Next Low-Wage Haven: USA

by Jane Slaughter

Jokes about the U.S. becoming “Europe’s Mexico” are commonplace, but now high-priced consultants are pushing the notion in all seriousness.

They’re predicting that within five years certain Southern U.S. states will be among the cheapest manufacturing locations in the developed world—and competitive with China.

Media Malpractice on Debt Ceiling

Five ways media misreported deficit debate

8/1/11

There are specific patterns in corporate media coverage of political debates: Progressive ideas are generally marginalized. "Compromise" between the major parties is encouraged. Democrats should "move to the center," which in practical terms actually means moving to the right.

All of these tendencies have driven the discussion over the federal debt and the debt ceiling. In the end, the political process has produced an agreement that can be cheered by pundits and analysts for adhering to media's built-in bias for center-right economics and bogus ideas about centrism and political compromise.

Why companies aren’t hiring more workers

They're scared — and you're working so hard they don't have to

By Allison Linn Senior writer

msnbc.com

updated 8/4/2011 5:50:48 PM ET

With more than 14 million people seeking work in this country, economists would really like to be seeing employers adding hundreds of thousands of jobs to their payrolls each month.

Instead, we’ve had to settle for just a small fraction of that.

The economy added a paltry 18,000 jobs in June, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The government will report employment figures for July on Friday, but already many are fretting that job growth will again be anemic.

Next 'Giant Sucking Sound': U.S. Senate Leaders Reach Accord on Three New 'Free Trade' Agreements

Panama, Columbia, South Korea next in line for American jobs...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

Earlier today, Brad Friedman reported that, despite high unemployment and food stamp usage at an all-time record high, U.S. corporations were experiencing record profits.

Simultaneously, Los Angeles Times reported that Senate leaders have reached an accord to pass three more NAFTA-like "free trade" agreements (Panama, Colombia, and South Korea) when Congress returns from its August recess. The Times stated: "Proponents [e.g., the U.S. Chamber of Commerce] say the trade agreements...will pump as much as $14 billion into the U.S. economy and add more than 250,000 jobs."

30 Years Ago Today: The Day the Middle Class Died ...A Letter From Michael Moore

From time to time, someone under 30 will ask me, "When did this all begin, America's downward slide?" They say they've heard of a time when working people could raise a family and send the kids to college on just one parent's income (and that college in states like California and New York was almost free). That anyone who wanted a decent paying job could get one. That people only worked five days a week, eight hours a day, got the whole weekend off and had a paid vacation every summer. That many jobs were union jobs, from baggers at the grocery store to the guy painting your house, and this meant that no matter how "lowly" your job was you had guarantees of a pension, occasional raises, health insurance and someone to stick up for you if you were unfairly treated.

How a Corporatist Supreme Court Cabal Joined Forces With Right-Wing and Kochs to Quietly Sell Out Our Democracy

By Jim Hightower, Hightower Lowdown
Posted on August 5, 2011, Printed on August 6, 2011

Bill Watterson is Mark Twain--with a drawing pen. He is a master cartoonist, but also a sharp-witted observer of the absurd, with an impish sense of humor. From 1985-1995, Watterson penned "Calvin and Hobbes," the truly marvelous comic strip that featured six-year-old Calvin and his stuffed tiger Hobbes. In Calvin's inventive and iconoclastic mind, Hobbes was a genuine tiger (and his best friend)and they shared boundless adventures that challenged conventional thinking and defied authority, often crashing right through the prescribed social order of the 'real' world.

A recurring theme in the strip was a two-player baseball competition in which both the kid and the tiger simply made up the rules as they went.

Social Security's Biggest Threat: The Debt Deal Super Committee

Posted: 8/4/11 11:07 AM ET

This week's deal to raise the debt ceiling should remove any doubt about the power corporate interests have over our government. The deal, hammered out by the president and Republican congressional leaders, places the burden of reducing our long-term budget problems squarely on average Americans, while the wealthiest individuals and corporations are given a free pass.

