Why Medicare Is the Solution — Not the Problem

by Robert Reich

Not only is Social Security on the chopping block in order to respond to Republican extortion. So is Medicare.

But Medicare isn’t the nation’s budgetary problems. It’s the solution. The real problem is the soaring costs of health care that lie beneath Medicare. They’re costs all of us are bearing in the form of soaring premiums, co-payments, and deductibles.

Medicare offers a means of reducing these costs — if Washington would let it.

Corporate Tax Holiday in Debt Ceiling Deal: Where's the Uproar?

by Matt Taibbi

Have been meaning to write about this, but I’m increasingly amazed at the overall lack of an uproar about the possibility of the government approving another corporate tax repatriation holiday.

I’ve been in and out of DC a few times in recent weeks and one thing I keep hearing is that there is a growing, and real, possibility that a second “one-time tax holiday” will be approved for corporations as part of whatever sordid deal emerges from the debt-ceiling negotiations.

Thoughts on Dodd-Frank Birthday: Everything is Broken

Thursday, 07/21/2011 - 8:39 am by Robert Johnson

The weakness of Dodd-Frank illustrates a crisis in governance that is sapping the vitality of the country.

Legislation is incremental. It is a reflection of compromise. Yet rarely in the history of the United States post WWII has legislation been so revealing. Revealing because, in relation to the velocity of circumstances that revealed the inadequacy of our regulatory framework, and in relation to the damage that was done to lives and living standards across America and around the world, this legislation did very little to rebalance the relationship between finance and larger society.

In essence, it was revealed that in this era of money politics people are basically defenseless against the concentrated power (even more concentrated after 2008!!) of the financial sector.

Wall Street Takes Aim At New Transparency Rule For Executive Pay

Susan Crabtree | July 22, 2011, 6:00AM

Wall Street has deployed an army of lobbyists to try to whittle away as much of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill as possible, spending $242.2 million on 712 hired guns to press their message on Capitol Hill since the beginning of 2010, according to a new report by Public Citizen.

The 30 most politically active business and financial industry organizations also ponied up $15.6 million in federal political contributions during the same time period. The entities with the deepest pockets include: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Bankers Association, the Financial Services Roundtable, MetLife, Goldman Sachs, to name just a few.

Phone hacking crisis shows News Corp is no ordinary news company

Rupert Murdoch's news organisations are not in the news business. What they crave is influence

Jay Rosen
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 19 July 2011 23.25 BST

Watching the phone hacking crisis crack wide open over the last few weeks has left me puzzled about its ultimate causes: what is it about News Corp that has produced these events?

I don't think we understand very much about this. We can say things like, "Ultimate responsibility goes to the man at the top," meaning Rupert Murdoch, chairman and CEO. And that sounds right, but it still doesn't explain how any of it happened. "The key people are criminals, liars, or willfully blind..." We could say that, but then we would have to explain how so many of them ended up at one company.

Puzzles like these have led many people to the conclusion that there's a culture inside News Corp that is in some way responsible, and I basically agree with that. Mark Lewis, lawyer for the family of Milly Dowler, said after Rebekah Brooks resigned: "This is not just about one individual but about the culture of an organization."

Koch And Exxon Pay To Write State Legislation Repealing Climate Change Laws

By Stephen Lacey on Jul 21, 2011 at 12:50 pm

According to tax records and other materials acquired by Bloomberg News, Koch Industries, Exxon Mobil, and numerous other corporations paid tens of thousands of dollars to write legislation for lawmakers that would repeal carbon pollution reduction programs in various states around the U.S. These companies working to dismantle environmental programs are members of the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, which allows private-sector parties to “pay-to-play” – charging thousands of dollars to sit at the table with legislators and craft bills.

Happy Birthday, Dodd-Frank

In the absence of smarter bankers, regulation will have to do.

