Foxheads freak out when Rep. Linda Sanchez points out the white supremacists lurking behind Arizona's immigration law

By David Neiwert Friday Jun 04, 2010 11:30am

All day yesterday on Fox, the talking/shrieking heads were all worked up about some comments from Rep. Linda Sanchez about Arizona's SB1070:

A California congresswoman is pointing the finger at white supremacist groups, who she says have inspired Arizona's new law cracking down on illegal immigrants.

Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., told a Democratic Club on Tuesday that white supremacist groups are influencing lawmakers to adopt laws that will lead to discrimination.

"There's a concerted effort behind promoting these kinds of laws on a state-by-state basis by people who have ties to white supremacy groups," said the lawmaker, who is of Mexican descent. "It's been documented. It's not mainstream politics."

Oh my God! Somebody tossed a little Baby Ruth of Truth into the swimming pool!

Companies Crack Down on Defining Dependents in Benefit Plans

By LESLEY ALDERMAN

To the list of letters that produce a groan when they arrive in your mailbox — a jury duty summons, past-due tax bills — add this one: a “dependent audit.”

A what?

A dependent audit comes from your employer, who wants proof that the people you’re carrying on the company health plan really are your dependents. If you can’t prove they are, the company will drop them.

The goal is to ferret out children who are over age 18 and not in school, ex-spouses, sometimes even nieces or nephews — people, in short, who do not meet an employer’s definition of dependent.

If your company does not already conduct these audits, chances are it eventually will. And while it may strike you as an annoyance, do not ignore this task. Otherwise, eligible dependents could lose their health coverage.

Glenn Beck's new book club pick: Nazi sympathizer who praised Hitler and denounced the Allies

On his radio show today, Glenn Beck heralded and promoted the work of Nazi sympathizer Elizabeth Dilling, who spoke at rallies hosted by the leading American Nazi group and praised Hitler. Today, Dilling is heralded by White Supremacists and White Aryans who revere her "fearless" work against Jewish people.

As Media Matters' Simon Maloy noted, Beck had kind words for Dilling's 1934 anti-communist book, The Red Network, saying: "This is a book -- and I'm a getting a ton of these -- from people who were doing what we're doing now. We now are documenting who all of these people are. Well, there were Americans in the first 50 years of this nation that took this seriously, and they documented it." Maloy noted that Dilling has a long history of rabid anti-Semitism, such as calling President Eisenhower "Ike the Kike" and labeling President Kennedy's New Frontier program the "Jew frontier."

Threat of Federal Enforcement Helps Uncover Widespread Financial Malfeasance, Researchers Find

The need to "fix" or restate financial statements is an admission by corporate management that these reports (prior to their being corrected) to the government and the investing public misrepresented the corporations' financial positions, Texas A&M University sociology professor Harland Prechel reports in a research paper published in the June 2010 issue of the American Sociological Review.

Prechel and Theresa Morris of Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., examined the revised statements from hundreds of the largest U.S. companies between 1995 and 2004, then co-authored the paper, titled "The Effects of Organizational and Political Embeddedness on Financial Malfeasance in the Largest U.S. Corporations: Dependence, Incentives, and Opportunities."

We Won't Climb Out of the Great Recession Until the Middle Class Has Money Again

We need a new New Deal that will bolster America’s floundering middle class.

June 4, 2010 | We’re falling into a double-dip recession.

The Labor Department reports this morning that the private sector added a measly 41,000 net new jobs in May. (The vast bulk of new jobs in May were temporary government Census workers.) But at least 100,000 new jobs are needed every month just to keep up with population growth.

In other words, the labor market continues to deteriorate.

Why Banks Try to Make Borrowers Feel Like Sinners When They Can't Pay off Their Mortgages

By Zach Carter, AlterNet
Posted on June 5, 2010, Printed on June 5, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/147106/

More than three years into one of the worst housing crashes in economic history, Americans remain wedded to a dysfunctional ideology that leaves citizens perpetually at the mercy of predatory bankers. Even after witnessing a gigantic wave of abusive lending drown the life savings of millions, most citizens still believe that borrowers, not bankers, are to blame for unaffordable loans, while a staggering majority believes it is morally wrong for troubled borrowers to walk away from their mortgages—even amid conditions of financial distress.

