Good Government vs. Less Government

Or: Why the Heritage Freedom Index is a Damned Statistical Lie

This guest post was contributed by StatsGuy, a frequent commenter and occasional guest on this blog. It shows how quickly the headline interpretation of statistical measures breaks down once you start peeking under the covers.

Recently, a controversy raged in the blogosphere about whether neo-liberalism has been a bane or a boon for the world economy. The argument is rather coarse, in that it fails to distinguish between the various elements of neo-liberalism, or moderate deregulation vs. extreme deregulation. But if we take the argument at face value, one of the major claims of neoliberals is that countries in the world which are more neoliberal are more successful (because they are more neoliberal). I disagree.

My disagreement is not with the raw correlation between the Heritage Index and Per Capita GDP. A number is a number. My disagreement is with the composition of the index itself, and interpreting this correlation as causation between neo-liberalism and ‘good things.’

Election-year politics derail bid to save teachers' jobs

David Goldstein | McClatchy Newspapers

last updated: May 28, 2010 06:02:34 PM

WASHINGTON — Congress bailed out Wall Street and the auto industry, but it appears to have drawn the line — at least for now — at rescuing teachers.

A Democratic plan to send $23 billion to the states to save the jobs of 100,000 to 300,000 public school teachers, librarians, counselors and other employees slated for layoffs looks dead for the time being.

Blame it on election-year politics. The anti-Washington, anti-spending mood has become so potent that even Democrats are antsy about helping teachers, one of their most long-standing and generous allies.

Looniness in the Cause of Deficit Reduction at the NYT

By Dean Baker

Created 05/27/2010 - 12:36pm

With the deficit hawks in high gear, people are prepared to say anything in pursuit of the goal of deficit reduction. Remarkably, the NYT is apparently willing to print almost anything. Today the deficit cutting crusade is led by hedge fund manager David Einhorn. In a lengthy column [1] Einhorn bemoans the fact that at least some people in the Obama administration are more concerned about getting people back to work than reducing the deficit.

Einhorn is a bit more knowledgeable about basic economics than many of those who worry that the United States will be unable to find investors to buy its debt. Since he has heard of the Federal Reserve Board, he recognizes that the actual concern should be inflation, not insolvency, since the Fed can always buy up government debt.

However, since one would have to struggle to find any evidence of inflationary pressures in recent economic data, Einhorn chooses to invent his own evidence:

Obama’s Missing Moral Narrative: George Lakoff for BuzzFlash

By BuzzFlash

Created 05/28/2010 - 8:47am

GEORGE LAKOFF FOR BUZZFLASH

Barack Obama may be one of the best communicators of this generation, but he is not living up to his own talents. In a year of disasters, communication failure doubles the disasters.

If, as he says, the monster spill was his highest priority from Day 1, he needed to communicate that from Day 1 — or at least Day 3 or 4. It took five weeks for him to tell the nation what he and his administration were doing. The result was visible in the press conference today. He was on the defensive. He needed to be on the offensive — from early on. The choice is not doing or communicating. It is doing and communicating.

His narrative: This is a tough, unprecedented situation, but I’m in charge, and I’ve been very busy, in the Situation Room where I belong, not on TV. I’m fully competent. I’m a good policy wonk — ask me any question about details. I’m honest. I admit my few policy mistakes. I think about the details day and night. Don’t think I’m oblivious.

It’s defensive, trying to overcome criticism that should never have been allowed to accumulate. But worse, it’s weak when it needs to be strong.

Obama's Crazy Plan To Cut Social Security

By Nancy J. Altman and Eric Kingson, Nieman Watchdog
Posted on May 28, 2010, Printed on May 29, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/146970/

President Obama and the leadership in Congress have delegated enormous, unaccountable authority to 18 unrepresentative, inordinately wealthy individuals. The 18 individuals are meeting regularly, in secret, behind closed doors, until safely beyond this year’s mid-term election. If they reach agreement, their proposal will be voted on in December by a lame duck Congress, without the benefit of open hearings and deliberations in the pertinent committees and without the opportunity for open debate and amendment on the floors of the House and Senate. Despite the speed and lack of accountability, the legislation will affect, in substantial ways, every man, woman, and child in this nation.

