The Bank Lobby Steps Up Its Attack on Elizabeth Warren

Ari Berman | June 1, 2011

Research support was provided by The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute.

On May 24 Elizabeth Warren was back on Capitol Hill testifying before Congress, defending her brainchild, the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a key element of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation. Warren is a major celebrity in Washington, an Oklahoma-born Harvard law professor who’s done more than anyone since Ralph Nader to put consumer protection on the national agenda. The room was packed with reporters, consumer advocates and lobbyists. GOP Representative Patrick McHenry, who chaired the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing, could barely hide his disgust for the CFPB and Warren, accusing her of lying to Congress and frequently interrupting her answers. “In a few short weeks,” McHenry warned ominously, “the bureau will become a powerful instrument in the hands of progressive regulators.”

In part because it’s one of the strongest aspects of Dodd-Frank, the CFPB has become a favorite target of Republican attacks, right up there with George Soros, ACORN and Planned Parenthood. It’s been called “one of the greatest assaults on economic liberty in my lifetime” (Representative Jeb Hensarling) and “the most powerful agency ever created” (Representative Spencer Bachus). The Wall Street Journal opinion page denounced Warren and the bureau three times in one week in March. And the bureau hasn’t even officially launched!

Paul Krugman: From American Conservatives, Voodoo Economics

Thursday 2 June 2011

So Representative Paul D. Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman, recently gave a big speech defending his budget plan — and demonstrated, in case you were wondering, that there’s no “there” there (and there never was).

Remember how everyone declared that Mr. Ryan was a serious person, truly willing to face up to the United States’ deficit problem? Well, now he’s out there denouncing the way “the budget debate has degenerated into a game of green-eyeshade arithmetic” — in other words, enough with all these numbers.

And his answer to the deficit now is that we have to grow our way out.

Hoodwinked! Wall Street Economists Sell Job Despair As "The New Normal"

By Richard Eskow

Created 06/03/2011 - 1:13pm

In light of today's terrible job numbers [1], it's a bittersweet experience to re-read a recent report from Wells Fargo Bank which argues that high unemployment is "the new normal." While it's comforting to find Wells Fargo employees who aren't laundering money for the Mexican drug cartels [2], their report is one more ideologically-driven nail in the coffin of America's jobs agenda.

Ideology's not a bad thing in politics, but it is a bad thing when it's disguised as as a work of unbiased analysis. Despite their mild disclaimers, that's exactly the posture Wells Fargo's economists are adopting.

They may not even realize how biased and ideological their report is, and that's the problem. Almost three years later, people are still hewing to the flawed philosophies that led to the financial crisis. That prevents the country from taking steps to end the permanent recession that enshrouds whole segments of our population.

Did The Cable Industry Pay Ralph Reed Millions Of Dollars To Orchestrate Tea Party Opposition To Net Neutrality?

By Lee Fang, ThinkProgress
Posted on June 2, 2011, Printed on June 3, 2011

As the New York Times and ThinkProgress have reported, Ralph Reed has returned as a force in the political world. A decade ago, Reed was a kingmaker in Republican politics and a corporate lobbyist who counted Fortune 100 companies like Enron and Microsoft as clients. His fall from grace, starting with the Jack Abramoff scandal and culminating in a humiliating loss in his run for lieutenant governor of Georgia, is apparently now behind him. Times reporter Erik Eckholm points out that Reed has successfully revived his work as an operator within the Republican Party, most notably with his ability to ensnare nearly every Republican presidential contender to a conference he’s hosting this weekend.

However, little is known about Reed’s work reviving his business as an astroturf lobbyist. According to documents obtained by ThinkProgress, the National Cable and Telecom Association (NCTA), a trade association that represents cable providers like Comcast and Qwest Communications, has provided Reed’s lobbying firm with at least $3,462,117 worth of contracts in the last three years alone. Century Strategies, the firm founded by Reed and fellow astroturf lobbyist Tim Phillips in 1997, received the contracts for what NCTA deemed “legal and advertising” services. View a screenshot of the relevant documents here and here.

