November voters. 

  

Countering counter-factoids

  

Having fleetingly redeemed themselves, will media worthies take on any national ticket whose arrogance (read: Romney team) openly scorns independent fact checking? Obama abuses civil and legal rights but not reportage, not yet ...

Should Labor Boycott Charlotte?
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 2 September 2012
“Last July’s announcement that the convention would be held in the staunchly anti-union city of  Charlotte, North Carolina—the least unionized state in the country—set off a firestorm of protest in the labor movement.”

The Democratic National Convention is less than a week away, and liberals are getting fired up. But at least one of the party's key constituencies isn’t quite so excited.

That group is organized labor.

Last July’s announcement that the convention would be held in the staunchly anti-union city of  Charlotte, North Carolina—the least unionized state in the country—set off a firestorm of protest in the labor movement. A year later, dissatisfaction still simmers, and there's a case to be made for an unprecedented move. The message is simple: maybe labor should sit this one out.

To a large extent, politics is about resources. How an organization decides to deploy those it has available says a lot about its values and priorities. So why would labor want to channel limited funds into bolstering a local economy organized around avowedly anti-union principles? By opting for North Carolina as a convention destination, rather than a swing state with stronger union infrastructure such as Ohio or Wisconsin, the Democratic Party created an entirely avoidable disaster.

Anti-Union Territory

Unions have already scaled back their involvement in the convention. If the labor movement decided to altogether avoid devoting members' time or money to attending, the Democrats could not claim they hadn't been warned. The party did not seek union input or prioritize supporting organized workers when selecting the convention location, and as soon as the news went public labor pointed to some glaring shortcomings: North Carolina is a so-called “right to work” state; Charlotte has virtually no unions among its building trades, construction firms, or service workers; and Charlotte has not one unionized hotel.

Four years ago, labor contributed heavily to the Democratic National Convention in Denver, including a $100,000 donation ...

Third-Party Candidates May Hurt Romney in Key States
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 31 August 2012
The conservative Constitution Party, which seeks to “restore American jurisprudence to its Biblical foundations,” has nominated Goode, a former congressman from Virginia, for president, potentially taking votes away from Romney in what has become a presidential swing state.

 

Dark-horse presidential candidates Gary Johnson and Virgil Goode may not be household names, but with a little help from super PACs, they could peel away precious support from Republican Mitt Romney and possibly even President Barack Obama in some key state races.

The conservative Constitution Party, which seeks to “restore American jurisprudence to its Biblical foundations,” has nominated Goode, a former congressman from Virginia, for president, potentially taking votes away from Romney in what has become a presidential swing state.

Meanwhile, Johnson, a former two-term GOP governor of New Mexico who failed to win the 2012 Republican presidential nod, has been nominated by the Libertarian Party — a perch from which he could throw a wrench in the plans of both Obama and Romney in several swing states.

Already, at least three pro-Libertarian super PACs have registered with the Federal Election Commission to support Johnson. And former Nixon administration operative Roger Stone, famous for sporting a tattoo of the disgraced president on his back, has touted a pro-Johnson super PAC.

Super PACs are allowed to collect unlimited contributions from individuals, unions and corporations to produce political advertisements that are not coordinated with any candidate. They were made possible in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United decision.

Goode, a staunch supporter of the 2nd Amendment and vocal opponent of abortion, served six terms in Congress — first as a Democrat, then as an independent and finally as a Republican, until he was unseated in 2008. Third-party candidates like Goode have no chance of winning the White House, but one only need look ...

Welcome to GOP Nutland!
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 29 August 2012
“Like his buddy Todd, Ryan has sponsored many bills to deny abortion to victims of rape.”

While it's hard to fathom right-wing nuttiness, it's sure not hard to find these days.

We saw it bloom spectacularly recently, popping right out of the head of Todd Akin, the GOP's Senate candidate in Missouri. The learned congressman gave America a twisted tutorial on the imaginary science of "legitimate rape," including an astonishing assertion of his belief in medical mojo. Akin explained that raped women don't get pregnant because — according to his grasp of reproductive science — the female body has ways "to shut that whole thing down."

Whoa! Screamed Mitt Romney and the entire Republican hierarchy, as they rushed to declare Akin out-of-bounds, unacceptable and ... well, nutty.

But wait. Guess who's presently cosponsoring legislation with Akin to impose this theological witchcraft on America's women? Why it's Romney's choice to hold the second-highest office in our nation, VP nominee Paul Ryan. Like his buddy Todd, Ryan has sponsored many bills to deny abortion to victims of rape.

Now, guess which party has just fully embraced Akin's nuttiness by including his absolutist "no-abortion-even-in-the-case-of-rape" provision in its national platform? Yes, the Romney-Ryan Republicans. Yet, that same party's panicked Poobahs have pronounced Akin's views so extreme that he should withdraw from the Missouri Senate race. Excuse me, but — logically speaking — doesn't that mean Ryan should also withdraw from his race?

Of course, in the fantasy universe of the far right, logic is an alien intruder, barred from interfering with either approved doctrine or political expediency. Indeed, here's their idea of logic: Akin, a devout worshipper of junk science, is a member of the House Committee on Science. Go figure.

And if you find that surreal, let me add that his ...

Why We’re Putting Ourselves on the (Pipe) Line With the Tea Party
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 25 August 2012
“The Tar Sands Blockade is a peaceful direct action campaign designed to unite everyone and anyone committed to stopping the pipeline.”

 

On July 27, TransCanada Corporation announced that it had received the last permit required before breaking ground on the Gulf Coast Segment of the Keystone XL pipeline. Although this news elicited many emotions among landowners and local communities, surprise was not among them. The campaign to stop the pipeline is now entering its fifth year, and pipeline opponents everywhere are mobilizing.

The Tar Sands Blockade is a peaceful direct action campaign designed to unite everyone and anyone committed to stopping the pipeline. We stand in solidarity with landowners in Texas and Oklahoma whose property rights have been trampled, as well as with  communities whose health and safety are being imperiled. And it’s not just local communities along the pipeline route who stand to be harmed. First Nations communities downriver from tar sands extraction sites in Alberta, Canada, are suffering from abnormally high cancer rates. Meanwhile, Keystone XL would threaten us all by opening the floodgates to the largest untapped reserve of carbon in North America.  

Why Direct Action?

In 2008, TransCanada was granted the extraordinary power of eminent domain—the ability to legally condemn and appropriate private property—and the corporation immediately leveraged it to pressure landowners into signing contracts. “TransCanada lied to me from day one,” says East Texas landowner Susan Scott. “They bullied me and said either I sign their papers or they’d take me to court.”

According to the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, eminent domain may be used only for projects that ...

The Wrong Kind of Experience: Paul Ryan’s Big Foreign Policy Credential
Taylor
Published: Thursday 23 August 2012
The Wisconsin congressman may come to regret his flippant response to Carl Cameron last Saturday, when the Fox News reporter asked how he would respond to critics who question his weak national security resume.

 

Defending himself against the perception that he has no significant foreign policy experience, Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan has drawn fresh attention to one of the most controversial acts of the past decade: the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq before U.N. weapons inspections were completed. Ryan now points to his vote for war as a token of his readiness to serve in the White House, but he is on the wrong side of both history and public opinion.

The Wisconsin congressman may come to regret his flippant response to Carl Cameron last Saturday, when the Fox News reporter asked how he would respond to critics who question his weak national security resume.

"I've been in Congress for a number of years," he said. "That's more experience than Barack Obama had when he came into office." Perhaps he should have stopped there, but instead blundered on, "I voted to send people to war."

Does Ryan believe that voting for war constitutes foreign policy experience? If so, it is a kind of experience that reflects very poorly on him. Even he must realize that the underlying premise of the war, Saddam Hussein's alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction, quickly proved to be nothing more than a Bush administration hoax, along with the secondary claim that ...

Why Conservative Attacks on Wind and Solar Energy?
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 22 August 2012
“The fossil-fuel industry is fully developed after many decades of government help. Going up against a fully-developed industry like oil and coal is enormously expensive, and the industry is trying to block We, the People from triggering private investment to help get us out from under its grip.”

There has been a recent flurry of propaganda attacks on wind and solar energy by oil-and-coal-backed conservatives. A vitally important tax credit to help build a renewable energy industry in this country expires at the end of this year without Congressional action, and the old oil and coal industries -- along with certain other countries -- want to make sure it does expire.

Background

The fossil-fuel industry is fully developed after many decades of government help. Going up against a fully-developed industry like oil and coal is enormously expensive, and the industry is trying to block We, the People from triggering private investment to help get us out from under its grip. It has nothing to do with government interfering in markets, or "picking winners and losers," this is about us helping offset the enormous competitive advantage oil and coal have due to government investment and assistance in oil and coal in prior decades. We do this because We, the People see the benefits and prosperity that will come to us from developing these alternative energy industries.

Oil and coal are, to put it mildly, entrenched in our economy, and, to put it mildly, make out very, very well because of that. Various forms of government assistance put them there and keeps them there. Aside from direct help like the tax breaks to the companies themselves and keeping taxes low at the pump (compare the cost of gas here to other countries), there are support structures like the cost of the vast military complex that keeps the oil flowing, building roads instead of rail, etc., and then of course there's the cost to us of that whole "let them dump their waste products into the environment for free" thing.

As a result vast ecosystem supporting the oil and coal industries has been built up over the decades. Delivery systems like pipelines, rail lines, gas stations, etc. are ...

How Does Class Matter?
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 21 August 2012
The union people found that “know-it-all” middle class people can actually listen, and the activists found that “rigid hierarchical” working class people sometimes work with a different set of responsibilities.

 

The hardest job I ever had in a half century of social change work was coordinating a multi-class coalition. It didn’t simplify things that it was also cross-racial. Nor that it was composed of people who had substantially different politics.

I led the Pennsylvania Jobs With Peace Campaign for seven years, in the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan’s White House was trying its best to undo the progress made in the 1960s and ’70s. Our chapter was part of a national campaign pressing to take money out of the military and use it for human needs. Our local chapter also pushed for decentralized people’s planning for economic conversion of military industries.

An advantage I had was that our campaign included a collective of the Movement for a New Society (MNS), a radical network that was already figuring out how social class influences the way activists do and don’t work together for change.

Sociologist Betsy Leondar-Wright has listed major social movements in the U.S. and identified their class composition. (See her website, ClassMatters.org, and her book Class Matters: Cross-Class Alliance Building for Middle-Class Activists.) She asked how successful they were in achieving their goals. Betsy found that the movements most likely to succeed were those that crossed class lines. The ones who achieved less were single-class, like blue collar trade union campaigns, or middle ...

Early Bain-Ization - How a Few Got Rich Illegally Suppressing Unions
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 18 August 2012
At the time Mitt Romney was at the consultant firm Bain & Company, and heard that Key Airlines was looking to be bought.

 

A look at one of Bain Capital's first deals shows a get-rich-quick-at-everyone-else's-expense pattern forming: borrow heavily, gut assets, cut wages, cut safety, crush unions, restructure for tax avoidance and sell with a sweetheart, insider deal. That pattern foreshadowed what happened to our jobs, communities, industries, economy and country since the early 1980s. An already-wealthy few got fantastically rich(er) and the rest of us paid the price.

A Financial Times Investigation

In FT investigation: Romney’s take-off the Financial Times (FT) investigated the $5 million buyout of Key Airlines, a "formative" deal from Mitt Romney's company Bain Capital's early years.

At the time Mitt Romney was at the consultant firm Bain & Company, and heard that Key Airlines was looking to be bought. Key Airlines had a $10 million per year government contract to shuttle pilots and support workers between Las Vegas and "Area 52," where they were working on the then-secret F-117A stealth fighter. Romney formed Bain Capital in part to buy the airline. T. Coleman Andrews III, a former White House official recruited to Bain by Romney led the buyout for Bain and chaired its board of directors.

The Financial Times investigation showed how the purchase of Key Airlines helped establish the company's method of doing business. They bought the company by borrowing all the money needed, 100% debt-financed, meaning Romney and Bain put up no money -- and very little risk -- of their own. They "restructured" the company; according to FT, "Bain also reshaped Key Airlines, turning it from a profitable, taxpaying company with a $13m balance sheet and its own aircraft, into an operating company with a $2m balance sheet and a holding company from which it sold assets separately."

When the pilots tried to start a union, the company unlawfully suppressed the ...

Paul Ryan’s Faux Populism
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 18 August 2012
Sounds good, but earlier this week – three days after being picked as Romney’s running-mate – Ryan went to Las Vegas to pay homage to Sheldon Adelson, the casino billionaire who is the poster boy for using money to become “politically connected” in Washington, and getting the “breaks” that come with it.

 

On Friday, Paul Ryan, the presumptive Republican vice-presidential nominee, made the most populist speech of this campaign season.

“It’s the people who are politically connected, it’s the people who have access to Washington that get the breaks,” he told an enthusiastic crowd of over 2,000 at a high school gym in Virginia.

“Well, no more. We don’t want to pick winners and losers in Washington… . Hardworking taxpayers should be treated fairly and it should be based on whether they’re good, whether they work hard and not who they know in Washington. That’s entrepreneurialism. That’s free enterprise.”

Sounds good, but earlier this week – three days after being picked as Romney’s running-mate – Ryan went to Las Vegas to pay homage to Sheldon Adelson, the casino billionaire who is the poster boy for using money to become “politically connected” in Washington, and getting the “breaks” that come with it. Adelson has promised to donate up to $100 million to make sure Romney and Ryan are in the White House next year.

Much of Adelson’s fortune comes from his casino in Macau, in China, via his money-greased access to Washington.

When China’s pitch for the 2008 Olympics was endangered by a House resolution opposing the bid because of China’s “abominable human rights record,” Adelson phoned Tom DeLay, then House majority whip and recipient of Adelson’s political generosity — urging him to block the resolution, which DeLay promptly did. The next day, according to the New York Times, a Chinese vice premier promised Mr. Adelson an endless line of gamblers to the Macau casino.

The money Adelson has committed to putting Romney and Ryan into the White House is a business investment. Adelson has a lot ...

On Social Security, Say It IS So, Joe!
Taylor
Published: Thursday 16 August 2012
“What does it mean when those words come from the Vice President of an Administration that's been talking for years about a deal to cut Social Security? A lot.”

 

What Vice President Joe Biden said today was, to use his now-famous phrase, "a big effin' deal." No, we're not talking about his "chains" comment which, as usual, has fascinated a press corps obsessed with taking statements out of context and playing "gotcha" games. We're referring to the comments he made about Social Security in a Virginia coffee shop.

From a press corps pool report, as relayed by NBC News:

"Hey, by the way, let's talk about Social Security," Biden said after a diner at The Coffee Break Cafe in Stuart, VA expressed his relief that the Obama campaign wasn't talking about changing the popular entitlement program. "Number one, I guarantee you, flat guarantee you, there will be no changes in Social Security," Biden said, per a pool report.

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Don’t Mess with Texas’ Tar Sands Blockade
Taylor
Published: Thursday 16 August 2012
That solidarity will take on greater meaning in a matter of days when construction on the pipeline is expected to begin and landowners will be bringing ice to the encampments to help alleviate the extreme Texas heat, as well as thanking everyone for defending the home they’ve built over decades.

One year after more than 1,200 people were arrested in front of the White House during two weeks of sit-ins against the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline, a coalition of Texas landowners and activists will attempt to physically halt its construction. Led by veteran climate justice organizers, participants ranging from environmentalists to Tea Partiers are preparing to lock arms for a sustained nonviolent civil disobedience campaign, beginning perhaps as early as this week.

The impetus for such action, which is being called the Tar Sands Blockade, goes back much further than last summer, however. In 2008 and 2009, small landowners along the pipeline’s route in rural Texas, Oklahoma and Nebraska started noticing survey stakes with orange tape marked “KXL.” They soon found out that TransCanada — the company building the pipeline — had eminent domain power over their property and that if they didn’t sign a contract allowing TransCanada to build, they would be taken to court.

Many landowners, feeling pushed into an impossible situation, signed the contracts. Some began organizing, doing community outreach to explain what was happening and building conservative support on the ground. Organizations such as Nacogdoches Stop Tarsands Oil Pipelines evolved out of conversations between landowners — first focusing around eminent domain, but then, when they learned that tar sands oil would be pumped through the pipeline, discussion started to include environmental impacts, such as toxic diluted bitumen and climate change.

By August 2011, the climate movement in the United States started to focus in on the ...

No Immediate Lift for Romney
Amanda Rae
Published: Tuesday 14 August 2012
Obama Calls Clinton Aide a “Patriot”
Amanda Rae
Published: Saturday 11 August 2012
On Gun Laws, It’s Bipartisan Consensus Not Gridlock That’s the Problem
Taylor
Published: Thursday 9 August 2012
“It’s the consensus, not the gridlock, that’s the problem.”

Another mass murder, another shooting spree, leaving bodies bullet-riddled by a legally obtained weapon. This time, it was Oak Creek, Wis., at a Sikh temple, as people gathered for their weekly worship. President Barack Obama said Monday, “I think all of us recognize that these kinds of terrible, tragic events are happening with too much regularity for us not to do some soul-searching.” Amidst the carnage, platitudes. With an average of 32 people killed by guns in this country every day—the equivalent of five Wisconsin massacres per day—both major parties refuse to deal with gun control. It’s the consensus, not the gridlock, that’s the problem.

The president’s press secretary, Jay Carney, said, “We need to take common-sense measures that protect Second Amendment rights and make it harder for those who should not have weapons under existing law from obtaining weapons.” It’s important to note where Jay Carney made that point, reiterating the phrase “common sense” five times in relation to the President’s intransigence against strengthening gun laws, and invoking “Second Amendment” a stunning eight times. He spoke from the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room in the White House, named after one of Mr. Carney’s predecessors, shot in the head by John Hinckley during the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan in 1981. Brady survived and co-founded with his wife the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. After each of these massacres, the Brady Campaign has called for strengthened gun control.

This latest mass ...

7 Ways to Beat the Ballot Bandits
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 6 August 2012
Don’t wait until Election Day to find out you have the wrong ID, your registration’s “inactive,” (9.9 million of you) or you’re on some creep’s challenge list.

 

1. Don’t Don’t DON’T Mail In Your Ballot

For those of you who mailed in your ballot, please tell me, what happened to it? You don’t know, do you? I can tell you that in the last election, half a million absentee ballots were never counted, on the flimsiest of technical excuses. And when they don’t count, you don’t even know it. Worse: Tens of thousands of ballots are not mailed out to voters in time to return them - in which case you’re out of luck. Most states won’t let you vote in-precinct once you’ve applied to vote absentee. Every time I hear of a voter going “absentee” to avoid computer screens, I want to “go postal.”

2. Vote Early – Before the Ballot Bandits Wake Up

Every state now lets voters cast ballots in designated polling stations and at county offices in the weeks before Election Day. Do it. Don’t wait until Election Day to find out you have the wrong ID, your registration’s “inactive,” (9.9 million of you) or you’re on some creep’s challenge list. By Election Day, if your name is gone or tagged, there’s little you can do but hold up the line.

3. Register and Register, then Register Again

Think you’re registered to vote? Think again, Jack. With all this purg’n going on (13 million and counting), you could be x’d out and you don’t know it. So check online with your Secretary of State’s office or call your County Board of Elections. Then register your girlfriend, your wife, your mailman, and your mommy. Then contact the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the League of Women Voters, and Rock the Vote and commit to a couple of days of door-to-door registration, especially at social service agency offices. In Florida, that means ...

Solyndra Loan Guarantee ‘A Bad Bet From the Beginning,’ GOP Report Says
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 3 August 2012
“Solyndra, a California-based renewable energy firm and favorite of the Obama White House, received the administration’s first loan guarantee in 2009 and was held out as an example of the ‘promise of clean energy’ by the president.”

 

The Department of Energy knew its $535 million loan guarantee to solar-panel maker Solyndra Inc. was “a bad bet from the beginning” but was “determined to make Solyndra a stimulus success story at any cost,” the Republican-led House Energy and Commerce Committee concluded in a report released Thursday.

Solyndra failed last year. The committee’s 154-page report follows its approval Wednesday of the No More Solyndras Act, which would disband the DOE loan guarantee program. The bill would also bar any guarantees for applications received after 2011 and require additional reviews by the Treasury Department and Congress for pending and existing loans.

Solyndra, a California-based renewable energy firm and favorite of the Obama White House, received the administration's first loan guarantee in 2009 and was held out as an example of the “promise of clean energy” by the president. Within two years, the company had filed for bankruptcy, firing 1,100 employees in the process.

The Center for Public Integrity and ABC News first reported on the Solyndra loan guarantee in May 2011, revealing that the DOE had rushed to back the firm without fully vetting its economic prospects. The investigation also noted that billionaire George Kaiser, one of Obama’s principal backers in the 2008 elections, was a major Solyndra shareholder.

The Energy and Commerce Committee report reflects an 18-month investigation into the DOE-Solyndra affair, presenting what it calls “a complete picture of the facts and circumstances” surrounding the White House, DOE, Solyndra, and investors like Kaiser.

“Solyndra will be ...

Study Shows Helping Homeowners Avoid Foreclosure Saves Taxpayers Money
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 31 July 2012
Fewer foreclosures help more than just struggling homeowners. Local housing markets are better off, as each foreclosure decreases the value of every other home in the neighborhood.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), which is tasked with regulating government backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, will soon make a decision regarding whether or not it will allow Fannie and Freddie to reduce mortgage amounts for troubled borrowers. Several analyses have shown that reducing mortgage principal is the most effective step for preventing foreclosures, and now an FHFA analysis shows that it could be a good deal for taxpayers as well READ FULL POST 1 COMMENTS

The Terrible Economy and the Anti-Election of 2012
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 29 July 2012
“President Obama has apparently decided against advancing any bold ideas for what he’d do in the second term, even if he has a Congress that would cooperate with him.”

 

The worst economy since the Great Depression and you might think at least one of the candidates would come up with a few big ideas for how to get us out of it.

But you’d be wrong. Neither candidate wants to take any chances by offering any large, serious proposals. Both are banking instead on negative campaigns that convince voters the other guy would be worse.

President Obama has apparently decided against advancing any bold ideas for what he’d do in the second term, even if he has a Congress that would cooperate with him. 

He’s sticking to a worn script that says George W. Bush caused the lousy economy, congressional Republicans have opposed everything he’s wanted to do to boost it, it’s slowly on the mend anyway, the Bush tax cuts shouldn’t be extended for the rich, and we shouldn’t take a chance electing Romney.

Yet the public wants bigger ideas from the President, and wants to know what he’ll do in his second term to get us out of this mess. A New York Times-CBS News poll released last week showed that a majority of voters believe the president “can do a lot about” the economy. That’s a double-digit jump from the fall of 2011.

The President could propose a new WPA, modeled after the Depression-era jobs program that hired hundreds of thousands of jobless Americans to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure, or a new Civilian Conservation Corps.

He could suggest permanently exempting the first $25,000 of income from payroll taxes, and making up the lost revenues by eliminating the ceiling on income subject to it. He could propose resurrecting the Glass-Steagall Act and breaking up the big banks, so Wall Street doesn’t cause another financial collapse.

But you won’t hear any of this, or anything else of this magnitude, because the ...

Want A Real Recovery? Raise the Minimum Wage.
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 20 July 2012
“The report explores the connection between stagnant —and falling — wages, and it’s central finding explodes the argument that raising the minimum wage will cause employers to stop hiring, and the hurt small businesses that opponents of a minimum wage increase (and of the idea of a minimum wage itself) claim are the primary employers of low-wage workers.”

 

Scratch the surface of just about any economic debate this election year, and you'll find one issue that goes all the way to the core: the yawning gap between the 1% and the rest of us, as skyrocketing income inequality. A new report from the National Employment Law Project (NELP), "Big Business, Corporate Profits, and the Minimum Wage," shows the extremes of that divide, and makes the case for raising the federal minimum wage as a means of closing that gap, and putting the national economy on the road to a real recovery.

The report explores the connection between stagnant —and falling — wages, and it's central finding explodes the argument that raising the minimum wage will cause employers to stop hiring, and the hurt small businesses that opponents of a minimum wage increase (and of the idea of a minimum wage itself) claim are the primary employers of low-wage workers. 

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Issa Wants to Know if Dems Are Raising Dollars for Super PACs
Taylor
Published: Thursday 19 July 2012
“House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., is investigating the frequency with which Cabinet Secretaries appear at super PAC events and whether government funds have been used for travel to and from these events.”

 

Five months after the Center for Public Integrity reported that four of President Barack Obama’s Cabinet members were willing to raise money for Democratic super PACs, the top Republican investigator in the House is asking for details.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., is “investigating the frequency with which Cabinet Secretaries appear at super PAC events and whether government funds have been used for travel to and from these events,” according to a July 12 letter obtained byPolitico.

In February, Obama reluctantly embraced super PACs and gave the go-ahead on a plan to allow senior campaign aides and top White House officials to fundraise for the nascent political advertising machines, which are legally allowed to collect unlimited contributions from individuals, corporations and unions.

Issa made a request for travel documents by Cabinet members, despite the fact that to date, none are known to have appeared at any such events.

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Obama Administration Wants Review of Prisoner’s Commutation Request
Taylor
Published: Thursday 19 July 2012
Obama Administration looking to reform the presidential pardon.

The Obama administration has asked for a fresh review of an Alabama federal inmate's commutation request and directed the Justice Department to conduct its first ever in-depth analysis of recommendations for presidential pardons, according to several officials and individuals involved.

The Office of Pardon Attorney has been at the center of growing controversy since December, when stories published by ProPublica and The Washington Post revealed a racial disparity in pardons. White applicants were four times more likely to receive presidential mercy than minorities. African Americans had the least chance of success.

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Green Party Nominee Jill Stein & Running Mate, Activist Cheri Honkala: “We Represent the 99 Percent”
Amanda Rae
Published: Sunday 15 July 2012
“We speak with Honkala and Dr. Stein about their campaign for the White House and the challenges they face as a third party in a two-party political system.”

Dr. Jill Stein’s Green Party vice-presidential running mate, Cheri Honkala, is a single mother who has firsthand experience with homelessness. In 2011, she ran as the Green Party candidate for sheriff of Philadelphia on a platform of ending foreclosures and halting evictions. "Large sections of the population are just sitting out. ... It’s not just because they’re not interested in what’s happening in this country. They just don’t see that their vote actually matters," Honkala says. "But our campaign gives an opportunity for people to see themselves, because we represent the 99 percent." Her Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign is one of the country’s largest movements led by the poor and homeless. We speak with Honkala and Dr. Stein about their campaign for the White House and the challenges they face as a third party in a two-party political system. If elected, Stein says she would work to repeal the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling. "There are so many strategies that a president could bring into play to help draw public attention to not only the problem, but how we can solve it with a constitutional amendment to make clear that corporations are not persons and money is not speech."

Transcript:

AMY GOODMAN: We’re broadcasting from Baltimore, Maryland, where the Green Party’s national convention is underway. I’m joined by Dr. Jill Stein, Green Party 2012 ...

Fixing the Lie-More Economy
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 13 July 2012
“The derivatives market, of which the vast majority is made up of interest rate products, is one manifestation of the political-financial monopoly.”

 

The Libor-Barclay’s scandal has made us increasingly aware of the collusion between politics and finance. The fix already lies in on our LIE MORE economy, where corporate raiders can easily siphon money out of our economy, leaving us fighting among ourselves for a shrinking economic pie. We debate safety nets, taxes, jobs, the deficit, and stimulus spending when the very first thing we should do is simply disconnect the siphon.

The derivatives market, of which the vast majority is made up of interest rate products, is one manifestation of the political-financial monopoly. As Goldman Sachs’ employee Fabrice Tourre so eloquently described in his emails to girlfriend Marrine Serres, he was the “fabulous Fab” creating “Frankenstein” products that were nothing more than “pure intellectual masturbation” for sale to unwitting clients.  The financial wizards of this monopoly include Wall Street banks, of which I will only highlight three.  These unregulated derivative products were very profitable and from 1998 to 2008, Bank of America reported profits of $135 billion, Citibank $145.8 billion, and JP Morgan Chase $97.6 billion. The political cronies of this monopoly included appointed and elected members of our federal government. A few of the top federal government regulators who ignored the warning signs to regulate the derivatives were Greenspan, Rubin, Levitt, Geithner, and Summers. Obviously the White House and Congress were active participants in the monopoly because of the benefits this collusion brought to them:

Dust Reforms Stymied by Years of Inaction
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 9 July 2012
About a year into his tenure as the nation’s top mine safety regulator, Main announced an ambitious plan he said was aimed at ending black lung.

 

For more than a quarter-century, government efforts to end deadly black lung disease have hit various brick walls, built by opposition from one side or the other.

Industry lobbyists object that tougher dust limits and more rigorous sampling requirements go too far. Labor leaders complain those same proposals are far too weak.

Miners are left with the same system that experts have agreed hasn't worked for decades. And thousands of those miners have paid with their health or their lives.

