Obama Has Adopted Many Core Republican Beliefs. Is That Why Their 2012 Candidates Are A Disaster? - Glenn Greenwald

Because Obama has governed as a centrist Republican, these GOP candidates are able to attack him as a leftist radical only by moving so far to the right in their rhetoric and policy prescriptions that they fall over the cliff.

The Republican presidential primaries have been a particularly base spectacle. Republicans have lurched manically from one ludicrous candidate to the next, only to watch in horror as each wilted the moment they were subjected to scrutiny.

In fairness to the much-maligned GOP field, they face a formidable hurdle: how to credibly attack Obama when he has adopted so many of their party's defining beliefs. Depicting the other party's president as a radical menace is one of the chief requirements for a candidate seeking to convince his party to crown him as the chosen challenger.

Because Obama has governed as a centrist Republican, these GOP candidates are able to attack him as a leftist radical only by moving so far to the right in their rhetoric and policy prescriptions that they fall over the cliff of mainstream acceptability, or even basic sanity.  They render themselves inherently absurd.

The full article is available here

If It Ain't Broke, Break It - Keith Ellison

When your entire philosophy is that government is the problem, you make government the problem. 

Last week, Speaker Boehner described the Senate deal for extending middle-class tax cuts and unemployment benefits as acceptable.  No sooner did the Tea Party House Republicans begin to fear that this good faith compromise just might succeed than they stepped forward and smashed the deal.  What happened? The anti-government ideologues happened.

The Tea Partiers rejected the deal their leader blessed—knowing full well the Senate would not capitulate to their demand—and thereby risking the livelihood of 160 million Americans who depend on the extension of unemployment benefits and payroll tax cuts. These are the Grover Norquist disciples who want to “drown government in the bathtub."

When your entire philosophy is that government is the problem, you make government the problem. Even conservative economists agree that unemployment benefits create jobs by allowing consumers to spend more money. Yet this conflicts with the Republicans’ predetermined ideology that no government action can help.

The Republican philosophy goes something like this: if you take your car to the mechanic and instead of fixing it, they take out the engine and charge you an arm and a leg, you should conclude that mechanics can’t fix cars and you should probably just take yours to the junkyard and sell it for scrap metal.

But the truth is—you probably just hired a bad mechanic.

The full article is available here

“War on Christmas”: Anti-Semitic, White Supremacist Roots of Right's Annual Culture War - Max Blumenthal

The Christmas kulturkampf is a growth industry, providing an effective boost for conservative fundraising and a ratings bonanza for right-wing media. 

What would Christmas be without warnings of the secular crusade to destroy it? Thanks to the fulminations of cable news cranks and evangelical moralists, the War on Christmas has become an annual outrage.

The story typically goes as follows: secular elements have intimidated stores into replacing the phrase “Merry Christmas” with “Happy Holidays;” nativity scenes have been removed from public spaces under threat of ACLU lawsuits; a decadent culture is moving ever closer to eradicating Christian morality; and America slouches towards Gomorrah.

The Christmas kulturkampf is a growth industry, providing an effective boost for conservative fundraising and a ratings bonanza for right-wing media.  So who was the genius that created it? To find the answer, a visit with the ghost of conservatism’s past is in order.

In his 1995 book, Alien Nation, Peter Brimelow argued that the influx of “weird aliens with dubious habits” from developing nations was eroding America’s white Christian “ethnic core,” and in turn, sullying its cultural underpinnings. The War on Christmas was, in his view, a particularly pernicious iteration of the multicultural “struggle to abolish America.”

In 1999, Brimelow founded what would become the internet’s leading anti-immigration web journal, VDare.com, named for the first British child born in the Americas. Brimelow’s new venture provided a forum to allies like Jared Taylor, a white supremacist publisher, and Kevin MacDonald, an evolutionary psychology professor who has argued that Jews are genetically equipped to out-compete Gentiles for resources and power.

VDare became the staging ground for the War on the War on Christmas. Unlike their more respectable counterparts, Brimelow’s writers dared to name the true anti-Christian Grinch: Jews.

VDare’s 2005 War on Christmas winner, Steve Sailer, a Eugenics enthusiast, wrote, “those exemplars of successful assimilation now seem to be de-assimilating emotionally, becoming increasingly resentful, at this late date, of their fellow Americans for celebrating Christmas.”

By 2005, Fox News personalities Bill O’Reilly and John Gibson were dedicating entire shows to the War on Christmas. While their rants were directed at “secular progressives,” they echoed the arguments of Brimelow’s allies. “It’s all part of the secular progressive agenda,” O’Reilly grumbled. “If you can get religion out, then you can pass secular progressive programs, like legalization of narcotics, euthanasia, abortion at will, gay marriage.” National Review’s website jumped back on the bandwagon, beginning with editor Kathryn Jean Lopez’s promotion of Gibson’s bestselling 2005 polemic, The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought.

The full article is available here

The Nastiness of Newt Gingrich - The Nation

Early in this years Presidential campaign, Newt Gingrich emerge as the cruelest and most unusual contender.

It figured that a Republican presidential primary race defined by nothing so much as a taste for cruel and unusual politics would eventually see Newt Gingrich emerge as the cruelest and most unusual contender.  And so he has, emerging as the default choice of a new breed of Republican so extreme it would scare the bejeezus out of Barry Goldwater or Ronald Reagan.

Last week, he stepped up with a proposal to fire school janitors and replace them with child laborers. Blaming “the core policies of protecting unionization and bureaucratization” for “crippling” children, Gingrich told a Harvard audience, “It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children in, first of all, in child laws, which are truly stupid.”

Even in a party where shamelessness is now considered a virtue, it’s unsettling that a man who collected $30,000 a month for an hour of counsel to Freddie Mac administrators would attack school janitors, who according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics earn a mean wage of $13.74 an hour, or $28,570 a year.

In response to Gingrich, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees said, “The people you want to fire and replace with kids? A lot of them are parents. That job puts a roof over kids’ heads, food on the table, and provides them with healthcare and the chance to get an education. That job is the only thing between a kid and poverty.” But Gingrich has never been bothered by the human costs of right-wing social experimentation.

Should GOP disdain for Romney be so overarching that Gingrich prevails, he will then be the beneficiary of the largesse that Karl Rove, the Koch brothers and others are accumulating to pay for an anyone-but-Obama campaign in the fall.

The full article is available here

Dead Afghan Kids Still Not Newsworthy - Peter Hart

We've been conditioned simply to accept these incidents as though they carry no meaning.

On November 25, the New York Times reported--on page 12--that six children were killed in one attack in southern Afghanistan on November 23. This news was, as best I can tell, not reported on ABC, CBS, NBC or the PBS NewsHour.

There were, on the other hand, several pieces about U.S. soldiers eating Thanksgiving dinners.

Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald was one of the few commentators to write about the latest killings. As he observed:

We're trained simply to accept these incidents as though they carry no meaning: We're just supposed to chalk them up to regrettable accidents (oops), agree that they don’t compel a cessation to the war, and then get back to the glorious fighting. Every time that happens, this just becomes more normalized, less worthy of notice. It's just like background noise: Two families of children wiped out by an American missile (yawn: at least we don't target them on purpose like those evil Terrorists: we just keep killing them year after year after year without meaning to). It's acceptable to make arguments that American wars should end because they're costing too much money or American lives or otherwise harming American strategic interests, but piles of corpses of innocent children are something only the shrill, shallow and unSerious--pacifists!--point to as though they have any meaning in terms of what should be done.

