Redbendad's Forever Temporary Blog

MPAA & Chris Dodd Threaten Bought Politicians

2012-01-21T12:34:00.002-06:00

MPAA Directly & Publicly Threatens Politicians Who Aren't Corrupt Enough To Stay Bought

from the sickening dept

Reinforcing the fact that Chris Dodd really does not get what's happening, and showing just how disgustingly corrupt the MPAA relationship is with politicians, Chris Dodd went on Fox News to explicitly threaten politicians who accept MPAA campaign donations that they'd better pass Hollywood's favorite legislation... or else:

"Those who count on quote 'Hollywood' for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who's going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. Don't ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don't pay any attention to me when my job is at stake,"

Why the United States Is Destroying Its Education System

2012-01-16T20:18:00.000-06:00

From CommonDreams.org by Chris Hedges:
The demonizing of teachers is another public relations feint, a way for corporations to deflect attention from the theft of some $17 billion in wages, savings and earnings among American workers and a landscape where one in six workers is without employment. The speculators on Wall Street looted the U.S. Treasury. They stymied any kind of regulation. They have avoided criminal charges. They are stripping basic social services. And now they are demanding to run our schools and universities.

Forbes.com Reports Policy Pepper-Spraying Peaceful Students

2011-11-19T18:18:00.001-06:00

Forbes.com writes:

I may be a critic of Occupy Wall Street, but the police are public servants, and public servants have no business treating the public this way.

By and large, Occupy has been a peaceful affair. Certainly pepper-spraying protesters while they sit calmly in a row like this is a gross abuse of power. It should have our collective blood boiling, whether or not we even agree with the protesters themselves. What was meant to be a protest against economic equality quickly morphs into a protest against the police state.

Bully: Limbaugh Repeatedly Attacks Cain Accuser's 13-Year-Old Son

2011-11-11T11:06:00.001-06:00

From: Medmamatters.org

November 09, 2011 7:56 am ET by Eric Boehlert

Using the power of his top-rated, nationally syndicated Clear Channel radio show, Rush Limbaugh on Tuesday repeatedly turned his AM wrath on a schoolboy and portrayed the 13 year-old as a villain in the Herman Cain sexual harassment saga.

A schoolboy.

Limbaugh even likened the young teenager to a Nazi storm trooper.

What prompted Limbaugh's bizarre outbursts? It was news that single mom Sharon Bialek had sat down with her son and told him about the encounter she alleges to have had with Cain thirteen years ago, and that her son then urged her to come forward and make her claim publicly. Limbaugh was enraged that a mother talked to her son about a pressing family matter, and that her son offered guidance.

From that innocuous premise, Limbaugh attacked the boy as a wannabe Nazi "brownshirt."

Could There Be a More Reprehensible and Ignorant GOP Candidate Than George W. Bush? Yes, Several.

2011-10-29T15:06:00.003-05:00

Finding a Voice by Ann Davidow via BuzzFlash.com

Where do such inconsequential people get the nerve to criticize their betters when they have so little to offer in terms of either foreign or domestic policy or intellect?

There was a time when I thought there could never be a more reprehensible, more ignorant presidential candidate and eventual president than George W. Bush, but I was wrong - - a man who served two terms still mispronouncing the word nuclear - - a person so insensate, as to find humor in a search for weapons of mass destruction under tables, and behind lecterns at a press correspondents' dinner. Who could have imagined that the leader of the free world could be so embarrassingly idiotic as to sign on for an unnecessary war financed by tax cuts that would leave the country in a mountain of debt?

The awful truth is, of course, that he was motivated by personal demons and incomplete intelligence that drove him to make incredibly bad foreign-policy decisions, compounded by less than well-founded economic considerations. The worst part of his malfeasance remains, however, the continuing insistence on his part and that of his ne'er-do-well vice president, that their administration was right to undertake an endless war without figuring out where or when it would end and to undermine our country's good name by using torture and calling it enhanced interrogation techniques. In a reference that often comes to mind in terms of what went on during the Bush years, there are always those who insist when a wolf is at the door that it is just a dog.

We have passed through a gruesome period of our history that will leave a multitude of unresolved issues behind, but at least for the moment the Iraq war itself is no longer our responsibility. Of course President Obama is being criticized by the likes of John McCain, Lindsey Graham and others who say we should stay in Iraq for "as long as it takes" whatever that means to them,- - ten more years, twenty, 'til the end of time? None of the war hawks ever suggest a way to pay for our foreign involvements even as they rant repeatedly about our "debt crisis."

Unfortunately these old militants keep hanging on, but as it turns out a new crop of equally inept members of our political vessel has arisen to drive home an agenda that promises to be as bereft of intellect and clearly defined objectives as the one that preceded it. In fact the new group, supported by and elected through the good offices of the tea party, promises to be an even greater threat to the country's equilibrium than their numbingly ineffectual counterparts. Watching the current crop of presidential hopefuls is as dispiriting an exercise as any yet imagined. And the possibility that one of them might actually become president is too daunting to imagine.

Some of them are too intellectually dim to be taken seriously. Others have agendas that defy the boundaries of reasonable discourse. Between the right-wing rhetoric and the economic schemes being promulgated by the Republican zealot class voters have precious little to hang on to that is enlightened and holds any hope for the future. And beware when Rick Santorum says "let me tell you a little story." His rendition of what occurred after the birth of his son was a tear-jerker of the first order. I understand he was making a point that his severely damaged infant who died soon after birth was a real person, not just a bunch of cells to be discarded if he failed to grow and prosper. But I don't think I'll ever get past the picture I have in my head of the Santorums gathering up that infant and taking it home to show their little brother to his five children.

As for the others, not one of them seems to have a seriously developed plan to move the country forward in terms of the economy or foreign policy. It is amazing how familiar the 'solutions' they support are. What are their supporters thinking when 9-9-9 is embraced by so many of them or when Medicare is seriously discussed as a voucher program? And when House Leader Paul Ryan accuses Democrats of class warfare are there still folks naïve enough to believe his attacks when Republicans, deep in the blame game, try to accomplish their agenda with such transparent tactics?

One can only hope the electorate has gotten a little smarter this time around and will reject the gang of lack-luster Republican candidates who have nothing to offer but empty rhetoric.

Justice in America

2011-10-19T21:46:00.002-05:00

Justice in America: rich man's crime vs poor man's crime

The Panic of the Plutocrats

2011-10-10T15:10:00.000-05:00

From Paul Krugman of The New York Times:

It remains to be seen whether the Occupy Wall Street protests will change America’s direction. Yet the protests have already elicited a remarkably hysterical reaction from Wall Street, the super-rich in general, and politicians and pundits who reliably serve the interests of the wealthiest hundredth of a percent.

And this reaction tells you something important — namely, that the extremists threatening American values are what F.D.R. called “economic royalists,” not the people camping in Zuccotti Park.

Consider first how Republican politicians have portrayed the modest-sized if growing demonstrations, which have involved some confrontations with the police — confrontations that seem to have involved a lot of police overreaction — but nothing one could call a riot. And there has in fact been nothing so far to match the behavior of Tea Party crowds in the summer of 2009.

Nonetheless, Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, has denounced “mobs” and “the pitting of Americans against Americans.” The G.O.P. presidential candidates have weighed in, with Mitt Romney accusing the protesters of waging “class warfare,” while Herman Cain calls them “anti-American.” My favorite, however, is Senator Rand Paul, who for some reason worries that the protesters will start seizing iPads, because they believe rich people don’t deserve to have them.

Michael Bloomberg, New York’s mayor and a financial-industry titan in his own right, was a bit more moderate, but still accused the protesters of trying to “take the jobs away from people working in this city,” a statement that bears no resemblance to the movement’s actual goals.

And if you were listening to talking heads on CNBC, you learned that the protesters “let their freak flags fly,” and are “aligned with Lenin.”

The way to understand all of this is to realize that it’s part of a broader syndrome, in which wealthy Americans who benefit hugely from a system rigged in their favor react with hysteria to anyone who points out just how rigged the system is.

Bloomberg Claims Jobless Protesters Destroying Jobs

2011-10-08T20:07:00.001-05:00

From CNN:
For those of you who are stupid and know it, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has a message for you. He blasted Wall Street protesters, entering their 22nd day Saturday, for targeting the financial sector and "trying to destroy the jobs of working people in the city."

His logic appears to be that educated students who can't find work due to the government allowing Wall Street to destroy the economy are trying to destroy jobs because...he said so.

Or maybe he is threatened by the message.

McGinniss Claims Palins Threaten Local People

2011-10-08T19:59:00.005-05:00

From CNN:
Author Joe McGinniss claims that the former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and her family "march right up to the border of inciting violence" to protect their image.

"The Palins have intimidated so many people for so long in the Wasilla (Alaska) area that it's very hard to find people willing to talk about them," said McGinniss, referring to the Palins' hometown, where he rented a house last summer. "They scare people. They threaten people."

Bloomberg Exposes Koch Brothers As Criminals

2011-10-02T19:07:00.006-05:00

Bloomberg Exposes Koch Brothers as Criminals
Read Bloomberg's history of the Koch brothers' bribes, pollution, sales to Iran, and attempts to destroy Social Security and the American political system by using lies, money, and propaganda.

Graham Takes Money from Man who Embezzled Funds Graham Helped Earmark

2011-09-21T20:43:00.002-05:00

OpenSecrets.org reports:

A South Carolina pharmaceutical executive and major contributor to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has been indicted for making at least $31,000 in illegal donations to the senator and embezzling at least $3.6 million of federal grant money, which Graham helped to earmark, The Post and Courier reports.

Jian-Yun “John” Dong, president and chief executive officer of South Carolina-based pharmaceutical company GenPhar, allegedly solicited a German national and GenPhar stockholder, who wired $36,000 over from a Frankfurt bank in 2007.

Dong then donated most of those funds through conduits -- such as his estranged wife Dahner Wang, daughter Deanna and GenPhar employees -- to Graham and his leadership PAC.

Editor's Note: Of course Graham is not in trouble - only the donor is. Politicians make the rules.

The Great Cancer Hoax

2011-09-19T21:41:00.000-05:00

From Mercola.com

"The National Cancer Program is a bunch of sh*t."
Dr. James Watson, 1975
Discoverer of DNA, Nobel Laureate

"Everyone should know that cancer research is largely fraud."
Dr. Linus Pauling, 1986
Nobel Laureate

UN Agenda 21 Program Removing Self-Sustaining Families in California

2011-09-18T08:59:00.000-05:00

From NaturalNews.com:
A self-sustaining couple who has lived in their home for 22 years and grown their own food, generated their own electricity with solar panels, and pulled water from their own private well -- all without ever needing any help from the government or anybody else -- Castaneda and his wife have been ordered to destroy their home and leave their land as well.

The US government's coercion of property owners to destroy their homes and leave their land is all part and parcel of the United Nations Agenda 21 program, a plan of action for "sustainable development" designed to cluster the populations of the world into organized, tightly-designed, planned communities, where they can be monitored, tracked, and forever connected to the government control grid (http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/).

Living on one's own private land, especially land that is detached from a major city and its respective power grid, is simply not part of the UN's global agenda for population control.

