New report cites disproportionate punishment for black students

By Susan Ferriss
7:30 am, October 6, 2011 Updated: 7:30 am, October 6, 2011

In a troubling pattern mirrored elsewhere, black students in North Carolina schools were found to be subjected to far harsher discipline than other students for the same types of minor infractions, according to a report released Tuesday by the National Education Policy Center, a non-partisan research center that sponsors peer-reviewed research.   

For the first-time offense of cell phone use  at school, 32 percent of black students in North Carolina were given out-of-school suspension, school data collected in 2010 showed, while less than 15 percent of white students received that same punishment for the same offense. For a first-time offense of public display of affection, according to the report, almost 43 percent of the accused black students in North Carolina were given out-of-school suspension,  compared to about 15 percent of white students.

Matt Taibbi: Break Up the 'Too-Big-to-Fail' Financial Behemoths that Destroyed the Economy

By Matt Taibbi and Keith Olbermann, Current.com
Posted on October 14, 2011, Printed on October 15, 2011

Editor's note: This week, finance industry journalist Matt Taibbi put together a list of five political demands Occupy Wall St. protestors could agitate for. First on his list was the breakup of the "too-big-to-fail" financial institutions holding the global economy hostage. In the following transcript from "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," Taibbi elaborates on how to break up the financial behemoths that sunk the economy.

Taibbi: First of all, nobody asked my advice on any of this and they're doing great without the advice of people like me. But ...

Olbermann: It's a democracy, everybody has a voice, take your platform.

Taibbi: Everybody has a voice. But there are a lot of people who have been following this whole issue of Wall Street corruption for years. There's a small community of those people and we've been talking amongst each other for the past few weeks -- trying to think about, what would the demands be? What would a good demand be if it came time to make one?

And the one thing everybody can agree on is that you have to break up the too-big-to-fail companies. You gotta go in and get rid of those companies because they're above the law and above the market. They have the implicit support of the United States government, which is a disastrous, deadly situation for everybody.

Dean Baker on How We Can Make the 'Free Market' Work for the 99%

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on October 13, 2011, Printed on October 15, 2011

In the post-War era, as a large American middle class emerged, the top 1 percent of households took in 10.02 percent of the nation's pre-tax income. In only eight of the years between 1946 and 1980 did they grab 11 percent or more, and only in one year -- 1946 -- did they consume more than 13 percent of the pie.

After Ronald Reagan arrived on the scene, things began to change. In his final year in office, those in the top 1 percent grabbed 15.5 percent of our pre-tax income.  And in the 10 years before the Great Recession hit, households at the top of the pile grabbed 20.3 percent -- twice as large a share as they'd enjoyed when the "Greatest Generation" were making their mark on the world.

So the reality is that the "other 99 percent" have been sharing an ever smaller piece of our economic output. Was this shift an accident? Did the wealthy get smarter or start working harder? Was it an act of God?

Paul Krugman: Has Ireland’s Suffering Paid Off? Not Likely

Ireland triumphs! Or maybe not.

There’s a visible push to claim that Ireland’s recent experience — somewhat better-than-expected growth in the second quarter and a rise in exports — vindicates austerity policies. There was even a new article in The Financial Times recently on export growth in Ireland, trumpeting a rise in pharmaceutical exports.

World Class Warfare

Why almost every continent on Earth is experiencing social and political turmoil.

By Nouriel Roubini  |  Posted Thursday, Oct. 13, 2011, at 3:28 PM ET

Social and political instability has gone global. This year alone, masses of people have poured into the real and virtual streets: the Arab Spring; riots in London; Israel’s middle-class protests against high housing prices and an inflationary squeeze on living standards; protesting Chilean students; the destruction in Germany of the expensive cars of “fat cats”; India’s movement against corruption; mounting unhappiness with corruption and inequality in China; and now the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York and across the United States.

Paul Krugman: Rabbit-Hole Economics

Reading the transcript of Tuesday’s Republican debate on the economy is, for anyone who has actually been following economic events these past few years, like falling down a rabbit hole. Suddenly, you find yourself in a fantasy world where nothing looks or behaves the way it does in real life.

And since economic policy has to deal with the world we live in, not the fantasy world of the G.O.P.’s imagination, the prospect that one of these people may well be our next president is, frankly, terrifying. 

