Deftones: Koi No Yokan - Pop Matters

Koi No Yokan is a record that will forever sit high upon Deftones’ burgeoning list of impressive achievements.

Chino Moreno’s distinctive vocal performance truly elevates the stature of each song: his delivery dripping over the liquid latex grooves of “Graphic Nature”, his calypso phrasing contrasting with the bloody “Gauze”, and his pitched shrieks and glorious croon echoing around the mountainous riffs of “Goon Squad”.

Deftones have built their legacy upon this constant creation of musical/vocal friction, and the kinetic energy that comes from combining grace and aggression has been masterfully harnessed on Koi No Yokan and expelled throughout.

The majority of songs are elaborately layered and contain interesting intros/outros that make Koi No Yokan play out as a continuous piece of music rather than a collection of songs that have no relationship with each other. Koi No Yokan also sees Deftones employ the production skills of Nick Raskulinecz for the second time in a row, and their interactive relationship is beginning to resemble the band’s highly successful past partnership with Terry Date. And Raskulinecz has done enough to make this album sound expansive, especially during more elaborate compositions: “Tempest”, “Rosemary” and “Entombed”.

At times during their existence, Deftones have been their own worst enemy, but the rich vein of form revived on 2010's Diamond Eyes continues with Koi No Yokan and does not show any signs of exhausting itself. When it comes to metal, positivity is not an energy that normally fuels artistic endeavours, with band’s preferring to rely on negativity to fuel their creative fires. But this fit and lean version of Deftones have turned negativity into vibrant positivity and channelled it into their cohesive and textured seventh full-length, Koi No Yokan – a record that will forever sit high upon Deftones’ burgeoning list of impressive achievements.

The full article is available here

Do Armed Civilians Stop Mass Shooters? Actually, No - Mark Follman

In the wake of the unthinkable massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, pro-gun ideologues are once again calling for ordinary citizens to arm themselves as a solution to mass shootings.

This argument isn't just absurd on its face; there is no evidence to support it.  Two people who tried it in recent years were gravely wounded or killed. And law enforcement overwhelmingly hates the idea of armed citizens getting involved.

Those pesky facts haven't stopped the "arm America more!" crowd from pressing the argument with alleged examples of successful armed interventions. The problem is, the few examples they keep using—in which they depict plain old folks acting heroically and with definitive results—fall apart under minimal scrutiny.

The full article is available here

The Actual War on Christmas: The Corrosive Power of Commerce - by John Brueggemann

It is the market that is attacking Christmas. Indeed, the market has all but conquered Christmas.

I personally don’t mind seeing religious symbolism in public places (from any tradition), but I can see why some do, especially those on the wrong side of power. Surely it is fair to protect some public space from evangelism.  Even a cursory reading of the Establishment Clause of the Constitution undermines the Right's annual, manufactured whine-fest.

What I do resent is the perversion of those traditions through commercialization ruthlessly injected into our lives by way of unrelenting corporate advertising, product placement all over the public square, and the consumerism-driven cultural amnesia of our time. I’m certainly not moved by the crocodile tears of the likes of Fox News. Cynically trafficking in fear and resentment in the name of Jesus sounds pretty close to genuine blasphemy.

It is the market that is attacking Christmas. Indeed, the market has all but conquered Christmas.  If Christmas has switched loyalties, it is at the behest of its new master that it has become imperial in its ambitions.

There is not a War on Christmas, it might be said, but a War of Christmas.

Jon Stewart says Christmas has laid siege to other holidays. Black Friday started a day earlier this year (on what used to be known as Thanksgiving) and lasted a week. Christmas trappings now go on sale well before Halloween.  The cultural imperative to find the next cool thing — advanced by many on the Web — becomes focused during this season: find the best trappings (on Thanksgiving Day, if necessary), find the hottest gift (fight for it if it is the last one on the shelf), and find the best price.

There is a war under way. But it is not about whether a Christmas tree can be mounted here or there. It is about whether the market will define the sacred.

Advent invites Christians to do exactly the opposite of what the Christmas shopping season urges: slow down, get ready for something out of the ordinary, look to the most important promises of God and neighbor, and ponder what gifts we have to offer.

The full article is available here

Debtpocalypse, Austerity and the Hollowing Out of America - Steve Fraser

Think of it as the archeology of decline,

Grim as the Debtpocalypse scenarios might seem, there is something confected about the mise-en-scène, like an un-fun Playland.  After all, there is no fiscal cliff, or at least there was none -- until the 2 parties built it.

And yet the pit exists.  It goes by the name of “austerity.” However, it didn’t just appear in time for the last election season or the lame-duck session of Congress to follow.  It was dug more than a generation ago, and has been getting wider and deeper ever since.  Millions of people have long made it their home.  “Debtpocalypse” is merely the latest installment in a tragic, 40-year-old story of the dispossession of American working people.

Think of it as the archeology of decline, or a tale of two worlds. As a long generation of austerity politics hollowed out the heartland, the traders and financial wizards of Wall Street gobbled up ever more of the nation's resources. It was another Great Migration -- instead of people, though, trillions of dollars were being sucked out of industrial America and turned into “financial instruments” and new, exotic forms of wealth.  If blue-collar Americans were the particular victims here, then high finance is what consumed them. 

The full article is available here

10 Ways to Avoid the Fiscal Cliff - Josh Harkinson

Although you might never know it from listening to the pundits, America isn't broke.

We have plenty of money to pay for government programs—we've just gradually lost our ability to collect it.  The money is there if you know where to look for it.

Here are 10 ways that politicians could avoid the fiscal cliff's $1.2 trillion in trigger cuts.

While these ideas alone won't immediately eliminate the budget deficit, they will, combined with expected growth, point the nation towards a sustainable fiscal path.

1. Stop giving investors a sweetheart deal
2. Quit subsidizing mansions and vacation homes
3. End the "step up" giveaway on inherited stocks
4. Revitalize the "death tax"
5. Heed America's favorite investment guru, Warren Buffet
6. Reset back to Clinton-era tax rates for upper incomes
7. Take agribusiness giants off the federal teat
8. End oil and gas sweetheart subsidies
9. Forget cap and trade: Impose a carbon tax instead
10. Stop giving corporations an excuse to hide profits and send jobs abroad

The full article is available here

The Central Park Five - AV Club

The facts of the case mattered less than what it represented: a city fighting back against the thugs, whether they were guilty of anything or not.
Ken Burns’ documentary The Central Park Five departs from his usual style, perhaps because it’s a collaboration with his daughter Sarah (who previously wrote a book about the subject of this film) and her husband David McMahon; or perhaps because it’s not a look back at America’s distantly painful past, but rather about a fresher wound; a rush to judgment in a city on edge in 1989.  New York City was dealing escalating racial tension, exacerbated by gang violence, police brutality, and vigilantism. 

The Central Park Five tells its story largely via interviews with the Five themselves, supplemented with archival news footage and atmospheric shots of the locations where these events took place. Missing from the film—because they declined to participate—are the rape victim, her actual attacker, or anyone from the police or the prosecution. And though there’s explanatory on-screen text throughout, the movie has no narrator. So unlike the comprehensive, authoritative voice of most of Burns’ documentaries, The Central Park Five is more subjective, bordering on claustrophobic.