Mitt Romney Says Obama "Failed America," But Romney Was the One Who Wanted to "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt"

By BooMan, Booman Tribune
Posted on June 3, 2011, Printed on June 3, 2011

Today, in a speech officially announcing his candidacy for president that the cable networks couldn\'t be bothered to cover in full, Mitt Romney declared that our country is inches away from no longer being a free-market economy and accused President Obama of having "failed America."

Funny thing.

Back on November 18th, 2008, Mitt Romney wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times, in which he rather explicitly recommended that Detroit\'s Big Three automakers be allowed to fail.

Paul Krugman: The Mistake of 2010

Earlier this week, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York published a blog post about the “mistake of 1937,” the premature fiscal and monetary pullback that aborted an ongoing economic recovery and prolonged the Great Depression. As Gauti Eggertsson, the post’s author (with whom I have done research) points out, economic conditions today — with output growing, some prices rising, but unemployment still very high — bear a strong resemblance to those in 1936-37. So are modern policy makers going to make the same mistake?

Mr. Eggertsson says no, that economists now know better. But I disagree. In fact, in important ways we have already repeated the mistake of 1937. Call it the mistake of 2010: a “pivot” away from jobs to other concerns, whose wrongheadedness has been highlighted by recent economic data.

To be sure, things could be worse — and there’s a strong chance that they will, indeed, get worse.

The Drug Market Scam: Why You Pay Way Too Much for Bad Medicine (And Bernie Sanders' Solution)

By Dean Baker, AlterNet
Posted on June 2, 2011, Printed on June 3, 2011

Drugs are cheap. There are few drugs that would sell for more than $5-$10 a prescription in a free market. However, many drugs in the United States sell for hundreds of dollars per prescription and sometimes several thousand dollars per prescription. There is a simple reason for this fact: government-granted patent monopolies.

The government gives patent monopolies to provide an incentive for drug companies to carry through research. This is an incredibly backward and inefficient way to pay for research. It leaves us paying huge amounts of money for cheap drugs. It also often leads to bad medicine.

Bribes Work: How Peterson, the Enemy of Social Security, Bought the Roosevelt Name

Bribes work. AT&T gave money to GLAAD, and now the gay rights organization is supporting the AT&T-T-Mobile merger. La Raza is mouthing the talking points of the Mortgage Bankers Association on down payments. The NAACP is fighting on debit card rules. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute supported the extension of the Bush tax cuts back in December. While it seems counter-intuitive that a left-leaning organization would support illiberal extensions of corporate power, in fact, that is the role of the DC pet liberal. This dynamic of rent-a-reputation is greased with corporate cash and/or political access. As the entitlement fight comes to a head, it’s worth looking under the hood of the DC think tank scene to see how the Obama administration and the GOP are working to lock down their cuts to social programs.

And so it is that the arch-enemy of Social Security, Pete Peterson, rented out the good name of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the reputation of the Center for American Progress, and EPI. All three groups submitted budget proposals to close the deficit and had their teams share the stage with Republican con artist du jour Paul Ryan. The goal of Peterson’s conference was to legitimize the fiscal crisis narrative, and to make sure that “all sides” were represented.

Wall Street Journal Honcho Shills for Secret Worker 'Education' Program Linked to Koch Group

By Adele M. Stan, AlterNet/The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute
Posted on June 2, 2011, Printed on June 3, 2011

In a darkened hotel ballroom in Pittsburgh, a middle-aged man with a boyish affect stands before the enthusiastic, if graying, activists of the Americans For Prosperity Foundation, gathered in August 2009 for its annual RightOnline conference.

"How many people here read the Wall Street Journal editorial page?" asks Stephen Moore, who sits on the paper's editorial board. The crowd responds enthusiastically. "What would we do," he continues, "without the Wall Street Journal and Fox News, right? And Americans for Prosperity?"

The Desperate Selling Off of America

By Rania Khalek, AlterNet

While we have been frantically playing defense against relentless assaults on multiple fronts, from anti-union legislation to draconian anti-choice laws to the attempted privatization of Medicare, the selling off of public assets to the private sector has received little attention.