The full article is available here

Fox News Spins Pepper Spraying Cops: ‘It’s a Food Product, Essentially’ - Gawker

Fox News hosts Bill O'Reilly and Megyn Kelly got to talking about a UC Davis police officer's appalling use of pepper spray on nonviolent protesters. Guess what direction the conversation took!

If you guessed "needlessly deferential to authority and dismissive to the suffering of protesters," you guessed correctly!  (What pepper spray does to your body)

"I don't think we have the right to Monday-morning quarterback the police," O'Reilly says, "particularly at a place like UC Davis, which is a fairly liberal campus."

God forbid! We'd never want to question Lt. John Pike's decision to generously and indifferently dust peacefully sitting protesters with pepper spray from only a few feet away. Especially given that Davis is, you know, a liberal campus!

And, gosh, even if we were going to Monday-morning quarterback the police, shouldn't we remember, as Megyn Kelly tells O'Reilly, that pepper spray is "a food product, essentially"?

The full article is available here

Memo Reveals How Seriously Powerful Interests Take Occupy Wall Street - George Zornick

Television show Up With Chris Hayes unveiled a major scoop: the show obtained a written pitch to the American Bankers Association from a prominent Washington lobbying firm, proposing a $850,000 smear campaign against Occupy Wall Street.

The memo, issued by Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford, described the danger presented by the burgeoning movement, saying that if Democrats embraced Occupy, “This would mean more than just short-term political discomfort for Wall Street.… It has the potential to have very long-lasting political, policy and financial impacts on the companies in the center of the bullseye.” Furthermore, it notes that “the bigger concern…should be that Republicans will no longer defend Wall Street companies.”

We’ve seen similar efforts already. Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS has blanketed Massachusetts airwaves with commercials depicting Occupy protestors as crazed radicals, and hitting Elizabeth Warren for embracing them.

These episodes belie any conservative claims that Occupy Wall Street (1) doesn’t have a clear purpose, or (2) won’t be effective. Rove has wondered in the past “what are these people for? To the degree that they’re for anything it’s left wing nuttiness.” Grover Norquist tweeted the other day that he hopes Occupy DC “keep(s) this up” because “Hippies elected Nixon. OWS will beat Obama.” Fox News is full of similar dismissals of Occupiers as dangerous, confused folks.

But if Rove thinks Occupy doesn’t present a clear message, why is he spending millions of dollars to attack them? Similarly, CLGC staffers are political professionals with many Wall Street clients, and the memo shows how seriously they consider the threat presented to powerful financial firms by the Occupy protests.

The full article is available here

Fox Falsely Dubs Alleged White House Attacker As "'Occupy' Shooter" - Media Matters

An official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing, said the motive for the gunfire might have been simple anger. 

During the November 17 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, co-host Gretchen Carlson asked Fox News contributor Michelle Malkin: "It looks like this White House shooting suspect may have tried to blend in with the Occupy protesters in D.C. when he came from out West. So I pose this question to you this morning: What would have happened if a tea party person had tried to do that?"

Malkin responded that "there is now conflicting testimony or evidence of whether he was in the Occupy D.C. camp, but apparently, reportedly, allegedly there is somebody within that movement who has confirmed that he was there at the camps."

Malkin later noted that "the guy was just completely off his rocker and had nothing to do with any coherent sense of political ideology." But during the segment, onscreen text continued to tie Ortega-Hernandez to the Occupy D.C. movement.

In trying to determine why he recently traveled to the nation's capital from the western part of the country, investigators searched the Occupy D.C. campground near the White House but have found no connection between him and the Occupy protesters, according to three law enforcement officials familiar with the case.

One of the officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing, said the motive for the gunfire might have been simple anger: Ortega-Hernandez "hates the president, he hates Washington, he hates society," the official said.

The full article is available here

Surprise! Right Wing Anti-Solyndra/Anti-Obama Ad Is ‘Mostly False’ - Chris Mims

An anti-Solyndra ad put out by Americans For Prosperity has been viewed 1 million times on YouTube alone, not to mention millions more on television.  Which just goes to show you that if you give the people what they want, they will eat it up like delicious candied bacon, because who doesn't like having their completely ridiculous prejudices reinforced at the expense of truth and our country's future economic prosperity?

One problem though; it is wrong.  Here are just a few of its by-now-canonical-on-Fox-News lies:

• The ad says that "friends of Obama" benefited from the loan, but it references a Daily Caller article about George Kaiser, who, according to Politifact, "is neither a shareholder nor an executive of Solyndra."
  
• Accusations that internal administration emails point to a special relationship with Solyndra are also false -- it’s sort of the opposite. An email from Steve Mitchell, who did get a meeting at the White House and who was connected to Solyndra, said, "I think the company is hoping that we have some unnatural relationship [with administration officials] that can open bigger doors -- I've cautioned them that no one really has those relationships anymore."
  
• Solyndra's loan guarantee was commenced under Bush Jr., not Obama. In the words of Politifact, " … the money wasn't Obama's to give. Solyndra's request predated his administration, and career Energy Department officials handled the deal."

The full article is available here

Dining out with Thomas and Scalia - Laura Conaway

The Supreme Court will hear a challenge to health reform this spring.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is married to a paid advocate against the health reform law, which raises the question of whether he'll recuse himself now that the Supreme Court says it will hear the case.

The day the Supreme Court gathered behind closed doors to consider the politically divisive question of whether it would hear a challenge to President Obama’s healthcare law, two of its justices, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, were feted at a dinner sponsored by the law firm that will argue the case before the high court.

All of this might be slightly less disconcerting were it not for the even larger context, including Scalia and Thomas having attended a conservative strategy session hosted by Koch Industries last year.

Can anyone have confidence in the objectivity of Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas, knowing their connections to electoral politics?

The full article is available here

Obama’s Offshore Oil-Drilling Expansion Doesn’t Wash - Tyson Slocum

It's clear that the Obama administration is willing to override the serious safety concerns raised by its own oil spill commission.

The Department of the Interior's new five-year offshore oil-drilling plan is bad news for the environment, oil workers and taxpayers.

Environmentalists and workplace safety advocates who reasonably anticipated regulatory reform of the oil industry in advance of any new offshore oil-drilling policy are deeply disappointed.

This plan was made in the absence of new safety rules designed to protect workers and the environment. We haven’t updated offshore drilling laws since 1978 – well before we had a deepwater or robust arctic drilling industry. We already know what happens when the oil industry is inadequately regulated.

With DOI’s announcement, it is clear that the administration is willing to override the serious safety concerns raised by its own oil spill commission formed in response to the BP oil disaster. It is unconscionable that new offshore oil drilling will be undertaken without any congressional reform of drilling rules and safety regulation.

The full article is available here

Time To Disband The Supercommittee - The Nation

The economy is in serious trouble. There are 25 million people in need of full-time work, wages are declining and one in four mortgages is underwater. People want Congress to focus on jobs and the economy. So how is it that after a few weeks of inching toward talk about unemployment, Congress has turned its attention back to austerity measures guaranteed to destroy jobs, not create them?

We’re approaching the deadline of the supercommittee, the despicable offspring of last summer’s debt-ceiling deal, in which a “gang of twelve” legislators was given extraordinary powers to meet in secret and decide the economic fate of the nation—a terrible precedent for our democracy. It must forge a plan to reduce the deficit by $1.2 trillion by Thanksgiving, and if nothing is passed by Christmas, deep cuts in discretionary spending begin automatically in 2013.

In a foolish concession to GOP extremism, the majority of Democrats on the supercommittee suggested $3 trillion in deficit reduction, with the ratio of spending cuts to tax hikes at a regressive six to one. A large chunk of those cuts would come from Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. These Democrats have thus given up on the core legacy of their party—and a core obligation of the nation. Even so, House Speaker John Boehner scorned their pre-emptive concessions while supercommittee Republicans suggested even harsher measures that would fall most heavily on the neediest.