Occupy Wall Street Has Already Won

How the movement has already shaken up American politics, and where it should go from here.

By Eliot Spitzer  |  Posted Thursday, Oct. 13, 2011, at 12:44 PM ET

Occupy Wall Street has already won, perhaps not the victory most of its participants want, but a momentous victory nonetheless. It has already altered our political debate, changed the agenda, shifted the discussion in newspapers, on cable TV, and even around the water cooler. And that is wonderful.

Suddenly, the issues of equity, fairness, justice, income distribution, and accountability for the economic cataclysm–issues all but ignored for a generation—are front and center. We have moved beyond the one-dimensional conversation about how much and where to cut the deficit. Questions more central to the social fabric of our nation have returned to the heart of the political debate. By forcing this new discussion, OWS has made most of the other participants in our politics—who either didn’t want to have this conversation or weren’t able to make it happen—look pretty small.

Breaking His Promise To Create 700K Jobs, Gov. Rick Scott Now Says ‘I Don’t Have To Create Any Jobs’

By Marie Diamond on Oct 14, 2011 at 11:40 am

Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL) campaigned on a promise to create jobs in Florida — his campaign mantras were even “Let’s get to work!” and “jobs, jobs, jobs.” However, recently he’s backed off his earlier pledge to create 700,000 jobs in addition to the 1 million jobs Florida is expected to generate as part of the state’s natural growth, absurdly claiming “I don’t know who said that.”

CHART OF THE DAY: These Are The 47 Percent

Brian Beutler | October 14, 2011, 5:45AM

If the left and the right are proxies in a class war, then they're currently fighting to win a battle of public perception. Each side wants the public to see them as on the side of the beleaguered many against the powerful few.

Democrats are vying for victory by supporting tax increases on millionaires and the "Buffett Rule," which posits that all millionaires should pay at least the same effective tax rates as the middle class. The Occupy Wall Street protesters have turned "We Are The 99 Percent" into a rallying cry.

Mitt Romney Is a Consultant to Believe In

By Michael Kinsley - Oct 13, 2011

 

How great a leader can you be if you go on and on about what a great leader you are?

In Tuesday’s Bloomberg-Washington Post Republican presidential debate, Mitt Romney crowned himself a leader -- “a leader with the experience of leading” -- again and again, without doing much to demonstrate it, such as taking a courageous -- that is, unpopular -- stand on something. Anything.

He also said, obnoxiously, that in deciding whom to vote for, people “are not going to be looking for someone who is not successful.” For Romney, the presidency is just the last rung on a long ladder of success. Not reaching it the last time hit him hard; he had never missed a step before.

Paul Krugman: When Industry Pollutes, We All Pay a Steep Price

Economics professors Nicholas Z. Muller, Robert Mendelsohn and William Nordhaus have a new paper in the latest edition of the American Economic Review that should be a major factor in how we discuss economic ideology. It won’t, of course, but let me lay out the case anyway.

In their paper, “Environmental Accounting for Pollution in the United States Economy,” what Muller, Mendelsohn and Nordhaus do is estimate the cost imposed on society by air pollution, and allocate it across industries. The costs being calculated, by the way, don’t include the long-run threat of climate change; they’re focused on measurable impacts of pollution on health and productivity, with the most important effects involving how pollutants — especially small particulates — affect human health, and use standard valuations on mortality and morbidity to turn these into dollars.

New study finds 400,000 farmers in southern Africa using 'fertilizer trees' to improve food security

As World Food Day puts focus on food crises, research shows potential for rapid, radical transformation on smallholder farms

NAIROBI, KENYA -- On a continent battered by weather extremes, famine and record food prices, new research released today from the World Agroforestry Centre documents an exciting new trend in which hundreds of thousands of poor farmers in Southern Africa are now significantly boosting yields and incomes simply by using fast growing trees and shrubs to naturally fertilize their fields. 

The analysis of two decades of work to bring the soil-enriching benefits of so-called "fertilizer trees" to the nutrient-depleted farms of Africa was published in the most recent issue of the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability. 

"In only five African countries, there are now some 400,000 smallholder farmers using fertilizer trees to provide critically needed soil nutrients -- and many report major increases in maize yields -- which shows that it is possible to rapidly introduce innovations in Africa that can have an immediate impact on food security," said Oluyede Ajayi, Senior Scientist at the World Agroforestry Centre and the paper's lead author.