That is why the UN created a "Wildlands Network and Smart Growth" component to Agenda 21 that gradually forces rural individuals to migrate to urban clusters, while seizing control and ownership of their left behind land in order to turn it back into wild, government-owned land (http://www.freedomadvocates.org/art...).

Sound like a crazy conspiracy theory? Do some research on Agenda 21 for yourself, and you will surely be shocked to learn the truth about the global agenda for human management, as well as how this plan coincides directly with the NAT program that is ridding California's Antelope Valley of any and all land owners that do not fit the new global paradigm.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/033582_nuisance_abatement_teams_homes.html#ixzz1YJQBaYm4
The United Nations' Agenda 21 Program

Plan from Perry's State of Weapons, Poverty, Least Health Insurance, Low Graduation , Creationism

2011-09-17T14:34:00.001-05:00

From BussFlash.com:

Let's look at the Texas model designed by Republican wannabe president, Governor Rick Perry who is asking American voters to choose the leader of a state that:

1) ... has saddled its citizens with a $27 billion budget deficit, one of the largest of all states, kicking it down the road until the next legislative session begins in 2013. In the interregnum, while Perry remains out of state campaigning, teachers, university funding, emergency first responders and health services are all taking major funding cuts as a result of the Texas budget debacle.
2) ... has the highest number of its citizens living in poverty.
3) ... has the highest number of its citizens with no health insurance coverage.
4) ... has the highest number of its citizens working for minimum wage or lower.
5) ... has the highest number of teenage girl pregnancies and repeat pregnancies, in spite of the abstinence-only sexual behavior micro-management law.
6) ... has one of the lowest graduation rates of senior high school students (ranked 43rd).
7) ... has passed a mandatory sonogram law that strips away a woman's freedoms and liberties, forcing those who become pregnant as a result of rape or incest who are seeking an abortion to submit to a secondary, state-mandated rape.
8) ... has passed repressive voter ID laws, the sole purpose of which is to make voting tougher, despite no reports of voter fraud.
9) ... has a supermajority Republican legislature and governor advocate that citizens carry loaded, concealed weapons everywhere, including schools, court houses, churches, college campuses, grocery and department stores and of course, bars;
10) ... has the lowest air and water quality in the nation, along with lax standards and perfunctory environmental protections.
11) ... in 2009 passed mandatory teaching of the Bible in public school classrooms.
12) ... has a governor, who along with his appointee on the State Board of Education, Barbara Cargill, promoted the teaching of Creation Science/Intelligent Design, and questioned the evidence supporting evolution, further advancing their religious agenda. They claim that men and dinosaurs coexisted, that the Earth is only 6,000-years-old, and that everything was created out of nothing at exactly the same time - evolution never occurred.

This is the template that Republicans and their current leading presidential candidate, Rick Perry, have laid out for America - a Texas paradigm that rewards predatory businesses with sweet tax incentives and tax exemptions paid for by low wages, no health insurance coverage for employees and paltry 401K retirement plans, funded in total by the employee.

The wannabe president has called Social Security a Ponzi scheme and a lie. Those are big words coming from a small-minded, cerebrally-challenged, deity-stamped governor who believes global warming is a liberal hoax.

Paradoxically, while some tunnel-visioned, self-worshiping religious leaders claimed that Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment against all those sinners in New Orleans, one must wonder how Governor Perry expects God to make up his mind when he hears Perry praying for a hurricane to end Texas's exceptional drought and horrific fires that have consumed practically the entire state?

"And I looked, and behold, a pale horse! And its rider's name was Death, and Hades followed him. And they were given authority over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by wild beasts of the earth."

It could be that God really does answer all prayers and to Perry's supplication, He simply said, "No!"

Texas GOP Congressboy Pranks Obama with 0% Corporate Tax Rate Bill

2011-09-16T19:05:00.000-05:00

From DailyKos.com:

Imbecile Texas Republican Louie Gohmert is rolling around on the floor of his congressional office in a fit of snickering and spittle, because he figured out that no lawmaker had officially proposed Barack Obama’s American Jobs Act to Congress. This means that technically speaking, the name “American Jobs Act” did not yet exist in the files, because the Democrats are losers. Gohmert immediately pooped himself with puerile excitement and ran off to scribble “American Jobs Act: no more corporate taxes forever” on two sheets of paper and then handed it over to the House. BAM, filed. He wins, that’s it! The name is his!

Oh, he's such a card, that Gohmert. His legislation consists entirely of repealing the corporate income tax, because of course it does. I'm not sure if he thinks this is a tremendous blow against Obama and his scary jobs proposals, or if he just wakes up each day wondering if there is some pissy little way to gum up the works of government a bit, and will take whatever small victories toward that end he can get.

Again, I point out: this is the stuff your Congress does instead of governing. I would at this point rather have the United States placed in the care of a high school "Model U.N." conference, because I think they would almost certainly take the job more seriously than most of the narcissistic clowns that are there now. Or maybe the House should just go on permanent fundraising vacation: it isn't like their September return from vacation has been one stick more productive than their month-long August absence.

---

From U.S. News.com: contributors to Gohmert's campaign

Most of Patriot Act Sneak & Peak Not Used for Terrorism

2011-09-10T08:21:00.002-05:00

The government has not been using the Sneak and Peak provision of the Patriot Act as it was sold to us. Here's the breakdown:

1618 for drugs
122 for fraud
15 for terrorism

Read more

BofA and ATT Love Rick Perry Long Time

2011-09-02T21:40:00.002-05:00

ThinkProgress documented the extent to which BofA had already provided abundant comfort to Perry. He has received over $125,000 from BofA’s PAC. He has received $4 million from the Republican Governor’s Association, to which BofA was a major contributor while Perry was its chairman. In exchange, Perry has been a stalwart advocate of deregulation for banking and financial services. He regards the Consumer Financial Protection Agency as unconstitutional.

But Bank of America is not Perry’s only CFF (Corporate Friend Forever) He is also intimate with AT&T. He recently endorsed the mega-merger between AT&T and T-Mobile (which the Justice Department recently announced it would challenge). I’m sure that had nothing to do with the $500,000 Perry has received from AT&T. Read more.

Pushback on Draconian Rick: Stay Out of Women's Sex Lives

2011-09-02T21:25:00.000-05:00

Alternet.org reports:

The Texas governor's ultra-invasive sonogram law was overturned by a court this week, providing an excellent opportunity to examine his awful record on women's rights.

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Rick Perry's chances at passing himself off as a reasonable Republican were diminished considerably yet again this week, when the Centre for Reproductive Rights secured a victory against a draconian anti-abortion regulation Perry rushed through the legislature in May, claiming while doing so that it was an emergency measure. When US district judge Sam Sparks rejected the law and blocked enforcement, he created an occasion for the national media to look more closely at Perry's record on women's rights. What they'll find is that Perry goes far beyond the usual anti-abortion platitudes: he not only bears a zealous hatred of abortion rights, but also a hostility to contraception and sex education.

While many states have mandatory ultrasound laws, the Texas bill rushed into law by Perry goes many steps further. The law requires a woman seeking an abortion to endure an anti-choice lecture delivered by a doctor who doesn't agree with the content, which gave judge Sparks the chance to reject the law on freedom of speech grounds. But what's truly alarming about the law is the searing contempt for women's dignity and intelligence baked right into it. Women would be required to go through an uncomfortable, invasive vaginal probe sonogram in order to get the picture and audible heartbeat required. They would then be sent home 24 hours to "think" about the decision, putting the Texas government in the position of a schoolteacher sending women to the corner. Read more.

Cantor Holding Disaster Victims Hostage

2011-09-02T21:04:00.000-05:00

From NYTimes.com:

Not long ago, a political party seeking to change U.S. policy would try to achieve that goal by building popular support for its ideas, then implementing those ideas through legislation. That, after all, is how our political system was designed to work.But today’s G.O.P. has decided to bypass all that and go for a quicker route.

Never mind getting enough votes to pass legislation; it gets what it wants by threatening to hurt America if its demands aren’t met. That’s what happened with the debt-ceiling fight, and now it’s what’s happening over disaster aid. In effect, Mr. Cantor and his allies are threatening to take hurricane victims hostage, using their suffering as a bargaining chip. Read more.

Inspector General of the National Science Foundation Says Reality-Denialists are Wrong

2011-08-26T17:08:00.001-05:00

From DiscoverMagazine.com:

The Inspector General of the National Science Foundation cleared Dr. Michael Mann of wrongdoing. It has again quelched the accusations by people who do not use facts to support their beliefs that Dr. Michael Mann's ClimateGate data analysis was faulty.

Here are the facts: the Earth is warming up. The rate of warming has increased in the past century or so. This corresponds to the time of the Industrial Revolution, when we started dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Greenhouse gases warm the planet (hence the name) — if they didn’t we’d have an average temperature below the freezing point of water. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas which is dumped into the atmosphere by humans to the tune of 30 billion tons per year, 100 times the amount from volcanoes. And finally, approximately 97% of climatologists who actually study climate agree that global warming is real, and caused by humans.

Those are simply the facts. It’s not hard to connect them, as long as you stick to reality and don’t let ideology sway you.

It’s not often you can actually say "case closed", but in this case it’s literally true: climatologist Michael Mann has been cleared of all wrongdoing by the Inspector General of the National Science Foundation.

Did I say "has been cleared"? I meant has been cleared once again, since there have been several investigations into his research and Dr. Mann has been cleared of all charges every single time (like here and here). All of this stemmed from the "ClimateGate" nonsense of the past couple of years, where leaked emails were taken hugely out of context by the press and climate change deniers, and used to smear scientists. Dr. Mann was at the center of the whole manufactured controversy, being the biggest target of the people who want to deny the Earth is warming up.

If you get your "science" from the pulpit, rather than from observation, evidence, and the scientific approach, you may be out-of-touch with things as they are.

Science Fiction and Fantasy Books IO9.com Can’t Wait For This Fall

2011-08-25T18:39:00.000-05:00

The Magician King, Lev Grossman (Viking)
Ready Player One, Ernest Cline (Crown)
Ganymede, Cherie Priest (Tor)
The Restoration Game, Ken MacLeod (Pyr)
Reamde, Neal Stephenson (William Morrow)
Goliath, Scott Westerfeld (Simon Pulse)
The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern
Aloha from Hell, Richard Kadrey (Harper Voyager)
The Children of the Sky, Vernor Vinge (Tor)
The Kingdom of Gods, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit)
Snuff, Terry Pratchett (Harper Collins)
The Cold Commands, Richard K. Morgan (Del Rey)
Infidel, Kameron Hurley (Night Shade Books)
Endurance, Jay Lake (Tor)
Seed, Robert Ziegler (Night Shade Books)

KBR Reportedly Rapes Employee Then asks Her for $2M

2011-08-23T18:26:00.000-05:00

TPMMuckraker.TalkingPointsMemo.com reports:

Military contractor KBR is trying to get a woman who said she was raped while working for them in Iraq to pay them $2 million to cover their court fees, claiming her $145 million lawsuit against them was frivolous and fabricated.

A jury rejected Jamie Leigh Jones' claim against the company last month. In a court filing, KBR said that Jones' claims were "frivolous, unreasonable, and groundless."

