The Big Lie About the FCC's Open Internet Plan (and a Dirty Little Secret)

The Big Lie isn't called the Big Lie for nothing. It's put before the public by organizations with comfy-sounding names, repeated endlessly in ads and columns and blog posts and tweets by groups and politicians -- many of whom receive support from those the Big Lie favors. Here's the current case in point: The government wants to takeover/control/regulate the Internet.

Who was responsible for this? Start with Americans for Prosperity. It's hard to quibble with a name for a group like "Americans for Prosperity." After all, who doesn't want Americans to be prosperous? Therefore, it's somewhat curious that a group that purports to have our well-being at heart is taking on the one institution that has been the greatest creator of wealth we have ever seen -- the Internet.

Glenn Beck's Golden Fleece

How Beck and other right-wing talkers turned paranoia into a pitch for Goldline, the gold dealer one congressman says is conspiring to "cheat consumers." A Mother Jones investigation.

— By Stephanie Mencimer

Wed May. 19, 2010 12:00 AM PDT

Read the latest on this story: Consumers tip off the FTC about Goldline, Beck's counterattack on Rep. Anthony Weiner, the story behind Goldline's perfect BBB rating, and the left-wing radio hosts who pitch gold.

Tune in to Glenn Beck's Fox News show or his syndicated radio program, and you'll soon learn about the evils of the US dollar, a currency on the verge of collapse due to runaway government spending, a ballooning national debt, and imminent Zimbabwe-style hyperinflation. To defend yourself against the coming financial holocaust, as Beck explained on his radio show last November, you need to "think like a German Jew in 1934, maybe 1931." And that means thinking about buying some gold.

Conveniently, Beck made that suggestion as he was in the midst of interviewing his own "gold guy," Mark Albarian, the president and CEO of Goldline International, a Santa Monica, California-based precious metals company that is a major sponsor of Beck's radio and cable shows—and now the target of Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.). In a seamless intertwining of anxiety and entrepreneurship, Beck and Albarian amicably debated whether we've already hit "peak gold" or whether the price of gold, then at $1,100 an ounce, might yet hit the inflation-adjusted high of $2,200 it saw back in 1980. Beck speculated that gold could go as high as $2,500 an ounce: "I think people are running out of options on what, you know, could be worth something at all."

Fred Malek's anti-Semitic past makes him unfit to chair a state government panel.

By Timothy Noah
Posted Friday, May 21, 2010, at 7:15 PM ET

---

On May 7 Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell appointed Fred Malek chairman of his Commission on Government Reform and Restructuring. McDonnell, a conservative Republican who assumed office in January, had achieved unwelcome national attention a month earlier when he declared April "Confederate History Month" without mentioning that the Confederates fought to preserve slavery (because, he explained to reporters, slavery did not rate as one of the issues "most significant for Virginia"). Two months before that, McDonnell had issued an executive order banning discrimination in state government that pointedly removed Virginia's previous protections based on sexual orientation.

McDonnell ended up backing down a little after his whitewash of the Confederacy and his revocation of civil rights protections for homosexuals stirred a predictable outcry from the African American and gay communities. (See "What's The Matter With Virginia?") But Jewish groups have been slow to protest the appointment of Malek, whose most noteworthy prior experience in government reorganization dates to 1971, when Malek was a 34-year-old special assistant to President Richard Nixon. At Nixon's request, Malek produced a memo denoting the number of Jews employed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Malek then arranged the demotion of at least four people with Jewish-sounding surnames. (He didn't actually know who was Jewish and who wasn't; he guessed based on their names.) It was the last recorded act of official anti-Semitism by the United States government.

Strontium-90 found in soil at Vermont nuke plant

Vermont Yankee officials say that while cleaning up after a leak of radioactive tritium at the nuclear power plant, they found another, more potent radioactive isotope in soil near where the leak occurred.