But the deal poses a larger threat. A provision in the agreement creates an appointed "Super Committee" in Congress that could circumvent normal rules and slash cherished programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

How could this happen? Prior to this week's debt agreement, it's been extremely difficult to cut Social Security benefits, because doing so required 60 votes to overcome an almost certain filibuster in the Senate. And rightly so - Social Security is the most successful and popular government program in the history of the United States.

Social Security's Biggest Threat: The Debt Deal Super Committee

Posted: 8/4/11 11:07 AM ET

This week's deal to raise the debt ceiling should remove any doubt about the power corporate interests have over our government. The deal, hammered out by the president and Republican congressional leaders, places the burden of reducing our long-term budget problems squarely on average Americans, while the wealthiest individuals and corporations are given a free pass.

But the deal poses a larger threat. A provision in the agreement creates an appointed "Super Committee" in Congress that could circumvent normal rules and slash cherished programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

How could this happen? Prior to this week's debt agreement, it's been extremely difficult to cut Social Security benefits, because doing so required 60 votes to overcome an almost certain filibuster in the Senate. And rightly so - Social Security is the most successful and popular government program in the history of the United States.

Commentary: U.S. middle class is where the real job creators are

By Mary Sanchez | The Kansas City Star

Achieving the “American dream” isn’t feeling so dreamy these days.

The day seems distant when average Americans held to the faith that hard work would secure them employment, a lifestyle they could depend on. And that if they passed that work ethic on to their children, along with a good education, then each generation would fare better in life.

Home ownership hits lowest level since 1965

By Les Christie August 5, 2011: 10:16 AM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- As the foreclosure crisis continues to wreak havoc on the housing market, a source of national pride has taken a sour turn. Home ownership is on the decline and, according to a recent Morgan Stanley report, the United States is fast becoming a nation of renters.

Last Friday, the Census Bureau reported that the percentage of people who owned a home had dropped to 65.9% during the second quarter -- its lowest level since the first quarter of 1998 and a far cry from the high of 69.2% reached in late 2004.

The Beast Is Starved: Welcome to the Next Great Depression

by John Atcheson

Since Reagan, Republicans have been on a “starve the beast” campaign – by which they mean eviscerate the government by taking away as much revenue as they can.

Starving the beast has been the biggest bait and switch con game that has ever been perpetrated on the American people. And the most tragic.

The Koch Spider Web

Thursday 4 August 2011

by: Allison Kilkenny, Truthout | News Analysis

An election took place last fall in Virginia that didn't garner national attention, but it should have - not for the candidates or issues - but for the giant pile of corporate cash manipulating events behind the scenes.

Rick Boucher, a then-28-year incumbent Democratic Congressman from the Ninth District - the longest-serving Congressman in that district since the Civil War - was surprisingly defeated by Republican Morgan Griffith. The upset came as a shock to many, since an early October poll [4] showed Boucher ahead by double digits, including one measure earlier in the month that put him ahead by 10 percentage points.

C'est la vie. Such is political life. The National Republican Congressional Committee spent around $600,000 in ads, and the media framed the defeat as a Blue Dog, Boucher losing due to his support for cap-and-trade policies.

Study Suggests Increase in Public Health Spending Results in Healthier People

LEXINGTON, Ky. (August 1, 2011) — A groundbreaking new study published in the journal, Health Affairs, suggests that increases in public health spending result in healthier people, especially in communities with fewer resources.

The study was co-authored by Glen P. Mays, the new F. Douglas Scutchfield Endowed Professor in Health Services and Systems Research at the University of Kentucky College of Public Health. At UK, Mays is affiliated with the National Coordinating Center for Public Health Services and Systems Research, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Sharla A. Smith, a research associate in the Department of Health Policy and Management, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, co-authored the study.

Paul Krugman: The Wrong Worries

In case you had any doubts, Thursday’s more than 500-point plunge in the Dow Jones industrial average and the drop in interest rates to near-record lows confirmed it: The economy isn’t recovering, and Washington has been worrying about the wrong things.