Jones said there is "nothing frivolous" about her claims, according to the Wall Street Journal, pointing out that a judge let the trial proceed and that the jury deliberated for over 10 hours before it reached its verdict.

Charles Koch Thinks Pollution and Anti-Science Propaganda are Beneficial to Society

2011-08-21T15:32:00.000-05:00

In response to Warren Buffet's request to tax the wealthy, Charles Koch wrote, "I believe my business and non-profit investments are much more beneficial to societal well-being than sending more money to Washington."

Koch Industries is among the country’s top sources of carcinogenic chemicals and air pollutants.

His non-profit investments include far-right conservative think tanks dedicated to cheerleading the war in Iraq, spreading anti-science propaganda, and smears that the poor do not really suffer.

Koch has given money to educational initiatives, but in exchange for control over academic freedom that simply furthered Koch’s political beliefs. These “investments” at best advance Koch’s political ideology and at worst misinform American voters. Either way, they are hardly a replacement for “government spend[ing]” on things like food assistance and basic medical service.

According to Forbes, the Koch brothers have seen their wealth rise $11 billion in recent years, making the Koch brother among the richest in the country by being worth around $22.5 billion each. Much of those, however, are due to soaring gas prices and the fact Koch Industries has avoided compensating the public for a hundred million tons of carbon pollution the company produces each year. Other Koch companies also receive significant government subsidies, despite Koch’s supposed opposition to government spending. This company is among the country’s top sources of carcinogenic chemicals and air pollutants.

Georgia's Latest Racially-Based Gerrymandering Screws African Americans

2011-08-19T19:45:00.000-05:00

The Atlanta Journal Constituion reports:

In a "minority report" written to refute Senate Reapportionment Chairman Mitch Seabaugh, R-Sharpsburg, Democrats said the map diminished the ability of minority voters to elect candidates of their choice. The Voting Rights Act calls such a violation "retrogression."

Their examples in the Senate included District 14, which is being moved out of south Georgia. It is 43 percent African American, but has been redrawn to be only 9 percent African American.

Editor's Note: America is no doubt shocked that Georgia's Republicans might be racist. Actually, it's not only about race. It is also about screwing the general population out of fair representation.

Childish Media Makes GOP Bachmann and Ignores GOP Paul

2011-08-19T19:33:00.001-05:00

The Economist.com reports:

Mr Paul doesn't deserve Ms Bachmann's ridiculous level of coverage. He doesn't. Rather, Mss Bachmann deserves to be treated like the unprepared also-ran she is.

If a Ron Paul victory in Ames would have unmasked the straw poll as a colourful but politically irrelevant spectacle, Michele Bachmann's victory ought to have done the same. But it didn't because the MSM likes Michele Bachmann. She's a photogenic embodiment of a certain polarising brand of conservatism that makes good copy and great TV.

By contrast, Ron Paul is a goofily avuncular non-comformist ideologue who speaks unutterable truths about American foreign policy and delivers incessant indignant harangues about the monetary system that approximately no one in the media understands.

I think Mr Paul's influence on the ideological cast of American conservatism has been underestimated and underreported, but to take even his influence, if not his candidacy, more seriously would require the talking haircuts and the newspaper typing corps to wrestle with a charged set of geopolitical and economic topics they would rather continue helping Americans not understand.

So Ron Paul's a proven loser we can neglect with a clear conscience, while it is a matter of great public interest whether or not Michele Bachmann actually attended a family reunion because, you see, the winner of the Ames straw poll is a real up-and-comer who's pulling down a fearsome 10% in national polls right up there with non-candidates Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin.

Right up there with Ron Paul.

Monsanto Sued for Acts of GMO Biopiracy

2011-08-19T18:42:00.000-05:00

LeMonde.fr reports:
NEW DELHI, LETTER - The Indian Biodiversity Authority announced Aug. 11 that it would initiate legal action against the U.S. seed company Monsanto to have developed a genetically modified eggplant from local varieties without to have sought permission.

For the first time in India, a company will be prosecuted for acts of "biopiracy" , an offense punishable by three years' imprisonment. Monsanto, its Indian partner Mahyco and several Indian universities had joined in 2005 to conduct research, with support from the U.S. Agency for Development USAID, favorable to genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

USDA Refuses to Publish It's Own Research Criticizing Monsanto's Roundup

2011-08-19T18:31:00.000-05:00

The USDA acknowledges the validity of the research of it's own scientist, which shows that Roundup is bad for the soil and creates RoundUp-resistant plants that becoming almost impossible to eradicate. But they won't share the results with the public.

Grist.org reports:

What would happen if a USDA scientist discovered that one of the most commonly used pesticides on the planet with a reputation for having saved millions of tons of US soil from erosion was -- rather than a soil savior -- a soil killer?

This news came to the fore thanks to a recently published must-read article from Reuters on how government regulators are “dropping the ball” on agricultural biotechnology. It begins with the story of USDA scientist Dr. Robert Kremer. Kremer has spent the last fifteen years looking at Monsanto's blockbuster broad-spectrum herbicide glyphosate (aka RoundUp), the most commonly used pesticide in the world and the companion to Monsanto’s possibly monopolistic RoundupReady lines of genetically engineered seeds.

Meanwhile, the response from the USDA to Dr. Kremer’s work has been, shall we say, subdued. Dr. Shannon of the USDA/ARS admitted that Dr. Kremer’s results are valid, but said that the danger they represent pales in comparison to the superweed threat. In fact, Shannon specifically likened Dr. Kremer’s new findings to unfortunate but unavoidable side-effects like any drug might have.

Making matters worse, and much to Dr. Kremer’s chagrin, the ARS refused to publicize his work on glyphosate. While ARS spokesperson Sandy Miller Hays admitted that an announcement about his findings was written, she claimed it was withheld due to the quality of the writing. In other words, the ARS killed the story because they couldn't bother to do some light editing.

Nor was the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) very interested in Kremer's findings. Run by Roger Beachy, a man with long-time links to the ag-biotech industry and an openly hostile attitude toward organic farming, NIFA is the bureaucratic nook within USDA responsible for informing farmers of new research.

Candidate Perry is No Idiot

2011-08-19T17:57:00.001-05:00

Yell Leader Rick Perry seems comfortable playing roles.

2011 GOP Presidential candidate Rick Perry is not an idiot, as some people claim. It is true that his policy positions seem like those of an idiot because they make no sense when one observes reality. But Mr. Perry did not choose those policies by observing reality. He chose them because the people who fund his candidacy chose them. Policy positions of right-wing religious zealots rarely feel the air of reality because the positions are based on fear and shame. They are designed to protect their beliefs from the intrusion of reality. Mr. Perry's role, as most Tea Party- and creationist-supported politician's role, is simply to take their money and spread their fear.

I'm guessing he could get 28% in a general election against Obama. I pulled that number approximately from the same place that Texas Governor Perry pulls his charm.

You can estimate the avidity of his reading by the number of volumes in the library he proudly stands and casually sits before. Perhaps he inherited the libray from George W. Bush too.

Energy Committee Evaluating Dangerous Gas Drilling Practice Is Stacked With 'Experts' on Industry Payroll

2011-08-15T18:34:00.000-05:00

ast May Obama charged Energy Secretary Steven Chu with the task of setting up an advisory board to look into the practice. Thanks to Dick Cheney and something known as the "Halliburton loophole," fracking is exempt from major environmental laws that protect our water and our health even though fracking can pose serious risks.
Fracking has resulted in over 1,000 documented cases of water contamination, yet companies are allowed to keep the chemicals they use a secret. Rural communities from Pennsylvania to Wyoming have been impacted by the industrialization of their towns by drilling operations and residents have complained of poisoned well water, health problems and even explosions from leaking methane. Calvin Tillman, the mayor of Dish, Texas left his town after his family became ill from nearby drilling operations.
So, some oversight from the Obama administration seemed like welcome news. Except the group, known as the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board (SEAB) Natural Gas Subcommittee, was a sham from the start.
As 28 scientists from 22 universities wrote in a letter to Secretary Chu: Six of the seven members have current financial ties to the natural gas and oil industry.

Fox News Roger Ailes Controls People with their Shame and Fear

2011-08-13T17:12:00.000-05:00

From Alternet.org:
"What Nixon did – and what Ailes does today in the age of Obama – is unravel and rewire one of the most powerful of human emotions: shame," says Perlstein, the author of Nixonland. "He takes the shame of people who feel that they are being looked down on, and he mobilizes it for political purposes. Roger Ailes is a direct link between the Nixonian politics of resentment and Sarah Palin's politics of resentment. He's the golden thread."
Roger Ailes knows exactly who is watching Fox News each day, and he is adept at playing to their darkest fears in the age of Obama. The network's viewers are old, with a median age of 65. Ads cater to the immobile, the infirm and the incontinent, with appeals to join class action hip-replacement lawsuits, commercials for products such as Colon Flow and testimonials for the services of Liberator Medical ("Liberator gave me back the freedom I haven't had since I started using catheters"). The audience is also almost exclusively white – only 1.38% of viewers are African-American. "Roger understands audiences," says Rollins, the former Reagan consultant. "He knew how to target, which is what Fox News is all about." The typical viewer of Sean Hannity's show, to take the most stark example, is a pro-business (86%), Christian conservative (78%), Tea Party-backer (75%) with no college degree (66%), who is over 50 (65%), supports the NRA (73%), doesn't back gay rights (78%) and thinks government "does too much" (84%). "He's got a niche audience and he's programmed to it beautifully," says a former News Corp colleague. "He feeds them exactly what they want to hear."
According to recent polls, Fox News viewers are the most misinformed of all news consumers. They are 12 percentage points more likely to believe the stimulus package caused job losses, 17 points more likely to believe Muslims want to establish Sharia law in America, 30 points more likely to say that scientists dispute global warming, and 31 points more likely to doubt President Obama's citizenship. At the height of the healthcare debate, more than two-thirds of Fox News viewers were convinced Obamacare would lead to a "government takeover", provide healthcare to illegal immigrants, pay for abortions and let the government decide when to pull the plug on grandma. In fact, a study by the University of Maryland revealed that ignorance of Fox viewers actually increases the longer they watch the network. That's because Ailes isn't interested in providing people with information, or even a balanced range of perspectives. Like his political mentor, Richard Nixon, Ailes traffics in the emotions of victimization.

Eisenhower, Nixon, GHW Bush, and Ronald Reagan each significantly cut military spending

2011-08-13T11:53:00.000-05:00

ForeignPolicy.com reports:

A report by the Center for American Progress, shows that it is Republican presidents, not Democrats, who have mandated significant cuts in defense spending. Eisenhower cut 27 percent overall, Nixon 29 percent, and President Bush H.W. Bush, who served only one term, 17 percent. Even Ronald Reagan, who lavished money on the Pentagon with the express purpose of bankrupting the Soviets, cut the budget by 10 percent during his second term. The great exception to the rule is George W. Bush, who increased spending by an astonishing 70 percent during his tenure. If we include the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States now spends $700 billion a year on defense, a figure that, translated into constant dollars, was last reached in World War II.

Officials reject UK finding that up to 168 Pakistani children killed by US drones

2011-08-13T11:39:00.001-05:00

Aljazeera.net reports:

US officials have strongly rejected allegations in an independent UK study that a covert drone war in Pakistan has killed large numbers of civilians, saying the numbers are "way off the mark".