By Bethany McLean
Posted Friday, July 22, 2011, at 11:21 AM ET

Poor Dodd-Frank. How would you like to celebrate your first birthday like this? A year after the financial reform legislation was signed into law, Republicans are inveighing against it, introducing bills to abolish or weaken it, and trying to starve the regulators that are supposed to implement it. Wall Street is pouring money into lobbying against it. Liberals worry that Dodd-Frank is already dead, and while that might be overstating the facts, the argument that too much regulation might stifle the weak recovery is gaining ground.

Right now, the only thing you can be sure of about Dodd-Frank is that it will have unintended consequences. But the status quo was not an option. The subprime crisis laid bare some ugly truths about the banks and showed that some of our fundamental assumptions about the way the world worked were wrong.

Facing Bribery Inquiry, News Corp. Lawyers Up With Former Federal Prosecutors

by Marian Wang
ProPublica, July 21, 2011, 12:41 p.m.

The embattled media conglomerate News Corporation and its independent directors have not only hired top criminal defense lawyers, they’ve also hired former Justice Department prosecutors well-versed in U.S. bribery law.

The new hires are a sign that the company is taking the Justice Department’s preliminary investigation—and the potential that the inquiry may turn specifically to bribery—rather seriously. (Read our story on why News Corp. may have good reason to worry.)

At least 1,400 arrests for antiwar dissent, but who’s counting? Not the press.

COMMENTARY | July 22, 2011

The national news media almost totally ignore homefront protests of the Afghanistan war, killer drones, torture, and more, regardless of their newsworthiness. By its lack of coverage, isn’t the press thus helping perpetuate an endless war?

Part of a Nieman Watchdog series, 'Reporting the Endgame'

By John Hanrahan
hanrahan@niemanwatchdog.org

Antiwar activists repeatedly stage dramatic acts of civil disobedience in the United States but are almost entirely ignored by mainstream print and broadcast news organizations. During the Vietnam era, press coverage of the fighting and opposition to it at home helped turn public opinion against the war. This time around lack of homefront coverage may be helping keep military involvement continue on and on.

In the past two years, protests of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, killer drones, torture, nuclear weapons and other war-related issues have been carried out at nuclear weapons silos and production facilities, military bases, unmanned drone facilities, major defense contractors’ headquarters and offices, the Nevada Nuclear Test site, nuclear weapons design laboratories, military recruiting centers, the U.S. Capitol, the White House, federal buildings in various states, the U.S. Strategic Air Command, and numerous other war-oriented sites across the country.

Greener pastures: How cows could help in the fight against climate change

Conservation: What goes on in the stomachs and under the hooves of cows might be the key to turning deserts back into grasslands

By Judith D Schwartz for Conservation, part of the Guardian Environment Network
guardian.co.uk, Friday 22 July 2011 14.49 BST

In reports of rising CO2 levels, it's easy to get the impression that the carbon-and-oxygen molecule is a kind of toxin, some alien vapor coughed up by a century-plus of heedless industrialism now coming back to haunt us. But on closer inspection, it seems that the problem isn't the carbon itself—it's that there's too much in the air and not enough in the ground.

When we consider our CO2 predicament, we tend to fault our love affair with the car and the fruits of industry. But the greater culprit has been agriculture: since about 1850, twice as much atmospheric CO2 has derived from farming practices as from the burning of fossil fuels (the roles crossed around 1970). Over the past 150 years, between 50 and 80 percent of organic carbon in the topsoil has vanished into the air, and seven tons of carbon-banking topsoil have been lost for every ton of grain produced.

Paul Krugman: The Lesser Depression

These are interesting times — and I mean that in the worst way. Right now we’re looking at not one but two looming crises, either of which could produce a global disaster. In the United States, right-wing fanatics in Congress may block a necessary rise in the debt ceiling, potentially wreaking havoc in world financial markets. Meanwhile, if the plan just agreed to by European heads of state fails to calm markets, we could see falling dominoes all across southern Europe — which would also wreak havoc in world financial markets.

We can only hope that the politicians huddled in Washington and Brussels succeed in averting these threats. But here’s the thing: Even if we manage to avoid immediate catastrophe, the deals being struck on both sides of the Atlantic are almost guaranteed to make the broader economic slump worse.