Who are these powerful people and what are their views?

Ordinary Workers Would Be Fired in a Second If They Screwed Up Anywhere Nearly as Bad as the Bankers Have

By Dean Baker, AlterNet
Posted on May 28, 2010, Printed on May 29, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/147032/

The world is suffering from the worst downturn since the Great Depression. The crisis has left tens of millions unemployed in the U.S., Europe, and elsewhere. The huge baby boomer generation in the United States, now on the edge of retirement, has seen much of its wealth destroyed with the collapse of the housing bubble.

It would be difficult to imagine a worse economic disaster. Prior periods of bad performance, like the inflation ridden seventies, look like mild flurries compared to the blizzard of bad economic news in which we are now enmeshed.

None of this is new. People don't need economists to tell them that times are bad. However, what the public may not recognize is that the same people who caused this disaster are still calling the shots. Specifically, there has been little change in personnel and no acknowledgment of error at the central banks whose incompetence was responsible for the crisis.

Is The SEC Still Working For Wall Street?

A version of this story appeared on The Baseline Scenario.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) under Mary Shapiro is trying to escape a difficult legacy -- over the past two decades, the once proud agency was effectively captured by the very Wall Street firms it was supposed to regulate.

The SEC's case against Goldman Sachs may mark a return to a more effective role; certainly bringing a case against Goldman took some guts. But it is entirely possible that the Goldman matter is a one-off that lacks broader implications. And in this context the SEC's handling of concerns about "high frequency trading" (HFT) -- following the May 6 "flash crash", when the stock market essentially shut down or rebooted for 20 minutes - is most disconcerting. (See yesterday's speech by Senator Ted Kaufman on this exact issue; short summary.)

Regulatory capture begins when the regulator starts to see the world only through the eyes of the regulated. Rather than taking on board views that are critical of existing arrangements, tame regulators talk only to proponents of the status quo (or people who want even more deregulation). This seems to be what is happening with regard to HFT.

Why Deficit Hawks Are Killing the Recovery

Friday, May 28, 2010

Consumer spending is 70 percent of the American economy, so if consumers can’t or won’t spend we’re back in the soup. Yet the government just reported that consumer spending stalled in April – the first month consumers didn’t up their spending since last September. Instead, consumers boosted their savings, probably because they’re worried about the slow pace of job growth (next Friday’s report will likely show gains, but the number will continue to be tiny compared to the overall ranks of the jobless), as well as a lackluster “recovery.” They’re also still carrying enormous debt burdens. One in four home owners is still underwater. And median wages are going nowhere.

The American Century Is So Over

Obama’s Rudderless Foreign Policy Underscores America’s Waning Power

By Dilip Hiro

Irrespective of their politics, flawed leaders share a common trait. They generally remain remarkably oblivious to the harm they do to the nation they lead. George W. Bush is a salient recent example, as is former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. When it comes to foreign policy, we are now witnessing a similar phenomenon at the Obama White House.

Here is the Obama pattern: Choose a foreign leader to pressure. Threaten him with dire consequences if he does not bend to Washington’s will. When he refuses to submit and instead responds vigorously, back off quickly and overcompensate for failure by switching into a placatory mode.

CA Democrats Pull Award From Key Leader Fighting Theocratic Takeover of Military

Bruce Wilson
Fri May 28, 2010 at 08:03:05 PM EST

According to Former US Ambassador Joe Wilson, Military Religious Freedom Foundation founder and head Mikey Weinstein has placed his life on the line in an ongoing campaign that has "almost single handedly" blunted an evangelical attempt to take over the US military. Presumably that's why the influential and affluent Pacific Palisades Democratic Club of Santa Monica, California had offered Weinstein the club's Anne Froelich Political Courage Award, which in the past has gone to heavy hitters such as Ron Kovich, Phil Donahue, Daniel Ellsberg, and Joseph and Valerie Wilson. But the club has just withdrawn its offer. The stated reason ? - Mikey Weinstein served in the first Reagan Administration.

