Poof! The IRS Scandal Evaporates - Andy Kroll

Liberal outfits were targeted, too.

Bad news for the Republican scandalmongers: The IRS also gave special scrutiny to groups with progressive-sounding names.

A Treasury Department inspector general found no evidence of political influence or bias. The head of the IRS division in question in Cincinnati identified himself to investigators as a "conservative Republican" and said politics played no role in their vetting decisions.

And now it turns out, as the Associated Press reported, the IRS also singled out for extra scrutiny groups applying for nonprofit status with "progressive, "occupy," and "Israel" in their name.

That is, liberal outfits were targeted, too.  IRS employees weren't only looking for conservative buzz words as they examined political nonprofit groups; they were on the watch for groups of all political stripes.

So is it case closed on the IRS debacle? Not yet. The agency still needs to explain why its staffers singled out groups in this way, and how it further intends to streamline the vetting process. But is this a liberal political conspiracy? Sure doesn't look like it.

The full article is available here

How a Nation Unwinds - Joe Klein

The past 40 years have been a time of vaulting libertarianism; we need a communitarian corrective, which seems quite impossible at this moment.

Over the past 40 years, the United States has unwound from its former rigor.  Facade has overtaken content, speculation has overtaken ­development. The middle class is sliding toward dissolution. The wealthy have become an isolated plutocracy. If it weren’t for the fact that this is America, I’d say we were pretty thoroughly cooked.

The past 40 years have been a time of vaulting libertarianism; we need a communitarian corrective, which seems quite impossible at this moment.

There was some hope, a few months ago, that we might actually get a budget this year. Both houses of Congress passed a version; it was time to hammer out the final deal. But the Republicans, following a strategy of nonsense posing as substance and nihilism posing as principle, have blocked any sort of negotiations. They have focused instead on nonscandals.  What is not being discussed in Washington?

There is no discussion of the overwhelming power and moral hazard of the five largest banks, which hold assets equal to 56% of the total U.S. economy and remain too big to fail. There is no discussion of the destructive growth of the financial sector, which is siphoning off our smartest young college graduates to create ever-more-complicated (and less substantive) investment schemes, like the collateralized debt obligations that crashed the market in 2008. There is little discussion of the decline of the middle class beyond the cliché-slinging of both sides. But where do we find the work to replace the factory jobs that sustained a prosperous middle class prior to the unwinding.

There are those, like the German historian Oswald Spengler, who believe that civilizations decay and die, that democracy ultimately lapses into plutocracy. They certainly seem to have momentum on their side these days.  We have been a nation of Henry Fords and Wright brothers. Our best hope is that, beneath the dissolution, we still are.

The full article is available here

Hey, Paul Ryan! We All Depend on Government, Even You (and Your Mom) - Peter Dreier

Ryan and his family have a long history of relying on government, just like any and all of us do.

Rep. Paul Ryan is back to his old tricks, demonizing people who rely on government to improve their lives. This week, his target was food stamp recipients.

He's already come out in favor of $20 billion in cuts that will throw an estimated two million children, elderly, and disabled Americans off food stamps. But now Ryan -- the millionaire Wisconsin Congressman who was Mitt Romney's VP running mate last year -- is pushing an amendment to eliminate food stamps for people who have $2,000 in savings, or a car worth more than $5,000.

Ryan and his family have a long history of relying on government, just like any and all of us do.

Last summer, in his speech to the GOP convention in Tampa, Ryan told a story about how, after his father's death, his mother "got on a bus every weekday for years, and rode 40 miles each morning to Madison."   He explain: “She earned a new degree and learned new skills to start her small business.It wasn't just a new livelihood. It was a new life. And it transformed my Mom from a widow in grief to a small businesswoman whose happiness wasn't just in the past. Her work gave her hope. It made our family proud. And to this day, my Mom is my role model.”

Ryan meant this as a celebration of his mother's lift-herself-by-her-own-bootstraps spirit.

