Effort To Dismantle Federal Unemployment Insurance Launched In Congress

The following was originally published at UnemployedWorkers.org

Less than five months after approving a reauthorization of federally-funded unemployment insurance benefits as part of an agreement to extend tax cuts for those with the highest incomes, leading members of Congress are looking to break that agreement and dismantle the unemployment benefits program while leaving the tax cuts for the wealthy in place.

A bill introduced yesterday in the House by Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI), Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, and in the Senate by Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Ranking Member of the Senate Finance Committee, would give states the ability to seize the federal funds allocated for unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless and use them for other purposes, including bailing out state government funds and substituting for employer unemployment taxes.

Five Republican Myths About Medicare

MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

There are more than five assertions that the right wing gets wrong about Medicare, but five is a start.

As with many embedded falsehoods in the corporate/wealthy choir book, the Medicare claims by the right are often inconsistent and even contradictory, depending upon which demographic group is parroting them.

The IMF's Switch in Time

Friday 6 May 2011
by: Joseph E. Stiglitz, Project Syndicate[3]

The annual spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund was notable in marking the Fund’s effort to distance itself from its own long-standing tenets on capital controls and labor-market flexibility. It appears that a new IMF has gradually, and cautiously, emerged under the leadership of Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

Slightly more than 13 years earlier, at the IMF’s Hong Kong meeting in 1997, the Fund had attempted to amend its charter in order to gain more leeway to push countries towards capital-market liberalization. The timing could not have been worse: the East Asia crisis was just brewing – a crisis that was largely the result of capital-market liberalization in a region that, given its high savings rate, had no need for it.

Taboo Economics

by Mark Engler

I have a proposal: Let’s double US government funds devoted to promoting renewable energy. Let’s expand allocations for foreclosure prevention to help another million Americans keep their homes. Let’s launch a $10-billion infrastructure programme to repair crumbling roads and bridges. Let’s double the number of new maths and science teachers that President Obama hopes to train, bringing the total to 200,000. And let’s hire back all of those police officers fired by the city of Camden, New Jersey – already among the most dangerous places in the country before budget constraints compelled it to dismiss half of its police force in December.

This fact may not sit well: Americans are under-taxed

Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers

last updated: May 05, 2011 09:40:18 PM

WASHINGTON — Here's a dirty little secret that most Americans don't want to hear: We're under-taxed.

That may sound like heresy; nobody wants to pay more taxes. But by historical standards, what we pay in federal taxes — rich, poor and everyone in between — has gone down.

At a time when Washington is wrestling with how to end federal budget deficits and trim the national debt — huge questions that are expected to dominate the nation's politics through the 2012 elections — the fact that Americans are under-taxed compared with U.S. historic norms is central to the discussion.

Plastic May Be Horrible For the Environment, But Could We Survive Without It?

By Kerry Trueman, AlterNet
Posted on May 4, 2011, Printed on May 7, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/150836/plastic_may_be_horrible_for_the_environment%2C_but_could_we_survive_without_it

Move over, cotton; turns out that plastic is really The Fabric of Our Lives®. Does the pervasiveness of plastics in our culture get under your skin? If so, read Susan Freinkel's just-published Plastic: A Toxic Love Story. You'll realize that it's probably also in your skin, in the form of phthalates, BPA, and other possible endocrine disrupters that leach out of plastic products and into our bodies.

Oh, and it's on your skin, too, if you're wearing nylon, polar fleece, pleather, or any of those trademarked textiles owned by Tea Party funders Charles and David Koch: Spandex, Dacron, Thermolite, Cordura, Tactel, CoolMax. It's enough to make a progressive sweat.

Paul Krugman: The "American Hooliganism" on Which China and Russia Rely

Vladimir Putin thinks we’re hooligans.

Remarking on monetary policy in the United States, the Russian prime minister said earlier this month, according to The Wall Street Journal: “Look at their trade balance, their debt, and budget. They turn on the printing press and flood the entire dollar zone — in other words, the whole world — with government bonds. There is no way we will act this way anytime soon. We don’t have the luxury of such hooliganism.”