On Friday, US officials criticised the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism report's finding that there had been many more CIA attacks on alleged al-Qaeda and Taliban targets and far more civilian deaths than previously reported.

The report said that bombing raids by unmanned aircraft had killed up to 168 children in Pakistan over the last seven years.

Hypocrite Bachmann Begs for Government Money with Contempt

2011-08-10T21:13:00.000-05:00

HuffingtonPost.com reports:

Letters obtained under the Freedom of Information Act underscore what Bachmann's critics describe as a glaring distance between her campaign oratory and her actual conduct as a lawmaker. Combined with previous revelations that Bachmann personally relied on a federally subsidized home loan while her husband's "gay-curing" business benefited from Medicaid payments, it appears that one of the Tea Party's most cherished members has demonstrated that the government does, in fact, play a constructive role -- at least in her life and district.

Few candidates in the Republican presidential primary field have decried the federal government with as much gusto as Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.). The three-term congresswoman has belittled the stimulus package, deemed the Obama administration both corrupt and "gangster," and lamented the "orgy" of spending she sees happening in Washington.

The contempt has served her well, helping her craft the type of fiscally conservative, anti-government message that has catapulted her into frontrunner status for the Iowa Caucus and, more immediately, Saturday's crucial Ames Straw Poll.

But it's simply not supported by the Minnesota Republican's actual record.

A Freedom of Information Act request filed by The Huffington Post with three separate federal agencies reveals that on at least 16 separate occasions, Bachmann petitioned the federal government for direct financial help or aid. A large chunk of those requests were for funds set aside through President Obama's stimulus program, which Bachmann once labeled "fantasy economics." Bachmann made two more of those requests to the Environmental Protection Agency, an institution that she has suggested she would eliminate if she were in the White House.

POLL: 63 PERCENT WANT SUPER COMMITTEE TO RAISE TAXES ON WEALTHY

2011-08-10T20:55:00.000-05:00

ThinkProgress.org reports:

A new CNN poll finds that 63 percent of Americans want the fiscal super committee to raise the taxes on wealthy individuals and business “so the government can use the money for programs to help lower-income Americans.” According to the poll research, “that sentiment has changed little since the 1990s.” Nearly two-thirds of those polled want no major changes to entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, and “nearly nine in ten don’t want any increase in taxes on middle class and lower income Americans.” Republican lawmakers, however, are taking the opposite approach by continuing theirrefusal to raise taxes on the wealthy and by insisting on cuts to entitlement programs instead.

What happened to Obama?

2011-08-07T10:20:00.000-05:00

This is a brilliant story in the New York Times by Drew Westen, who "...is a professor of psychology at Emory University and the author of “The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation.”

In this story, Dr. Western explains what has always been missing from President Obama's story, describes the political approach President Obama has been taking, and speculates reasons why he has taken that approach.

I hope that the President reads this story and considers how he might resolve the issues presented in this article.

These GOP Candidates are Scum

2011-08-06T20:24:00.000-05:00

From the NYTimes.com:

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa – The Republican presidential candidates on Saturday seized on the first-ever downgrade of the nation’s credit rating as a new line of criticism against President Obama, suggesting that ultimate responsibility rested in the Oval Office even though the rating agency, Standard & Poor’s, cited the overall political gridlock in Washington as a major cause for its decision.

Editor's Note: S&P said that they lowered the country's rating because they realized the government wasn't going to raise taxes, which the GOP demanded. Integrity has no meaning to them. They are insane - they lie to themselves and to the country.

Bending Over for Political Support

2011-08-06T20:15:00.002-05:00

Koch's Americans for Prosperity Fraud Grows in Wisconsin

2011-08-06T19:50:00.000-05:00

From WisconsinGazette.com:

A fraudulent absentee ballot campaign involving the anti-gay group Wisconsin Family Action appears to be far more widespread than originally thought.

Initial reports had indicated that phony ballots were sent only to Senate Districts 2 and 10, but new evidence links them to all eight districts holding recall elections in August.

Printed and paid for by Americans for Prosperity, a front group for the billionaire Koch brothers, the ballots instruct recipients to vote no later than Aug. 11, even though the election is Aug. 9.

WFA was one of the right-wing groups whose return address was printed on the ballots. WFA director Julaine Appling, the state’s leading anti-gay activist, at first acknowledged and later denied involvement in the scheme when confronted by a concerned citizen in a taped phone call.

U.S. and U.N. Fought Democratic Forces in Haiti

2011-08-06T15:42:00.000-05:00

From TheNation.com:

The United States maintained publicly that Aristide resigned in the face of a ragtag force of former Haitian army soldiers rampaging in Haiti’s north. But Aristide called his escort by a US Navy SEAL team on his flight into exile “a modern-day kidnapping.”

Two months later, the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) was established, a 9,000-strong UN occupation force that still oversees Latin America’s first independent nation.

Aristide has spoken forcefully against the UN occupation, particularly in his 2010 year-end letter to the Haitian people. “We cannot forget the $5 billion which has already been spent for MINUSTAH over these past six years,” he wrote. “Anybody can see how many houses, hospitals, and schools that wasted money could have built for the victims” of the January 12, 2010, earthquake that destroyed much of Port-au-Prince and surrounding regions.

Such positions are major reasons Washington fought to get and keep Aristide out of Haiti, the cables make clear. “A premature departure of MINUSTAH would leave the [Haitian] government...vulnerable to...resurgent populist and anti-market economy political forces—reversing gains of the last two years,” wrote US Ambassador Janet Sanderson in an October 1, 2008, cable. MINUSTAH “is an indispensable tool in realizing core USG [US government] policy interests in Haiti.”

At a high-level meeting five years ago, top US and UN officials discussed how the “Aristide Movement Must Be Stopped,” according to an August 2, 2006, cable. It described how former Guatemalan diplomat Edmond Mulet, then chief of MINUSTAH, “urged US legal action against Aristide to prevent the former president from gaining more traction with the Haitian population and returning to Haiti.”

At Mulet’s request, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan urged South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki “to ensure that Aristide remained in South Africa.”

Joe Lieberman Says U.S. Should Cut Social Security To Pay For Fighting ‘The Islamist Extremists

2011-08-03T18:13:00.000-05:00

From ThinkProgress.org:

LIEBERMAN: "I want to indicate today to my colleagues that Senator Coburn and I are working again on a bipartisan proposal to secure Social Security over the long term, we hope to have that done in time. To also forward to the special committee for their consideration. So, bottom line, we can’t protect these entitlements and also have the national defense we need to protect us in a dangerous world while we’re at war with Islamist extremists who attacked us on 9/11 and will be for a long time to come."

What do Oprah, the statue of liberty, birds, gays, and blacks have in common? Rick Perry

2011-08-03T17:52:00.000-05:00

From: ThinkProgress.org:

On August 6th, Gov. Rick Perry will host a rally of prayer and fasting for a “nation in crisis.” Perry has invited all 49 other governors to share in the event he defines as “a nondenominational, apolitical, Christian prayer meeting.” He is expected to announce his presidential intentions soon after the rally.

A quick look at the event’s endorsement list features a who’s-who of extreme right-wing religious figures. They warn of dire consequences for our nation: birds dying out because gays can serve in the military, hurricanes ravaging “sinful cities,” even Oprah Winfrey being a sign of the Apocalypse. Yet despite their outlandish beliefs and rhetoric, Perry features their support prominently on the event’s website.

ThinkProgress has compiled the top outlandish beliefs from pastors associated with Perry’s prayer rally:

– Oprah is a sign of the Apocalypse: In his channel on GOD TV, Mike Bicklecalled Oprah a “forerunner to the harlot movement.” Bickle also warned that traditional “marriage will be…defiled” as the “gay marriage agenda, which is rooted in the depths of Hell,” progresses.
– Blackbirds are dying because of gay soldiers: Dr. Cindy Jacobs recorded avideo declaring a connection between the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and the sudden death of blackbirds in Beebee, Arkansas as a divine punishment. She also called “girl-on-girl kissing” a “plague on society” and asked divine forgiveness for the violation of a woman’s “natural use.”
– The Statue of Liberty is a “demonic idol”: In various sermons, John Benefiel called the Statue of Liberty a “demonic idol.” He also expressed a belief that homosexuality is a plot contrived by the Illuminati “to limit the world population.”
– Hurricane Katrina was divine retribution for the city’s “sin”: John Hagee said residents of New Orleans were at fault for Hurricane Katrina: “I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God and they were recipients of the judgment of God for that.” Hagee has also insinuated that “the Holocaust…was the fault of Jews themselves” and Hitler acted as a “hunter” corralling the Jews into Israel.
– Gay rights movement from the “pit of hell”: Dwight McKissic denouncedcomparisons between the civil rights movement and the gay rights movement because the latter is a “satanic anointment…inspired by the anti-Christ” that comes from the “pit of hell.” McKissic also said that “God uses natural disasters to punish evil,” pointing to Hurricane Katrina because “New Orleans flaunts sin.”
– Jesus actually opposed the minimum wage: Influential pastor David Barton has made a name for himself by distorting Biblical text to support his claim that Jesus opposed the minimum wage and the capital gains tax. Barton has also argued that public school students are getting “homosexual indoctrination.”
– Children of gay parents are like orphans of 9/11: During this year’s Faith and Freedom conference, ThinkProgress reported on Jim Garlow’s comparison of orphans of the September 11th attacks to children raised in same-sex households. Garlow is also known for his controversial allegation that African Americans have saved the country from the “enslavement of gay marriage.”
– Director of a Christian para-military group: Jay Swallow is the Director of SWAT, a “Christian Military Training Camp” organized “for the purpose of dealing with the occult and territorial enemy strong holds in America.” Participants of the training session sign a liability waiver before becoming “warriors” against “occult and territorial enemy strongholds in America.” Participants are also trained “how to pray for casinos on Native American land.”
– African Americans are “cursed” by homosexuals: Willie Wooten published abook about the curse of the African American people. He wrote that their tolerance of “immorality” in the Democratic Party begets curses of “adultery, incest, children from incestuous union, children born out-of-wedlock, destroyed virginity, bestiality, homosexuality, lesbianism.”

Al Gore on how to bring logic to the debate and fix the economy

2011-08-02T15:34:00.002-05:00

Debt Deal Good for Rich and Radical Right

2011-08-01T21:04:00.000-05:00

From BusinessInsider.com:

Anyone who characterizes the deal between the President and Republican leaders as a victory for the American people over partisanship understands neither economics nor politics.

The deal does not raise taxes on America’s wealthy and most fortunate — who are now taking home a larger share of total income and wealth, and whose tax rates are already lower than they have been in eighty years. Yet it puts the nation’s most important safety nets and public investments on the chopping block.

It also hobbles the capacity of the government to respond to the jobs and growth crisis. Added to the cuts already underway by state and local governments, the deal’s spending cuts increase the odds of a double-dip recession. And the deal strengthens the political hand of the radical right.

