Chart: Super Committee Dems, GOP Differ On Jobs

As noted previously, the deficit Super Committee is gridlocked largely because the GOP is unwilling to accept higher taxes on wealthy people as part of a compromise with Democrats that also cuts Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. But the parties also differ on the question of whether their recommendations should include any near term spending and/or tax cuts to give the weak economy a much-needed boost.

Recently committee Republicans and Democrats presented each other with competing plans — some details of which were leaked to the press. Aides note that the Dem plan contained about $300 billion in expansionary measures, while the GOP plan contained… well, see for yourself.

The Global 99 Percent


The Occupy Wall Street protesters are part of a worldwide movement against inequality.

By Joseph E. Stiglitz | Posted Friday, Nov. 4, 2011, at 3:35 PM ET

The protest movement that began in Tunisia in January, subsequently spreading to Egypt and then to Spain, has now engulfed Wall Street and cities across America. Globalization and modern technology now enable social movements to transcend borders as rapidly as ideas can. And social protest has found fertile ground everywhere: a sense that the “system” has failed, and the conviction that even in a democracy, the electoral process will not set things right—at least not without strong pressure from the street.

In May, I went to the site of the Tunisian protests. In July, I talked to Spain’s indignados. From there, I went to meet the young Egyptian revolutionaries in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. And last month I talked with Occupy Wall Street protesters in New York. There is a common theme, expressed by the OWS movement in a simple phrase: “We are the 99 percent.”

What Should Occupy Wall Street Do Now?

Three organizing ideas and five policy ideas that could make the protests even more successful.

By Eliot Spitzer | Posted Friday, Nov. 4, 2011, at 2:50 PM ET

This is the question frequently—and properly—asked of Occupy Wall Street and its fans. Those of us who have written and spoken vigorously in support of OWS and for its capacity, almost unparalleled in today’s political environment, to shift our political focus, have an obligation to contribute our answers to the question of what OWS should do. We should answer not because there is any reason for this organic movement—which has done just fine without advice from outsiders—to listen to any of the advice rendered, but because it will help those of us outside the movement clarify our own political ideas.

Debunking the Iran "Terror Plot"

by Gareth Porter

 

At a press conference on October 11, the Obama administration unveiled a spectacular charge against the government of Iran: The Qods Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had plotted to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Adel al-Jubeir, right in Washington, DC, in a place where large numbers of innocent bystanders could have been killed. High-level officials of the Qods Force were said to be involved, the only question being how far up in the Iranian government the complicity went.

The US tale of the Iranian plot was greeted with unusual skepticism on the part of Iran specialists and independent policy analysts, and even elements of the mainstream media. The critics observed that the alleged assassination scheme was not in Iran’s interest, and that it bore scant resemblance to past operations attributed to the foreign special operations branch of Iranian intelligence. The Qods Force, it was widely believed, would not send a person like Iranian-American used car dealer Manssor Arbabsiar, known to friends in Corpus Christi, Texas as forgetful and disorganized, to hire the hit squad for such a sensitive covert action.

New York Post declares war on Occupy Wall Street

Rupert Murdoch's tabloid runs three covers in a row attacking the movement
 
By Justin Elliott

From the beginning, Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post was never exactly friendly to the cause of Occupy Wall Street.

When the NYPD arrested hundreds on the Brooklyn Bridge in one of the watershed events of the young movement on Oct. 1, most of the media seized on the heavy-handed (and possible illegal) police tactics.

Raising Medicare Eligibility Age Erodes Social Security, New Study Shows

By Daniel Marans

November 3, 2011 - 6:09pm ET 

A proposal to increase the Medicare eligibility age, which the Super Committee is considering, would drive up health care costs to the point where they would consume almost half of the Social Security check of a middle-class retiree, according to a new analysis by Social Security Works.

In his testimony before the Super Committee yesterday, Erskine Bowles, a Morgan Stanley executive and co-chair of the President’s Fiscal Commission, recommended raising the Medicare eligibility age to 67 as a way to bridge the differences between Democrats and Republicans on the Super Committee.

Digby: Sacrifice Scam

Oh spare me:

To underscore the fact that GOP’s intransigence on taxes is the source of the gridlock, the committee’s Democratic co-chair confirmed that Democrats are willing to make the sort of deep cuts to entitlement programs Republicans are demanding — but only if Republicans abandon the pledge.

“It’s not enough for either side to simply say they want to reduce the deficit—now is the time when everyone needs to be putting some real skin in the game and offering serious compromises,” Murray said at the hearing, in her most pointed public comments to date. “Democrats have made clear we are prepared to do that. We’ve said we are very open to painful concessions and compromises if Republicans are as well—and we have put forward serious ideas that reflect this. But these concessions would only be made—and only considered—in the context of a balanced deal that doesn’t just fall on the middle class and most vulnerable Americans—but that requires big corporations and the wealthiest among us to share in the sacrifices.”