Ways To Create Good Jobs For A Stronger Economy

By Sean McMartin

October 13, 2011 - 4:10pm ET 

On the same day that conservatives in the Senate blocked action on a bill that would create 2 million new jobs, progressives and business leaders were in the nearby Russell Senate Office Building discussing what it takes to create good jobs.

The Good Jobs For A Stronger Economy Conference on Tuesday brought together business and organization leaders, along with their ideas for creating better-paying jobs with benefits in the United States and for rebuilding the middle class.

Obama and GOP plans are inadequate to scale of ‘Lesser Depression,’ report says

By Zachary Roth | The Lookout –  Wed, Oct 12, 2011

The American economy isn't just going through a weak patch--it's mired in a "Lesser Depression" that poses a challenge more daunting than at any since the crisis of the 1930s, according to a major new study released Wednesday.

The provisions in President Obama's jobs plan are no more likely to be effective at producing a lasting recovery than were the bank bailouts and various stimulus efforts that came before, write Daniel Alpert, Robert Hockettt, and Nouriel Roubini in the New America Foundation report, "The Way Forward: Moving from the Post-Bubble, Post-Bust Economy to Renewed Growth and Competitiveness." The dire economic situation, they argue, demands far more urgent and aggressive action.

"Marriage Market" Theories Leave Love Out of the Equation

By Amanda Marcotte  |  Posted Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2011, at 2:05 PM ET

This piece about the shifts in marriage and dating patterns by Kate Bolick at the Atlantic has some interesting ideas in it, but she makes you pay for these ideas by only bringing them up after forcing you to swim through a sea of unquestioned assumptions and straight up fallacies: that evolutionary psychology is a real science instead of 21st century phrenology, that 40-year-old men are uniformly disinterested in dating women their own age, that singleness is mainly a product of women wanting men more successful than themselves, that the whole nation looks like New York City's notoriously brutal dating marketplace, that there's a meaningful difference between a woman who terminates a long-standing cohabitation and a divorcée, and that Susan Walsh should be treated like an expert in dating when she's better described as a charlatan whose only credential for giving advice is her shockingly sadistic misogyny (and who likes to diagnose feminists from afar as mentally ill because they question her immoveable belief that dating is really a war between men and women in which each tries to extract what they want from the other with as minimal contribution of love or sex as possible, depending on the gender stereotype). Even the interesting idea at the end of her piece, which is that women deal with the scarcity of decent men that are marriageable by shoring up their relationships to each other, feels weak and mealy-mouthed. It made me long for some saber-rattling radical lesbian separatism that, while not my cup of tea personally speaking, at least has conviction.

Pentagon's accounting shambles may cost an additional $1 billion

DOD had pledged clean books by 2017, but Panetta wants deadline moved up three years

By R. Jeffrey Smith

UPDATED: 5:20 pm ET 10/13/2011

The Pentagon, which previously warned that reliable military spending figures could not be produced until 2017, has discovered that financial ledgers are in worse shape than expected and it may need to spend a billion dollars more to make DOD’s financial accounting credible, according to defense officials and congressional sources.

Experts say the Pentagon’s accounting has never been reliable. A lengthy effort by the military services to implement new financial systems at a cost so far of more than $6 billion has itself been plagued by overruns and delays, senior defense officials say. The Government Accountability Office said in a report last month that although the services can now fully track incoming appropriations, they still cannot demonstrate their funds are being spent as they should.

What the New Deal Accomplished

651,000 miles of highway. 8,000 parks. The Triborough Bridge. Do conservatives who attack the New Deal actually know what America gained from it?

By Michael Hiltzik  |  Posted Thursday, Oct. 13, 2011, at 10:34 AM ET

During the years of the New Deal, America’s government built as it never had before—or has since.

The New Deal physically reshaped the country. To this day, Americans still rely on its works for transportation, electricity, flood control, housing, and community amenities. The output of one agency alone, the Works Progress Administration, represents a magnificent bequest to later generations. The WPA produced, among many other projects, 1,000 miles of new and rebuilt airport runways, 651,000 miles of highway, 124,000 bridges, 8,000 parks, and 18,000 playgrounds and athletic fields; some 84,000 miles of drainage pipes, 69,000 highway light standards, and 125,000 public buildings built, rebuilt, or expanded. Among the latter were 41,300 schools.