That closed-off quality costs The Central Park Five some drama. It never expands its scope or meaning over the course of its two-hour running time. But the specifics make the story powerful regardless. Yet, the facts of the case mattered less than what it represented: a city fighting back against the thugs, whether they were guilty of anything or not.

The full article is available here

Dear Congress, This Holiday Season, Don’t Make the Poor Poorer - A Circle of Protection

A Circle Of Protection

This season is when many in our country give of their time and money to help those in need. These programs are important.

A lot of ink, pixels, and air have been used on the potential effects of the so-called “fiscal cliff.” While many experts say that “cliff” is a misnomer (it’s more of long slope in the wrong direction), there is at least broad agreement that it’s not the right direction for the country’s long-term health.

We’ve heard a lot about the potential effects on Wall Street, our nation’s credit rating, and even the military. But little has been said about the devastating consequences for our nation and the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people — or for the charities and non-profits that serve them. 

This week, the Circle of Protection, released an open letter to the president and Congress with a simple message: during the holidays, please “advance policies that protect the poor — not ones that make them poorer.”

This season is when many in our country give of their time and money to help those in need. These programs are important. But according to Bread for the World, all the food provided by churches and charities amounts to only 6 percent of what the federal government spends. And, unfortunately, a recent poll commissioned by World Vision, shows that while Americans plan to spend more this year on gifts, they are planning on giving less to charity.

The full article is available here

Precise Weapons Kill Civilians Too - Peter Hart

Calling airstrikes that kill civilians more often than fighters "precise"–well, perhaps there's a more precise word than that.

As a general rule, it'd be better if media accounts of war did not stress the surgical precision of the weapons being used. It's a fixture of U.S. reporting on U.S. wars, but the same rhetoric is used when U.S. allies, like Israel, are dropping bombs.

According to the Palestinians Centre for Human Rights (11/19/12), 87 Palestinians had been killed, 57 of them civilians in the last round of fighting. Another tally finds that 72 percent of the casualties are civilians.

It could be argued, as defenders of Israeli military attacks have done before, that this ratio of civilian-to-combatant deaths is more humane than recent U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But calling airstrikes that kill civilians more often than fighters "precise"–well, perhaps there's a more precise word than that.

The full article is available here

Foreign Policy Experts React To The "Red Dawn" Remake - Asawin Suebsaeng

It's a conceptually hilarious invasion premise and completely implausible.

Hollywood has remade Red Dawn, and the foreign-policy community is baffled.  The 2012 remake updates the villains to North Korean troops—aided by Putin's Russia—who conquer large chunks of America with their warplanes, electromagnetic pulse machine, and use of anti-Wall Street propaganda. 

It's a conceptually hilarious invasion premise and completely implausible. Three foreign policy experts weigh in on the remake:

* Lawrence Korb, former assistant secretary of defense to Ronald Reagan, and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress:  "How are the North Koreans gonna get here? We're talking about thousands of miles. Did they stage an amphibious landing like we did in Normandy? Did they fly over? Each of the pilots in their air force only flies four hours each year! Their military is in terrible shape, they don't have enough fuel."

* Christopher Preble, VP for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute: "To pose the North Koreans as a credible threat to the continental United States is as ridiculous as the spectre of all-out alien invasion. Also, how exactly would they get from there to here??"

* Michael Mazza, research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute specializing in defense policy in the Asia-Pacific: "Obviously the premise is entirely ridiculous. There have neither the money nor the military capacity to reach us."

The full article is available here

Black Friday Now Black Thursday, But Don’t Expect the Best Bargains on Either - Reclaim Democracy

You’re just as likely to save money on most items at other times in the year.

Instead of spending time with their families on Thanksgiving this year, employees for Walmart, Target and other chains get to give thanks by selling consumerism to people who think they’re getting great deals. 

Employees of retail chains now must work on one of the only three days they traditionally haven’t had to work. Employees who don’t want to join risk drifting into part-timer purgatory or worse.

Before rushing through dessert to ditch grandma and the kids, consider research commissioned recently by the Wall Street Journal. The headline with which it reported the results tells the story succinctly: The Myth of the Black Friday Deal (applies equally to Black Thursday). As you may surmise, you’re just as likely to save money on most items at other times in the year.

Of course, the corporate push to replace a day traditionally dedicated to family with consumerism is predictable, but here’s one ray of hope: chain employees and disgusted citizens are starting to fight back.

The full article is available here

Causes Of Hunger - Bread For The World

The causes of hunger in the United States are rooted in poverty. 

Once annual food insecurity data was collected, beginning in 1995, it became clear that the ups and downs in food insecurity line up closely with the changes in poverty.  The causes of hunger in the United States are rooted in poverty. We cannot address one without also trying to solve the other.

Millions of Americans earning low wages struggle to put food on the table and make ends meet. In order to address the continuing prevalence of poverty in the U.S., we need to create good jobs for everyone who can work, provide adequate work supports, and offer incentives so low-income workers are able to save and build wealth.

The ancient Chinese maxim still rings true: Feed a man a fish and he eats for a day—teach him to fish and he eats for a lifetime. Families become hunger-free when they can provide for themselves. The solution is simple: jobs that pay enough for a family to live on.

The full article is available here

Israel & Gaza: Enough! - Rabbi Michael Lerner

All the usual suspects are cheering on their respective sides in the latest struggle between Israel and Palestine being fought out at the expense of some Israeli and more Palestinian civilian lives. I’ve been overwhelmed with sadness at the tragic loss of lives and harm to the bodies of Israelis and Palestinians, and outraged at all those who continue to justify their side and demean the other, implicitly cheering on the violence even as they officially deplore it! Enough is enough.

It is time the Israelis acknowledge the cost of their Occupation and denial of fundamental democratic and human rights on the Palestinian people. Much of the Israeli media gives little attention to the ongoing violence directed at Palestinians, such as outright stealing of land from Palestinian farmers, IDF suppression of non-violent demonstrations against the Occupation, and holding Palestinians without charges.

Targeted assassinations now carried out by drones whose daily presence in the skies over Gaza make that tiny area the world’s largest outdoor prison. Ironically, except for the tiny percentage of Israelis who read Ha’aretz, most Israelis don’t even have a clue about what the daily oppressive reality is like for people in the West Bank, much less for the million plus human beings living in Gaza.

The majority of Israelis go about daily life oblivious to the suffering that the status quo generates until Palestinians launch their (thankfully mostly ineffective) missiles against hapless citizens in S’derot and other southern Israeli towns.

Hamas wants to subvert the Palestinian Authority efforts to get Palestine a higher status at the U.N. because that would make Hamas less viable in the coming Palestinian national elections. Its willingness to continue these symbolic (and more recently less symbolic and more substantive) launching of missiles against Israeli targets are not aimed at winning anything.

The full article is available here

Soundgarden: King Animal - Pop Matters

For a group of Soundgarden’s magnitude and cleverness, average is still pretty damn good.

King Animal does not sully the Soundgarden legacy. Everything we all might hope for is present: Chris Cornell’s weathered yet still sturdy wail, a weighty rhythm section, and an unending stream of detuned riffs in weird time signatures.

This time though there’s more of a conventional rockist swagger to the grooves. The reason the group moves like this? Simple: it’s having fun. It’s nice to hear how much he and his bandmates obviously enjoy playing with one another again.