The full article is available here

Meet Your 7 Billion Neighbors - Lisa Hymas

Yeah, yeah, you know -- the world population is hitting 7 billion this year. Here are some facts about the world's people that you might not already be familiar with.

• 60 -- percentage of key ecosystem services (freshwater, air and water purification, etc.) degraded or used unsustainably by humans over the last 50 years
• 215 million -- number of women in the world who want to prevent or delay pregnancy but don't have access to modern contraception
• $16.9 billion -- estimated annual cost of providing family-planning services to all women in developing countries
• $20.8 billion -- amount Wall Street firms paid out in bonuses in 2010

The full article is available here

Stark Divide Between Who Caused Climate Change and Who's Being Hit - Damian Carrington

While rich, industrialized nations caused climate change through past carbon emissions, it is the developing world that is bearing the brunt.  The point is starkly illustrated in a new map of climate vulnerability: the rich global north has low vulnerability, the poor global south has high vulnerability.

Large areas of north America and northern Europe are not so exposed to actual climate risk, and are very well placed to deal with it. 

The map is produced by risk analysts Maplecroft by combining measures of the risk of climate change impacts, such as storms, floods, and droughts, with the social and financial ability of both communities and governments to cope. The top three most vulnerable nations reflect all these factors: Haiti, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe.

It is not until you go all the way down 103 on the list, out of 193 nations, that you encounter the first major developed nation: Greece. The first 102 nations are all developing ones. Italy is next, at 124, and like Greece ranks relatively highly due to the risk of drought.

The full article is available here

Saving Capitalism From Crony Capitalists - Nicholas D. Kristof

Whenever I write about Occupy Wall Street, some readers ask me if the protesters really are half-naked communists aiming to bring down the U.S. economic system when they're not doing drugs or having sex in public.

The answer is no. That alarmist view of the movement is a credit to the (prurient) imagination of its critics, and voyeurs of Occupy Wall Street will be disappointed. More important, while alarmists seem to think that the movement is a "mob" trying to overthrow capitalism, one can make a case that, on the contrary, it highlights the need to restore basic capitalist principles like accountability.

To put it another way, this is a chance to save capitalism from crony capitalists.

Financial institutions boost leverage in search of super-size profits and bonuses. Banks pretend that risk is eliminated because it's securitized. Rating agencies accept money to issue an imprimatur that turns out to be meaningless. The system teeters, and then the taxpayer rushes in to bail bankers out. Where's the accountability?

Yes, we face a threat to our capitalist system. But it's not coming from those manning the barricades at Occupy Wall Street protests. Rather, it comes from pinstriped apologists for a financial system that glides along without enough of the discipline of failure and that produces soaring inequality, socialist bank bailouts and unaccountable executives.

The full article is available here

Immunity & Impunity in Elite America: How The 1% Subvert Rule of Law - Glenn Greenwald

As intense protests spawned by Occupy Wall Street continue to grow, it is worth asking: Why now? The answer is not obvious. After all, severe income and wealth inequality have long plagued the United States. 

While the Founders accepted outcome inequality, they emphasized -- over and over -- that its legitimacy hinged on subjecting everyone to the law’s mandates on an equal basis. Jefferson wrote that the essence of America would be that “the poorest laborer stood on equal ground with the wealthiest millionaire, and generally on a more favored one whenever their rights seem to jar.”

Today, it is glaringly obvious to a wide range of Americans that the wealth of the top 1% is the byproduct not of risk-taking entrepreneurship, but of corrupted control of our legal and political systems. It is equally obvious that they are using that power not to lift the boats of ordinary Americans but to sink them.

In lieu of the rule of law -- the equal application of rules to everyone -- what we have now is a two-tiered justice system in which the powerful are immunized while the powerless are punished with increasing mercilessness. As a guarantor of outcomes, the law has, by now, been so completely perverted that it is an incomparably potent weapon for entrenching inequality further, controlling the powerless, and ensuring corrupted outcomes.

The tide that was supposed to lift all ships has, in fact, left startling numbers of Americans underwater. In the process, we lost any sense that a common set of rules applies to everyone, and so there is no longer a legitimizing anchor for the vast income and wealth inequalities that plague the nation.

The full article is available here

New Inequality Data Likely to Boost "Occupy" Movement - Jim Lobe

A major study on income equality by a non-partisan government agency is likely to boost the "Occupy Wall Street" movement, whose standing with the general public appears on the rise, according to a new poll.

The study, released by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), found that the average after-tax real income of the top one percent of the nation's households grew by 275% between 1979 and 2007 - about seven times greater than the increase in income by the remaining 99 percent over the same period.

And the income of the poorest 20% of the nation's earners grew by a mere 18% during that period, according to the report, which had been requested by the senior Democratic and Republican members on the Senator Finance Committee several years ago. That was less than one percent per year.

The report – the latest in a series of private or non-profit studies that confirm a sharp rise in income and wealth inequality over the past generation – came as a new New York Times/CBS News poll showed stronger-than-expected popular support for the "Occupy" movement, which has spread to dozens of cities across the country.

The full article is available here

Why America Must Revive Its Middle Class - Jeffrey Sachs

Economically, things began to fray, and fray badly, in the 1970s. Yet America misdiagnosed the problems. Rather than focus on the overseas challenge to U.S. competitiveness, Ronald Reagan declared in 1980 that government was not the solution to our problems--it was the problem. The key to re-establishing a sound economy, he claimed, was to slash taxes, reduce government programs like energy research and social insurance and generally adhere to a free-market course.

The Reagan diagnosis neglected the fact that the federal government had been a handmaiden of the country's inclusive growth of the 1950s and '60s. Worse, the Reagan Revolution failed to grapple with the even bigger upheaval of globalization.

The new globalization has accelerated the hollowing out of U.S. industries such as apparel, autos and textiles and in the process devastated the middle class employed in manufacturing, except in the highest-skill areas. Although American consumers have been the beneficiaries of a flood of low-cost and high-quality Chinese products, America's industrial workers have paid for it in wage cuts and higher unemployment.

The median earnings of full-time male workers reached their peak way back in 1973. Female workers have fared somewhat better, in part because they are disproportionately in areas like health care and education, which are more sheltered from global competition. The earnings of the CEOs who oversaw this loss of competitiveness, of course, soared spectacularly, especially as they grabbed stock options designed for their benefit.

The truth is that it will take more spending--not in the form of haphazard stimulus but in smart long-term public investments in education, infrastructure and human capital--to get us out of our present mess. It's time to stop arguing about spending cuts for everyone and tax cuts for the rich. Instead, Congress should be having a serious discussion about how we're going to fund our future competitiveness. In this way, we can build the skills and productivity in our society to compete effectively in the 21st century.

The full article is available here

Why Are Police Attacking Peaceful Protesters? OWS Exposes Militarization of US Law Enforcement

Now all of America is seeing the result of police militarization. Efforts to intimidate the protesters are symptoms of three decades of policies that have militarized civilian law enforcement.

Police repression in America is hardly new. Low-income neighborhoods, communities of color and political activists have always had to deal with unnecessary shows of force by some police officers. However, as the number of Occupy arrests nears 1,000, instances of police brutality continue to pile up.