"We can't get a regulation out to save our souls," said former federal Mine Safety and Health Administration staffer Celeste Monforton, who now studies workplace health issues and advocates for workers and their families.

Take the case of the Obama administration's MSHA chief, Joe Main.

About a year into his tenure as the nation's top mine safety regulator, Main announced an ambitious plan he said was aimed at ending black lung.

Main proposed to tighten the legal limit on dust that causes black lung, to require more accurate continuous personal dust monitors, and to reform sampling methods and enforcement of dust limits.

"I hope the miners and the mining community embrace this approach," Main, assistant labor secretary for MSHA, told reporters in October 2010. "It is the right thing to do."

A decade earlier, Main was director of safety for the United Mine Workers union when the Clinton administration announced its plan to end black lung. It included a government takeover of dust monitoring and similar changes to sampling techniques, but no tightening of the dust limit.

Main said the Clinton proposal didn't go far enough. In particular, the UMW was upset that the government monitoring would involve fewer samples, because of budget and staffing constraints ...

Defining American Exceptionalism
Amanda Rae
Published: Saturday 7 July 2012
“If America remains exceptional, it is thanks to the president and the hopeful citizens who elected him — and very much despite his partisan adversaries, those most pious, most misguided exponents of American exceptionalism.”

The Fourth of July is the birthday of American exceptionalism — originally, the idea cherished by the nation's Revolutionary founders that the practice of liberty, equality and democracy in these United States would kindle hope in a world downtrodden by every form of despotism, hierarchy and oppression.

Independence Day marked the determination of a new and diverse people to throw off the old yoke of hereditary rule, with all its attendant traditions of social and economic stratification. The founders believed that America would inspire other nations as an ally and friend, rather than dominate them by force of arms or money. They did not regard their weak new republic as intrinsically superior or chosen to rule the world by God — but argued instead that the ideals of popular sovereignty and constitutional freedom represented the natural rights and the future of humanity everywhere.

So July 4 is a holiday whose meaning still resonates, despite centuries of contradictory history and circumstance. And it ought to be a day ...

A Solidarity Statement from Occupy Colleges and Occupy Student Debt
Taylor
Published: Thursday 5 July 2012
Today, over 36 million people in the United States have student loans, while at least 1 out of 5 borrowers go into default.

Occupy Student Debt and Occupy Colleges have recently merged because of our overlapping principles. Collectively, our beliefs are simple: we are here to advocate on behalf of students and to educate as many people as possible on the growing crisis of student debt. We are fighting for quality, affordable and accessible education for all students who want to obtain a college degree. Beyond that, we don’t have any demands as we are forming a broad coalition. We will never see debt forgiven in one large bill and how can we even ask for free education when tuition prices keep rising - how about we start with a tuition hike freeze before we ask for all education to be free? These are just a few of the questions that our alliance hopes to address.

Today, over 36 million people in the United States have student loans, while at least 1 out of 5 borrowers go into default. As highlighted in a short video we released, those who default are slammed with exorbitant fees and penalties, exploding and usurious interest rates, destroyed credit ratings, possible suspension of driver’s licenses, possible suspension of professional licenses, and more. For these reasons we have opposed the decision which encourages borrowers to voluntarily default on their student loans. If a million people were to actually default, this would be a dream come true for companies such as Sallie Mae who happens to own many collection companies as well. Due to heavy lobbying from these student lenders, consumer rights have been stripped away and lenders make far more if the borrower defaults.

Given that, we believe it would be a great disservice if we were to tell all borrowers that it’s in their best interest to voluntarily default. And we’re not alone on this decision - during a weekly conference call involving over 50 colleges, Occupy Colleges put to a vote whether or not to support voluntary default. The result? A unanimous decision opposing voluntary ...

Classified Confusion: What Leaks Are Being Investigated, and What’s the Law on Leaks?
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 3 July 2012
“Here’s what we know about leak investigations underway, the legality of leaks, and why leak prosecutions have been so rare.”

Recent scoops on national security have drawn the ire of Republican lawmakers, who have accused the Obama White House of leaking stories that burnish its image.

Obama responded that he has “zero tolerance” for leaks. He also said: “the writers of these articles have all stated unequivocally that they didn’t come from this White House. And that’s not how we operate.”

 
Obama Healthcare Law Receives More Support
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 2 July 2012
White House Advocates GMO Toxins While Preaching Healthy School Lunch
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 1 July 2012
There continues to be a disconnect among the FDA, USDA, the White House and Americans about what is safe to eat and disclosure about what Americans are consuming.

Jeffrey Smith from the Institute for Responsible Technology explains exactly how Monsanto's genetically modified corn is toxic to humans, according to a new French study from the University of Caen. In the stunning audio below, Smith details how this corn is designed to rupture the stomach of insects and what it did to the stomachs of humans during this study.

 

At the very same time President Obama continues to allow his appointees, Michael Taylor, in charge of food safety at the FDA, and Tom Vilsack, Secretary of Agriculture, to maintain GMOs are safe, the White House holds events to "inform" and "educate" parents about healthy school lunches for children.

 

There continues to be a disconnect among the FDA, USDA, the White House and Americans about what is safe to eat and disclosure about what Americans are consuming. Upwards of 90% of Americans want genetically modified foods labeled and a petition is still sitting up at the FDA containing well over 1 million signatures from concerned citizens requesting the FDA label GMOs. The FDA had given assurances months ago the agency would consider and respond to the petition. That has yet to happen. In 2007 on the campaign trail, Candidate Obama promised to label GMOs if elected. He has not done so and in fact, appointed Taylor and Vilsack with long-standing ties to Monsanto, a major developer of GMO seeds, instead.

Posted from here: http://tampa.cbslocal.com/2012/06/25/white-house-advocates-gmo-toxins-while-preaching-healthy-school-lunch-elizabeth-dougherty-food-nation-radio-network-jeffrey-smith-audio/

White House Pulls Ambassador-Nominee Accused of Drunk Driving
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 30 June 2012
Court records show that Broas, 58, was pulled over by police on June 19 at 1:18 AM on Connecticut Avenue in Chevy Chase and charged with “attempting to drive a vehicle while under the influence of alcohol.”

 

The White House has withdrawn the nomination of Washington attorney Timothy M. Broas — a top Obama campaign fundraiser — as ambassador to the Netherlands following charges of drunk driving and resisting arrest in suburban Maryland earlier last week.

 

Court records show that Broas, 58, was pulled over by police on June 19 at 1:18 AM on Connecticut Avenue in Chevy Chase and charged with “attempting to drive [a] vehicle while under the influence of alcohol.”

He was ticketed for driving 47 miles per hour in a 35 mile per hour zone. He also faces a criminal charge of resisting arrest, according to Montgomery County District Court records. The White House announcement was made Thursday night.

Broas, a Chevy Chase resident, has been a major bundler for President Barack Obama, part of an elite group of fundraisers who collect donations from their friends and associates. Obama announced his intent to appoint him to the ambassadorship in April, as the Center for Public Integrity previously reported.

Prior to his nomination, Broas had raised more than $500,000 for Obama’s re-election efforts. He is one of only 117 bundlers to raise at least a half-million dollars for Obama, the Democratic National Committee and Democratic parties in battleground states.

During the president’s campaign four years ago, he also raised between $200,000 and $500,000 for Obama.

Broas “withdrew his nomination for personal reasons,” said Debra Reed, a spokeswoman. “That’s the extent of what we’ll say about that.”

She added that Broas believed that the charges he faced would “be resolved under the transportation ...

Obama Threatens to Veto Bill that Defunds Wall Street Reform
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 30 June 2012
The 2013 Financial Services bill is heading to the House floor after being considered by the Rules Committee on Thursday.

 

House Republicans, after failing to prevent the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law from passing Congress, have attempted to undermine it by refusing to give Wall Street regulators adequate funds to do their jobs. Both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission are short of the funding they require, and House Republicans recently voted in committee to fund the SEC $245 million below the Obama administration’s request for 2013.

However, should that funding bill actually reach President Obama’s desk, he has announced that he will veto it:

The 2013 Financial Services bill is heading to the House floor after being considered by the Rules Committee on Thursday.

“The bill severely undermines key investments in financial oversight and implementation of Wall Street reform to protect American consumers, as well as needed tax enforcement and taxpayer services. It also hampers effective implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA),” the White House statement reads.

House Republicans on the Appropriations Committee also recently approved a cut of $25 million to the CFTC’s budget.

Just ten days ago, the Republican chairman of the House Financial Services Committee admitted that Wall Street regulators do not have the resources necessary to do what Congress has asked of them. However, House Republicans have not acted to rectify the situation, instead bringing to the House floor a bill that would simply exacerbate the problem.

Eric Holder Knee Deep, ’In Contempt’
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 29 June 2012
Advocates Hail Supreme Court Decision - Worry at Law’s Shortcomings
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 29 June 2012
“The Affordable Care Act’s [ACA] requirement that certain individuals pay a financial penalty for not obtaining health insurance may reasonably be characterized as a tax.”

 

Initial reactions to the U.S. Supreme Court’s general upholding of the health care reform law Thursday ranged from the American Public Health Association’s (APHA) heralding the decision to conservative groups, such as the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, decrying it as “a victory for those who want the Federal government to micromanage your life and medical care.”

 

Buzzing beneath the first bluster of reactions, though, advocates for uninsured or underinsured Americans are raising concerns about the impact — if any — of limitations on the high court’s decision.

 

Chief Justice’s Surprise Swing Vote

 

First, here’s what the court decided: The 200-plus-page judgment breaks down into two major parts. In a 5-4 majority opinion written by conservative stalwart Chief Justice John Roberts, who became the surprise swing vote, the court upheld the law’s provision mandating that individuals have insurance or pay a penalty. 

 

The decision states, “The Affordable Care Act’s [ACA] requirement that certain individuals pay a financial penalty for not obtaining health insurance may reasonably be characterized as a tax.” 

 

Roberts thus accepted the Obama administration’s secondary argument that compelling people to buy insurance or be penalized was not tantamount, as dissenting Justice Antonin Scalia argued, to compelling citizens to buy broccoli for their health. Instead, says the majority, the penalty for not purchasing health insurance is no different from any other federal tax permitted by the U.S. Constitution.

 

The Chief Justice, however, sided with his four conservative colleagues on the ...

Fox’s Brazen Star: Karl Rove Rebukes Obama on Executive Privilege Claim
Taylor
Published: Thursday 28 June 2012
“For someone whose qualifications as a constitutional authority are nil, Rove's comments displayed an impressive degree of contempt for his listeners that is not seen every day, not even on Fox.”

Forever incapable of embarrassment, let alone sober reflection, Karl Rove is very well suited to his current roles as Fox News commentator and Crossroads Super PAC smear sponsor. But he achieved a moment of near-perfection last Thursday when, appearing on a Fox morning news broadcast, he spoke up about President Obama's invocation of executive privilege against a House committee subpoena of Justice Department documents.

“It's one thing to exert executive privilege over the actions of the president, and his aides, and the White House,” he said. “It's another thing to exercise executive privilege with regard to a Cabinet official, seemingly in a matter that — according to the president up until now — had no connections with, no contact with, no communications with the White House ... .”

Rove went on to complain that the president's privilege claim over the “Operation Fast and Furious” documents demanded by Rep. Darrell Issa's oversight committee “is a very long reach. I mean basically, if the president is allowed to take the privilege that goes to the Executive Office of the President and extend it to a Cabinet department, then he can extend it to any branch of the government for any matter, even if there was no presidential or White House involvement. And I'm not certain that that's what the Founders thought about when they talked about executive privilege.”

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Conservative Politics Will Again Trump Law in Supreme Court’s Health Care Ruling
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 25 June 2012
The four justices’ hard line challenge to the government’s position during oral arguments signaled that they leaned heavily toward scrapping the law.

 

President Obama and top Democrats have repeatedly exuded cautious confidence that the Supreme Court would uphold part or most of the Affordable Care Act. But beneath their strained optimism, the Obama administration almost certainly has known that politics, not law, will ram its way into the high court’s final decision. 

 

There was never much doubt that the health care reform law would face rough sledding from the court's four ultra conservatives. The tip-off came quickly. The four justices’ hard line challenge to the government’s position during oral arguments signaled that they leaned heavily toward scrapping the law. 

 

The ostensible hook that the conservatives latched onto to assail the law was that the individual mandate is an unlawful infringement on individual liberty. It allegedly forces Americans to buy insurance. Nowhere does the U.S. Constitution confer that power on Congress or the executive branch.

 

GOP’s War on Health Care Reform

 

That’s just the start. Polls show that a slender majority of Americans want to dump all or parts of the law. This includes some Democrats. 

 

Despite loud protests that they are not swayed by public opinion or ideological beliefs, the court’s conservatives have shown they are as much “judicial activists” for their political views as they accuse liberal jurists of being. And the polls give even more ammunition to them. 

 

But even without the polls, the GOP and ultra conservatives waged their own very public and relentless war on health care reform from the moment Obama proposed it—even though the White House structured the legislation along line Republicans had advocated for ...

How to Fight Wall Street - and Transform a Nation
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 23 June 2012
“There are at least two areas of criminal activity worth concentrating on: mortgage documentation, and securities.”

 

Eric Schneiderman was right.

New York State's Attorney General told an audience at the Take Back the American Dream Conference that we need a "transformational politics" that will change the way we look at ourselves, our society, and our economy.

The wealthy have amassed an ever-greater share of our national income through conscious policy choices, said Schneiderman, not through an act of God. They’ve been able to divert our nation from a production economy to a financial-speculation economy the same way.

Schneiderman was suggesting that political action should help us change the way we view our economic world.

 

 

Free Your Mind, Arrests Will Follow

I couldn't agree more. Thanks to an expensive and intensive decades-long campaign of propaganda and political influence-peddling, many Americans re-adopted a mythology about wealth that had been discredited and abandoned by most of the world (including the United States) in the 20th Century. We need to transform ourselves, remove the blinders, and see things as they really are.

Schneiderman's distinction between "transformational" and "transactional" politics was also valid: Voters don't just want to see a legislative accomplishment - any accomplishment - regardless of its impact. They want to see accomplishments that reflect who we are as a people, and which advance us as a society.

But transformation will need some involvement from the world of "transactional" activity, too. As I told the group, I can't think of any single act that would be more "transformative" that the arrest of a senior Wall Street executive.

Wall Street: CSI

The occasion was a panel discussion on "Taking On Wall Street" moderated by MSNBC's Alex ...

The Facts Behind Obama’s Executive Privilege Claim
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 22 June 2012
Holder says that his office already released thousands of documents, and that the others that Issa wants are internal communications protected by executive privilege

 

Yesterday, the Obama administration invoked executive privilege to prevent the release of certain documents to Congress related to Operation Fast and Furious, the arms-trafficking sting gone awry that came to light last year. (As we've detailed, federal agents lost track of hundreds of guns they sold to suspected gun smugglers, many of which later turned up at crime scenes in Mexico).

The fall-out from the failed operation has been an ongoing battle between Attorney General Eric Holder and congressional Republicans, in particular Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Issa wants documents related to the Department of Justice's investigation of the operation.

The committee voted yesterday to recommend that Holder be held in contempt of Congress for not turning over some documents. Holder says that his office already released thousands of documents, and that the others that Issa wants are internal communications protected by executive privilege.

In the midst of all this back-and-forth, we lay out exactly what the executive privilege is, and what it means in this case.

So what is executive privilege?

The president can invoke executive privilege in order to withhold some internal executive branch communications from the other branches of government. The privilege is based on the separation of powers between the branches.

Executive privilege has been invoked ...

Is Barack Obama Morphing into Dick Cheney?
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 22 June 2012
As recent events have demonstrated, Obama’s energy policies globally bear an eerie likeness to Cheney’s, especially in the way he has engaged in the geopolitics of oil as part of an American global struggle for future dominance among the major powers.

 

As details of his administration’s global war against terrorists, insurgents, and hostile warlords have become more widely known -- a war that involves a mélange of drone attacks, covert operations, and presidentially selected assassinations -- President Obama has been compared to President George W. Bush in his appetite for military action.  “As shown through his stepped-up drone campaign,” Aaron David Miller, an advisor to six secretaries of state, wrote at Foreign Policy, “Barack Obama has become George W. Bush on steroids.”

When it comes to international energy politics, however, it is not Bush but his vice president, Dick Cheney, who has been providing the role model for the president.  As recent events have demonstrated, Obama’s energy policies globally bear an eerie likeness to Cheney’s, especially in the way he has engaged in the geopolitics of oil as part of an American global struggle for future dominance among the major powers.

More than any of the other top officials of the Bush administration -- many with oil-company backgrounds -- Cheney focused on the role of energy in global power politics.  From 1995 to 2000, he served as chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Halliburton, a major supplier of services to the oil industry.  Soon after taking office as vice president he was asked by Bush to devise a new national energy strategy that has largely governed U.S. ...

Nonprofit Profile: Americans for Prosperity
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 22 June 2012
The Virginia-based 501c(4) with a network of 34 state affiliates is known for drawing support from the conservative billionaire Koch brothers and for “incubating” the tea party movement.

 

Type of organization: 501(c)(4)

Supports: Conservative candidates

Opposes: Barack Obama, Democrats

Founded: 2004

Location: Arlington, VA.

Website: http://americansforprosperity.org/

Social media:

On Twitter:

June 11: “Proud to help! RT @FelineBengal @AFPhq Congrats on the great job you did in Wisconsin. Your hard work paid off. Thanks from all of us.”

June 11 “Looking forward to hearing from @SarahPalinUSA this week at @afphqRightOnline conference #RO12”

On Facebook

Finances (calendar year 2010):

Total revenue: $22 million

Total expenses: $24 million

Net assets: $43,000

990: 

Health Care: Give the People What They Want
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 22 June 2012
“More than three-fourths of Americans want their political leaders to undertake a new effort, rather than leave the health care system alone if the court rules against the law, according to the poll.”

 

The nutty thing about the health care debate that will play a prominent role in the next election is that most Americans want pretty much the same outcome: to control costs without sacrificing quality. And that’s not what either major-party candidate is offering. Few think that Obamacare, a Romneycare descendant that contains the same kind of individual mandate the then-governor of Massachusetts signed into law, will get us to that desired goal. Nor would Mitt Romney, who has been reborn as a celebrant of the old, pre-Obama system with a few nips and tucks.

As the nation awaits a Supreme Court ruling on the constitutionality of the Obama health care approach, a new Associated Press-GfK poll suggests that the vast majority of Americans want Congress to come up with a better plan. They know that the current system is unsustainable. Only a third of those polled favored the law President Barack Obama signed, but according to the AP, “... Whatever people think of the law, they don’t want a Supreme Court ruling against it to be the last word on health care reform.” The article continued, “More than three-fourths of Americans want their political leaders to undertake a new effort, rather than leave the health care system alone if the court rules against the law, according to the poll.”

That sentiment underscores the opportunity missed by Obama, who limited his ambition to what Big Pharma and the insurance giants would accept as “reform” in a system that they had so successfully exploited. Obamacare is a faux reform born of opportunism, as was Romney’s original version: Play ball with those who have profited most from the run-up of medical costs and expect them to make it more affordable.

Two dynamics doomed the experiment. First, the new Democratic president wanted to launch a bold progressive program, but rather than channel the spirit of Franklin Delano Roosevelt to address the ...

U.S. Attorney General Contempt Charges
Amanda Rae
Published: Thursday 21 June 2012
Republicans Swoon Over Holder’s ‘Partisan’ Leak Probers (and Forget Ken Starr)
Taylor
Published: Thursday 21 June 2012
“Angry Republicans (and their media enablers at Fox News, et al.) insist that the White House must have leaked information about the president's terrorist ‘kill list,’ the success of drone strikes and the killing of Osama bin Laden to improve the president’s martial image and re-election prospects.”

 

This week, Republicans on Capitol Hill opened yet another front in their continuous sniping against the Obama administration, the Justice Department and Attorney General Eric Holder. Having demanded a federal investigation of intelligence leaks, they now claim to be outraged because Holder has asked two United States attorneys to conduct that probe — and one of the two happens to be a Democrat.

Angry Republicans (and their media enablers at Fox News, et al.) insist that the White House must have leaked information about the president's terrorist "kill list," the success of drone strikes and the killing of Osama bin Laden to improve the president's martial image and re-election prospects. Never mind that they fawned over the Bush White House, regardless of its leaks and even its unlawful disclosure of CIA officer Valerie Plame's identity. That was then, of course — and now the alleged leaks of national security material from a Democratic administration enrage them.

Whether those stories emanated from the Obama White House or not, someone must have tipped off The New York Times, which first reported the "kill list," among other things. So consistent with President Obama's evident obsession about stanching leaks, Holder appointed Ronald Machen, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, and Rod Rosenstein, the U.S. attorney for the District of Maryland, to oversee an investigation and potential prosecution of the leakers.

20 Questions: Why You Should Join Today’s March Against Money in Politics
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 20 June 2012
If you’ve got doubts about whether or not to join us, here are twenty questions (and answers) that should help you make up your mind.

There's a march and demonstration taking place tomorrow (Wednesday, June 20) to protest money's corrupting influence in our political process. We'll be marching on the headquarters of Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS organization in Washington DC to protest the corrupting, debasing, and anti-democratic influence of money in politics.

I'll be there, and you should be too. Why?

I'm glad you asked.

Hey, I marched when I was in junior high school. Like many other people, I thought those days were over. Maybe you did did too. News flash: They're not. Maybe you're like me and rediscovered the power of protest by joining the Occupy movement. Or maybe you're still sitting on the fence.

If you've got doubts about whether or not to join us, here are twenty questions (and answers) that should help you make up your mind.

1. March? Really? On foot? That's so retro, so sixties! Weren't demonstrations just something that was fashionable when guys wore Nehru jackets and women wore granny skirts?

Actually, no. Public demonstrations for "redress of grievances" are as old as the Republic itself - older, in fact. Nonviolent demonstrations defeated the British Empire in India. They triggered the American Revolution. They gave working people their rights, created the middle class, and led to the greatest prosperity in our history during the 20th Century.

More recently, public demonstrations helped bring down the Iron Curtain and sparked the Arab Spring, a fight that's still underway but which has already changed the political landscape of the Middle East.

Protest marches are a pure form of democracy in action. That's something that never goes out of fashion.

2. But don't we do all ...

The Return of Watergate
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 19 June 2012
Lessons learned and lost in the 40 years since the Watergate scandal.

 

Sunday marked the 40th anniversary of the Watergate scandal, an event of startling criminality that left a permanent scar on American politics and Americans’ trust in government. The scandal began when five men were arrested for breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex. The ensuing investigation led straight to the highest echelons of the White House and eventually forced the first resignation of an American president on August 9, 1974.

The anniversary of the Watergate affair should serve as a reminder of the dangers of lax regulations on political campaign contributions. A recent Washington Post article reflects on the important relationship of money in politics in the era of Nixon and the crime committed at Watergate:

READ FULL POST 3 COMMENTS

Nonprofits Outspent Super PACs in 2010, Trend May Continue
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 19 June 2012
“Since their creation in 2010, the Center for Public Integrity and Center for Responsive Politics found that about 15 percent of super PAC spending has been done by groups that have reported receiving contributions from a 501(c)(4) or a 501(c)(6).”

 

While super PACs were cast as the big, bad wolves during the last election, the groups were outspent by “social welfare” organizations by a 3-2 margin, a trend that may continue amid reports that major donors are giving tens of millions of dollars to the secretive nonprofit groups.

A joint investigation by the Center for Public Integrity and the Center for Responsive Politics has found that more than 100 nonprofits organized under section 501(c)(4) of the U.S. tax code spent roughly $95 million on political expenditures in the 2010 election compared with $65 million by super PACs.

Nearly 90 percent of the spending by these nonprofits — more than $84 million — came from groups that never publicly disclosed their funders, the joint analysis of Federal Election Commission data found. Another $8 million came from groups that only partially revealed their donors.

Unlike the nonprofits, super PACs are required to release the names of their contributors.

In terms of party allegiance, ...

Corporate Feelings
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 19 June 2012
“In the upside-down world of regressive Republicanism, McConnell thinks proposed legislation requiring companies to disclose their campaign spending would stifle their free speech.”

Perhaps you’d expect no more from the Republican leader of the Senate who proclaimed three years ago that the GOP’s first priority was to get Obama out of the White House.

But Senator Mitch McConnell’s speech Friday at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington is simply bonkers.

The only reason I bring it up is because it offers an inside look at how the  Republican goal of getting rid of Obama is inextricably linked to the Republican Supreme Court’s decision equating corporations with people under the First Amendment, and to the Republican’s current determination to keep Americans in the dark about which corporations contribute what. 

In the upside-down world of regressive Republicanism, McConnell thinks proposed legislation requiring companies to disclose their campaign spending would stifle their free speech.

He describes the current push to disclose the sources behind campaign contributions as a “political weapon,” used by the Democrats, “to expose its critics to harassment and intimidation.” 

Harassment and intimidation? It used to be called accountability to shareholders and consumers.

Five members of the Supreme Court think corporations are people. Mitt Romney agrees. And now the minority leader of the Senate – the highest-ranking Republican official in America – takes this logic to its absurd conclusion: If corporations are people, they must be capable of feeling harassed and intimidated if their shareholders or consumers don’t approve of their political expenditures.

Hell, they might even throw a tantrum. Or cry.

But what exactly are corporations anyway, separate and apart from their shareholders and consumers? Legal fictions, pieces of paper.

And whom do corporations exist for if not the people who legally own them and those who purchase the products and services they sell? 

Clearly, ...

White House Admits to Ops in Yemen and Somalia
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 16 June 2012
Surveillance Nation or Not?
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 16 June 2012
I was asked for details about how the organization operated, its membership, its meetings, and about the people who attended them.

 

In the late 1980s, Vietnam veteran Brian Willson sued the U.S. government after being maimed by a Navy munitions train during a protest against U.S. wars in Central America. During trial preparations, the U.S. attorney subpoenaed and deposed several of us who had been at the demonstration or were involved in local organizing. Thus began an 18-month ordeal focused on what we viewed as improper government information-gathering, which came to a close only after Willson reached a settlement in his case.

In my sworn deposition I willingly shared my experience of that horrendous day. But when the interview turned to questions about the internal operations of the organization I worked for at the time — The Pledge of Resistance — I respectfully refused to answer. I was asked for details about how the organization operated, its membership, its meetings, and about the people who attended them. Supported by two lawyers from the Center for Constitutional Rights, I declined to respond. I felt that sharing this information would potentially have a chilling effect on our community and our campaign — would people come to meetings if they knew that data about them might end up in a government file? The trust and solidarity that nurtures so much organizing could be jeopardized.

Even more significantly, I felt that the government wasn’t entitled to this information. The Pledge had a long history of nonviolence training and nonviolent action. There was no basis, so far as the legal case was concerned, to gather this kind of material. We feared that it could be used, then or in the future, for political purposes. Surveillance of the Central America peace movement was not uncommon — 60 movement offices were reportedly broken into during those years — and we had concerns that the information ...

A Back Door to the Public Option
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 15 June 2012
“If the Court strikes down the individual mandate, health insurance company lobbyists and executives will swarm Capitol Hill seeking to have the Act amended to remove the requirement that they insure people with pre-existing medical conditions.”

 

Any day now the Supreme Court will issue its opinion on the constitutionality of the Accountable Care Act, which even the White House now calls Obamacare.

Most high-court observers think it will strike down the individual mandate in the Act that requires almost everyone to buy health insurance, as violating the Commerce Clause of the Constitution — but will leave the rest of the new healthcare law intact.

But the individual mandate is so essential to spreading the risk and cost of health care over the whole population, including younger and healthier people, that some analysts believe a Court decision that nixes the mandate will effectively spell the end of the Act anyway.

Yet it could have exactly the opposite effect. If the Court strikes down the individual mandate, health insurance company lobbyists and executives will swarm Capitol Hill seeking to have the Act amended to remove the requirement that they insure people with pre-existing medical conditions. They’ll argue that without the mandate they can’t afford to cover pre-existing conditions.

But the requirement to cover pre-existing conditions has proven to be so popular with the public that Congress will be reluctant to scrap it.

This opens the way to a political bargain. Insurers might be let off the hook, for example, only if they support allowing every American, including those with pre-existing conditions, to choose Medicare, or something very much like Medicare. In effect, what was known during the debate over the bill as the “public option.”

So in striking down the least popular part of Obamacare - the individual mandate - the Court will inevitably bring into question one of its most popular parts - coverage of pre-existing conditions. And in so doing, open alternative ways to maintain that coverage - including ideas, like the public option, that were rejected in favor of the mandate.

The fact is, ...

Bush EPA Chief Urges Action on Chemical Hazards
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 13 June 2012
Congress had moved quickly to pass bills on water safety and bioterrorism, and the EPA thought it was “on the right track” to pass a bill on chemical security as well.