The Associated Press

MONTPELIER, Vt. —

Vermont Yankee officials say that while cleaning up after a leak of radioactive tritium at the nuclear power plant, they found another, more potent radioactive isotope in soil near where the leak occurred.

Rand Paul: An Anti-Government Conspiracy Theorist?

David Corn,Columnist

Should a U.S. senator hang out with a 9/11 conspiracy theory champion?

That's a question for Rand Paul, the Tea Party favorite who this week won the Republican Senate primary in Kentucky. While Paul was still celebrating, he created a media-political tempest by declaring that he opposed the provision of the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964 that bans discrimination by private businesses.

Blanche Lincoln vs. Bill Halter in Round Two of Arkansas Senate Fight

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – This Race is About Arkansas, Not Outside Groups.

That's U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln's mantra as she gears up for a June 8 Democratic runoff with Lt. Gov. Bill Halter.

Neither candidate received 50 percent of the primary vote, guaranteeing three more weeks of testy campaigning. Lincoln received 44.3 percent to Halter's 42.5 percent. The third candidate, DC Morrison, who aligned more with the Tea Party than with Democrats, garnered a stunning13 percent.

Cantwell, Kerry and Warner are siding with the richest on Wall St. over the unemployed

by Joe Sudbay (DC) on 5/21/2010 10:57:00 AM

Senate Democrats are proposing legislation titled, The American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act. The bill will, among other things, extend unemployment benefits and COBRA extensions. They're trying to schedule for a vote next week before the recess. And, to ward off the usual GOP criticism, this time, they've even come up with a way to pay for part of it: Removing a special tax loophole available to money managers. And, it's a big loophole that allows some of the richest people on Wall Street to pay the lowest tax rate.

From various sources, I pieced together how this tax structure works. Money managers at entities likes hedge fund, private equity firms and hedge funds don't get weekly paychecks. They're paid through a system known as "carried interest." Their income, which is essentially based on a share of the profits of the fund, is taxed at a far lower rate than income tax (15% vs. the top marginal income rate of 35%). So, what does it mean.

Must watch Rachel: Why Rand Paul matters

by: Daniel De Groot

Fri May 21, 2010 at 20:13

I can't praise this segment highly enough:

[...]

I will admit, I was a little dubious over how much attention this thing was getting, but I realize now I was wrong to question it (usually a safe assumption that whatever thing the media pack are chasing is dumb).

Paul Krugman: Lost Decade Looming?

Despite a chorus of voices claiming otherwise, we aren’t Greece. We are, however, looking more and more like Japan.

For the past few months, much commentary on the economy — some of it posing as reporting — has had one central theme: policy makers are doing too much. Governments need to stop spending, we’re told. Greece is held up as a cautionary tale, and every uptick in the interest rate on U.S. government bonds is treated as an indication that markets are turning on America over its deficits. Meanwhile, there are continual warnings that inflation is just around the corner, and that the Fed needs to pull back from its efforts to support the economy and get started on its “exit strategy,” tightening credit by selling off assets and raising interest rates.

And what about near-record unemployment, with long-term unemployment worse than at any time since the 1930s? What about the fact that the employment gains of the past few months, although welcome, have, so far, brought back fewer than 500,000 of the more than 8 million jobs lost in the wake of the financial crisis? Hey, worrying about the unemployed is just so 2009.

Whacking the Old Folks

By William Greider / The Nation

In setting up his National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, Barack Obama is again playing coy in public, but his intentions are widely understood among Washington insiders. The president intends to offer Social Security as a sacrificial lamb to entice conservative deficit hawks into a grand bipartisan compromise in which Democrats agree to cut Social Security benefits for future retirees while Republicans accede to significant tax increases to reduce government red ink.

Obama's commission is the vehicle created to achieve this deal. He ducks questions about his preferences, saying only that "everything has to be on the table." But White House lieutenants are privately talking up a bargain along those lines. They are telling anxious liberals to trust the president to make only moderate cuts. Better to have Democrats cut Social Security, Obama advisers say, than leave the task to bloodthirsty Republicans.