These figures and plenty of other distressing data come from a little-noticed survey published in April by mortgage giant Freddie Mac (in addition to serving as bonus factories for reckless executives, Freddie and its sister company Fannie Mae produce some of the most reliable housing data available, particularly on consumer sentiments). The reason for the survey's relatively small splash is easy to understand—almost nothing about consumer attitudes toward housing has changed since 2003, right before the eruption of the subprime boom.

Wealth Gap Yawns and So Do Media

Friday 04 June 2010

by: Julie Hollar | Extra!

Little interest in study of massive race/gender disparities.

The Insight Center for Community Economic Development (3/8/10) released a stunning report about the wealth gap for women of color: Single black women have a median wealth of $100 and Hispanic women of $120—dramatically lower than white men ($43,800), white women ($41,500) or black men ($7,900).

Skocpol Responds to Reich

Josh Marshall | June 3, 2010, 4:03PM

Skocpol Responds to Reich on what Obama should do ...

I like Bob Reich and consider him a friend, but he is nuts. [see article Skocpol is responding to here] There is a reason why the right, including Sarah Palin, is calling for Obama to "take charge" of the BP disaster, including fixing the leaking pipe. This is a problem that cannot be solved, and probably will not be for many months.

One Lump or Two?

Will the United States suffer a "double-dip" recession?

By Daniel Gross
Posted Thursday, June 3, 2010, at 2:01 PM ET

---

In the past month, several unfortunate phrases have joined the lexicon, including "top kill," "Gore divorce," and "double-dip recession." On the May 21 Today show, CNBC's volatile James Cramer increased his odds of the econo­my suffering a relapse from 25 percent to 35 percent. At a mid-May investment conference, Robert Arnott, chairman of money manager Research Affiliates, predicted that "there's a better than 50 percent chance that we will see a second dip in the economy." Google searches for "double-dip" have spiked.

And why not? GDP grew at a 3 percent rate in the first quarter, down sharply from 5.6 percent in the 2009 fourth quarter. The Conference Board Leading Economic Index (LEI) fell in April by 0.1 percent, the first downturn since March 2009. The debt crisis that began in Athens is threatening to tear the euro zone asunder. (Beware of Greeks bearing rifts!)

Read the Gettysburg Address

Americans have lost their commitment to shared sacrifice. Lincoln's speech can help them recover it.

By Eliot SpitzerPosted Friday, June 4, 2010, at 11:42 AM ET

How quickly we forget. Just days ago, on Memorial Day—a day of gratitude, respect, and celebration—the words of President Lincoln's Gettysburg Address were read at ceremonies across the nation. The phrase from that speech that always sticks with me is the challenge President Lincoln set forth for us: "[R]esolve that these dead shall not have died in vain." He implored us not to shy away from the sacrifices we too have an obligation to shoulder in order to advance the "unfinished work" that remained—not merely winning the Civil War and ending slavery, but the continued creation of a nation with opportunity for all.

U.S. 'secret war' expands globally as Special Operations forces take larger role

By Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 4, 2010; A01

Beneath its commitment to soft-spoken diplomacy and beyond the combat zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Obama administration has significantly expanded a largely secret U.S. war against al-Qaeda and other radical groups, according to senior military and administration officials.

Special Operations forces have grown both in number and budget, and are deployed in 75 countries, compared with about 60 at the beginning of last year. In addition to units that have spent years in the Philippines and Colombia, teams are operating in Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia.

Arctic Sea Ice at Lowest Point in Thousands of Years

By Andrea Thompson
posted: 04 June 2010 09:10 am ET

The shrinking amount of sea ice that covers the Arctic Ocean today is the smallest it has been in the last few thousand years, a new study suggests.