Democratic Party: Now She Hates You More Than She Hates Them

2011-08-01T20:48:00.000-05:00

From BusinessInsider.com:

I hate the Tea Party. I loathe Conservatives who keep the rich even richer and despise the poor, most of whom they’ve never met and in whose circumstances they wouldn’t deign to survive, let alone “thrive in” and “take personal responsibility for” (Republicans: born on 3^rd and proud they haven’t fallen back to 2^nd). But, you know what, Democrats? F#ck. You. In this moment, on this night, I hate you more than I do them.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/an-open-hate-letter-to-the-democratic-party-i-hate-you-2011-8#ixzz1TpdbWZ14

Racist Lamborn Says Compromising with Obama Like "Touching a Tar Baby"

2011-08-01T19:36:00.000-05:00

From TPMLiveWire.com:

Rep. Doug Lamborn likened compromising with Obama to "touching a tar baby" on talk radiotoday. But he probably didn't mean to use theracially charged term in a racist way, right? There's no way he missed the lesson from John McCain's "tar baby" blunder, or Mitt Romney's "tar baby" blunder, or Tony Snow's "tar baby"blunder, right?

Given the famed political correctness of Lamborn's district in Colorado Springs--home ofsexually repressed meth head pastors and family-focused homophobes--I'm guessing this is all a big misunderstanding.

Heavier Cars Increase Fatality by 47% to Other Vehicles' Passengers

2011-07-31T10:37:00.001-05:00

From: Freakonomics.com:

Heavier vehicles are safer for their own occupants but more hazardous for the occupants of other vehicles. In this paper we estimate the increased probability of fatalities from being hit by a heavier vehicle in a collision. We show that, controlling for own-vehicle weight, being hit by a vehicle that is 1,000 pounds heavier results in a 47% increase in the baseline fatality probability. Estimation results further suggest that the fatality risk is even higher if the striking vehicle is a light truck (SUV, pickup truck, or minivan). We calculate that the value of the external risk generated by the gain in fleet weight since 1989 is approximately 27 cents per gallon of gasoline. We further calculate that the total fatality externality is roughly equivalent to a gas tax of $1.08 per gallon. We consider two policy options for internalizing this external cost: a gas tax and an optimal weight varying mileage tax. Comparing these options, we find that the cost is similar for most vehicles.

And a child shall lead them

2011-07-30T10:18:00.000-05:00

Michigan Court Allows Dow Chemical to Poison Water Supply with Dioxin

2011-07-26T21:48:00.001-05:00

From PoliticsUSA.com:

"Within the past month, the ability of individuals to band together to take on powerful corporations was dealt a crushing blow when the conservative Supreme Court disallowed class action status to millions of women who suffered pay discrimination at the hands of retail giant Wal-Mart. It is bad enough that the High Court deprived the women an opportunity to plead their case before the court, but the real damage was the precedent that disallows individuals from joining forces to fight corporate injustice and damaging business practices. Within the past week, that precedent was cited by a Michigan judge who was set to hear a case between a hundred land owners and corporate giant Dow Chemical.

The Michigan case involved landowners who complained that the chemical giant spread dioxin, a highly toxic and cancer-causing byproduct of chemical manufacturing process through the Tittabawassee and Saginaw Rivers and into Lake Huron. When rivers downstream flooded, sediment laden with dioxin was deposited on properties in the floodplain. Soil samples of floodplain properties revealed dioxin contamination thousands of times higher than Michigan allows and prompted health officials to warn property owners to wear masks while mowing their lawns, keep children from playing in dirt near their homes, avoid eating fish and livestock raised in the floodplain, and to take other precautions to keep from being poisoned.

The land owners say property values are diminished and they are not able to fully use their properties because of the contamination; not to mention the health damages they may have already been subjected to. The judge, Leopold Borello, had granted class status for the group but reversed his decision because, although the case met Michigan guidelines for class status, the Supreme Court’s Wal-Mart decision created new rules for what a group must have in common with one another in order to be considered a class."

U.S. Government Armed Major Mexican Cartels

2011-07-26T21:20:00.000-05:00

From The Christian Science Monitor:
"The .50 caliber bullet hole, the report says, likely came from a gun trafficked via Fast and Furious, an operation to allow nearly 2,000 arms to leave US gunshops via certain traffickers who the US government had identified and thought it could track. The idea was to trace these "straw buyers" to key cartel figures in an attempt to score major gun busts to prove the US was serious about stopping arms trafficking across the border."

U.S. Government Contract Funded Taliban

2011-07-25T19:49:00.002-05:00

Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- A U.S. military task force has discovered that part of a $2.16 billion transportation contract was diverted through a murky network of subcontractors and into the hands of a group of Afghan power-brokers, criminals and Taliban insurgents, according to a source with knowledge of the investigation.

God Tricks GOP Candidates into Running for President in 2012

2011-07-25T19:12:00.001-05:00

This rather promiscuous urging of several Republican candidates to run - based on their claims that God is backing them - leads one to believe that the GOP aspirants are either lying or God likes a good political donnybrook.

Right-wingers' Assault on Public Education

2011-07-25T19:08:00.000-05:00

Jim Hightower | Budgeting for Ignorance

All across the country, right-wing zealots are wielding their little ideological hammers to destroy common sense and wreck the common good. These anti-government extremists are going after everything from the basic rights of workers to our crucial environmental protections. Their most shameful assault, however, is on our public schools. They're not merely clobbering teachers and shattering education budgets; they're after the very idea of public education."

You Don't Have a Plan

2011-07-25T06:41:00.000-05:00

http://i.imgur.com/q3OgN.jpg

Who Has Actually Increased the National Debt

2011-07-24T19:27:00.002-05:00

Fraud in Ohio in 2004 Stole Presidential Election; Conservative Whistle Blower Dies in Crash

2011-07-24T07:52:00.000-05:00

Until now, the architectural maps and contracts from the Ohio 2004 election were never made public, which may indicate that the entire system was designed for fraud. In a previous sworn affidavit to the court, Spoonamore declared: "The SmarTech system was set up precisely as a King Pin computer used in criminal acts against banking or credit card processes and had the needed level of access to both county tabulators and Secretary of State computers to allow whoever was running SmarTech computers to decide the output of the county tabulators under its control."

Spoonamore also swore that "...the architecture further confirms how this election was stolen. The computer system and

SmarTech had the correct placement, connectivity, and computer experts necessary to change the election in any manner desired by the controllers of the SmarTech computers."

SmarTech was part of three computer companies brought in to manage the elections process for Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, a Republican. The other two were Triad and GovTech Solutions. All three companies have extensive ties to the Republican party and Republican causes.

In fact, GovTech was run by Mike Connell, who was a fiercely religious conservative who got involved in politics to push a right-wing social agenda. He was Karl Rove's IT go-to guy, and was alleged to be the IT brains behind the series of stolen elections between 2000 and 2004.

Connell was outed as the one who stole the 2004 election by Spoonamore, who, despite being a conservative Republican himself, came forward to blow the whistle on the stolen election scandal. Connell gave a deposition on the matter, but stonewalled. After the deposition, and fearing perjury/obstruction charges for withholding information, Connell expressed an interest in testifying further as to the extent of the scandal.

"He made it known to the lawyers, he made it known to reporter Larisa Alexandrovna of Raw Story, that he wanted to talk. He was scared. He wanted to talk. And I say that he had pretty good reason to be scared," said Mark Crispin Miller, who wrote a book on the scandal.

Connell was so scared for his security that he asked for protection from the attorney general, then Attorney General Michael Mukasey. Connell told close friends that he was expecting to get thrown under the bus by the Rove team, because Connell had evidence linking the GOP operative to the scandal and the stolen election, including knowledge of where Rove's missing emails disappeared to.

Before he could testify, Connell died in a plane crash.

There were three phases of chicanery. First, there was a pre-election period, during which the Secretary of State in Ohio, Ken Blackwell, was also co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio, which is in itself mind-boggling, engaged in all sorts of bureaucratic and legal tricks to cut down on the number of people who could register, to limit the usability of provisional ballots. It was really a kind of classic case of using the letter of the law or the seeming letter of the law just to disenfranchise as many people as possible.

On Election Day, there was clearly a systematic undersupply of working voting machines in Democratic areas, primarily inner city and student towns, you know, college towns. And the Conyers people found that in some of the most undersupplied places, there were scores of perfectly good voting machines held back and kept in warehouses, you know, and there are many similar stories to this. And other things happened that day.

After Election Day, there is explicit evidence that a company called Triad, which manufactures all of the tabulators, the vote-counting tabulators that were used in Ohio in the last election, was systematically going around from county to county in Ohio and subverting the recount, which was court ordered and which never did take place. The Republicans will say to this day, 'There was a recount in Ohio, and we won that.' That's a lie, one of many, many staggering lies. There was never a recount.

And now, it seems, there never will be.

Bad Billionaires

2011-07-22T16:53:00.002-05:00

Why should billionaires who act like this be taxed at a lower rate than you and me?

GOP Complains as Ship Goes Down

2011-07-19T09:43:00.001-05:00

Three billionaire donors fund 90% of Karl Rove's SuperPac

2011-07-18T18:02:00.000-05:00

American Crossroads Watch reports:

American Crossroads, the super PAC spearheaded by Karl Rove, is vowing a massive attack ad campaign aimed at defeating President Barack Obama next year. The group reported it had raised $3.8 million during the first six months of 2011.

The group proclaims on its website that its mission is to empower "America's citizens" to "take back control of their government." But the new report suggests American Crossroads is anything but a grassroots funded organization.

More than 90 percent of its money this year came from just three billionaire donors: Jerry Perenchio, the former Hollywood talent agent and ex-chairman of the Spanish language television network Univision, whose trust contributed $2 million; Dallas area hotel magnate Robert Rowling, who gave $1 million; and Texas homebuilder Bob Perry, who donated $500,000.

Greed: GOP wants to decrease pay and increase hours to minimum wage workers

2011-07-17T12:50:00.000-05:00

Huffington.com reported that:
"In a Congressional hearing Thursday, Republican lawmakers indicated a willingness to reform the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the bedrock Depression-era statute that established a minimum wage and time-and-a-half overtime for American workers."

The federal minimum wage for covered nonexempt employees is $7.25 per hour effective July 24, 2009. So a full-time worker paid minimum wage would earn 8 * 40 * 52 * 7.25 = $15,080 per year. That's $1256 per month. The GOP thinks that's just too much. And why should they have to pay extra for over 40 hours per week work?

They know people who will work for less - people who are desperate. And they don't mind taking advantage of them.

Greed, by definition, is an obsession - an illness that comes from fear.

IT'S OFFICIAL: The Whole World Thinks Republicans Are Dangerous Maniacs Threatening Everyone

2011-07-15T18:21:00.000-05:00

BusinessInsider.com says:

IT'S OFFICIAL: The Whole World Thinks Republicans Are Dangerous Maniacs Threatening Everyone

Yes, the rest of the world is watching this embarrassing debt ceiling nonsense, and it is growing dismayed.

Der Spiegel has a roundup of commentary in German newspapers about the fight, and the universal message is this:

The US is holding the entire world hostage, and it's the Republicans that are playing with fire.

Hard to accuse the Germans (who are no fans of fiscal profligacy) of being motivated by politics, or of having some inherent reason to attack Republicans. This is just the reality of what they're doing.