Can Republicans exhibit "political courage" ? According to Weinstein the club's decision to pull the award is ludicrous and offensive, and a "slap in the face" that appears to question the courage of fighting men and women in the US military, many of whom are Republicans, whose freedom of religion interests Weinstein's MRFF represents. The nonprofit Military Religious Freedom Foundation has worked with over 18,000 clients in the US military, states Weinstein, 94% of whom are Christian.

Saving Water, the (Really) Old-Fashioned Way

By Adam Davidson-Harden and Jay Walljasper, OnTheCommons.org
Posted on May 29, 2010, Printed on May 29, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/147031/

Rajendra Singh, founder of Tarun Bharat Sangh, (TBS, or Young India Association), always wanted to be a farmer. Bowing to family pressure, he studied to be a doctor of traditional Indian Ayurvedic medicine and after school moved to the Alwyn district in the arid state of Rajasthan. Singh was not simply practicing medicine, he wanted to test some ideas about healing ecosystems.

The local Arvari River had dried up during the 1940s when the surrounding hills were stripped of trees. It flowed only during the monsoon season. Since that time most people fled local villages to seek a livelihood elsewhere. When Singh arrived in 1985, he noticed that only the oldest and poorest people were left in the area.

Why Is Kim Jong-il Suddenly So Aggressive?

Actually, North and South Korean ships have been clashing for years.

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Wednesday, May 26, 2010, at 6:18 PM ET

---

North Korea's recent sinking of a South Korean warship was not an inexcusable act of aggression that came out of nowhere. It was an inexcusable act of aggression that had been building up for many years.

Though it was little noted in U.S. news reports, the maritime border between North Korea and South Korea—known as the Northern Limit Line—has been a frequent scene of naval clashes and confrontations over the last decade.

The March 26 incident, which killed 46 South Korean sailors and wounded many more, is by far the deadliest of these attacks and fully worthy of the condemnation it's received from the Obama administration, the U.N. secretary-general, and other world leaders.

‘McCarthyite’ provision in defense bill targets ACLU lawyers

By Muriel Kane
Thursday, May 27th, 2010 -- 12:28 pm

The defense appropriations bill currently moving through the House of Representatives includes a measure which directs the Defense Department's inspector general to investigate attorneys who may have "interfered with operations of the Department of Defense" while representing detainees at Guantanamo Bay and report back to Congress.

That measure has civil libertarians up in arms. Salon's Glenn Greenwald, for example, described the "truly vile provision" as a "McCarthyite attack on detainee lawyers" and identified it as "the brainchild of GOP Rep. Jeff Miller of Florida, who has labeled efforts to represent detainees ... a 'treacherous enterprise" and smeared those lawyers as 'disloyal.'"

Household detergents, shampoos may form harmful substance in wastewater

Scientists are reporting evidence that certain ingredients in shampoo, detergents and other household cleaning agents may be a source of precursor materials for formation of a suspected cancer-causing contaminant in water supplies that receive water from sewage treatment plants. The study sheds new light on possible environmental sources of this poorly understood water contaminant, called NDMA, which is of ongoing concern to health officials.

Are Goldman Sachs and the Megabanks Able to Wipe out an Entire Economy with a Keystroke?

By Scott Thill, AlterNet
Posted on May 27, 2010, Printed on May 27, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/147006/

"We have found no evidence that these events were triggered by 'fat finger' errors, computer hacking, or terrorist activity, although we cannot completely rule out these possibilities," a recent Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) report on the so-called May 6 "Flash Crash" that wiped out a cool trillion in a mere half-hour weakly admitted. "Much work is needed to determine all of the causes of the market disruption."