Yet, King Animal doesn’t expand the Soundgarden legacy, either. It’s a record that undertakes the kind of brand-maintaining return-to-norm path fellow alt-rockers Stone Temple Pilots and Alice in Chains have embarked upon after returning from lengthy absences.  A somewhat flat mix doesn’t really help: Soundgarden pivots and parries as usual, but a better sense of dynamics is much needed to make the performances truly pop.

After roughly a decade where new great rock riffs were thin on the ground, this is one album that appears intent on redressing the balance. Listening to Cornell and Kim Thayil spool out riff after riff after riff is a pleasant reminder of just how inventive and idiosyncratic Soundgarden’s music is, using everything from detuned power chords to doubled single-note line to noisy, dissonant textures to create head-bobbing hard rock that is monolithic yet nuanced.

There really are no worlds left for Soundgarden to conquer, no great victories left to achieve beyond having a hit comeback album that isn’t crap. So we get music that is comfortably, unmistakably Soundgarden, that in the long view of the band’s career can be described as respectably average.

But for a group of Soundgarden’s magnitude and cleverness, average is still pretty damn good.

The full article is available here

'Grand Bargain' Charade Protects Corporate Welfare - Ralph Nader

Congress is still talking about a “Grand Bargain” that “balances” far more spending cuts than tax increases. That is another way of saying that you – the consumer of Medicare and Medicaid services, the recipient of Social Security, and the average taxpayer will take the brunt of the spending cuts, while the wealthy get their income taxes restored, not raised, to their pre-Bush modest levels.

There are two ways to cut Medicare and Medicaid. The right wants to cut benefits. Consumers want to cut vendor fraud, the overcharging and the immense over-diagnosis, over-treatment and erroneous or unnecessary procedures and prescriptions documented so often.

The deep bias of public dialogue here, whether in such reborn deficit-reduction commissions as Simpson-Bowles or in the general media is revealed in the use of the word “entitlements.” It is only used to apply to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, which involve recycling peoples’ tax dollars.

It is not used to describe the massive corporate entitlements shoveled out daily to business welfarists in the form of subsidies, bailouts, giveaways, tax loopholes, debt revocations, loan guarantees, discounted insurance and other aid to dependent corporations. Why? Power produces privileges.

What about taxing capital gains and dividends the same as ordinary income? That was the case under Ronald Reagan.Then there is the bloated military budget, so full of redundancies, waste, boondoggle weapons programs, endless weapons cost over-runs, contracting fraud and boomeranging Empire expenditures as to boggle the minds.

So enough already of the twisted, evasive talk of the Grand Bargain on your backs. The Grand Bargain should be both Parties paying close attention to corporate welfare, corporate tax escapes, and corporate crime, fraud and abuse before unraveling the most meager social safety net in the western world.

The full article is available here

Deficit Hawk Hypocrites - Nobel-Prize Winning Economist Paul Krugman

Back in 2010, self-styled deficit hawks — better described as deficit scolds — took over much of our political discourse. At a time of mass unemployment and record-low borrowing costs, a time when economic theory said we needed more, not less, deficit spending, the scolds convinced most of our political class that deficits rather than jobs should be our top economic priority.

Recent events have also demonstrated clearly that the deficit-scold movement was never really about the deficit. Instead, it was about using deficit fears to shred the social safety net. Mr. Ryan’s alleged plans to reduce the deficit were obvious flimflam, since he was proposing huge tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations while refusing to specify how these cuts would be offset.  But to deficit scolds, his plan to dismantle Medicare and his savage cuts to Medicaid apparently qualified him as a fiscal icon.

And then there’s the matter of the “fiscal cliff.”  Contrary to the way it’s often portrayed, the looming prospect of spending cuts and tax increases isn’t a fiscal crisis. It is, instead, a political crisis brought on by the G.O.P.’s attempt to take the economy hostage.

And just to be clear, the danger for next year is not that the deficit will be too large but that it will be too small, and hence plunge America back into recession.  The truth is that deficits are actually a good thing when the economy is deeply depressed, so deficit reduction should wait until the economy is stronger.

The deficit scolds, while posing as the nation’s noble fiscal defenders, have in practice shown themselves both hypocritical and incoherent. They don’t deserve to have a central role in policy discussion; they really don’t even deserve a seat at the table.

Let's show them the door.

The full article is available here

Small Businesses Grew Twice As Fast Under Clinton Tax Rates - Travis Waldron

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), in highlighting his opposition to the letting the Bush tax cuts expire, said, “Raising taxes on small businesses will kill jobs in America,” Boehner said. “It is as simple as that.”

Economic evidence, however, contradicts that view. Under President Clinton, the top marginal tax rate was 39.6 percent, where it would return if the high-income Bush tax cuts expire at the end of the year. But small businesses grew twice as fast during Clinton’s time in office than they did when President Bush occupied the White House.

Non-partisan reports from the Congressional Budget Office and Congressional Research Service show that the expiration would have little effect on economic growth, and the Joint Committee on Taxation found that only 3 percent of small businesses would be hit by the increase.

According to a Treasury Dept. study cited by CBPP, just 7.6 percent of the income taxed at the top two income tax rates comes from actual small business income.

The full article is available here

Mandate Or No Mandate? Different Standards For Different Parties - Fair & Accuracy In Reporting

In 2004, George W. Bush won 50.7% of the popular vote over Democrat John Kerry, and had a 286-251 edge in electoral votes. Many media outlets proclaimed that to be a "mandate."  So this week Barack Obama won re-election; before the Florida results were final, he had a 303-206 electoral vote advantage and 50.5% of the popular vote. What do you call that? For a lot of people in the media, definitely not a mandate.

On CBS Evening News (11/7/12), Bob Schieffer declared, "In the hard world of American politics, the president did not get a mandate yesterday." On the NPR website (11/7/12), a headline was "For Obama, Vindication, But Not a Mandate." The Washington Post's Dan Balz (11/7/12) called it "an uncertain mandate, although Obama will attempt to claim one." While USA Today declared Bush's 2004 victory a mandate, the front-page of the paper the day after the election bore the headline "A Nation Moving Further Apart."

Time magazine's Joe Klein (11/7/12) declared that "the election was a mandate for moderation." He added: "The last month of Mitt Romney‘s campaign, when he rushed to the center and suddenly made it a race, ratified the real will of the people: a sensible centrism that runs deeper than the over-caffeinated bluster that seems to dominate the media. The election hinted that the third rail of American politics--the certain death that comes to those who question entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare--is beginning to lose its juice."

So the "will of the people" is for politicians to enact policies that are deeply unpopular?!?

It is a curious notion the media is putting forth: that the politician who wins an election should quickly move to satisfy voters who did not support his agenda. But for many in corporate media, that is what centrism is all about -- when the politician is a Democrat.

The full article is available here

How The Tea Party Helped To Pass and Protect Affordable Care Act - Ezra Klein

Some credit for the passage of the Affordable Care Act goes to the Tea Party. Harry Reid would likely have lost his majority — and his seat — in 2010 if the Tea Party hadn’t successfully knocked out top-tier challengers in Delaware, Colorado and Nevada and replaced them with more extreme conservatives. Senate Republicans would be much likelier to retake the Senate tonight if Richard Lugar and Sarah Steelman were running rather than Richard Murdock and Todd Akin.