But shouldn't someone remind Ryan that the bus was a public service, that the road was built and maintained by government, and that the University of Wisconsin in Madison is a public institution?

This is the Paul Ryan whose budget plan would have slashed funding for public education, roads, and public services that are the investments we need to lift people out of poverty and strengthen our economy. Now he's taking aim at the most vulnerable people in society -- food stamp recipients.

The full article is available here

In All But 6 States, You Can Be Fired For Being Victim of Domestic Violence - Bryce Covert

The loss of a job thanks to abuse can end up cutting off a lifeline to end that abuse.

Last week, Carie Charlesworth, a teacher in California and a victim of domestic violence, was fired from her job because her abusive husband invaded the school parking lot and put the school on lockdown.

While her abuser was sent to prison, she was also punished for his crime by losing her employment. The school’s action -– firing her because she is a victim of domestic abuse –- is sadly legal in most states.

Just six, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, New York, Oregon, and Rhode Island, have laws on the books that bar employment discrimination against victims of domestic abuse or sexual assault, according to an up-to-date document tracking these laws from Legal Momentum.

The loss of a job thanks to abuse can end up cutting off a lifeline to end that abuse. Three-quarters of women report staying with their abuser longer because of economic reasons.

 “We know that economic abuse is frequent in these situations, and abusers often try to get the victim fired in order to increase her financial dependency on him,” Kim Gandy, president and CEO of the National Network to End Domestic Violence, told ThinkProgress. By showing up at a partner’s workplace, in many states an abuser can put her job at risk, potentially driving her back into his arms.

The full article is available here

Supreme Court Protects Corporations From Liability At Consumer's Expense - Nicole Flatow

Another instance of the most business-friendly justices in 65 years siding with their friends.

In a 5-3 ruling with Justice Sonia Sotomayor recused, Justice Antonin Scalia eviscerated almost any opportunity small merchants have to challenge alleged monopolistic practices by American Express in their credit card agreements.

Sound familiar? Earlier this term, the court turned back on procedural grounds a lawsuit alleging monopolistic practices by Comcast. A week after that, they turned back the claims of workers to challenge employer practices as a class.

And in 2011, they issued one of the worst blows to consumer rights in years when they held that consumers challenging $30 fees could not sue together as a class. In each of these cases, the court’s procedural rulings mean the parties may never get to argue about whether these corporations actually violated the law. And as a consequence, these corporations may never be held accountable.

Today’s ruling was yet another point in the Chamber of Commerce’s remarkable tally of wins before the Roberts Court, and another chance for the most business-friendly justices in 65 years to side with their friends.

The full article is available here

Keystone XL isn’t built yet, already it’s faulty - John Upton

Already TransCanada is digging up stretches of faulty piping.

Property owners who watched with disgust and fear as TransCanada contractors ripped up their land to lay the southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline are being treated to a repeat performance.

The pipeline isn’t even in service yet, but already TransCanada is digging up stretches of faulty piping and replacing them, raising fresh safety fears. T

he pipeline is intended to link up with the Keystone XL northern leg — which is still waiting for approval from the Obama administration — and then carry tar-sands oil down to refineries in Texas.

The full article is available here

Local Business Helps Communities Thrive - Stacy Mitchell

There’s a connection between the ownership structure of our economy and the vitality of our democracy.

Cities where small, locally owned businesses account for a relatively large share of the economy have stronger social networks, more engaged citizens, and better success solving problems, according to several recently published studies.

And in the face of climate change, those are just the sort of traits that communities most need if they are to survive massive storms, adapt to changing conditions, find new ways of living more lightly on the planet, and, most important, nurture a vigorous citizenship that can drive major changes in policy.

That there’s a connection between the ownership structure of our economy and the vitality of our democracy may sound a bit odd to modern ears. But this was an article of faith among 18th- and 19th-century Americans, who strictly limited the lifespan of corporations and enacted antitrust laws whose express aim was to protect democracy by maintaining an economy of small businesses.