Democrats Can Win in November

How Tuesday's election results should encourage them.

By Eliot Spitzer
Posted Friday, May 21, 2010, at 8:26 AM ET

---

The instant analysis of Tuesday's election results was hyperbolic: Incumbents are dead! The establishment is finished! The fringes have overtaken the middle! But the portents of doom are, as usual, overblown. A closer look at the results should give substantial comfort to a White House whose mantras are still "Change," "Hope," and "Yes We Can."

First, the obvious: A public that has experienced multi-decade middle-class stagnation is ready to give new voices and ideas a chance, and that means great danger for incumbents. If the "new normal" is anything close to the last decade, we are in deep trouble: median income stagnant; job creation flat; family debt rising; income inequality increasing. More is being demanded by the public than a return to the grim economic realities of pre-recession 2007.

Stop Complaining, Wall Street

The Senate reform bill is much kinder to the finance industry than it deserves.

By Daniel Gross
Posted Friday, May 21, 2010, at 9:42 AM ET

---

The Senate's passage Thursday night of extensive financial reform is being portrayed as a big loss for the financial sector. "No End to Banks' Capitol Punishment," reads the headline in the Wall Street Journal. But everything's relative. Wall Street wanted no reform at all. And this bill seems like harsh punishment only because the default situation for the last 30 years has been that the financial sector gets precisely the regulation it wants.

What may be most striking to average Americans about the bill is actually how un-punitive it is. Given what the financial sector put the nation through in the past three years, the case for strong punishment was very compelling. But while there are provisions that the financial sector doesn't like, the legislation that is now headed to a House-Senate conference is in fact relatively tame.

Reforms put Wall Street in its place

Thomas Noyes
guardian.co.uk,
Friday 21 May 2010 16.30 BST

The Senate last night passed a comprehensive financial reform bill by a vote of 59 to 39 after weeks of amendments and a series of cloture votes failed to derail the measure.

Passage of S.3127, the Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010, represents a clear victory for Barack Obama, who made this his next big legislative priority after healthcare. Obama hailed the bill's passage, noting "The recession we're emerging from was primarily caused by a lack of responsibility and accountability from Wall Street to Washington."

Prenatal exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals linked to breast cancer

A study in mice reveals that prenatal exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals, like bisphenol-A (BPA) and diethylstilbestrol (DES), may program a fetus for life. Therefore, adult women who were exposed prenatally to BPA or DES could be at increased risk of breast cancer, according to a new study accepted for publication in Hormones & Cancer, a journal of The Endocrine Society.

Endocrine-disrupting chemicals are substances in the environment that interfere with hormone biosynthesis, metabolism or action resulting in adverse developmental, reproductive, neurological and immune effects in both humans and wildlife. These chemicals are designed, produced and marketed largely for specific industrial purposes.

Obama's Impossibly Complex Win

The Senate passed a historic finance reform bill on Thursday night, fulfilling a major goal of the administration. But, Eric Alterman writes, the legislation is a thicket of compromises.

Whatever you think about the financial regulation bill that finally passed in the Senate Thursday night, you can't say it’s not a big deal. It’s 1500 pages long, and just take a look at Journal’s précis of its major provisions.

Below the Radar: HUD is Trying to Privatize and Mortgage Off All of America’s Public Housing

By Mark

Created 05/21/2010 - 8:40am

GEORGE LAKOFF FOR BUZZFLASH

The Obama Administration’s move to the right is about to give conservatives a victory they could not have anticipated, even under Bush. HUD, under Obama, submitted legislation called PETRA to Congress that would result in the privatization of all public housing in America.

The new owners would charge ten percent above market rates to impoverished tenants, money that would be mostly paid by the US government (you and me, the taxpayers). To maintain the property, the new owners would take out a mortgage for building repair and maintenance (like a home equity loan), with no cap on interest rates.