But it’s not just that the Tea Party has been instrumental in helping Senate Democrats hold the majority necessary to protect the Affordable Care Act. It was the primary challenge against the late Sen. Arlen Specter that pushed the Pennsylvanian to switch parties, thus providing Democrats with the crucial 60th vote needed to break the Republican filibuster and pass health reform.

This is an ironic legacy of the Tea Party and the tactics it chose: It arose in ferocious opposition to Obama’s agenda, but by driving Specter out of the party and pushing harsh conservatives over more electable Republican candidates, it gave Senate Democrats the majorities they needed to pass and protect the key accomplishments of Obama’s presidency — and that’s before you get into whether the Tea Party’s influence in the Republican presidential primaries forced Mitt Romney to the right and gave Obama a crucial edge in a close presidential election.

The full article is available here

The Malalas You Don't See - Sarah Waheed

On October 24 in Northwest Pakistan, two children were injured in a drone strike authorized by President Obama. Other kids have been killed by similar strikes; Americans do not know their names. Unlike Malala Yousafzai, the teenager from the Swat Valley, who was shot by the Taliban for promoting girls’ education, Madonna did not dedicate a song to them, nor has Angelina Jolie spoken out on their behalf. No mass vigils have been held in their honor.

Instead, people like Time magazine columnist Joe Klein defend such drone attacks as justifiable pre-emptive measures to protect “our” children, with such chilling statements as “the bottom line is: in the end, whose four year old gets killed?”  Given the recent Washington Post report showing that secret kill lists are expanding under the euphemism “disposition matrix,” such rationalizations for the killing of children are disturbing.

The media attention paid to the horrific attack on Malala Yousafzai—and the close tracking of her recovery—is certainly justifiable. However, the false choice, between the drones and the Taliban, is as limited as George W. Bush’s rhetoric of “you are either with us or against us.” The nihilistic thinking of “my violence is better than your violence” also fuels the Taliban. As despicable as was the attack on Malala Yousafzai, it does not justify the drone attacks in the tribal areas of Pakistan, which continue to kill civilians like her.

If there is any doubt about the morality of drone strikes, imagine a reverse scenario. If Pakistan’s intelligence agencies were launching drone strikes into the rural Midwest with the purpose of targeting extremist militias—and in the process were killing American children with impunity—it is doubtful that most Americans would stand for it. The children injured in drone strikes are just as much victims of the ongoing war as Malala. And unless a political solution is seriously pursued instead of a secretive military one, more lives will be needlessly lost.

The full article is available here

Hurricane Sandy Blows Away Political Pretense and Ideological Nonsense - Joe Conason

When Hurricane Sandy destroyed swaths of the Atlantic coastline and darkened our largest city, the anti-government ideology of the tea party Republicans—and its panderers like Mitt Romney—was exposed as pretense and nonsense.  What we learned from Sandy is the same lesson that Katrina ought to have taught us years ago: The right wing disdain for government can imperil your health, your family’s safety and your nation’s security.

At the center of the storm’s aftermath stood New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.  None of these men is an anti-government ideologue. Surrounded by suffering and wreckage, they looked to Washington because no other power could begin to cope with the boggling problems they confront, both immediately and as they contemplate reconstruction.

America is one nation that lifts up those in pain and in need together.  The partisan divisions of a national election shouldn’t matter at such a moment, as Christie observed impatiently when a Fox News anchor suggested that he provide a photo opportunity for Romney in the disaster area.   

Disbanding FEMA apparently would be fine with Romney, who said “absolutely” when asked by CNN’s John King in a 2011 Republican debate whether he would consign disaster relief to the states rather than the federal government. For that matter he would go still further, said the former Massachusetts governor; best of all would be to let the private sector assume FEMA’s responsibilities.
 
Nobody asked Romney how a privatized FEMA would function, but it is interesting to imagine the private-equity version of disaster management—and how that entity might squeeze profit from tragedy.

The full article is available here

The Moral Priority of the Common Good - Frank Kirkpatrick

We need to re-establish the fundamental moral priority for the nation of the public or common good.

Conservative Americans seem to love candidates who speak about values. Unfortunately most of that discourse has been the language of the religious right, which focuses on personal or so-called "family" values. But at the core of a good society is the moral priority of the common good. 

Biblical tradition reminds us that ignoring the social conditions that perpetuate poverty and injustice ultimately undermines the realization of family values while destroying the bonds of mutual responsibility that constitute a good society.

The founders of the republic put the interests of the common good above the interests of the private. As historian Gordon Wood has said, “The sacrifice of individual interests to the greater good of whole formed the essence of republicanism … and the great deficiency of existing governments was precisely the sacrificing of the public good to the private greed of small ruling groups.”

If we can re-establish the fundamental moral priority for the nation of the public or common good to what the founders originally held dear and what the biblical tradition teaches, we might have a fulcrum by which to pry the American moral spirit free from the prison into which the Tea Party and severely conservative Republicans have confined it.

The full article is available here

Nonpartisan Tax Report Withdrawn After GOP Protest - Jonathan Weisman

The Congressional Research Service has withdrawn an economic report that found no correlation between top tax rates and economic growth, a central tenet of conservative economic theory, after Senate Republicans raised concerns about the paper’s findings and wording.  The report questions the premise that lowering the top marginal tax rate stimulates economic growth and job creation.

“The reduction in the top tax rates appears to be uncorrelated with saving, investment and productivity growth. The top tax rates appear to have little or no relation to the size of the economic pie,” the report said. “However, the top tax rate reductions appear to be associated with the increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution.”

Romney, the Republican nominee, maintains that any increase in the top tax rates on income and capital gains would slow economic growth and crush the job market’s recovery.

The pressure applied to the research service comes amid a broader Republican effort to raise questions about research and statistics that were once trusted as nonpartisan and apolitical.

Republicans have also tried to discredit the private Tax Policy Center ever since the research organization declared that Mitt Romney’s proposal to cut tax rates by 20 percent while protecting the middle class and not increasing the deficit was mathematically impossible.

The full article is available here

Corporate Lobbyists Manage Our Presidential Debates - Lee Fang

Three debates have gone by, and to this date, neither a candidate for president or vice president has been asked about some of the biggest issues facing voters this cycle.  Why are our debate moderators so reluctant to bring up controversial topics that affect the future of our country? What’s behind this wall of silence?  It’s worth considering that the men behind the nonprofit managing our presidential debate system are corporate lobbyists.

Mike McCury, the Democratic co-chair of the Commission on Presidential Debates and a former White House press secretary for President Clinton, works as a Partner at Public Strategies Washington, a Beltway lobbying firm.  McCurry doesn’t disclose all of his clients, but his website lists a number of corporations, including Bain Capital, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co, Lockheed Martin Corporation, the US Chamber of Commerce and Anheuser-Busch.

Frank Fahrenkopf Jr, the Republican co-chair, is the head of a lobbying coalition of casinos and related gambling industries. Fahrenkopf—who was paid $1,920,561 in 2010, according to IRS records—represents firms like Las Vegas Sands Corp, MGM Resorts International, Morgan Stanley, KPMG and Goldman Sachs. Fahrenkopf’s group spends millions on K Street lobbyists and attorneys—retaining even Ropes & Gray, the law firm in charge of Romney’s non-blind trust—to influence federal policy on issues ranging from Internet gambling to tax and labor policy.

Americans deserve a real debate; one that shines a light on our biggest challenges and forces the candidates to draw real distinctions. It’s less than reassuring that we have K Street shills managing our only substantive public forum.