The sea ice that normally covers huge swaths of the Arctic Ocean has been retreating and thinning over the last few decades, due to the amplified warming at the North Pole, which is a consequence of the buildup of greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere.

Paul Krugman: Things Everyone In Chicago Knows

Which happen not to be true.

It was deeply depressing to see Raguram Rajan write this:

The tsunami of money directed by a US Congress, worried about growing income inequality, towards expanding low income housing, joined with the flood of foreign capital inflows to remove any discipline on home loans.

That’s a claim that has been refuted over and over again.

Viscount Monckton, another fallen idol of climate denial

Professor John Abraham's withering scrutiny reveals how the gurus of climate scepticism repeat a pattern of manipulation

Another one bites the dust. Every so often, someone with a strong stomach and time to spare volunteers to devote weeks or months of their life to a grisly task: investigating the claims of a person who dismisses the science or significance of man-made climate change. Dave Rado did it with Martin Durkin's film, the Great Global Warming Swindle. Howard Friel did it with Bjørn Lomborg. Ian Enting did it with Ian Plimer.

It involves slow, painstaking work, following the sources, checking the claims against the science. But the result in all cases has been the same: a devastating debunking of both the claims and the methods of the people investigated.

Now another fallen idol of climate change denial must be added to the list: Viscount Monckton's assertions have been comprehensively discredited by professor of mechanical engineering John Abraham, at the University of St Thomas in Minnesota.

How To Punish BP

Your most creative, incisive, and sadistic ideas for how to make the company suffer.

By Daniel Gross
Posted Wednesday, June 2, 2010, at 3:56 PM ET

Our call for reader suggestions on how to punish BP and its executives for the oil spill hit a nerve. It inspired more than 120 comments and several dozen e-mailed suggestions, including a few in French from Slate.fr readers. (Merci!)

After combing through and categorizing the responses, my conclusion is that you are in a very angry and vindictive mood, eager to hit BP, its executives, and its shareholders where it hurts. There were multiple calls for shutting down the company, seizing its assets, and imposing various legal and extra-legal sanctions on its executives.

Privatization of Public Housing Shelved — For Now

HUD’s attempt to privatize all of America’s public housing has been put on hold — for now. You played an important role. Thousands of you signed the petition and spread the word, so that those at the House Financial Services Committee hearing on May 25 understood what the stakes were.

Barney Frank and Maxine Waters asked the right questions, and HUD’s answers revealed what was hidden in the language of the bill, namely, that all public housing in America would be subject to privatization. Under the PETRA bill, public housing could result in new ownership that would take out mortgages from private banks to fix and maintain the property. In the case of budget cuts to HUD, or mismanagement by new owners, the mortgage payments would be endangered and foreclosure would be a real issue. Banks that held the mortgages could foreclose and then those banks would own what is now public housing.

A Dangerous Crossroads

By Mitchell Hirsch
June 2, 2010 - 10:24am ET

The following was originally published at Working America's "Main Street" blog.

Ominous signs emerged last week that a threat to undermine an economic recovery is afoot, and that threat has particularly severe consequences for America’s 15 million unemployed.

Before voting on an already scaled-down jobs and jobless aid bill, House Democrats succumbed to pressure from conservative Blue Dogs and nervous moderates and weakened the bill further, eliminating some of its core provisions.

Then, despite narrowly passing the bill on a vote of 214 to 205, the House joined the Senate in leaving town for a week-long recess — allowing eligibility for extended federal unemployment insurance programs to expire June 2.

Unemployment Linked to Dislike of Democracy

By Zoё Macintosh, LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 02 June 2010 12:17 pm ET

Individuals out of a job for are more likely to harbor negative opinions about democracy and desire a rogue leader than their employed counterparts, a new study suggests.

Using data from more than 130,000 people from 69 countries, scientists found that having or not having a job is enough to make otherwise similar individuals feel differently about the effectiveness of democratic political systems.