As states face a budget shortfall of $125 billion for fiscal year 2012, leaders are searching for creative ways to fill budget gaps, while refusing to consider the one legitimate solution: forcing tax-dodging corporations and the rich to pay their fair share in taxes. Rather than upset the moneyed interests who bought their seats in office, politicians of all stripes prefer to cut pensions, close schools, slash child nutrition programs, and most importantly, privatize, privatize, privatize!

AP's "Fact Check" Distorts the Fundamentals of a Republican Plan to Reshape Medicare

By Dean Baker
June 2, 2011 - 10:50am ET

Major news outlets like to adhere to the pretext that the truth in any political argument always lies in the middle. This means that they feel the need to say that the truth in the current battles over the budget and Medicare lies somewhere between the Democratic and Republican positions.

In the past this practice meant, for example, that most of these news organizations said things like the truth on civil rights was somewhere between the positions put forward by people like Martin Luther King and segregationists like George Wallace. Many might think the truth does not always lie between the positions set out by the major actors in national political debates.

The WH/Politico Attack on Seymour Hersh

by Glenn Greenwald

Seymour Hersh has a new article in The New Yorker arguing that there is no credible evidence that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons; to the contrary, he writes, "the U.S. could be in danger of repeating a mistake similar to the one made with Saddam Hussein's Iraq eight years ago -- allowing anxieties about the policies of a tyrannical regime to distort our estimates of the state's military capacities and intentions." This, of course, cannot stand, as it conflicts with one of the pillar-orthodoxies of Obama foreign policy in the Middle East (even though the prior two National Intelligence Estimates say what Hersh has said). As a result, two cowardly, slimy Obama officials ran to Politico to bash Hersh while hiding behind the protective womb of anonymity automatically and subserviently extended by that "news outlet"

Some Inconvenient Truths About the National Debt

By ThinkProgress War Room on Jun 1, 2011 at 5:00 pm

How’d We Get Here?

As we draw closer to August 2, the drop-dead date by which the nation’s debt ceiling must be raised or the U.S. will risk economic calamity by defaulting on its obligations, Republicans continue to play political games with the economy. Last night, House Republicans staged a political stunt by bringing a $2.4 trillion increase in the nation’s borrowing limit that was not paired with any spending cuts up for a vote. Republicans designed the measure to fail (as it did, with the Democratic leadership also calling for a ‘no’ vote in protest) to try and gain political leverage over President Obama and the Democrats in the ongoing budget negotiations being led by Vice President Biden. Also tucked into this measure was poison pill language blaming President Obama for the nation’s fiscal woes. Since the GOP continues to have collective amnesia about how we got into this mess in the first place, here’s a handy chart from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP):

Congress' Culture of Wealth: How Insider Information Enriches Members of the House

By Sarah Jaffe, AlterNet
Posted on June 2, 2011, Printed on June 2, 2011

We know that members of Congress often stroll right out of their jobs and into lucrative lobbying positions, consulting gigs, or book deals. We know that they enjoy all sorts of perks of their offices, from golf trips with lobbyists to corporate-sponsored air travel.

We even might have guessed that they've done some insider trading. After all, these are the people who make decisions about how the economy is going to go. About which mega-defense corporation will get the next juicy contract.

Just Who Are Boehner's Economists?

By Bill Scher

Created 06/01/2011 - 11:38am

Today, Speaker John Boehner released a list of 150 economists [1] who back the Republican position that an hike in the debt limit should be conditional on spending cuts greater than that increase. Nothing in the statement mentions fairer taxation or investments in job creation and economic growth as additional ways to manage our long-term debt.

Sounds impressive, though. 150 economists! They must know what they're talking about, right?

The Beatification of Senator Simpson

Posted: 05/31/11 03:39 PM

Former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson has been a holy terror ever since he was appointed by President Obama to co-chair his deficit commission last year. With equal fervor he has attacked both his opponents and the basic facts surrounding the budget in general and Social Security in particular.