The full article is available here

Obama, Romney, and the Foreign Policy Debate - Stephen Zunes

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the third and final presidential debate of the 2012 campaign was the similarity between the two candidates on many basic foreign policy issues. Part of the reason is that, as he did in the first two debates, Romney reversed himself on a number of extreme right-wing positions he had taken earlier in a desperate effort to depict himself as a moderate. At the same time, Obama’s hawkish stances served as yet another reminder of just how far to the right Obama has evolved since running as an anti-war candidate just four years ago.

Indeed, Romney’s perceived need to lie about Obama’s record and his reluctance to provide much in the way of specific policy alternatives is indicative of how little difference there actually is between the two when it comes to the U.S. role in the world.

Both candidates agree on American exceptionalism, as exemplified by Obama’s insistence that “America remains the one indispensable nation.” And both agreed that this hegemonic role in international affairs would be enforced militarily.

Obama and Romney’s double standards also pertain to human rights issues.  Despite Israel’s violation of scores of UN Security Council resolutions and ongoing, systematic human rights violations, Obama bragged during the debate that “we have created the strongest military and intelligence cooperation between our two countries in history.”

Incredibly, Romney criticized him for not supporting the right-wing Israeli government enough! Unable to place himself much further to the right when it comes to supporting Netanyahu’s government, Romney has repeatedly insisted that Obama had explicitly called on creating “daylight” between the United States and Israel, despite repeated analyses from fact-checkers that Obama actually never said that.

On several occasions, despite the disappointing similarities between the two candidates, Romney was nevertheless able to prove himself far less adept at addressing foreign policy issues—and often showed his willingness to make demonstrably false claims about Obama’s record.

The full article is available here

Voting Shouldn’t Be Made A Difficult Process - Darryl Lorenzo Wellington

Over the past few years, Republican legislatures and governors have pushed through bills curtailing early balloting and imposing stiff voter ID requirements.  Republican legislators in 40 states introduced bills that would have the effect of limiting the franchise. The GOP proposed and enacted more restrictions on the right to vote than at any time since the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

Federal law already has voter identification requirements, such as verifying voters’ identities with signatures.  The Republican scheme to limit voting on Election Day is shameful.

The 2008 presidential election was a stunning affirmation of the American electoral process, attaining the highest voter turnout (57 percent) since 1968.

Any doubt regarding the purely partisan motivations of the new voting impediments was erased in June of this year when Pennsylvania House Majority Leader Mike Turzai bragged to an audience that the state’s new and very strict voter ID law would “allow Gov. Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.”

Not coincidentally, the laws disproportionately burden exactly those groups, such as blacks and Latinos, who heavily supported Barack Obama in 2008. Judges have struck down several of these, but at least 13 states currently maintain restrictive voting mandates passed only in the last two years.

You may have heard of the case of Dorothy Cooper, a 96-year-old African-American woman in Tennessee, who produced a Social Security card, a voter registration card, a birth certificate and a lease, yet was denied the right to re-register until her story created a stir.

The right to vote should be sacred. We cannot justify barring potentially millions of legitimate votes by disingenuously advocating a hunt to weed out extremely rare cases of fraud.  Our moral mission as a democracy should be to encourage all citizens to vote. We should be removing — not erecting — obstacles in the path to the voting booth.

The full picture is available here

CD Review: Converge: All That We Love Leave Behind - Brandon Stosuy

The brilliant Boston band Converge have been around a long time, though you might not guess it from the manic energy crammed into their eighth album, All We Love We Leave Behind. If you go beyond the amped, break-neck intensity and listen to the compositions, it becomes clear the Boston band is nearing the 25-year mark: You don't just show up and write songs like this.

As overwhelming as AWLWLB may be on first listen, it's really not all speed. There's a thing people say about young professional quarterbacks, about how they need experience before the game "slows down." You get that on this album, too. In my interview with Bannon, he said: "I feel that the current generation of listeners of heavy music are progressing a bit past their gateway bands and are digging deeper than they used to and understanding more abrasive and complex music and art. It's like being around an unfamiliar language long enough that it eventually begins to make sense." I agree with this, and it's the reason why Converge are a band with plenty of fans who weren't close to being born when the band formed in 1990.

Of course, there's plenty for older audiences, too-- aging, death, decisions, punk as a way of life, and the way these things preoccupy you when you go past 30 are largely what this album is about.

AWLWLB is an example of building on and mastering the music you loved when you were younger-- something that became more than music, ultimately-- so that it has a chance to grow old with you without becoming any less vital.

The full article is available here

Voting Rights Victory In Ohio - Aura Bogado

Ohio’s 2004 election process was the source of national ridicule.

A federal appeals court has blocked the state of Ohio from cutting off its early voting hours. In August, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted (Republican), cut off early voting the weekend before the election.

Because black churches encourage their congregants to vote after services the Sunday before Election Day, Husted’s move would have disproportionately affected black voters. The new rule would have allowed military voters to cast their ballots in person through the weekend—but not any others.

Ohio’s 2004 election process was the source of national ridicule. Long lines forced many people to make a choice between voting and going to work on time, or voting and picking up their children on time from school or daycare. Machines broke down, causing already long lines to be still for hours at a time.

The full article is available here

Toledo Mosque Scorched By Arson, Community Rallies In Response - David Yonke

Any attack on a house of worship, no matter what faith, is deplorable and should be condemned.

Muslim worshipers are reeling from an arson fire at the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo, but are grateful for an outpouring of support from the local interfaith community.

“All the support we get is very welcome because if you are going through a tragedy and you have a friend who is holding your hand it means a lot,” said S. Zaheer Hasan, a spokesman for theUnited Muslim Association of Toledo.

The Rev. Steve Anthony, executive director of Toledo Area Ministries, said he and his organization that represents 125 Christian churches and nonprofit agencies are outraged by the arson attack and will do what they can to help local Muslims.

“Any attack on a house of worship, no matter what faith, is deplorable and should be condemned,” Anthony said. “And there’s no room for that in a pluralistic society. We should respect each other’s houses of worship."

The full article is available here

There Is Arsenic In Your Rice: Here Is How It Got There - Twilight Greenway

According to new research by the Consumers Union, which took over 200 samples of both organic and conventionally grown rice and rice products, nearly all the samples contained some level of arsenic, and a great deal of them contained enough to cause alarm.

Arsenic, especially the inorganic form often found in rice, is a known carcinogen linked to several types of cancer, and believed to interfere with fetal development.  Rice absorbs arsenic from soil or water much more effectively than most plants. That’s in part because it is one of the only major crops grown in water-flooded conditions, which allow arsenic to be more easily taken up by its roots and stored in the grains.

The study illustrates what a long shadow industrial farming practices can cast over the entire food system — and the way some chemicals can cycle through our food and water, for literally generations.  For decades, farmers used lead-arsenate insecticides to control pests. As the name implies, these were extra dangerous because of their lead content and they were banned in the 1980s, but much of the arsenic that was left behind still remains in the soil.

The Consumers Union released a chart designed to help consumers limit their exposure to rice, with exact serving recommendations for both adults and children. Rice cereal, which federal surveys indicate many small children eat multiple times a day, is of special concern.