Wall Street Journal circulation scam claims senior Murdoch executive

Andrew Langhoff resigns as European publishing chief after exposure of secret channels of cash to help boost sales figures

Nick Davies
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 12 October 2011 12.27 EDT 
 
One of Rupert Murdoch's most senior European executives has resigned following Guardian inquiries about a circulation scam at News Corporation's flagship newspaper, the Wall Street Journal.
The Guardi
an found evidence that the Journal had been channelling money through European companies in order to secretly buy thousands of copies of its own paper at a knock-down rate, misleading readers and advertisers about the Journal's true circulation.

The bizarre scheme included a formal, written contract in which the Journal persuaded one company to co-operate by agreeing to publish articles that promoted its activities, a move which led some staff to accuse the paper's management of violating journalistic ethics and jeopardising its treasured reputation for editorial quality.

A Taxing Situation: Why The GOP Is Advocating A Tax Increase On The Middle Class

Benjy Sarlin October 13, 2011, 5:52 AM

You can almost always count on Republican presidential candidates to be united in their opposition to more taxes for the rich. But this time around, the 2012 field is standing lockstep behind a less traditional idea: the middle class pays too little in taxes.

Thanks to a strange convergence of conservative ideological trends since President Obama’s election, Republicans now are expected to protest the entire bottom half of taxpayers’ contributions as too stingy even while they proclaim Americans are “Taxed Enough Already.” And they’ve yet to figure out a policy that will satisfy both complaints at once.

Cain's 9-9-9 plan: Good for the rich, bad for the poor

By Steven Thomma | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain's proposed 9-9-9 tax plan would shift the tax burden in the United States, raising taxes on the poor while cutting taxes for the wealthy.

Cain proposes to scrap the current tax code and replace it with a flat 9 percent tax on personal income, a second 9 percent tax on corporate income, and a third 9 percent tax on sales. It also would eliminate the payroll tax paid for Medicare and Social Security, the estate tax, and capital gains taxes.

The Seven Biggest Economic Lies

by Robert Reich

 

The President’s Jobs Bill doesn’t have a chance in Congress — and the Occupiers on Wall Street and elsewhere can’t become a national movement for a more equitable society – unless more Americans know the truth about the economy.

Here’s a short (2 minute 30 second) effort to rebut the seven biggest whoppers now being told by those who want to take America backwards.

Gov. Rick Scott’s daughter was an anthropology major

Earlier this week, Gov. Rick Scott of Florida singled out the field of anthropology as one that should receive less state funding because he thinks it doesn't help "create jobs" or spur the economy.

"You know, we don't need a lot more anthropologists in the state," Scott said in a radio interview. "It's a great degree if people want to get it, but we don't need them here."

Can Tax Cuts Pay for Themselves?

By SIMON JOHNSON

Can tax cuts “pay for themselves,” inducing so much additional economic growth that government revenue actually increases, rather than decreases? The evidence clearly says no.

Nevertheless, a version of this idea, under the guise of “dynamic scoring,” has apparently surfaced in the supercommittee charged with deficit reduction — the joint Congressional committee with 12 members. Dynamic scoring sounds technical or perhaps even scientific, but here the argument means simply that any pro-growth effect of tax cuts should be stressed when assessing potential policy changes (e.g., reforming the tax code). For anyone seriously concerned with fiscal responsibility, this is a dangerous notion.

Air Force Academy Cadets Decide They Must Pretend To Be Fundamentalist Christians

A little over a year ago, a cadet at the Air Force Academy emailed the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) to tell us about an “underground” group of about a hundred Academy cadets who, in order to maintain good standing among their peers and superiors at the Academy, were actually pretending to be fundamentalist Christians. Their charade included leaving Bibles, Christian literature, and Christian music CDs laying around their rooms; attending fundamentalist Christian Bible studies; and feigning devoutness at the Academy’s weekly “Special Programs in Religious Education” (SPIRE) programs. This group of cadets had decided to resort to doing whatever they had to do to play the role of the “right kind” of Christian cadets, all the while living in constant fear of being “outed.”