The Oakland Police fired tear gas on demonstrators Tuesday night as they marched through downtown, determined to reclaim the camp that officers destroyed that morning. The use of force seriously injured an Occupy activist and Iraq War veteran. Scott Olsen, 24, remains sedated on a respirator, in stable but critical condition at Highland Hospital. Video posted to YouTube suggests that Olsen was hit at close range with a tear-gas canister. After demonstrators rush to Olsen's aid, an Oakland cop waits a few beats before lobbing a second explosive device at the crowd.

Felix Rivera-Pitre was punched in the face in New York during a march through the city’s financial district; Ryan Hadar was dragged out of the street by his thumbs at Occupy San Francisco; and at Occupy Boston, members of Veterans for Peace were shoved to the ground and dragged away for chanting and peacefully occupying a local park.

Now all of America is seeing the result of police militarization. Efforts to intimidate the protesters are symptoms of three decades of policies that have militarized civilian law enforcement.

A clear pattern has emerged in the response to occupations throughout the country, from San Francisco to Denver, involving midnight raids by heavily armed paramilitary units of riot police deployed to enforce park curfews.

This level of overwhelming police presence, along with the disproportionate and combative force directed at peaceful, unarmed protesters, alarms Americans previously unaware of the increasingly militaristic nature of American law enforcement.

The full article is available here

The Flat-Tax Fraud, and the Necessity of a Truly Progressive Tax - Robert Reich

The flat tax is a fraud. It raises taxes on the poor and lowers them on the rich.  The details of flat-tax proposals vary, of course. But all of them end up benefiting the rich more than the poor for one simple reason: Today’s tax code is still at least moderately progressive.

Flat-taxers pretend a flat tax is good public policy, for two reasons.  First, they say, it would simplify paying taxes. Baloney. Flat-tax proposals don’t eliminate popular deductions. Second, they say a flat tax is fairer than the current system.  The truth is the current tax code treats everyone the same.

The real problem is the top brackets are set too low relative to where the money is. The top-most bracket starts at $375,000 a year. People with incomes higher than that pay 35 percent – again, only on that portion of their incomes exceeding $375,000.  This is absurd. It means a professional who’s making, say, $380,000 a year pays the same income-tax rate as a plutocrat pulling in $2 billion or $20 billion.

Actually, it’s worse than that because the plutocrats get most of their income in the form of capital gains, which are taxed at only 15 percent. That’s why America’s 400 richest people – who earned an average of $300 million last year, and who have more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans put together – now pay at a 17 percent rate (according to the IRS).

Regressives are pushing the flat tax as a smokescreen.

The full article is available here

Rabbit-Hole Economics - Paul Krugman

Reading the transcript of the most recent Republican debate on the economy is, for anyone who has actually been following economic events these past few years, like falling down a rabbit hole. Suddenly, you find yourself in a fantasy world where nothing looks or behaves the way it does in real life.

And since economic policy has to deal with the world we live in, not the fantasy world of the G.O.P.’s imagination, the prospect that one of these people may well be our next president is, frankly, terrifying. 

In the real world, recent events were a devastating refutation of the free-market orthodoxy that has ruled American politics these past three decades. Above all, the long crusade against financial regulation...

But down the rabbit hole, none of that happened. We didn’t find ourselves in a crisis because of runaway private lenders like Countrywide Financial. We didn’t find ourselves in a crisis because Wall Street pretended that slicing, dicing and rearranging bad loans could somehow create AAA assets — and private rating agencies played along. We didn’t find ourselves in a crisis because “shadow banks” like Lehman Brothers exploited gaps in financial regulation to create bank-type threats to the financial system without being subject to bank-type limits on risk-taking.

The GOP is becoming a caricature of itself.

The full article is available here

The Self-Righteous, the Ideologically Confused… “the 53%” - Claire Snyder-Hall

Although I shouldn’t be surprised, I have to say that I do find myself angered and appalled by a reaction that has recently emerged in opposition to the Occupy Wall Street movement, a reaction by working people who claim to speak for “the 53%.” According to Slate, the 53% figure refers to the number of households that actually pay federal income tax. The other 47% do not have to pay either because they have so many deductions or they are simply too poor.

The 53% Tumblr site I discovered this week has the following ridiculous tagline: “We are the 53%: Those of us who pay for those of you who whine about all of that … or that … or whatever.” Apparently, each person posting on the site feels like he or she is personally supporting a bunch of free-loaders and that somehow all the protestors are living on hand-outs. Talk about self-aggrandizing and ignorant!

The Tumblr page shows a series of hard working people, many of whom are economically marginal by their own account. These people should be the base for progressive politics, but they clearly reject any attempt to enact policies that help regular people, like themselves, have a better life.

Instead, they would rather self-righteously defend the economic interests of those who exploit the labor of working people, who pad their own pockets by systematically trashing the commons. Some of the 53%-ers even seem offended to be considered part of the 99% that isn’t benefiting from the current system of distribution – as if recognizing their objective place in the current economic system is some kind of insult.

The full article is available here

Six Demands to Make of Wall Street - Bernie Sanders

The financial crisis and the jobs crisis have demonstrated to the American people that we now have a government that is of the 1 percent, by the 1 percent and for the 1 percent, as Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz eloquently articulated.  We now have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major, advanced country on earth.  The top one percent earn more income than the bottom 50 percent and the richest 400 Americans own more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans.   

Now that Occupy Wall Street is shining a spot light against Wall Street greed and the enormous inequalities that exist in America, the question then becomes, how do we change the political, economic and financial system to work for all Americans, not just the top 1 percent?

1) If a financial institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.

2) Put a cap on credit card interest rates to end usury.

3) The Federal Reserve needs to provide small businesses in America with the same low-interest loans it gave to foreign banks.

4) Stop Wall Street oil speculators from artificially increasing gasoline and heating oil prices.

5) Demand that Wall Street invest in the job-creating productive economy, instead of gambling on worthless derivatives.

6) Establish a Wall Street speculation fee on credit default swaps, derivatives, stock options and futures.

Reform will not be easy.  After all, Wall Street is clearly the most powerful lobbying force on Capitol Hill.  From 1998 through 2008, the financial sector spent over $5 billion in lobbying and campaign contributions to deregulate Wall Street.  More recently, they spent hundreds of millions more to make the Dodd-Frank bill as weak as possible, and after its passage, hundreds of millions more to roll back or diluter the stronger provisions in that legislation.  

The full article is available here

The Seven Biggest Economic Lies - Robert Reich

The Occupiers on Wall Street and elsewhere can’t become a national movement for a more equitable society - unless more Americans know the truth about the economy. Here's an effort to rebut the seven biggest whoppers now being told by those who want to take America backwards.

1. "Tax cuts for the rich trickle down to everyone else." Baloney. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush both sliced taxes on the rich and what happened? Most Americans’ wages (measured by the real median wage) began flattening under Reagan and have dropped since George W. Bush. Trickle-down economics is a cruel joke.

2. "Higher taxes on the rich would hurt the economy and slow job growth." From the end of World War II until 1981, the richest Americans faced a top marginal tax rate of 70 percent or above. Under Dwight Eisenhower it was 91 percent. Even after all deductions and credits, the top taxes on the very rich were far higher than they’ve been since. Yet the economy grew faster during those years than it has since.

3. "Shrinking government generates more jobs." According to Moody’s economist Mark Zandi (a campaign advisor to John McCain), the $61 billion in spending cuts proposed by the House GOP will cost the economy 700,000 jobs this year and next.

4. "Cutting the budget deficit now is more important than boosting the economy."  With so many Americans out of work, budget cuts now will shrink the economy. They’ll increase unemployment and reduce tax revenues. That will worsen the ratio of the debt to the total economy. The first priority must be getting jobs and growth back by boosting the economy.