It wasn’t until the 20th century that this tenet of American political thought was fully superseded by the consumer-focused, bigger-is-better ideology that now dominates our economic policy-making. Ironically, the shift happened just as social scientists were furnishing the first bona fide empirical evidence linking economic scale to civic engagement.
The full article is available here

Exonerated Prisoners Are Winning the Fight Against the Death Penalty - David Love

Innocence, of course, is just one reason to end executions.

Abolition in Maryland, which has executed more than 300 people, is important. It is the first state below the Mason-Dixon line to abolish the death penalty. The South accounts for 80 percent of the executions in the US.

Innocence, of course, is just one reason to end executions. The death penalty is punishment for the poor, disproportionately of color, reserved for those who cannot afford the best justice money can buy. 

Encouragingly, death penalty sentencing is on the decline. Last year saw the second lowest number of new death sentences since 1976.

Faced with the inherent brutality of the death penalty, its violation of human rights, exorbitant cost, ineffectiveness, dysfunction and incessant risk of killing innocent people, other states will follow Maryland’s example.

The full article is available here

277 Million Boston Bombings - Robert Scheer

To this day, antipersonnel weapons—the technologically refined version of the primitive pressure cooker fragmentation bombs exploded in Boston—maim and kill farmers and their children in Southeast Asia.

The horror of Boston should be a reminder that the choice of weaponry can be in itself an act of evil. President Obama made clear that “anytime bombs are used to target innocent civilians, it is an act of terror.”

Obama was right to blast the use of weapons that targeted civilians in Boston as inherent acts of terrorism, but by what standard do such weapons change their nature when they are deployed by governments against civilians?

America’s role in the deployment of antipersonnel land mines, and our country’s refusal to sign off on a ban on cluster munitions agreed to by most of the world’s nations, that offers the most glaring analogy with the carnage of Boston.

To this day, antipersonnel weapons—the technologically refined version of the primitive pressure cooker fragmentation bombs exploded in Boston—maim and kill farmers and their children in Southeast Asia.  The United States dropped 277 million cluster bomblets on Laos between 1964 and 1973.

From 2001 through 2002, the United States dropped 1,228 cluster bombs containing 248,056 submunitions in Afghanistan, and U.S. and British forces used almost 13,000 cluster munitions containing an estimated 1.8 million to 2 million submunitions during the first three weeks of combat in Iraq in 2003.

The whole point of a cluster weapon is to target an area the size of several football fields with the same bits of maiming steel that did so much damage in Boston. The International Committee of the Red Cross, which has been active in attempting to clear land of remaining bomblets, estimates 10,000 Lao civilian casualties to date from such weapons. As many as twenty-seven million unexploded bomblets remain in the country, according to the committee.

On Aug. 1, 2010, the Convention on Cluster Munitions, banning such weapons, became a matter of international law for the 111 nations, including 18 NATO members, that signed the agreement. The U.S. was not one of them. Current American policy, according to the Congressional Research Service report, is that “cluster munitions are available for use by every combat aircraft in the U.S. inventory; they are integral to every Army or Marine maneuver element and in some cases constitute up to 50 percent of tactical indirect fire support.”

The full article is available here

Austerity's Failure = Everywhere You Look - Jon Queally

Austerity leads the economy to perform more poorly.

The last week has been a flurry of headlines decrying the complete and utter failure of the 'austerity experiment' across the globe, with an influential academic paper from Harvard economists becoming the poster-child not only of poor scholarship but also failed common sense.

As New York Times columnist and Nobel economist Paul Krugman notes:

"The austerian position has imploded; not only have its predictions about the real world failed completely, but the academic research invoked to support that position has turned out to be riddled with errors, omissions and dubious statistics.

The academic research mentioned is the work of Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff, which was revealed last week to be riddled with spread sheet errors that vastly undercut the paper's conclusion. Those faulty conclusions, however, were widely used by pro-austerity policy-makers on both sides of the Atlantic to justify slashing public spending, imposing harsh cuts on social programs and worker benefits."