The Guys in the 1% Brought This On | Barbara Ehrenreich

By Barbara Ehrenreich, October 12, 2011

At the risk of being pedantic, let me point out that “99% versus 1%” is not a class analysis, not in any respectable sociological sense. Shave off the top 1% and you’re still left with some awfully steep divides of wealth, income and opportunity. The 99% includes the ordinary rich, for example, who may lack private jets but do have swimming pools and second homes. It also includes the immigrant workers who mow their lawns and clean their houses for them. This is not a class. It’s just the default category left after you subtract the billionaires.

99 Percenters, Meet the 53 Percenters

In response to Occupy Wall Street, some conservatives are blasting the 47 percent of Americans who don’t pay federal taxes. Do they have a point?

By Annie Lowrey  |  Posted Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2011, at 6:45 PM ET

The slogan doesn’t exactly sing: “We are the 53 percent!” But this new campaign, a conservative answer to Occupy Wall Street, has some verve. The 53 Percenters are responding to We Are the 99 Percent, an inequality-focused online Tumblr designed to shame—or at least call out—the top 1 percent of earners who are taking bigger and bigger pieces of the pie.

The 53 percent say everyone should stop moaning, quit pointing fingers at Wall Street, and pay their damn taxes. (The name refers to the fact that only 53 percent of households pay federal income tax these days.) The brainchild of Erick Erickson of RedState.org, the 53 Tumblr features comments like: “I don’t blame Wall Street. Suck it up you whiners. I am the 53 percent subsidizing you so you can hang out on Wall Street and complain.” (That’s from Erickson’s inaugural post, by the way.)

Tennessee sponsor of guns-in-bars bill arrested for DUI with gun

A Tennessee lawmaker who sponsored a controversial bill to allow handguns to be carried in bars was arrested Tuesday for driving under the influence and possessing a handgun while under the influence.

Madrick, Dean Win Big Defending Social Security and Medicare

Monday, 10/10/2011 - 1:57 pm by Tim Price

We’ve all heard it before, repeated ad nauseam by conservative critics of Social Security and Medicare: “Grandma’s benefits imperil junior’s future.” That’s the claim Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow Jeff Madrick and former DNC chairman Howard Dean sought to debunk at last week’s Intelligence Squared debate. Arguing for the motion were Fox News commentator Margaret Hoover and media mogul Mort Zuckerman. So how did the progressives fair? Before the debate, the audience was split 33/32 in favor of the motion, with 35 percent undecided. By the time Madrick and Dean were finished, they’d swayed 56 percent of the crowd to their side.

Kenneth Dahlberg’s role in Watergate

SHOWCASE | October 11, 2011
 
Dahlberg died Oct. 4th at age 94; his name will be prominent as long as people follow the Watergate story. Here Barry Sussman, who was the Washington Post’s Watergate editor, explains why.

By Barry Sussman
bsussman@niemanwatchdog.org

Obituaries of Kenneth Dahlberg, who died at age 94 on Oct. 4th, pointed out that he unwittingly played a key role in the unraveling of Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal coverup. That’s an understatement. The “Dahlberg check” story was the single most important contribution the Washington Post made in its two years of Watergate coverage.

For reporters and editors, the Dahlberg story is still relevant; it shows that good reporting by a small group, at not much expense, can change the course of events. For Watergate junkies – and there still are some – the Dahlberg check details will forever be juicy.

How the Top One Percent Ripped Off the Bottom 99 Percent

Tuesday, 10/11/2011 - 12:18 pm by Jon Rynn

As the financial sector sucks up more and more money, the rest of us are left making less and less.

Occupy Wall Street has put a spotlight on the vast and growing economic inequality in the United States. It now takes its place as a top progressive priority — perhaps the highest priority it has experienced since the Great Depression.

Underlying this greater and greater inequality is a shift of wealth from manufacturing to the top 1 percent and the financial sector. Over the past 40 years, the sectors of the economy that grew in output share grew very little in employment share — making more money but paying it to a small group of people. The sectors of the economy that grew in employment share did not grow in output share, meaning that a growing number of workers had to share in a smaller pot of profits. From 1969 to 2007, the richest 1 percent has grabbed 15 percent more of the income of the United States, to a total of about 24 percent. Meanwhile, the manufacturing sector has lost a similar 15 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). This has led to a downward shift in income for the bottom 99 percent.