The full article is available here

The 47 Percent Meme: Mitt Romney, The Fox News Candidate - Eric Boehlert

Obama, according to the fevered rhetoric of the far-right, wants to radically extend the reach of the government in an effort to extract voter loyalty. Therefore, Obama voters must be lazy victims who rely on the government for sustenance from birth to death. Mitt Romney's repetition of this same insulting allegation belies his kowtowing to Fox News and other right-wing talkers.

"He'd rather you be a slave and be economically dependent upon him," is how Fox favorite Rep. Allen West (R-FL) put it.  (No unemployment recipient has ever voted Republican?)  The Atlantic mapped out where Romney's 47% of no-income-tax-paying voters live, and it turns out "those people are disproportionately in red states -- that is, states that tend to vote Republican."

In Romney's case, the Republican's long-standing caricature of the lazy welfare recipient gets dramatically expanded to include tens of millions of Americans who vote Democratic and who apparently worship big government and disdain hard work.  Writing off nearly half the electorate as selfish dependents who refuse to take responsibilities for their own lives isn't usually how White House candidates frame their campaigns.  This is the kind of fringe, conspiratorial rhetoric that campaigns usually leave to the periphery. And for good reason (see Sarah Palin, 2008).

But in today's Republican Party, Mitt Romney must bow at the feet of Fox News.  Apparently, that means echoing the dark, incoherent attacks that the talk channel conjures up.

The full article is available here

Bob Dylan: Tempest (A-): A.V. Club

Now 71, Dylan sounds positively skeletal on Tempest, his voice stretched almost past the point of sounding like a voice at all. It suits him. And it suits the material here: sparer, spookier songs than those found on recent albums, tracks filled with fatalistic lyrics that find hope only in companionship, and even then, sometimes only the illusion of hope.

The notion of coming full circle serves as a recurring theme here, via both the lyrics and rootsiness of the music. It isn’t a new theme. Dylan has played the part of a man who’s traveled the world and come back with a message and a warning since “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.”

But now weary wisdom has taken the place of apocalyptic urgency. He sounds like he’s come to understand that even the direst warnings usually go unheeded, leaving those who survive to sing about it. “It’s soon after midnight and my day has just begun,” Dylan sings on “Soon After Midnight,” sounding surprised to still be around, much less awake. If he has any final statements, he’s saving them. There’s too much work to be done.

Fox Omits The Facts To Politicize 9-11 Moment Of Silence and Smear Obama - Kevin Zeiber

Fox ignored history and President Obama's own words to attack the president for not including the word God in a proclamation commemorating the anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks. 

Fox & Friends co-host Gretchen Carlson claimed that Obama has "called for a moment of silence, but has not called for the word God. So some people are asking, why is God being left out again?" Later, her colleague Steve Doocy said: "On this most somber of days, get this. Does the President of the United States call on people to pray for those lives lost? No."

Fox was referring to a presidential proclamation declaring September 11, 2012, to be Patriots Day.  The reality is that President Obama followed the example of President George W. Bush who did not include the word God in his 2006, 2007, and 2008 Patriot Day proclamations. 

Furthermore, Obama called on "God's grace" and asked people to pray for the lives lost in a separate official proclamation declaring the days between September 7 and September 9 as national days of prayer and remembrance in commemoration of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

The full article is available here

We Have a Long Way to Go - Elaina Ramsey

Jonathan Kozol has dedicated his life to working with low-income children in inner cities. As one of the leading advocates for public education reform and the author of three prize-winning books about his time with children in the South Bronx, Kozol is a steadfast champion of children subjected to poverty. Fire in the Ashes: Twenty-Five Years Among the Poorest Children in America serves as his culminating work about his captivating journey, with them, of friendship, triumph, and loss.

Regarding standardized exams, what impact did the testing policies of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) have on these children?
The schools they went to began “obsessive testing,” or teaching to the test.  Teachers were forced to make children read out of these abysmally boring phonics readers, reading systems produced by corporations which were allegedly aligned with state exams.  These kids were the first product of what I would call the test-and-terror regimen which has since overtaken our public education system in this country.

The New York Times recently reported that wealthy neighborhoods in Manhattan are raising about $1 million a year through their PTAs to supplement public education funds. How do you feel about this practice?
What we’re ending up with in wealthy neighborhoods are hybrid public/private schools. So long as this goes on, there will never be an honest meritocracy in the United States. What we have right now is what I would call a purchasable hereditary meritocracy. That isn’t the way to educate citizens in a democracy. Charity is a blessed thing; I’d never turn it down. But charity is not, and will never be, a substitute for systematic justice.

What lessons can we learn from the children in your book?
To me, the lesson is that the public school in neighborhoods of poverty ought to have the same terrific resources, well-respected and well-rewarded, emotionally well-protected teachers that can see the magic in the child’s eyes and have the time to educate. A child shouldn’t have to dazzle the world with her amusing personality to get a wonderful education in an alleged democracy.

That’s why I keep on struggling to defend good teachers against the tendency to treat them with abuse and disrespect. This is why I will continue to do everything in my power to get rid of the obsessive testing, this notion that the only things that matter are the things you can measure. And that’s also why I will continue struggling against the invasion of corporate interests into the public sector.

The full article is available here

Corporate Power on Full Display at Party Conventions - Laura Bonham

The most disturbing similarity between the two is direct corporate sponsorship, and the more obscure soft corporate funding through their respective host committees. While the GOP Convention website proudly boasts their corporate sponsors on their homepage, the Democrats have also accepted corporate funding while trying to maintain the sheen of grassroots funding.

We cannot ignore the connections that wealthy patrons and their corporations have on our political process and who gets elected in this country. By virtue of their wealth, titans of industry have always had more voice in our elections than the average individual. Their influence has led to the election of politicians who support their corporate worldview.

For over a decade, proponents of small “d” democracy have been working to limit the power of corporations. Following the Citizens United decision, they came together to form the Move to Amend Coalition. Recognizing that corporations can and have benefited society in many ways, have an important role in a vibrant economy, and are entitled to privileges to protect themselves, Move to Amend is calling for a Constitutional amendment which clearly states that corporations are not people, are not entitled to unalienable human rights, that money is not speech and can be regulated in campaigns.

The full article is available here

The Politics of Poverty - Jimmy Dorrell

In my mind, the poor are the ones being hijacked in all of this.

If educated congressmen, presidential candidates, governors, and even local representatives can be as nasty and polarized as they have publicly shown, there is little reason to honestly discuss an issue, since the potential for alienation and misrepresentation is at an all-time high.

No one seems to be listening, having crystallized their presuppositions with a crafty skill of spinning any topic into their agenda. Ironically, our children are watching adult leaders model behavior we wouldn’t let them get away with.

In my mind, the poor are the ones being hijacked in all of this. Wealthy politicians from both major parties certainly are not arguing or creating policy from the viewpoint of Jesus. Thinly veiled religious statements have become part of the shallowness of American politics. It seems “Under God” doesn’t mean, “I submit to the teachings of God to love my enemies, serve others, and model the sacrificial lifestyle of God in the Flesh.” We have wrapped the Bible in a flag and replaced faith with “civil religion” which ultimately becomes anti-Christian.

Will Christian Americans ever stand up for the poor and marginalized? I doubt it. It is not from cynicism that I make that statement. It’s just that I believe that most politics and religion today are driven by wealth and selfishness.

And amidst all these social dilemmas in our nation and State, there is little room for substantive discussion and compromise, only blame, anger, and creating anecdotal myths that seek to validate our stances, with very little accomplished in the end.