Christine Todd Whitman, Environmental Protection Agency chief under George W. Bush, urged the EPA Tuesday to use its authority under the Clean Air Act to impose stricter safety standards on American chemical facilities vulnerable to accidents or terrorist attacks.

“I cannot understand why we have not seen some action when the consequences of something happening are so potentially devastating,” Whitman said in a teleconference that included representatives of labor and environmental groups.  

As Bush’s EPA administrator, Whitman was prepared to unveil a proposal requiring chemical plants to use safer processes in the months after 9/11. Under the Clean Air Act’s general duty clause, Whitman said, the EPA had the authority to require hazard reduction at facilities at risk of catastrophic chemical releases.

But the plan was scuttled by the White House, which maintained that chemical hazards could be better addressed by legislation, Whitman said. Congress had moved quickly to pass bills on water safety and bioterrorism, and the EPA thought it was “on the right track” to pass a bill on chemical security as well.

Bob Bostock, Whitman’s homeland security adviser at the time, said EPA officials expected litigation from the chemical industry if it used the general duty clause. “It wasn’t so much that we were afraid we’d lose the litigation,” Bostock said. “We didn’t want to be tied up in litigation for years and years, leaving this unaddressed.”

Legislation never came. Now, Whitman and others are pressing the EPA to act on its own. In March, the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council wrote a 

Republicans Continue Attacks on Obama Over Information Leaks
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 11 June 2012
How Activists Score Wins Taking on the Banks
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 10 June 2012
“Those victories happen dramatically more often when homeowners organize and make their fight public.”

 

There is some good news in the fight for homeowners and against the big banks. Homeowners who are facing foreclosures because of unfair and often illegal practices by the major financial Goliaths are learning how to organize, how to shame bank executives and how to get local media attention.

But a panel of activists at Netroots Nation also expressed disappointment that there has not yet been any prosecutions of banking industry executives for any of the wrongdoing that led to the financial crisis and the millions of home foreclosures that followed.

That disappointment will greet Eric Schneiderman, the New York state attorney general who is also the head of an investigative task force on the financial crisis commissioned by President Obama, when he speaks tonight at a Netroots Nation plenary session.

Tracy Van Slyke, the director of New Bottom Line, one of the progressive grassroots organization leading the effort to break up the big banks and hold them accountable for causing the financial crisis, reflected the mood of the panel when she said that she was viewing the work of Schneiderman and the task force "with growing disappointment and growing anger" because of its slow progress.

Matt Browner-Hamlin, senior economic strategist at the Citizen Engagement Lab, said that top banking executives have already testified to actions before Congress that should lead to indictments, but so far they have not. There is a need for some real heroes in the fight against the big banks, Browner-Hamlin said, and "I had hoped that Schneiderman would be one of those heroes. Unfortunately, that's not going to be the case."

The heroes instead have been ordinary homeowners facing the threat of losing their homes who have found that by banding together with community activists and other homeowners they can often curb the big banks' worst behavior and begin to move public opinion on such issues as whether the big ...

Two US Attorneys Appointed by Holder to Lead Leak Probe
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 9 June 2012
Bradley Manning’s Story, From Difficult Childhood to Alleged Whistleblower on World Stage
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 9 June 2012
“In many ways Bradley Manning's story is the story of the United States in the post-9/11 era.”

The new book, "Private: Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks, and the Biggest Exposure of Official Secrets in American History," tracks Manning's trajectory from growing up as a gay teen in small-town Oklahoma to joining the U.S. Army, where he found success as an intelligence analyst before being charged with the largest U.S. intelligence breach on record. We speak with the book's author, Denver Nicks. "In many ways Bradley Manning's story is the story of the United States in the post-9/11 era," Nicks says. "[His] life is sort of quintessentially American, in that he's gay at a time when gay rights goes mainstream; he joins the Army, and as an intelligence analyst no less, at a time when the national security state really starts to metastasize into something that we have never seen before ... We have more people with more access to more secret information than ever before, while we are living in the post 9/11 era of foreign policy conducted, as Dick Cheney said, in the shadows. We are more dependent than ever on leaks to know what our government is doing. Leaks are not only inevitable, but necessary ... Bradley Manning had access to an extraordinary amount of classified information -- more, in fact, than he leaked."

 

Transcript

AMY 

Congress Still Working to Stop Intelligent Leaks
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 8 June 2012
The Big-Lie Coup d’Etat
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 6 June 2012
“The debt is growing because of obligations entered into long ago, many under George W. Bush – including two giant tax cuts that went mostly to the very wealthy that were supposed to be temporary and which are still going, courtesy of Republican blackmail over raising the debt limit.”

 

JP Morgan Chase,  Goldman Sachs, BP, Chevron, WalMart, and billionaires Charles and David Koch are launching a multi-million dollar TV ad buy Tuesday blasting President Obama over the national debt.

Actually, I don’t know who’s behind this ad because there’s no way to know. And that’s a big problem.

The front group for the ad is Crossroads GPS, the sister organization to the super PAC American Crossroads run by Republican political operative Karl Rove.

Because Crossroads GPS is a tax-exempt nonprofit group, it can spend unlimited money on politics — and it doesn’t have to reveal where it gets the dough.

By law, all it has to do is spent most of the money on policy “issues,” which is a fig leaf for partisan politics.

Here’s what counts as an issue ad, as opposed to a partisan one. The narrator in the ad Crossroads GPS is launching solemnly intones: “In 2008, Barack Obama said, ‘We can’t mortgage our children’s future on a mountain of debt.’ Now he’s adding $4 billion in debt every day, borrowing from China for his spending. Every second, growing our debt faster than our economy,” he continues. “Tell Obama, stop the spending.”

This is a bald face lie, by the way.

Obama isn’t adding to the debt every day. The debt is growing because of obligations entered into long ago, many under George W. Bush – including two giant tax cuts that went mostly to the very wealthy that were supposed to be temporary and which are still going, courtesy of Republican blackmail over raising the debt limit.

In realty, government spending as a portion of GDP keeps dropping.

As I said, I don’t know who’s financing this big lie but there’s good reason to think it’s some combination of Wall Street, big corporations, and the billionaire Koch brothers.

According ...

Dissecting Obama’s Standard on Drone Strike Deaths
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 6 June 2012
“But speaking on condition of anonymity, an administration official acknowledged that the administration does not always know the names or identities of everyone in a location marked for a drone strike.”

 

In a lengthy front-page story last week exploring President Obama's use of drone strikes in countries including Pakistan and Yemen, the New York Times reported that the president had "embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in."

Citing "several administration officials," the Times reported that this method "in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants ... unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent." The Times reported that this standard allowed counterterrorism adviser John Brennan to claim in June 2011 that for nearly a year "there hasn't been a single collateral death because of the exceptional proficiency, precision of the capabilities that we've been able to develop."

Human rights groups and others have expressed outrage at the reported counting method. And in the last few days alone, 27 "suspected militants" have been killed in three drone strikes in Pakistan, including the reported No. 2 of al Qaeda.

We wanted to lay out exactly what's known (not much) about the apparent policy, what's not (a lot), and what the White House is saying in response to the Times report.

Crucially, the White House has done nothing to knock the story down. I gave the White House a chance to respond, and it declined to comment on the record. But speaking on condition of anonymity, an administration official acknowledged that the administration does not always know the names or identities of everyone in a ...

Praying at the Church of St. Drone
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 5 June 2012
“The last two presidents may not have been emperors or kings, but they -- and the vast national-security structure that continues to be built-up and institutionalized around the presidential self -- are certainly one of the nightmares the founding fathers of this country warned us against.”

 

Be assured of one thing: whichever candidate you choose at the polls in November, you aren’t just electing a president of the United States; you are also electing an assassin-in-chief.  The last two presidents may not have been emperors or kings, but they -- and the vast national-security structure that continues to be built-up and institutionalized around the presidential self -- are certainly one of the nightmares the founding fathers of this country warned us against.  They are one of the reasons those founders put significant war powers in the hands of Congress, which they knew would be a slow, recalcitrant, deliberative body.

Thanks to a long New York Times piece by Jo Becker and Scott Shane, “Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will,” we now know that the president has spent startling amounts of time overseeing the “nomination” of terrorist suspects for assassination via the remotely piloted drone program he inherited from President George W. Bush and which he has expanded 

OSHA Rules on Workplace Toxics Stalled
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 5 June 2012
The federal standard in place to protect workers like Revers from beryllium is based on an Atomic Energy Commission calculation crafted by an industrial hygienist and a physician in the back of a taxi in 1949. For the last 12 years, an effort to update that standard has been mired in delay.

 

At 58, retired machinist Bruce Revers is tethered to his oxygen machines — a wall unit when he’s at home, a portable tank when he’s out. The simple act of walking to the curb to pick up his newspaper is a grind.

“This is a hell of a thing to live with,” Revers, of Orange, Calif., said of his worsening lung disease. “There’s nothing I can do without my air.”

His undoing was beryllium, a light and versatile metal to which he was exposed in a Southern California factory that makes high-tech ceramics for the space, defense and automotive industries. His bosses tried to keep the place clean and well-ventilated, Revers says, and he wore a respirator to shield his lungs from the fine metallic dust. Nonetheless, he was diagnosed with chronic beryllium disease in 2009.

He will not recover.

The federal standard in place to protect workers like Revers from beryllium is based on an Atomic Energy Commission calculation crafted by an industrial hygienist and a physician in the back of a taxi in 1949. For the last 12 years, an effort to update that standard has been mired in delay. A plan to ...

The Job Stall
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 2 June 2012
“At least 125,000 jobs are needed a month merely to keep up with the growth in the working-age population available to work.”

 

The White House must be telling itself there are still five months between now and Election Day, so the jobs picture could brighten. After all, we went through a similar mid-year slump in 2011 but came out fine.

But however you look at today’s jobs report, it’s a stunning reminder of how anemic the recovery has been – and how perilously close the nation is to falling into another recession.

Not only has the unemployment rate risen for the first time in almost a year, to 8.2 percent, but, more ominously, May’s payroll survey showed that employers created only 69,000 net new jobs. The Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics also revised its March and April reports downward. Only 96,000 new jobs have been created, on average, over the last three months.

Put this into perspective. Between December and February, the economy added an average of 252,000 jobs each month. To go from 252,000 to 96,000, on average, is a terrible slide. READ FULL POST 17 COMMENTS

Hope Burning
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 1 June 2012
“When a rare opportunity for a drone strike at a top terrorist arises—but his family is with him—it is the president who has reserved to himself the final moral calculation.”

So now we have Rambo Obama, a steely warrior who, according to a lengthy leaked insider account in The New York Times, hurls death-dealing drones at anyone who threatens the good old USA. Including children. Those children are presumed guilty by virtue of proximity, and the Times plays along, not even modifying a targeted terrorist with the word “alleged,” as once had been the paper’s convention: “When a rare opportunity for a drone strike at a top terrorist arises—but his family is with him—it is the president who has reserved to himself the final moral calculation.”

Obama as the cool triggerman is an image useful to White House operatives as they buff the president’s persona for the coming election. But what it reveals is the mindset of a political cynic whose seductive words cloak the moral indifference of a methodical executioner. Forget Harry Truman, who obliterated the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or Lyndon Johnson, who carpet-bombed millions in Vietnam. The Democrats have got themselves another killer, one whose techniques are as devastatingly effective, but brilliantly refined.

The story obviously was planted in The New York Times to benefit the Obama political campaign. Otherwise, why would the president’s former chief of staff, William Daley, and three dozen current and past intelligence insiders provide the newspaper with the most sensitive details of national security decision-making?

Pfc. Bradley Manning was held for many months in solitary confinement for allegedly disclosing information of far lower security classification. The difference is that the top secrets in the news article are ones the president wants leaked in the expectation they will burnish his “tough on terrorism” credentials. This is clearly not the Obama whom many voted for in the hope that he would stick by his word, including the pledge he made on his second day in office to ...

Conservative Outside Groups Plan to Spend $1 Billion to Retake the White House
Taylor
Published: Thursday 31 May 2012
Republican spending will dwarf that of Democrats.

We always knew that the 2012 presidential election would be expensive. While President Obama’s super PAC has struggled to raise cash, a network of conservative outside groups,  including those led by Karl Rove, the Koch brothers, as well as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, is planning to spend about $1 billion on the election in November, Politico reports:

That total includes previously undisclosed plans for newly aggressive spending by the Koch brothers, who are steering funding to build sophisticated, county-by-county operations in key states. POLITICO has learned that Koch-related organizations plan to spend about $400 million ahead of the 2012 elections – twice what they had been expected to commit.

READ FULL POST 14 COMMENTS

It’s a Wrap, Obama on Track: Gallup Speaks, Experts Squeak
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 27 May 2012
“Think on it: so much exertion, so many words and lies broadcast, all for this wimpy dead-end: the static status quo?”

How comforting to discover, long before $2 billion evaporates in our quadrennial mayhem of misdirection, the finale! Survey says: Obama gets an encore, unless the wary one flubs big-time or a Black Swan sidelines his headlines. I got evidence: the latest poll, elitist expertise, stock charts and detailed voting patterns back to 1860. Match that, Mitt, you twit.  

 

But, alas for the left, few glad tidings, just which brand of anti-progressive runs the White House. Okay, pedestrian mini-series deliver more suspense, but that's what we got. No high drama every election. Instead, a six-month, horror show full of faux suspense plays out -- "will the nice, stumbling right centrist beat back the mechanized, alien throwback?" -- only for the nation to end up treading water.

 

Ah, the irony: everyone wants change, no one loves the status quo, and the majority reviles Congress, wonders about the president, and some days wants to drown government itself. Think on it: so much exertion, so many words and lies broadcast, all for this wimpy dead-end: the static status quo? Like other fantasies, salvation or quick domestic job growth, change rattles our collective unconscious, but reality is aloof and immovable.

 

And change per se is no panacea: ask any pessimist or ex-Obama fan punished by recalling the promise of '08. We malcontents only wish Obama acted with boldness, even tried out for "the most divisive figure in modern American history." That tea-stained distortion oozes from Marco Rubio, another joker oblivious to history going back, let's see, four years. Hey, dimwit, forget the most divisive V.P. ever -- indisputably the most divisive figure in modern politics? Along with his sidekick, Cheney's a black hole of lying divisiveness, leveraging minority rule to radically militarize foreign, economic and domestic policies.

 

Despite everything, Obama the ...

Liberals’ Drone Terrorist Targeting Killings
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 26 May 2012
Lobbying Still Plays a Major Role in Obama White House
Taylor
Published: Thursday 24 May 2012
The White House visitor records make it clear that Obama’s senior officials are granting that access to some of K Street’s most influential representatives.

 

President Obama was elected with a promise to reform and increase transparency, pledging as a candidate that lobbyists “will not run my White House…and will not drown out the voices of the American people.” He enacted strict limits on lobbying his administration and barred (most) recent lobbyists from working for his administration.

But a recent study of the White House visitor logs by the Washington Post found that the lobbying industry is a “regular presence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.” And lobbyists who had personal connections to the White House “enjoyed the easiest access.”

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Confrontation Brews in Congress
Amanda Rae
Published: Thursday 17 May 2012
Obama May Pull His Veto Card on House Defense Bill
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 16 May 2012
Ron Paul Stops Campaigning
Amanda Rae
Published: Tuesday 15 May 2012
White House & Dems Back Banks Over Protests: Newly Discovered Homeland Security Files Show Feds Central to Occupy Crackdown
Amanda Rae
Published: Tuesday 15 May 2012
“A new trove of heavily redacted documents provided by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) exposes the massive hypocrisy of the Obama administration and the Democratic Party, which this election year have tried to co-opt and claim as their own the anti-fat-cat theme of the ‘We are the 99%’-chanting Occupiers.”

A new trove of heavily redacted documents provided by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) on behalf of filmmaker Michael Moore and the National Lawyers Guild makes it increasingly evident that there was and is a nationally coordinated campaign to disrupt and crush the Occupy Movement.

The new documents, which PCJF National Director Mara Verheyden-Hilliard insists “are likely only a subset of responsive materials,” in the possession of federal law enforcement agencies, only “scratch the surface of a mass intelligence network including Fusion Centers, saturated with 'anti-terrorism' funding, that mobilizes thousands of local and federal officers and agents to investigate and monitor the social justice movement.”

Nonetheless, blacked-out and limited though they are, she says they offer clues to the extent of the government’s concern about and focus on the wave of occupations that spread across the country beginning with last September’s Occupy Wall Street action in New York City.

The latest documents reveal “intense involvement” by the DHS’s so-called National Operations Center (NOC). In its own literature, the DHS describes the NOC as “the primary national-level hub for domestic situational ...

What Buffett Really Said About the Buffett Rule
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 13 May 2012
“Oh, it doesn’t -- it is a small improvement in a very bad tax system. It doesn’t cure all, it doesn’t cure all revenue problems remotely.”

Right-wing media claimed that Warren Buffett "blast[ed]" the Buffett rule and that he "isn't totally in favor" of it, citing a CNBC interview in which Buffett said the rule is a "small improvement" that "doesn't cure all revenue problems." But during that interview, Buffett said that he's "fine" with the rule as introduced by Senate Democrats and that it "encompasses the principles that I believe in."

Buffett: I'm "Fine" With The Buffett Rule; "It Encompasses The Principles That I Believe In"Buffett On CNBC: "I'm Fine With" The Buffett Rule; "It Encompasses The Principles That I Believe In." From the May 7 edition of CNBC's Squawk Box:

ANDREW ROSS SORKIN (co-host): You know, Warren, to me, one of the most interesting answers that came out of the meeting was about the Buffett rule, and in particular, sounded to me like you were indicating that what the White House has done with the Buffett rule is different than what you would've done. And I think you used the quote that it's been butchered a bit. Could you elaborate on that?

BUFFETT: No, no. No, I said some of the commentary about it has been butchered or - but no, I would not say the rule at all has been butchered. Obviously, if I were writing a bill myself, there would be - there'd be a little difference. For one thing, there would probably be a different break point - maybe at $10 million or something of the sort. But, it's interesting - you mention the term "White House" because it's Senator Whitehouse who introduced the bill - Senator Whitehouse of Rhode Island. And I wrote him a letter ...

Ohio Town Center Stage for the U.S. Presidential Race
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 11 May 2012
President Obama Threatens to Veto Republican Bill
Amir Gholi
Published: Thursday 10 May 2012
Biden OK With Marriage Rights for Gay Couples
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 7 May 2012
How to Win Friends and Influence Politics
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 6 May 2012
The country’s biggest retailer has adroitly used millions of dollars in campaign contributions, charity drives, lobbying campaigns, and its work for popular causes like childhood nutrition and carbon emissions to build support in Congress and the White House.

Wal-Mart is under fire for its role in a growing controversy, where the multinational corporation is accused of paying $24 million in bribes to Mexican officials and covering up the payments. But the corporation is no stranger to scandal. And it’s worked hard to maintain its reputation, the New York Times reports:

The country’s biggest retailer has adroitly used millions of dollars in campaign contributions, charity drives, lobbying campaigns, and its work for popular causes like childhood nutrition and carbon emissions to build support in Congress and the White House.

It also uses these methods to increase its “favorable” ratings, especially with liberals. And as Wal-Mart’s top lobbyist explained to investors in 2010, the company thinks the strategy has worked.

“Across the board, our reputation with elected officials is improved, not only here in the U.S. but around the world,” the lobbyist, Leslie Dach, boasted as he ticked off poll numbers that he said demonstrated the company’s improving public profile. That popularity, he said, “makes it easier for us to stay out of the public limelight when we don’t want to be there.”

These strategies have earned the company beneficial relationships with lawmakers. During the 2010 election cycle, Wal-Mart’s political action committee and employees donated about $1.7 million to federal candidates and last year, spent $7.8 million on lobbying. Spreading the wealth has helped improve its stature with the traditionally hostile Democratic Party:

For years Wal-Mart had reliable allies in the Republican Party, while it struggled to develop support among Democrats. But in recent years it has joined with the Obama administration on a number of its initiatives, including President Obama’s health care plan, ...

Tavis Smiley Says Fight Poverty With Living-Wage Jobs
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 4 May 2012
“Tax cuts do not equal an aggressive jobs program,” Smiley said, responding to such proposals as a recently passed bill in the House of Representatives that would give $46 billion in tax cuts to so-called “small businesses,” even those that earn hundreds of millions of dollars, in the name of job creation.

 

As the political establishment prepares to do battle Friday over what is likely to be another mediocre jobs report, talk-show host Tavis Smiley this afternoon called for a living-wage jobs program as part of an all-out offensive against poverty in America.

"What we need is a program for creating jobs with a living wage," Smiley said during a conference call set up to promote the book he wrote with author and educator Cornel West, "The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto."

The book is an in-depth look at income inequality in America and its political, economic, and moral dimensions. Smiley calls poverty "the moral and spiritual issue of our time" and is urging the White House to convene a "conference on the eradication of poverty" that would come up with a specific plan with concrete benchmarks for lowering the national poverty rate.

And without question, jobs would be a central part of that agenda.

"Tax cuts do not equal an aggressive jobs program," Smiley said, responding to such proposals as a recently passed bill in the House of Representatives that would give $46 billion in tax cuts to so-called "small businesses," even those that earn hundreds of millions of dollars, in the name of job creation. That legislation, according to Congress's Joint Committee on Taxation, would actually have had too small an effect on the economy to be measured.

What Smiley and West call for is a minimum wage of at least $10 an hour; the current federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. The minimum wage is higher in 18 states and the District of Columbia, but the highest minimum wage in the country is $8.80 an hour, in Oregon.

Smiley's call ...

The Obama Contradiction
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 29 April 2012
“To grasp just how this country’s first African-American-constitutional-law-professor-liberal Oval Office holder became the most imperial of all recent imperial presidents, it’s necessary to look back to the early years of George W. Bush’s presidency.”

He has few constraints (except those he’s internalized).  No one can stop him or countermand his orders.  He has a bevy of lawyers at his beck and call to explain the “legality” of his actions.  And if he cares to, he can send a robot assassin to kill you, whoever you are, no matter where you may be on planet Earth.

He sounds like a typical villain from a James Bond novel.  You know, the kind who captures Bond, tells him his fiendish plan for dominating the planet, ties him up for some no less fiendish torture, and then leaves him behind to gum up the works.

As it happens, though, he’s the president of the United State, a nice guy with a charismatic wife and two lovely kids.

How could this be?

 

Crash-and-Burn Dreams and One That Came to Be

Sometimes to understand where you are, you need to ransack the past.  In this case, to grasp just how this country’s first African-American-constitutional-law-professor-liberal Oval Office holder became the most imperial of all recent imperial presidents, it’s necessary to look back to the early years of George W. Bush’s presidency.  Who today even remembers that time, when it was common to speak of the U.S. as the globe’s “sole superpower” or even “hyperpower,” the only “sheriff” on planet Earth, and the neocons were boasting of an empire-to-come greater than the British and Roman ones rolled together?

In those first high-flying years after 9/11, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and their top officials held three dreams of power and dominance that they planned to make reality.  The first was to loose the U.S. military -- a force they fervently believed capable of bringing anybody or any state to heel -- on the Greater Middle ...

CISPA Critics: Cybersecurity Act Will Increase Domestic Surveillance, Violate Privacy Rights
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 29 April 2012
The bill has faced widespread opposition from online privacy advocates and even the Obama administration, which has threatened a veto.

As it heads toward a House vote, critics say the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) would allow private internet companies like Google, Facebook and Microsoft to hand over troves of confidential customer records and communications to the National Security Agency, FBI and Department of Homeland Security, effectively legalizing a secret domestic surveillance program already run by the NSA. Backers say the measure is needed to help private firms crackdown on foreign entities — including the Chinese and Russian governments — committing online economic espionage. The bill has faced widespread opposition from online privacy advocates and even the Obama administration, which has threatened a veto. We speak with Michelle Richardson, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.

Transcript:

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: A legislative battle has erupted on Capitol Hill over a controversial House bill that critics say would allow private internet companies to hand over troves of confidential customer records and communications to the National Security Agency and other agencies. In a letter on Monday, 18 Democratic House members warned that unless specific limitations were put in place, the bill, quote, "would, for the first time, grant non-civilian federal agencies, such as the National Security Agency, unfettered access to information about Americans’ internet activities and allow those agencies to use that information for virtually any purpose." The bill is titled the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or simply CISPA.

Backers of the legislation say it is needed to help private companies crack down on foreign entities—including the Chinese and Russian governments—committing online economic espionage that is stealing trade secrets from U.S. ...

Bin Laden’s Anniversary put U.S on Guard
Amir Gholi
Published: Friday 27 April 2012
Why “We’re on the Right Track” Isn’t Enough, and What Obama’s Plan Should Be For Boosting the Economy
Amir Gholi
Published: Friday 20 April 2012
“With so much of the nation’s disposable income and wealth going to the top, the vast middle class doesn’t have the purchasing power it needs to fire up the economy.”

President Obama’s electoral strategy can best be summed up as: “We’re on the right track, my economic policies are working, we still have a long way to go but stick with me and you’ll be fine.”

That’s not good enough. This recovery is too anemic, and the chance of an economic stall between now and Election Day far too high.

Even now, Mitt Romney’s empty “I’ll to it better” refrain is attracting as many voters as Obama’s “we’re on the right track.” Each man is gathering 46 percent of voter support, according to the latest New York Times/CBS poll. Only 33 percent of the public thinks the economy is improving while 40 percent say they’re still falling behind financially — an 11 point increase from 2008. Nearly two-thirds are concerned about paying for housing, and one in five with mortgages say they’re underwater.

If the economy stalls, Romney’s empty promise will look even better. And I’d put the odds of a stall at 50-50. That puts the odds of a Romney presidency far too high for comfort. Need I remind you that Romney enthusiastically supports Paul Ryan’s wildly regressive budget, and as president would be able to make at least one or possibly two Supreme Court appointments, and control the EPA and every other federal agency and department?

The Obama White House should face it: “We’re on the right track” isn’t sufficient. The President has to offer the nation a clear, bold strategy for boosting the economy. It should be the economic mandate for his second term.

It should consist of four points:

First, Obama should demand that the nation’s banks modify mortgages of homeowners still struggling in the wake of Wall Street’s housing bubble — threatening that if the banks fail ...

President Obama Will Renominate Republican to Nuclear Panel
Amir Gholi
Published: Thursday 19 April 2012
House Transportation Bill: Huge Republican FAIL
Amir Gholi
Published: Thursday 19 April 2012
“The legislation is not a serious effort to address the nation’s transportation needs and get the nation’s jobs machine moving faster in the process.”

House Republicans today once again showed that they are not only ideologically wrong-headed but legislatively inept.

The House finally passed a transportation reauthorization bill, but not the fatally flawed five-year plan that House Speaker John Boehner had originally tried to move but failed, nor the perfectly reasonable two-year bill that received true bipartisan support in the Senate. Instead, it would be a just-over-five-month bill, lasting through the end of September.

The legislation is not a serious effort to address the nation's transportation needs and get the nation's jobs machine moving faster in the process. It is actually a middle finger in the face of the Obama administration, designed to score political points. It also has the effect of allowing a conference discussion to proceed with the Senate, which could yield a bill that would allow transportation projects to continue beyond September.

The Associated Press's Joan Lowy summarizes the path to this pathetic end:

"House Republican leaders decided on the strategy after repeatedly trying and failing to garner enough votes to pass their own, long-term transportation plan. That effort ran into opposition from tea-party conservatives, who say transportation programs should be paid for entirely by ...

Activists To Launch “We Can’t Wait” Campaign Challenging White House On Anti-Discrimination Order
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 16 April 2012
The White House insists that it’s putting the executive order on hold in order to build legislative support for the Employment Nondiscrimination Act or ENDA, which would prohibit all employers from discriminating against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender employees.

Gay rights activists are planning to challenge the White House’s decision to delay an executive order prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in federal contracting and plan to launch a “We Can’t Wait” campaign to urge President Obama to reverse course and issue the directive ahead of the November elections. The effort, which co-opts one of the Obama campaign’s own slogans, will be funded by “Jonathan Lewis, son of billionaire Democratic benefactor Peter Lewis”:

[Lewis] said he would spend $100,000 to fund a “We Can’t Wait” campaign targeting Obama, a takeoff on the president’s own slogan for his efforts to use administrative actions as end runs around what he has termed an obstructionist Congress. The donor’s money will be used to fly victims of discrimination at federal contractors to Washington to confront Obama and his aides and gin up public attention. [...]

“[Obama] has not been able to provide a single valid reason for why he is now refusing to sign the executive order protecting LGBT workers,” the younger Lewis added, referring to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. “It has become increasingly clear that this decision is based on cowardice rather than principled leadership.”

The White House insists that it’s putting the executive order on hold in order to build legislative support for the Employment ...

The End of “Shut Up and Play”
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 13 April 2012
“As high-profile events periodically prove, politics and athletics have long had a love-hate relationship, the affinity ebbing, and flowing with the cultural tides.”