Here's the passage from Bild, the newspaper of the masses:

"Playing poker is part of politics, as is theatrical posturing. That's fair enough. But what America is currently exhibiting is the worst kind of absurd theatrics. And the whole world is being held hostage.

"Irrespective of what the correct fiscal and economic policy should be for the most powerful country on earth, it's simply not possible to stop taking on new debt overnight. Most importantly, the Republicans have turned a dispute over a technicality into a religious war, which no longer has any relation to a reasonable dispute between the elected government and the opposition."

"If it continues like this, the US will be bankrupt within a few days. It would cause a global shockwave like the one which followed the Lehman bankruptcy in 2008, which triggered the worst economic crisis since the war. Except it would be much worse than the Lehman bankruptcy. The political climate in the US has been poisoned to a degree that is hard for us (Germans) to imagine. But we should all fear the consequences."

Israeli police found guilty but will not face trial for killing Palestinian girl because it was four years ago

2011-07-13T19:34:00.000-05:00

By Catrina Stewart in Jerusalem for The Independent

Wednesday, 13 July 2011

- GE
- XTRA LARGE

Israeli policemen suspected of shooting dead a 10-year-old Palestinian schoolgirl in 2007 will escape prosecution after a court said that too much time had elapsed to allow a re-examination of the case.

The decision will come as a blow for the girl's parents, who have campaigned for justice for their daughter, Abir Aramin, who died after being struck in the head during a school break.

In a highly critical ruling, Israel's High Court described the police investigation into the girl's death as a "sordid affair" that had been both "sloppy" and "negligent" and ordered the state to pay the family's legal costs.

But it backed an earlier decision not to charge two border policemen allegedly involved in her death, in part because of the difficulty of conducting an investigation so long after the incident in the absence of fresh evidence.

Human rights organisation Yesh Din, which had petitioned the court to indict the policemen, expressed its dismay. "An innocent girl was shot and somebody has to take responsibility," said Haim Erlich, the NGO's director. "No justice was done."

Abir was fatally wounded in January 2007 after buying snacks with her sister and two friends during a school break in the West Bank town of Anata.

Eyewitnesses claimed that border guards, who had clashed with stone-throwing Palestinian rioters nearby, fired at the girl from a passing jeep. The police opened an investigation but closed it a short while later, arguing it was possible she had been killed by a rock and that there was insufficient evidence to proceed.

Residents said there were no clashes in that particular street, and a parallel investigation and autopsy carried out by Israeli NGOs concluded that she had been killed by a rubber bullet fired by police in the jeep.

An Israeli civil court last year agreed with the girl's family, saying there was "no debate" that Abir was shot by border guards.

Koch Brother's ALEC Exposed

2011-07-13T19:00:00.001-05:00

The Center for Media and Democracy has obtained copies of more than 800 model bills approved by corporations through ALEC meetings, after one of the thousands of people with access shared them, and a whistleblower provided a copy to the Center. We have analyzed and marked-up those bills and made them available at ALEC Exposed. This article has been updated.

In April 2011, some of the biggest corporations in the U.S. met behind closed doors in Cincinnati about their wish lists for changing state laws. This exchange was part of a series of corporate meetings nurtured and fueled by the Koch Industries family fortune and other corporate funding.

At an extravagant hotel gilded just before the Great Depression, corporate executives from the tobacco giant R.J. Reynolds, State Farm Insurance, and other corporations were joined by their "task force" co-chairs -- all Republican state legislators -- to approve “model” legislation. They jointly head task forces of what is called the “American Legislative Exchange Council” (ALEC).

There, as the Center for Media and Democracy has learned, these corporate-politician committees secretly voted on bills to rewrite numerous state laws. According to the documents we have posted to ALEC Exposed, corporations vote as equals with elected politicians on these bills. These task forces target legal rules that reach into almost every area of American life: worker and consumer rights, education, the rights of Americans injured or killed by corporations, taxes, health care, immigration, and the quality of the air we breathe and the water we drink.

Editor's Note: Koch is pronounced "coke", not "cock".

Look at the mess you made

2011-07-10T19:04:00.000-05:00

Pay for Corporate Jets with Your Food Budget

2011-07-10T09:49:00.000-05:00

Would you pay taxes if it meant that your children wouldn't eat and if all of the money you paid went to give tax breaks for corporate jets?

Then why are we subsidizing corporate jets at the expense of programs to feed poor school kids?

Demand that we stop that now.

Fox News Reportedly PR Arm of Republican Party

2011-07-09T11:39:00.001-05:00

From Alternet.org:
"Of course, there is ample evidence that Fox News is operating as the public relations arm of the Republican Party. Fox has had in its employ up to five potential GOP candidates for president. It interviews Republican candidates almost exclusively. It has distributed memos instructing its anchors and reporters to use language that parrots Republican talking points. It has even broadcast reports written by the Republican National Committee word-for-word, displaying accompanying graphics that contained the same typos in the original RNC document. That last bit of journalistic cronyism was the work of current Fox "News Watch" host Jon Scott."

House Passes $649B Defense Spending Bill

2011-07-09T11:26:00.000-05:00

"The military budget is not on the table. The military is at the table, and it is eating everybody else's lunch."
~ Representative Barney Frank

The Economist Says Republicans Look Unprincipled

2011-07-09T11:15:00.001-05:00

"A gamble where you bet your country’s good name"

This newspaper has a strong dislike of big government; we have long argued that the main way to right America’s finances is through spending cuts. But you cannot get there without any tax rises. In Britain, for instance, the coalition government aims to tame its deficit with a 3:1 ratio of cuts to hikes. America’s tax take is at its lowest level for decades: even Ronald Reagan raised taxes when he needed to do so.

The sticking-point is not on the spending side. It is because the vast majority of Republicans, driven on by the wilder-eyed members of their party and the cacophony of conservative media, are clinging to the position that not a single cent of deficit reduction must come from a higher tax take. This is economically illiterate and disgracefully cynical.

And the closer you look, the more unprincipled the Republicans look. Earlier this year House Republicans produced a report noting that an 85%-15% split between spending cuts and tax rises was the average for successful fiscal consolidations, according to historical evidence. The White House is offering an 83%-17% split (hardly a huge distance) and a promise that none of the revenue increase will come from higher marginal rates, only from eliminating loopholes. If the Republicans were real tax reformers, they would seize this offer.

Both parties have in recent months been guilty of fiscal recklessness. Right now, though, the blame falls clearly on the Republicans. Independent voters should take note.

In three weeks, if there is no political deal, the American government will go into default. Not, one must pray, on its sovereign debt. But the country will have to stop paying someone: perhaps pensioners, or government suppliers, or soldiers. That would be damaging enough at a time of economic fragility. And the longer such a default went on, the greater the risk of provoking a genuine bond crisis would become.

There is no good economic reason why this should be happening. America’s net indebtedness is a perfectly affordable 65% of GDP, and throughout the past three years of recession and tepid recovery investors have been more than happy to go on lending to the federal government. The current problems, rather, are political. Under America’s elaborate separation of powers, Congress must authorise any extension of the debt ceiling, which now stands at $14.3 trillion. Back in May the government bumped up against that limit, but various accounting dodges have been used to keep funds flowing. It is now reckoned that these wheezes will be exhausted by August 2nd.

How about a new law for lobbying?

2011-07-09T09:23:00.002-05:00

No corporation, lobbyist, or any of their representatives may provide benefit or communicate directly or indirectly with any member of the Court or Congress or any of their representatives or their family members while that member of Congress is a member of Congress. No member of Congress may encourage or vote for any law or regulation that benefits any person or organization that has provided benefit to that member of Congress in the last five years. No member of the Court or Congress nor their campaigns nor their family members may receive benefit from any person or organization that has benefited from a law or regulation encouraged by or voted for by a member of Congress while and for five years after they were a member of Congress.

Justice Thomas Voted for AEI in Three Cases after Accepting Their Gift

2011-06-21T15:00:00.004-05:00

In 2001, a conservative, corporate-aligned think tank called the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) gave Justice Clarence Thomas the gift of a $15,000 bust of Abraham Lincoln.

AEI, however, is not simply in the business of giving luxurious gifts to Supreme Court justices — it is also in the business of litigating before the United States Supreme Court. ThinkProgress uncovered three briefs that AEI filed in Thomas’ Court after Thomas received their $15,000 gift. Thomas recused from none of these three cases, and he either voted in favor of the result AEI favored or took a stance that was even further to the right in each case:

Riley v. Kennedy : AEI filed a brief asking the Supreme Court to reverse a lower court decision preventing a change in Alabama’s voting law from going into effect. Justice Thomas did not recuse, and he joined the Supreme Court’s decision reversing the lower court.

Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 : AEI filed a brief asking the Supreme Court to reverse a lower court decisionupholding a local school district’s desegregation plan. Thomas joined the majority opinion reversing the lower court’s decision, and he filed a lengthy concurrence defending that result.

Whitman v. American Trucking Association: AEI joined a brief asking the Supreme Court to allow the EPA to consider the costs of implementing new air quality standards before it issued them. Thomas’ concurring opinion went much further than AEI asked him to go, suggesting that the law authorizing EPA to issue these standards is unconstitutional.

Although there is no evidence that AEI gave Thomas the $15,000 gift specifically to buy his vote in a particular case, Thomas’ decision to sit on cases where his benefactor has a demonstrated interest creates a very serious appearance of impropriety. No one would trust a judge to hear their case if they learned that someone on the other side of the case had given that judge a rare and expensive gift.

Reveling in the Pain of Others: Moral Degeneracy and Violence

2011-06-20T20:29:00.000-05:00

From Truth-Out.org:

America has lost the formative culture that would allow us to contest, challenge and transform the prevailing culture of unbridled individualism, consumerism, militarism and desire for instant pleasure. Both major political parties now impose harsh penalties on the poor, young people, the elderly, immigrants, and other groups considered disposable. We are on the brink of an authoritarianism in which war and violence not only cause unbearable hardship and suffering for the vast majority of the American people, but also produce a larger social pathology in which the actions of the "Kill Team" soldiers who sought out pleasure in the most vile and grotesque acts of violence are symptomatic of something that is becoming normalized and commonplace in American society. This is a violence being waged against democracy and the public good, one that feeds on mobilization of desires and collective pleasures in the face of the suffering of others.

Justice Thomas Caught Up In Yet Another Ethical Tangle

2011-06-19T12:56:00.002-05:00

The New York Times reports on Justice Clarence Thomas’ longstanding — and highly fruitful — relationship with a leading conservative donor named Harlan Crow. Crow has donated nearly $5 million to Republican candidates and conservative organizations, including $100,000 to the anti-John Kerry Swift Boat Veterans for Truth — and he has also been very generous to the Thomas family. But is Justice Clarence Thomas a criminal? You be the judge.

The Great Ronald Reagan

2011-06-04T21:45:00.004-05:00

Clarence Thomas Invested In Lobbying Firm Tied To Tea Party and Engaged In "Judicial Insider Trading" To Enrich His Wife

2011-06-03T22:19:00.001-05:00

WASHINGTON, June 1, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- ProtectOurElections.org, a campaign finance watchdog, has asked the FBI and Department of Justice to investigate Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, Virginia (Ginni) Thomas for financial and judicial corruption partly based on the Justice's newest financial disclosures.