It’s not just that the threat of a double-dip recession has become very real. It’s now impossible to deny the obvious, which is that we are not now and have never been on the road to recovery.

For two years, officials at the Federal Reserve, international organizations and, sad to say, within the Obama administration have insisted that the economy was on the mend. Every setback was attributed to temporary factors — It’s the Greeks! It’s the tsunami! — that would soon fade away. And the focus of policy turned from jobs and growth to the supposedly urgent issue of deficit reduction.

But the economy wasn’t on the mend.

Are We Heading For A Second Global Financial Crisis?

By Richard Murphy, Comment Is Free
Posted on August 4, 2011, Printed on August 5, 2011

How far are we from #gfc2? For those not aware, #gfc2 is the Twitter hashtag used for "global financial crisis 2". And the question I ask is a real one.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog wondering whether July 2011 felt like July 1914. And then along came a Greek deal, and now a US debt deal, and you might presume I had been prematurely melodramatic.

I wish that were true; I very much doubt it is.

Cantor: Entitlement Promises ‘Frankly, Are Not Going To Be Kept For Many’

By Pat Garofalo on Aug 4, 2011 at 9:35 am

During an interview with the Wall Street Journal, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) said he is ready and willing to slash entitlements like Medicare, because, in his opinion, Americans have to “come to grips with the fact that promises have been made that frankly are not going to be kept for many“:

What Everyone Should Know About the “Debt Crisis” in the U.S.

by Mark Weisbrot

Since the U.S. “Debt Crisis” has been a big international story for the last few weeks, it is worth clarifying what is real and what is not. First, the U.S. government does not have a “debt crisis.” The U.S. government is paying net interest of just 1.4 percent of GDP on its public debt – this is not much by any historical or international comparison. The relatively large annual deficit at present (9.3 percent of GDP) is overwhelmingly the result of the recession and weak recovery. The long-term deficit projections are driven by health care costs in the private sector. These spill over into public spending because the U.S. government pays for almost half of health care spending, at a rate that is twice as high as other developed countries – and rising fast.

Behind The Scenes With The Reporter Who Took Down Murdoch

By Media Matters for America
Posted on August 4, 2011, Printed on August 5, 2011

Nick Davies is a British journalist and filmmaker who began his career in the mid-1970s. An accomplished freelancer and special correspondent for the Guardian, he is the author of five books, including Flat Earth News, a withering and widely-praised critique of the British press. His forthcoming sixth book will concern the latest and arguably most important scoop of his career -- the phone hacking scandal that has rocked News Corp. to its foundation. Davies met with Media Matters in New York to discuss his scoop and why he thinks "Murdoch has a lot to answer for."

How long were you on the phone hacking story before it broke open?

I started looking at it in January 2008. At first, it was just one project I was working on of many. The first story didn't appear until July 2009, after 18 months of working on it. It was a big story that caused a huge reaction in the UK. Then I began tackling it full time -- producing some 80 stories over a two-year period.

Stocks Plunge on Fears of Global Turmoil

By GRAHAM BOWLEY

What began as a weak day in the stock markets ended in the worst rout in more than two years, as investors dumped stocks amid anxiety that both Europe and the United States were failing to fix deepening economic problems.

With a steep decline of around 5 percent in the United States on Thursday, stocks have now fallen nearly 11 percent in two weeks. Markets have been plunging as investors sought safer havens for their money — including Treasury bonds, which some had been avoiding during the debate over extending the nation’s debt ceiling.

How JP Morgan Took Over All Kentucky's Financial Services, And Why You Should Be Scared

By Danny Mayer, North of Center
Posted on August 4, 2011, Printed on August 5, 2011

OnJuly 1, JP Morgan Chase became the Commonwealth’s bank. As the state’s official depository, JP now receives all deposits, writes all checks and makes all wire transfers on the $12-15 billion that flow through Kentucky state government in the course of a fiscal year. It will cut payroll checks, receive federal and other funds earmarked for the state, and disburse educational or transportation or any other funds to their appropriate monetary endpoints. For its trouble, the bank will receive $1.3 million in state fees and the ability to re-lend idle state funds out to customers for private gain.