That's another way of saying that it remains only the market makers that caused the largest single-day point decline in Dow Jones history who actually know where the bodies are buried. The rest of us, including the SEC, have a Sisyphean task of sifting through mountains of dense data. But regardless of who ends up on the end of possible criminal proceedings, the SEC is sure that the whole clusterstock was seriously exacerbated by the robotraders executing light-speed electronic transactions via supercomputers, while exposing our hyperreal economy as an Internetworked casino. If anything, the Flash Crash proved that market makers like Goldman Sachs and plenty more playing both sides of securities could be capable -- with the high-priced help of math and computer science Ph.Ds crafting up proprietary, recursive algorithms -- of wiping out any corporation's stock, perhaps any nation's economy, in a comparative instant with just the press of a button.

Covert US Military Strategy on Iran

By Robert Parry
May 25, 2010

Hawks in the United States and Israel appear set on “regime change” in Iran, pursuing a game plan similar to the run-up to war in Iraq, ratcheting up tensions while frustrating opportunities for a peaceful settlement.

In the latest example, the New York Times on Tuesday published a leaked account of an order signed by U.S. Central Command chief, Gen. David Petraeus, expanding “clandestine military activity in an effort to disrupt militant groups to counter threats in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and other countries in the region.”

In most of those countries, the secret U.S. military operations would be intended to help U.S. allies combat anti-government militants. However, in Iran, the goal would be to make contact with opposition forces, according to the Times article by Mark Mazzetti.

“Officials said the order also permits reconnaissance that could pave the way for possible military strikes in Iran if tensions over its nuclear ambitions escalate,” the article said.

How Obama's Election Drove the American Right Insane

By John Amato and David Neiwert, PoliPoint Press
Posted on May 26, 2010, Printed on May 26, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/146963/

The following is adapted from "Over the Cliff: How Obama’s Election Drove the American Right Insane," due out next month from PoliPoint Press.

On the day Barack Obama was elected president of the United States, much of the nation -- particularly those who supported and voted for him -- celebrated the election of the first African American to the country's highest office. For those who voted for his opponent, John McCain, there was naturally the usual bitterness and disappointment.

Among a certain subset of those Americans, however -- especially those who opposed Obama precisely because he sought to become the nation's first black president -- it went well beyond the usual despair. For them, November 5, 2008, was the end of the world. Or at least, the end of America as they knew it.

Will Europe Take America Down?

You should—and shouldn't—worry about the Greek debt crisis.

By Daniel Gross
Posted Tuesday, May 25, 2010, at 6:30 PM ET

---

It's difficult to get comfortable with this recovery, isn't it? In April, the economy finally started to create jobs at a decent pace. But now problems in Europe, some of which are eerily reminiscent of the credit debacle that laid the United States low in 2008, are threatening to tank U.S. stock markets and the economy at large. While there's reason to be concerned, there's little reason to panic. The troubles in Europe bring some short-term good news for the United States—and not just the humbling of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who as recently as January prattled on about the demise of U.S. economic leadership. And there is some potential bad news.

The trouble in Europe started in the government bond markets. As deficits and funding demands mounted, Greece, Spain, and Portugal lost the confidence of investors. Credit markets suddenly ceased to believe that these nations could get their financial houses in order. In exchange for assistance from the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, Greece agreed to cut spending and raise taxes. Spain and Portugal are following suit. The ECB is running an expansionary monetary policy, but many of the European Union's member states are now running seriously contractionary fiscal policies. The result: Economic growth in continental Europe just hit a wall.

Long Term Unemployment: No Help for the 99ers

First Posted: 05-24-10 03:22 PM | Updated: 05-24-10 06:53 PM

This week Congress will consider legislation to reauthorize extended unemployment benefits for the rest of the year. It's going to be an epic fight: Republicans in the Senate will likely do everything they can to stand in the way of a bill projected to add $123 billion to the deficit, forcing Dem leadership to round up a supermajority for a last-minute Friday vote before Congress adjourns for its Memorial Day recess.

Too bad the jobs crisis, in a big way, has already left this bill in the dust. Hundreds of thousands of people have exhausted their extended unemployment benefits. In some states, laid-off workers can receive checks for 99 weeks -- and that's all they're going to get. This bill isn't for the "99ers" and there's no proposal on deck to give them additional weeks of benefits.

"What's frustrating is that our government doesn't seem to think this is an important issue," said Christy Blake, a 35-year-old mother of two in Fruitland, Md. "We didn't put ourselves here. It wasn't our choice. I have been diligently looking for work."