Larry Bates, The Silver Wizard

wilkyjr
Tue Jun 01, 2010 at 11:50:00 AM EST

If you thought it was beginning to be safe for your children to listen to talk radio, you might need to learn about Dr. Larry Bates. A self described expert on the economy, investments and the stock market, Bates has gathered a binge following. His recent book, The New Economic Disorder, is making its rounds through Christian radio, television, and internet posts. Bates provides the lovely prospect to his readers and listeners that he nation is heading for economic disaster. He has teamed up with Larry Pratt of Gunowners of America to prepare the country for the certain downfall in the nation that is just around the corner and will make the Great Depression mild by comparison. Those who promote the prospect of a waning Religious Right might do well to check out Larry.

Why You Should Care About the Psychology of Disgust

Monday 31 May 2010

by: Joe Brewer, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

Are you someone who struggles to understand why people behave the way they do in politics? Perhaps you've been confused by all the fervor against gay marriage. Or maybe you're taken aback by the strong emotions waged against government-sponsored health care.

To understand political behaviors like these, you'll need to become familiar with the psychology of disgust.

Paul Krugman: The Pain Caucus

What’s the greatest threat to our still-fragile economic recovery? Dangers abound, of course. But what I currently find most ominous is the spread of a destructive idea: the view that now, less than a year into a weak recovery from the worst slump since World War II, is the time for policy makers to stop helping the jobless and start inflicting pain.

When the financial crisis first struck, most of the world’s policy makers responded appropriately, cutting interest rates and allowing deficits to rise. And by doing the right thing, by applying the lessons learned from the 1930s, they managed to limit the damage: It was terrible, but it wasn’t a second Great Depression.

Now, however, demands that governments switch from supporting their economies to punishing them have been proliferating in op-eds, speeches and reports from international organizations. Indeed, the idea that what depressed economies really need is even more suffering seems to be the new conventional wisdom, which John Kenneth Galbraith famously defined as “the ideas which are esteemed at any time for their acceptability.”

Washington food fight pits big producers against local farms Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/05/21/94634/washington-food-fight-pits-big.ht

By David Goldstein | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — There's a food fight under way between Capitol Hill and the Agriculture Department, and it's about small potatoes.

Organic small potatoes.

Big ones, too, as well as peas, beans, beef, poultry and melons. Just about anything, in fact, that's farm-raised and edible.

Three Republican senators have complained that a USDA effort to educate the public about where food comes from slights "conventional farmers who produce the vast majority of our nation's food supply."

No Guarantees at the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation

Pension Protection Agency Cited for Audit Failure, Misleading Congress

By John Solomon | May 03, 2010

Last November, the federal corporation charged with protecting Americans’ retirement funds issued an ominous public warning: the amount of pensions at risk inside failing companies had more than tripled during the recession.

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation’s announcement signaled it might need tens of billions of new dollars to rescue traditional pensions paid by U.S. firms whose economic collapse left them unable to meet their retirement obligations to workers.

Bob Gates is shouting for weapons spending cuts; won't someone listen?

By George C. Wilson
gcwilson1@comcast.net

In pleading for sanity in providing for “the common defense,” as the Constitution puts it, Defense Secretary Gates sounds to me like a man who (1) plans to announce his resignation from Fort Fumble right after the midterm elections and leave office by the end of this year; (2) wants to burnish his reputation as a reformer before he becomes just another Washington has-been or (3) has persuaded President Obama to take the defense budget off the White House “don’t touch” list, starting next year.

Whatever his reasons, Gates is clearly fed up with the status quo in the military-industrial-political complex.

The Consensus On Big Banks Shifts, But Not At Treasury

By Simon Johnson, co-author 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and The Next Financial Meltdown

Attitudes towards big banks are changing around the world and across the political spectrum. In the UK, the new center-right government is looking for ways to break them up:

“We will take steps to reduce systemic risk in the banking system and will establish an independent commission to investigate the complex issue of separating retail and investment banking in a sustainable way; while recognising that this will take time to get right, the commission will be given an initial time frame of one year to report.”