How to kill Social Security: Be ignorant about it

by Gaius Publius on 5/20/2010 06:22:00 PM

I'm writing this in response to a few of the comments my recent Social Security article attracted. It seems that despite years of public discussion — from the Bush push of 2005, to Obama's suspected embrace of a Peterson cat food future — many of us still don't know what Social Security is and how it's been used.

And that's how they'll kill Social Security — by turning our ignorance against us.

Like Nixon to China: Obama and Social Security

by Gaius Publius on 5/19/2010 04:57:00 PM

Just like it takes a Republican to open Communist* China, it takes a Democrat to kill Social Security. Get ready, folks. If you thought the corporate gifts in the so-called Health Care bill were bad, just wait till Obama's so-called Deficit Commission gets its claws into Social Security.

Jane Hamsher put up a must-read article earlier this week that serves as a intro to her online salon with Steven Gillon, author of The Pact: Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and the Rivalry that Defined a Generation.

Investors Made Millions from People Facing Eviction

By Fred Schulte
Huffington Post Investigative Fund

Created 2010-05-18 08:00

‘Crime of Greed’ Deprived Local Governments of Revenue, Prosecutors Allege

A six-year conspiracy by veteran real estate investors to rig bids and stifle competition at tax sale auctions made two chief organizers at least $10 million, largely from fees homeowners paid to keep from losing their properties, according to federal prosecutors.

Though many details remain under seal in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, prosecutors allege that from 2002 through 2007 the pair acted to corrupt nearly two dozen municipal tax sales in Baltimore and five other Maryland jurisdictions, including Montgomery and Prince George’s counties in the Washington, D.C. suburbs.

Every year, local governments in Maryland sell investors the right to collect unpaid taxes and municipal fees, often for a few hundred dollars or less. Lien holders can sue to take the property of those who fail to pay them.

Glenn Greenwald: Obama and the myth of the public opinion excuse

Writing about my post from last week on the diversion of civil liberties erosions from non-citizens to citizens, the University of Massachusetts-Amherst's Charli Carpenter asks what (if anything) can be done to combat this trend:

[I]s it too late for dissent to make a difference? I welcome readers' ideas. I think many voters thought they'd already taken the appropriate step by electing a progressive, pro-civil liberties leader. With the writing on the wall, what now?

In replying to her question, Matt Yglesias attempts to re-direct blame away from Obama by invoking the Public Opinion Excuse:

I don't think the answer to her question is particularly difficult -- people who want to halt the erosion of civil liberties need to do a better job of persuading people that the erosion of civil liberties would be a bad thing. If you have an incumbent administration being urged by the opposition to seize more power, and the public wants the administration to seize more power, then you get what we have today. People on the good team are sometimes in denial about opinion on this subject, but read the numbers -- the public wants Guantanamo Bay open, wants suspects tried in military courts, and thinks we should give up more civil liberties in order to enhance security.

Public opinion on these issues is much more mixed than Matt suggests (the very first poll cited in his link shows the public almost evenly divided -- 45-47% -- on whether the alleged Times Square bomber should be tried in a civilian court or a military commission).

Prime mortgages going bust at an alarming rate

By Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Aftershocks from the nation's financial crisis continue rumbling through the housing sector as fixed-rate mortgages held by the safest borrowers accounted for nearly 37 percent of new foreclosures during the first three months of this year, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported Wednesday.

Additionally, more than one in 10 homeowners were behind on their mortgage payments in the first quarter — a record, the association said. That's up from 9.47 percent in the last three months of 2009.

Final vote on Wall St. reform bill seen in Senate

"We're passing this bill tonight," Reid spokesman Jim Manley told reporters in the Capitol.

The Senate moved to wrap up debate on the bill earlier on Thursday, a key procedural hurdle paving the way for a vote. The bill now needs only a simple majority to win final approval.