The full article is available here

Today's Republicans: The Party Of Strivers - Conservative Columnist David Brooks

There is a flaw in the vision the Republicans offered in Tampa. It is contained in its rampant hyper-individualism. Speaker after speaker celebrated the solitary and heroic individual. There was almost no talk of community and compassionate conservatism. There was certainly no conservatism as Edmund Burke understood it, in which individuals are embedded in webs of customs, traditions, habits and governing institutions.

Today's Republicans strongly believe that individuals determine their own fates. In a Pew Research Center poll, for example, 57% of Republicans believe people are poor because they don't work hard. Only 28% believe people are poor because of circumstances beyond their control. These Republicans believe that if only government gets out of the way, then people's innate qualities will enable them to flourish.

The fact is our destinies are shaped by social forces much more than the current GOP is willing to admit. The skills that enable people to flourish are not innate but constructed by circumstances.   Government does not always undermine initiative. Some government programs, like the GI Bill, inflame ambition.  Today's Republicans, who see every government program as a step on the road to serfdom, are often blind to that. They celebrate the race to success but don't know how to give everyone access to that race.

Today's Republican Party won't be a worthy governing party until it treads the course Lincoln trod: starting with individual ambition but ascending to a larger vision and creating a national environment that arouses ambition and nurtures success.

The full article is available here

Paul Ryan's Proposed Cuts To Food Stamps Would Hit Red States Hardest - Tom Laskawy

While cutting food stamps remains atop the Republican agenda, a new Gallup poll reminds us that hunger continues to run rampant in America.   According to a recent Gallup poll, over 18 percent of Americans “say there have been times when they could not afford the food they needed” during the last year. In 15 states, that figure jumps to one in five Americans.

There’s an odd political angle to this poll. The top-10 list for states with the highest hunger rates includes the GOP strongholds of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Louisiana. More than half of those states are as red as they come, i.e. even in a landslide these states wouldn’t back Obama.

A cynic would thus observe the deep irony that Republicans have dubbed Obama the “Food Stamp President,” while the Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan, the party’s acknowledged deep-thinking wonk, wants to cut food stamps by $133 billion over the next decade.

The fact that Republicans have utterly abandoned the economic interests of vast swaths of their supporters in favor of policies that tilt toward the rich doesn’t represent irony as far as I’m concerned. Rather, it’s tragedy.

The full article is available here

The Backwards, Inside-out Politics Of Mitt Romney, Barack Obama, and Coal - Philip Bump

“That plant kills people,” Mitt Romney said in 2003, pointing at the Salem Harbor power plant. He was right — one estimate suggests that 20 people die each year due to pollution from the plant, now managed by Dominion Energy. “They have thumbed their nose at the people of Massachusetts and Salem Harbor by not cleaning it up on time. So we’re saying, clean it up on time, do the job in the community, invest in cleaning technology.”

Romney’s language is far stronger than any President Obama has ever used on coal. In fact, the president’s campaign is using that line to attack Romney in radio ads in coal-producing states.

How the hell did this happen? How is it that the Democratic presidential candidate is embracing the most noxious form of energy production in America, while his opponent is on record saying that it should be cleaned up?

With one key, prominent exception: the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA has inched forward like a soldier on its belly, pushing ahead with slightly stronger guidelines on particulates, mercury, carbon emissions. Attempts to make a difference on ozone were rebuffed by the president, but the EPA has continued to do its job, despite taking an enormous amount of heat for doing so. The EPA is the stated reason that, despite the president’s inaction and Romney’s past rhetoric, coal companies are fuming at Barack Obama. A broad array of coal and mining company executives have pledged financial support for the Romney campaign, arguing that their industry is at risk from the EPA’s action.

The full article is available here

The Idea of America and Governmentphobe's Distortion Of It - Valerie Elverton-Dixon

When Mitt Romney announced Paul Ryan as his running mate, Ryan said that America was an idea. He spoke of the idea that human rights derive from God and from nature and not from government. It's an interesting opposition Ryan asserts between God and nature on one hand and government on the other.

His remarks intimate that government is some tyrannical bogey man out to debilitate righteous free enterprise, binding it with red tape and stealing our liberties and our hard-earned money through taxes. He seems to think that big government equals a reduction of our human rights. This is a distortion of the idea of America.

If we look to the Declaration of Independence as the founding document that articulates the idea of America, an often neglected passage says, "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” According to the Declaration, while government is not the origin of human rights, it exists to secure human rights. So to posit an opposition between rights and government is incorrect.

What does the idea of America mean when the rich, for the most part, do not fight in our nation’s wars, pay as little taxes as they can, and then dishonorably distort the truth in our national political conversation in order to gain and to maintain power?

The full article is available here

The Ryan Choice - Robert Reich

Paul Ryan exemplifies the social Darwinism at the core of today’s Republican Party: Reward the rich, penalize the poor, let everyone else fend for themselves. Dog eat dog.

Ryan’s views are crystallized in the budget he produced for House Republicans last March as chairman of the House Budget committee. It would cut $3.3 trillion from low-income programs over the next decade. The biggest cuts would be in Medicaid, which provides healthcare for the nation’s poor – forcing states to drop coverage for an estimated 14 million to 28 million low-income people, according to the non-partisan Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.

Ryan’s budget would also reduce food stamps for poor families by 17% ($135 billion) over the decade, leading to a significant increase in hunger – particularly among children. It would also reduce housing assistance, job training, and Pell grants for college tuition.  In all, 62% of the budget cuts proposed by Ryan would come from low-income programs.

At the same time, Ryan would provide a substantial tax cut to the very rich – who are already taking home an almost unprecedented share of the nation’s total income.

Social Darwinism offered a moral justification for the wild inequities and social cruelties of the late nineteenth century. It allowed John D. Rockefeller, for example, to claim the fortune he accumulated through his giant Standard Oil Trust was “merely a survival of the fittest… the working out of a law of nature and of God.”

Not until the 20th century did America reject social Darwinism. We created a large middle class that became the engine of our economy and our democracy. We built safety nets to catch Americans who fell downward, often through no fault of their own.

We designed regulations to protect against the inevitable excesses of free-market greed. We taxed the rich and invested in public goods – public schools, public universities, public transportation, public parks, public health – that made us all better off.  In short, we rejected the notion that each of us is on our own in a competitive contest for survival.

The full article is available here

Dark Days with the Dark Knight - David Sterritt

The recent mass shootings bears out the need to get beyond simplistic attacks on popular culture. When social chaos grabs the headlines, it’s easier to blame movies than to examine root causes like the disintegrating safety net for families and maxed-out mental-health facilities.

What’s really going on with violent entertainment has deep roots in the American psyche. In some respects the present-day United States is a nasty place: look at the amount of gun violence, the grotesque influence of the National Rifle Association, the amount of violence by other means, the astounding number of people in jails and prisons, the number of people executed each year, the proliferation of domestic poverty, the ability of wealth to shape public policy, the accelerating decline of the middle and working classes, the horrifically large number of innocent people killed as a result of the Iraq invasion, the use of torture as an interrogation and punishment device, the embrace of indefinite detention for people not convicted (or even accused) of crimes, the acceptance of a permanent state of war against anyone declared to be The Enemy, and on and on.

