Occupy Wall Street: inquiries launched as new pepper-spray video emerges

NYPD officer Anthony Bologna faces two investigations as video emerges of a second pepper-spray incident

The senior New York police officer at the centre of the Occupy Wall Street pepper spray controversy fired the gas at protesters a second time just moments later.

After new video emerged on Wednesday showing the second incident, New York police commissioner Ray Kelly told reporters that the Civilian Complaint Review Board would investigate the officer, deputy inspector Anthony Bologna.

Friedrich Hayek Joins Ayn Rand as a Hypocritical User of Medicare

We’ve been a bit hard on the left of late, so we figured we’d take some steps to balance our programming. Mark Ames, who has been doggedly on the trail of the Koch brothers, found a delicious failure to live up to his oft-repeated standard of conduct by a god in the libertarian pantheon, Friedrich Hayek. And this fall from grace was encouraged one of the chief promoters of extreme right wing ideas in the US, Charles Koch.

Bear in mind that Charles Koch has not merely promoted libertarian ideas generally but in particular founded the Cato Institute, which has done more than any other single organization to wage war on Social Security.

Paul Krugman: Phony Fear Factor

The good news: After spending a year and a half talking about deficits, deficits, deficits when we should have been talking about jobs, job, jobs we’re finally back to discussing the right issue.

The bad news: Republicans, aided and abetted by many conservative policy intellectuals, are fixated on a view about what’s blocking job creation that fits their prejudices and serves the interests of their wealthy backers, but bears no relationship to reality.

Listen to just about any speech by a Republican presidential hopeful, and you’ll hear assertions that the Obama administration is responsible for weak job growth. How so? The answer, repeated again and again, is that businesses are afraid to expand and create jobs because they fear costly regulations and higher taxes. Nor are politicians the only people saying this. Conservative economists repeat the claim in op-ed articles, and Federal Reserve officials repeat it to justify their opposition to even modest efforts to aid the economy.

Reaganomics

Friday, 09/30/2011 - 10:05 am by Adam Gluck

What is Reaganomics?

Reaganomics refers generally to the fiscal policies Reagan pursued during his presidency. Its tenets probably sound fairly familiar: cut taxes, reduce government spending, and decrease regulation. It also was characterized by an attempt to control the money supply to reduce inflation.

Meet the Wealthy Men Trying to Buy Our Upcoming Election

By Justin Elliott, Salon
Posted on September 29, 2011, Printed on September 30, 2011

The hidden infrastructure of the 2012 campaign has already been built.

A handful of so-called Super PACs, enabled to collect unlimited donations by the continued erosion of campaign finance regulations, are expected to rival the official campaign organizations in importance this election. In many cases, these groups are acting essentially as outside arms of the campaigns.

These are America's best-funded political factions, their war chests filled by some of the richest men (and almost all are men) in the country.

More than 80 percent of giving to Super PACs so far has come from just 58 donors, according to the Center for Responsive Politics  analysis of the latest data, which covers the first half of 2011. The Republican groups have raised $17.6 million and the Democratic groups $7.6 million. Those numbers will balloon, with American Crossroads, the main Republican Super PAC, aiming to raise $240 million.)

The due-process-free assassination of U.S. citizens is now reality

By Glenn Greenwald

(updated below)
 
It was first reported in January of last year that the Obama administration had compiled a hit list of American citizens whom the President had ordered assassinated without any due process, and one of those Americans was Anwar al-Awlaki.  No effort was made to indict him for any crimes (despite a report last October that the Obama administration was "considering" indicting him).  Despite substantial doubt among Yemen experts about whether he even had any operational role in Al Qaeda, no evidence (as opposed to unverified government accusations) was presented of his guilt.  When Awlaki's father sought a court order barring Obama from killing his son, the DOJ argued, among other things, that such decisions were "state secrets" and thus beyond the scrutiny of the courts.  He was simply ordered killed by the President: his judge, jury and executioner.  When Awlaki's inclusion on President Obama's hit list was confirmed, The New York Times noted that "it is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing."

Heeding fake concerns about propriety -- instead of real matters of substance

COMMENTARY | September 29, 2011
 
Faced with some hot data on oil speculation, the media squawked when it should have jumped.