Gingrich’s Radical Plan to Weaken the Judiciary

At this weekend’s Values Voter Summit, and again on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, former House speaker and presidential candidate Newt Gingrich stated that as president, he would urge Congress to subpoena federal judges whose decisions he disagreed with and even ignore Supreme Court rulings that he believes are wrong.

New Free Trade Agreements Threaten to Kill Jobs and Labor Rights

Tuesday 11 October 2011

by: David Bacon, Truthout | News Analysis 

 

Last week, President Obama broke his campaign commitment and put three free trade agreements up for a vote in Congress. Business interests, ecstatic at the prospect, promise they'll bring us jobs. Experience tells us, however, their promises are worthless.

My Advice to the Occupy Wall Street Protesters

Hit bankers where it hurts

By Matt Taibbi

October 12, 2011 8:00 AM ET

I've been down to "Occupy Wall Street" twice now, and I love it. The protests building at Liberty Square and spreading over Lower Manhattan are a great thing, the logical answer to the Tea Party and a long-overdue middle finger to the financial elite. The protesters picked the right target and, through their refusal to disband after just one day, the right tactic, showing the public at large that the movement against Wall Street has stamina, resolve and growing popular appeal.

But... there's a but. And for me this is a deeply personal thing, because this issue of how to combat Wall Street corruption has consumed my life for years now, and it's hard for me not to see where Occupy Wall Street could be better and more dangerous. I'm guessing, for instance, that the banks were secretly thrilled in the early going of the protests, sure they'd won round one of the messaging war.

4 Things You Need to Know About the Iran Bomb Plot

—By Adam Serwer | Wed Oct. 12, 2011 3:00 AM PDT

The assassination was never going to take place. On Tuesday, FBI Director Robert Mueller described Iranian American Mansour Arbabsiar's alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to the United States as straight out of a "Hollywood script." In a sense he was right—because the plot was controlled from the beginning by the FBI. According to the criminal complaint, when Arbabsiar traveled to Mexico in May 2011, to allegedly find an assassin from the ranks of Mexican drug cartels, he ended up talking to a paid DEA* informant who dodged drug charges in exchange for cooperating with authorities. In keeping with previous sting cases, the FBI was careful to record statements from Arbabsiar dismissing the possibility of numerous civilian casualties, something that makes an entrapment defense all but impossible to mount.

Herman Cain's Enron-esque Disaster

The story the GOP presidential candidate won't tell you about his years in corporate America.

—By Andy Kroll

Mon May. 23, 2011 3:00 AM PDT

What GOP presidential contender Herman Cain lacks in political experience, he likes to say, he makes up for with decades' worth of success in corporate America. He climbed the corporate ladder at the Pillsbury Company, chaired the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, and rescued the failing Godfather's Pizza franchise. That business-centric message has won Cain his share of admirers: a focus group convened after a recent Fox News presidential debate overwhelmingly declared Cain the winner.

"I think that over 40 years of business experience is resonating a lot more with people than simply having political experience," he said on a recent Iowa visit. "Knowing how Washington works isn't necessarily an advantage. As a businessman going in, I don’t want to know how Washington works. I want to change Washington D.C. and so by not knowing how it is supposed to work I can ask tough questions that will help change the culture."

Paul Krugman: Intellectual Styles Of The Rich And Clueless

Oh, my. Jeff Immelt, who President Obama for some reason appointed to head his job creation panel, insists that what’s good for GE is good for America:

I want you to root for me. Look, every one in Germany roots for Siemens, everyone in Japan roots for Toshiba, everyone in China roots for China South Rail, I want you to say, win GE.

I think this notion that it’s the population of the US against big companies is just wrong.

When Being Rich Makes Us Poor, People Should Occupy Wall Street

Posted: 10/10/11 05:35 PM ET

The Very Serious People in Washington are busy trying to find creative ways to cut Social Security and Medicare and take other benefits from middle-class and moderate-income families. The refrain here is that we just can't afford this level of generosity any more.

There are two parts of this story that should drive the rest of us crazy. And it is difficult to determine which one is the more infuriating.

The first is that we know that many people in this country are fabulously rich. And as Elizabeth Warren beautifully reminded us, none of them did it on their own. But Professor Warren is actually far too generous in her account.

Why Small Businesses Aren't Innovative

Everyone says small businesses are dynamic, market-shaking, job creators. But new evidence suggests that's not true.