The funny thing is that Russia, like other emerging markets, is suffering from inflation precisely because it doesn’t want to let the United States reduce its trade deficit. Capital wants to flow to the emerging markets, with the counterpart of that flow being a move on their part into trade deficit, while the United States reduces its trade deficit. But the necessary counterpart of that move is a real appreciation on the part of the emerging markets — a rise in the relative prices of their goods and services. They could let their currencies rise; if they won’t, the real appreciation will take place via inflation, which is what is happening.

Citizens United Decision Profoundly Affects Political Landscape

by Spencer MacColl

Unprecedented political spending. Secret donors. New ways for unions and corporations to spend money on politics.

An analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics reveals that the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission Supreme Court ruling of January 2010 has profoundly affected the nation's political landscape.

Pundits Predict No More Accurately Than a Coin Toss, Students Find

ScienceDaily (May 6, 2011) — Op-ed columnists and TV's talking heads build followings by making bold, confident predictions about politics and the economy. But rarely are their predictions analyzed for accuracy.

Now, a class at Hamilton College led by public policy professor P. Gary Wyckoff has analyzed the predictions of 26 prognosticators between September 2007 and December 2008. Their findings? Anyone can make as accurate a prediction as most of them if just by flipping a coin.

Their research paper, "Are Talking Heads Blowing Hot Air? An Analysis of the Accuracy of Forecasts in the Political Media" was presented via webcast May 2 at www.hamilton.edu/pundit.

The Hamilton students sampled the predictions of 26 individuals who wrote columns in major print media and who appeared on the three major Sunday news shows -- Face the Nation, Meet the Press, and This Week -- and evaluated the accuracy of 472 predictions made during the 16-month period. They used a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being "will not happen, 5 being "will absolutely happen") to rate the accuracy of each, and then divided them into three categories: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

The Christian Right Extremists Behind the GOP's War on Women

By Sarah Posner, The American Prospect
Posted on April 27, 2011, Printed on May 7, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/150758/the_christian_right_extremists_behind_the_gop%27s_war_on_women

Last fall, when then-Congressman Alan Grayson of Florida aired a campaign ad calling his Republican opponent Daniel Webster "Taliban Dan," a collective, dismissive groan rumbled from the political commentariat. "Has Alan Grayson gone too far?" pondered Politico. But the question, despite the ad's shortcomings, should have been: Is Dan Webster, an evangelical Christian and staunch social conservative, too radical for the United States Congress?

Whatever the wisdom of using the term "Taliban Dan," Grayson was onto something that should have, if properly examined, provided clues to the Republican-controlled Congress' fixation with cutting off funding to Planned Parenthood. That such a question doesn't get asked is a function of how Congress has already gone too far -- and not in Grayson's direction. The Webster campaign should have given ample evidence that the Tea Party was full of religious zealots bent on undermining the rights of women. By failing to fully interrogate so-called social conservatism and understand its religious motivations, the press and pundits continue to provide cover for candidates with an extreme agenda, which they're far from finished carrying out.

In Florida, GOP squeezes Obama-friendly voters

BY JOY-ANN REID

Last week, we learned that even achieving the highest level of academic and political success — up to and including being elected president of the United States — is not enough to exempt an African American from having it demanded of him, by even the Washington press corps, that he prove the circumstances of his birth to a white, B-list television personality.

The racial enmity — dare I say envy — of people like Donald Trump, and the parade of racists and rejectionists rallying behind the birther banner will soon lose media interest.

But there are forms of rejectionism that in a way are more pernicious, in that they target not President Obama, but rather the people who voted for him, and who Republicans fear will do so again.

Paul Krugman: Fears and Failure

From G.D.P. to private-sector payrolls, from business surveys to new claims for unemployment insurance, key economic indicators suggest that the recovery may be sputtering.

And it wasn’t much of a recovery to start with. Employment has risen from its low point, but it has grown no faster than the adult population. And the plight of the unemployed continues to worsen: more than six million Americans have been out of work for six months or longer, and more than four million have been jobless for more than a year.

It would be nice if someone in Washington actually cared.

Rice, straw and coconut the new alternatives to wood

By Fiona Graham
Technology of business reporter, BBC News

You've found the house of your dreams.

Or it will be when the renovations are done. After years of grotty flats and poky "starter homes" that ended up being second and third homes too, that windfall from great-aunt Annie is going to be put to good use.

More than anything you want to have some beautiful timber features both inside and out - but without destroying a small corner of the Amazon basin to do it.