5.  "Medicare and Medicaid are the major drivers of budget deficits."  Medicare and Medicaid spending is rising quickly, to be sure. But that’s because the nation’s health-care costs are rising so fast. One of the best ways of slowing these costs is to use Medicare and Medicaid’s bargaining power over drug companies and hospitals to reduce costs, and to move from a fee-for-service system to a fee-for-healthy outcomes system.

6.  "Social Security is a Ponzi scheme."  Social Security is solvent for the next 26 years. It could be solvent for the next century if we raised the ceiling on income subject to the Social Security payroll tax. That ceiling is now $106,800.

7.  "It’s unfair that lower-income Americans don’t pay income tax."  Lower-income Americans pay out a larger share of their paychecks in payroll taxes, sales taxes, user fees, and tolls than everyone else.

Demagogues through history have known that big lies, repeated often enough, start being believed — unless they’re rebutted. These seven economic whoppers are just plain wrong.

The full article is available here

Solyndra and The Self-Referential Beltway Media Cycle - David Roberts

One sign of Republicans' success in hyping the Solyndra scandal is that they've got everybody calling it a scandal. Despite the turgid atmospherics, though, there still hasn't been any official wrongdoing established, or even charged. It's like an optical illusion of a scandal, a trick of the media light. Or, to mix metaphors, a hard candy shell with no nut inside.

Last Friday's Solyndra news blitz illustrates the point pretty well. In response to sweeping demands from Republicans, the White House released another huge cache of emails. Poring over them, searching desperately for scandal-ish material in the 65,000 pages of documents the White House has handed over so far, the best reporters could come up with was that Obama had appointed, as political liaison for the program, someone who had "bundled" money for his 2008 campaign.

Those of you awake earlier this century might recall that the Bush administration outdid this "scandal" roughly once a week. Remember Cheney's secret energy task force with fossil-fuel companies? Remember the illicit sex and cocaine at the Minerals Management Service? Remember "Brownie" at FEMA? Remember the manipulation of scientific reports on climate? Remember the $6.6 billion in lost reconstruction money in Iraq?

The Beltway media feedback loop has become grotesquely self-serving and self-referential. It is now for and about plutocrats. And it gives plutocrats what they demand: tidbits and titillation that embarrass Democrats and discredit challengers to the corporate status quo (22 percent of Politico's traffic comes from the Drudge Report). Solyndra-the-scandal is just too juicy too allow for any perspective on Solyndra-the-solar-company.

The full article is available here

Study: Income Inequality Kills Economic Growth - Josh Harkinson

Corporate chieftains often claim that fixing the US economy requires signing new free trade deals, lowering government debt, and attracting lots of foreign investment. But a major new study has found that those things matter less than an economic driver that CEOs hate talking about: equality.

"Countries where income was more equally distributed tended to have longer growth spells," says economist Andrew Berg, whose study appears in the current issue of Finance & Development, the quarterly magazine of the International Monetary Fund.

So how important is equality? According to the study, making an economy's income distribution 10 percent more equitable prolongs its typical growth spell by 50 percent.

The authors aren't the first economists to suggest that income inequality can torpedo the economy. Marriner Eccles, the Depression-era chairman of the Federal Reserve (and an architect of the New Deal), blamed the Great Crash on the nation's wealth gap.

The full article is available here

Middle Class Fights Plutonomy to Save the Dream - Robert Borosage

What Washington can’t seem to understand is the scope of the crisis that Americans face. It isn’t just the 25 million people in need of full time work. We have fewer payroll jobs now than we had in 2000 but 30 million more people. Wages and household incomes are falling. Barely half of employees get health insurance at work, and those that do pay ever more out of pocket before the insurance kicks in.

One in eight homes is in foreclosure or in arrears; one in four is under water. A staggering $12 trillion in wealth that people thought they had – much of it in their homes – has been lost. Only half of employees have any kind of retirement plan at work, and now Social Security and Medicare are under attack.

The middle class is getting crushed. And this isn’t an accident; it is a defeat. It is the result of conservative ideas and corporate interests that have dominated our politics for over thirty years. They launched an attack on labor, lowered the floor under the poorest Americans, and raised the roof for the rich. The money that was supposed to trickle down instead congealed at the top. The richest 1% captured all of the growth of the last decade, while the bottom 90% lost ground.

Right now, the American dream is endangered. America has become, Citibank analysts wrote, a “plutonomy,” made of the rich and the rest – and only the rich count. That is not what most Americans find acceptable.

The full article is available here

Top Five Reasons Why The Occupy Wall Street Protests Accurately Embody The Values Of The REAL Boston Tea Party

In recent years, the Boston Tea Party has been associated with a right-wing movement that supports policies favoring powerful corporations and the wealthy.  However, the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations picking up momentum across the country better embody the values of the original Boston Tea Party. 

Indeed, the very first Boston Tea Party was truly radical and faced scorn from elites and conservatives of the era.

In the late 18th century, the British government became deeply entwined with the interests of the East India Trading Company, a massive conglomerate that counted British aristocracy as shareholders.

1.) The Original Boston Tea Party Was A Civil Disobedience Action Against A Private Corporation. In 1773, agitators blocked the importation of tea by East India Trading Company ships across the country. In Boston harbor, a band of protesters led by Samuel Adams boarded the corporation’s ships and dumped the tea into the harbor. No East India Trading Company employees were harmed, but the destruction of the company’s tea is estimated to be worth up to $2 million in today’s money.

2.) The Original Boston Tea Party Feared That Corporate Greed Would Destroy America. As Professor Benjamin Carp has argued, colonists perceived the East India Trading Company as a “fearsome monopolistic company that was going to rob them blind and pave the way maybe for their enslavement.” A popular pamphlet called The Alarm agitated for a revolt against the East India Trading Company by warning that the British corporation would devastate America just as it had devastated South Asian colonies.

3.) The Original Boston Tea Party Believed Government Necessary To Protect Against Corporate Excess. Smithsonian historian Barbara Smith has noted that Samuel Adams believed that oppression could occur when governments are too weak. As Adams explained in a Boston newspaper, government should exist “to protect the people and promote their prosperity.” Patriots behind the Tea Party revolt believed “rough economic equality was necessary to maintaining liberty,” says Smith.

4.) The Original Boston Tea Party Was Sparked By A Corporate Tax Cut For A British Corporation. The Tea Act, a law by the British Parliament exempting tea imported by the East India Trading Company from taxes and allowing the corporation to directly ship its tea to the colonies for sale, is credited with setting off the Boston Tea Party. The law was perceived as an effort by the British to bailout the East India Trading Company by shutting off competition from American shippers.

5.) The Original Boston Tea Party Wanted A Stronger Democracy. There is a common misconception that the Boston Tea Party was simply a revolt against taxation. The truth is much more nuanced, and there were many factors behind the opposition to the East India Company and the British government. Although the colonists resented taxes levied by a distant British Parliament, in the years preceding the Tea Party, the Massachusetts colony had levied taxes several times to pay for local services.

The full article is available here

Reagan Called For End To ‘Crazy’ Tax Loopholes For Millionaires Current Republicans Hate - Pat Garofalo

When President Obama released his plan for “the Buffett rule,” which involves closing tax loopholes and ensuring that millionaires pay their fair share in taxes, he explained that “middle-class families shouldn’t be paying higher taxes than millionaires and billionaires.”

Ever since, many Republicans have been attacking Obama for inciting “class warfare.” “It looks like the President wants to move down the class warfare path,” said House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI). “I don’t think I would describe class warfare as leadership,” agreed Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH).