Yes, you should be worried.

The Recovery Is Dead, Long Live the Recovery

by Robert Scheer

The die has been cast. Obama’s “nearly complete capitulation to the hostage-taking demands of Republican extremists,” as an editorial in the normally sedate New York Times described the deal to raise the debt ceiling, is a disaster in the making. It rules out a vigorous government response to the persistent economic stagnation in which joblessness, housing foreclosures and an ever-widening gap between the top 2 percent and the rest of Americans have become the norm.

But to use the word “capitulation” is too kind, since this president, as was Bill Clinton before him, is clearly one of those “New Democrats” who welcomes the opportunity to jettison the legacy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as outmoded political baggage. Otherwise, why would Obama have reached for a “grand bargain” in which he even put Social Security and Medicare cuts on the table before the Republicans rolled him?

Our Sputtering Economy, by the Numbers

by Braden Goyette
ProPublica, Aug. 2, 2011, 2:08 p.m.

With increasing signs that the economy is laboring, most economists agree that a short-term infusion of spending, or an extension of this year's temporary cut in Social Security taxes, could help fend off a new downturn.

But whatever one thinks of the debt deal—and most of its billions in cuts won't come for a few years—there's a near-consensus in Washington against spending increases.

A Fix for the Debt Ceiling That No One Is Talking Abou

Dean Baker
August 1, 2011 | 12:00 am

Economists believe that people respond to incentives. The fact that economists never suffer career consequences for failing to consider new ideas explains why they so rarely consider any policy that has not long been in the standard bag of tricks. I mention this background since it is relevant to the reaction given a proposal on the debt ceiling that Ron Paul originally put forward and that I subsequently endorsed. Paul suggested that the Fed could destroy the $1.6 trillion in government bonds that it now holds as a way of getting room under the debt ceiling. Debt to the Fed counts as part of the government debt subject to the limit. If the Fed destroyed $1.6 trillion in debt, then it would create a space of $1.6 trillion under the ceiling.

This is an interesting way of getting around the ceiling, although it would almost certainly require an act of Congress to do it. As it turns out, the other side of this story is even more interesting. The Fed plans to sell off the $1.6 trillion in government bonds it currently holds. It also plans to sell off more than $1 trillion in mortgage backed securities it bought to help stabilize financial markets at the peak of the financial crisis. Following the logic of Paul’s idea, I suggest that the Fed could simply hold on to large amounts of debt for an indefinite period of time. The interest on this debt would continue to be paid to the Fed and then be refunded to the Treasury—an effective and easy way to reduce the deficit that almost no one is talking about.

Enormous Cuts in Military Spending? Read the Fine Print

by Medea Benjamin and Charles Davis

In this age of austerity, all the politicians are talking about the need for spending cuts. But when it comes to shared burdens and slashed budgets, don't expect the Pentagon to start holding bake sales, despite what you may have heard about reductions to its obscenely bloated funding.

Citing the U.S. government's $14.3 trillion debt, lawmakers from both parties have seized the moment to try and attain long hoped-for cuts to Social Security and Medicare. But the recent deal does seem to include some good news for lovers of peace: the push for reductions would encompass the war-making part of the state. Indeed, according to a “fact sheet” released by the White House on the bipartisan compromise, the recent deal to raise the national debt ceiling “puts us on track to cut $350 billion from the defense budget over 10 years.”

Tom Watson: 'Phone hacking is only the start. There's a lot more to come out'

The Labour MP has won the admiration of fellow politicians for doggedly nvestigating the phone-hacking scandal. What has the experience taught him, how has it changed his life – and what revelations are still to come?

John Harris
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 2 August 2011 19.59 BST

A month ago, Tom Watson received word that the Guardian was about to expose the hacking of Milly Dowler's phone by the News of the World. With 72 hours to go, he cleared his diary; a few days later, he was averaging three hours sleep a night, as he and his staff picked through leaked documents, newspaper archives, personal testimony from phone-hacking victims, and more. As the MP who had been obsessively trying to cut through the murk surrounding News International for two years, he well knew that the most dramatic chapter in the two-year phone-hacking saga had arrived – and the imperative now was to work harder than ever.