Would your next thought be rice? Possibly not.

New York Times #Fail in Report on Alleged 'Historian' David Barton, Fave of Huckabee and Beck

By digby, Hullabaloo
Posted on May 5, 2011, Printed on May 7, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/580361/new_york_times_%23fail_in_report_on_alleged_%5C%27historian%5C%27_david_barton%2C_fave_of_huckabee_and_beck

This post originally appeared at Hullabaloo.

In case the recent Trumpmania didn\'t convince you, here\'s the latest example of how the media helps to mainstream the craziest wingnuts in the land. Check out today\'s front-page New York Times article on Glenn Beck\'s personal historian, the leader of his Black Robed Regiment, pseudo-historian David Barton. You\'ll find that he\'s quite a nice fellow who is influential in the GOP. You\'ll also find that some "liberal groups" like People for the American Way and Americans United for Separation of Church and State are alarmed because he\'s one of those ...zzzzzzzz. (Aren\'t they always upset about something???)

What you won\'t find is any serious discussion of his alleged scholarship, politics or theocratic vision for America. Instead you get this mealy mouthed nonsense:

[M]any professional historians dismiss Mr. Barton, whose academic degree is in Christian education from Oral Roberts University, as a biased amateur who cherry-picks quotes from history and the Bible.

Nominate Elizabeth Warren – Provide The Pecora Hearings We Need

By Simon Johnson

Ms. Warren is helping get the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) off the ground and remains the leading contender to become its formal head (subject to Senate confirmation). She summarizes her substantive agenda this way,

We’re trying to make these markets transparent, which makes it easier for community banks to compete both with large financial institutions and with their nonbank competitors.”

She should now be nominated to the CFPB position. There will be strong Republican opposition and some Democrats who are close to the financial sector may be lukewarm. But a public hearing on her case represents our best opportunity to experience a modern version of the Pecora Hearings – the Senate Banking Committee hearings in the 1930s that laid bare the inner (and rotten) workings of the biggest financial firms (see Michael Perino’s book on Pecora for details).

The International Assault on Labor

Wednesday 4 May 2011
by: Noam Chomsky, Truthout

In most of the world, May Day is an international workers' holiday, bound up with the bitter 19th-century struggle of American workers for an eight-hour day. The May Day just past leads to somber reflection.

A decade ago, a useful word was coined in honor of May Day by radical Italian labor activists: "precarity." It referred at first to the increasingly precarious existence of working people "at the margins" – women, youth, migrants. Then it expanded to apply to the growing "precariat" of the core labor force, the "precarious proletariat" suffering from the programs of deunionization, flexibilization and deregulation that are part of the assault on labor throughout the world.

By that time, even in Europe there was mounting concern about what labor historian Ronaldo Munck, citing Ulrich Beck, calls the "Brazilianization of the West - the spread of temporary and insecure employment, discontinuity and loose informality into Western societies that have hitherto been the bastions of full employment."

TX Teacher Suspended After Telling Muslim Student 'I Bet You're Grieving'

Evan McMorris-Santoro | May 4, 2011, 10:58AM

A Texas high school teacher has been placed on administrative leave following an incident where he allegedly told a 9th grade Muslim girl in his algebra class "I bet that you're grieving" on Monday following the death of Osama bin Laden.

According to one parent at Clear Brook High School in Houston who spoke about the incident to a local ABC affiliate, the teacher also said, "I heard about your uncle's death."

The parent said the student "understood that he was referring about Osama bin Laden being killed and was racially profiling her."

Miracle schools, vouchers and all that educational flim-flam

ASK THIS | April 13, 2011

Former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch tells reporters to dig deep when states or school districts or even individual schools claim big educational gains; chances are someone is gaming the system. She shows how such gaming works – and when it comes to asking the right questions, Ravitch could be anyone’s assignment editor.

By Diane Ravitch
gardendr@gmail.com

Be skeptical of miracle schools. Sometimes their dramatic gains disappear in a year or two or three. Most such claims rely on cheating or gaming the system or on intensive test prep that involves teaching children how to answer test questions. These same children, having learned to take tests, may actually be very poorly educated, even in the subjects where their scores were rising.