Are You Unemployed Because You Are Lazy?

By Dave Johnson

Created 05/24/2010 - 5:13pm

Are you still unemployed? Obviously it is because you are lazy. At least, many members of Congress think so, anyway.

And besides, cutting the deficit -- caused by tax cuts for the rich and massive military spending increases -- is much more important than paychecks for Americans. The solution to the deficit -- caused by tax cuts for the rich and massive military spending increases -- is to cut back on things that help the American public.

What Was Feminism Really Like in 1970?

You won't find out from Martin Amis' version.

By Katha Pollitt
Posted Tuesday, May 25, 2010, at 9:58 AM ET

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The first thing I read about The Pregnant Widow is that I wouldn't like it. Amis said he had been told it would get him "in trouble with the feminists," wrote Alison Flood in a November pre-publication puff piece in the Guardian, "but he insisted that it was actually 'a very feminist book' and that 'they haven't got a case.' " It was touching, actually, Amis' belief that there is an army of book-reviewing harpies out there, chafing to make their "case"—and that book review editors would give them this plum assignment. (In fact, with the exception of Michiko Kakutani's pan in the New York Times, the only reviews I've seen in the British or American press have been by men. They liked it.) But never mind, I thought. Martin Amis is notorious for aggressively dumb publicity-generating remarks—all leftists are Stalinists, British Muslims should be strip-searched at random—that show none of the insight into modern life that he displays in his often quite wonderful novels.

The Pregnant Widow is mostly about sexual antics among a group of prosperous young Britishers spending a summer holiday in a magically well- appointed castle in Italy in 1970. Keith Nearing, authorial stand-in and nebbishy English major ("he occupied that much-disputed territory between five foot six and five foot seven") makes dutiful nightly love with his smart but not-quite-beautiful-enough girlfriend Lily while pining for her gorgeous blond friend Scheherazade. Will Keith get to sleep with Scheherazade? It's the sexual revolution, so theoretically, anything goes—and then, too, Scheherazade is rather frustrated, as Lily confides to Keith in graphic detail, since her boyfriend keeps prolonging his arrival in order to hunt yet more exotic beasts with Arab royals. Minor characters pop in and out, there's a lot of topless sun-bathing, a lot of discussion about how feminism permits girls to act "like boys," i.e. initiate no-strings sex, and a lot of reading, too. Keith is plowing through the classic British novels, which, from Richardson to Hardy, all seem to be about women's sexual virtue: "Will she fall? Will she fall, this woman? What'll they write about, he wondered, when all women fall? Well, there'll be new ways of falling …"

Indeed, Keith's bumbling pursuit of the sweet, surprisingly straitlaced Scheherazade takes almost as long as Lovelace's siege of the virginal Clarissa—and is, in a different way, almost as anticlimactic. After about 1,200 pages, Lovelace drugs and rapes Clarissa, whereupon she kills herself, leaving him with endless guilt. Keith fumbles his attempt to drug Lily so she'll sleep through what he hopes will be the great assignation, and Scheherazade changes her mind at the last moment. Keith consoles himself with the fantastically uninhibited Gloria Beautyman. The conjunction of these two events—rejection by the divine Scheherazade, glorious sex with kinky Gloria—plunges poor Keith into a "trauma" of sexual befuddlement that lasts for 25 years. Men can dish it out, is the joke here, but they sure can't take it.

U.S. Is Said to Expand Secret Actions in Mideast

By MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON — The top American commander in the Middle East has ordered a broad expansion of clandestine military activity in an effort to disrupt militant groups or counter threats in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and other countries in the region, according to defense officials and military documents.

The secret directive, signed in September by Gen. David H. Petraeus, authorizes the sending of American Special Operations troops to both friendly and hostile nations in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa to gather intelligence and build ties with local forces. Officials said the order also permits reconnaissance that could pave the way for possible military strikes in Iran if tensions over its nuclear ambitions escalate.