In fact, policy makers seem determined to perpetuate what I’ve taken to calling the Lesser Depression, the prolonged era of high unemployment that began with the Great Recession of 2007-2009 and continues to this day, more than two years after the recession supposedly ended.

Chance favors the concentration of wealth, U of M study shows

New model isolates the effects of chance in an investment-based economy

Most of our society's wealth is invested in businesses or other ventures that may or may not pan out. Thus, chance plays a role in where the wealth of a society will end up.

But does chance favor the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, or does it tend to level the playing field? Three University of Minnesota researchers have built a simplified model that isolates the effects of chance and found that it consistently pushes wealth into the hands of a few, ever-richer people.

The study, "Entrepreneurs, chance, and the deterministic concentration of wealth," is published in the July 20 issue of the journal PLoS ONE.

News Corp and the Hacked Climategate Emails: Time for an Independent Investigation

By Joe Romm on Jul 19, 2011 at 12:55 pm

There have been countless independent investigations into the scientists whose e-mails were hacked in November 2009. And the scientists have been (quietly) vindicated every time (see “The first rule of vindicating climate science is you do not talk about vindicating climate science“).

But we still don’t know who hacked the emails! And now we know that one of the key investigative bodies tasked with tracking down the hackers — Scotland Yard – were compromised at the time.

N.Y. Times Columnist's Fantasy: There Are Jobs For Those Who Want Them

By Dean Baker
July 21, 2011 - 10:52am ET

The New York Times on Wednesday featured another Casey Mulligan episode of "There Is No Unemployment." Mulligan's argument is that if we look at employment rates for the older population we see that they have actually risen in the downturn even as employment for people ages 25-55 plummeted. Mulligan interprets this as evidence that highly motivated older workers are able to find jobs, and if younger workers were equally motivated they would find jobs too.

This is an interesting story. The rise in employment rates of older workers is a striking story in this downturn and one that I and others have often noted. However, there are other possible interpretations.

Stronger social safety net leads to decrease in stress, childhood obesity

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Social safety net programs that reduce psychosocial stressors for low-income families also ultimately lead to a reduction in childhood obesity, according to research by a University of Illinois economist who studies the efficacy of food assistance programs on public health.

Craig Gundersen, a professor of agricultural and consumer economics at Illinois, says food and exercise alone are not to blame for the extent of obesity among children in the United States. Psychosocial factors, such as stressors brought about by uncertainty about the economy, income inequality, and a fraying social safety net also must be considered, he says.

How to Save $2 Trillion

Posted: 7/20/11 05:46 PM ET

There are 23 million Americans who can't find full-time work, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

There are 50 million Americans who can't see a doctor when they are sick, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

There are more than 15 million American families who owe more on their mortgage than their homes are worth, according to Zillow. That's almost a third of all the families who own homes.

Audit: Fed gave $16 trillion in emergency loans

By Stephen C. Webster
Thursday, July 21st, 2011 -- 11:34 am

The U.S. Federal Reserve gave out $16.1 trillion in emergency loans to U.S. and foreign financial institutions between Dec. 1, 2007 and July 21, 2010, according to figures produced by the government's first-ever audit of the central bank.

Last year, the gross domestic product of the entire U.S. economy was $14.5 trillion.

GOP Strategy Wrecks Economy and Obama in One Fell Swoop

by Ted Rall

Ross Douthat, the conservative columnist who elevates bland to middle-brow art for The New York Times, thinks Republicans have overreached in their showdown with Obama over the debt ceiling. “[The Republicans'] inability to make even symbolic concessions has turned a winning hand into losing one,” he says.

Advantage, according to Douthat, representing the mainstream media: Obama.

Of course, Obama had already agreed to begin dismantling Social Security and Medicare, surrenders Republicans have craved for decades. If he pulls off this “victory” Obama will have done more damage to the Democratic Party and its core values than any president in our lifetimes. How will he promote what Douthat fears will be a “victory”? I wonder.