First, the organization alleges, Justice Thomas falsified 20 years of judicial financial disclosure forms by denying that his wife had income sources; second, he engaged in judicial corruption by receiving $100,000 in support from Citizens United during his nomination and then ruling in favor of Citizens United in 2010 without disclosing that fact or disqualifying himself; and third, he apparently conspired with his wife in a form of "judicial insider trading" by providing her with information about the result of the Court's decision in Citizens United prior to its issuance, which she then used to launch a new company to take financial advantage of that decision to benefit her and her husband.

Christie Wants Max Annual Income of $5317 to Qualify for Medicare

2011-06-03T22:13:00.001-05:00

The NJ GOP Christie administration is expected to propose cutting the maximum income level of Medicaid from $24,645 to $5,317 a year for a family of three, said Ray Castro, senior analyst for New Jersey Policy Perspective, a left-leaning think tank, who was briefed by administration officials. State officials confirmed the figure.

She's a hateful cynic.

U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would Stay Cheap

2011-06-03T21:43:00.002-05:00

A Wikileaks post published on The Nation shows that the Obama Administration fought to keep Haitian wages at 31 cents an hour.

It started when Haiti passed a law two years ago raising its minimum wage to 61 cents an hour. According to an embassy cable:

This infuriated American corporations like Hanes and Levi Strauss that pay Haitians slave wages to sew their clothes. They said they would only fork over a seven-cent-an-hour increase, and they got the State Department involved. The U.S. ambassador put pressure on Haiti’s president, who duly carved out a $3 a day minimum wage for textile companies (the U.S. minimum wage, which itself is very low, works out to $58 a day).

If a foreign army were inside the U.S. killing innocent American children

2011-05-15T10:22:00.002-05:00

BY GLENN GREENWALD

The New York Times reports today:

For the second time in three days, a night raid in eastern Afghanistan by NATO forces resulted in the death of a child, setting off protests on Saturday that turned violent and ended in the death of a second boy. . . .

"American forces did an operation and mistakenly killed a fourth-grade student; he had gone to sleep in his field and had a shotgun next to him," [the district's governor, Abdul Khalid]. said. "People keep shotguns with them for hunting, not for any other purposes," Mr. Khalid said.

The boy, [15], was the son of an Afghan National Army soldier . . . When morning came, an angry crowd gathered in Narra, the boy’s village, and more than 200 people marched with his body to the district center. Some of the men were armed and confronted the police, shouting anti-American slogans . . .

The police opened fire in an effort to push back the crowd to stop its advance to the district center. A 14-year-old boy was killed, and at least one other person was wounded, Mr. Khalid said. . . .

On Thursday, a night raid by international forces in Nangahar Province resulted in the death of a 12-year-old girl and her uncle, who was a member of the Afghan National Police.

There's nothing much new to say here, but every now and then, it's worth highlighting not only what we're doing, but what the results are. Just imagine the accumulated hatred from having things like this happen day after day, week after week, year after year, for a full decade now, with no end in sight -- broadcast all over the region. It's literally impossible to convey in words the level of bloodthirsty fury and demands for vengeance that would arise if a foreign army were inside the U.S. killing innocent American children even a handful of times, let alone continuously for a full decade.

It's the perfect self-perpetuating cycle: (1) They hate us and want to attack us because we're over there; therefore, (2) we have to stay and proliferate ourselves because they hate us and want to attack us; (3) our staying and proliferating ourselves makes them hate us and want to attack us more; therefore, (4) we can never leave, because of how much they hate us and want to attack us. The beauty of this War on Terror -- and, as the last two weeks have demonstrated, War is the bipartisan consensus for what we are and should be doing to address Terrorism -- is that it forever sustains its own ostensible cause.

The Tenfold Path to Guts, Solidarity and the Defeat of the Corporate Elite

2011-05-11T20:12:00.000-05:00

by: Bruce E. Levine, Truthout
Many Americans know that the United States is not a democracy but a "corporatocracy," in which we are ruled by a partnership of giant corporations, the extremely wealthy elite and corporate-collaborator government officials. However, the truth of such tyranny is not enough to set most of us free to take action. Too many of us have become pacified by corporatocracy-created institutions and culture.

Goldman Sachs Bet $13 Billion It's Clients Would Lose

2011-04-26T21:22:00.002-05:00

Slate magazine writes:

Putting the Levin-Coburn report together with the FCIC report, we now have a pretty extensive set of documents with which to understand the inner workings of a still compromised Wall Street, riddled with conflicts of interest and favoring half-truths at best when dealing with government.

The banks traded for their own interests directly against the interests of their clients. Goldman harnessed its proprietary trading power to go short on the subprime market. It held a $13 billion short position at one point. At the same time, it aggressively marketed the very securities it believed would founder. It knowingly sold junk to its clients so Goldman could prosper on the other side of the trade. Such is the conclusion of bipartisan investigators.

Kucinich Dance With Gates about Bradley Manning Kafkaesque

2011-04-14T19:15:00.001-05:00

The continued delays I have experienced amount to a subversion of Pfc. Manning's legal rights as well as my own rights and obligations as a Member of Congress to conduct oversight. The whole world is now watching.

What is going on with Secretary Gates and the Department of Defense with respect to Pfc. Manning's treatment is more consistent with Kafka than the U.S. Constitution. I will not cease in my efforts to determine whether or not the conditions under which he has been held constitute torture.

Bush vs Bradley Manning

2011-04-12T21:22:00.003-05:00

250 Legal Scholars Condemn Obama’s Treatment of Bradley Manning

2011-04-12T19:31:00.001-05:00

The Obama administration has detained the alleged Wikileaks whistleblower under tortuous conditions—for almost a year, has been subjected to solitary confinement in a windowless 6×12 cell for 23 hours a day, under constant surveillance, prevented from exercising, lacking a pillow or sheets. For the remaining hour every day, he is allowed to walk in circles in a somewhat larger cell, still without any human company. Every five minutes he is asked, “Are you OK?” and must answer yes. Now he is being forced to sleep naked. Put together, his treatment constitutes cruel and unusual punishment without trial, protest 250 legal scholars, including preemenent liberal law professor Laurence Tribe, a man who taught Obama constitutional law, supported his 2008 campaign, and until recently worked as a Justice Department legal adviser. The letter draws scathing conclusions about his treatment, as well as about Obama’s personal culpability in this mockery of justice:

The administration has provided no evidence that Manning’s treatment reflects a concern for his own safety or that of other inmates. Unless and until it does so, there is only one reasonable inference: this pattern of degrading treatment aims either to deter future whistleblowers, or to force Manning to implicate Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in a conspiracy, or both. . . .

President Obama was once a professor of constitutional law, and entered the national stage as an eloquent moral leader. The question now, however, is whether his conduct as commander in chief meets fundamental standards of decency. He should not merely assert that Manning’s confinement is “appropriate and meet[s] our basic standards,” as he did recently. He should require the Pentagon publicly to document the grounds for its extraordinary actions—and immediately end those that cannot withstand the light of day.

Why We Must Raise Taxes on the Rich

2011-04-10T07:30:00.002-05:00

by: Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog

Here’s the truth: The only way America can reduce the long-term budget deficit, maintain vital services, protect Social Security and Medicare, invest more in education and infrastructure, and not raise taxes on the working middle class is by raising taxes on the super rich.

Even if we got rid of corporate welfare subsidies for big oil, big agriculture, and big Pharma – even if we cut back on our bloated defense budget – it wouldn’t be nearly enough.

The vast majority of Americans can’t afford to pay more. Despite an economy that’s twice as large as it was thirty years ago, the bottom 90 percent are still stuck in the mud. If they’re employed they’re earning on average only about $280 more a year than thirty years ago, adjusted for inflation. That’s less than a 1 percent gain over more than a third of a century. (Families are doing somewhat better but that’s only because so many families now have to rely on two incomes.)

Yet even as their share of the nation’s total income has withered, the tax burden on the middle has grown. Today’s working and middle-class taxpayers are shelling out a bigger chunk of income in payroll taxes, sales taxes, and property taxes than thirty years ago.

It’s just the opposite for super rich.

The top 1 percent’s share of national income has doubled over the past three decades (from 10 percent in 1981 to well over 20 percent now). The richest one-tenth of 1 percent’s share has tripled. And they’re doing better than ever. According to a new analysis by the Wall Street Journal, total compensation and benefits at publicly-traded Wall Street banks and securities firms hit a record in 2010 — $135 billion. That’s up 5.7 percent from 2009.

Yet, remarkably, taxes on the top have plummeted. From the 1940s until 1980, the top tax income tax rate on the highest earners in America was at least 70 percent. In the 1950s, it was 91 percent. Now it’s 35 percent. Even if you include deductions and credits, the rich are now paying a far lower share of their incomes in taxes than at any time since World War II.

The estate tax (which only hits the top 2 percent) has also been slashed. In 2000 it was 55 percent and kicked in after $1 million. Today it’s 35 percent and kicks in at $5 million. Capital gains – comprising most of the income of the super-rich – were taxed at 35 percent in the late 1980s. They’re now taxed at 15 percent.

If the rich were taxed at the same rates they were half a century ago, they’d be paying in over $350 billion more this year alone, which translates into trillions over the next decade. That’s enough to accomplish everything the nation needs while also reducing future deficits.

If we also cut what we don’t need (corporate welfare and bloated defense), taxes could be reduced for everyone earning under $80,000, too. And with a single payer health-care system – Medicare for all – instead of a gaggle of for-profit providers, the nation could save billions more.

Yes, the rich will find ways to avoid paying more taxes courtesy of clever accountants and tax attorneys. But this has always been the case regardless of where the tax rate is set. That’s why the government should aim high. (During the 1950s, when the top rate was 91 percent, the rich exploited loopholes and deductions that as a practical matter reduced the effective top rate 50 to 60 percent – still substantial by today’s standards.)

And yes, some of the super rich will move their money to the Cayman Islands and other tax shelters. But paying taxes is a central obligation of citizenship, and those who take their money abroad in an effort to avoid paying American taxes should lose their American citizenship.

But don’t the super-rich have enough political power to kill any attempt to get them to pay their fair share? Only if we let them. Here’s the issue around which Progressives, populists on the right and left, unionized workers, and all other working people who are just plain fed up ought to be able to unite.

Besides, the reason we have a Democrat in the White House – indeed, the reason we have a Democratic Party at all – is to try to rebalance the economy exactly this way.

All the President has to do is connect the dots – the explosion of income and wealth among America’s super-rich, the dramatic drop in their tax rates, the consequential devastating budget squeezes in Washington and in state capitals, and the slashing of vital public services for the middle class and the poor.

This shouldn’t be difficult. Most Americans are on the receiving end. By now they know trickle-down economics is a lie. And they sense the dice are loaded in favor of the multi-millionaires and billionaires, and their corporations, now paying a relative pittance in taxes.

The President has the bully pulpit. But will he use it?

---
ROBERT REICH
Robert Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written thirteen books, including The Work of Nations, Locked in the Cabinet, Supercapitalism, and his most recent book, Aftershock.

Monsanto behind anti-whistleblowing bill in Iowa.