In a Bloomberg interview earlier this month Columbia University's Joseph Stiglitz was blunt about the historical record. “There is no instance of a large economy getting to growth through austerity," he said. "Austerity leads the economy to perform more poorly. It leads to more unemployment, lower wages, more inequality.”

The Reinhart and Rogoff paper was not used only to argue for cuts to popular social insurance programs, it was also used to argue against government efforts to boost the economy and create jobs.

You get the idea: The austerity agenda looks a lot like a simple expression of upper-class preferences, wrapped in a facade of academic rigor. What the top 1% wants becomes what economic science says we must do.

The full article is available here

What if the Tsarnaevs Had Been the "Boston Shooters"? - John Cassidy

Yes, this is only a counter-factual exercise, which, like all such riffs, shouldn’t be taken too literally. But it’s hard to think about it for long without coming to the conclusion that there’s something askew with the way we think about and react to various types of extreme violence, and the weapons used in such episodes.

In a country where each life (and death) is supposed to count equally, surely the victims of gun violence should be accorded the same weight as the victims of bomb violence. And the perpetrators should get equal treatment, too. But, of course, that’s not how things work. 

Most Americans associate bomb attacks with terrorists. When they hear of mass shootings, they tend to think of sociopaths and unbalanced post-adolescents. If the Tsarnaevs had managed to carry out a gun massacre unharmed and escaped, their identities unknown, would the first presumption have been that the shooters were Islamic extremists? Or would people have looked in another direction?

Terrorism, especially homegrown terrorism, is a minor threat to public safety and public health. It pales in comparison to gun violence.

The full article is available here

Our Souls And A Planet's Worth of Suffering - Bill Hodgeman

I don't think that the human soul was made to sustain information about a planet's worth of suffering--everyday--when, in most cases, there's nothing we can do about it. 

For most of history, people were only aware of the tragedies that happened in their own communities, and in most cases, they COULD do something about it. 

Lopsided Information- Action ratios are bad for the soul.

Boston bombing: Bad journalism fuels terrorism hysteria - Robin Abcarian

What is wrong with the New York Post?

Thursday morning, the tabloid newspaper’s front page featured a huge photo of two young men with backpacks, with the giant headline: “Bag Men: Feds seek these two pictured at Boston Marathon.”

In the online story, the pair’s faces had big red circles around them. Yes, sort of like targets. Turns out, the young men had nothing to do with the blasts.  After an appropriate hail of criticism, Post Editor Col Allan, incredibly, defended his decision to smear two innocent men. And yes, that was a smear.

By making a lame pun about their backpacks, the Post leaped past any kind of journalistic restraint and implied the men were suspects in the case. How could you read the photo and the giant headline any other way?

Claims feed into stereotypes and affirm our worst prejudices. A Saudi Arabian kid running from the blast must be the suspect. A couple of swarthy backpack-toting kids watching the race must be the suspects.  The New York Post promulgated both those stories.

The full article is available here

Oklahoma Grandmother Bike-Locks Herself to KXL Pipeline Machinery - Jacob Chamberlain

Zorn was eventually removed from the equipment by local police and taken into custody.

Oklahoma grandmother Nancy Zorn, 79, locked herself to a piece of heavy machinery Tuesday morning in protest of TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline construction, halting work on a construction site of the tar sands harbinger for several hours.

“Right now our neighbors in Arkansas are feeling the toxic affect of tar sands on their community. Will Oklahoma neighborhoods be next?” Zorn asked, referring to the thousands of barrels of tar sands oil which spilled out of an Arkansas pipeline last week.

“I can no longer sit by idly while toxic tar sands are pumped down from Canada and into our communities. It is time to rise up and defend our home. It is my hope that this one small action today will inspire many to protect this land and our water.”

Zorn was eventually removed from the equipment by local police and taken into custody.

Zorn is the second Oklahoma grandmother this year risking arrest to stop construction of the pipeline, Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance said Tuesday. The action is part of a series of civil disobedience actions against the pipeline construction led by the group.