Gang of Six Plan Cuts Social Security Now, Devastates It Later

By Nancy Altman
July 20, 2011 - 11:35pm ET

The Gang of Six’s “Bipartisan Plan to Reduce Our Nation’s Deficits" proposes immediate and significant cuts to Social Security benefits, and a process for addressing the program’s funding shortfall projected to appear 25 years from now. The process would virtually guarantee devastating cuts. This plan breaks faith with the American people, who overwhelmingly oppose benefit cuts.

The Gang of Six framework contains very few specifics but one is glaring – the immediate cuts that would affect all 55 million Social Security beneficiaries by changing the way the annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) is calculated. Their plan would substitute the less accurate and less-generous chained consumer price index (CPI) for the current CPI in calculating the COLA. This breaks a promise made by many politicians to not cut the benefits of anyone over age 55.

James O'Keefe's Silly New Stunt Goes After Medicaid

By Jamilah King, Colorlines
Posted on July 21, 2011, Printed on July 21, 2011

Conservative activist James O’Keefe is back to his dirty tricks again. This time the 27-year-old, whose claims to fame include attacks against ACORN, NPR, and Planned Parenthood, took aim at Medicaid, the nation’s low income health program. As Republicans on Capitol Hill threaten to tank the country’s economy if Democrats don’t give in to severe cuts to programs like Medicaid, O’Keefe’s Project Veritas sends a man dressed in a Irish kilt to a South Carolina public assistance office claiming he’s a member of the controversial Irish Republican Army and then releases video of a government employee acting as an alleged “terrorist sympathizer.”

The so-called “sting” had the man in a kilt walk into a Charleston, South Carolina office and ask for help for 25 fellow hospitalized Irishmen who need Medicaid.

Jobless Claims Rise Above Expectations

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Factory activity in the Mid-Atlantic region rebounded in July, but stubbornly high new filings for jobless benefits suggested an expected pick-up in economic growth in the second half of 2011 would be modest.

The Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank said its business activity index, which gauges factory activity in the region, rose to 3.2 from a near two-year low of minus 7.7 in June. Orders, hiring and shipments all improved.

Justice Department Filing Casts Doubt on Guilt of Bruce Ivins, Accused in Anthrax Case

by Mike Wiser, PBS Frontline, Greg Gordon, McClatchy Newspapers, and Stephen Engelberg, ProPublica July 18, 2011, 8:03 p.m.

Update (7/19): On Tuesday, Justice Department lawyers retracted statements that question the FBI's finding that a former Army microbiologist mailed the anthrax-filled letters that killed five people in 2001.

This story was co-published with PBS FRONTLINE and McClatchy.

WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department has called into question a key pillar of the FBI's case against Bruce Ivins, the Army scientist accused of mailing the anthrax-laced letters that killed five people and terrorized Congress a decade ago.

Shortly after Ivins committed suicide in 2008, federal investigators announced that they had identified him as the mass murderer who sent the letters to members of Congress and the media. The case was circumstantial, with federal officials arguing that the scientist had the means, motive and opportunity to make the deadly powder at a U.S. Army research facility at Fort Detrick, in Frederick, Md.

How I misread News Corp's taxes: David Cay Johnston

Wed, Jul 13 2011

The author is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

By David Cay Johnston

July 13 (Reuters) - Readers, I apologize. The premise of my debut column for Reuters, on News Corp's taxes, was wrong, 100 percent dead wrong.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp did not get a $4.8 billion tax refund for the past four years, as I reported. Instead, it paid that much in cash for corporate income taxes for the years 2007 through 2010 while earning pre-tax profits of $10.4 billion.

For the first time in my 45-year-old career I am writing a skinback. That is what journalists call a retraction of the premise of a piece, as in peeling back your skin and feeling the pain. I will do all I can to make sure everyone who has read or heard secondary reports based on my column also learns the facts and would appreciate the help of readers in that cause.

No excuses. But I will explain how I made such a bonehead error.