Ordinarily, either his rudeness or his lack of understanding of the facts on the issues where he is supposed to be an expert would be sufficient to have him exiled from the public limelight. Yet, because his views coincide with the editorial positions at elite news outlets like the Washington Post, his credibility as a spokesperson on the budget and Social Security is never tarnished.

Rand Paul, Supposed Defender Of Civil Liberties, Calls For Jailing People Who Attend ‘Radical Political Speeches’

By Alex Seitz-Wald
on May 31, 2011 at 8:00 pm

Libertarian-leaning Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) made headlines last week for single-handedly obstructing the renewal of the Patriot Act, calling the law an unconstitutional infringement on civil liberties. His demand to insert a series of amendments to weaken the law nearly allowed it to lapse and put the country at “risk,” but Paul said it was worth it to prevent the government from continuing to “blatantly ignor[e] the Constitution.” But when Paul went on Fox News host Sean Hannity’s radio show Friday to discuss his opposition to the national security law, he suggested implementing a far more serious infringement on civil liberties.

The Persistence of Hate

German communities that murdered Jews in the Middle Ages were more likely to support the Nazis 600 years later

Updated Wednesday, June 1, 2011, at 7:52 AM ET

From Rosa Parks' refusal to move to the back of the bus in Montgomery, Ala., to the "Little Rock Nine," who defied school segregation in Arkansas, most of the civil rights clashes of the 20th century played out on the turf where the Confederacy had fought to preserve slavery 100 years earlier.

If a century seems like a long time for a culture of racism to persist, consider the findings of a recent study on the persistence of anti-Semitism in Germany: Communities that murdered their Jewish populations during the 14^th-century Black Death pogroms were more likely to demonstrate a violent hatred of Jews nearly 600 years later. A culture of intolerance can be very persistent indeed.

Fla. Gov. Scott bashed Obama's stimulus but kept $370 million of it in budget

By Marc Caputo | The Miami Herald

Florida Gov. Rick Scott campaigned against President Obama's "failed stimulus" program — yet the freshman politician kept nearly $370 million of the federal cash in the Florida budget he signed last week.

Scott's decision to keep the stimulus money stands out in a year when the governor touted record budget vetoes of up to $615 million. He emphasized the vetoes of “wasteful” spending at a Thursday event that featured a campaign-style “Promises Made, Promises Kept” banner.

Al-Jazeera footage captures 'western troops on the ground' in Libya

Five of Gaddafi's generals are among latest defectors to rebels as South African president seeks to broker ceasefire

Julian Borger and Martin Chulov, guardian.co.uk,
Monday 30 May 2011 15.33 BST

Armed westerners have been filmed on the front line with rebels near Misrata in the first apparent confirmation that foreign special forces are playing an active role in the Libyan conflict.

A group of six westerners are clearly visible in a report by al-Jazeera from Dafniya, described as the westernmost point of the rebel lines west of the town of Misrata. Five of them were armed and wearing sand-coloured clothes, peaked caps, and cotton Arab scarves.

The sixth, apparently the most senior of the group, was carrying no visible weapon and wore a pink, short-sleeve shirt. He may be an intelligence officer. The group is seen talking to rebels and then quickly leaving on being spotted by the television crew.

On Last Night's Debt Limit Vote: Appeasing Republicans Won't Work

By Steve Benen, Washington Monthly
Posted on June 1, 2011, Printed on June 1, 2011

Shortly after voters gave Republicans control of the House of Representatives, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) struck a refreshingly responsible tone about the debt ceiling. "I've made it pretty clear to [my caucus] that as we get into next year, it's pretty clear that Congress is going to have to deal with [the debt limit]," Boehner said after the midterms. "We're going to have to deal with it as adults. Whether we like it or not, the federal government has obligations and we have obligations on our part."

The House GOP, of course, quickly abandoned this maturity. Following through with American obligations is out; playing chicken with the economy is in. Acting like adults is out; acting like intemperate children is in.