So how have the last few weeks been? "Sleep-deprived, totally crazy," he says, sitting in his parliamentary office during what seems to be a rare moment of calm. "But also, there's been a great sense of relief. I think I said something to David Cameron about a month before: that there were powerful forces trying to cover this story up. At some points over the last two years, I thought it might blow. But I've also thought that the lid could be welded back on. But when Nick Davies broke the Milly Dowler story, that was the point where I knew they'd never get the lid back on."

US of Austerity: What $570 Billion Cuts Will Do to Our Water, Air, the Jobless, Children, the Elderly, and the Poor

By Andy Kroll, Mother Jones
Posted on August 2, 2011, Printed on August 3, 2011

The debt ceiling deal hammered out by President Barack Obama and congressional leaders and passed in the House on Monday afternoon makes deep, painful, and lasting cuts throughout the federal government's budget. What's on the chopping block? The numbers tell the tale.

The Obama-GOP plan cuts $917 billion in government spending over the next decade. Nearly $570 billion of that would come from what's called "nondefense discretionary spending." That's budget-speak for the pile of money the government invests in the nation's safety and future—education and job training, air traffic control, health research, border security, physical infrastructure, environmental and consumer protection, child care, nutrition, law enforcement, and more.

Our Step-By-Step Guide to Understanding ALEC’s Influence on Your State Laws

by Lois Beckett
ProPublica, Aug. 1, 2011, 1:26 p.m.

For decades, a discreet nonprofit has brought together state legislators and corporate representatives to produce business-friendly “model” legislation. These “model” bills form the basis of hundreds of pieces of legislation each year, and they often end up as laws. As media scrutiny of the nonprofit—the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC—has grown, we’ve built both a guide and a searchable database so you can see for yourself how ALEC’s model bills make their way to statehouses.

Following the steps we lay out may reveal some interesting connections. Last month, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel political columnist Daniel Bice looked into an obscure ALEC-approved bill to tax chewing tobacco by weight rather than price. The ALEC model legislation calls this a “fairness” issue, noting that “taxes that create a consumer preference within a product category impede free market commerce.” It does not note that Altria, the parent company of Philip Morris and a member of ALEC’s private enterprise board, sells pricier “premium” brands of chewing tobacco and stands to benefit from the tax change.

Who gains from debt deal? The Pentagon, for one

By Nancy A. Youssef | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — The last-minute deal that Congress is considering to raise the federal debt limit probably will mean trillions of dollars in government spending reductions for most agencies. But one department stands to gain: the Pentagon.

Rather than cutting $400 billion in defense spending through 2023, as President Barack Obama had proposed in April, the current debt proposal trims $350 billion through 2024, effectively giving the Pentagon $50 billion more than it had been expecting over the next decade.

For even the most successful blacks and Hispanics, 'separate' means 'unequal'

A new research brief from the US2010 Project shows that the average black or Hispanic household earning over $75,000 lives in a poorer neighborhood than the average white resident earning under $40,000.

The US2010 Project's data show in most metro areas there are similar neighborhood gaps in median and per capita income; percent of residents with a college education or professional occupation; home ownership; and housing vacancy (http://www.s4.brown.edu/us2010/SeparateAndUnequal/Default.aspx).

The Retirement fantasy

– middle class Americans are quickly realizing that a secure retirement future may only be a myth. Stagnant income, debt illusion, and the future outlook for working Americans.