As high-profile events periodically prove, politics and athletics have long had a love-hate relationship, the affinity ebbing, and flowing with the cultural tides. In the tumultuous 1960s, for instance, stars like Muhammed Ali, Arthur Ashe and John Carlos used their notoriety to embolden the major social movements of the time. Then came the 1980s and 1990s, which saw the sports world depoliticized in an age of "Just Do It" and "greed is good." For every Charles Barkley using Nike commercials to forward social messages about role models, there were far more Michael Jordans who avoided any political statements whatsoever.

Skip forward to 2012 — a superheated moment primed by seething protest campaigns and a divisive presidential election. Not surprisingly, the sports world has again shifted, becoming just as politically fraught as the society it entertains — and whether or not you agree with a particular sports icon's opinion, the larger change is a welcome development for participatory democracy.

In the last few years, we've seen sports activism at every locus on the ideological continuum. On the right, football phenom Tim Tebow starred in an anti-abortion Superbowl ad. In the trans partisan middle, Boston Bruins goaltender Tim Thomas refused to attend the White House's Stanley Cup ceremony because he said he "believe(s) the Federal government has grown out of control." And on the left, Major League Baseball teams have led public campaigns against anti-gay bullying.

No matter the issue, sports are now involved. The NFL players association has proudly supported public workers' high profile fights. Miami Marlins manager Ozzie Guillen (clumsily) highlighted the hypocrisy of an American government that at once embraces various dictators but shuns Cuba's autocratic regime. And, of course, LeBron James organized Miami Heat players into a hoodie-themed photo in solidarity with those ...

Experts Reject Study From Koch-Backed Center Claiming Health Care Law Will Increase Deficit
Amanda Rae
Published: Thursday 12 April 2012
A recent right-wing media study says the Health Care Law “Is Expected To Add At Least $340 Billion And As Much As $530 Billion To Federal Deficits.”

Right-wing media are touting a study claiming the health care reform law will not lower the deficit, but rather increase it by more than $300 billion. In fact, economic experts dismissed the study by conservative analyst Charles Blahous, saying it uses "discredited arguments."

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Study Claims Health Care Law Will Add More Than $300 Billion To Deficit

Study: Health Care Law "Is Expected To Add At Least $340 Billion And As Much As $530 Billion To Federal Deficits." According to a study by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University:

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Obama Barks at Extreme Supremes: the Inept vs. the Unfeeling
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 11 April 2012
“Though increasingly bereft of sane checks and balances, our system boasts judicial vetoes – and this very SC did that even to W. over lawless military tribunals, an anti-terrorism favorite with much greater Congressional majorities than Obamacare.”

What’s a vexed, reactive incumbent to do when his best-laid plans go awry, put upon by lying hordes after his job, then that pugnacious posse at the Supreme Court (SC)?  Of course, hark! Find a sure-fire insurance policy. How about a unilateral, pre-emptive sortie against the black-robed gang of five Supremes that pays off with protection, if not leverage, come what may?

 

After all, we’re beyond counting how this Court embarrasses itself (and America) by anti-democratic, throwback rulings, and like the old days on the wrong side of history.  On top of all, slick, fast-talking shills fronting as impartial judges echo anemic rightwing FOX slogans.  Fretting over fantasy broccoli commands cheapens the debate, the law, and notions of justice.

 

True, Obama will feast more by eviscerating the Ryan budget, but bashing the Supremes is a good opening act.  Yes, let’s indict villains who smile and smile while strip-searching away our health care options.  Forget life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness when curable maladies strike home.    

 

Curiously, a sensible campaign tactic was mangled by this smartest-dumb president since Clinton. Certainly, this White House braced for questions about the judicial jujitsu hurled against “Obamacare” a week ago.  But why then dismiss the universe’s most powerful, least accountable officials as “unelected,” irrelevantly doubting their legitimacy?  Was Obama covertly, maybe unconsciously, backing public referendums on SC picks?  Doubtful, but it’s not the most ridiculous thought experiment I’ve ever heard. For sure, we’d not endure that multiply challenged Clarence Thomas had he been on a national ballot.  Would such formalities do any worse than putting Thomas, Scalia and Alito on a single court, let ...

Why the Buffett Rule Sets the Bar Too Low
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 11 April 2012
“Senate Democrats have scheduled a vote Monday on a minimum 30 percent overall federal tax rate for everyone earning more than $1 million a year.”

Next Monday most Americans will be filing their income taxes for tax year 2011. This year, though, tax day has special significance. If there’s one clear policy contrast between Democrats and Republicans in the 2012 election, it’s whether America’s richest citizens should be paying more.

Senate Democrats have scheduled a vote Monday on a minimum 30 percent overall federal tax rate for everyone earning more than $1 million a year. It’s nicknamed the “Buffett Rule” in honor of billionaire Warren Buffett who has publicly complained that he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary.

No one in Washington believes the Buffett Rule has any hope of passage this year. It’s largely symbolic. The vote will mark a sharp contrast with Republican Paul Ryan’s plan (enthusiastically endorsed by Mitt Romney) to cut the tax rate on the super rich from 35 percent to 25 percent – rewarding millionaires with a tax cut of at least $150,000 a year. The vote will also serve to highlight that Romney himself paid less than 14 percent on a 2010 income of $21.7 million because so much of his income was in capital gains, taxed at 15 percent. 

Hopefully in the weeks and months ahead the White House and the Democrats will emphasize three key realities:

1. The richest 1 percent of Americans is now taking in over 20 percent of total national income, and so far has raked in almost all the gains from this recovery. Thirty years ago, the richest 1 percent got 9 percent of total income. Income and wealth are now more concentrated at the top than they’ve been since the 1920s. 

2. The richest 1 percent is paying a lower tax rate than they’ve paid since 1980. For three decades after World War II, their tax rate never dropped below 70 percent. Even considering all deductions and tax credits, they paid close to 55 percent. Under Eisenhower, the top rate was 91 percent and the effective rate was 58 ...

Former Obama Adviser Van Jones on Life Inside White House and Right-Wing Smear Attack
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 8 April 2012
"I am probably the only person in American life who was a grassroots outsider, who became a White House insider.”

Forced out of his job as White House special adviser on green jobs by a right-wing smear campaign, Jones has just become the first former Obama official to release a book. It’s called "Rebuild the Dream," and its release comes on the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination. Obama appointed Jones as an adviser in 2009, but he resigned his post after he came under an attack spearheaded by then-Fox News host Glenn Beck. He writes about the experience in his new book and describes his unusual history as both a White House insider and an outside agitator for grassroots change. "I'm probably the only person in American life who was a grassroots outsider, who became a White House insider — I was there for six months — and then I became a grassroots outsider again," Jones says. "What I saw when I was there, and after, is this massive misunderstanding between the insiders in that building, the insiders in D.C., and the outsiders that help to elect those folks, and huge missed opportunities for positive change." Jones also outlines strategies for the future.

Transcript:

AMY GOODMAN: Today we are joined by Van Jones for the hour. He has written a new book; it is called Rebuild the Dream. Why this book, Van?

VAN JONES: Well, ...

“Two Sources of Power”: Van Jones on Obama Reelection and Building Occupy-Like Mass
Amanda Rae
Published: Tuesday 3 April 2012
Responding to concerns that White House advisor Van Jones and others may “co-opt” the Occupy agenda, he says the movement speaks for itself, and argues his campaign can allow “the entire 99 percent” to join the conversation that Occupy began.

We speak with former White House advisor Van Jones about what role the Occupy movement can and should play in re-electing President Obama. He says one reason he launched his Rebuild the Dream campaign last summer was to recognize economic issues not being effectively addressed by progressives. “We were very good on issues around environment, race, gender, immigration, sexuality ... But there is a hole in the donut on the economy, and the Tea Party was just driving through that hole in the donut every day." Responding to concerns that he and others may “co-opt” the Occupy agenda, he says the movement speaks for itself, and argues his campaign can allow “the entire 99 percent” to join the conversation that Occupy began. “What we’ve got to be able to do is continue to fight for the values that we believe in long enough for the demographic change to make those ideas a permanent governing majority.”

The Age of Obama: What Went Wrong (and How to Fix It)
Amir Gholi
Published: Friday 30 March 2012
“The simple truth is this: we overestimated our achievement in 2008, and we underestimated our opponents in 2009.”

This article is adapted from Rebuild the Dream, Van Jones' new book.

The 2008 campaign was a campfire around which millions gathered. But after the election, it was nobody’s job or role to tend that campfire. The White House was focused on the minutiae of passing legislation, not on the magic of leading a movement. Obama For America did the best that it could, but the mass gatherings, the idealism, the expanded notions of American identity, the growing sense of a new national community, all of that disappeared.

It goes without saying that clear thinking and imaginative problem solving are easier in hindsight, away from the battlefield. I was in the White House for six months of 2009, and I was outside of it afterward. I had some of the above insights at the time, but many did not come to me in the middle of the drama and action. Most are the product of deeper reflection, which I was able to do only from a distance.

Nonetheless, the exercise of trying to sort out what might have been and trying to understand why nobody was able to make those things happen in real time has informed this book and shaped my arguments going forward.

Let me speak personally: looking back, I do not think those of us who believed in the agenda of change had to get beaten as badly as we were, after Obama was sworn in. We did not have to leave millions of once-inspired people feeling lost, deceived, and abandoned. We did not have to let our movement die down to the level that it did.

The simple truth is this: we overestimated our achievement in 2008, and we underestimated our opponents in 2009.

We did not lose because the backlashers got so loud. We lost because the rest of us got so quiet. Too many of us treated Obama’s inauguration as some kind of finish line, when we should have seen it as just ...

White House Burning: Putting Out the Wrong Fire
Amir Gholi
Published: Wednesday 28 March 2012
“This country faces real fires - a huge unemployment problem, an unsustainable trade deficit, and a broken health care system.”

I have enormous respect for Simon Johnson. I first recall seeing him one late evening on a Bill Moyers segment in the middle of the financial crisis. I couldn't quite believe that the former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund was complaining about the oligarchs in the financial industry using their control of the U.S. government to bail out their bankrupt banks. This was more likely attributable to too much alcohol or too little sleep than anything that could really be happening in this world.

Remarkably, it turned out to be true. Ever since the beginning of the financial crisis, Johnson, along with his co-author James Kwak, has been a tireless proponent of financial reform. Their blog, Baseline Scenario, is an essential source for those following the debate over financial reform, as well as other issues. Their last book, 13 Bankers, is a great account of the growing concentration in the financial industry that left us with too-big-to-fail banks.

Given their heroic role in the financial reform debate, I am not anxious to criticize Johnson and Kwak's new book, White House Burning. But there are some important areas of difference that deserve attention.

The basic thesis of White House Burning is that the country is on an unsustainable fiscal path. Unlike some of the Chicken Littles leading the budget debate, Johnson and Kwak are responsible in how they lay out the case. There is no nonsense about runaway government spending. They explicitly refute this story. Most categories of government spending, except defense, have remained constant or fallen as a share of GDP since the budget surplus days of the late 90s.

They also point ...

The New Jim Crow
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 26 March 2012
Obama’s mere presence in the Oval Office is offered as proof that “the land of the free” has finally made good on its promise of equality.

Ever since Barack Obama lifted his right hand and took his oath of office, pledging to serve the United States as its 44th president, ordinary people and their leaders around the globe have been celebrating our nation’s “triumph over race.”  Obama’s election has been touted as the final nail in the coffin of Jim Crow, the bookend placed on the history of racial caste in America. 

Obama’s mere presence in the Oval Office is offered as proof that “the land of the free” has finally made good on its promise of equality.  There’s an implicit yet undeniable message embedded in his appearance on the world stage: this is what freedom looks like; this is what democracy can do for you.  If you are poor, marginalized, or relegated to an inferior caste, there is hope for you.  Trust us.  Trust our rules, laws, customs, and wars.  You, too, can get to the promised land.

Perhaps greater lies have been told in the past century, but they can be counted on one hand.  Racial caste is alive and well in America

Most people don’t like it when I say this.  It makes them angry.  In the “era of colorblindness” there’s a nearly fanatical desire to cling to the myth that we as a nation have “moved beyond” race.  Here are a few facts that run counter to that triumphant racial narrative:

“Social Security is Broke”—and Other Corporate Scare Tactics
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 25 March 2012
For years, corporations have been peddling myths to rally us behind their interests. Here are three things everyone “knows,” and why they’re wrong.

Winston Churchill reportedly said, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on.” That was before corporations had perfected the art of public relations, investing millions of dollars in PR campaigns to advance their commercial and political interests.

The fact is, there are a number of things most people know are true—except they’re not. That’s the result of well-planned, well-funded, long-term propaganda campaigns designed to make people believe things that are against their own best interests.

One relatively new example is the climate denial industry, which is funded by some of the richest corporations and CEOs on the planet to protect their profits from regulations that would address climate change. Although it’s one of the biggest threats we have ever faced, an increasing number of Americans believe there is widespread disagreement in the scientific community about climate change.

But that’s not true—there is actually widespread scientific agreement on climate, and a few dissenters, most paid in some way by the oil industry. Millions of dollars have been spent to create the appearance of disagreement, including deployment of so-called experts and even TV meteorologists to repeat talking points favored by big oil.

In the past year, the Internet and social media have brought together social movements across the globe, and there are signs that, in this new information age, people are breaking through the fog of corporate disinformation. But some of the “facts” have been repeated for so many years that a lot of people still think they are true.

“Social Security is Broke”

—The Cass City Chronicle (Jan. 22, 1976)

For more than 30 years, opponents of Social Security have peddled this lie.

The roots of the efforts to attack Social Security run deep in the far ...

Obama’s Sin is not Hypocrisy, but Naivete
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 11 March 2012
“Lobbyists are people who know how to get things done in Washington — hard things, because the easy ones don‘t require an arsenal of lobbyists on fat retainers.”

Steve Ricchetti is a once and, no doubt, future lobbyist. So it was inevitable that Vice President Biden’s decision to hire Ricchetti as a senior adviser would prompt howls about Obama administration hypocrisy.

After all, it had pledged to keep lobbyists out of its White House, and now it was bringing in one of the city’s top you-know-what’s. Make that former you-know-what’s: Ricchetti, cleansing himself of the supposed sin of lobbying, had dropped his lobbyist registration shortly before the start of the Obama administration — though he remained head of the, yes, lobbying firm he founded with his lobbyist brother.

As my colleague Dana Milbank tartly noted, “Only in today’s Washington could a president circumvent his own ban on hiring lobbyists by hiring the head of a lobbying firm.”

Nice line.

But maybe the real problem of the Obama White House is not that it has too many lobbyists. Maybe the real problem is that it has had too few. Maybe if the Obama administration had had more Ricchettis from the start, it would have had fewer problems.

After all, lobbyists are people who know how to get things done in Washington — hard things, because the easy ones don’t require an arsenal of lobbyists on fat retainers.

President Obama’s self-imposed ban on lobbyists delivered on a campaign pledge adopted in the aftermath of the seamy Jack Abramoff scandal. As I wrote at the time, “The ugly excesses and outright criminality . . . argue for this cleansing of a corrupt system. The new rules serve, as Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote of Hester Prynne wearing her letter, as ‘a living sermon against sin.’ ”

But ...

Obama Releases Housing Plan to Help Military Veterans Who Were Victims of Illegal Foreclosures
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 7 March 2012
“Obama outlined the proposals at a press briefing today, where he called it “unconscionable” that military members were among the worst victims of the foreclosure crisis and the fraudulent practices from Wall Street banks that have occurred during it:”

With the housing crisis still acting as a drag on the nation’s economic recovery, the White House announced a plan today to assist struggling homeowners and address improper foreclosures. The plan, which requires no Congressional action, will reduce refinancing fees for homeowners with government-backed loans, but the plan’s major focus was on helping military veterans who were the victims of foreclosure fraud, predatory mortgage practices, and other improper foreclosures.

Obama outlined the proposals at a press briefing today, where he called it “unconscionable” that military members were among the worst victims of the foreclosure crisis and the fraudulent practices from Wall Street banks that have occurred during it.

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Free Trade Or Democracy, Can’t Have Both
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 4 March 2012
“Is it ‘trade’ to close a factory here and move it to a country where people don't have a say?”

Recent stories about the conditions of Apple's contractors in China have opened many people's eyes about where our jobs, factories, industries and economy have been going, and why. The stories exposed that workers live 6-to-12-to-a-room in dormitories, get rousted at midnight to work surprise 12-hour shifts, get paid very little, use toxic chemicals, suffer extreme pollution of the environment, etc. Is this "trade?" Or is it something else?

Is This ...

The 28 Billion Dollar Man: Is Sen. Shelby the Most Fiscally Irresponsible Politician Ever?
Amanda Rae
Published: Saturday 3 March 2012
“Sen. Richard Shelby is losing tens of billions of dollars, hurting millions of middle-class homeowners, and stalling our economy recovery for one reason: to take the White House away from the Democrats.”

Republicans love to say that nothing's more important cutting the Federal deficit. So why is Sen. Richard Shelby wasting $28 billion of taxpayer money? Shelby's used parliamentary tricks to put more than half of the nation's mortgages under the rule of an unelected official who answers to no one - except apparently Richard Shelby - whose wasting money like it's going out of style.

Is Richard Shelby a closet Deficit Lover? In Washington that's called The Love That Dare Not Speaks Its Name.

But the real answer's much simpler. Richard Shelby is losing tens of billions of dollars, hurting millions of middle-class homeowners, and stalling our economy recovery for one reason: to take the White House away from the Democrats.

Shelby's following the path laid out by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who said the number one priority of GOP Senators is to make Barack Obama a "

White House Applauds Decision to Build Part of Keystone XL Pipeline
Amanda Rae
Published: Tuesday 28 February 2012
“Obama’s decision last month to reject the full 1,661-mile Keystone XL pipeline from Canada’s tar sands has become a focal point of Republican efforts to portray him as responsible for the recent spike in gasoline prices.”

With President Barack Obama facing fire from Republicans over the rising cost of gasoline, the White House moved quickly Monday to trumpet a Canadian company's decision to build a section of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline from Cushing, Okla., to Houston after Obama blocked a longer path last month.

Press Secretary Jay Carney hailed TransCanada's announcement and used it to counter Republican criticism that the administration has stifled oil and gas production. He said that the Oklahoma to Texas section of the pipeline would "help address the bottleneck of oil in Cushing that has resulted in large part from increased domestic oil production, currently at an eight-year high."

The company's decision, Carney said, "highlights a little-known fact — certainly, you wouldn't hear it from some of our critics — that we approve, pipelines are approved and built in this country all the time."

Obama's decision last month to reject the full 1,661-mile Keystone XL pipeline from Canada's tar sands has become a focal point of Republican efforts to portray him as responsible for the recent spike in gasoline prices, and they fault him for blocking a project they say would create jobs and reduce America's dependence on oil imports from unstable foreign sources.

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A World Bank for a New World
Brian Walker
Published: Saturday 25 February 2012
“For too long, the Bank’s leadership has imposed US concepts that are often utterly inappropriate for the poorest countries and their poorest people.”

The world is at a crossroads. Either the global community will join together to fight poverty, resource depletion, and climate change, or it will face a generation of resource wars, political instability, and environmental ruin.

The World Bank, if properly led, can play a key role in averting these threats and the risks that they imply. The global stakes are thus very high this spring as the Bank’s 187 member countries choose a new president to succeed Robert Zoellick, whose term ends in July.

The World Bank was established in 1944 to promote economic development, and virtually every country is now a member. Its central mission is to reduce global poverty and ensure that global development is environmentally sound and socially inclusive. Achieving these goals would not only improve the lives of billions of people, but would also forestall violent conflicts that are stoked by poverty, famine, and struggles over scarce resources.

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Corporations Don’t Need a Tax Cut, So Why is Obama Proposing One?
Anna Gilliam
Published: Thursday 23 February 2012
“The President gives a rousing speech, as he did on December 6 in Kansas. Then he misses an opportunity to put his campaign where his mouth is.”

 

The Obama administration is proposing to lower corporate taxes from the current 35 percent to 28 percent for most companies and to 25 percent for manufacturers.

The move is supposed to be “revenue neutral” – meaning the Administration is also proposing to close assorted corporate tax loopholes to offset the lost revenues. One such loophole allows corporations to park their earnings overseas where taxes are lower.

Why isn’t the White House just proposing to close the loopholes without reducing overall corporate tax rates? That would generate more tax revenue that could be used for, say, public schools.

The Gas Wars
Anna Gilliam
Published: Tuesday 21 February 2012
“Oil prices are rising for three reasons — none of which has to do with offshore drilling or the XL pipeline.”

Nothing drives voter sentiment like the price of gas – now averaging $3.56 a gallon, up 30 cents from the start of the year. It’s already hit $4 in some places. The last time gas topped $4 was 2008.

And nothing energizes Republicans like rising energy prices. Last week House Speaker John Boehner told Republicans to take advantage of voters’ looming anger over prices at the pump. On Thursday House Republicans passed a bill to expand offshore drilling and force the White House to issue a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline. The tumult prompted the Interior Department to announce on Friday expanded oil exploration in the Arctic.

If prices at the pump continue to rise,  expect more gas wars.

In fact, oil prices are rising for three reasons — none of which has to do with offshore drilling or the XL pipeline.

The first, on the supply side, is Iran’s decision to cut in oil exports to Britain and France in retaliation for sanctions put in place by the EU and United States. Iran’s threat to do this has been pushing up crude oil prices for weeks.

The second, on the demand side, is rising hopes for a global economic recovery – which would mean increased oil consumption. The American economy is showing faint signs of a recovery. Europe’s debt crisis appears to be easing. Greece’s pending bailout deal is calming financial nerves on both sides of the Atlantic, and the Bank of England and European Central Bank are keeping rates low. At the same time, China has decided to boost its money supply to spur growth there.

Neither of these would have much effect were it not for the third reason — overwhelming bets of hedge funds and other money managers that oil prices will rise on the basis of the first two reasons.

Speculators have pushed crude oil to $105.28 per barrel, up 35 percent since September. Brent crude, Europe’s benchmark, is now $120.37 a barrel ...

Hypocrisy and Assad
Anna Gilliam
Published: Friday 17 February 2012
“[Assad] could be with us for a while yet, and it seems that behind the thunderous rhetoric the U.S. government may be accommodating to that fact.”

 

Few spectacles have been more surreal than senior U.S. officials — starting with the president, the secretary of state and the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. — solemnly lecturing Bashar al-Assad and his beleaguered Syrian government on the need to accommodate rebel forces whose sponsors are intent on slaughtering the ruling Alawite minority or driving them into the sea.

At one grimly hilarious moment last Friday, these worthy sermons were buttressed by a message from Ayman al-Zawahiri, the head of al-Qaida, therefore presumably the No. 1 target on President Obama's hit list, similarly praising the "Lions of Syria" for rising up against the Assad regime. Al-Qaida and the White House are in sync!

The last time the United States faced serious internal dissent was in the 1960s and early 1970s, from war resisters and black and Native American movements. The government responded instantly with a methodical program of violent repression, including a well-documented agenda of assassination.

In 1993, the first year of the Clinton administration, federal agents launched an armed assault on a religious group in a compound outside Waco, Texas. Attorney General Janet Reno concluded that negotiation with the besieged Christian fundamentalists was useless and ordered an assault. Seventy-six Branch Davidians were burned ...

Obama’s Dive Into the Super PAC Deep End
Anna Gilliam
Published: Wednesday 15 February 2012
“The president needed to play the super PAC game in 2012. I just wish he hadn’t decided to go all in.”

The Obama campaign, defending its decision to embrace the super PAC supporting the president’s reelection, contends that it would be foolish to unilaterally disarm.

Fair point. But the Obama campaign’s move goes beyond unilateral disarmament. It amounts to dangerous proliferation in the nuclear arms race of campaign spending.

The campaign did not merely announce its full-throated support of the supposedly independent expenditure effort. It confirmed that it would be sending its own representatives to headline super PAC events. And not just campaign officials, but senior White House aides and Cabinet secretaries.

In for a dime, I suppose, in for a million-dollar check.

So much for a president who railed against the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling, warning that it “opens the floodgates for an unlimited amount of special interest money into our democracy.” Now he’s deploying the Cabinet to help rake it in.

OK, they won’t be asking for the cash themselves — just sitting in the room to “amplify our message,” as the campaign explained, while others do the grubby work of collecting checks. (Calling Stephen Colbert.) This is a distinction only a campaign finance lawyer can love.

As I said, I have sympathy for the no-unilateral-disarmament argument, and for the Democratic predicament when it comes to matters of money and politics.

The super PAC ...

It’s Official: Money Now Governs America
Anna Gilliam
Published: Wednesday 15 February 2012
“So there you have it — American politics has developed into a game for the fun and profit of a few superrich narcissists.”

The rich are different from you and me, but the really, really, really rich are also different from the merely rich.

For example, the rich can buy caviar and Champagne, but the Triple-R Rich can buy entire presidential campaigns.

Take Sheldon Adelson, the moneybags who's pumped $11 million so far into Newt Gingrich's right-wing run. He has single-handedly kept Gingrich's White House ambitions alive. Without this one guy's money, The Newt would've been long gone. Thanks a lot, Sheldon.

But Adelson can easily afford to roll the dice on a far-out candidate. This global casino baron hauled in $3.3 million in pay last year. Not for a year — that's what his hourly take was. In other words, his $11-million bet on Newt, which altered the Republican presidential race, was nothing — less than three-and-a-half hours of one of Sheldon's workdays.

Even Rick Santorum, who's so far to the right that his left brain has entirely atrophied from lack of use, is actually in the running for the GOP nomination. He insists that people are flocking to him because of the power of his ideas. Sure, Rick — and the power of Foster Friess' money.

This little-known Wall Street multimillionaire has long been a partner in the Koch brothers' plutocratic cabal and a steady funder of right-wing Christian politics. Friess modestly claims that God is "the ...

This Just in, Insurers Required to Speak Plain English
Brian Walker
Published: Monday 13 February 2012
The Department of Health and Human Services stiffens spine and requires health insurance companies to clearly explain their policies.

All the attention paid to the debacle about coverage for contraceptives over the past several days obscured a broader, undisputed win for all consumers, including those who are pregnant or about to be pregnant.

While the media was obsessing about the contraceptives controversy, the Department of Health and Human Services unveiled a final rule that even the Catholic bishops should support. Starting this fall, insurers and employers that offer health care benefits must provide us with more clearly written information about what their benefit plans cover and how much of our own money we’ll have to pay if we get sick, injured or, yes, pregnant.

This is no small matter. Rumors had been circulating in Washington over the past several months that the administration would cave to the demands of the insurance industry’s trade organization that this requirement be gutted to the point of being meaningless for most Americans. The rule requiring that this information be written in plain English was part of the health care reform law.    

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Obama’s Contraception Fig Leaf
Brian Walker
Published: Sunday 12 February 2012
“Originally... religious institutions were given a one-year grace period to figure out how to comply with the coverage mandate.”

I write today in praise of fig leaves. In politics, as in religion, fig leaves have an important place.

The compromise — in the Obama administration’s assessment, non-compromise — announced by the White House is, in essence, a huge regulatory fig leaf.

Women who work for religiously affiliated institutions that morally object to contraception will nonetheless have access to contraceptive coverage free of charge, just as women who work for other employers. They won’t have to sign up for any different coverage or pay any additional money.

The employers, for their part, won’t have to pay for the coverage, say they offer it or even direct employees to places where they can obtain it. The extra cost, and here is where the fig leaf comes in, will be born by the insurance companies themselves.

This is, of course, a dodge — a quite clever and positive one. Everyone gets to say that the religious institutions aren’t “paying for” contraception. But if covering contraception ends up costing them money, you can be sure those costs will be passed along, as costs always are, to customers.

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Democratic Operatives Seeking Million-Dollar Checks for Super PACs
Anna Gilliam
Published: Thursday 9 February 2012
“White House shift may help Dems catch up with GOP on fundraising.”

 

Five Democratic super PACs are reaching out to party mega-donors, in a fledgling effort seeking $1 million to $10 million contributions, now that President Barack Obama has blessed the outside spending group working to get him re-elected.

Discussions among the five super PACs are under way about setting up a joint fundraising committee, said Bill Burton, a former deputy White House press secretary and co-founder of Priorities USA Action, which was launched last spring to help Obama win a second term.

“We’re in serious talks,” Burton told iWatch News, but added that a final decision hasn’t been made about establishing a joint fundraising mechanism. Either way, “there are a lot of people in the progressive donor community who have not yet gotten involved who are likely to be involved.”

Other top Democratic fundraisers say that a joint fundraising entity is likely and stress that the White House’s abrupt shift on super PACs — which came Monday in a conference call to leading donors and fundraisers with campaign manager Jim Messina — could help prod large donors to write seven-figure checks.

Democratic fundraisers are hoping that several major donors such as Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg and Chicago ...