Attempt To Cap ATM Fees At 50 Cents Blocked In Senate

Ryan Grim Ryan Grim – Wed May 19, 12:01 am ET

Tom Harkin was stifled in his effort Tuesday evening to bring a measure to the Senate floor that would cap ATM fees at 50 cents. Harkin (D-Iowa) first introduced his amendment on May 4 and has yet to get a vote. With the close of debate on Wall Street reform rapidly approaching, Harkin went straight to the floor to ask the chamber's consent to vote, conceding that he would be satisfied with a mere five minutes of debate.

Banks, both small and large, oppose the amendment and argue that capping fees will reduce the number of privately available ATMs at convenience stores and elsewhere as well as the number of bank-owned cash machines.

Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due

The most damaged part of the American economy—consumer credit—may finally be recovering.

By Daniel Gross
Posted Wednesday, May 19, 2010, at 1:14 PM ET

---

"First in, last out" is a well-known accounting term, and it may also be the right phrase to characterize this economic recovery. Even though the economy began to expand in mid-2009, the sector that led us into the mess—credit—has remained in recession. The conflagration of debt—soured mortgages, defaulted bank loans, Chapter 11 corporations, huge credit-card charge-offs, student loans, auto loans—drove the economy into a deep recession. Now, nearly a year into the overall economic expansion, there are tentative signs that improvement is coming to the stricken world of consumer credit.

Take the biggest component of consumer debt: mortgages. The Mortgage Bankers Association today released its data on the first quarter of 2010. It found the delinquency rate for residential mortgages rose to 10.06 percent in the first quarter, up substantially from the fourth quarter of 2009 and from the first quarter of 2009. But other measures suggest that the mortgage clouds have begun to break. TransUnion, the credit-data firm, reported last week that the mortgage-loan delinquency rate—defined as the percentage of borrowers who are two or more months late—fell in the first quarter of 2010 after three straight years of increases.

Finally, The Republicans Come Out To Fight. Where Is The President?

The Senate Republicans are refusing to allow a vote on the Merkley-Levin amendment, which would put a meaningful version of the Volcker Rule into law (splitting off proprietary trading from major banks).

After weeks of dancing around, the Democrats finally have a signature issue on which to fight. Senator Carl Levin frames it exactly right: “It’s a sad day when the power of Wall Street can overwhelm the power of the American people in the US Senate.”

This is the opportunity that White House claims it has long sought – to have an intense fight on a financial reform issue that everyone can understand. Paul Volcker made his determination long ago: the big banks are too big and must, in this fashion, be broken up. Senators Merkley and Levin negotiated the precise language of their amendment in good faith. The Republicans have made their answer clear: No way.

Top Fed Official Offers Dire Forecast, Says Economy Will Suffer For Years

A top Federal Reserve official warned Tuesday that one consequence of the Great Recession will be a "new normal" in which Americans have lower expectations for a better life.

In a speech, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland President and CEO Sandra Pianalto said that she expects "our journey out of this deep recession [to] be a slow one" because of the loss of skills jobless Americans have experienced as a result of prolonged unemployment, and the "heightened sense of caution" consumers and businesses are operating under as they navigate the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

Senate rejects wrapping up debate on Wall St bill

WASHINGTON, May 19 (Reuters) - Democrats in the U.S. Senate failed to muster enough votes to wrap up debate on a sweeping overhaul of U.S. financial regulations -- a surprise setback to one of President Barack Obama's top domestic priorities.

Two Democrats joined 39 Republicans to deny the Democrats the 60 votes they needed in the 100-seat chamber to wrap up debate on the bill and move toward final passage.

Why Job Creation Agencies Stay Off the Table

Don’t expect a CCC or WPA in this decade as there are pointed reasons not to reach into the New Deal quiver.

By Emily Badger

Unemployment, stuck at just under 10 percent now two years into the recession, isn’t anywhere near as bad as it was during the Great Depression. Nearly a quarter of the work force was then out of a job. Bread lines curled around street corners, and unemployed veterans, their families in tow, were rebuffed from Washington by force.