The other facts I reported remain:

* Among the 100 largest companies in the United States, News Corp has the third largest number of subsidiaries in tax havens, a Government Accountability Office study found in 2009.

* On an accounting basis, which measures taxes incurred but often not actually paid for years, News Corp had a tax rate of under 20 percent, little more than half the 35 percent statutory rate, its disclosures show.

* Murdoch has bought companies with tax losses and fought to be able to use them, which reduces his company's costs.

* News Corp lawyers and accountants are experts at making use of tax deferrals, though the company's net tax assets have shrunken from $5.7 billion in 2007 to $3.3 billion last year as the benefits were either used or expired.

Environmental Pollutants Lurk Long After They "Disappear"

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Ridding the environment of pharmaceutical waste not as easy as it seems, warns TAU researcher

The health implications of polluting the environment weigh increasingly on our public consciousness, and pharmaceutical wastes continue to be a main culprit. Now a Tel Aviv University researcher says that current testing for these dangerous contaminants isn't going far enough.

Dr. Dror Avisar, head of the Hydro-Chemistry Laboratory at TAU's Department of Geography and the Human Environment, says that, when our environment doesn't test positive for the presence of a specific drug, we assume it's not there. But through biological or chemical processes such as sun exposure or oxidization, drugs break down, or degrade, into different forms — and could still be lurking in our water or soil.

President Obama's Big Deal: Cuts for Social Security, but No Taxes for Wall Street

Monday 18 July 2011

by: Dean Baker, Truthout | News Analysis

The ability of Washington to turn everything on its head has no limits. We are in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Even though the recession officially ended two years ago, there are still more than 25 million people who are unemployed, can only find part-time work or who have given up looking for work altogether. This is an outrage and a tragedy. These people's lives are being ruined due to the mismanagement of the economy.

And we know the cause of this mismanagement. The folks who get paid to manage and regulate the economy were unable to see an $8 trillion housing bubble. They weren't bothered by the doubling of house prices in many areas, nor the dodgy mortgages that were sold to finance these purchases. Somehow, people like former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan and his sidekick and successor Ben Bernanke thought everything was fine as the Wall Street financers made billions selling junk mortgage and derivative instruments around the world.

Report offers new framework to guide K-12 science education, calls for shift in the way science is taught in US

WASHINGTON – A report released today by the National Research Council presents a new framework for K-12 science education that identifies the key scientific ideas and practices all students should learn by the end of high school. The framework will serve as the foundation for new K-12 science education standards, to replace those issued more than a decade ago. The National Research Council is the operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineering; all three are independent, nongovernmental organizations.

The committee that wrote the report sees the need for significant improvements in how science is taught in the U.S. The new framework is designed to help students gradually deepen their knowledge of core ideas in four disciplinary areas over multiple years of school, rather than acquire shallow knowledge of many topics. And it strongly emphasizes the practices of science – helping students learn to plan and carry out investigations, for example, and to engage in argumentation from evidence.

Special Report - Inside Rebekah Brooks' News of the World

By Georgina Prodhan and Kate Holton

LONDON | Sat Jul 16, 2011 1:32pm BST

(Reuters) - "It was the kind of place you get out of and you never want to go back again." That's how one former reporter describes the News of the World newsroom under editor Rebekah Brooks, the ferociously ambitious titian-haired executive who ran the top-selling Sunday tabloid from 2000 to 2003.

Journalists who worked there in that period describe an industrialised operation of dubious information-gathering, reporters under intense pressure attempting to land exclusive stories by whatever means necessary, and a culture of fear, cynicism, gallows humour and fierce internal competition.

"We used to talk to career criminals all the time. They were our sources," says another former reporter from the paper who also worked for Murdoch's daily tabloid, the Sun. "It was a macho thing: 'My contact is scummier than your contact.' It was a case of: 'Mine's a murderer!' On the plus side, we always had a resident pet nutter around in case anything went wrong."