While the Bush administration had approved some clandestine military activities far from designated war zones, the new order is intended to make such efforts more systematic and long term, officials said. Its goals are to build networks that could “penetrate, disrupt, defeat or destroy” Al Qaeda and other militant groups, as well as to “prepare the environment” for future attacks by American or local military forces, the document said. The order, however, does not appear to authorize offensive strikes in any specific countries.

Latina professor jeered, threatened for speaking against immigration laws

By Stephen C. Webster
Monday, May 24th, 2010 -- 10:03 pm

Professor Sandra Soto, welcome to civil rights notoriety.

Last week, Arizona University's professor of Latina studies took the stage to address 2010 graduates of the school's Social and Behavioral Sciences program. Naturally, her words were timely and touched upon the state's recently passed immigration laws that allow police to question and detain anyone who they suspect of being an illegal immigrant.

Then, she called the measure "the strictest anti-immigrant legislation in the country" that is "explicitly intended to drive undocumented immigrants out of the state."

One false move in Europe could set off global chain reaction

By Howard Schneider and Neil Irwin

Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 24, 2010

If the trouble starts -- and it remains an "if" -- the trigger may well be obscure to the concerns of most Americans: a missed budget projection by the Spanish government, the failure of Greece to hit a deficit-reduction target, a drop in Ireland's economic output.

But the knife-edge psychology currently governing global markets has put the future of the U.S. economic recovery in the hands of politicians in an assortment of European capitals. If one or more fail to make the expected progress on cutting budgets, restructuring economies or boosting growth, it could drain confidence in a broad and unsettling way. Credit markets worldwide could lock up and throw the global economy back into recession.

Enough Hot Air About Inflation

It isn't our biggest concern right now.

By Daniel Gross
Posted Monday, May 24, 2010, at 11:49 AM ET

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Can we please stop worrying about inflation—at least for a few months? Since the onset of the financial crisis in 2008, there has been serious concern that the massive expansion of the Fed's balance sheet, the central bank's policy of zero interest rates, and the large stimulus (and ensuing deficits) would, by some iron law of economics, debase the currency, boost the government's long-term borrowing costs, and ignite inflation. (Last year, I wrote about the debate over this topic between inflation-fretting historian Niall Ferguson and inflation-downplaying economist Paul Krugman.)

By almost every measure—the price of gold being a notable exception—observed inflation and inflation expectations have remained remarkably contained since the fall of 2008. They have done so even as growth has reignited in the United States. And the evidence weighing in favor of deflation—or at least a serious lack of inflation—continues to mount. Last week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, fell 0.1 percent in April. Over the last year, it has risen a tame 2.2 percent. Factor out volatile food and energy prices and the long-term trend was more heartening. In the last 12 months, the core index has risen just 0.9 percent, "the smallest 12-month increase since January 1966." (Check out this inflation chart Krugman posted on his blog on May 19.)

New Documents Obtained In Sheriff Joe Arpaio Case

Maricopa County Board Of Supervisors Says $50 Million Misused

Elizabeth Erwin
Reporter, KPHO.com

POSTED: 7:34 pm MST May 23, 2010

UPDATED: 2:40 pm MST May 24, 2010

PHOENIX -- CBS 5 obtained some new information about how much money the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors said Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio may have misused.Arpaio's attorneys said the board has a vendetta against the sheriff, but if the information in the court documents is true, $50 million could have been misused.

Paul Krugman: The Old Enemies

So here’s how it is: They’re as mad as hell, and they’re not going to take this anymore. Am I talking about the Tea Partiers? No, I’m talking about the corporations.

Much reporting on opposition to the Obama administration portrays it as a sort of populist uprising. Yet the antics of the socialism-and-death-panels crowd are only part of the story of anti-Obamaism, and arguably the less important part. If you really want to know what’s going on, watch the corporations.

How can you do that? Follow the money — donations by corporate political action committees.

Party of No: How Republicans and the Right Have Tried to Thwart All Social Progress

By Arun Gupta, TruthOut.org
Posted on May 23, 2010, Printed on May 24, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/146965/

As much as they may grumble, there is a legitimate reason why the Republicans have been labeled the “Party of No.” For decades, the party’s kneejerk stance has been to oppose any legislation or policy involving social, economic or political progress.