The full article is available here

Paul Ryan’s Regressiveness Part II - Robert Reich

Austerity economics — of which Ryan’s upcoming budget is the most extreme version — is a cruel hoax. 

Republicans lost the election but they still shape what’s debated in Washington — the federal budget deficit and so-called “fiscal responsibility.”

The White House’s and the Democrat’s continuing failure to reshape that debate has lead directly and logically to Paul Ryan’s budget plan this week, which is a more regressive version of the same plan American voters resoundingly rejected last November.

Sadly, the President is playing into the GOP’s hands with a new round of negotiations over a “grand bargain.”  Despite February’s encouraging job numbers, the major challenge is still jobs, wages, growth, and widening inequality — not deficit reduction and fiscal responsibility.

Austerity economics — of which Ryan’s upcoming budget is the most extreme version — is a cruel hoax. Cruel because it hurts most those who are already hurting; a hoax because it doesn’t work.

So why even try for a “grand bargain” that won’t deal with these fundamentals but only further legitimize the GOP mythology and further mislead the public about what’s really at stake?

The full article is available here

You: Doing More With Less, Corporate Profits: Going Strong

What's good for American business isn't necessarily good for Americans.

The Dow hit a record high this week, but who's winning? In all the chatter about our "jobless recovery," how often does someone explain the simple feat by which this is actually accomplished?

US productivity increased twice as fast in 2009 as it had in 2008, and twice as fast again in 2010: workforce down, output up, and voilá! No wonder corporate profits are up 22 percent since 2007.  Americans' disposable income has inched ahead 1.4% by comparison.  So far in this recovery, corporations have captured an unusually high share of the income gains.

The word "productivity" is a term insidious in both its usage and creep. And so we kowtow to—nay, embrace—a cultural maxim that just happens to be enormously convenient to corporate America. The not-so-subtle implication is always: Don't you want to be a productive member of society? 

Except what's good for American business isn't necessarily good for Americans. We're not just working smarter, but harder. And harder. And harder, to the point where the driver is no longer American industriousness, but something much more predatory.

Just counting work that's on the books (never mind those 11 pm emails), Americans now put in an average of 122 more hours per year than Brits, and 378 hours (nearly 10 weeks!) more than Germans. The differential isn't solely accounted for by longer hours, of course—worldwide, almost everyone except us has, at least on paper, a right to weekends off, paid vacation time and paid maternity leave. (The only other countries that don't mandate paid time off for new moms are Papua New Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Samoa, and Swaziland.)

The full article is available here

The Sequester & The Tea Party Plot - Robert Reich

Sequestration is only the start.

Imagine a plot to undermine the government of the United States, to destroy much of its capacity to do the public’s business, and to sow distrust among the population.

Imagine further that the plotters infiltrate Congress and state governments, reshape their districts to give them disproportionate influence in Washington, and use the media to spread big lies about the government.

Finally, imagine they not only paralyze the government but are on the verge of dismantling pieces of it.

Far-fetched? Perhaps. But take a look at what’s been happening in Washington and many state capitals since Tea Party fanatics gained effective control of the Republican Party, and you’d be forgiven if you see parallels.

Sequestration is only the start. What they set out to do was not simply change Washington but eviscerate the U.S. government — “drown it in the bathtub,” in the words of their guru Grover Norquist – slashing Social Security and Medicare, ending worker protections we’ve had since the 1930s, eroding civil rights and voting rights, terminating programs that have helped the poor for generations, and making it impossible for the government to invest in our future.

The full article is available here

Aisle be damned: How Big Food dominates your supermarket choices - by Andy Bellatti

They have been able to become so large because of the evisceration of antitrust law during the Reagan administration.

Just 20 companies produce most of the food eaten by Americans (yes, even organic brands). These companies are so large, they have the economic and political power to dictate food policy, from laws on advertising junk food to children and manipulating nutrition standards to weakening federal pesticide regulations and blocking the labeling of genetically engineered foods.