By Annie Lowrey| 

Posted Monday, Sept. 19, 2011, at 7:15 AM ET

 A year ago, President Barack Obama approved the Small Business Jobs Act, which cut taxes and expanded loan programs for tens of thousands of small companies. Signing the bill into law, he gave a speech that could have come out of the mouth of any Washington politician: lauding the country's "entrepreneurs," the "basement inventor[s]" designing revolutionary new products and creating most of the country's new jobs.

Paul Krugman: If Banks Are Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Have Banks

Yglesias tells us that some Occupy Wall Street protesters have picked up Ron Paulish monetary ideas — although some know better. I thought I’d say a word about one particular idea that sounds plausible to some people but is actually quite wrong: banning fractional reserve banking.

I know that’s a popular theme among some Austrians. But it’s actually neither a good idea nor even feasible.

Iceland: From Crisis to Constitution

Yves here. I’m intrigued by the way Iceland’s post crisis experience does not get the coverage it warrants. This is a country whose banking system collapsed and its citizens suffered months of real privation (I dimly recall that it was difficult to import medicine, for instance, because no finance more or less means no trade). Yet after a period of serious dislocation, things somehow got sorted out, and with a cleaned up financial system and a much cheaper currency, the Icelandic economy has rebounded nicely.

One aspect of this housecleaning was writing a new constitution. Its preamble calls for a just society, an idea which seems to be at the core of OccupyWallStreet’s demands: “We, the people of Iceland, wish to create a just society with equal opportunities for everyone.” I think readers will find both the process of developing and ratifying this document as well as its major provisions to be eye-opening. The model for the US Constitution was the Corsican constitution of 1755. Could this Icelandic document also have a disproportionate impact?

David Brooks: Bard of the 1 Percent

by Dean Baker

David Brooks delved deep into his storage locker of misinformation to tell readers that the idea of blaming the richest 1 Percent for the country's problems is just silly. He told us that the really big ideas aren't about reversing the upward redistribution of income from the top, they are from centrists who want to do things like cut our Social Security and make us pay more for health care. Let's have some fun with Mr. One Percent.

Lies, Lies and More Lies: How Anti-Choicers Are Using "Personhood" to Ban Birth Control

by Amanda Marcotte

What do you do when all the discourse around a topic is based around a scientific fallacy---or even an outright lie---but pointing that out distracts from the most pertinent issues of a specific debate? Most of the time, the right wing war on science is an easy one to figure out how to fight: conservatives tell lies about science, pro-science people fight back with the facts. There are drawbacks to this strategy, since it’s often a matter of pitching emotions vs. reason, but at least the path of fighting lies with facts is clear. It’s the strategy we use to fight back against claims that global warming isn’t real, that evolution didn’t happen, or that the HPV vaccine causes mental retardation. But when it comes to debating whether or not the birth control pill should be made illegal, the strategy of simply pointing out that the right is lying falls apart, and unfortunately for very understandable reasons.

The Myth of Voter Fraud

It has been a record year for new legislation designed to make it harder for Democrats to vote — 19 laws and two executive actions in 14 states dominated by Republicans, according to a new study by the Brennan Center for Justice. As a result, more than five million eligible voters will have a harder time participating in the 2012 election.

Of course the Republicans passing these laws never acknowledge their real purpose, which is to turn away from the polls people who are more likely to vote Democratic, particularly the young, the poor, the elderly and minorities. They insist that laws requiring government identification cards to vote are only to protect the sanctity of the ballot from unscrupulous voters. Cutting back on early voting, which has been popular among working people who often cannot afford to take off from their jobs on Election Day, will save money, they claim.

Journalists Funded By ‘Vulture Capitalist’ Paul Singer Campaign To Smear Wall Street Protests

By Lee Fang on Oct 10, 2011 at 10:30 am

The campaign to marginalize and destroy the growing 99 Percent Movement is in full swing, with many in the media attempting to smear the people participating in the “occupation” protests across the country. However, several of the so-called journalists deriding, and in some cases sabotaging the movement, have paychecks thanks to a billionaire whose business practices have been scorned as among the worst of the financial elite.

As the New York Times has documented, Paul Singer, a Republican activist and hedge fund manager worth over $900 million, has emerged as one of the most important power brokers within the GOP.