2011-04-09T15:30:00.000-05:00

Speaking of Monsanto, it turns out they are playing a role in Iowa's proposed anti-whistleblower bill -- a bill focused primarily on agriculture. Should the bill pass, it will become illegal to produce undercover videos at various types of agricultural facilities (as well as to get a job at a facility with the express intent of producing a video). Sarah Damian of the Government Accountability Project, a "whistleblower advocacy organization," observes over at the Food Integrity Campaign's blog that Monsanto has been throwing lobbying dollars behind Iowa's effort to draw a steel curtain around food production. And not without reason:

... Monsanto has more facilities in Iowa than in any other state in the country, with more than 25 offices. The company is heavily invested in the bill's outcome because "crop operations" are also covered, which would apply to Monsanto's seed houses, pesticide manufacturing plants and research facilities throughout Iowa. The biotech and crop chemical giant wouldn't want any undercover videos produced on its clock, apparently.

That's a bit ironic, however, given the fact that Monsanto investigators are notorious for trespassing on farmers' property and going to extreme measures to produce evidence of seed patent infringement, including posing as land mappers or even joining a local Alcohol Anonymous group to gain the farmers' trust and gain video access to their fields. Talk about undercover.

I am to blame

2011-04-08T21:21:00.001-05:00

Former Mexican president urges drug legalization

2011-04-07T19:54:00.000-05:00

Legalization of drugs in Mexico would not only lead to lowered violence and drug consumption but also boost its economy, former Mexican President Vicente Fox said Wednesday during a speech to a convention of newspaper editors from the United States and Latin America.

Drug cartel's manager's son says federal government supports them

2011-04-07T19:45:00.002-05:00

Last week, Reporte Indigo released a document in the record of Vicente Zambada. In it, the lawyers said they based their defense on showing that the DEA, the FBI and ICE would have known and tolerated the drug trafficking activities of which accuses Zambada Niebla.

How to cut $84 billion from budget

2011-04-07T19:09:00.002-05:00

GOP Aims to Weaken Consumer Financial Protection

2011-04-06T22:04:00.000-05:00

WASHINGTON (CNNMoney) -- House Republicans on Wednesday detailed a new barrage of legislative measures they plan to pursue that would dilute, delay and curtail powers of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

Falwell's Christian School Got $445 Million From Government

2011-04-05T20:58:00.002-05:00

Liberty University, the evangelical private Christian school founded by dead apartheid-supporting bigot Jerry Falwell, received $445 million in federal financial aid last year. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, by the way, received $420 million from the federal government.

Senators John Kyl and Jeff Sessions Blocked Whistle-Blowers Act

2011-04-02T20:24:00.001-05:00

With the help of our listeners we have managed to eliminate all but two Senators, both of whom have said that their policy is not to comment on the placement of anonymous holds. The Government Accountability Project has let us know that this project has had the two-pronged effect in the Senate of making Senators more hesitant to use the secret hold, and bringing new attention to the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act, which is expected to be reintroduced in the Senate shortly.

Senators John Kyl and Jeff Sessions Blocked Whistle-Blowers act.

Cost of Support for the Wealthy is $42 billion per year

2011-04-02T20:07:00.003-05:00

Mafia-controlled Italian Firms Dump Toxic Waste off Somali Coast

2011-04-02T19:54:00.000-05:00

During the height of the Somali civil war, Swiss and Italian firms Achair Partners and Progresso, signed a secret agreement with the transitional government of warlord Ali Mahdi Mohamed. Taking advantage of the chaos and the fact that Ali Mahdi was desperate for arms and cash to oust rival General Farah Aideed– the European firms began to unload thousands of tonnes of toxic waste arriving in steel drums off the coast of Somalia. Some even made it to the mainland and were buried in 40 inches by 30 inches holes.

The main perpetrators are said to be Italian firms controlled by the mafia, whose job is to dispose Europe’s extremely hazardous waste. Locals also suspect German and Danish shipping companies are in the trade, with some contracted to transport thousands of tonnes of poisonous stockpile including 60, 000 hexachlorobenzene (HCB) barrels from Australia. They say, sometimes instead of taking the hazardous waste to Europe where it can be incinerated, they dump it in the Somali coast to save money and time and also they face strong opposition from Europe’s environmental action groups.

12 Murdered in Response to Christian Minister Burning Koran

2011-04-02T09:08:00.002-05:00

MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan — Stirred up by three angry mullahs who urged them to avenge the burning of a Koran at a Florida church, thousands of protesters on Friday overran the compound of the United Nations in this northern Afghan city, killing at least 12 people, Afghan and United Nations officials said.
Multimedia

The dead included at least seven United Nations workers — four Nepalese guards and three Europeans from Romania, Sweden and Norway — according to United Nations officials in New York. One was a woman. Early reports, later denied by Afghan officials, said that at least two of the dead had been beheaded. Five Afghans were also killed.

Mr. Jones, the Florida pastor, caused an international uproar by threatening to burn the Koran last year on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Among others, the overall commander of forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, had warned at that time that such an action could provoke violence in Afghanistan and could endanger American troops. Mr. Jones subsequently promised not to burn a Koran, but he nonetheless presided over a mock trial and then the burning of the Koran at his small church in Gainesville, Fla., on March 20, with only 30 worshipers attending.

Transocean's Best Safety Year Despite Deepwater Explosion

2011-04-02T08:55:00.002-05:00

DANIEL GILBERT And TENNILLE TRACY report for the Wall Street Journal:

Transocean Ltd. had its "best year in safety performance" despite the explosion of its Deepwater Horizon rig that left 11 dead and oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, the world's largest offshore-rig company said in a securities filing Friday.

Accordingly, Transocean's executives received two-thirds of their target safety bonus. Safety accounts for 25% of the equation that determines the yearly cash bonuses, along with financial factors including new rig contracts.

The payout contrasts with that for 2009, when the company withheld all executive bonuses after incurring four fatalities that year "to underscore the company's commitment to safety."

In a filing on executive pay, Transocean said, "Notwithstanding the tragic loss of life in the Gulf of Mexico, we achieved an exemplary statistical safety record." Based on the total rate of incidents and their severity, "we recorded the best year in safety performance in our company's history."

House directs $100M DC religious private schools

2011-03-31T19:26:00.002-05:00

Wednesday, the U.S. House of Representatives (many of whom were elected on promises of cost-cutting and budget-slashing) voted to direct $100M of your taxpayer dollars to prop up private religious schools in Washington, DC.

Presumably, they are spending taxpayer millions to support the schools where the congressmen's children go to school in order to keep their own expenses down.

In a 225 to 195 vote, the House approved H.R. 471, the Scholarships for Opportunity and Results Act. This legislation reauthorizes and expands the Washington, D.C. Federal private school voucher pilot program, under which millions of Federal taxpayer dollars — $100M per year over the next five years — are funneled into a voucher system which favors private religious schools over public and charter schools.
More than 80 percent of students in the D.C. voucher program attend private religious schools, which, under this program, are allowed to discriminate in hiring and enrollment on the basis of religion.

After Paying Zero Income Taxes, GE Plans To Ask Its Union Workers To Make Wage And Benefits Concessions

2011-03-28T20:59:00.001-05:00

ThinkProgress.com writes:

Our guest blogger is Mike Elk, a freelance labor journalist and third generation union organizer based in Washington, D.C. You can follow him for more updates on Wisconsin on twitter at @MikeElk.

Last week, the New York Times reported that, despite making $14.2 billion in profits, General Electric, the largest corporation in the United States, paid zero U.S. taxes in 2010 and actually received tax credits of $3.2 billion dollars. The article noted that GE’s tax avoidance team is comprised of “former officials not just from the Treasury, but also from the I.R.S. and virtually all the tax-writing committees in Congress.”

After not paying any taxes and making huge profits, ThinkProgress has learned that General Electric is expected to ask its nearly 15,000 unionized employees in the United States to make major concessions.

Michelle Bachman Proposes Penalizing Single MOthers

2011-03-27T17:47:00.001-05:00

Bachmann proposes implementing a tax system that would encourage "family formation." The context of Bachmann's remarks make it clear that she would like to either give tax credits, or lower tax rates to people who are married as opposed to those who are single. Given Bachmann's past statement on gay rights, the lower tax rates and/or tax credits would also only apply to heterosexual couples. If implemented, single mothers would likely be taxed at a higher rate than mothers who are married.

Pentagon Attempts to Make Bradley Manning Insane

2011-03-27T17:42:00.001-05:00

(CNN) -- Army Pfc. Bradley Manning has been imprisoned in the Quantico Marine Corps Brig for nine months, suspected of giving highly classified State Department cables to the website WikiLeaks. He has not been tried, yet is kept in solitary confinement in a windowless room 23 hours a day and forced to sleep naked without pillows or blankets.

The problem with the argument that Manning is being kept in long-term solitary confinement to prevent his suicide is that long-term solitary confinement causes suicide.

One of the most stunning statistics in criminology today is that, on average, 50% of U.S. prisoner suicides happen among the 2% to 8% of prisoners who are in solitary confinement, also known as segregation.

US government denies entry visa to Afghan women’s rights activist

2011-03-19T17:30:00.003-05:00

March 17, 2011

The United States has denied a travel visa to Malalai Joya, an acclaimed women’s rights activist and former member of Afghanistan’s parliament. Ms. Joya, who was named one of TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world in 2010, was set to begin a three-week US tour to promote an updated edition of her memoir, A Woman Among Warlords, published by Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

Colleagues of Ms. Joya’s report that when she presented herself as scheduled at the U.S. embassy, she was told she was being denied because she was “unemployed” and “lives underground.” Then 27, Joya was the youngest woman elected to Afghanistan’s parliament in 2005. Because of her harsh criticism of warlords and fundamentalists in Afghanistan, she has been the target of at least five assassination attempts. “The reason Joya lives underground is because she faces the constant threat of death for having had the courage to speak up for women’s rights – it’s obscene that the U.S. government would deny her entry,” said Sonali Kolhatkar of the Afghan Women’s Mission, a U.S. based organization that has hosted Joya for speaking tours in the past and is a sponsor of this year’s national tour.

Joya has also become an internationally known critic of the US-NATO war in Afghanistan. Organizers argue that the denial of Joya’s visa appears to be a case of what the American Civil Liberties Union describes as “Ideological Exclusion,” which they say violates Americans’ First Amendment right to hear constitutionally protected speech by denying foreign scholars, artists, politicians and others entry to the United States.

10 Things We Hate about David Letterman

2011-03-18T18:35:00.003-05:00

10. Wears clothes that make blind men blink.
9. Hides the fact that he takes his teeth out on Halloween.
8. Doesn't walk over and grab the fire-eating woman, even though she makes him shiver with desire.
7. Never has Sirrajul and Mujibur over for brunch.
6. Is funny even though he's comatose with boredom.
5. Rarely sings us a little tune with the band unless inspired by Ashcroft.
4. Rarely gives Rupert more than a little peck on the cheek.
3. Rejects Howard Stern's constant request to show his chest.
2. Never lets Biff wear a swim suit on mail day.
1. Never wears his "I secretly worship Opra" t-shirt in public.

Notice:
David Letterman may not be drawn or quartered without a wink and a nod from CBS (with all due respect to Worldwide Pants, Inc.).