• Posted by mybudget360
  

Americans are having a tougher time finding extra disposable income to save and create wealth. It is hard to plan for the future when you are worrying about having enough money to purchase a couple of frozen meals. When looking at overall statistics we rarely get a glimpse at how tough things have become for the working and middle class. We usually get data discussing retirement account worth but most of these reports fail to acknowledge that 1 out of 3 Americans have zero dollars to their name. That is obviously an important caveat. You also have a banking system that imposes predatory practices on those least able to afford it. Case after case has been reported of those living paycheck to paycheck while having to pay multiple overdraft fees that can range from $25 to $40 per charge. Banks realize they can simply place a stop but why let all this easy money free? For those who can save and end up purchasing a home, most of the wealth is derived from home equity which in a nationwide housing bubble is like having all your money in one stock. Income is not a good measure of wealth. The per capita income in the United States is $25,000 and after paying the mortgage or rent, healthcare costs, and buying food little is left over. What all these items point to is that retirement as many envisioned may largely be a fantasy that is only available to a select few.

Koch Group Mails Suspicious Absentee Ballot Letters In Wisconsin

Eric Kleefeld | August 1, 2011, 2:08PM

Updated: August 1, 2011, 4:40PM

Is the Koch-backed conservative group Americans For Prosperity up to no good in the Wisconsin state Senate recalls?

As Politico reports, mailers have now turned up from Americans For Prosperity Wisconsin, addressed to voters in two of the Republican-held recall districts, where the elections will be held on August 9. The mailers ask recipients to fill out an absentee ballot application, and send it in -- by August 11, after Election Day for the majority of these races.

How Sex Panic Almost Destroyed the Economy

By Amanda Marcotte, RH Reality Check
Posted on August 1, 2011, Printed on August 3, 2011

Sunday night, right before the fatal deadline, the U.S. Congress finally came to a deal that allows us to raise the debt ceiling, without which the federal government would basically shut down completely and start to default on its loans, creating a cascade of economic disasters. Congress came to a deal before we had to learn those Depression-era money-saving skills (sadly, we don’t have flour sacks to make clothes from any longer). Now it's time to reflect on how our country has gone so far off track that we can’t even handle the basic responsibility of keeping the country from plunging into a manufactured crisis that nearly led to economic collapse. There are multiple causes, but one that hasn’t been discussed much is abortion.

Yes, abortion. Or, more specifically, the sustained sex panic that has been going on in this country since the sixties and seventies, when the sexual revolution occurred and women secured their reproductive rights. If it seems a little strange to argue that sex panic helped bring us to the verge of economic collapse, well, that’s the nature of the circuitous, ever-evolving world of politics. But it’s sex panic that helped create the modern right-wing populist, and it’s the modern right-wing populist that created the current crisis.

Study finds conformity does not equal cooperation

If you follow the pack are you more likely to co-operate with others in it? Not necessarily according to research into social behaviour by academics at the University of East Anglia.

The study, published in the August issue of the journal Personality and Individual Differences, shows that people who do not conform are most likely to work together for the greater good, while conforming to social norms can actually make people less likely to co-operate – a finding which surprised the researchers and could have implications in the workplace for team design and operations management.

News Of The World Also Accused Of Computer Hacking, Mass E-Mail Deletion

Jillian Rayfield | August 1, 2011, 11:23AM

Scotland Yard announced Saturday that it will set up a new task force to investigate allegations that News Of The World reporters took part in computer hacking as well as phone hacking.

"Operation Tuleta is currently considering a number of allegations regarding breach of privacy, received by the MPS since January 2011, which fall outside the remit of (phone-hacking) Operation Weeting, including computer hacking," the police said in a statement.

The Democratic Unemployment Act

How will President Obama and his party justify the spending cuts in the debt deal?

By David Weigel
Posted Monday, Aug. 1, 2011, at 11:18 AM ET

On Sunday, after he'd been schooled by leaders on the automatic cuts that could make a debt deal possible, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., talked to reporters. He was tight-lipped on the details but broadly optimistic about the bargain. There was one nagging question I wanted to ask: All the discretionary spending cuts in the plan—did they threaten to slow down growth, to drive up unemployment?

A new catalyst for ethanol made from biomass

Researchers potentially find a renewable path to fuel additives, rubber and solvents

RICHLAND, Wash. -- Researchers in the Pacific Northwest have developed a new catalyst material that could replace chemicals currently derived from petroleum and be the basis for more environmentally friendly products including octane-boosting gas and fuel additives, bio-based rubber for tires and a safer solvent for the chemicals industry.