By Dan Froomkin


After firebrand Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders leaked confidential data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to the Wall Street Journal last month -- data that dramatically illustrated how speculators were dominating the oil futures market during the 2008 spike in oil prices -- other news outlets jumped on the story.

In the worst possible way. 

The data, which exposed precisely how much Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and other Wall Street speculators dominated the crude oil futures market, was a big new lead reporters could have used to further explore the dynamics behind the staggering gas price increase that resulted in a huge transfer of wealth from ordinary Americans to the very rich.

Schools Say No To Tea Party's Constitution Lessons

—By Stephanie Mencimer  | Thu Sep. 29, 2011 7:59 AM PDT

 

 Earlier this year, tea party groups sparked a bit of an uproar when they announced plans to pressure public schools into teaching their version of constitutional history during the federally mandated Constitution week that began September 17. Led by a large umbrella group, Tea Party Patriots, activists planned to pressure local school officials into using controversial curriculum developed by the National Center for Constitutional Studies (NCCS). The NCCS was founded by Glen Beck's favorite pseudo-historian, W. Cleon Skousen, who argued in his book The 5,000 Year Leap that the creation of the US was a divine miracle. When the news got out, liberal legal groups expressed outrage and urged schools to reject the plan.

America faces a jobs depression

Keynes was right: only government can get us out of this jobs slump. And only taxing wealth can restore US prosperity

Robert Reich
Thursday 29 September 2011 09.33 EDT

The Reverend Al Sharpton and various labor unions announced Wednesday a March for Jobs. But I'm afraid we'll need more than marches to get jobs back.

Since the start of the Great Recession at the end of 2007, the potential labor force of the United States – that is, working-age people who want jobs – has grown by over 7 million. But since then, the number of Americans who actually have jobs has shrunk by more than 300,000.

In other words, we're in a deep hole – and the hole is deepening. In August, the United States created no jobs at all. Zero.

Big Tobacco knew radioactive particles in cigarettes posed cancer risk but kept quiet

Tobacco companies knew that cigarette smoke contained radioactive alpha particles for more than four decades and developed "deep and intimate" knowledge of these particles' cancer-causing potential, but they deliberately kept their findings from the public, according to a new study by UCLA researchers.


The analysis of dozens of previously unexamined internal tobacco industry documents, made available in 1998 as the result of a legal settlement, reveals that the industry was aware of cigarette radioactivity some five years earlier than previously thought and that tobacco companies, concerned about the potential lung cancer risk, began in-depth investigations into the possible effects of radioactivity on smokers as early as the 1960s.

What's Behind the Scorn for the Wall Street Protests?

by Glenn Greenwald

It's unsurprising that establishment media outlets have been condescending, dismissive and scornful of the ongoing protests on Wall Street.  Any entity that declares itself an adversary of prevailing institutional power is going to be viewed with hostility by establishment-serving institutions and their loyalists.  That's just the nature of protests that take place outside approved channels, an inevitable by-product of disruptive dissent: those who are most vested in safeguarding and legitimizing establishment prerogatives (which, by definition, includes establishment media outlets) are going to be hostile to those challenges.  As the virtually universal disdain in these same circles for WikiLeaks (and, before that, for the Iraq War protests) demonstrated: the more effectively adversarial it is, the more establishment hostility it's going to provoke.

Jon Stewart to GOP base: Your candidates aren’t the problem — it’s you

By David Edwards


Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart offered a little advice to a Republican base that first preferred Rep. Michele Bachmann and then Texas Gov. Rick Perry and now wants New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to be the party’s presidential nominee.

“You want to add another candidate?” Stewart asked the GOP base. “It’s like the Republican primary is a season of American Idol in reverse, where every week you just add some new idiot… Have you ever considered the possibility that your candidates aren’t the problem — it’s you?”

Why Don't the Deficit Hawks Want to Tax Wall Street?

Monday 26 September 2011

by: Dean Baker, Truthout | News Analysis 

 

The intensity with which the country's leading deficit hawks continue to ignore financial speculation taxes (FST) is getting ever more entertaining. While deficit hawks like Wall Street investment banker Peter Peterson, Morgan Stanley Director Erskine Bowles and The Washington Post never tire of preaching the virtues of shared sacrifice, somehow sacrifice for Wall Street never features as a part of this story.