White House: ‘Absolutely Firm,’ but Willing to Talk, on Birth Control
Anna Gilliam
Published: Thursday 9 February 2012
“The White House scrambled to contain the controversy — and cast the debate not as one over religious freedom, but one over access to affordable preventative care for women.”

 

The White House insisted Wednesday that the president's commitment to contraceptive access for women is "absolutely firm," even as Republicans from Capitol Hill to the presidential campaign trail assailed the policy as an attack on religious liberty.

Republicans seized on a call from Catholic bishops, who in recent weeks have asked their parishioners to object to a federal law requiring religious-based institutions, such as Catholic hospitals and universities, to provide contraceptives as part of their health care coverage. A new law taking effect this year requires most private insurers to pay for birth control. Religious groups have been given an extra year to comply.

At the White House, Press Secretary Jay Carney said the administration wants all American women — no matter where they work — to have access to the same health care coverage and the same preventive care services. That includes contraception without a co-payment.

"We want to work with all of these organizations to implement this policy in a way that is as sensitive to their concerns as possible," Carney said. "But let's be clear: The president is committed to ensuring that women have access to contraception without paying any extra costs, no matter where they work.

"That's the president's commitment," he said. "That is explicit in the policy proposal."

But at the Capitol, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, delivered a rare floor speech vowing a repeal. He and his Republican counterparts in the Senate called it an "assault on religious liberty."

"In imposing this requirement, the federal government has drifted dangerously beyond its constitutional boundaries, encroaching on religious freedom in a manner that affects millions of Americans and harms some of our nation's most vital institutions," Boehner said.

The White House scrambled to contain ...

Jobs Report: Progress, But Don’t Break out the Bubbly
Brian Walker
Published: Sunday 5 February 2012
“The Congressional Budget Office warned this week that if Congress and the White House does nothing the economy will continue to creep and the unemployment rate will go up above 9 percent in 2013, before it finally slides downward.”

President Obama today will go to a fire house in the Virginia suburbs of Washington to tout his plan to promote hiring of veterans as first responders. It's a program that is sorely needed to address an American travesty: One out of every eight of the veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are out of a job.

But as today's unemployment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows, the economy could still use a job corps for the rest of us as well.

The news is good: 243,000 jobs were produced in January, and the unemployment rate went down to 8.3 percent. That includes 257,000 in private sector jobs, offset by a loss of 11,000 local government jobs and 6,000 federal government jobs. With that report, the economy has seen under President Obama's watch 10 quarters of economic growth and five quarters of jobs growth. The report shows growth across the private economy, notably in manufacturing and construction.

America’s Jobs Deficit, and Why It’s Still More Important Than the Budget Deficit
Brian Walker
Published: Saturday 4 February 2012
“When they’re not blaming Obama for a bad economy, Republicans are decrying the federal budget deficit and demanding more cuts.”

The most significant aspect of January’s jobs report is political. The fact that America’s labor market continues to improve is good news for the White House. But as a practical matter the improvement is less significant for the American work force.

President Obama’s only chance for rebutting Republican claims that he’s responsible for a bad economy is to point to a positive trend. Voters respond to economic trends as much as they respond to absolute levels of economic activity. Under ordinary circumstances January’s unemployment rate of 8.3 percent would be terrible. But compared to September’s 9.1 percent, it looks quite good. And the trend line – 9 percent in October, 8.6 percent in November, 8.5 percent in December, and now 8.3 percent – is enough to make Democrats gleeful. 

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Newt Gingrich: The Spawn of Citizens United
Anna Gilliam
Published: Thursday 2 February 2012
“After the Citizens United edict, Adelson can go all in to push his willing servant into the White House.”

Wow, January's gone already — time really flies when you're having Republican presidential primaries! And what better time than Groundhog Day to poke into that warren of feral Republican ideologues and see what the heck is going on.

Already, four of the GOP contenders have had to drop out — Michele Bachmann because she was just too wacky, Jon Huntsman because he was too sane, Herman Cain because he was too exposed and Rick Perry because he was too dimwitted.

But the greatest surprise is the sudden surge of the Adelson campaign. Little-known until now, Adelson was the big winner in South Carolina, came from nowhere to a second-place finish in the Florida primary, and looks to have the political kick needed to go the distance.

Never heard of Adelson? It consists of the married duo of Sheldon and Miriam, neither of whom are actually on any ballot. Rather, they are running on the Money Ticket.

Sheldon Adelson of Las Vegas is a global casino baron who holds a $21 billion personal fortune. He has long been a major funder of far-right-wing causes, and this year he is placing an extra-big bet on his old political consort, Newt Gingrich. When Newt's presidential bid nearly flatlined after his electoral collapses in Iowa and New Hampshire, Sheldon rushed in with emergency CPR — Cash-Powered Resuscitation. This one rich guy wrote a $5 million check to "Winning Our Future," Gingrich's Super PAC. Sheldon's money was injected directly into toxic attack ads against Mitt Romney in South Carolina's primary, jolting Newt's campaign back to life.

Gingrich still lacked the financial vitality to match Romney's media buy in Florida's pricy primary, however. No worries, though — Miriam Adelson stepped in to infuse Winning Our Future with another $5 million jolt of CPR. The Gingrich campaign, you see, is a vessel for the Adelson campaign, and word is that this one READ FULL POST 8 COMMENTS

Right-Wing Media Launch Predictable Attacks on Obama’s State of the Union Address
Amanda Rae
Published: Thursday 26 January 2012
Right-wing media have responded to President Obama’s State of the Union speech with their predictable attacks that often sounds very familiar.

Right-wing media have responded to President Obama's State of the Union speech with predictable attacks, calling it "class warfare" and claiming it was "transparently partisan."

Right-Wing Media Predictably Respond To Obama's Speech By Crying "Class Warfare"

Doocy: Obama Used "Warren Buffett's Secretary To Kick Off His Class Warfare Campaign." On the January 25 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, co-host Steve Doocy teased a segment about Obama's speech by saying, "The president us[ed] Warren Buffett's secretary to kick off his class warfare campaign in last night's State of the Union address." [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 1/25/12]

Fox's Ramsey: "Last Night Our President Declared War On ...

People Power vs Banker Power: Score One for the People
Anna Gilliam
Published: Wednesday 25 January 2012
“Hundreds of thousands of concerned citizens signed online petitions from a range of organizations that includes MoveOn, Color of Change, Progressives United, and the Campaign for America's Future.”

I hate to sound Pollyanna-ish, but sometimes the sunny point of view turns out to be right.

Yes, corporate money has hijacked democracy. And it's true that our two-party system often fails to offer real choices or reflect the will of the majority. Our corporate political system doesn't have a problem. It is the problem.

But we saw yesterday that concerned citizens can make a difference. Yesterday they won a battle against one of democracy's most implacable adversaries: Wall Street. They fought back against a lousy bank deal and stopped it in its tracks.

For the moment.

Bankers' Choice

It wasn't obvious that it could be done. Despite a setback or two – the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau being the primary one - bank executives have scored one victory after another:

They got to keep their jobs after destroying the economy and driving their own institutions into the ground.

They kept on collecting fat bonuses after the American people bailed them out.

They were able to weaken regulatory reform so they could keep their too-big-to-fail status and retain many of their screw-the-customer privileges.

They've settled one lawsuit after another, often for flagrant criminal behavior, by paying relatively puny settlements - and writing the checks with other people's money to do it. They've been able to avoid paying for their misdeeds with their money - or their time.

They've even been able to whine ad nauseum without public anger or ridicule, about the mild reprimands and even milder regulatory changes they've had to face since crashing the world's economy.

One for the People

This week bankers were on the brink of another undeserved victory, capping months of negotiation led by Obama Administration officials and involving most of the states. But hundreds of thousands of concerned citizens ...

Obama to Frame Re-Election Themes Tuesday in State of the Union Address
Amanda Rae
Published: Tuesday 24 January 2012
“Obama hopes the speech will help him frame the coming election on his terms rather than the themes heard daily from Republicans in Congress and those on the campaign trail competing for the party nomination to oppose him.”

President Barack Obama delivers an election-year State of the Union address Tuesday night at a moment when the country is worried about the economy and his own prospects for re-election are mixed at best.

Americans rank the economy their top concern, and domestic issues are at their highest level on their priority list in 15 years, according to one new poll Monday.

At the same time, Obama continues to win the approval of less than half the country — lower than the last two presidents heading into their re-election years and similar to George H.W. Bush in 1992, the last incumbent to lose his bid for a second term. One big difference: Bush's numbers were heading down; Obama's are lackluster but stable.

Obama hopes the speech will help him frame the coming election on his terms rather than the themes heard daily from Republicans in Congress and those on the campaign trail competing for the party nomination to oppose him.

"Far from strengthening our economy, President Obama's policies ... are making

 Poll: Economy is top priority

our economy worse," House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said in a pre-emptive strike Monday.

"Since President Obama took office, 1.7 million fewer people have jobs, gas prices have doubled, and the health care law is making it harder for small businesses to hire and provide health insurance to their employees," Boehner said.

White House aides said Monday that Obama will build on a speech he gave in Kansas last month. In it, Obama ...

For a State of the Union Home Run, the President Should Stand Up for Social Security
Anna Gilliam
Published: Monday 23 January 2012
“There’s no better way for the President to start the year than with a vigorous, unambiguous defense of Social Security - and Medicare, too.”

Like a lot of former Obama voters, I've had my issues with the President. Sure, it helped when he sang that Al Green song at the Apollo Theater last week. (Good job, Mr. President! Good pitch and an appropriately understated delivery.)

But in a time of uncertainty people are looking for certitude. In a time of great battles people are looking for strength. They don't just need to hear the words when they listen to their leaders. They need to feel the music.

The State of the Union Address is scheduled for this Tuesday night. The President can go a lot further toward winning over voters who are disappointed, doubtful, or just unenthusiastic, if he chooses an issue that's vitally important to them and offers a clear, strong and unequivocal defense.

Social Security is the ideal issue. It's one of many, according to polls, where both parties are out of step with voters. After seeing their savings, pension plans, and housing values destroyed, people are frightened about their retirement security. They don't hear anybody in Washington offering to protect their benefits.

And to borrow a phrase from Rev. Al, they're tired of being alone.

People's Choice

Last year the President narrowly averted political disaster in his State of the Union address. He bowed to outside pressure and abandoned an ill-conceived plan to propose cutting Social Security benefits and a partial lifting of cap on payroll taxes that fund them. But a form letter from the White House illustrates the Administration's still-squishy position on both Social Security and Medicare.

The White House is clearly preparing for an economically-themed, pro-99 percent speech this week. A chart is clearly visible on

Bad Bankers, Bad Fraud Deals, And The President’s ‘Great Gatsby’ Problem
Anna Gilliam
Published: Friday 20 January 2012
“The president’s allies should join his critics in encouraging him to abandon the Jay Gatsbys of Wall Street to sail with, rather than against, the currents of history.”

"Investigate the Banks!" Today a coalition of progressive groups handed in a petition with more than 360,000 signatures that demanded exactly that. It calls on the Obama administration to stop pushing a cushy fraud settlement for bankers, to pursue a fair deal for shafted homeowners, and to let criminal investigations against Wall Street crooks proceed.

Yet White House officials are still aggressively pushing the very same cushy deal on foreclosure fraud that inspired the petition. And just this week the Justice Department declined to prosecute fraudulent bankers once again as it worked to settle another bank fraud case.

Thinking about this relentless pursuit of Wall Street settlements, suddenly the last line of The Great Gatsby —the one about "boats against the current"—came to mind. Bankers are today's Jay Gatsbys. They're shady figures who have adopted a veneer of respectability, yet remain relentlessly, ruthlessly, and sometimes illegally self-interested.

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Burma Release, Ceasefire Hailed by Obama, Rights Groups
Brian Walker
Published: Saturday 14 January 2012
The U.S. recalled its ambassador to Burma after the 1990 elections, whose results were ignored by the ruling military junta which subsequently renamed the country Myanmar.

The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama Friday hailed the release by the Burmese government of hundreds of political prisoners, suggesting that it went far toward satisfying Washington's conditions for fully normalizing ties between the two countries.

In a statement released by the White House after the first releases were confirmed, Obama called it a "crucial step in Burma's democratic transformation and national reconciliation process".

"I have directed Secretary (of State Hillary) Clinton and my Administration to take additional steps to build confidence with the government and people of Burma so that we seize this historic and hopeful opportunity."

For her part, Clinton, who met last December with President Thein Sein and the country's most famous dissident, Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, during the first trip by a U.S. secretary of state to Burma in nearly 60 years, called the releases "a substantial and serious step forward in the government's stated commitment to political reform".

She added that the administration will soon send an ambassador to Burma, among other measures, to "strengthen and deepen our ties with both the people and the government".

She also praised a ceasefire agreement reached Thursday between the government and the six-year-old Karen National Union (KNU) insurgency as an "important step forward".

At the same time, she stressed, as did Obama in his statement, that full normalization will depend on continuing progress on all fronts, "including taking further steps to address the concerns of ethnic minority groups, making sure that there is a free and fair by- election, and making all the releases from prison unconditional, and making sure that all remaining political detainees are also released."

International human rights group echoed the administration's praise but also warned against a rush ...

Obama Seeks Power to Streamline Federal Government
Brian Walker
Published: Saturday 14 January 2012
If the authority were granted, Congress would be required to hold an up-or-down vote on the president’s plan — without making any changes to it — within 90 days of its submission.

President Barack Obama is asking Congress for expanded power to streamline the tangle of agencies he oversees, a move he says would bring the federal government into the modern world.

Standing Friday in the White House East Room before a group of small business owners, Obama said the move would save money and modernize a bureaucracy that hasn't been updated since 1984.

"No business or nonprofit leader would allow this kind of duplication or unnecessary complexity in their operations," Obama said. "You wouldn't do it when you're thinking about your businesses. So why is it OK for our government? It's not. It has to change."

Obama noted that there are five different entities that oversee housing and more than a dozen involved in food safety. He repeated his favorite example, which he mentioned in last year's State of the Union address: the Interior Department oversees salmon in fresh water, but the Commerce Department handles them in saltwater.

Obama said his first stab at consolidation would be to merge six business and trade agencies — including the Commerce Department, the Small Business Administration and the U.S. Trade Representative — into one. As part of that ...

Protesters Gather to Mark Guantanamo Anniversary
Anna Gilliam
Published: Thursday 12 January 2012
“Protesters voiced anger with President Barack Obama’s failure to close the prison and with his approval last month of the National Defense Authorization Act.”

Chants of "Guantanamo has got to go" echoed down Pennsylvania Avenue on Wednesday as a crowd of rain-dampened protesters marked the 10th anniversary of the arrival of the first 20 detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

More than 800 people demonstrated in what they said was solidarity with the 171 inmates who remain in the prison, as well as the unknown numbers detained at the U.S. military prison at Bagram, Afghanistan.

Protesters voiced anger with President Barack Obama's failure to close the prison — which he promised to do during his 2008 presidential campaign — and with his approval last month of the National Defense Authorization Act, which codified the U.S. government's authority to detain prisoners, including U.S. citizens, indefinitely without trial.

"President Obama is largely responsible for the failure to close Guantanamo, and his administration should not take its progressive base for granted," said Vincent Warren, the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a legal advocacy group that represents some Guantanamo detainees.

"Guantanamo is one part of an illegal, inhumane and unjust global detention policy," Warren said. "Our message: 'No excuses, shut it down.'"

Protests by human rights groups also were planned across the country in Miami, Boston, San Francisco and Chicago, and around the world in cities such as Paris, Toronto, Madrid and Berlin.

In Washington, 171 people in orange jumpsuits and black hoods led a procession from Lafayette Park, across from the White House, to the Supreme Court. They represented the prisoners who continue to be held in legal limbo at Guantanamo years after the newly inaugurated Obama ordered the facility closed within 12 months.

No arrests were reported in the protest, which followed several smaller protests at the White House after Obama's Dec. 31 signing of ...

Budget Director Lew to Replace Daley as Obama’s Chief of Staff
Anna Gilliam
Published: Tuesday 10 January 2012
“The switch comes as Obama has shown that he’s all but given up on congressional Republicans, whom he’s said oppose his initiatives simply because he’s proposed them.”

President Barack Obama on Monday named his budget director, Jack Lew, to be his next chief of staff to replace William Daley, who's leaving after a year in the job just as the White House begins to gear up for a bruising re-election campaign.

Standing with Lew and Daley in the White House State Dining Room, Obama said he had "every confidence that Jack will make sure that we don't miss a beat," noting that Lew as director of the White House Office of Management and Budget already has "one of the other most difficult jobs in Washington."

Daley, who had signaled last fall in an interview with a hometown Chicago TV station that he'd stay only through the presidential campaign, last week told Obama he wanted to leave sooner.

Obama said he'd asked Daley to reconsider, "but in the end, the pull of the hometown we both love - a city that's been synonymous with the Daley family for generations - was too great."

In January 2010, Daley, a former commerce secretary under President Bill Clinton, replaced Rahm Emanuel, who won election as Chicago's mayor. Daley was brought in to help the White House reach out to business leaders, but he failed to broker a deal with congressional Republicans to cut the country's debt.

In November, some of Daley's management duties were given to senior adviser Pete Rouse to "help streamline and make more effective" internal White House communications.

Obama praised Daley as an "outstanding chief of staff, during one of the busiest and most consequential years of my administration."

Daley will stay on the job until the end of the month, overseeing preparation for the annual State of the Union address. Likewise, Lew will stay at the budget office until the close of the month, overseeing development of the president's 2013 budget.

Chief of staff is one of the most critical posts in every White House. It serves ...

Will Romney Lie His Way to the White House?
Anna Gilliam
Published: Tuesday 10 January 2012
“When Romney makes a comment about President Obama wanting to have equal outcomes regardless of individual effort and success, he is just speaking nonsense.”

Mitt Romney seems ready to wield his version of birtherism as a major weapon in the fall campaign against President Obama.  In his standard stump speech he tells audiences that President Obama wants "to replace our merit-based society with an entitlement society." According to Romney, this means a European-style welfare state that redistributes wealth and creates equal outcomes regardless of individual effort and success.

That’s pretty strong stuff, but of course this doesn’t sound anything like the President Obama who many of us have come to know and criticize. After all, this is the guy who got the top Wall Street bankers and told them that he was the only thing standing between them and the pitchforks. And, according to Ron Suskind, he assured them that he would hold his ground.

The Wall Street boys have not seen much leveling in the Obama years, nor has anyone else in the top rungs of society. It seems the substance of Romney’s complaint involves President Obama’s occasional references to "fat cats," his plans to restore the Clinton-era tax rates, and his national health care plan.

Taking these in turn, it really is touching how sensitive the rich and powerful are to being called out in public. While the men and women at the top rungs of the corporate hierarchy give the impression of being tough streetfighters who clawed and kicked their way to the top, we now find that they are actually shrinking violets who get hurt when the president isn’t nice to them.

OK, so a President Romney will not say bad things about rich people. But there is a big difference between being somewhat impolite and doing anything that threatens the wealth of the rich.

On the latter front, the staple of the Romney argument is that President Obama wants to raise the tax rate ...

Jobs News Good for Obama, but When Will Public Feel It?
Brian Walker
Published: Saturday 7 January 2012
The White House has embarked on a strategy of taking small steps of its own, using Obama's executive power to cast him as working to improve the economy despite an obstinate Congress.

The 200,000 new December jobs and the dip in the unemployment rate announced Friday are good news for President Barack Obama, whose chances of retaining the White House are lashed to improving the sluggish economy.

Whether the jobs rate can sustain a positive trajectory — and influence public perception that things are getting better by November — is unclear, however.

Improved economic numbers are always a positive, but no president since Franklin Roosevelt has won re-election with an unemployment rate that's higher than 7.2 percent. Analysts say that even if the economy shows a sustained recovery — as it has started to before, only to falter — it takes time to register with the public. Indeed, the White House sought Friday to temper expectations, saying the improving numbers show a recovering, not a recovered, economy.

 

Obama touted the 3.2 million jobs created over the past 22 months, and said the numbers showed that it would be risky to change paths.

"A lot of families are still ...

The Recess Appointment(s) Obama Hasn’t Made
Brian Walker
Published: Saturday 7 January 2012
Republicans, following the lead of their Democratic counterparts under the previous administration, have been trying to block President Obama from making recess appointments by holding what are known as “pro forma” sessions.

A move by President Obama this week to proceed with a handful of recess appointments has top GOP leaders crying foul, complaining that the move is questionably legal because it ignores a clever procedural technicality used by Republicans to prevent such appointments.

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Obama Bucks GOP, Nominates CFPB Chief
Elizabeth
Published: Thursday 5 January 2012
Recess appointments are common ways for presidents to install nominees the Senate won’t confirm.

Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that President Obama’s 2012 election strategy would feature a White House battle against an unpopular and intransigent Congress.

Today, the administration fired the first shot. Obama announced this morning his intention to use a recess appointment to nominate Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the new regulatory agency that was created by the Dodd-Frank legislation but has been leaderless since the summer because of Republican obstruction in the Senate. “Today, I am appointing Richard as America’s consumer watchdog,” Obama said at a raucous event in Shaker Heights, Ohio, with Cordray at his side.

Recess appointments are common ways for presidents to install nominees the Senate won’t confirm. So common, in fact, that Republicans took pre-emptive measures and wouldn’t allow Congress to actually go on recess during this break—they held meaningless “pro forma” sessions at least every three days, where the session would be gaveled in and then gaveled out just as quickly.

But Obama went ahead and nominated Cordray anyhow. While the Justice Department under Bill Clinton said that Congress must be out of session for three days in order for a recess appointment to be valid, the White House rationale is that the entire pro-forma maneuvering is a “gimmick,” in the words of White House communications director Dan Pfieffer, and no such three-day timeframe exists.

As Ian ...

Wall Street’s Bad Romance With Romney
Brian Walker
Published: Friday 30 December 2011
“Romney’s long history of acrobatic flip-flopping and the palpable dishonesty of his pandering to the Tea Party actually help him in this context, because his wealthy supporters don’t think he actually means the nonsense he spouts.”

Throughout the 2012 election cycle Republican candidate Mitt Romney has made ham-handed efforts at playing a populist. His standard applause line on the stump is an appeal to nationalism, that he will “never apologize for America.” He criticizes President Obama for “taking advice from the Harvard faculty lounge,” even though Romney himself holds law and business degrees from Harvard and counts Harvard professors among his economic and foreign policy advisers.

But from a funding standpoint, Romney’s campaign looks more like a third world oligarchy than a populist insurgency. Jetting to fundraisers in Manhattan and London, Romney has raked in donation from the most elite of financial institutions. His support from Wall Street has allowed him to build a sizable cash advantage, which pays for the expansive field organizing and advertising that should enable him to outgun his opponents through the primaries.

With the exception of Texas Governor Rick Perry, no other candidate has comparable corporate support. Through the second quarter of 2011, before Perry entered the race, Romney raised $17.6 million, more than all his GOP opponents combined. In the third quarter, ending on September 30, Romney piled on an additional $13.9 million. In December he  READ FULL POST 2 COMMENTS

Loom of the Jackboot: Obama Gives Military Extreme Powers
Brian Walker
Published: Friday 23 December 2011
“A company owned by, say Goldman Sachs, could enjoy delegated powers to arrest any U.S. citizen here within the borders of the USA”

Too bad Kim Jong-il kicked the bucket last weekend. If the divine hand that laid low the North Korean leader had held off for a week or so, Kim would have been sustained by the news that President Obama had signed into law a bill that puts the United States not immeasurably far from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in contempt of constitutional protections for its citizens or constitutional restraints upon criminal behavior sanctioned by the state.

At least the DPRK doesn't trumpet its status as the least-best sanctuary of liberty. American politicians, starting with the president, do little else.

A couple of months ago, came a mile-marker in America's steady slide downhill towards the status of a Banana Republic with Obama's assertion that he has the right as president to secretly order the assassination, without trial, of a U.S. citizen he deems to be working with terrorists. This followed his 2009 betrayal of his pledge to end the indefinite imprisonment without charges or trial of prisoners in Guantanamo.

After months of declaring that he would veto such legislation, Obama has now crumbled and will soon sign a monstrosity called the Levin/McCain detention bill, named for its two senatorial sponsors, Carl Levin and John McCain. It's snuggled into the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act.

House GOP Leaders Capitulate, Agree to 2-Month Tax-Cut Extension
Anna Gilliam
Published: Friday 23 December 2011
“The House GOP surrender came after a week of White House pressure and mounting criticism of House Republicans from GOP-friendly allies.”

House Republican leaders reversed themselves Thursday and agreed to a temporary two-month extension of a payroll tax break — after a week of pummeling from President Barack Obama and even some of their conservative allies.

 

The retreat, which should spare 160 million Americans from suffering an $80 per month payroll tax hike starting Jan. 1, is a major win for Obama, who postponed a Christmas holiday in Hawaii to stay in Washington and pressure the House into taking the compromise.

 

The House GOP surrender came after a week of White House pressure and mounting criticism of House Republicans from GOP-friendly allies, including the Wall Street Journal editorial board, which likened the House leadership's opposition to extending a popular tax break to a "circular firing squad."

 

Obama, in a statement called it "good news, just in time for the holidays. ... I've stated consistently that it was critical that Congress not go home without preventing a tax increase on 160 million working Americans. Today, I congratulate members of Congress for ending the partisan stalemate by reaching an agreement that meets that test."

 

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, who stunned Washington on Sunday by rejecting a compromise that had cleared the Senate Saturday by a vote of 89-10 — with 39 Republicans voting for approval — said Thursday evening that his members had wanted a full-year tax cut to give businesses some certainty in a turbulent economy, but he finally agreed to the two-month compromise, along with a minor accounting fix.

 

"We were here fighting for the right things," Boehner said. "It may not have been politically the smartest thing in the world, but ... we have fought the good fight."

 

Boehner plans to bring the Senate bill — with the fix — to the House floor Friday for a voice vote ...

Christmas is No Time to Talk About War and Peace
Anna Gilliam
Published: Tuesday 20 December 2011
We from the United States can only celebrate Christmas by ending our cultural narcissism, renouncing empire, and making room for the poor and the weak of the world.

When I heard the President speak to returning troops last week, my mind flashed back to an article I once wrote for our local newspaper.  Each week a different member of the local clergy would write a column, and I had been asked to write the piece for Christmas.  That year all I could hear was the drumbeat leading toward a war with Iraq.  I racked my brain trying to think of a way to put faces on the people we were about to bomb.  Looking at a nativity scene I thought, “the people we are about to kill look like that.”  Maybe a reframed Christmas story could help Americans stop hating Saddam long enough to care about the people who will pay the real cost of this invasion. I submitted the following article, covering the Christmas story the way the U.S. press was covering the build-up to the Iraq war. Looking back, I should have known what was about to happen.

 

Christmas Cancelled as a Security Measure

    (Ellis Island)   The three wise men were arrested today attempting to enter the country.  The Iraqi nationals were carrying massive amounts of flammable substances known as “frankincense” and “myrrh.”  While not explosives themselves, experts revealed that these two substances could be used as a fuse to detonate a larger bomb. The three alleged terrorists were also carrying gold, presumably to finance the rest of their mission. 

    Also implicated in the plot were two Palestinians named Joseph and Mary.  An anonymous source close to the family overheard Mary bragging that her son would “bring down the mighty from their thrones and lift up the lowly.” In what appears to be a call to anarchy, the couple claims their son will someday “help prisoners escape ...

Young and Old Protest in DC for Jobs, Unemployment Benefits
Brian Walker
Published: Saturday 10 December 2011
At the state and federal levels, quests to balance budgets have dragged down employment.

Julia Lee hobbled on a cane in a crowd of marchers toward the Longworth House Office Building. She last held a full-time job five years ago. Lee, who now receives disability payments, was injured in an accident and uses a cane due to a rejected knee replacement two years ago.

 

The grandmother of seven from Philadelphia traveled to Washington because, to her, something’s not right.

 

“All Americans have a right to a job and have a right to take care of their families, because that’s what this country is built on,” Lee said.

 

Young and old in mud-caked shoes marched toward the Capitol on Thursday calling for jobs and economic fairness. The marchers have convened in Washington from across the country, camping on Washington’s National Mall by day and sleeping in local churches by night.

 

They are part of an effort backed by Our DC, a grassroots advocacy group focused on good jobs for District residents. It organized the encampment in collaboration with a coalition of union members and the unemployed. Thursday’s procession followed several days of action, including a march on K Street, known as the center of corporate lobbying, and sit-ins at congressional offices.

 

1.8 Million Would Lose Unemployment Benefits

 

The mobilization is tied to Congress’s current focus on proposed extensions of the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits. If the payroll tax cut is allowed to expire at the end of this month, an American family making $50,000 a year stands to pay an additional $1,000 in taxes next year, according to the White House.

 

And if the unemployment extensions end, 1.8 million people will lose benefits, according to the National Employment Law Project). The president has advocated vehemently for the two measures, arguing that both provided needed stimulus for the slowly recovering economy. House ...