Ultimately, the U.S. government was so pressed for response it pursued what’s now considered a radical solution. The government, quite simply, hired people. It created the Civilian Conservation Corps, which employed young men laying infrastructure in national parks. It created the Civil Works Administration, which briefly put 4 million people to work constructing roads and bridges. It founded the Works Progress Administration, which at its peak employed more people than the federal government does today (at a time when the American work force was one-third the size it is now).

U of M study finds rising levels of dioxins from common soap ingredient in Mississippi River

U of M study finds rising levels of dioxins from common soap ingredient in Mississippi River sediments

Dioxins in general decreasing, but those derived from triclosan increasing

Contacts: Ryan Maus, University News Service, maus@umn.edu, (612) 624-1690
Rhonda Zurn, Institute of Technology (College of Science and Engineering), rzurn@umn.edu, (612) 626-7959

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (05/18/2010) —Specific dioxins derived from the antibacterial agent triclosan, used in many hand soaps, deodorants, dishwashing liquids and other consumer products, account for an increasing proportion of total dioxins in Mississippi River sediments, according to University of Minnesota research.

The study appears online in the May 18 issue of the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

Texas schools board rewrites US history with lessons promoting God and guns

US Christian conservatives drop references to slave trade and sideline Thomas Jefferson who backed church-state separation

Chris McGreal, Houston
guardian.co.uk,
Sunday 16 May 2010 17.19 BS

Cynthia Dunbar does not have a high regard for her local schools. She has called them unconstitutional, tyrannical and tools of perversion. The conservative Texas lawyer has even likened sending children to her state's schools to "throwing them in to the enemy's flames". Her hostility runs so deep that she educated her own offspring at home and at private Christian establishments.

Now Dunbar is on the brink of fulfilling a promise to change all that, or at least point Texas schools toward salvation. She is one of a clutch of Christian evangelists and social conservatives who have grasped control of the state's education board. This week they are expected to force through a new curriculum that is likely to shift what millions of American schoolchildren far beyond Texas learn about their history.

Nouriel Roubini: How to Break Up the Banks, Stop Massive Bonuses, and Rein in Wall Street Greed

By Zach Carter and Nouriel Roubini, AlterNet
Posted on May 18, 2010, Printed on May 18, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/146900/

New York economist Nouriel Roubini is the author of, most recently, "Crisis Economics: A Crash Course In The Future Of Finance." He is considered one of the most prominent and respected economists in the world. When both Wall Street bankers and Bush administration policymakers were insisting that everything was just fine, Roubini was warning about the most dire financial crisis since the Great Depression. In 2007, the financial elite laughed him off, but Roubini was vindicated by the crash of 2008. AlterNet economics editor Zach Carter recently spoke with Roubini about the financial crisis, the subsequent bailout, the financial reform bill moving through Congress, and the global economic outlook.

Zach Carter: How is the financial reform legislation going?

Nouriel Roubini: In my view, the financial reform bill goes in the right direction in terms of what needs to be done, but it doesn't go far enough in a number of dimensions. My view is that if banks are too big to fail, using higher capital charges and an insolvency regime is not going to work. If they're too big to fail, they're just too big, and they should be broken up.

If they're too big to fail, they're also becoming too big to be saved, too big to be bailed out, and too big to be managed. No CEO can monitor the activities of thousands of separate profit and loss statements, and the activities of thousands of different bankers and traders. So that's one dimension. We must be capable of going beyond the Volcker Rule, which is essentially Glass-Steagall-Lite. We need to go all the way and implement the kind of restrictions between commercial banking and investment banking that existed under Glass-Steagall.

How Are Things Going in Afghanistan?

A Pentagon report says: not well.