The European Commission, among others, signals that a bank tax is coming; presumably, as suggested by the IMF, this will have higher rates for bigger banks and for banks with less capital. And other European officials are increasingly worried by the lack of capital in German banks, by the recent reckless lending sprees in Ireland and Spain, and by the dangers posed by banks that are much bigger than their home countries (e.g., Switzerland).

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/05/explaining-the-rand-paul-disaster/57118/

After getting himself into trouble on Rachel Maddow's show on MSNBC, and everywhere else, Rand Paul has decided to cancel an interview on Sunday's "Meet the Press" rather than risk further damage. It's pretty amazing that a guy who embraced the role of national face of the Tea Party movement with such enthusiasm is crashing and burning so spectacularly. Two points to raise from my reporting trip to Kentucky earlier this week that I think are pertinent.

The first is that the Rand Paul who emerged post-election--questioning the Civil Rights Act, exonerating BP for the oil spill, and generally setting off grenades in the national media--is nothing like the Rand Paul who campaigned and won the Kentucky GOP primary.

"Government Doesn’t Have The Resources To Stop It"

-- by Dave Johnson

People want the President to exert leadership to turn things around.

The oil leak. Unemployment. Credit card scams. Foreclosures. Predatory corporations. Environmental destruction. Global warming. Roads and bridges crumbling. Incomes stagnant. Schools getting worse. Companies moving overseas. Problem after problem.

People want to know, "Why doesn't the government push BP aside and take over?" The answer is, "Government doesn't have the resources to stop it."

Frank Rich: Obama’s Katrina? Maybe Worse

FOR Barack Obama’s knee-jerk foes, of course it was his Katrina. But for the rest of us, there’s the nagging fear that the largest oil spill in our history could yet prove worse if it drags on much longer. It might not only wreck the ecology of a region but capsize the principal mission of the Obama presidency.

Before we look at why, it would be helpful to briefly revisit that increasingly airbrushed late summer of 2005. Whatever Obama’s failings, he is infinitely more competent at coping with catastrophe than his predecessor. President Bush’s top disaster managers — the Homeland Security secretary, Michael Chertoff, as well as the notorious “Brownie” — professed ignorance of New Orleans’s humanitarian crisis a full day after the nation had started watching it live in real time on television. When Bush finally appeared, he shunned the city entirely and instead made a jocular show of vowing to rebuild the coastal home of his party’s former Senate leader, Trent Lott. He never did take charge.

The Obama administration has been engaged with the oil spill from the start — however haltingly and inarticulately at times. It was way too trusting of BP but was never AWOL. For all the second-guessing, it’s still not clear what else the president might have done to make a definitive, as opposed to cosmetic, difference in plugging the hole: yell louder at BP, send in troops and tankers, or, as James Carville would have it, assume the role of Big Daddy? The spill is not a Tennessee Williams play, its setting notwithstanding, and it’s hard to see what more drama would add, particularly since No Drama Obama’s considerable talents do not include credible play-acting.

But life isn’t fair, and this president is in a far tougher spot in 2010 than his predecessor was in 2005.

At the Heart of the Crash

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine
by Michael Lewis
Norton, 266 pp., $27.95

Not the least striking revelation of Michael Lewis’s excellent book, The Big Short, is that this author of financial best-sellers has changed his mind. In a column for Bloomberg News in early 2007, he praised the rapidly expanding market for derivatives. Visiting the annual meeting of financiers and policymakers at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that year, he was exasperated by the fears of some of the participants. “None of them seemed to understand that when you create a derivative you don’t add to the sum total of risk in the financial world,” he wrote, sounding arguments very similar to those made by Alan Greenspan. “You merely create a means for redistributing that risk. They have no evidence that financial risk is being redistributed in ways we should all worry about.”

As we now know, derivatives were the instruments that enabled Wall Street to stretch capital dangerously far—and were at the center of the financial crisis that began that year.