Right-Wing Media Baselessly Attack Obama for Not Supporting Israel ... Again
Anna Gilliam
Published: Tuesday 6 December 2011
The right-wing media have launched another round of attacks on President Obama for supposedly being anti-Israel.

The right-wing media have launched another round of attacks on President Obama for supposedly being anti-Israel. However, Obama has regularly supported Israel, and according to a recent poll, the majority of Israeli Jews support him.

 

Right-Wing Media Continue To Claim That Obama Holds Contempt For Israel

Bill Kristol: Obama Is "Acting To Weaken The Security Of The State Of Israel." A Weekly Standard blog post, titled "Blaming Israel First," quoted a statement by Bill Kristol, the editor and founder of the magazine, saying that Obama thinks "the world would be a safer, simpler, and more peaceful place if not for the troublesome Jewish state." From the statement:

"Nobody believes President Obama when he claims, as he did last week, that he 'has done more for the security of the state of Israel than any previous administration.' That's because he hasn't -- and because President Obama and his administration keeps acting to weaken the security of the state of Israel.

[...]

"Just about the only thing in the Middle East that President Obama hasn't blamed Israel for is the Iranian nuclear program. But when it comes to this, too, instead of supporting crippling sanctions or preparing military strikes, the White House seems to spend more time deterring Israel from acting than deterring Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons in the first place. And the administration's energy seems more focused on undermining Israel and those members of Congress pushing for a tougher approach to Iran, than in undermining the Iranian regime.

"The Obama message is loud and clear: the world would be a safer, simpler, and more peaceful place if not for the troublesome Jewish state. [The Weekly Standard,

Cain Ends Embattled Campaign, Saying He’s ‘at Peace’
Brian Walker
Published: Sunday 4 December 2011
His farewell was trademark Cain: confident, cheeky and challenging of political convention.

His popularity sinking and his credibility under attack, Herman Cain suspended his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination on Saturday in a defiant, unapologetic blaze of glory.

For all practical purposes, Cain's suspension means he has dropped out, ending his quest for the White House because of the political damage cause by allegations of sexual harassment and marital infidelity.

"I am suspending my presidential campaign because of the continued distraction, the continued hurt caused on me and my family — not because we are not fighters, not because I'm not a fighter," the former Godfather's Pizza CEO told a loyal hometown crowd in Atlanta.

Cain, who has denied all the allegations, was accompanied by his wife, Gloria, in a rare campaign appearance. He said that he and his family were "at peace" over the ordeal.

His decision likely caused the party hierarchy to relax a little as well. Cain's personal drama had become a distraction, drawing attention away from the rest of the GOP field.

Many in the Republican establishment also never thought Cain was a serious candidate to begin with, despite his ability to draw support. He had little in the way of ground organizations in key early states, and his travel scheduled sometimes seemed to ...

Obama Hits the Road to Tout a Tax-Cut Plan Republicans Seem to Like
Moderator
Published: Wednesday 30 November 2011
“Republicans plan to devise an alternative way of paying for the payroll tax increase, but they have not yet announced their plans.”

President Barack Obama jets to Scranton, Pa., on Wednesday to ramp up pressure on Congress to extend and perhaps expand a payroll tax cut for another year — a move that Senate Republicans suggested Tuesday could happen, at least the extension.

Last year, Obama and Congress agreed to cut the payroll tax paid by workers for Social Security by 2 percentage points, to 4.2 percent. Obama now wants to extend that another year — and even expand it so that workers would pay only 3.1 percent tax on their wages up to $106,800. If Congress doesn't act however, the 2-point tax cut ends Dec. 31, effectively raising taxes on workers.

The tax cut extension is a major part of Obama's $447 billion job creation package, and White House officials said he plans to champion it aggressively in the few weeks that Congress has remaining until it recesses for Christmas.

"If Congress refuses to act — then middle-class families are going to get hit with a tax increase at the worst possible time," Obama said last week in Manchester, N.H. "The question they'll have to answer when they get back from Thanksgiving is this: Are they really willing to break their oath to never raise taxes, and raise taxes on the middle class just to play politics?"

The White House has put a tax calculator on its whitehouse.gov webpage, allowing visitors to run the calculations themselves and warning that ...

Don’t Blame This Mess on Obama
Moderator
Published: Friday 25 November 2011
“The blame game is a dreary enterprise, but if we’re destined to play yet another round, let’s go back and at least take a more nuanced view of the ledger.”

Congress fails. The can is kicked. Cue the finger-pointing at President Obama for failing to lead.

Count me out, this time around.

 

The collapse of the supercommittee is not Obama’s fault. If he had pushed and prodded and cajoled and horse-traded, the result likely would have been the same. Perhaps even worse, in the sense that the partisan digging-in might have been even more entrenched.

For all the eleventh-hour, “where-was-Obama?” moaning, the bipartisan congressional directive to the White House as the supercommittee did its work was simple: Back off.

That’s right. The message from both Republican and Democratic members of the group was that presidential involvement could only be counterproductive. The more ...

Obama Praises Report as Groups Urge Arms Delay
Moderator
Published: Thursday 24 November 2011
“We welcome today’s report by the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI), which provides a thorough and independent assessment of events in Bahrain since protests first erupted in February,” the White House said in a statement.

The administration of President Barack Obama has praised a damning report issued Wednesday in Manama on Bahrain's crackdown on the democracy movement earlier this year, as human rights groups called on Washington to further delay delivery of a pending 53-million-dollar arms package to the kingdom.

"We welcome today's report by the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI), which provides a thorough and independent assessment of events in Bahrain since protests first erupted in February," the White House said in a statement.

"The report identifies a number of disturbing human rights abuses that took place during this period, and it is now incumbent upon the Government of Bahrain to hold accountable those responsible for human rights violations and put in place institutional changes to ensure that such abuses do not happen again," according to the statement.

It also said Washington "will closely follow" the implementation of King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa's commitment to carry out the report's recommendations.

At the same time, several major human rights groups here called on the administration to further delay the transfer of a pending 53- million-dollar arms deal for Bahrain in light of the findings by the Commission, which was headed by the Egyptian-American jurist, Cherif Bassiouni.

"The U.S. shouldn't sell the arms until there's clear evidence that the Bahraini ruling family is addressing these very serious issues that the commission found and has taken action on the recommendations," said Joe Stork, the Middle East analyst for Human Rights Watch (HRW) here.

"The Bahraini security forces have demonstrated over the past few months a willingness to use everything from weapons up to tanks in cracking down against domestic protestors," said Sanjeev Bery, Middle East/North ...

In Defense of Diplomacy
Taylor
Published: Thursday 24 November 2011
New legislation would make all diplomatic contact with Iran illegal.

Though most of our history books, as well as contemporary journalism, tend to focus on violence between peoples and nations, the vast majority of conflicts have been settled peacefully.  For centuries, it has been forbidden to “kill the messenger,” thereby enabling diplomacy between governments. Even in cases where countries have not had formal diplomatic relations, quiet negotiations – often initially clandestine and between low-level officials – have prevented cold conflicts from becoming hot ones.  Even war itself has generally not prevented ongoing diplomatic contact, which has often prevented escalation, limited civilian casualties, and made possible a speedier end to the conflict.

With the advent of air travel and instantaneous long-distance communication, the ease with which representatives of adversarial governments can meet has made diplomatic contact more timely and frequent. Meanwhile, advances in the study of negotiation and conflict resolution has made it more effective. Indeed, the improved quantity and quality of diplomatic contact has been a major factor in the dramatic reduction in inter-state wars over the past sixty years.

Unfortunately, Congress is taking up dangerous legislation which appears to be designed to make the risk of war more likely. The bill takes the unprecedented step of effectively preventing any kind of U.S. diplomatic contact with Iran. The Iran Threat Reduction Act of 2011 (H.R. 1905), sponsored by Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the right-wing chair of the House Foreign Relations Committee, is a far-reaching sanctions bill which contains a provision (Section 601, subsection (c)) which would put into law a restriction whereby

"No person employed with the United States Government may contact in an official or unofficial capacity any person that. . . is an agent, ...

Congress May Try Blocking Cuts if Debt Panel Fails
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 22 November 2011
With Super Congress decision looking unlikely, lawmakers already fighting automatic budget cuts.

Failure by Congress' debt-cutting supercommittee to recommend $1.2 trillion in savings by Wednesday is supposed to automatically trigger spending cuts in the same amount to accomplish that job.

But the same legislators who concocted that budgetary booby trap just four months ago could end up spending the 2012 election year and beyond battling over defusing it.

Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., say they are writing legislation to prevent what they say would be devastating cuts to the military. House Republicans are exploring a similar move. Democrats maintain they won't let domestic programs be the sole source of savings.

In the face of those efforts, President Barack Obama has told the debt panel's co-chairmen that he "will not accept any measure that attempts to turn off the automatic cut trigger," White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters last week. The leaders of both parties in the House and Senate have expressed similar sentiments — seemingly making any attempt to restore the money futile.

"Yes, I would feel bound by it," House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said recently of the automatic cuts. "It was part of the agreement."

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Man Charged With Attempted Assassination in White House Shooting
Moderator
Published: Friday 18 November 2011
A witness stated that a man stopped his car and began shooting through the passenger-side window in the direction of the White House.

An Idaho man has been charged with attempting to assassinate President Obama in connection with a shooting incident at the White House on Friday night.

A criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania states that Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez, 21, "knowingly did attempt to kill the President of the United States." The charge carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Ortega-Hernandez was arrested in Indiana, Pa., on Wednesday, five days after a shooting incident near the National Mall.

The U.S. Secret Service, ATF, FBI, U.S. Park Police and the Washington Metropolitan Police Department had been working together to locate Ortega-Hernandez after law enforcement Friday responded to the sound of gunfire on Constitution Avenue, approximately 700 yards south of the White House.

A witness stated that a man stopped his car and began shooting through the passenger-side window in the direction of the White House.

On Tuesday, personnel discovered two rounds of ammunition on the White House grounds, at least one of which damaged historic exterior glass in a window above the Truman Balcony on the South Portico.

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Obama’s Positive Flip and Romney’s Negative Flop
Moderator
Published: Thursday 17 November 2011
Is Global Warming an Election Issue After All?

Conventional wisdom has it that the next election will be fought exclusively on the topic of jobs. But President Obama’s announcement last week that he would postpone a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline until after the 2012 election, which may effectively kill the project, makes it clear that other issues will weigh in -- and that, oddly enough, one of them might even be climate change.

The pipeline decision was a true upset.  Everyone -- and I mean everyone who "knew" how these things work -- seemed certain that the president would approve it. The National Journal runs a weekly poll of “energy insiders” -- that is, all the key players in Washington. A month to the day before the Keystone XL postponement, this large cast of characters was “virtually unanimous” in guaranteeing that it would be approved by year’s end.

Transcanada Pipeline, the company that was going to build the 1,700-mile pipeline from the tar-sands fields of Alberta, ...

Fox Ignores Bipartisan Health, Environmental Concerns to Claim Keystone Decision was “Political”
Moderator
Published: Tuesday 15 November 2011
“Fox failed to report on health and environmental concerns raised by the Keystone project”

Fox News figures have been claiming that the Obama administration's decision to delay the Keystone XL pipeline project puts "politics ahead of jobs for the American people." But Fox failed to report on health and environmental concerns raised by the Keystone project; Fox also failed to report that it was unpopular with officials of both parties and residents of the Nebraskan communities where it would have been located.

Obama Admin. Announces Delay Of Keystone XL Pipeline Decision

NYT: "The Obama Administration ... Announced Thursday That It Would Review The Route Of The Disputed Keystone XL Oil Pipeline." From a November 10 New York Times article:

The State Department said in a statement that it was ordering a review of alternate routes to avoid the environmentally sensitive Sand Hills region of Nebraska, which would have been put at risk by a rupture of the 1,700-mile pipeline carrying a heavy form of crude extracted from oil sands formations in Alberta to refineries in Oklahoma and the Gulf Coast. [The New York Times, 11/10/11]

Fox Claims Keystone Decision Was "Political"

Gallagher: Keystone Decision Sacrifices Jobs "In The Name Of Political Expediency." On the November 11 edition of Fox News' America ...

Iran Threat Reduction Act Actually Enhances Threat of War
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 15 November 2011
New legislation is looking to cause serious threats between the U.S. and Iran.

Congress is taking up dangerous legislation which appears to be designed to pave the way for war by taking the unprecedented step of effectively preventing any kind of U.S. diplomatic contact with Iran. The Iran Threat Reduction Act of 2011 (H.R. 1905), sponsored by the right-wing chair of the House Foreign Relations Committee Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, contains a provision (Section 601, subsection (c)) which would put into law a restriction whereby

“No person employed with the United States Government may contact in an official or unofficial capacity any person that. . . is an agent, instrumentality, or official of, is affiliated with, or is serving as a representative of the Government of Iran;”

Never in the history of this country has Congress ever restricted the right of the White House or State Department to meet with representatives of a foreign state, even in wartime. If this measure passes, it will establish a dangerous precedent whereby Congress would likely follow with similar ...

‘Occupy Wall Street’ and Obama
Taylor
Published: Sunday 13 November 2011
“The Occupiers are adamant they will not be co-opted, by the president or anyone else.”

The bursting to life of the Occupy Wall Street movement is the most hopeful development in American politics since Barack Obama was elected president three years ago this month. Obama's election has turned out to be largely a false hope. But that false hope might still be redeemed - and the president motivated to become the reformer he once pledged to be - if the Occupy movement grows into the kind of massive, broad-based, relentless movement no president can afford to ignore.

Already, the Occupy Wall Street website claims that the movement has spread to 100 cities in the United States and inspired sympathy actions in 1,500 cities around the world. Momentum appears to be building in other ways as well. Activists in other progressive movements - environment, labour, anti-poverty and housing - are beginning to collaborate with Occupy. TV commercials are airing on mainstream media outlets, even Fox News, spreading Occupy's message that the US political and economic system is rigged in favour of the top one per cent. And opinion polls are indicating that a sizeable majority of Americans agree with this analysis, though there seems to be less support for the Occupy activists themselves.

The latest big protest targeted the White House itself, when an estimated 12,000 people physically surrounded the home of the US president last Sunday to urge rejection of a ...

Super Collusion: Will Obama and Capitol Dems Betray the Middle Class, Seniors, and the Poor?
Taylor
Published: Saturday 12 November 2011
Democrats may turn their backs on everything they stood for and betray the people with the super committee proposal.

Two new reports suggest that the President and Congressional Democrats are about to betray everything Democrats once stood for. Under pressure from Barack Obama, Democrats on the "Super Committee" have sketched out an appalling "compromise" proposal that would almost certainly doom both their 2012 electoral chances and his own.

They'd have it coming. Their draft plan that literally takes crutches away from poor people to protect tax breaks for the wealthy.

Unfortunately, middle class and impoverished Americans would suffer much more than they would. Career politicians can always look forward to comfortable sinecures from the wealthy interests who will benefit from their proposal. But the rest of us would once again be punished for the excesses of the rich, then left to the untender mercies of our new Republican leaders.

That, and not the fate of a President or a party, would be the real tragedy.

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Keystone XL: Ring Around the Rose Garden
Moderator
Published: Wednesday 9 November 2011
“[President Obama] has powerful corporations pushing for the pipeline, but a ring of people he needs for re-election outside his window.”

More than 10,000 people gathered in Washington, D.C., last Sunday with a simple goal: Encircle the White House. They succeeded, just weeks after 1,253 people were arrested in a series of protests at the same spot. These thousands, as well as those arrested, were unified in their opposition to the planned Keystone XL pipeline, intended to run from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf Coast of Texas. A broad, international coalition against the pipeline has formed since President Barack Obama took office, and now the deadline for its approval or rejection is at hand.

Bill McKibben, founder of the global movement against climate change 350.org, told me: “This has become not only the biggest environmental flash point in many, many years, but maybe the issue in recent times in the Obama administration when he’s been most directly confronted by people in the street. In this case, people willing, hopeful, almost dying for him to be the Barack Obama of 2008.”

The president, until recently, simply hid behind the legal argument that, as the pipeline was coming from Canada, the proper forum for the decision fell with the U.S. Department of State and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. That was until a key Clinton insider was exposed as a lobbyist for the company trying to build Keystone XL, TransCanada. The environmental group Friends of the Earth has exposed a series of connections between the Clinton political machine and Keystone XL. Paul Elliott is TransCanada’s top lobbyist in Washington on the pipeline. He was a high-level campaign staffer on Hillary Clinton’s bid for the White House in 2008, and worked as well on Bill Clinton’s campaign in 1996 and Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign in 2000.

Friends of the Earth (FOE) received emails following a Freedom of Information Act request, documenting ...

The Devil in the Tar Sands
Moderator
Published: Tuesday 8 November 2011
“Oil from the tar sands of Alberta is the dirtiest in the world, and its extraction is already causing problems. If Keystone is built, there will be increased efforts to expand oil production there, making a bad situation much worse.”

On Sunday, November 6, thousands of people encircled the White House as part of the ongoing effort to press US President Barack Obama to stop the Keystone XL pipeline. If the nearly 1,700-mile pipeline were to be built, it would run from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, through the heartland of the US, all the way to the Texas coast on the Gulf of Mexico. Should the project go ahead, Obama will have made one of the single most disastrous decisions of his presidency concerning climate change and the very future of our planet.

In August, some 1,250 people were arrested in front of the White House while protesting against Keystone. One of them was James Hanson, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who has been studying for decades the impact of fossil fuels on the environment. Hanson argues that the pipeline would sound the death knell for the world’s climate. Oil from the tar sands of Alberta is the dirtiest in the world, and its extraction is already causing problems. If Keystone is built, there will be increased efforts to expand oil production there, making a bad situation much worse.

Opposition to the pipeline throughout the US is growing in intensity – from the activists arrested in Washington, DC, to the governor of Nebraska, who is seeking state legislation to stop the pipeline from running through America’s biggest aquifer, to members of the US Congress, who have petitioned Obama about the project. The outpouring of opposition surprised the oil industry, its highly paid lobbyists, and especially TransCanada Corporation, which would build the pipeline. So, like many huge corporations facing public criticism, they and their allies are responding with a dubious new marketing effort.

"Follow Project Syndicate on Facebook or Twitter. For more from Jody ...

Thousands Surround White House in Protest of Keystone Oil Pipeline
Moderator
Published: Monday 7 November 2011
“A two-week anti-pipeline sit-in outside the White House in August resulted in 1,524 arrests, but there were no arrests Sunday.”

On a sunny, cloudless day, thousands of protesters encircled the White House Sunday in a show of numbers intended to persuade President Barack Obama to stop a proposed oil pipeline from being built.

The Keystone XL pipeline would stretch 1,661 miles from Alberta, Canada, to Texas' Gulf Coast and requires a presidential permit because it crosses the U.S.-Canada border. Environmentalists say the project is a key test of Obama's green credentials.

Wearing orange vests with the message "Stop the pipeline #noXL," protesters first heard from prominent environmentalists, a preacher, a Nobel laureate, and a movie star, and then gathered to hold hands in a ring that stretched in front of the White House and several blocks down side streets before joining up behind the White House lawn. Organizers estimated that the crowd exceeded 10,000 people.

"You can't occupy the White House, but you can surround it," said environmentalist and protest organizer Bill McKibben in a reference to the Occupy Wall Street movements spreading around the country.

With the failure of climate change legislation on Capitol Hill last year, environmentalists have made stopping the Keystone pipeline their major focus in recent months. They want the president to reject the pipeline because of the risks of spills and what they say is the likely ...

Campaign 2012: Welcome to the Slugfest
Moderator
Published: Sunday 6 November 2011
“Of course the Obama campaign will attempt to present the affirmative case for his reelection, citing legislative achievements, foreign policy successes and the current flurry of executive actions.”

Forget hope and change. President Obama’s reelection campaign is going to be based on fear and loathing: fear of what a Republican takeover would mean, and loathing of whomever the Republican nominee turns out to be.

Of course the Obama campaign will attempt to present the affirmative case for his reelection, citing legislative achievements, foreign policy successes and the current flurry of executive actions. But his strategists have clearly concluded that selling the president will not be enough, and the contours of the ugly months ahead are becoming increasingly apparent.

All campaigns are about drawing contrasts. Even when running for reelection with the benefit of a healthy economy in 1996, Bill Clinton campaigned against the imaginary Dole-Gingrich ticket with an early and intense barrage of ads tying the eventual Republican nominee to the unpopular House speaker.

And as much as Obama presented himself as above the regular partisan fray during the 2008 campaign, he was not averse to taking the lower road when it appeared the advisable route.

But running for a second term accompanied by the albatross of 9 percent unemployment inevitably requires an even more brutal technique. In that sense, Obama’s reelection campaign is more reminiscent of George W. Bush vs. John Kerry in 2004, an embattled president managing to win reelection ...

Washington Post Admits Keystone XL Jobs are a Pipe Dream
Moderator
Published: Sunday 6 November 2011
With the job benefits up in smoke, pipeline opponents are confident that if the President sticks to his calculus, the only plausible option is to deny the pipeline permit.

In an explosive story posted online in the Washington Post this afternoon, pipeline company TransCanada admitted that it has grossly misrepresented the number of jobs the controversial Keystone XL project would create.

The 20,000 jobs involved in pipeline construction? A fabrication supported by misleading mathematics. The 250,000 indirect jobs? A number based on one oil-industry funded study that counted jobs for “dancers, choreographers and speech therapists,” according to the Post.

“Thank heavens some reporter actually questioned this jobs number, instead of just repeating it,” said Bill McKibben, who is leading a major protest against Keystone XL this Sunday at the White House. “The only study not paid for by the pipeline company makes clear that there are no net jobs from this pipeline because it will kill as many as it will create.”

Lawmakers, Republican presidential candidates, and the media have repeated TransCanada’s claim that the Keystone XL project would create 20,000 new jobs if approved–13,000 from direct construction and 7,000 from supply manufacturers. The Post shows both numbers to be inaccurate, quoting TransCanada chief executive Russ Girling: “Girling said Friday that the 13,000 figure was ‘one person, one year,’ meaning that if the construction jobs lasted two years, the number of people employed would be only 6,500.”

The manufacturing jobs are also misleading. The company has already purchased $1.9 billion on pipe and other materials. Of the money still to be spent, the Post and Cornell report both concluded that the majority would go overseas. At least $1.7 billion worth of steel will be purchased from a Russian-owned mill in Canada. TransCanada claims the remainder will be produced in Arkansas. The ...

Washington Pre-Occupied
Moderator
Published: Saturday 5 November 2011
“Here, as elsewhere, people are outraged at what feels like a rigged game – an economy that won’t respond, a democracy that won’t listen, and a financial sector that holds all the cards.”

The biggest question in America these days is how to revive the economy.

The biggest question among activists now occupying Wall Street and dozens of other cities is how to strike back against the nation’s almost unprecedented concentration of income, wealth, and political power in the top 1 percent.

The two questions are related. With so much income and wealth concentrated at the top, the vast middle class no longer has the purchasing power to buy what the economy is capable of producing. (People could pretend otherwise as long as they could treat their homes as ATMs, but those days are now gone.) The result is prolonged stagnation and high unemployment as far as the eye can see.

Until we reverse the trend toward inequality, the economy can’t be revived.

But the biggest question in our nation’s capital right now has nothing to do with any of this. It’s whether Congress’s so-called “Supercommittee” – six Democrats and six Republicans charged with coming up with $1.2 trillion in budget savings — will reach agreement in time for the Congressional Budget Office to score its proposal, which must then be approved by Congress before Christmas recess in order to avoid an automatic $1.5 trillion in budget savings requiring major across-the-board cuts starting in 2013.

Have your eyes already glazed over?

Diffident Democrats on the Supercommittee have already signaled a willingness to cut Medicare, Social Security, and much else that Americans depend on. The deal is being held up by Regressive Republicans who won’t raise taxes on the rich – not even a tiny bit.

President Obama, meanwhile, is out on the stump trying to sell his “jobs bill” – which would, by the White House’s own estimate, create fewer than 2 million jobs. Yet 14 million people are out of work, and another 10 million are working part-time who’d rather have full-time ...

President Obama Calls for the Passage of His Jobs Bill
Moderator
Published: Friday 4 November 2011
The president called for the passage of his jobs bill at the Key Bridge in Washington D.C. on Tuesday.

President Obama pushed for the passage of the infrastructure part of his jobs bill and criticized Congress, saying “Construction workers want to do their jobs, we need Congress to do theirs.” The words come during a continuing uphill battle with GOP who seem unresponsive to the president’s pleas for action. The president said that infrastructure work during hard times improves the economy and keeps our society moving forward.

Uncle Sam Helps out With Student Loan Debt
Moderator
Published: Monday 31 October 2011
First, the cap on monthly loan payments will be lowered to 10 percent of a student’s discretionary income - down from the 15 percent set in a law passed last year.

Mallory Anthony laughs as she describes herself as "the face of student loan debt in America."

But the 26-year-old woman who owes about $32,000 really doesn't think her struggle is funny at all.

"I get by on the bare minimum health and car insurance. I'm frugal with my grocery shopping, and I try not to eat out much."

So Anthony was delighted to learn that President Barack Obama is accelerating a plan that might knock hundreds of dollars from the check she writes each month to her lenders.

The changes could affect as many as 1.6 million Americans.

First, the cap on monthly loan payments will be lowered to 10 percent of a student's discretionary income - down from the 15 percent set in a law passed last year.

Second, under the "Pay as You Earn" plan, the break begins in January, instead of 2014.

Unsure how she might be affected, Anthony hopes for some relief.

Anthony remembers "the overwhelming fear" felt six months after her 2007 college graduation when it was time to pay for school and she didn't have the money.

"I've had to ask my family for assistance paying them back," she said, and deferred some payments.

Working full time in admissions at Rockhurst University as well as some evenings and weekends as a nanny, she's taking classes toward a master's degree at Webster University.

That means yet more ...

Can Rick Perry Rebound? His History - and Money - Suggest Yes
Moderator
Published: Sunday 30 October 2011
“In less than three months, Perry has nosedived in the polls and is drawing comparisons with candidates from past races who showed early promise but quickly tanked.”

Bounding into the lead within days after announcing his bid for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, Texas Gov. Rick Perry seemed like he was on a history-making path to follow his predecessor, George W. Bush, all the way to the White House.

In less than three months, Perry has nosedived in the polls and is drawing comparisons with candidates from past races who showed early promise but quickly tanked. Now the question often asked is whether Perry's quest for the presidency is nearing an end or poised for a new beginning and an ultimate rebound.

"The polls go up and down, but when it comes to jobs, conservative record, policy initiatives and resources, Perry is well-positioned to win," insists Ray Sullivan, Perry's communications director. And, to varying degrees, a number of independent analysts share that assessment, saying it's far too early to dismiss Texas' longest-serving governor as a spent force in the national political arena.

Perry's strategy for winning — and rebounding from his slide in the polls — rests on a number of factors, including $17 million in fundraising, aggressive campaigning on television and social media, more selective engagement in debates, magnifying his jobs-oriented economic message, and intense personal campaigning to accent Perry's proven skills at working a crowd.

Another under-the-radar resource is what veteran ...

Occupy the Banks: Strategies for Transformation
Taylor
Published: Sunday 30 October 2011
“The largely student/youth organized efforts might even be historic—if, that is, they come to terms with the reality that the challenge we face is systemic, not merely political and, that the crisis is also highly unusual in its demands.”

The “occupations” now building around the country are a necessary and justified response to the outrages of a political-economic system that substitutes posturing for decision-making, looking the other way as the top one percent runs off with almost a fourth of the nation’s income and more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined. The largely student/youth organized efforts might even be historic—if, that is, they come to terms with the reality that the challenge we face is systemic, not merely political and, that the crisis is also highly unusual in its demands.

For over a century, liberals and radicals have seen the possibility of change in capitalist systems from one of two perspectives: the reform tradition assumes that corporate institutions remain central to the system but believes that regulatory policies can contain, modify, and control corporations and their political allies. The revolutionary tradition assumes that change can come about only if corporate institutions are eliminated or transcended during an acute crisis, usually but not always by violence.

But what happens if a system neither reforms nor collapses in crisis?

READ FULL POST 14 COMMENTS

US Launches Drones from Ethiopia
Taylor
Published: Saturday 29 October 2011
GOP to Subpoena White House over Solyndra
Taylor
Published: Saturday 29 October 2011
The GOP’s threats of a subpoena over the Solyndra debate may become more than just threats.

The fallout from the government’s failed $535 million bet in solar panel maker Solyndra expanded on Friday, with the Obama administration seeking an independent audit of Energy Department loans even as the Republican-led House Energy committee threatened a subpoena of the president.

White House officials said the audit would focus on the health of existing loans in the Energy Department’s multi-billion dollar portfolio of investments in clean tech firms.

Solyndra, the first recipient of Energy Department backing, collapsed in bankruptcy and is now the subject of multiple investigations. The Energy Department and White House backed the half billion dollar investment in Solyndra, government emails show, even as budget and Treasury officials were raising red flags.