Marriage confers 'little benefit' to children's development

Institute for Fiscal studies research suggests parents' educational qualifications more influential on child development than marriage

Randeep Ramesh, social affairs editor
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 19 July 2011 15.36 BST

Marriage confers "little if any benefit" in terms of a child's development, according to new research, challenging the rationale behind the prime minister's desire to offer tax breaks to couples who tie the knot.

New research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has found "little or no evidence" that marriage itself has any effect on children's "social or cognitive" development. Before the election the Tories had made the breakdown of the traditional nuclear family a key plank of their "broken Britain" analysis.

How to Liberate America from Wall Street Rule

How is it that our nation is awash in money, but too broke to provide jobs and services?

by David Korten

The dominant story of the current political debate is that the government is broke. We can’t afford to pay for public services, put people to work, or service the public debt. Yet as a nation, we are awash in money. A defective system of money, banking, and finance just puts it in the wrong places.

Raising taxes on the rich and implementing financial reforms are essential elements of the solution to our seemingly intractable fiscal and economic crisis. Yet proposals currently on the table fall far short of the need.

Bachmann criticizes black farmer settlement

By MARGERY A. BECK - Associated Press | AP – Tue, Jul 19, 2011

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann pointed to one program in particular Monday when talking about wasteful government spending: a multibillion dollar settlement paid to black farmers, who claim the federal government discriminated against them for decades in awarding loans and other aid.

The issue came up after Bachmann and Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa toured flooded areas along the Missouri River. During a news conference, they fielded a question about whether farmers affected by the flooding also should be worried by proposed U.S. Department of Agriculture cuts.

Koch brothers declare war on offshore wind

by Keith Harrington

15 Jul 2011 1:07 PM

The war over America’s coastal-energy future has officially begun, and the result could determine whether we see wind turbines or catastrophic oil spills along our coastlines in coming years.

The opening salvo came in early July, when everyone’s favorite climate-hating, fossil-fuel-loving industrialist villains, the Koch brothers, released a so-called “cost-benefit analysis” of New Jersey offshore wind development plans through their front group Americans for Prosperity.

Phone hacking: Murdoch paid US anti-bribery law lobbyists

$1m donation to US Chamber of Commerce in spotlight amid calls for prosecution of News Corp in America, where it is based

Ed Pilkington in New York
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 14 July 2011 18.11 BST

Rupert Murdoch donated $1m to a pro-business lobby in the US months before the group launched a high-profile campaign to alter the anti-bribery law – the same law that could potentially be brought to bear against News Corporation over the phone-hacking scandal.

News Corporation contributed $1m to the US Chamber of Commerce last summer. In October the chamber put forward a six-point programme for amending the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, or FCPA, a law that punishes US-based companies for engaging in the bribery of foreign officials.

News of the World phone-hacking whistleblower found dead

Death of Sean Hoare – who was first named journalist to allege Andy Coulson knew of hacking – not being treated as suspicious

Amelia Hill, James Robinson and Caroline Davies
guardian.co.uk, Monday 18 July 2011 18.04 BST

Sean Hoare, the former News of the World showbusiness reporter who was the first named journalist to allege that Andy Coulson was aware of phone hacking by his staff, has been found dead .

Hoare, who worked on the Sun and the News of the World with Coulson before being dismissed for drink and drugs problems, was said to have been found at his Watford home.

Little-known firms tracking data used in credit scores

By Ylan Q. Mui, Published: July 16

Atlanta entrepreneur Mike Mondelli has access to more than a billion records detailing consumers’ personal finances — and there is little they can do about it.

The information collected by his company, L2C, comes from thousands of everyday transactions that many people do not realize are being tracked: auto warranties, cellphone bills and magazine subscriptions. It includes purchases of prepaid cards and visits to payday lenders and rent-to-own furniture stores. It knows whether your checks have cleared and scours public records for mentions of your name.

Wash Post: "Top lawmakers target ‘grand bargain’ for debt plan"

by Gaius Publius on 7/17/2011 08:10:00 PM

Just out in the Washington Post, looks like the Dems are having their way with the Republicans. Boehner et al have agreed to work on the Grand Bargain, complete with massive cuts, after all. "Democrat" Kent Conrad plays a key supporting role (natch).