Whenever a school has a dramatic increase in test scores in only one or two years, ask questions about the participation rate: How many kids started the school? How many were tested? Were low-performing students held back in a previous grade to inflate the scores? Reporters should also check to see if there has been any verification to make sure that there was no cheating (e.g., a high erasure rate, changing scores from wrong to right). Who graded the papers? Did teachers have access to the test questions before the test was given? If so, they might have taught the test questions during practice sessions.

Why Does Senator McCaskill Want to Bankrupt Our Children?

Monday 2 May 2011
by: Dean Baker, Truthout

That is what people should be asking Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill along with her fellow senators who advocated strict caps on government spending. The idea being pushed by Senator McCaskill, together with Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker and several other prominent senators, would limit federal spending to 20.6 percent of GDP. It would require difficult-to-obtain super majorities to exceed this cap. Spending would be cut across a variety of programs if the cap is not reached.

This proposal is hugely deserving of ridicule for a variety of reasons. First, it operates from a blatantly wrong premise - that government spending has grown out of control.

Bin Laden Reading Guide: How to Cut Through the Coverage

by Marian Wang and Braden Goyette
ProPublica, May 3, 2011, 1:38 p.m.

The death of Osama bin Laden has sent news organizations scrambling for details on how it happened, where it happened, and what it all means.

We’ve rounded up some of the best coverage, being careful to note what’s been said, what’s already being disputed, and what still remains to be seen.

Portable tech might provide drinking water, power to villages

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Researchers have developed an aluminum alloy that could be used in a new type of mobile technology to convert non-potable water into drinking water while also extracting hydrogen to generate electricity.

Such a technology might be used to provide power and drinking water to villages and also for military operations, said Jerry Woodall, a Purdue University distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering.

How the GOP is Lamely Trying to Divide America Over Osama Bin Laden

By Steve M., No More Mister Nice Blog
Posted on May 4, 2011, Printed on May 5, 2011

Was it ever possible that the killing of Osama bin Laden would unite America the way America was united (at least in many people's memories) immediately after 9/11?

No, it was never possible. Republicans are responding to this the way they respond to everything: by seeking to divide America and undermine Democrats and liberals. They do this for the same reason the scorpion stings the frog in the fable: it's their nature. They will continue trying to divide America until we wake up and realize that they hate America -- or at least they hate any America in which we don't turn over all the power to them. They'll undermine and weaken that pluralistic America until we finally recognize their disloyalty and marginalize the dividers.

The 12 Worst (and Most Powerful) Christian Right Groups

By Rob Boston, Americans United for Separation of Church and State
Posted on May 2, 2011, Printed on May 3, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/150809/the_12_worst_%28and_most_powerful%29_christian_right_groups

The Religious Right in America is lavishly funded and politically well connected. While the men who lead the fundamentalist Christian political movement hold different opinions about theology, they share a deep and abiding hostility to the separation of church and state. They seek to inject religion into public schools, obtain taxpayer funding for religious schools and other ministries, roll back reproductive choice and deny civil rights to gay people. And they enjoy extraordinary influence in Washington, D.C., and in many state legislatures.

What follows is a survey of some of the nation’s leading Religious Right organizations. Collectively, these groups raise more than three-quarters of a billion dollars annually, the bulk of it tax-exempt. Budget figures are from public tax documents and are the most recent available, in most cases from 2009 and 2010.

Cheering a Monster's Death Is Not the Same as Patriotism

By Richard Rodriguez, New America Media
Posted on May 2, 2011, Printed on May 3, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/150808/cheering_a_monster%27s_death_is_not_the_same_as_patriotism

There was something unseemly about that gathering of college-age Americans outside the White House just before midnight on Sunday, cheering at the news of Osama bin Laden’s death. Some of the kids had draped flags over their shoulders; they chanted “USA, USA, USA.” I doubt there was a true patriot in the bunch.

Patriotism is not the same thing as cheering in the streets when your side wins the Super Bowl. Patriotism is truest and best when it is quiet, the acceptance of civic duty, as a kind of fate—never with childish glee, but with mature resolution. I think of Pat Tillman, sitting alone in a football stadium after September 11th, deciding that he needed to abandon the boyish game that he loved and instead enlist as a soldier.

Paul Krugman: Springtime for Bankers

Last year the G.O.P. pulled off two spectacular examples of bait-and-switch campaigning. Medicare, where the same people who screamed about death panels are now trying to dismantle the whole program, was the most obvious. But the same thing
happened with regard to financial reform.