However, if calling for an end to millionaires having lower tax rates than their secretaries is class warfare, Obama is only the latest class warrior to occupy the Oval Office. In a June 6, 1985 speech at Northside High School in Atlanta, Georgia, then President Ronald Reagan explained that tax loopholes allowing a millionaire to pay lower taxes that a bus driver were “crazy,” because they allowed the “truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share.”

When Reagan asked the crowd whether millionaires should be paying more or less in taxes than a bus driver, the crowd resoundingly responded “more!” Reagan also told an Illinois crowd about a letter he had received from a man who said that tax loopholes allowed him to pay a lower tax rate than his secretary. “He wrote me the letter to tell me he’d like to come to Washington and testify before Congress as to how that’s possible for him to do and why it is wrong,” Reagan said.

The full article is available here

Compassionless Conservatives - Jon Bauman

Remember when George W. Bush ran as a "Compassionate Conservative?" Nice slogan. The problem was that "Compassionate Conservatives" never actually seemed compassionate.

But at least the Bushies bothered to pretend. With the rise of the Tea Party, those good old days of feeling the need to fake some sense of humanity are far behind us, and a new breed of openly Compassionless Conservatives has come to the fore, both among politicians and the general public. Their undue level of influence in today's "dialogue" makes us wonder what kind of country America is actually becoming.

During the 2008 campaign when some nutcase yelled "Kill him" at a Sarah Palin rally while she was attacking then-candidate Barack Obama. Palin clearly heard him, and just smiled, making no comment.

Fast forward to last week's Republican "debate" (all of them are more like fawn-offs to the far, far right) and the crowd reaction to the question of whether a hospital should treat an uninsured patient in an emergency. "Let him die?" "YEAH!!!" And all the candidates stood silent again, just as Palin did before.

Finally, in their most authentic moment of this Florida "debate," all the Compassionless Conservative candidates performed in perfect lockstep by standing silent once again when the audience booed a soldier for serving his country while being gay.

That was Compassionless Conservatism at its clearest, a chorus of bigoted haters safely unleashing their loathing in a friendly room where none would dare risk losing all those hate-filled votes.


The full article is available here

Pearl Jam: Twenty - by Joshua Kloke

Pearl Jam have continued to exist for 20 years not because of fortune, fame, or even hit records, but for a reason much more elemental altogether: their fans. Pearl Jam owes a lot to their fans. Which is why it’s fitting that the soundtrack to PJ20 was chosen not by the band or their record label, but by director Cameron Crowe, who has been a Pearl Jam fan since its inception.

There is an element of faith when it comes to exchanges between the band and its fans, and PJ20 provides as prime an example as one will ever hear. The band trusted Crowe to choose the tracks for the soundtrack, and Crowe came through in spades. What you hear on PJ20 are the highs, the lows, and the kind of honesty which has become a Pearl Jam trademark.

Spread over two discs (and eventually, two vinyl LPs), the first disc features tracks taken directly from the film, while the second is a collection of rarities and demos. Some tracks recognizable by even the most casual Pearl Jam fan are represented, but even then, Crowe went to great lengths to ensure these tracks stand out.

The full article is available here

How Many Slaves Work For You? - Cathleen Falsani

While major brands continue to address issues like sweatshops in developing nations, many companies still do not know where the supplies come from for their products.

There are more people living in slavery today — an estimated 27 million people, more than at any other time in human history — but until now it’s been hard to comprehend just how many aspects of our everyday lives are dependent upon forced labor.

While major brands continue to address issues like sweatshops in developing nations, many companies still do not know where the supplies come from for their products — for instance, the cotton used to make a t-shirt or the beans in that grande soy latte.

The Slavery Footprint campaign launched Thursday (Sept. 22), which also happened to have been the 149th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, with the goal of personalizing “the issue of modern slavery by providing people with an assessment of just how much their lifestyle depends on forced labor — and the steps they can immediately take to help end it.”

The full article is available here

Obama Isn't Waging 'Class Warfare,' He Wants to End Republican War on Middle Class - Robert Creamer

If I were a Republican, the last thing I'd want to talk about is "class warfare."   For 30 years -- whenever they have been in power -- Republicans and their Wall Street/CEO allies have conducted a sustained, effective war on the American middle class.

Much of the success of their war has resulted from their insistence that it didn't exist. They have talked instead about how the economy needs to reward all those "job creators" whose beneficence will rain down economic prosperity on the rest of us.

American workers have become more and more productive -- but they haven't shared in the income generated by that increased productivity, so now they can't afford to buy the products and services they produce.

The success of the Wall Street/CEO/Republican war on the middle class rests, in part, in the old frog in boiling water story. If you put a frog in a pot of boiling water, they say, the frog will jump right out. But if you put a frog in a pot and gradually turn up the heat until it boils you end up with a cooked frog.

Republican policies have gradually shifted wealth, income and power from the middle class -- and those who aspire to be middle class -- into their own hands and for obvious reasons they haven't wanted to focus too much attention on "class warfare."

The full article is available here

What Nirvana's 'Nevermind' Means to Me - Spin Magazine

40 Artists Reflect on a Classic ... In case you're just joining us: On September 24, 1991, the Seattle-based band Nirvana -- singer-guitarist Kurt Cobain, bassist Krist Novoselic, and new drummer Dave Grohl -- released their second album, Nevermind, their first for major label DGC Records. And while the ensuing maelstrom has hardly gone undocumented, the effect the record had on music fans and artists alike is as raw and personal now as it was 20 years ago.

The full article is available here

The New GOP: Anti-Kids, Anti-Jobs, Anti-Business... And Anti-Republican - Richard Eskow

This is not your father's (or mother's) GOP. During a time of national crisis, the president has submitted an urgently-needed jobs bill that is well within the mainstream for Republicans as well as Democrats. But today's Republicans are a new breed, dedicated not to their country or even an ideology.

Republicans from Taft to Bush Sr. used spending and new taxes to do the right thing for their country in times of economic downturn. But today's Republicans are a nihilistic pack who would turn against everything their predecessors believed in, in the name of selfishness and greed.

I have one yardstick by which I test every major problem," said Dwight D. Eisenhower, "and that yardstick is: Is it good for America?"

Where are the Republicans of yesteryear?

The full article is available here

Exxon Makes Billion-Dollar Bet Climate Change is Real, Here Now and Going to Get Worse; But Keeps Funding Deniers - Joe Romm

This just in: Exxon Mobil has made a multi-billion dollar acknowledgement that climate change is real and is happening now.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for them to admit this, though. Exxon would like you to believe that climate change is neither real nor urgent. That is why they have spent millions of dollars over the last several years funding climate skeptics and fighting legislation that would regulate the emissions of greenhouse gases. When you hear climate skeptics speak, there’s a good chance that Exxon money is in their pocket.

Actions, however, speak louder than words. And Exxon’s most recent action was a thunderclap. According to reports, Exxon has just signed an extensive deal with Rosneft, the Russian state oil company, to develop promising offshore oil and gas deposits in the Arctic Ocean. The companies will begin by investing $3.2 billion to explore in the Kara Sea, with the potential of increasing the investment to $500 billion in the future. Exxon is so convinced of the potential of these sites that it is giving Rosneft ownership rights in several of its global properties to complete the deal.

Full article is available here

10 Years On, Sick Ground Zero Workers Still Without Proper Care - Michelle Chen

This week, 9/11 firefighters and police chiefs rallied to demand changes to the rules governing compensation for health problems tied to poisonous air and debris at Ground Zero.

They want federal funds to support treatment for cancer, which is currently omitted from the primary legislation covering Ground Zero-related medical needs.