Morgenson Runs Peterson Institute Propaganda Against “Entitlements” Meaning Medicare and Social Security

I’m generally a Gretchen Morgenson fan, since she’s one of the few writers with a decent bully pulpit who regularly ferrets out misconduct in the corporate and finance arenas. But when she wanders off her regular terrain, the results are mixed, and her current piece is a prime example. She also sometimes pens articles based on a single source, which creates the risk of serving as a mouthpiece for a particular point of view. And the one she chose to represent tonight is one that is in no need of amplification, that of the Peterson Foundation’s well-funded campaign to gut Social Security and Medicare.

The Peterson Institute paper she relies upon, by former Fed and Treasury economist Joe Gagnon and Peterson Institute research associate Marc Hinterschweiger, is about the government deficits and the need to take Serious Measures to get them under control, which of course means reducing entitlements, in particular Social Security and Medicare.

The Truth about the US Economy

by Robert Reich

The U.S. economy continues to stagnate. It’s growing at the rate of 1.8 percent, which is barely growing at all. Consumer spending is down. Home prices are down. Jobs and wages are going nowhere.

It’s vital that we understand the truth about the American economy.

How did we go from the Great Depression to 30 years of Great Prosperity? And from there, to 30 years of stagnant incomes and widening inequality, culminating in the Great Recession? And from the Great Recession into such an anemic recovery?

The Medicare “Crisis”: A “Shaggy Wolf Story”

Trustees’ Report Much Less Gloomy than Advertised

Summary: Below, Part 2 of the May 13 post headlined “Medicare Trustees Report that Reform Legislation Cuts Medicare Costs by 25 Percent.”

Conservatives continue to use the annual report recently released by Medicare’s Trustees as evidence that Medicare needs what one conservative pundit calls a “sweeping overhaul.” In theory, House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan’s plan to privatize Medicare is dead, but somehow, it’s still in the news. Yesterday Newt Gingrich announced that he’s with Ryan, and today Senator John Kerry is calling a press conference to denounce Ryan’s voucher plan.

What has been lost in the debate is the fact that the Trustee’s report is not nearly as gloomy as advertised.

Jared Bernstein Lets Slip Interesting Info About WH Economic Views

By: David Dayen Monday May 30, 2011 11:23 am

Paul Krugman had a good column today on how America needed to end its “learned helplessness” on the jobs crisis. He cited multiple options of things the government could do right now to create jobs, which would of course increase government revenue and over time reduce the deficit. Among them were such ideas as a WPA-type program of public works jobs, repairing roads an rebuilding infrastructure; a dedication to increasing inflation, which would reduce the debt burden; or a “serious program of mortgage modification” that would reduce private debt from homeowners and allow them to spend in a more productive capacity (not to mention the effect on home prices from reducing foreclosures).

Instead, Washington is consumed with reducing the deficit, finding “common ground” on the budget cuts that would theoretically make those reductions, and committed to messing around with Medicare and slashing other vital safety-net programs. Krugman’s point was that another world is possible, and that it’s important for those on the outside of government to explain what that world could look like, even given the opposition from the Republican Party to these measures

Health Care Rationing for Beginners

By James Kwak

“Obama-care kills Medicare as we know it. Obama-care raids $500 billion from Medicare to spend on Obama-care, puts in place a 15-panel board to ration Medicare by unelected bureaucrats.

“Our budget, repeals the raiding, gets rid of the rationing board, preserves this program, makes no changes for a person 55 years of age or older and saves Medicare, by reforming it for our generation, so it’s solvent. The president’s plan does not save Medicare, it allows it to go bankrupt, rations the program and raids the program. We get rid of the rationing, we stop the raiding and we save the program from bankruptcy.”

That was Paul Ryan on Fox News recently.

Ordinarily this wouldn’t be worth responding to, except to point out, as Sam Stein did, that Ryan’s proposed budget also ”raids $500 billion from Medicare,” so the statement that “we stop the raiding” is, um, a lie. But it isn’t news that Paul Ryan has an issue with honesty, except perhaps for David Brooks.

Madison Avenue Declares 'Mass Affluence' Over

“Mass affluence,” as a new white paper from Ad Age, the advertising industry’s top trade journal, has just declared [1], “is over.”