To make sustainable biofuels, producers want to ferment ethanol from nonfood plant matter such as cornstalks and weeds. Currently, so-called bio-ethanol's main values are as a non-polluting replacement for octane-boosting fuel additives to prevent engine knocking and as a renewable replacement for a certain percentage of gasoline. To turn bio-ethanol into other useful products, researchers at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and at Washington State University have developed a new catalyst material that will convert it into a chemical called isobutene. And it can do so in one production step, which can reduce costs.

Matt Stoller: What Presidency?

By Matt Stoller, who worked on the Dodd-Frank financial reform law and Federal Reserve transparency issues as a staffer for Rep. Alan Grayson (on Twitter at @matthewstoller)

If you have only one rule in politics, I suggest the following – get your head of out your television set, and start paying attention to government. The narrow intense focus of TV can constrain us so powerfully that we are blinded by technicolor.

To explain – there’s an endless stream of musings on our current political problems, with an attempt to apportion “blame” for what’s going on. One argument, fleshed out by Paul Krugman and Amanda Marcotte is that of truculent Republican extremists are at the root dysfunction. In Krugman’s words, “The problem with American politics right now is Republican extremism, and if you’re not willing to say that, you’re helping make that problem worse. ” In this formulation, the President, though he does not fight hard enough, is drawn to poor policy-making by the dynamic imposed by far right ideologues. Another argument suggests that Republicans are making clear arguments about what they want, and it is the lack of a clear alternative that leads to our current morass. In this formulation, it is a betrayal by Obama that is the primary issue at hand.

Climate Change Debunked? Not So Fast

Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer
Date: 28 July 2011 Time: 07:14 PM ET

New research suggesting that cloud cover, not carbon dioxide, causes global warming is getting buzz in climate skeptic circles. But mainstream climate scientists dismissed the research as unrealistic and politically motivated.

"It is not newsworthy," Daniel Murphy, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) cloud researcher, wrote in an email to LiveScience.

Democratic Politics in a Nutshell

by Glenn Greenwald

Let's begin by taking note of three facts:

(1) Three days ago, Democratic Rep. John Conyers, appearing at a meeting of the Out of Poverty caucus, said: "The Republicans -- Speaker Boehner or Majority Leader Cantor -- did not call for Social Security cuts in the budget deal. The President of the United States called for that" (video here, at 1:30);

(2) The reported deal on the debt ceiling is so completely one-sided -- brutal domestic cuts with no tax increases on the rich and the likelihood of serious entitlement cuts in six months with a "Super Congressional" deficit commission -- that even Howard Kurtz was able to observe: "If there are $3 trillion in cuts and no tax hikes, Obama will have to explain how it is that the Republicans got 98 pct. of what they wanted," while Grover Norquist, the Right of the Right on such matters, happily proclaimed: "Sounds like a budget deal with real savings and no tax hikes is a go."

Paul Krugman: The President Surrenders

A deal to raise the federal debt ceiling is in the works. If it goes through, many commentators will declare that disaster was avoided. But they will be wrong.

For the deal itself, given the available information, is a disaster, and not just for President Obama and his party. It will damage an already depressed economy; it will probably make America’s long-run deficit problem worse, not better; and most important, by demonstrating that raw extortion works and carries no political cost, it will take America a long way down the road to banana-republic status.

Start with the economics. We currently have a deeply depressed economy. We will almost certainly continue to have a depressed economy all through next year. And we will probably have a depressed economy through 2013 as well, if not beyond.

US debt deal: how Washington lost the plot

Politicians and the media are obsessing on debt, deficit and cuts, but the real story is a stalled economy and rising unemployment

Dean Baker, Guardian.co.uk,
Monday 1 August 2011 16.30 BST

President Obama and the Republicans in Congress have finally worked out a deal over the debt ceiling. It appears as though the Republicans got most of what they wanted: big cuts to domestic spending and no tax increases.