The outrage among Ground Zero emergency responders and volunteers is stoked by the belief—recently affirmed by a ProPublica investigation—that the government failed utterly to warn people in the area about the risks of the pollution, or to implement essential safety measures for workers at the site, like enforcing rules about protective gear.

The full article is available here

Getting Those Republican Attacks Right - Dean Baker

At this point, Republicans are beginning to sound almost like wind-up toys when they complain about job-killing taxes and regulations that keep businesses from hiring. The media should at least do the Republicans and the public the courtesy of attempting to discern if these complaints make any sense.

If the charges are true, then there are logical implications that can be explored. The media should be taking the time to see whether the evidence is consistent with Republican claims.

The tax side of the story is pretty simple. The Republicans are making things up.

We still have the Bush-era tax rates in effect. The wealthy are paying a smaller share of their income in taxes than at any point since the Great Depression. The tax rate on corporate profits is also hovering near a post-Depression low.

Some of the more inventive Republicans may claim that it is fear of higher taxes in the future that discourages hiring, but this doesn't fly either. There is a huge amount of turnover in the labor market, especially in sectors like health care, retail and restaurants.

Even if employers were convinced that higher tax rates in 2013 and beyond would make it unprofitable to have more workers; that would hardly be a reason not to hire workers today. Its a safe bet that ordinary turnover would allow them to reduce their workforce to the desired level long before the tax rates returned to their Clinton-era levels.

Of course we created 3 million jobs a year from 1996-2000. This makes it difficult to claim the Clinton-era tax rates would destroy jobs.

The full article is available here

U.N. Study: Austerity Measures Pushing World Economy Toward Disaster - Reuters

The pursuit of austerity measures and deficit cuts is pushing the world economy toward disaster in a misguided attempt to please global financial markets, the annual report of the United Nations economic thinktank UNCTAD said on Tuesday.

The report, entitled "Post-crisis policy challenges in the world economy," savaged U.S. and European economic policies and called for wage increases, stricter regulation of financial markets, including a return to a system of managed exchange rates, and a conscious break with market-led thinking.

"The message here is very pragmatic: we need to reverse our course quickly," said UNCTAD Secretary General Supachai Panitchpakdi.

Supachai, a former head of the World Trade Organization, said the policy response to the crisis, with an emphasis on fiscal tightening, was misconceived and inept.

The report's lead author Heiner Flassbeck said the global economic situation was extremely dangerous and, without more stimulus, a decade of stagnation was the best-case scenario.

In 200+ Days The House GOP Has Voted To Kill 1.9 Million Jobs And Created 0 - Jason Easley

The day after the GOP took base the House, John Boehner said, “As you heard me say last night, we are humbled by the trust that the American people have placed in us and we recognize this is a time for us to roll up our sleeves and go to work on the people’s priorities: creating jobs, cutting spending and reforming the way Congress does its business. It’s not just what the American people are demanding — it’s what they are expecting from us.”

We are a little past the 200 day mark and the House GOP have yet to pass a bill that would create a single job. The only spending they are willing to slash is related to the poor, the disabled, women, Social Security and Medicare, but they have changed the way that the Congress does business by being so hardline that House of Representatives is irrelevant as a policy making body and has become an obstacle to agreement on even the most basic of legislation.

House Republicans have pulled a bait and switch on the American electorate. They ran a campaign based on job creation, but once elected set out to implement a corporatist and socially conservative agenda.

3 Charts To Email To Your Right-Wing Relative - Nation of Change

Your right-wing brother-in-law is plugged into the FOX-Limbaugh lie machine, and keeps sending you emails about "Obama spending" and "Obama deficits" and how the "Stimulus" just made things worse.

Your right-wing brother-in-law is plugged into the FOX-Limbaugh lie machine, and keeps sending you emails about "Obama spending" and "Obama deficits" and how the "Stimulus" just made things worse.

Problem: Your right-wing relative is plugged into the FOX-Limbaugh lie machine, and keeps sending you emails about "Obama spending" and "Obama deficits" and how the "Stimulus" just made things worse.

Solution: Here are three "reality-based" charts to send to him. These charts show what actually happened.

We all want to fix the terrible problems the country has. But it is so important to know just what the problems are before you decide how to fix them. Otherwise the things you do to try to solve those problems might just make them worse.

If you get tricked into thinking that Obama has made things worse and that we should go back to what we were doing before Obama -- tax cuts for the rich, giving giant corporations and Wall Street everything they want -- when those are the things that caused the problems in the first place, then we will be in real trouble.

We all want to fix the terrible problems the country has. But it is so important to know just what the problems are before you decide how to fix them. Otherwise the things you do to try to solve those problems might just make them worse. If you get tricked into thinking that Obama has made things worse and that we should go back to what we were doing before Obama -- tax cuts for the rich, giving giant corporations and Wall Street everything they want -- when those are the things that caused the problems in the first place, then we will be in real trouble.

The full article is available here

Never-Wrong Pundit Picks Obama to Win in 2012 - Paul Bedard

Allan Lichtman, the American University professor whose election formula has correctly called every president since Ronald Reagan’s 1984 re-election, has a belated birthday present for Barack Obama: Rest easy, your re-election is in the bag.

“Even if I am being conservative, I don’t see how Obama can lose,” says Lichtman, the brains behind The Keys to the White House.

Lichtman developed his 13 Keys in 1981. They test the performance of the party that holds the presidency. If six or more of the 13 keys go against the party in power, then the opposing party wins.“The keys have figured into popular politics a bit,” Lichtman says. “They’ve never missed. They’ve been right seven elections in a row. A number that goes way beyond statistical significance in a record no other system even comes close to.”

The full article is available here

Braid: Closer To Closed - AV Club

Last year, Braid discussed recording a single for Record Store Day, which eventually turned into the new four-song EP Closer To Closed. Recorded by frequent collaborator J. Robbins (who also helmed the band’s 1998 swan song, Frame And Canvas), Closer To Closed let the members of Braid re-indulge in their songwriting chemistry without the pressures of being in a band.

The subtitle might as well be This Is A Fun Hobby For Us When We Have Time, Just Don’t Expect A Tour.

Singer-guitarist Bob Nanna wrote the three originals on the EP—the other is a cover of Jeff Hanson’s “You Are The Reason”—with singer-guitarist Chris Broach taking lead vocals on the opener, “The Right Time.” Broach’s voice sounds thin, but his and Nanna’s guitars easily slip into their knotty interplay, building to an excellent chorus. The same follows on “Do Over,” with Nanna taking over lead vocals.

The EP comes and goes in 16 minutes, but it’s nice to see Braid picking up as if 10 years hadn’t passed. Here’s hoping more music follows.

The full review is here

Fear, Inc.: America's Islamophobia Network - Center for American Progress

A small group of donors fund a cluster of think tanks that promote rank Islamophobia.

As the tenth anniversary of 9/11 approaches, a new report details the right-wing donors behind a network of "experts" who promote xenophobic fear of Islam.

In extensive detail, the report describes how a small group of donors fund a cluster of think tanks that promote rank Islamophobia, and how their misinformation is spread through a network of conservative media.

The important context here is that anti-Islam sentiment is growing in the decade since the September 11 attacks: an ABC News taken last year in the wake of the Ground Zero mosque debate showed 49 percent of Americans had a negative view of Islam, compared with just 39 percent in October 2002.

These efforts recall some of the darkest episodes in American history, in which religious, ethnic, and racial minorities were discriminated against and persecuted.

From Catholics, Mormons, Japanese Americans, European immigrants, Jews, and African Americans, the story of America is one of struggle to achieve in practice our founding ideals.

Unfortunately, American Muslims and Islam are the latest chapter in a long American struggle against scapegoating based on religion, race, or creed.