By Sam Pizzigati

Created 05/30/2011 - 5:03pm

The American middle class, concludes a new study from the ad industry’s top trade journal, has essentially become irrelevant. In a deeply unequal America, if you’re over 35 and your income hasn’t yet topped $200,000 a year, you don’t matter.

The chain-smoking ad agency account execs of Mad Men, the hit cable TV series set in the early 1960s, all want to be rich some day. But these execs, professionally, couldn’t care less about the rich. They spend their nine-to-fives marketing to average Americans, not rich ones.

Mad Men’s real-life ad agency brethren, 50 years ago, behaved the exact same way — for an eminently common-sense reason: In mid-20th century America, the entire U.S. economy revolved around middle class households. The vast bulk of U.S. income sat in middle class pockets.

DNA tests find "disturbingly widespread" seafood fraud

May 27, 2011 11:00 AM

If you've long suspected that the "mahi-mahi" on your plate may really be yellowtail, you now have science on your side: Researchers with the non-profit group Oceana have harnessed the power of forensic science to confirm that as much as half of all seafood sold in the U.S. is mislabeled.

"Results from our DNA lab show that about half the time the fish you are eating is not the species listed on the menu," said DNA tester William Gergits. The group accuses the industry of "seafood fraud," and is calling on the federal government to step in to more tightly regulate fisheries and related businesses.

Paul Krugman: Against Learned Helplessness

Unemployment is a terrible scourge across much of the Western world. Almost 14 million Americans are jobless, and millions more are stuck with part-time work or jobs that fail to use their skills. Some European countries have it even worse: 21 percent of Spanish workers are unemployed.

Nor is the situation showing rapid improvement. This is a continuing tragedy, and in a rational world bringing an end to this tragedy would be our top economic priority.

Yet a strange thing has happened to policy discussion: on both sides of the Atlantic, a consensus has emerged among movers and shakers that nothing can or should be done about jobs. Instead of a determination to do something about the ongoing suffering and economic waste, one sees a proliferation of excuses for inaction, garbed in the language of wisdom and responsibility.

World-Wide Assessment Determines Differences in Cultures

May 26, 2011

Conflicts and misunderstandings frequently arise between individuals from different cultures. But what makes cultures different; what makes one more restrictive and another less so?

A new international study led by the University of Maryland and supported by the National Science Foundation's Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences offers insights that may help explain such cultural differences and bridge the gaps between them.

A Decade of Magical Tax-Cut Thinking

The 2001 Bush tax cuts added $2.5 trillion to the national debt and disproportionately benefited the wealthiest households. Have we learned anything?

by Chuck Collins

Republican leaders in Congress have a one-point program for whatever ails the nation: cut taxes for millionaires and large corporations.

Got a revenue surplus? Cut taxes. Got a budget deficit? Cut taxes. Got a toothache? Cut taxes.

These politicians are like my uncle who believed the solution to every problem was a wee glass of scotch. They live in a world of magical thinking.

Who's Killing the US Middle Class? Russia Today Debate With Harvard/Cato Institute Economist

By Richard Eskow

Created 05/29/2011 - 12:33pm

While I'm posting videos, here's a debate on the death of the middle class I did on Russian Television with Harvard economist and Cato Institute maven Jeffrey Miron and Samuel Sherraden of New America. Samuel's a good guy, but Miron and I really went at it.

Global Warming Will Bring Violent Storms And Tornadoes, NASA Predicts

ScienceDaily (Aug. 31, 2007) — NASA scientists have developed a new climate model that indicates that the most violent severe storms and tornadoes may become more common as Earth's climate warms.

Previous climate model studies have shown that heavy rainstorms will be more common in a warmer climate, but few global models have attempted to simulate the strength of updrafts in these storms. The model developed at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies by researchers Tony Del Genio, Mao-Sung Yao, and Jeff Jonas is the first to successfully simulate the observed difference in strength between land and ocean storms and is the first to estimate how the strength will change in a warming climate, including "severe thunderstorms" that also occur with significant wind shear and produce damaging winds at the ground.