On the plus side, social security and Medicaid appear to be largely intact, although the deal commits Congress to set up another one of those dreadful "bipartisan" commissions, and some cuts to Medicare are on the table. The main qualification for being chosen as a member or staffer for this commission will be that you were too ignorant of the economy to notice the $8tn housing bubble whose collapse brought on the current crisis. Fortunately, Washington has no shortage of policy wonks who fit this description.

Pam Geller Justifies Breivik’s Terrorism: Youth Camp Had More ‘Middle Eastern or Mixed’ Races Than ‘Pure Norwegian'

Popular hate blogger Pam Geller has received scrutiny in recent days as the public became aware that the right-wing terrorist in Norway, Anders Behring Breivik, had praised her blog andthoroughly cited her writing in his political manifesto. After a number of blogs made the connection, as well as the New York Times, theAtlantic, and other major outlets, Geller became incensed and began lashing out at her critics.

In a post defending herself yesterday, Geller — who has called Obama “President Jihad” and claimed that Arab language classes are a plot to subvert the United States — reached a new low. Geller justifies Breivik’s attack on the Norwegian Labour Party summer youth camp because she says the camp is part of an anti-Israel “indoctrination training center.” She says the victims would have grown up to become “future leaders of the party responsible for flooding Norway with Muslims who refuse to assimilate, who commit major violence against Norwegian natives including violent gang rapes, with impunity, and who live on the dole.”

Conservative Media Myths About Fuel Economy Standards

July 29, 2011 5:28 pm ET — 51 Comments

Conservative media are promulgating the myths that higher fuel economy standards are unattainable with current technology, will cost consumers and will increase traffic deaths. In fact, automakers have said they will be able to meet the standards, consumers will net thousands in fuel savings, and safe cars in a variety of sizes will continue to be produced.

Legislation to Phase Out Private Military Contractors is Filed in Senate and House

By BuzzFlash

Created 07/29/2011 - 1:47pm

NEWS ALERT FROM SENATOR BERNIE SANDERS (I-Vt.)

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) today introduced legislation that would phase out private security contractors in war zones.

The legislation recognizes that the United States increasingly has relied on private contractors to wage our wars, wasting taxpayer money, damaging military morale and hurting our reputation around the world.

"The American people have always prided themselves on the strength, conduct, and honor of our United States military. I therefore find it very disturbing that now, in the midst of two wars and a global struggle against terrorism, we are relying more and more on private security contractors - rather than our own military - to provide for our national defense," Sanders said.

Debunking the Big Lie Right-Wingers Use to Justify Black Poverty and Unemployment

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on July 29, 2011, Printed on July 31, 2011

In April, the Oklahoma legislature passed a constitutional amendment that would do away with affirmative action policies in the Sooner State. Sally Kern, a state rep vying for the coveted title of Most Extreme Lawmaker in America, explained her rationale for supporting the amendment, saying (among a slew of nutty things) that “it's character that ought to count, not whether you're white or black... it should be your willingness to say, 'I'm going to become everything I can become.'"

Kern suggested that blacks simply don't work as hard as whites. “I’ve taught school,” she said, “and I saw a lot of people of color who didn’t study hard because they said the government would take care of them.”

Star Polar Bear Scientist in the Dog House

The government mysteriously puts a lead Arctic biologist on administrative leave. Is it caving to oil interests?

— By Kate Sheppard

Fri Jul. 29, 2011 12:00 PM PDT

Everything you've been told about polar bears and global warming is a lie. Or at least that's what climate skeptics have rushed to claim in response to the news that the government is investigating a scientist who wrote a significant paper five years ago about drowned bears in the warming Arctic. Charles Monnett, a wildlife biologist with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement (BOEMRE) in Alaska, has been placed on administrative leave as the agency's inspector general undertakes an investigation into unnamed "integrity issues." But an environmental watchdog group believes that the real reason for the investigation is pressure from oil and gas interests who see polar bears as pests that stand between them and the vast mineral reserves deep beneath the Arctic.