Why the Elites Are in Trouble

by Chris Hedges

Ketchup, a petite 22-year-old from Chicago with wavy red hair and glasses with bright red frames, arrived in Zuccotti Park in New York on Sept. 17. She had a tent, a rolling suitcase, 40 dollars’ worth of food, the graphic version of Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” and a sleeping bag. She had no return ticket, no idea what she was undertaking, and no acquaintances among the stragglers who joined her that afternoon to begin the Wall Street occupation. She decided to go to New York after reading the Canadian magazine Adbusters, which called for the occupation, although she noted that when she got to the park Adbusters had no discernable presence.

The lords of finance in the looming towers surrounding the park, who toy with money and lives, who make the political class, the press and the judiciary jump at their demands, who destroy the ecosystem for profit and drain the U.S. Treasury to gamble and speculate, took little notice of Ketchup or any of the other scruffy activists on the street below them. The elites consider everyone outside their sphere marginal or invisible. And what significance could an artist who paid her bills by working as a waitress have for the powerful? What could she and the others in Zuccotti Park do to them? What threat can the weak pose to the strong? Those who worship money believe their buckets of cash, like the $4.6 million JPMorgan Chase gave a few days ago to the New York City Police Foundation, can buy them perpetual power and security. Masters all, kneeling before the idols of the marketplace, blinded by their self-importance, impervious to human suffering, bloated from unchecked greed and privilege, they were about to be taught a lesson in the folly of hubris.

Paul Krugman: Panic of the Plutocrats

It remains to be seen whether the Occupy Wall Street protests will change America’s direction. Yet the protests have already elicited a remarkably hysterical reaction from Wall Street, the super-rich in general, and politicians and pundits who reliably serve the interests of the wealthiest hundredth of a percent.

And this reaction tells you something important — namely, that the extremists threatening American values are what F.D.R. called “economic royalists,” not the people camping in Zuccotti Park.

Paul Krugman: Was Failure Inevitable?

Ezra Klein has a generally reasonable analysis of the Obama administration’s failure to respond with sufficient force to the economic crisis. Broadly speaking, he’s saying that the eurovenn applied: an economically adequate response lay beyond the bounds of the politically feasible.

In general, I’m trying not to do too much looking back; the question is what to do now. Still, I guess this needs addressing.

One on One With Rep. Jan Schakowsky: "We Are Not Helpless!"

Sunday 9 October 2011

by: Alissa Bohling, Truthout | Interview 

Rep. Jan Schakowsky's (D-Illinois) $227 billion jobs bill was more or less dead on arrival in the Republican-controlled House. And while she's proud to say it left its mark on the president's American Jobs Act, that bill is stalled out in Congress. But in a wide-ranging interview last month, Schakowsky insisted that a jobs bill must pass. In a rhetorical landscape overrun with hyperbole, she claims that today's political battles really are "epic," and she remains ambitious on every front, from auditing the military to experiencing firsthand what it means to rely on food stamps. In this conversation with Truthout, Schakowsky envisions a not-so-distant future where food banks set up shop on Capitol Hill, foreclosed homeowners trade their sadness for anger like bankers trading credit default swaps, and the public comes forward "with their hair on fire that ordinary people deserve better."

5 New Rules for an Economy That Works

By David Morris, On the Commons
Posted on October 7, 2011, Printed on October 9, 2011

Jim Hightower likes to tell the story of the moving company in Austin whose slogan is, "If we can get it loose, we can get it moving." The thousands of people occupying Freedom Plaza in Washington and Zuccotti Park in New York, along with the tens of thousands others protesting around the country may have pried us loose from our cynicism and despair.

The 99% is growing stronger and larger. The next step is to move the country. Which requires us to decide where we want to go and how we want to get there. Which in turn requires us to agree on the new rules for a new economy.

Protesters Against Wall Street
As the Occupy Wall Street protests spread from Lower Manhattan to Washington and other cities, the chattering classes keep complaining that the marchers lack a clear message and specific policy prescriptions. The message — and the solutions — should be obvious to anyone who has been paying attention since the economy went into a recession that continues to sock the middle class while the rich have recovered and prospered. The problem is that no one in Washington has been listening.

At this point, protest is the message: income inequality is grinding down that middle class, increasing the ranks of the poor, and threatening to create a permanent underclass of able, willing but jobless people. On one level, the protesters, most of them young, are giving voice to a generation of lost opportunity.