Conservative Media Mangle Memo To Attack The NLRB

May 28, 2011 12:42 pm ET — 5 Comments

Conservative media outlets are deriding a memo recently released by the National Labor Relations Board, claiming that it "shows that the board wants to give unions much greater power over employers and their investment and management decisions." In reality, the memo addresses a narrow portion of labor law that requires employers to bargain with unions if labor costs are a factor when businesses decide to relocate. The changes contemplated in the memo would simply "encourage the use of bargaining rather than after-the-fact assessment of whether bargaining might have been successful."

The new Know Nothings

In their quest to convince voters that America is in danger, Republicans are lying about 9/11 and baldly denying history

Megan Carpentier
guardian.co.uk,Monday 11 January 2010 21.00 GMT

More than 150 years ago, a disparate group of anti-immigrant, conspiracy-minded Americans became sick of traditional politicians and started a grassroots movement to take political power from the hands of those they no longer trusted. When asked by outsiders what their movement was called, they were ordered to answer, "I know nothing," leading others to call them the Know Nothing party. The movement, however, was co-opted by the traditional parties and undermined by policy disagreements, and many members eventually folded into the Republican party. Some things, apparently, don't change as much as we'd like to believe.

Republican leaders, and the 20-somethings crafting their made-for-television talking points, are apparently counting on the fact that their base still knows nothing, or is at least willing to forget what they do know. Not content to blame the Bush-led Wall Street bailouts on President Obama, or the shoe-bomber reprise on Obama's security and intelligence policies that were nonetheless instituted by his predecessors, Republican thought-leaders like Mary Matalin, former White House press secretary Dana Perino and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani have decided that there is one big thing that just couldn't have happened on the Republicans' watch: 9/11.

Mysterious fund allows Congress to spend freely, despite earmark ban

By Cole Deines, CNN

May 28, 2011 -- Updated 2354 GMT (0754 HKT)

Washington (CNN) -- The defense bill that just passed the House of Representatives includes a back-door fund that lets individual members of Congress funnel millions of dollars into projects of their choosing.

This is happening despite a congressional ban on earmarks -- special, discretionary spending that has funded Congress' pet projects back home in years past, but now has fallen out of favor among budget-conscious deficit hawks.

Bubbling sea signals severe coral damage this century

By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News

Findings from a "natural laboratory" in seas off Papua New Guinea suggest that acidifying oceans will severely hit coral reefs by the end of the century.

Carbon dioxide bubbles into the water from the slopes of a dormant volcano here, making it slightly more acidic.

Meet the New GOP, Same as the Old GOP

Posted on May 28, 2011, Printed on May 30, 2011

For the better part of two years, the Republican base made it clear it prefers a certain kind of far-right candidate. These activists demanded "insurgents" and "outsiders," who have no use for the entrenched Washington establishment and its corrupt power structure. After the midterms, we'd see a new way of doing business.

Or not.

Hard-charging Republicans who rallied voters last year with cries of "Stop the spending, ban the earmarks" are quietly offering a more familiar Washington refrain now that they're in Congress: not in my backyard.

Come Saturday Morning: GOP Tax Lies about Maryland and Oregon

By: Phoenix Woman
Saturday May 28, 2011 6:45 am

Watching Republicans lie about taxes and money can be entertaining, such as what we’re seeing happen with any Republican who dares touch the leprosy-transmitting kryptonite known as Paul Ryan’s Fantasy Budget. But that doesn’t mean the lies are any less nasty — or that we can depend on the evening news to swat down these lies.

For instance, there are the lies, pushed in part with the repeated Murdoch Wall Street Journal‘s editorial page’s assistance, about rich people allegedly fleeing Oregon and Maryland in droves. BSP’s Sally Jo Sorensen catches a state legislator, Gruesome Glenn Gruenhagen, last seen being, um, freaky (hence the lovely Tildology graphic illustration), spreading the baloney via his e-mails to his constituents:

Maryland and Oregon each passed tax increases on top earners only to end up collecting far less revenue than anticipated. Both states lost approximately one-third of their high-income filers, who relocated to tax-friendly states like Florida. They didn’t necessarily move their entire business out of state, but relocated themselves enough days a year to meet tax-filing requirements.