As you may recall, Republicans ran hard against bank bailouts. Among other things, they managed to convince a plurality of voters that the deeply unpopular bailout legislation proposed and passed by the Bush administration was enacted on President Obama’s watch.

And now they’re doing everything they can to ensure that there will be even bigger bailouts in years to come.

13 Conservative Myths About Taxes -- Debunked

By Terrance Heath, Campaign for America's Future
Posted on May 1, 2011, Printed on May 2, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/150799/13_conservative_myths_about_taxes_--_debunked

"What do we think? What do we know? What can we prove?" That's a quote from "And the Band Played On," HBO's adaptation of Randy Shilts' book about the beginnings of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. It's the mantra of Centers for Disease Control epidemiologists searching for the cause of the epidemic, using empirical evidence. In that context, what you think, what you know, and what you think you know is meaningless unless you can prove it.

In Washington, D.C., it gets turned around: How can we prove what we think we know? When it comes to conservatives and taxes, this couldn't be more true.

The problem is, all the evidence disproves what conservatives think they know about taxes. The latest example a study (PDF) that debunks the conservative talking point that rich people will run for the borders if their taxes go up.

Running in the red: How the U.S., on the road to surplus, detoured to massive debt

By Lori Montgomery, Published: April 30

The nation’s unnerving descent into debt began a decade ago with a choice, not a crisis.

In January 2001, with the budget balanced and clear sailing ahead, the Congressional Budget Office forecast ever-larger annual surpluses indefinitely. The outlook was so rosy, the CBO said, that Washington would have enough money by the end of the decade to pay off everything it owed.

Voices of caution were swept aside in the rush to take advantage of the apparent bounty. Political leaders chose to cut taxes, jack up spending and, for the first time in U.S. history, wage two wars solely with borrowed funds. “In the end, the floodgates opened,” said former senator Pete Domenici (R-N.M.), who chaired the Senate Budget Committee when the first tax-cut bill hit Capitol Hill in early 2001.

Safeguards ignored in string of assisted living tragedies

Rob Barry, Michael Sallah and Carol Marbin Miller | McClatchy Newspapers

last updated: April 30, 2011 06:41:16 PM

MIAMI — For more than a decade, Bruce Hall ran his assisted-living facility in Florida's Panhandle like a prison camp.

He punished his disabled residents by refusing to give them food and drugs. He threatened them with a stick. He doped them with powerful tranquilizers and, when they broke his rules, he beat them — sending at least one to the hospital.

"The conditions in the facility are not fit even for a dog," one caller told state agents.

When Florida regulators confronted Hall in 2004 over a litany of abuses at his facility, they said, he chased them from the premises while railing against government intrusion.

Why Is Damning New Evidence About Monsanto's Most Widely Used Herbicide Being Silenced?

By Jill Richardson, AlterNet
Posted on April 27, 2011, Printed on May 1, 2011

Dr. Don Huber did not seek fame when he quietly penned a confidential letter to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack in January of this year, warning Vilsack of preliminary evidence of a microscopic organism that appears in high concentrations in genetically modified Roundup Ready corn and soybeans and "appears to significantly impact the health of plants, animals and probably human beings." Huber, a retired Purdue University professor of plant pathology and U.S. Army colonel, requested the USDA's help in researching the matter and suggested Vilsack wait until the research was concluded before deregulating Roundup Ready alfalfa. But about a month after it was sent, the letter was leaked, soon becoming an internet phenomenon.

Huber was unavailable to respond to media inquiries in the weeks following the leak, and thus unable to defend himself when several colleagues from Purdue publicly claiming to refute his accusations about Monsanto's widely used herbicide Roundup (glyphosate) and Roundup Ready crops. When his letter was finally acknowledged by the mainstream media, it was with titles like "Scientists Question Claims in Biotech Letter," noting that the letter's popularity on the internet "has raised concern among scientists that the public will believe his unsupported claim is true."

Now, Huber has finally spoken out, both in a second letter, sent to "a wide number of individuals worldwide" to explain and back up his claims from his first letter, and in interviews. While his first letter described research that was not yet complete or published, his second letter cited much more evidence about glyphosate and genetically engineered crops based on studies that have already been published in peer-reviewed journals.