"Job Creators": Luntz Strikes Again

by Alan Grayson

If you have been hearing the term “job creators” a lot lately, it’s because Frank Luntz wanted you to.

As PBS put it, Luntz’s expertise is “testing language and finding words that will help his clients sell their products, or turn public opinion on an issue or a candidate.”  In other words, propaganda.

Republicans Cheer Murders of Colombian Labor Leaders

Tuesday 27 September 2011

by: Dave Johnson, Campaign for America's Future | Report 

 

Hundreds of executions in Texas -- Republican crowd cheers.

An uninsured person in a coma -- Republican crowd shouts "Let him die!"

And now, labor leaders murdered in Colombia -- Republicans say "A good start..."

Obama Plan Prevents 2012 Recession: Economists

By Timothy R. Homan - Sep 28, 2011 12:00 AM ET 

President Barack Obama’s $447 billion jobs plan would help avoid a return to recession by maintaining growth and pushing down the unemployment rate next year, according to economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.

The legislation, submitted to Congress this month, would increase gross domestic product by 0.6 percent next year and add or keep 275,000 workers on payrolls, the median estimates in the survey of 34 economists showed. The program would also lower the jobless rate by 0.2 percentage point in 2012, economists said.

Study: China Trade Did More Damage To US Economy Than Anyone Knew

By Susie Madrak

Workers have said all along that U.S. trade policies were killing American jobs, and now the research is finally catching up to them. Maybe we'll be smart enough to drop the three Bush trade agreements Obama is currently trying to push:

For years, economists have told Americans worried that cheap Chinese imports will kill jobs that the benefits of trade with China far outweigh its costs.

But new research suggests the damage to the U.S. has been deeper than these economists have supposed. The study, conducted by a team of three economists, doesn't challenge the traditional view that trade is ultimately good for the economy. Workers who lose jobs do eventually find new work or retire, while the benefits from trade, such as lower prices, remain. The problem is the speed at which China has surged as an exporter—overwhelming the normal process of adaptation.

Classism and Stigma in Florida Law: Welfare Applicants Use Drugs Less Than Other Groups

By Kristen Gwynne, AlterNet
Posted on September 27, 2011, Printed on September 28, 2011

Florida is the first state to enact a law requiring welfare applicants to take drug tests, and several other states have expressed interest in the alleged money-saving technique as well.  The policy is simple: Welfare applicants take drug tests and those who fail are denied.  Then, they must wait another year until they can re-apply and be drug tested again. Assuming a significant number of people on welfare use drugs, legislators designed the law to save state money recipients would spend on drugs.  The problem is that preliminary studies do not show that high numbers of welfare applicants use drugs.  In fact, welfare applicants use drugs at rates lower than the general population.

How To Learn the Language of Evil

Alan Wolfe's Political Evil offers lessons liberals especially need.

By Michael Ignatieff
Posted Monday, Sept. 26, 2011, at 4:19 AM ET

Evil is a moral problem for everyone, difficult to acknowledge in ourselves, hard to understand in others, and difficult to defeat without committing lesser evils. Liberals—I count myself as one—have a special problem with evil, connected to our particular form of self-regard. Liberals like to believe we are tolerant, but evil, by definition, cannot be tolerated. We believe that politics ought to be deliberative, but we can't deliberate with evil. We think compromise can be honorable, but there are no honorable compromises with evil. We think politics ought to be governed by reason, but evildoers, while they may reason, are not reasonable. 

In Praise of Extremism

What good did bipartisanship ever do anybody?

• By Frank Rich
• Published Sep 25, 2011

 The election is still thirteen months away, but in certain coastal circles, the quadrennial wailing has erupted right on schedule: “If that man gets in the White House, I’m moving out of the country!” This time that man is Rick Perry, who might have been computer-generated to check every box in a shrill liberal fund-raising letter: a gun-toting, ­Bible-thumping, anti-government death-penalty absolutist from Texas. And this time the liberals’ panic is not entirely over-the-top. Perry isn’t a novelty nut job like Michele Bachmann. He’s the real deal. It’s not implausible he could win his party’s nomination and prevail in enough swing-state nail-biters to take the presidency. He could do so because the times and the politician are in alignment. A desperate and angry country is facing the specter of a double-dip recession with zero prospects of relief from a defunct Washington. Perry is the only viable declared candidate—as measured by organizing savvy, fund-raising prowess, poll numbers, and take-no-prisoners gubernatorial résumé—hawking an unambiguous alternative to the failed status quo.