There's a Right Way and a Wrong Way to Deal With a Jobs Crisis -- Why Is Germany Doing It So Well?

By John Schmitt, AlterNet
Posted on May 30, 2011, Printed on May 30, 2011

The Great Recession hit harder in the United States than in most of the rest of the world. Among the world's rich economies, we experienced the third largest increase in unemployment, trailing only Spain and Ireland. Most advanced economies saw substantially smaller increases in unemployment and one --Germany-- actually saw its unemployment rate decline.

Can we learn anything from countries that weathered the Great Recession better than we did? The experience of two countries --Denmark and Germany-- seems particularly informative. Denmark had a model labor market before the downturn, but ironically, offers a cautionary tale. Germany's economy has been up and down since unification in the early 1990s, but points one way out of our mess.

Global carbon at record high: IEA

1 hr 16 mins ago

PARIS (AFP) – Carbon-dioxide emissions hit a record high last year, the International Energy Agency said on Monday, dimming the prospects of limiting the global temperature increase to two degrees Celsius.

"Energy-related carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2010 were the highest in history, according to the latest estimates," the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a statement.

After a dip in 2009 caused by the global financial crisis, emissions are estimated to have climbed to a record 30.6 gigatonnes (Gt), a five percent jump from the previous record year in 2008, when levels reached 29.3 Gt, the IEA said.

Hospitals hunt substitutes as drug shortages rise

"Some experts pointedly note that pricier brand-name drugs seldom are in short supply."

By LAURAN NEERGAARD, AP Medical Writer
23 mins ago

WASHINGTON – A growing shortage of medications for a host of illnesses — from cancer to cystic fibrosis to cardiac arrest — has hospitals scrambling for substitutes to avoid patient harm, and sometimes even delaying treatment.

"It's just a matter of time now before we call for a drug that we need to save a patient's life and we find out there isn't any," says Dr. Eric Lavonas of the American College of Emergency Physicians.

AT&T Wants to Give You an 80s Makeover

by Tim Karr

If you were around in the 80s, you might be experiencing a horrible flashback right about now.

No, it’s not because legwarmers and spandex are in style again. It’s because AT&T, that monopoly that once lorded over your rotary phone, has resurfaced with a scheme to rule your mobile phone as well.

Back in the 80s, AT&T’s power was near absolute. That’s why antitrust authorities stepped in to break up the monopoly and protect the American people against abuse.

Now, with AT&T’s planned $39 billion takeover of T-Mobile, we’re reaching the danger point again. And this time control over one of the most vital forms of communication is at stake.

Abortion saved my life

I almost died in an emergency room because the doctor on call refused to perform a necessary procedure

By Mikki Kendall

There's this lawmaker out of Kansas, Rep. Peter DeGraaf, who has a lot to say about abortion. He's currently best known for saying that women should plan ahead in case of rape and not expect their regular insurance to cover an abortion after an assault. And I could spend a lot of time discussing the flaws in his logic, or even hashing out when life begins, but what I'm really concerned about is the idea that anyone besides a pregnant woman should have a say in what she does with her body after finding out she's pregnant.

I'm a mom, and I love my sons more than anything. And it is because I love them that I had an abortion at 20 weeks. It was my fifth pregnancy (I'd had two earlier miscarriages), and, as it turned out, my last. There was trouble from the beginning; I didn't experience any of the normal indicators of pregnancy, so I was already ten weeks along when I found out. I hadn't so much as missed a period; in fact, I was seeing an OB/GYN because of the increased heaviness in my cycle. When we found out, I talked it over with my husband and we debated an abortion before deciding we'd try to make it work. My doctor told me that my pregnancy was very high risk and that she wasn't sure of a good outcome. Per her instructions, I took it very easy because I wanted to give the baby the best possible chance. But I kept having intermittent bleeding and I knew there was a good chance I wouldn't be able to carry to term.