The Post headline says it all, but of course there's more (h/t Jim Roberts; my emphasis):

Top lawmakers target ‘grand bargain’ for debt plan

Even as President Obama and congressional leaders focus on a fallback plan to lift the nation’s debt ceiling, top Democrats and Republicans have begun to map a new way to craft the same sort of ambitious deficit-cutting plan they abandoned last week.

Mistakes Repeated Through Superstition and Prejudice

Thursday 14 July 2011

I recently picked up a copy of Lionel Robbins’s 1934 book “The Great Depression” in a used book shop in Norwich, England. It’s quite revealing: judicious in tone, full of tables and facts, clearly meant to be seen as the work of a wise observer — indeed, a Very Serious Person.

And utterly, utterly wrongheaded.

EXCLUSIVE: As Ralph Reed Steers ‘GOP Israel Primary,’ Documents Reveal Right-Wing Israeli Group Is Paying Him

By Lee Fang on Jul 15, 2011 at 10:10 am

Hawkish pro-Israel positions have become a litmus test for Republican candidates, particularly in the 2012 presidential campaign. And one of the political operatives driving this phenomenon is none other than Ralph Reed, the disgraced lobbyist who left the Christian Coalition to form Century Strategies. Reed’s newest group, the Faith and Freedom Coalition, has actively encouraged Tea Party activists and GOP politicians to champion far right Israeli priorities. Deputy Speaker of the Knesset Danny Danon helped headline Reed’s last Faith and Freedom conference, where nearly every GOP presidential candidate spoke.

Mitch McConnell: We Must Rewrite The Constitution Because ‘Elections’ Haven’t ‘Worked’

By Ian Millhiser on Jul 13, 2011 at 11:49 am

Speaking on the Senate floor this morning, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) offered what may be the most concise summary of conservative constitutionalism ever spoken — America must rewrite the Constitution to force conservative outcomes because we the people consistently elect lawmakers who disagree with McConnell:

The time has come for a balanced budget amendment that forces Washington to balance its books. If these debt negotiations have convinced us of anything, it’s that we can’t leave it to politicians in Washington to make the difficult decisions that they need to get our fiscal house in order. The balanced budget amendment will do that for them. Now is the moment. No more games. No more gimmicks. The Constitution must be amended to keep the government in check. We’ve tried persuasion. We’ve tried negotiations. We’re tried elections. Nothing has worked.

The Rise of the Wrecking-Ball Right

by Robert Reich

Recently I debated a conservative Republican who insisted the best way to revive the American economy was to shrink the size of government. When I asked him to explain his logic he said, simply, “government is the source of all our problems.” When I noted government spending had brought the economy out of the previous eight economic downturns, including the Great Depression, he disagreed. “The Depression ended because of World War Two,” he pronounced, as if government had played no part in it.

A few days later I was confronted by another conservative Republican who blamed the nation’s high unemployment rate on the availability of unemployment benefits. “If you pay someone not to work, they won’t,” he said. When I pointed out unemployment benefits couldn’t possibly be the cause of joblessness because there are now about five job seekers for every job opening, he scoffed. “Government always makes things worse.”

Rachel Maddow, There Is Much, Much More To The Story of Rick Perry’s Apostles

Posted by racheltabachnick on @ 6:11 pm

Article printed from speakeasy: http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy

URL to article: http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2011/07/13/rachel-maddow-there-is-much-much-more-to-the-story-of-rick-perry%e2%80%99s-apostles/

On Tuesday, Rachel Maddow did the world a favor by airing a series of short video clips of the endorsers of Rick Perry’s upcoming prayer event. The clips were posted by Right Wing Watch, with some originating from Talk2action.org. These video clips should receive much more national exposure, but they need to be viewed in context of the movement they represent. Rachel Maddow, keep at it! Perry’s endorsers are not just a random group of radical evangelists making outrageous statements.

These are the apostles and prophets of the New Apostolic Reformation, the biggest international religious movement you never heard of.