Paul Krugman: Euro Zone Death Trip

Is it possible to be both terrified and bored? That’s how I feel about the negotiations now under way over how to respond to Europe’s economic crisis, and I suspect other observers share the sentiment.

On one side, Europe’s situation is really, really scary: with countries that account for a third of the euro area’s economy now under speculative attack, the single currency’s very existence is being threatened — and a euro collapse could inflict vast damage on the world.

On the other side, European policy makers seem set to deliver more of the same. They’ll probably find a way to provide more credit to countries in trouble, which may or may not stave off imminent disaster. But they don’t seem at all ready to acknowledge a crucial fact — namely, that without more expansionary fiscal and monetary policies in Europe’s stronger economies, all of their rescue attempts will fail.

Fundamental Political and Economic Mistakes are Speeding Up America's Decline

By Pepe Escobar, Tomdispatch.com
Posted on September 25, 2011, Printed on September 26, 2011

More than 10 years ago, before 9/11, Goldman Sachs was predicting that the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) would make the world economy’s top ten -- but not until 2040.  Skip a decade and the Chinese economy already has the number two spot all to itself, Brazil is number seven, India 10, and even Russia is creeping closer. In purchasing power parity, or PPP, things look even better.  There, China is in second place, India is now fourth, Russia sixth, and Brazil seventh.

No wonder Jim O’Neill, who coined the neologism BRIC and is now chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, has been stressing that “the world is no longer dependent on the leadership of the U.S. and Europe.”  After all, since 2007, China’s economy has grown by 45%, the American economy by less than 1% -- figures startling enough to make anyone take back their predictions. American anxiety and puzzlement reached new heights when the latest International Monetary Fund projections indicated that, at least by certain measurements, the Chinese economy would overtake the U.S. by 2016.  (Until recently, Goldman Sachs was pointing towards 2050 for that first-place exchange.)

6 Ways the Rich Are Waging a Class War Against the American People

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on September 25, 2011, Printed on September 26, 2011

There hasn't been any organized, explicitly class-based violence in this country for generations, so what, exactly, does “class warfare” really mean? Is it just an empty political catch-phrase?

The American Right has decided that returning the tax rate paid by the wealthiest Americans from what it was during the Bush years (which, incidentally, featured the slowest job growth under any president in our history, at 0.45 percent per year) to what they forked over during the Clinton years (when job growth happened to average 1.6 percent per year) is the epitome of class warfare. Sure, it would leave top earners with a tax rate 10 percentage points below what they were paying after Ronald Reagan's tax cuts, but that's the conservative definition of "eating the rich" these days.

The Guardian's Phone Hacking Page

All the latest on the phone hacking scandal.

Is the "Special Relationship" Becoming Too Expensive?

Saturday 24 September 2011

by: Jamie Stern-Weiner, New Left Project | Op-Ed 

 

The wave of popular uprisings across the Middle East created many new spaces for popular political participation. Even where those new spaces are now coming under counterrevolutionary attack, as in Egypt, many Arab governments have had to modify their policies to better reflect the views of an increasingly assertive public.

From the beginning it was clear that this shift would come at the expense of  “the US-Israeli-Saudi system” in the region. The militant assertion of popular will in Egypt, Bahrain, Jordan, Tunisia, and elsewhere has made it much more difficult for Arab regimes to collaborate with Israel and the U.S., the latter not least because of its role in supporting the former. Israel’s two most important allies in the region have both been forced to take steps against it in an attempt to accommodate public opinion. In Egypt, the not-so-new regime is still very much in bed with both the U.S. and Israel, and continues to value both American aid and security cooperation with its neighbour. But the revolution did make a difference, and the government is having to take public opinion into account to a much greater extent than before.