The full article is available here

Our Current Model of Economic Growth Is Driving Us Over The Cliff - Paul Gilding

I have come to the conclusion that our human society and economy is now so large that we have passed the limits of our planet’s capacity to support us. 

This means things are going to change. Not because we will choose change out of philosophical or political preference, but because if we don’t transform our society and economy, we risk social and economic collapse and the descent into chaos.

In all this though, there is a surprising case for optimism. As a species, we are good in a crisis, and passing the limits will certainly be the biggest crisis our species has ever faced.

We have the opportunity to build a society that represents our highest capacities, with extreme poverty eliminated; great technology that works with rather than against nature and provides us with abundant energy and resources; a closed-loop economy with no waste; communities that work and support one another.

The full article is available here

Stop Coddling the Super-Rich - Warren Buffett

While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks.  These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species.

Last year about 80 percent of these revenues came from personal income taxes and payroll taxes. The mega-rich pay income taxes at a rate of 15 percent on most of their earnings but pay practically nothing in payroll taxes. It’s a different story for the middle class: typically, they fall into the 15 percent and 25 percent income tax brackets, and then are hit with heavy payroll taxes to boot.

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, tax rates for the rich were far higher, and my percentage rate was in the middle of the pack. According to a theory I sometimes hear, I should have thrown a fit and refused to invest because of the elevated tax rates on capital gains and dividends.

I didn’t refuse, nor did others. I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone — not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 percent in 1976-77 — shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain. People invest to make money, and potential taxes have never scared them off.

And to those who argue that higher rates hurt job creation, I would note that a net of nearly 40 million jobs were added between 1980 and 2000. You know what’s happened since then: lower tax rates and far lower job creation.

My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.

The full article is available here

Not Trickling Down: The Percentage Of Americans In Poverty Now Equals China - Politics USA

In a recent report, experts said the number of poor in America is nearly identical by percentage to China where more than half the population are peasant farmers who barely subsist from day to day.

America is said to be the wealthiest country on the planet and it has its fair share of extremely wealthy citizens who enjoy special privileges based on their financial worth. However, for all the wealth in America there are still a disproportionate number of people living in dire poverty with no hope of ever exceeding their present condition and it should be a cause of shame for the nation.

It is unfortunate, but regardless of the amount of wealth in America, there are at least 31 million children living in poverty which is approximately one in five of all children.

Researchers at Cornell University discovered that children who grow up in poverty are deeply affected in their educational and psychological development. The researchers found that the instability of children who grow up in poverty are affected by their home lives and that environmental stressors hinder their education and there is a direct correlation between a family’s income and success in school.

The full article is available here

Leaked Documents Show Speculators Drove 2008 Oil Price Spike - Public Citizen

The growing controversy over the leaking of trading documents naming 219 investors in oil futures positions during the 2008 oil price spike shows two things.

First, the data reveals that excessive speculation by banks and others is the driving force in oil markets, pushing prices beyond the supply-demand fundamentals. Who wins when prices rise? Wall Street traders that are engaged in speculating. Who loses? Every consumer who fills up at the pump.

Second, this data shows that we need this information to be made public on a regular basis. The companies named – including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley – were significant players in the 2008 price run-up. The public should know who is responsible for high gas prices. It should get this information not just now, three years later, but on a regular basis, within two weeks.

The President's Bold Jobs Bill (Maybe) - Robert Reich

Some of the Presidents political advisers have been pushing for small-bore initiatives that they believe might have a chance of getting through the Republican just-say-no House. They also figure policy miniatures wont give aspiring GOP candidates more ammunition to tar Obama as a big-government liberal. But the President is sounding as if he's rejected their advice. That's good policy and good politics.

Good policy because any jobs bill has to be big enough to give the economy the boost it needs to get out of the gravitational pull of the Great Recession.

A bold jobs plan is also good politics. With more than 25 million Americans looking for full-time jobs, the wages of people with jobs falling, and an economy on the verge of a double dip, the President has to come out fighting on the side of average people.

Remember: Faster growth means a more manageable debt in the long term. Which means the President could tie this (or any other jobs bill of similar magnitude) to an even more ambitious long-term debt-reduction plan than hes already proposed.

The full article is available here

The Truth about the So-Called "Light Bulb Ban" - Republican Jim DiPeso

A group of congressmen, including one Michelle Bachmann, are backing legislation to repeal what they call the "light bulb ban." Which is sort of like proposing legislation to repeal the flying spaghetti monster. Like the "bulb ban," it exists only as the figment of vivid imaginations.

The rhetoric of the "bulb ban" crowd departs sharply from reality.  The legislation did not ban incandescent light bulbs. It set efficiency standards for general-purpose lighting.  Bachmann and her like-minded allies argue that the 2007 law restricts freedom of choice.

That's exactly the opposite of what's been happening in the lighting market. Philips, GE, and Sylvania beat the law's deadline and have introduced incandescent products that meet the law's requirements. There are more lighting choices than ever before. That's the case today and will be the case next year and the years following.

If anything deserves scorn, it's not the 2007 energy law. It's politicians who seem to have enough time on their hands for political posturing and pointless legislative capers.

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The Hopeless Politics of 2011 - Steve Kornacki

The best case scenario for Obama and his supporters — gut it out for the next 15 months, eke out a small but impressive-seeming win, then hope the Republicans of the 113th Congress decide its in their interests to be just a little bit more open to collaboration.  If that doesn't sound like much to hope for, well, welcome to the politics of 2011.

The current majority party in the House is at the mercy of rank-and-file members who, either because they believe it themselves or because the constituents they will answer to in their next primary election do (or both), approach every issue with the assumption that President Obama, even if what he is saying or doing actually meshes with what once passed for Republican orthodoxy, is totally and completely wrong.

They have convinced themselves that these deficits are mainly the product of a spending binge that Obama and the Democratic Congress embarked on in 2009 and 2010 — and that they can only be arrested through aggressive, immediate spending cuts. Tax hikes, of course, are off the table.

You can point out — over and over again — all of the logical flaws in this reasoning, but don't assume it will change anyone's mind. That would assume that the GOP's deficit dogma is coming from a logical place. But it isn't. Instead, it's best understood as a primarily emotional phenomenon, the product of the intense resentment of and resistance to Obama that has defined the party's base (and its opinion-shaping commentators) since even before the 2008 election.

There's no reason to think that the current Wall Street meltdown, no matter how long it lasts and now matter how clearly the market expresses its disdain for austerity, will prompt Republicans to give an inch — not when they can simply claim that because something bad happened on Obama's watch, it's a direct result of his policies and that he needs to be opposed even more fiercely going forward.

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Obama In An Era Of Decline: How Will He Manage Debt Crisis, Tea Party, GOP? - Peter Beinart

The decision by Standard & Poor’s to downgrade America’s credit rating marks the clearest sign yet that we have entered a new era in American politics.  Today's political environment is like the deeply pessimistic 1970s. President Obama, like presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter, will be defined by how he manages the politics of decline.

Even if Obama can win reelection, the crucial question is, Can he win big enough to change the GOP? The single factor most contributing to American decline is the Republican Party’s theological opposition to raising taxes, a theology with Ronald Reagan as its patron saint, even though Reagan himself raised taxes several times as president.

Obama’s real challenge, therefore, is not merely to win, but to win convincingly enough that he provokes a reassessment on the other side of the aisle, a Republican version of the Democratic Leadership Council that challenged liberal orthodoxies in the wake of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush’s victories in the 1980s. Unless that happens, Americans may be living with the politics of decline for a very long time.

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