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Friday, May 14, 2010, at 4:17 PM ET

---

Hamid Karzai has gone back to Afghanistan, and so the denizens of the Pentagon's E Ring and Foggy Bottom's seventh floor can drop their strained smiles and resume biting away at their fingernails.

Things in that unhappy country are going badly—much worse, of course, than Team Obama had to pretend this week but quite a bit worse than even a sensible skeptic might think. And unless Karzai takes to heart the lectures he heard (someone must have given him a stern talking-to amid all the bonhomie), things are only going to get worse still.

The evidence for this comes from an unclassified, 150-page Defense Department document called "Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan." Released in late April, it's the fifth in a series of semi-annual reports mandated by Congress. A few disheartening lines from its executive summary were duly recited by the media. But the full report is a hair-raiser. The news is almost all bad; and the few bits of good news turn out, on close inspection, to be extremely misleading.

Oceans’ fish could disappear in 40 years: UN

By Agence France-Presse

Monday, May 17th, 2010 -- 1:43 pm

The world faces the nightmare possibility of fishless oceans by 2050 without fundamental restructuring of the fishing industry, UN experts said Monday.

"If the various estimates we have received... come true, then we are in the situation where 40 years down the line we, effectively, are out of fish," Pavan Sukhdev, head of the UN Environment Program's green economy initiative, told journalists in New York.

Politicians ignore Keynes at their peril

Deficit reduction is a big mistake when unemployment is high, as anyone familiar with the basics of economic theory can tell you

Dean Baker
Monday 17 May 2010 17.00 BST

John Maynard Keynes explained the dynamics of an economy in a prolonged period of high unemployment more than 70 years ago in The General Theory. Unfortunately, it seems very few people in policymaking positions in the United States or Europe have heard of the book. Otherwise, they would be pushing economic policy in the exact opposite direction than it is currently heading.

Most wealthy countries have now made deficit reduction the primary focus of their economic policy. Even though the US and many eurozone countries are projected to be flirting with double-digit unemployment for years to come, their governments will be focused on cutting deficits rather than boosting the economy and creating jobs.

The Continuing Exploits of Cattle Conservatism

Submitted by pmcarpenter on Mon, 05/17/2010 - 5:32am.

THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter

I wish I could say the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll presented its uncomprehending majorities as the incomprehensible, but unfortunately they're all too familiar and all quite accountable.

Before getting to that, however, a few of the poll's horrifying highlights.

For instance, more Americans than not -- in actual fact, an absolute majority -- now say "they are willing," in the words of NBC News' deputy political director, Mark Murray, "to give up personal freedoms and civil liberties to prevent another terrorist attack." In short, the terrorists have won; they have corralled us into a nation of cowards and authoritarian enablers -- a superpower of poltroonery, a contradiction which cannot hold.

Google Data Admission Angers European Officials

By KEVIN J. O’BRIEN

BERLIN — European privacy regulators and advocates reacted angrily Saturday to the disclosure by Google, the world’s largest search engine, that it had systematically collected private data since 2006 while compiling its Street View photo archive.

After being pressed by European officials about the kind of data the company compiled in creating the archive — and what it did with that information — Google acknowledged on Friday that it had collected snippets of private data around the world. In a blog post on its Web site, the company said information had been recorded as it was sent over unencrypted residential wireless networks as Google’s Street View cars with mounted recording equipment passed by.

Corporate Frontman Known as 'Dr. Evil' Makes a Fine Living Attacking Charities

By Ian T. Shearn, The Humane Society of the United States
Posted on May 11, 2010, Printed on May 17, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/146832/

Editor's Note: Reprinted by permission of The Humane Society of the United States.

If charity does indeed begin at home, in the case of Richard Berman, it starts in a $3 million, 8,800-square-foot mansion he shares with his second wife in McLean, Va. One of his first decisions in a day of many is whether to drive the Bentley or the Ferrari to work. On this particular spring morning, he goes with the Bentley.