I find it hard to imagine how anyone can place those factors on one side of the scale, and put violent films on the other, and then say the Columbine or Virginia Tech or Batman shooters did what they did because movies got them all excited.

What’s needed now is not just a less violent cinema but a more intelligent cinema that dares to think about issues and to encourage thinking in its audience. We are the beneficiaries of the most advanced audiovisual systems ever known, capable of moving our emotions, challenging our ideas, and opening our imaginations. Is it right that the most technologically sophisticated and financially expensive products of this system are entertainments like the Batman movies, designed to deliver their gratifications not to the mind but to the gut? Surely our entertainment industry can aspire to greater things.

The full article is available here

Yes, More Solyndras for Clean Energy - Michael Grunwald from Time Business

The solar company failed, but the decision to invest in it was the right one.

The Solyndra “scandal” is trotted out every few months as part of the big-vs.-small-government debate in this country, but it is not and never was a scandal. The federal clean-energy loan program that the infamous solar-panel maker was a part of was designed to finance risky ventures, and Solyndra was a reasonable risk.

The Bush and Obama Administrations both selected Solyndra from 143 applicants for the program’s first loan, and investigators found no evidence that political interference made that happen.

But no matter how often independent fact checkers debunk charges of crony capitalism, Washington Republicans won’t be deterred from pushing a No More Solyndras Act, vowing to kill the loan program. Government aid isn’t supposed to guarantee success; subsidized farms and entrepreneurs with Small Business Administration loans fail all the time. Some students who receive Pell Grants probably end up drunks on the street.

There’s a legitimate debate to have about Solyndra and green industrial policy, but it’s not the debate over imaginary corruption we’ve been having. Solar power has increased over 600% since 2009, partly because of the low prices that doomed Solyndra. The $90 billion for clean energy in the stimulus actually crowded in private investment, luring an additional $100 billion in matching funds from the sidelines.

Yet Republicans haven’t argued against subsidies for manufacturing. In fact, they’ve argued that the stimulus shipped manufacturing jobs overseas, which is ludicrous. It has increased the domestic content of U.S. wind turbines from 20% to 60%. Politics aside, that’s a good thing. It would be a shame to trade our dependence on foreign oil for dependence on foreign turbines, solar panels and lithium-ion batteries, all products that were invented in the U.S.

The full article is available here

Republicans’ Anti-Government Rhetoric Comes Back to Bite Republican Governments - Ed Kilgore

Anyone who’s lived in metropolitan Atlanta knows its infamously snarled highway traffic. But any Georgian also knows that it would be impossible to raise taxes to do something about it—at least since 2004, when Republicans achieved control of both the legislative and executive branches of state government for the first time since Reconstruction.

Last week’s calamitous defeat of a sales-tax-for-transportation referendum in metro Atlanta and most of the state showed that when push comes to shove, Republican governing can’t survive the Republicans’ anti-governing message. Having spent years demonizing higher taxes and government spending, Georgia Republicans were in a poor position to ask for more of both for any purpose under the sun.

The Georgia experience matters nationally for a simple reason: Since 2008, the GOP and its business allies have energized its movement-conservative base (rechristened as the Tea Party Movement) to savagely fight for radically reduced public spending. Now, when increased public investments and the revenues necessary to pay for them are obviously essential to keep a state economy growing, Republicans can no longer dial back the rhetoric.

If Republicans conquer Washington in November and Republican-controlled state governments derive the bitter harvest of radically reduced federal support for public services, it will be interesting to see if a “governing wing” of the GOP survives at all in state capitals around the country. And it will be equally interesting to see whether business interests are happy with obtaining better tax rates and less regulation in exchange for dysfunctional government from sea to shining sea.

The full article is available here

High-Capacity Semiautomatic Handguns: Weapon of Choice for Mass Shootings - Greg McCune

The semiautomatic handgun used in the deadly attack on a Wisconsin Sikh temple is the same type used in other recent U.S. mass shootings, including one at a theater in Colorado, and the attack on a congresswoman in Arizona, gun experts said.

Wisconsin shooter Wade Michael Page used a Springfield 9mm semiautomatic handgun to carry out the attack at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, officials said. As in several other recent mass shootings, the gun had been purchased legally, at a Milwaukee-area gun store called the Shooter Shop.

James Holmes, the man accused of killing 12 people in a shooting spree last month at a theater in Aurora, Colorado, used one .40-caliber Glock handgun and had another one in his car.  Jared Loughner, who is accused of killing six people and critically wounding Representative Gabrielle Giffords in a January 2011 attack in Tucson, Arizona, used a Glock 9 mm semiautomatic pistol with a magazine that held more than 30 bullets.

Seung-hui Cho, the Virginia Tech University student who killed 32 people and then committed suicide in 2007, also used a Glock semiautomatic handgun.  The common thread binding the mass attacks together is that they all used semiautomatic handguns with high-capacity magazines.

Semiautomatic handguns are the weapon of choice for mass murderers because they are light and easy to conceal, and adaptable to using high-capacity magazines, experts say. This allows the shooter to fire the maximum number of bullets in a short period of time.

The full article is available here

Crazy Weather: 'Virtually No Other Explanation Than Climate Change' - Common Dreams

A statistical climate change analysis led by NASA's James Hansen, which will be presented in a report released Monday on the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that recent extreme weather events are not anomalies, but rather the result of a systemic climate change patterns fueled by man-made global warming.

The new analysis of the past six decades of global temperatures revealed a stunning increase in the frequency of extremely hot summers, with deeply troubling ramifications for not only our future but also for our present. The odds that natural variability created these extremes are minuscule, vanishingly small. To count on those odds would be like quitting your job and playing the lottery every morning to pay the bills.

In an op-ed published on Saturday, Hansen explained that the new analysis, which looked at the past six decades:

revealed a stunning increase in the frequency of extremely hot summers, with deeply troubling ramifications for not only our future but also for our present.

This is not a climate model or a prediction but actual observations of weather events and temperatures that have happened. Our analysis shows that it is no longer enough to say that global warming will increase the likelihood of extreme weather and to repeat the caveat that no individual weather event can be directly linked to climate change. To the contrary, our analysis shows that, for the extreme hot weather of the recent past, there is virtually no explanation other than climate change.

The full article is available here

The Book of Jobs - Joseph E. Stiglitz

It has now been almost five years since the bursting of the housing bubble, and four years since the onset of the recession. Wages are falling—the real income of a typical American household is now below the level it was in 1997.

We knew the crisis was serious back in 2008. The banks got their bailout. Some of the money went to bonuses. Little of it went to lending. And the economy didn’t really recover.

Even if we fully repair the banking system, we’ll still be in deep trouble—because we were already in deep trouble. The fact is the economy in the years before the current crisis was fundamentally weak, with the housing bubble, and the unsustainable consumption to which it gave rise, acting as life support.

The trauma we’re experiencing right now resembles the trauma we experienced 80 years ago, during the Great Depression, and it has been brought on by an analogous set of circumstances. Then, as now, we faced a breakdown of the banking system. But then, as now, the breakdown of the banking system was in part a consequence of deeper problems.

The problem today is the so-called real economy. It’s a problem rooted in the kinds of jobs we have, the kind we need, and the kind we’re losing, and rooted as well in the kind of workers we want and the kind we don’t know what to do with. The real economy has been in a state of wrenching transition for decades, and its dislocations have never been squarely faced.

The full article is available here