“Today we are directing that an independent analysis be conducted of the current state of the Department of Energy loan portfolio, focusing on future loan monitoring and management,” White House chief of staff Bill Daley told the Associated Press. “While we continue to take steps to make sure the United States remains competitive in the 21 st century energy economy, we must also ensure that we are strong stewards of taxpayer dollars.”

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Limbaugh Says Global Warming, Occupy Wall Street Part of ‘Sybil’ Conspiracy: ‘Nothing Is Real’
Moderator
Published: Tuesday 18 October 2011
In his show, Limbaugh took this news to mean that all institutions are part of a global “liberal” conspiracy, including climate science.

In one of his most unhinged rants yet, hate radio show host Rush Limbaugh argued that the revelation that a famous book about multiple-personality disorder is a hoax means that “nothing is real,” including global warming. “Sybil” was an influential 1973 book written for a popular audience that told of a psychiatrist’s client with “multiple personality disorder.” The book influenced the field of psychoanalysis for years. By the 1990s, questions were raised about the veracity of the tale, and a new book by Debbie Nathan, Sybil Exposed, fully debunks the story, after thousands of people were mistreated.

In today’s show, Limbaugh took this news to mean that all institutions are part of a global “liberal” conspiracy, ...

A New Bush Era or a Push Era?
Elizabeth
Published: Tuesday 11 October 2011
The suggestion that a loss for Obama would signal a return to the Bush era has some merit.

Back when Barack Obama was still just a U.S. senator running for president, he told a group of donors in a New Jersey suburb, “Make me do it.” He was borrowing from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who used the same phrase (according to Harry Belafonte, who heard the story directly from Eleanor Roosevelt) when responding to legendary union organizer A. Philip Randolph’s demand for civil rights for African-Americans.

While President Obama has made concession after concession to both the corporate-funded tea party and his Wall Street donors, now that he is again in campaign mode, his progressive critics are being warned not to attack him, as that might aid and abet the Republican bid for the White House.

Enter the 99 percenters. The Occupy Wall Street ranks continue to grow, inspiring more than 1,000 solidarity protests around the country and the globe. After weeks, and one of the largest mass arrests in U.S. history, Obama finally commented: “I think people are frustrated, and the protesters are giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how our financial system works.” But neither he nor his advisers—or the Republicans—know what to do with this burgeoning mass movement.

Following the controversial Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which allows unlimited corporate donations to support election advertising, the hunger for campaign cash is insatiable. The Obama re-election campaign aims to raise $1 billion. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the financial industry was Obama’s second-largest source of 2008 campaign contributions, surpassed only by the lawyers/lobbyists industry sector.

The suggestion that a loss for Obama would signal a return to the Bush era has some merit: The Associated ...

Obama’s Failing Emails
Moderator
Published: Tuesday 11 October 2011
Four years ago at this time, the early adopters among us were just starting to get used to the regular flow of email from the Obama campaign.

For connoisseurs, Barack Obama’s fundraising emails for the 2012 election campaign seem just a tad forlorn -- slightly limp reminders of the last time ‘round.

Four years ago at this time, the early adopters among us were just starting to get used to the regular flow of email from the Obama campaign. The missives were actually exciting to get, because they seemed less like appeals for money than a chance to join a movement.

Sometimes they came with inspirational videos from Camp Obama, especially the volunteer training sessions staged by organizing guru Marshall Ganz. Here’s a favorite of mine, where a woman invokes Bobby Kennedy and Cesar Chavez and says that, as the weekend went on, she “felt her heart softening,” her cynicism “melting,” her determination building. I remember that feeling, and I remember clicking time and again to send another $50 off to fund that people-powered mission. (And I recall knocking on a lot of New Hampshire doors, too, with my 14-year-old daughter.)

It’s no wonder, then, that I’m still on the email list. But I haven’t been clicking through this time. Not even when Barack Obama himself asked me to “donate $75 or more today to be automatically entered for a chance to join me for dinner.” Not even when campaign manager Jim Messina pointed out that, though “the president has very little time to spend on anything related to the campaign… this is how he chooses to spend it -- having real, substantive conversations with people like you” over the dinner you might just win. (And if you do win, you’ll be put on a plane to “Washington, or Chicago, or wherever he might be that day.”)

Not even when deputy campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon offered to let me “take ...

Bill McKibben’s Speech at Occupy Wall Street
Moderator
Published: Sunday 9 October 2011
“On November 6, one year before the election, we’re going to be in DC with a huge circle of people around the White House and they’re going to be carrying signs with quotations from Barack Obama from the 2008 campaign.”

Today, Tar Sands Action organizer Bill McKibben spoke at Occupy Wall Street in New York City and made the connection between the demonstrations there and the ongoing fight against the Keystone XL pipeline. Below is a video and transcript of the speech. Many thanks to our friends at Treehugger for providing the video.

Here is the text of Bill’s speech:

Today in the New York Times there was a story that made it completely clear why we have to be here. They uncovered the fact that the company building that tar sands pipeline was allowed to choose another company to conduct the environmental impact statement, and the company that they chose was a company was a company that did lots and lots of work for them. So, in other words, the whole thing was rigged top to bottom and that’s why the environmental impact statement said that this pipeline would cause no trouble, unlike the scientists who said if we build this pipeline it’s “game over” for the climate. We can’t let this pipeline get built.

On November 6, one year before the election, we’re going to be in DC with a huge circle of people around the White House and they’re going to be carrying signs with quotations from Barack Obama from the 2008 campaign. He said, “It’s time to end the tyranny of oil.” He said, “I will have the most transparent government in history.” We have to go to DC to find out where they have locked that guy up. We have to free Obama, because there is some sort of stunt double there now. So on November 6, I hope we can move, just for a day, Occupy Wall Street down ...

Obama Waives Aid Curbs on Militaries Using Child Soldiers
Moderator
Published: Thursday 6 October 2011
“The administration insisted that some progress had been made over the past year in addressing the child soldier problem in both Chad and the DRC.”

For the second year in a row, U.S. President Barack Obama has waived a Congressionally-mandated ban on military aid for four countries that use child soldiers.

The four countries that will continue to receive military assistance despite the use of child soldiers in their armed forces include Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Yemen and the newly independent nation of South Sudan, according to a memo released by the White House late Tuesday. 


All four, which are slated to receive a total of more than 200 million dollars in military aid in 2012, were given waivers by the administration last year, as well. 

The latest decision was denounced by Human Rights Watch (HRW) which said it showed “a lack of leadership and a disregard for U.S. law”.

“Countries that keep using child soldiers aren’t going to get serious about ending the practice until they see the U.S. is serious about withholding the money,” said Jo Becker, who heads HRW’s children’s rights division. 


“The Obama administration has been unwilling to make even small cuts to military assistance to governments exploiting children as soldiers,” she added. “Children are paying the price for its poor leadership.” 


Under the U.S. Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2008, which took effect in 2010, Washington is banned from providing U.S. foreign military financing (FMF), military training, and several other military aid programmes to countries that recruit soldiers under the age of 18. 


Obama can waive the bans if he determines that doing so would serve “the national interest”.


Five countries, as well as the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA) in what in July became South Sudan, were identified last year as using child soldiers during 2009. They included Chad, the DRC, Yemen, Somalia, and Myanmar. Of those, only Somalia and ...

The Government Cracks Down On White House Protests - But Is It Legal?
Moderator
Published: Wednesday 5 October 2011
“All said and done, about 1,250 people were arrested at the White House in a two-week stretch that began August 20, 2011.”

Protests in front of the White House are nearly as commonplace as lies in Washington – nary a week goes by without a handful of some decent ones. But actions taken by the U.S. Park Police and government lawyers in two separate demonstrations at the White House – one with LGBT activists and the other with environmentalists - suggest the government may be imposing stricter responses in order to dissuade peaceful protesters from staging certain demonstrations at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. 

Though both of those demonstrations were designed to be actions in which the protesters risked arrest, the treatment of the activists who were arrested strays from the usual way in which acts of civil disobedience in front of the White House have been handled over the last few decades. 

Here are the basic rules of the road: Protesters know that if they stop moving on the White House sidewalk within 10 yards to the right or left of the center line – the “picture postcard zone” – they will risk being arrested if they don’t respond to verbal warnings. Once arrested, peaceful protesters can have typically been offered what’s known as the “post-and-forfeit” option where they can post bail (around $50 to $100) and then choose to forfeit it without a trial. It involves no admission of guilt, leaves civil protesters with no criminal conviction, keeps the D.C. jail facilities from being clogged with non-violent offenders, and saves the court the trouble of adjudicating the cases in its already crammed schedule.

But “those days are over,” says Mark Goldstone, a Washington lawyer who has defended non-violent activists for about 25 years.

“The predictability of being able to exercise your rights in the picture postcard zone and coming out of there basically unscathed,” he says, “I think those rules that ...

What Should Progressives Do About the President?
Elizabeth
Published: Saturday 1 October 2011
The President often courts the left when he needs it, only to pitch his actions to the right at clinch time.

Progressives may sometimes feel like they're in a backdoor high-school affair with the President. You know the kind: The popular kid will make out with someone from the wrong side of the tracks. But he'll only take a rich kid from "the right kind of family" to the school dance.

The President often courts the left when he needs it, only to pitch his actions to the right at clinch time. Right-wing ideology is often mistakenly called the "center" today, despite holding views that are so conservative they're often rejected by Republicans as well as Democrats. But it's the right all the same.

Lately the President has made some significant moves toward the left, but the response has been cool in some progressive corners. The skepticism's understandable. His 2008 platform was progressive too, but after he was elected he tacked sharply right without even bothering to explain the shift. Progressives don't want to keep feeling like the kid who 'puts out' in the backseat of a convertible and then is all alone on prom night.

But if you believe (as I do) that the progressive movement should be independent of Barack Obama and the Democrats, then the decision to work with them should be made strategically. There are times to oppose them, but there are also times to support, encourage, and persuade them.

The President's new progressive moves aren't enough, and they're still watered down with unproductive and unpopular rightwing notions. But they are a move in the right direction. He deserves some credit for that. The progressive movement does too. So what's next?

The Right Left, the Wrong Right

There's no need to rehash all the mistakes of the last three years. The President and his advisors still cling to the mistaken idea that, as one of them told

Sex And The Single Drone
Moderator
Published: Thursday 29 September 2011
In 2007, CIA director Michael Hayden began lobbying the White House for “permission to carry out strikes against houses or cars merely on the basis of behavior that matched a ‘pattern of life’ associated with al-Qaeda or other groups.”

In the world of weaponry, they are the sexiest things around.  Others countries are desperate to have them.  Almost anyone who writes about them becomes a groupie.  Reporters exploring their onrushing future swoon at their potentially wondrous techno-talents.  They are, of course, the pilotless drones, our grimly named Predators and Reapers.

As CIA Director, Leon Panetta called them “the only game in town.”  As Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates pushed hard to up their numbers and increase their funding drastically.  The U.S. Air Force is 

Freedom Isn’t Free at The State Department
Moderator
Published: Tuesday 27 September 2011
“I was interrogated for the first time in my 23-year State Department career by State’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security(DS) and told I was under investigation for allegedly disclosing classified information.”

On the same day that more than 250,000 unredacted State Department cables hemorrhaged out onto the Internet, I was interrogated for the first time in my 23-year State Department career by State’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS) and told I was under investigation for allegedly disclosing classified information. The evidence of my crime? A posting on my blog from the previous month that included a link to a WikiLeaks document already available elsewhere on the Web.

As we sat in a small, gray, windowless room, resplendent with a two-way mirror, multiple ceiling-mounted cameras, and iron rungs on the table to which handcuffs could be attached, the two DS agents stated that the inclusion of that link amounted to disclosing classified material. In other words, a link to a document posted by who-knows-who on a public website available at this moment to anyone in the world was the legal equivalent of me stealing a Top Secret report, hiding it under my coat, and passing it to a Chinese spy in a dark alley.

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Obama to Unveil Plan that Drastically Changes No Child Left Behind
Moderator
Published: Saturday 24 September 2011
States would have more flexibility in spending federal poverty dollars that previously had to go toward special tutoring for struggling students.

For nearly a decade, public schools around the country have struggled to meet federal academic standards, considered "failing" when too many children flunked achievement tests.

But if the White House has its way, schools and districts no longer would be labeled failures and No Child Left Behind - the landmark education act signed into law by President George W. Bush in January 2002 - would be overhauled.

President Barack Obama on Friday is expected to propose monumental changes to the way schools are judged and sanctioned based on student academic achievement, fixing what senior administration officials on Thursday called a "broken law."

A cornerstone of law - that all students tested pass state exams by 2013-14 - would be thrown out in favor of states coming up with their own plans to bring struggling students up to par in the most troubled schools. "Adequate Yearly Progress" - the annual requirement to improve test scores - would go away.

And states would have more flexibility in spending federal poverty dollars that previously had to go toward special tutoring for struggling students.

Administration officials on Thursday stressed that states will have to set a high academic bar, and that schools still will be held accountable for student performance.

The changes aren't a sure thing yet.

So far, the Obama administration has been unable to reach a deal with Congress to amend the law that put No Child Left Behind reforms in place, so the U.S. Department of Education is moving forward with a process of waivers to allow states the flexibility to change their systems of testing students and judging the performance of schools and districts.

States can apply for the waivers to No Child Left Behind as early as November.

Illinois will likely seek one, said Illinois State Board of Education spokeswoman Mary Fergus.

"We would still like to see the details involved in the ...

Key Context on Obama’s Vague Proposed Millionaires’ Tax
Elizabeth
Published: Monday 19 September 2011
Warren Buffet, an investor and America's second wealthiest person, has repeatedly argued that it’s wrong that his that he and his other “mega-rich” friends are taxed at a lower rate than middle-class taxpayers

This morning, as part of his broader deficit reduction plan, President Obama called for a new rule that would raise taxes on the the wealthiest Americans. The proposal was quick to spark reaction from Republicans, who labeled it “class warfare.”

But politics aside, we thought it would be helpful to run through what’s actually known about the proposal, the impact it might have on the deficit, and the history behind it all. 

So what, exactly, is the plan?

President Obama’s plan would require households making more than $1 million annually — and the president is one of them — to pay a certain minimum percentage in taxes that matches the rate at which middle-class households are taxed. (Think of it as a simpler version of the overly complicated alternative minimum tax, which was enacted to ensure that even with their many deductions, rich taxpayers still paid a minimum percentage in income taxes.)

Are there any more details?

Nope. The White House has left it quite vague. In fact, it’s unclear how serious the proposal is at this stage.

The president hasn’t yet specified at what rate the millionaires should be taxed. And as the New York Times puts it, administration officials have said that the plan is more of a guiding principle for negotiations. Indeed, they haven’t included its potential ...

The Phony Solyndra Scandal
Moderator
Published: Wednesday 14 September 2011
Conservative are accusing the Obama administration of corruption in choosing Solyndra to receive a government loan guarantee.

Well here's a surprise: conservatives and oil interests are pushing deceptive and destructive stories about President Obama and clean energy. Imagine that! Their intent (as always) is to turn people against President Obama, clean energy, national energy policy, stimulus to help the economy, and government in general. It's what they do. Here is some information to help you push back on the latest whipped-up, anti-green, anti-government, anti-Obama "scandal."

Solyndra

Solyndra was a startup solar-power equipment manufacturer based in Fremont, California that went bankrupt at the end of August. The company's solar collectors used a special tubular internal design that let it collect light from all directions, and were made with a copper-indium-gallium-diselenide (CIGS) thin film that avoided using then-expensive silicon. It was one of several companies that received assistance from the government, in an attempt to push back on China's strategic targeting of green-energy manufacturing.

The company, partly  READ FULL POST 25 COMMENTS

Two Cheers And One Jeer for The American Jobs Act
Moderator
Published: Friday 9 September 2011
Temporary tax cuts haven’t proven to be particularly effective in stimulating new spending in times of economic stress.

Two cheers for the President and his America’s Jobs Act. Cheer Number One: In presenting it to a joint session of Congress, he sounded as passionate and determined as he’s ever sounded.

Second cheer: He laid out the problem correctly and effectively. He explained why jobs and growth must be the nation’s first priority now — not the federal deficit. The economy is in crisis. People are hurting. So government must act, and act quickly. It’s irresponsible at a time like this to suggest that government should simply close down.

But a jeer because the jobs plan he presented isn’t nearly large enough or bold enough to make a major dent in unemployment, or to restart the economy.

$450 billion sounds like a lot – and is more than I expected — but some of this merely extends current spending (unemployment benefits) and tax cuts (in Social Security taxes), so it doesn’t add to aggregate demand.

The net new boost to the economy is closer to $300 billion. That doesn’t approach even half the gap between what the economy is now producing and what it could produce at or near full employment.

And much that $300 billion is in the form of temporary tax cuts to individuals and companies. Some of these make sense — enlarging the Social Security tax cut, extending it to employers, and giving small businesses a tax holiday for new hires.

But temporary tax cuts haven’t proven to be particularly effective in stimulating new spending in times of economic stress. People tend to use them to pay off debts or increase savings. Companies use them to reduce costs, but they won’t make additional hires unless they expect additional sales – which won’t occur unless consumers increase their spending.

That leaves some $140 billion for infrastructure – improving outworn school buildings, roads, bridges, ports, and so on. And $35 billion to help cash-starved ...

Obama Jobs Plan Bolder Than Expected, But Is It Enough?
Moderator
Published: Friday 9 September 2011
The official unemployment rate stands at 9.1 percent, and the White House is predicting the rate will not fall below six percent until 2017

Before a joint session of Congress, President Obama laid out a $447 billion package of tax cuts and new government spending Thursday night to help stimulate the economy and create new jobs. His speech comes at a time when 14 million people are unemployed and another 8.8 million are working part-time but seeking full-time work. The official unemployment rate stands at 9.1 percent, and the White House is predicting the rate will not fall below six percent until 2017. The jobs crisis is particularly severe for African Americans, who face an unemployment rate that soared to 16.7 percent in August—the highest it’s been since 1984. We speak with Dedrick Muhammad, senior director for economic programs for the NAACP, and Scott Paul, founding executive director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing.

Transcript: 

JUAN GONZALEZ: Before a joint session of Congress, President Obama laid out a $447 billion package of tax cuts and new government spending Thursday night to help stimulate the economy and create new jobs. The President’s speech comes at a time when 14 million people are unemployed and another 8.8 million are working part-time but seeking full-time work. The official unemployment rate stands at 9.1 percent, and the White House is predicting the rate will not fall below six percent until possibly 2017. The job crisis is particularly severe for African Americans. The black unemployment rate soared to 16.7 percent in August, the highest it’s been since 1984.

On Thursday night, Obama urged Congress to quickly pass the jobs package.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: The purpose of the American ...

Evidence of British & Pakistani Complicity on 9/11
Moderator
Published: Thursday 8 September 2011
“Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq remain among the poorest, most violent and corrupt countries while such oil companies as Exxon Mobile, Royal Dutch Shell, BP and Petronas have signed contracts with Baghdad to ensure themselves humongous rewards for decades to come.”

In the hours immediately after the 9/11 attacks, before so many theories muddied the airwaves, there was the clear sense that the scale of the operation would have had to involve at least one foreign sovereign state.

By mid-afternoon, then-CIA chief George Tenet laid the blame squarely on Al Qaeda. Mohamed Atta and 18 other hijackers were identified within 72 hours.

In November 2001, U.S. forces in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, uncovered a videotape which showed Osama bin Laden gloat about his victory.

End of the story--or so it seemed.

Connecting the dots, and the Bush Administration’s seeming failure to do so, obsessed the media for weeks and months to come. Doing so, however, despite officially touted “complexities,” was in fact exceedingly easy, some of the key events having taken place right under official noses in Washington, D.C.

By October 2001, ABC News, Fox and CNN were reporting a fund transfer of $100,000 in early August of that year from Dubai to two Florida bank accounts held by the 9/11 ringleader Atta. On October 6, CNN identified the man who had sent the money—one Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh. Yet, when questioned about him, the White House in its news briefings managed to prevent the story from gaining further traction by creating confusion through usage of aliases and alternate spellings for Sheikh’s name.

In his memoir, “In the Line of Fire,” former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf writes, “Omar Sheikh is a British national born to Pakistani parents in London on December 23, 1973. . . . He … went to the London School of Economics but dropped out before graduation. It is believed . . . that . . . he was recruited by the British intelligence agency MI-6.”

The Bush Administration knew that Sheikh had been sent by MI6 to Pakistan to cooperate with its counterpart, the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI). Protecting Britain and Pakistan as two ...

CIA’s Push for Drone War Driven by Internal Needs
Moderator
Published: Tuesday 6 September 2011
“The CIA’s institutional interests in continuing the drone war may have become so commanding that no director could afford to override those interests on the basis of his own analysis of how the drone strikes affect U.S. interests.”

When David Petraeus walks into the Central Intelligence Agency Tuesday, he will be taking over an organization whose mission has changed in recent years from gathering and analyzing intelligence to waging military campaigns through drone strikes in Pakistan, as well as in Yemen and Somalia.

But the transformation of the CIA did not simply follow the expansion of the drone war in Pakistan to its present level. CIA Director Michael Hayden lobbied hard for that expansion at a time when drone strikes seemed like a failed experiment.

The reason Hayden pushed for a much bigger drone war, it now appears, is that it had already created a whole bureaucracy in the anticipation of such a war.

During 2010, the CIA "drone war" in Pakistan killed as many as 1,000 people a year, compared with the roughly 2,000 a year officially estimated to have been killed by the SOF "night raids" in Afghanistan, according to a report in the Sep. 1 Washington Post.

A CIA official was quoted by the Post as saying that the CIA had become "one hell of a killing machine", before quickly revising the phrase to "one hell of an operational tool".

The shift in the CIA mission's has been reflected in the spectacular growth of its Counter-terrorism Center (CTC) from 300 employees in September 2001 to about 2,000 people today – 10 percent of the agency's entire workforce, according to the Post report.

The agency's analytical branch, which had been previously devoted entirely to providing intelligence assessments for policymakers, has been profoundly affected.

More than one-third of the personnel in the agency's analytical branch are now engaged wholly or primarily in providing support to CIA operations, according to senior agency officials cited by the Post. And nearly two-thirds of those are analyzing data used by the CTC drone war staff to make decisions on targeting.

Some of that shift of ...

10 Years of 9/11 Wars Is Enough
Moderator
Published: Monday 5 September 2011
Even if the White House withdraws troops according to its proposed schedule, by 2012 the number of U.S. troops still fighting that war will be higher than when Obama took office

The 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks is sure to bring televised images of somber reflection. Looking back is, in some ways, easier for commentators and pundits than wrestling with the current state of Washington's so-called "war on terror."

The United States is mired in two major wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with undeclared drone bombing campaigns in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. Launching these wars was fairly easy for the White House, with or without congressional approval. How any of them ends, though, remains unclear. Even the NATO war in Libya, which by many accounts has "ended," could become more chaotic and bloodier in the very near future.

The shift from Washington's time-limited military adventures that followed the Vietnam War — the relatively brief conflicts in Grenada, Panama, Somalia, and Kosovo, for example — to today's seemingly interminable and endlessly multiplying military commitments is one of the most notable, yet little noted, features of the post-9/11 landscape. Regrettably, too many mainstream journalists seem all too willing to encourage Washington's new "permanent war" footing.

The Iraq War, we've been led to believe, is the one that's ending, if it's not already over. Last summer's withdrawal of combat troops was treated in the press as the conclusion of a very long war. But this summer the news tells a different story: Obama administration officials are lobbying the Iraqi government to hammer out an agreement that would allow U.S. troops to stay beyond the end of the year.

One newspaper called this a "vexing problem" for President Barack Obama, since he'll have to explain why he's extending a war he vowed to end. And recent upticks in bombings in Iraq inevitably trigger worry about how dangerous it will be for U.S. troops to leave. This is a strange conclusion, given that this violence is happening while ...

How To Honor the True Spirit of 9/11: First, Ignore Limbaugh
Moderator
Published: Sunday 4 September 2011
To Rush Limbaugh and assorted lesser cogs in the right-wing noise machine, that was a deeply controversial statement and an attempt to “politicize” the event — as if the White House had ordered everybody to put on blue caps, join a local Obama for America chapter and then build a solar house for the poor

If volunteerism is suddenly unpatriotic and even "socialist," that will come as a nasty surprise to many of the Republicans and conservatives who always have supported such efforts, notably including both presidents named Bush. And if stepping up to help our neighbors and community on 9/11 would somehow dishonor the Americans killed in those infamous attacks — as feverish critics of  READ FULL POST 16 COMMENTS

Bush And Cheney Remind Us How We Got Into This Mess
Moderator
Published: Sunday 4 September 2011
Bush was hewing to what had already become Republican dogma and by now has become something akin to scripture: Taxes must always be cut because government must always be starved

Thank you, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, for emerging from your secure, undisclosed locations to remind us how we got into this mess: It didn’t happen by accident.

The important thing isn’t what Bush says in his interview with National Geographic or what scores Cheney tries to settle in his memoir. What matters is that as they return to the public eye, they highlight their record of wrongheaded policy choices that helped bring the nation to a sour, penurious state.

Questions about whether President Obama has been combative enough in dealing with the Republican opposition — or sufficiently ambitious in framing his progressive agenda — seem trivial when viewed in this larger context. Obama is tackling enormous problems that took many years to create. His presidential style is important insofar as it boosts or lessens his effectiveness, but its importance pales beside the generally righteous substance of what he’s trying to accomplish.

It was the Bush administration, you will recall, that sent the national debt into the stratosphere and choked off federal revenue to the point of asphyxiation. Bush and Cheney decided to fight two wars without even accounting — let alone paying — for them. Rather than raise taxes to cover the cost of military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, Bush opted to maintain unreasonable and unnecessary tax cuts.

So far, the wars and the tax cuts have cost the Treasury between $4 trillion and $5 trillion. If Bush had just left income tax rates alone, nobody except Ron Paul would be talking about the debt.

My aim isn’t to attack Bush but to attack his philosophy. When he was campaigning for the White House ...

The Lesson of the Chinese Invasion
Moderator
Published: Sunday 4 September 2011
As opposed to multinational corporations, which care only about maximizing shareholder profit, our public-policy arena is supposed to be focused on building America

Many economic Nostradamuses have long predicted that the epitaph on America's tombstone will ultimately read, "Made In China." But casual observers probably didn't think the funeral procession would happen this fast. In the last year, though, most have wised up. Thanks to a spate of mind-blowing headlines, we are learning that the Chinese invasion isn't just a distant possibility — it's happening right now.

First, in February, ABC News reported that almost every Americana-themed trinket sold in the Smithsonian Institute is made in China. Then news hit that San Francisco is importing its new bay bridge from China. Then came the  READ FULL POST 12 COMMENTS

Can’t Wait: Conservative Media Attack Obama’s Jobs Plan Before It’s Even Released
Elizabeth
Published: Saturday 3 September 2011
“This Isn’t A Serious Job Proposal. It’s Just Another Political Stunt From Obama And The Opticians.” –Rush Limbaugh

Can't Wait: Conservative Media Attack Obama's Jobs Plan Before It's Even Released

Conservative media have attacked President Obama's jobs plan as a "catastrophe," a "political stunt," and a "giveaway" to groups that Obama "favor[s]" before the plan has even been released.

Obama's Jobs Plan Has Yet To Be Released...

AP: President Obama Will "Deliver An Address On Jobs And The Economy To A Joint Session Of Congress On Sept. 8." The Associated Press reported:

In a retreat after an hours-long test of wills Wednesday, President Barack Obama agreed to deliver an address on jobs and the economy to a joint session of Congress on Sept. 8, yielding to House Speaker John Boehner, who had balked at Obama's request for a Sept. 7 speech.

Obama's address still gives him a grand stage to unveil his economic agenda, but it falls on the same evening as the opening game of the National Football League season. White House officials were working on the precise timing of the speech. [Associated Press, 8/31/11]

...But Right-Wing Media Have Attacked It Anyway

Rush Limbaugh: "This Isn't A Serious Job Proposal. It's Just Another Political Stunt From Obama And The Opticians." From the September 1 edition of Premiere Radio Networks' The Rush Limbaugh Show:

LIMBAUGH: It is interesting to go through the drive-by media headlines on what happened regarding John Boehner's refusal to agree to the date September the 7th for Obama's political speech, a campaign speech before a joint session of -- no, it wasn't a jobs speech. It was never going to be a jobs speech. ...

Obama Can’t Create Many Jobs Without Congress’ Help
Moderator
Published: Saturday 3 September 2011
The Constitution gives Congress primary power over taxes and spending

President Barack Obama's own job may be on the line as he presents his plan for job creation next week, with the nation's unemployment rate mired at 9.1 percent and his popularity at a record low.