They have been able to become so large because of the evisceration of antitrust law during the Reagan administration. And since that time, no U.S. president has been willing to tackle the issue of concentration. This is ironic since all of the rhetoric about our economic system revolves around competition in the marketplace.

Ultimately, to create a fair and healthy food system we need to build the political power to create commonsense regulations — and enforce them — for food safety and labeling, antitrust policy, biotechnology, and other new technologies used in the food system. This means having our eye on the long-term prize of a regulatory system that really works. Laying out what this ideal regulatory system should look like also creates more political space for achieving short-term goals and mobilizing more people. Activists are really tired of fighting for just the best they can get in the latest fight over some terrible deregulation scheme dreamed up by corporate interests and pushed by governmentphobes. We must fight for what we really want.

The full article is available here

Battles of the Budget and a War Between the Classes - Paul Krugman

The fight over the fiscal cliff was just one battle in that war.

Our 2 major political parties are engaged in a fierce struggle over the future shape of American society. Democrats want to preserve the legacy of the New Deal and the Great Society — Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — and add to them what every other advanced country has: a more or less universal guarantee of essential health care. Republicans want to roll all of that back, making room for drastically lower taxes on the wealthy.

The fight over the fiscal cliff was just one battle in that war. It ended, arguably, in a tactical victory for Democrats; mainly because of what didn’t happen: There were no benefit cuts.. The question is whether it was a Pyrrhic victory that set the stage for a larger defeat.  Progressives, always worried that President Obama seems much too willing to compromise about fundamentals, breathed a sigh of relief.

There were also some actual positives from a progressive point of view. Expanded unemployment benefits were given another year to run, a huge benefit to many families and a significant boost to our economic prospects (because this is money that will be spent, and hence help preserve jobs). Other benefits to lower-income families were given another five years — although, unfortunately, the payroll tax break was allowed to expire, which will hurt both working families and job creation.

So why are many progressives — myself included — feeling very apprehensive? Because we’re worried about the confrontations to come.  According to the normal rules of politics, Republicans should have very little bargaining power at this point.  But the G.O.P. retains the power to destroy, in particular by refusing to raise the debt limit — which could cause a financial crisis. And Republicans have made it clear that they plan to use their destructive power to extract major policy concessions.

The full article is available here

2012: The Year Cities Stood Up To Climate Change — and Took A Beating - Greg Hanscom

A year ago, as the curtain was closing on 2011, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg stood in front of an audience at the United Nations and declared that it would be cities, not national governments, that would lead the fight against climate change. “As mayors — the great pragmatists of the world’s stage and directly responsible for the well-being of the majority of the world’s people — we don’t have the luxury of simply talking about change but not delivering it,” he said.

2012 would prove Bloomberg right. It would also lay bare just how far we still have to go before cities like New York are prepared for he havoc climate change is wreaking — and how hard urban leaders in the U.S. will have to fight to get help from Washington on this and a whole host of other issues. In the closing days of 2012, we watched Republicans in Congress balk at funding disaster relief after superstorm Sandy barreled into New York, inflicting tens of billions of dollars in damage along the Eastern Seaboard.

In recent decades, the U.S. has turned its back on urban areas, pouring billions into car-centric suburbs while allowing inner cities to crumble. As with climate change, we understand what it will take to assuage many of our cities’ worst problems — joblessness, poverty, crime — and yet we’re content to turn a blind eye, dismiss these as someone else’s problem. Many Republicans go so far as to call any policy that would help cities part of the bogus “war on the suburbs.” Urban sustainability efforts, they say, are a United Nations plot to destroy the American way of life.

In truth, cities are the key to battling the climate conundrum, as Alex Steffen eloquently points out in his new book, Climate Zero, published in Grist last month. The question for Americans — for our national and local leaders, for millennial urbanophiles, and baby boomers who say they want to live in cities again — is whether we’re really ready to commit to making our cities work again. The answer to that question will have huge implications not just for our cities, but for our warming planet as well.

The full article is available here

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