Capable of zero to 60 in 4.4 seconds, the commute to his Washington D.C. office is no doubt enjoyable, even if the car’s 500-plus horsepower is bridled in congestion. He glides into his parking garage in the K Street corridor, gently backs the Bentley into a reserved spot and exits the car, clutching a bundle of newspapers under his arm.

PAUL KRUGMAN: Going to Extreme

Utah Republicans have denied Robert Bennett, a very conservative three-term senator, a place on the ballot, because he’s not conservative enough. In Maine, party activists have pushed through a platform calling for, among other things, abolishing both the Federal Reserve and the Department of Education. And it’s becoming ever more apparent that real power within the G.O.P. rests with the ranting talk-show hosts.

News organizations have taken notice: suddenly, the takeover of the Republican Party by right-wing extremists has become a story (although many reporters seem determined to pretend that something equivalent is happening to the Democrats. It isn’t.) But why is this happening? And in particular, why is it happening now?

Will They Get Fooled Again?

by Dean Baker

While it may not be the job of the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board to deceive Congress to advance the interests of the big banks, apparently no one has informed Ben Bernanke of this fact.

Some people may recall the role that Mr. Bernanke played in helping to get the TARP through Congress. As part of the effort to build fear among members, he told Congress: "The credit markets aren't working. Corporations aren't able to finance themselves through commercial paper."

This was a big deal. Most large corporations are now dependent on selling commercial paper to finance their ongoing operations. They borrow money on the commercial paper market to meet their payroll and pay suppliers. If major companies were not able to sell commercial paper, they would quickly be unable to pay their bills and the economy really could shut down.

Katha Pollitt: What Ever Happened to Welfare Mothers?

Long lines of gloomy people in business suits at a jobs fair. Foreclosure signs on tidy suburban lawns. Adults moving into their parents' basement. In the news these days, the face of poverty is middle class, educated and often married: the hard-working, play-by-the-rules victims of the ongoing financial crisis. It's the man-bites-dog story that never ends.

But what about the people who already were poor before the crisis? Like women on welfare? Oh, them. The welfare reform bill, pompously titled the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) and signed by Bill Clinton in the run-up to the election, was supposed to pull these hapless folk off the dole with a mix of carrots and sticks aimed at forcing mothers off welfare and into the workforce. Not only would they find jobs that would allow them to support their children, the theory went; once single motherhood ceased to be subsidized by the taxpayer, poor women would settle down and marry before having kids. On its tenth anniversary PRWORA was widely trumpeted as a success: "Pragmatic progress," declared Newsweek's Robert Samuelson. "Everything has worked," Douglas Besharov of the American Enterprise Institute told USA Today. "Welfare reform has been a triumph for the federal government and the states-and even more for single mothers," claimed Brookings Institution senior fellow Ron Haskins in its newsletter. On the New York Times op-ed page, Clinton patted himself on the back for a successful triangulation ("At the time, I was widely criticized by liberals who thought the work requirements too harsh and conservatives who thought the work incentives too generous") and for moving millions from "dependence to empowerment."

Frank Rich: A Heaven-Sent Rent Boy

OF all wars, only culture wars offer the hope of sheer, unadulterated hilarity. Sex and hypocrisy were staples of farce long before America became a nation, and they never go out of style. Just listen to the roaring audience at the new hit Broadway revival of the perennial “La Cage aux Folles,” where a family-values politician gets his comeuppance in drag. Or check out the real-life closet case of George Rekers, who has been fodder for late-night television comics all month.

Rekers is in a class by himself even in the era of Larry Craig and Ted Haggard. A Baptist minister and clinical psychologist with a bent for “curing” homosexuality, the married, 61-year-old Rekers was caught by Miami New Times last month in the company of a 20-year-old male escort at Miami International Airport. The couple was returning from a 10-day trip to London and Madrid. New Times, which published its exposé in early May, got an explanation from Rekers: “I had surgery, and I can’t lift luggage. That’s why I hired him.''