He'll call on Congress to back him on a package of proposals that the White House says will put Americans back to work. Earlier this summer he tried to rally public pressure on Congress to do as he wished, and he may do so again, exercising his power of "the bully pulpit." This week he threatened to bash Republicans on the campaign trail if they fail to follow his lead.

But Republicans in Congress are dead set against any big new spending program, and they control the House of Representatives, so the prospect of no big new jobs program rolling out of Washington before 2013 looms large.

In light of that, is there anything else Obama can do on his own to spur job creation?

Probably nothing significant.

The White House says there are some steps the executive branch can take without congressional approval, but independent analysts — even those who are pressing Obama to make an ambitious case in his address next Thursday for a sweeping job-creation package — say the magnitude of the nation's problems is so large that it's beyond anything the executive branch can do on its own.

"I know it's tempting to look for a man-on-a-white-horse response to this situation as a way out of the gridlock between the two parties ... but we have to solve this as a country," said William Galston, a former policy adviser to President Bill Clinton and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a center-left policy research center.

Galston said presidents had executive power they could use to "speed things up or slow things down" within existing programs, "but if you try to do things that go beyond what Congress has authorized, particularly right now with the partisan ...

Labor Day: A Day to Rest, Remember, And Act - for “Entitlements” And Jobs
Moderator
Published: Saturday 3 September 2011
As the Department of Labor explains, “Labor Day is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers.”

Rest. A time of rest from long hours of work. That's the principle enshrined in Labor Day, a 125-year-old American holiday that celebrates the spirit of organized labor. It's the spirit behind the six-day workweek, too. A day of rest was enshrined in monotheism's holy texts, after all, but it didn't become law until labor unions demanded it. ("Thou shalt remember the Sabbath and keep it holy" - did your boss forget?)

It's also the spirit behind the principle that people who work all their lives deserve a financially secure retirement. Our forebears fought to win us this time of rest, too, and now we're called on to defend it once more.

The White House keeps hinting that the President will once again propose cuts to Medicare and Social Security - either when he presents his jobs proposal next week, or shortly afterwards. That would roll back the hard-won principle that people who work hard deserve their time of rest. It would also be a harsh blow to a struggling economy after a devastating jobs report.

If Americans return from their Labor Day celebrations to hear their President announce these cuts, it will feel like the breaking of an ancient compact. Voters should encourage him not to make that mistake, and not to break that promise.

Days of Struggle

As the Department of Labor explains, "Labor Day is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers." The first Labor Day celebration took place in New York City in 1882, organized by one of the first trade unions. States and municipalities began recognizing it as a holiday in the years that followed, and ...

Keystone Pipeline Fight: Wall Street Is Watching
Moderator
Published: Friday 2 September 2011
White House approval could spur investments in dirtier fossil fuels and worsen global warming

Actresses Darryl Hannah and Margot Kidder and hundreds of less well-known activists are ending a two-week civil disobedience campaign focused on preventing Obama administration approval of a pipeline to ferry oil extracted from Canadian tar sands to U.S. refineries. They say it threatens forests, water supplies, and will radically worsen global warming.

But climate scientists and oil industry analysts say more is at stake than the fate of the so-called Keystone XL project. It is among a handful of energy projects in North America whose approval could boost investment and create momentum for unconventional sources of fossil fuels. Many scientists believe increased use of such dirtier energy could make it harder to avert a climate crisis.

While protestors want White House officials and the public to notice, investors already are watching developments closely – and the pipeline’s builder, whose chief lobbyist has deep connections in Washington, is spending heavily to influence the outcome. To Wall Street, approval of extending the pipeline to refineries along the Gulf of Mexico would be more than symbolic.

“It could give a signal that the U.S. isn’t necessarily going to step up regulations” on new and dirtier forms of fossil fuels, said Jacob Correll, a commodities analyst at Summit Energy, a consulting firm. “It might give investors more comfort that it’s going to be a country that’s more conducive to continuing these drilling investments going forward.”

If TransCanada Corp., a Calgary, Alberta-based energy company, receives administration approval to build the $7 billion pipeline expansion, it “could add incentives for refineries” to process dirtier grades of crude, said Sparsh Khandeshi, a refineries law fellow at the Environmental Integrity Project, an advocacy group founded by former Environmental ...

Asking for What Obama Promised
Moderator
Published: Friday 2 September 2011
Protesters push Obama to resist the influence of the oil industry and stop the Keystone XL pipeline.

It’s hard to get away from corporations’ influence in Washington, D.C. Even at the new Martin Luther King Jr. memorial this weekend, I noted that the sponsors list, etched on a stone wall, was a litany of the most recognizable corporate heavy-hitters—including Walmart, ExxonMobil, Fannie Mae, Lehman Brothers, PepsiCo, and BP. An ironic tribute to a man who openly questioned capitalism and the deep gap between rich and poor.

Over the past two days, I watched more than 200 people get arrested in protests that are attempting to push back against the oil industry’s influence on a key decision that President Obama is about to make. In total, there have been more than 700 arrests since the demonstrations began. In their signs and speeches, the protesters draw self-consciously on King’s legacy of civil disobedience, but many are not seasoned activists. Most of the people I met at the White House gates were core supporters of Obama in 2008. They put their weight and energy into Obama’s campaign, knocking on doors to deliver him a landslide. Three years later, they are angry and frustrated with the president.

The protests focus on stopping the 

Lessons From Central Cell Block
Moderator
Published: Tuesday 30 August 2011
It’s hard for me to take on a president I worked to elect, hard to say the plain truth: that on environmental issues he’s been content to make small changes around the edge but unwilling to use the power of his office to make real change.

I’m a wuss.
 
I figured that out on August 20, when a guard was leading me down the cellblock in manacles and leg irons, and I looked through the bars of one cage, and there was Dan Choi, the former Army lieutenant turned gay rights activist.

I knew he’d been arrested with us that morning outside the White House, protesting a climate-killing pipeline called Keystone XL, planned to run from the tar sands of Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico. But it was only now, in the DC jail’s Central Cell Block, that it really struck me what his participation meant. He’d been down this road before—arrested three times outside the White House, galvanizing the successful effort to end “don’t ask, don’t tell”—so unlike the rest of us, he had a pretty good sense of how his day would end. He did it anyway.

He did it even though climate change isn’t his issue. I didn’t come forward to do time for gay marriage, or immigration reform or any of the other things I believe in; I’m an environmentalist. So looking at Dan made me understand what solidarity looks like—how those of us on the fringe should be uniting to provide common pressure on an administration and a Congress that rarely feels enough heat to veer from the corporate status quo.

Mostly, though, I felt like a wuss—and not ...

The Real Obama
Moderator
Published: Friday 26 August 2011
“As president, Obama is not doing well and it's not just a matter of the 53 percent disapproval rating.”

The White House that shook in Tuesday's earthquake has been home to its present incumbent for 32 months. President Obama wasn't around to watch the furniture shake. He's up on Martha's Vineyard for the third year in a row with Michelle and their two daughters, bunkered in a $25,000-a-week holiday rental on a lush 28-acre estate in the little town of Chilmark.

He's keeping a low profile. Words like "standoffish" roll petulantly off the tongues of the island's liberal elites. They were spoiled by Bill Clinton, who spent six presidential vacations on the Vineyard. No renter, he. Bill freeloaded on rich pals and party donors, mostly synonymous.

No one could ever accuse Bill of being standoffish, though he once confided to Vernon Jordan that he preferred Jackson Hole, Wyo., to Martha's Vineyard as a vacation spot since it was impossible to get "pussy" in the stuffy Massachusetts resort.

Obama's standoffishness includes, I am informed by one knowledgeable Martha's Vineyard local, failure to show at an exclusive fundraiser. As well as a party of his friend Henry Louis Gates, the Harvard professor whose July 2009 spat with the Cambridge police once prompted the normally hyper-prudent Obama to say the cops had acted "stupidly" — probably the most vivid off-the-cuff judgment of his entire presidency.

He did show up for one event, but without Michelle. The presidential excuse for her no-show was that he and Michelle didn't "want to leave the kids alone." Alone? One of the houses on the Chilmark estate is occupied by the Secret Service, another by close aides. You'd think at least two could have been press-ganged into child-minding duties.

Like many presidents trying to have a holiday, Obama has drawn fire for lounging about on the Vineyard for 10 days while ordinary Americans battle hard times, and Hurricane Irene threatens the Atlantic ...

Arrested at the White House
Moderator
Published: Thursday 25 August 2011
“Acting as a living tribute to Martin Luther King.”

I didn’t think it was possible, but my admiration for Martin Luther King, Jr., grew even stronger these past days.

As I headed to jail as part of the first wave of what is turning into the biggest civil disobedience action in the environmental movement for many years, I had the vague idea that I would write something. Not an epic like King's “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” but at least, you know, a blog post. Or a tweet.

But frankly, I wasn’t up to it. The police, surprised by how many people turned out on the first day of two weeks of protests at the White House, decided to teach us a lesson. As they told our legal team, they wanted to deter anyone else from coming -- and so with our first crew they were… kind of harsh.

We spent three days in D.C.’s Central Cell Block, which is exactly as much fun as it sounds like it might be. You lie on a metal rack with no mattress or bedding and sweat in the high heat; the din is incessant; there’s one baloney sandwich with a cup of water every 12 hours.

I didn’t have a pencil -- they wouldn’t even let me keep my wedding ring -- but more important, I didn’t have the peace of mind to write something. It’s only now, out 12 hours and with a good night’s sleep under my belt, that I’m able to think straight. And so, as I said, I’ll go to this weekend’s big celebrations for the opening of the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial on the Washington Mall with even more respect for his calm power.

Preacher, speaker, writer under fire, but also tactician. He really understood the power of nonviolence, a power we’ve experienced in the last few days. When the police cracked down on us, the publicity it produced cemented two of the main purposes of our protest:

First, it made Keystone XL -- the new, 1,700-mile-long pipeline we’re trying to block that will vastly increase the flow of ...

“Helpless President Lit” - The Latest Trend in Political Tragedy
Moderator
Published: Wednesday 24 August 2011
“The only thing more destructive than expecting too much out of our leaders - or ourselves - is expecting too little.”

Call it "Helpless President Lit." A recent Ezra Klein column is the latest in a growing genre which celebrates our Commander-in-Chief, not as a powerful leader, but as a perennial victim. It portrays him as someone who's powerless over other people's actions, and sometimes even over his own. In this genre the President is forever at the whim of forces beyond his control, even when he has a supermajority in the Senate and a strong majority in the House.

Helpless President Lit is a form of melodrama. It's like an old-fashioned cliffhanger with the President replacing Little Nell, that noble young creature who's forever being tied to a train track or suspended over a gorge by some dastardly villain. Except the country's about to get hurt, not him - and nobody's coming to the rescue.

There'd be no point discussing this backward-looking and speculative genre if it didn't encourage the President and his supporters to continue on such a destructive course of action. I agree with Klein and other critics who say we focus too much attention on the Presidency. But this discussion affects our thinking and behavior at all levels of political engagement.

The only thing more destructive than expecting too much out of our leaders - or ourselves - is expecting too little.

The Rules of the Genre

There are strict conventions in ...

Your Job, Mr. President, Is Jobs
Moderator
Published: Wednesday 24 August 2011
“The people are waiting. Do they have a president or not?”

Having just been recently rolled by tea party Republicans in the debt-ceiling circus, Barack Obama now says that his priority is job creation. Wow, what took him so long?

Jobs should have been Priority No. 1 when he first took office. But instead, the Obamacans put Wall Street banksters first, dumping trillions of dollars from our public funds into saving the butts of greedheads who crashed our economy. They bailed out Wall Streeters without even requiring that the bankers invest in job-creating, grassroots enterprises. The jobs will come later, they said. Wrong.

A fragile recovery did sprout in 2009, but, oxymoronically, it was called a "jobless recovery," and workers keep getting pink slips. Obama himself explained that jobs are "a lagging economic indicator." Later, he told us.

Then, last December, with an exploding crisis of joblessness knocking our economy to its knees, who did the White House help? The super-rich! Their ridiculous Bush tax breaks were extended for another two years, without any requirements to use this windfall to create a single job.

"Soon," Obama said back then — we'll get to that pesky job issue ... soon. Now, the day after signing the debt reduction monstrosity that slashed trillions from programs to help working families, the president says that, at last, he's ready to take action on jobs.

Really? What kind of action? "I will urge (Congress) to immediately take some steps — bipartisan, commonsense steps — that will make a difference," he boldly declared. But as we've seen, "bipartisan" steps only go backward. And, as for "immediately," the Urger in Chief added that lawmakers should ...

The New Old Obama
Elizabeth
Published: Monday 15 August 2011
The president's loyalists believe that a new Obama—or, in many ways, the old Obama of 2008—is about to appear.

For President Obama, these are the days of never hearing an encouraging word. Not since his own supporters were losing faith in his presidential campaign in the summer of 2007 has Obama confronted so many bad reviews and such widespread frustration and angry criticism from his own side.

Now, the censure is reinforced by terrible tidings from the outside in the form of wildly swinging stock markets, persistent unemployment and divisions in the nation's capital so deep that they make the period around President Clinton's impeachment look like an era of good feelings.

For Obama's lieutenants, his comeback from the '07 summer doldrums provided an overlearned lesson that encouraged them to ignore external criticism and cruise along with complete confidence in their man's almost magical powers of restoration.

The president's loyalists still have faith in him and still love to criticize media narratives they think underestimate him. But this time, both he and they are expressing a level of frustration that may be the healthiest thing happening to Obama in what is an otherwise dismal moment in his presidency. A White House crowd often too sure of itself is fully aware of the ferocious fight Obama faces and the seriousness of the problems he confronts. Their mood and past experience suggests that a new Obama -- or, in many ways, the old Obama of 2008 -- is about to reappear.

The biggest factor is the end of the default threat. Make no mistake: The administration was petrified that conservatives in Congress really would push the country over the cliff in the debt-ceiling fight. GOP leaders may have realized the dangers involved, but Obama worried that if he miscalculated, House Republicans might not muster a majority to ...

Show Us Your Plan
Elizabeth
Published: Sunday 7 August 2011
"If the Republican candidates believe that the spending caps in the House-passed "Cut, Cap and Balance Act" are feasible, they should explain what they'd cut."

The 2012 election comes complete with a take-home exam. Voters should demand that every candidate, including the incumbent, take it.

The test consists of a single question:

The new congressional super-committee is supposed to produce another $1.2 to $1.5 trillion in savings over the next decade.

Please identify where in the budget you would find these savings, identifying specific program cuts and, if applicable, tax changes. You may exceed the target but may not come up with less.

However, to make this assignment somewhat easier, you will be able to credit yourself with savings on interest payments, equivalent to 20 percent of the target.

For purposes of scoring this exam, Congressional Budget Office baselines will be used. You may use any of the alternate baselines employed by the CBO, depending on whether you choose to let the Bush tax cuts expire on schedule and would like to receive budgetary credit for the same.

Answers given in general platitudes -- "winning the future" and "cut, cap and balance" -- without providing specifics will be marked down. Significant points will also be taken off for answers that express the "solution" in terms of percentage cuts or caps, or that envision general reductions -- e.g. "Medicare savings" -- without identifying how these will be achieved. ...

The Lesson for Democrats: Any Republican Will Do
Elizabeth
Published: Thursday 4 August 2011
"Eighty percent of Americans think the country is on the wrong track, and a majority think Obama is doing a bad job."

He blew it. Two days before the United States was officially set to default on its debts August 2, President Barack Obama had the Republicans where he wanted them.

All he had to do was announce that he'd trudged the last half mile towards a deal, but that there is no pleasing fanatics who reject all possibilities of compromise. Fanatics who are ready and eager to shut down the government, to see seniors starve and veterans denied their ...

White House Urges End to Programs that Can Make Dangerous Jobs Safer
Moderator
Published: Thursday 4 August 2011
"Obama budget cuts could impair safety in some of the deadliest occupations."

Loggers, farmworkers and commercial fishermen die on the job at an astonishing pace.  In 2009, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the fatality rate for agricultural workers was five times that of American industry as a whole. The rate for loggers was almost 19 times as high, for fishermen 58 times as high.

Trees and tractors crush these workers. Pesticides poison them. They succumb to heat and water.

Even so, the Obama administration wants to eliminate a research and outreach program aimed at finding new ways to prevent deaths, injuries and illnesses in the three high-risk occupations. It also wants to trim a program that trains occupational physicians and nurses, safety professionals and industrial hygienists. The savings, if both programs disappeared, would be about $47 million. The cuts, proposed in February, were not a product of the recent standoff over the debt ceiling.

The two programs are funded though the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention . The administration argues the programs are of questionable value, and that one of them has accomplished its mission. The White House urges that both be stripped from the CDC’s $315 million occupational safety and health budget for fiscal year 2012, which begins Oct. 1.

But the programs have some ardent fans, who hope to dissuade Congress from dropping the ax when it returns from its August recess.

READ FULL POST 1 COMMENTS

Fox Defaulted To Bad Economic Policy During Debt Ceiling Debate
Moderator
Published: Monday 1 August 2011
"Fox figures consistently dismissed or downplayed concerns over government default."

During the debt ceiling debate, Fox has relentlessly pushed economic policies and positions that experts have said would be harmful to the economy, including downplaying default concerns, openly advocating for default and a credit downgrade, and actively lobbying for a balanced budget amendment.

 

Fox Figures Consistently Dismissed Or Downplayed Concerns Over Government Default

Hannity: Democrats' "Doomsday Rhetoric Would Have You Believe" That If The Ceiling Deadline Passes, The "Economy Would Crumble." On the July 11 edition of his Fox News show, Sean Hannity said: "As the deficit reduction talks continue in Washington, Democrats have been ramping up their efforts to scare the American people into supporting this deal. Now, the left's doomsday rhetoric would have you believe that if Congress does not vote to raise the debt limit by August the 2nd, the American economy would crumble." [Fox News, Hannity, 7/11/11, via Media Matters]

Dobbs Calls Debt Ceiling Deadline A "False Date" And "Pure Fiction." On his July 11 Fox Business show, host Lou Dobbs called the August 2 deadline for raising the debt limit a "false date" and "pure fiction." Dobbs made his comments in response to J. Dennis Hastert, former Republican speaker of the House, who said that "the federal government can decide what it's going to pay, when, and where." [Fox Business, Lou Dobbs Tonight, 7/11/11, via Media Matters]

Carlson: "Some Republicans" Are Asking Whether Debt Ceiling Deadline Is A "Democratic Ploy." On the July 12 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, co-host ...

Green With Tea Party Envy
Moderator
Published: Monday 1 August 2011
"Democrats are empty of political innovation. The tea party is not."

I suffer from tea party envy. There is little about the actual party I like and there are some members I abhor, but I am jealous of its sense of purpose, its determination and its bracing conviction that it is absolutely right. In its own way, it waves a crimson battle flag while President Obama’s is a sickly taupe -- the limp banner of an ideological muddle.

Obama would be a good White House chief of staff, but as a president he lacks political savvy. He never knew how to get ahead of the tea party wave. He never knew how to marshal -- or create -- his own constituency. Republican invective notwithstanding, he lacks demagogic tools. He tries to solve problems instead of, for the Republicans, creating them. Barack Obama does not do pain.

Still, Obama came to the White House at a tough time for a Democrat. Washington has gone topsy-turvy. The liberal party, the Democrats, has turned conservative. Its lawmakers want to conserve Social Security and conserve Medicare and conserve a myriad of other programs that have turned into patronage plums for important constituencies.

The Republicans of the tea party, on the other hand, say they are conservatives, but they are really radicals -- maybe even nihilists. They would destroy rather than compromise. They are drunk on bromides about Big Government and Small Business and the virtues of a balanced budget, no matter what damage all that does to an already sick economy. In another era, folks with this mentality would be yelling “Power to the people” or some such thing because a good slogan is more persuasive than careful analysis any day. You can, ...

A Hold-Your-Nose Deal
Moderator
Published: Monday 1 August 2011
"Obama tried, and failed, to shake Republicans out of their fevered dream that the $14.3 trillion national debt can be brought under control with budget cuts only."

It's supremely galling. It's unbalanced, unfair and mostly unwise. For President Obama and the Democratic Party, it's a comprehensive defeat. But it's not the end of the world.

The deal struck Sunday to free the U.S. economy from its Republican hostage-takers is impossible for progressives to love. It gets all the big things wrong, starting with the most fundamental: Obama never should have acquiesced in linking a routine hike in the debt ceiling -- necessary to pay bills Congress has already incurred -- with all the difficult spending questions that should be dealt with in the budget process.

Obama's starting point was a demand for a "clean," unencumbered bill to raise the ceiling; House Speaker John Boehner said no. What would have happened if Obama refused to budge? We don't know because that's not his style. It would be nice, someday, to find out.

Once this became a debate about debt reduction and national priorities, it was obvious that budget cuts needed to be matched by new revenue. After all, if you look at historical norms, spending is too high and tax receipts are too low by about the same amount. Obama commandeered the bully pulpit and demanded a "balanced approach" that included revenue. He inveighed against undertaxed "millionaires and billionaires" who fly around in corporate jets. Polls showed that by a considerable margin, the public agreed.

Republicans insisted on budget cuts only, with not a cent of new revenue -- and that, ladies and gentlemen, is what they got. There's no way to spin it: Boehner and the GOP won. Obama and the Democrats lost.

This isn't a rout, however. It's a retreat, in relatively good order, that leaves Democrats provisioned for the battles to come.

Four Myths About the Debt-Ceiling Deal
Moderator
Published: Monday 1 August 2011
"The 'debt ceiling' deal has been crafted so that 'centrist' Democrats and Republicans can finally implement the draconian measures they both want."

Today we're watching the end of a brief manufactured crisis - and the beginning of a long national nightmare. The "debt ceiling" deal has been crafted so that "centrist" (i.e., right-wing) Democrats and Republicans can finally implement the draconian measures they both want, but in an indirect way that gives them as little accountability as possible.

As might be expected, there's a lot of confusion around the deal -- in fact, it's designed to create confusion. Here are four myths about the deal, followed by four ways it's likely to hurt you personally if it isn't stopped:

Myth #1: The deal "preserves Social Security and Medicare."

Right-leaning Democrats are busy telling this story this morning, but it's not true. It only defers the day of reckoning. Social Security and Medicare are exempted from the first and smaller round of cuts, but not from the larger $1.5 trillion in cuts that the unelected "Super Congress" must find. Half of this unelected group will consist of Republicans pledged to gut these programs, and it's looking likely that at least half of the Democrats will include Senators like Kent Conrad, the entitlement-cutting solon who briefly shuttled messages between the two parties as this "deal" was being crafted.

The likeliest outcome? Unnecessary and drastic benefit cuts to Social Security that probably involve raising the retirement age even more than it's already scheduled to rise, the "chained-CPI" that artificially lowers cost-of-living standards to well below what seniors need for their expenses, and possibly a means-testing system that sounds reasonable but will quickly target middle-income Americans.

This isn't a deal to protect Medicare and Social Security. It's a deal to deliver those cuts through a body that's not accountable to voters (except in their own states and ...

Congressional Left Slam Obama's Debt Deal
Moderator
Published: Monday 1 August 2011
The question that remains is: How much damage?

“Given the choice between a Republican and someone who acts like a Republican, people will vote for the real Republican all the time,” said Harry Truman.
 
If the thirty-third president was right, then Barack Obama just did himself and his party a world of hurt.
 
Faced with the threat that Tea Party–pressured Republicans in the House really would steer the United States toward default, and in so doing steer the US economy over the cliff, Obama had to do something. But instead of bold action—borrowing a page from Ronald Reagan to demand a straight up-or-down vote on raising the debt ceiling; borrowing a page from Franklin Roosevelt to pledge to use the authority afforded him by the Constitution to defend the full faith and credit of the United States—the president engaged in inside-the-Beltway bargaining of the most dysfunctional sort.

In cutting a deal with Congressional Republicans that places Democratic legacy programs—Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid—at risk while cutting essential programs for working families and the poor, Obama has positioned himself and his administration to the right of where mainstream Republicans such as Howard Baker, Bob Dole and George H.W. Bush used to stand in fights with the fringe elements of their party.

Now, the fringe is in charge of the GOP. And Obama is cutting deals to satisfy Republicans that Britain’s banking minister describes as “

President Obama Tries for a Fiscal Plan
Moderator
Published: Friday 29 July 2011
The Empty Bully Pulpit
Elizabeth
Published: Wednesday 27 July 2011
"The man who has occupied the Oval Office since January, 2009 is someone entirely different — a man seemingly without a compass, a tactician who veers rightward one day and leftward the next..."

How did we get into this mess?

I thought I’d seen Washington at its worst. I was there just after Watergate. I was there when Jimmy Carter imploded. I was there during the government shut-down of 1995.

But I hadn’t seen the worst. This is the worst.

How can it be that with over 9 percent unemployment, essentially no job growth, widening inequality, falling real wages, and an economy that’s almost dead in the water — we’re locked in a battle over how to cut the budget deficit?

Part of the answer is a Republican Party that’s the most irresponsible and rigidly ideological I’ve ever witnessed.

Part of the answer is the continuing gravitational pull of the Great Recession.

But another part of the answer lies with the President — and his inability or unwillingness to use the bully pulpit to tell Americans the truth, and mobilize them for what must be done.

Barack Obama is one of the most eloquent and intelligent people ever to grace the White House, which makes his failure to tell the story of our era all the more disappointing and puzzling. Many who were drawn to him in 2008 (including me) were dazzled by the power of his words and insights — his speech at the 2004 Democratic convention, his autobiography and subsequent policy book, his talks about race and other divisive issues during the campaign.

We were excited by the prospect of a leader who could educate — an “educator in chief” who would use the bully pulpit to explaini what has happened to the United States in recent decades, where we must go, and why.

But the man who has occupied the Oval Office since January, 2009 is someone entirely different — a man seemingly without a compass, a tactician who veers rightward one day and leftward the next, an inside-the Beltway dealmaker who doesn’t explain his comprises in light of larger goals.

In his inaugural address, Obama ...

How House Progressives Can Save The Debt Ceiling Deal ... And The Middle Class
Moderator
Published: Monday 25 July 2011
"House Progressives have leverage - lots of leverage. "

As online "Countdown Clocks" count the hours before there's a debt ceiling disaster, the spotlight is on the individuals and groups who can make or break a deal. We've heard a lot about the Senate's Gang of Six, members of the Administration, House leaders Boehner and Cantor, and the radical Tea Party Republicans who allegedly hold 'veto power' over any proposed deal.

But another group holds at least as much power as those radical Republicans, and it has the added advantage of representing views that are widely supporting by Americans in both political parties. That group is the House Progressive Caucus.

The media coverage is revealing. Tea Party Republican Joe Walsh holds no official position in Congress except that of a freshman Representative, and his economic views are far to the right of the American mainstream. Yet as we write this, a Google News search on "Joe Walsh" (excluding "guitar" and "Eagles" to eliminate "Rocky Mountain Way" Joe Walsh) gets 1,461 hits. Rep. Keith Ellison, on the other hand, co-chairs a large Congressional caucus whose support may be vital to the passage of any deal. Yet his name only gets 157 hits - a figure that falls even more when you eliminate references to his religion.

Rep. Joe Walsh: To paraphrase his namesake, life's been good to him so far. Rep. Keith Ellison, on the other hand, must sometimes feel as if he's fighting in the dark. Yet the way ...

Ralph Nader Is Tired of Running for President
Moderator
Published: Tuesday 5 July 2011
When most Americans face the nightmare before us, when they realize the irreversible devastation unleashed on the ecosystem and the economic misery from which they cannot escape, violence will have a broad and terrifying appeal..

The most important moral and intellectual voices within a disintegrating society are slowly discredited when their nonviolent protests and calls for justice cannot alter intransigent and corrupt systems of power. The repeated acts of peaceful civil disobedience, efforts at electoral and political reform and the fight to protect the rule of law are dismissed as useless by an embittered, dispossessed and betrayed public. The demagogues and hatemongers, the purveyors of violence, easily seduce enraged and bewildered masses in the final stages of collapse with false promises of vengeance, new glory and moral renewal. And in the spiral downward the good among us are reviled as naive and ineffectual fools.

There is no shortage of courageous dissidents in America. They seek to thwart the imperial disasters, looming financial insolvency and suicidal addiction to fossil fuel. They have stood in small knots on street corners week after week, month after month, year after year, to denounce the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have occupied banks, shut down coal-fired power plants, attempted to halt mountaintop removal, interfered with whaling ships and walked in blustery weather to the White House, where they were arrested. They are struggling to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza on a ship called the Audacity of Hope. But because the corporate state and the two major political parties are indifferent to principled calls for reform, and because the mass of the public still buys into the myths of globalization and the American dream, the plundering and destruction continue unimpeded.

When most Americans face the nightmare before us, when they realize the irreversible devastation unleashed on the ecosystem and the economic misery from which they cannot escape, violence will have a broad and terrifying appeal. Those of us who demand a return to the rule of law and remain steadfast to nonviolence will find ourselves cast aside—the useful ...

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