You name it, the right has opposed it: civil rights, school desegregation, women’s rights, labor organizing, the minimum wage, social security, LGBT rights, welfare, immigrant rights, public education, reproductive rights, Medicare, Medicaid. And through the years the right invoked hysterical rhetoric in opposition, predicting that implementing any such policies would result in the end-of-family-free-enterprise-God-America on the one hand, and the imposition of atheism-socialism-Nazism on the other.

Glenn Beck's Common Nonsense: An Interview With Alex Zaitchik

By Sara Robinson

Created 05/24/2010 - 12:05am

America has this long tradition of twisted, odd, widely beloved and yet darkly dangerous right-wing cultural impresarios that pop up out of our landscape like cultural tornadoes, leaving huge swaths of derangement and destruction in their wake. Aimee Semple McPherson. Father Coughlin. Joe McCarthy. Once in a while, when the cultural cross-currents intersect just so, they rise on the whirlwind, gather huge followings, and lead their followers on a furious high-velocity turn that blows across the countryside in desperate pursuit of a utopia only they can see. These maunderings are typically mercifully short and usually end in disaster, for both the people who started the storm as well as those who got swept away in it. And all is forgotten—until the next time.

The next time, in this case, arrived on 9/11/01; and the tornado took on the form of Glenn Beck. It only seems like Glenn Beck has been with us forever. It's hard to remember a time when his endless rants weren't filling hours of TV time on Headline News, and more recently dominating everything else on FOX. But Beck was basically going nowhere fast before 9/11—the event that saved his failing TV career, turned this know-nothing showman into a leading political theorist, and catapulted him into the very eye of the far-right's always-churning cultural storm.

The Road To Economic Serfdom

By Peter Boone and Simon Johnson

According to Friedrich von Hayek, the development of welfare socialism after World War II undermined freedom and would lead western democracies inexorably to some form of state-run serfdom.

Hayek had the sign and the destination right but was entirely wrong about the mechanism. Unregulated finance, the ideology of unfettered free markets, and state capture by corporate interests are what ended up undermining democracy both in North America and in Europe. All industrialized countries are at risk, but it’s the eurozone – with its vulnerable structures – that points most clearly to our potentially unpleasant collective futures.

As a result of the continuing euro crisis, European Central Bank (ECB) now finds itself buying up the debt of all the weaker eurozone governments, making it the – perhaps unwittingly – feudal boss of Europe. In the coming years, it will be the ECB and the European Union who dictate policy. The policy elite who run these structures – along with their allies in the private sector – are the new overlords.

America's secret police network

J. Edgar Hoover knew that power lies between the manila covers of a personal dossier and he used that knowledge to build and maintain his empire for almost half a century.

The FBI, the CIA and virtually every other agency given the authority to spy to defend us from foreign or domestic enemies, have sooner or later used their power to threaten our liberties.

In contrast to the CIA and FBI, the Law Enforcement Intelligence Unit (LEIU) is a little known organization; in fact, almost no one has ever heard of it. But its power is considerable and its potential threat to our freedom is enormous.

Dirty Linen Gets Intel Chief Fired

by Ray McGovern

The Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation of how 23-year-old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab soiled his underpants with a makeshift bomb over Detroit last Christmas hung out so much dirty linen on the crowded clothes line of the U.S. intelligence community that it was an easy call to get rid of Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair.

The Senate committee's findings released on Tuesday showed the community in all-too-familiar disarray - adrift with no helmsman strong, savvy and courageous enough to bang heads together to get the far-flung intelligence bureaucracies to cooperate. The report is a damning catalogue of misfeasance and mistakes.

Yet, given recent precedent, with the intelligence community screwing up so clearly and regularly with no accountability, the Christmas Day fiasco and other recent misadventures might not have been enough to send Blair packing.

Pete Peterson’s Anti-Social Security Talking Points: Coming Soon to Texas Textbooks?

By Nathan Tabak

Created 05/22/2010 - 10:25am

Over the last few months, Texas’ far-right Board of Education has been in the national spotlight as they prepare to debate new, highly ideological textbook standards [1] for high school. These proposed changes – which could affect textbooks all over the country, since Texas is the country’s second-largest textbook market [2]– would mandate the inclusion of a section on “causes and key organizations and individuals of the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s,” a section defending McCarthyism, and criticisms of the civil rights movement, among other changes.

Unsurprisingly, even more changes along these lines are afoot, in advance of a final vote [3] on May 21. But amongst the many radical distortions of American history along right-wing ideological lines, one finds a change with disturbingly mainstream support.

Surveillance Is Suspected as Spacecraft’s Main Role

By WILLIAM J. BROAD

A team of amateur sky watchers has pierced the veil of secrecy surrounding the debut flight of the nation’s first robotic spaceplane, finding clues that suggest the military craft is engaged in the development of spy satellites rather than space weapons, which some experts have suspected but the Pentagon strongly denies.

Last month, the unmanned successor to the space shuttle blasted off from Florida on its debut mission but attracted little public notice because no one knew where it was going or what it was doing. The spaceship, known as the X-37B, was shrouded in operational secrecy, even as civilian specialists reported that it might go on mysterious errands for as long as nine months before zooming back to earth and touching down on a California runway.

In interviews and statements, Pentagon leaders strongly denied that the winged plane had anything to do with space weapons, even while conceding that its ultimate goal was to aid terrestrial war fighters with a variety of ancillary missions.

Grayson introduces ‘War Is Making You Poor Act’ to highlight cost of ongoing wars.

Today, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) introduced bipartisan legislation called the “War Is Making You Poor Act,” which aims to call attention to a) how much money is being spent to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and b) how budget gimmicks are used to pay for them. Grayson’s legislation would slash the $159 billion request for supplemental war funding and use that money to deliver a tax break for all Americans. Grayson demands the Pentagon use its currently existing $549 billion defense budget to fight the wars.

Financial Overhaul Bill Poses Big Test for Lobbyists

By ERIC LICHTBLAU and EDWARD WYATT

WASHINGTON — Last Wednesday, Representative David Scott, Democrat of Georgia, mingled with insurance and financial executives and other supporters at a lunchtime fund-raiser in his honor at a chic Washington wine bar before rushing out to cast a House vote.

Nearby, supporters of Representative Michael E. Capuano, Democrat of Massachusetts, gathered that evening at a Capitol Hill town house for a $1,000-a-head fund-raiser. Just as that was wrapping up, Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York, was feted by campaign donors at nearby Nationals Park at a game against the Mets.

It was just another day in the nonstop fund-raising cycle for members of the House Financial Services Committee, which has become a magnet for money from Wall Street and other deep-pocketed contributors, especially as Congress moves to finalize the most sweeping new financial regulations in seven decades.

Frank Rich: The ‘Randslide’ and Its Discontents

IF there is one certain outcome to recent American elections, it’s this: The results will invariably prove most of the Beltway’s settled political narratives wrong.

Tuesday’s pre-midterms were no exception. We were told that all incumbents and Washington insiders were doomed, but Exhibit A, the defeat of Arlen Specter, was hardly a test case. The sui generis opportunist Specter lost to another incumbent, a congressman who has been a Democrat far longer than he has. We were also told — as we were, incessantly, in 2008 — that blue-collar white men in western Pennsylvania would flee the Democrats. But in the special House election there — Tuesday’s only Republican-vs.-Democrat battle — a million G.O.P. dollars and countless anti-Obama-Pelosi ads proved worthless. Not only did a Democrat win big, but that winner was a Washington insider’s insider, a longtime aide to the seat’s previous occupant, the quintessential pork baron John Murtha.

That said, it would be a mistake to overinterpret these results to spawn new, and equally bogus, narratives about rekindled Democratic prospects for November. The 2010 election was and is up for grabs. The only race with genuine long-term implications last week was Rand Paul’s victory by a margin of some 24 percentage points in Kentucky’s Republican senatorial primary.