No, corporations and wealthy people will not be "sacrificing" anything. They won't even notice it. Corporations are nothing more than a legal construct so they don't have the capacity for "sacrifice."

Deadbeat Rep. Joe Walsh, Who Owes $100k In Child Support, Receives ‘Pro-Family’ Award From Family Research Council

By Lee Fang on Nov 4, 2011 at 10:20 am

In July, the press learned that Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL), a Tea Party freshman in Congress, owed $117,000 in unpaid child support to his ex-wife. Walsh, despite earning a hefty salary as a member of Congress, has continued to refuse to pay his ex-wife to support his children. Now, it appears, an influential Christian right lobbying group is lending some support to the deadbeat congressman.

The Sun-Times reports that the Family Research Council, a social conservative advocacy nonprofit headed by CNN pundit Tony Perkins, has awarded Walsh a 100 percent rating as a “True Blue” member of Congress.

Thomas Ferguson: How to Take Back Our Political System From the 1%

Ferguson outlines bold measures to stop the tsunami of money that threatens our democracy, starting with a Constitutional Amendment. 

 

November 3, 2011  |  The following has been adapted from a version of a speech delivered to Occupy Boston by Thomas Ferguson, the father of the "Investment Theory of Politics." 

 

I’m honored to speak to you today about money and politics, but it’s not the first time I’ve been here. This is actually the third time I’ve visited your encampment. The first couple of times I walked around and looked at the signs. Many were priceless; the best tutorials I’ve ever seen on the subject of money and politics. My favorite was the one that advised that Congressmen and women should emulate NASCAR drivers and show us their sponsors. Another styled contemporary capitalism “socialism for the 1%.” And many sharply attacked the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which helped throw open the floodgates to the tidal wave of secret money that is now engulfing American elections.

Raises and cuts in public sector salaries have a direct effect on the private sector

A joint study of the Bank of Spain and the Pablo de Olavide University (UPO) confirms that public salaries are clearly influential throughout the whole of Europe's economy. For the study, researchers chose a representative sample of four EU countries: Italy, Spain, Germany and France. According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the public sector employs an average of 20% of Europe's working population.

"The rises and cuts in the salaries of public sector workers put pressure on the private sector in the same financial year," states A. Jesús Sánchez Fuentes, co-author of the study by the Pablo de Olavide University and the Bank of Spain which is published in the Empirical Economics journal.

Paul Krugman: Oligarchy, American Style

Inequality is back in the news, largely thanks to Occupy Wall Street, but with an assist from the Congressional Budget Office. And you know what that means: It’s time to roll out the obfuscators!

Anyone who has tracked this issue over time knows what I mean. Whenever growing income disparities threaten to come into focus, a reliable set of defenders tries to bring back the blur. Think tanks put out reports claiming that inequality isn’t really rising, or that it doesn’t matter. Pundits try to put a more benign face on the phenomenon, claiming that it’s not really the wealthy few versus the rest, it’s the educated versus the less educated.

So what you need to know is that all of these claims are basically attempts to obscure the stark reality: We have a society in which money is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few people, and in which that concentration of income and wealth threatens to make us a democracy in name only.

A Hot Wet Thousand Years and 10 Green Energy Stories to Avert it

The bad news is that I’ve been reading David Archer’s The Long Thaw on climate change projections, and he thinks that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been way too conservative. As I understand him, his research shows that because of massive carbon emissions produced by human beings, by 2100 the average temperature of the earth’s surface will likely increase by 3 degrees C. But, he thinks that thereafter it will go on up another 2 degrees, for a total of 5 over the next few generations. The last time you had a climate 5 degree C. warmer than our prehistoric climate was the Eocene, 40 million years ago. All surface ice melted and the climate was tropical all the way to the poles.

We don’t actually know if there has ever been such a rapid increase in carbon in the atmosphere (there have been occasional periods in geological time when the earth warmed up similarly, as with the Eocene, but it is impossible to know at the moment over what time period that occurred). Human beings nowadays are carbon-spewers on steroids.

Smearing Social Security

William Greider on November 3, 2011 - 2:19pm ET

 

The Washington Post published a sensational story last Sunday that claimed that Social Security is already broke. “Adding billions to US budget woes,” the headline read. Instead of piling up surpluses, as the Social Security trust fund has done for nearly thirty years, this year the system became “cash negative.” Social Security, the Post warned, “is sucking money out of the Treasury.”

This is alarming news, if true. Fortunately, it is not true. The Post committed what I call fact-filled mendacity—a pejorative mash of scary buzz words and opaque statistics that encourages readers to reach false conclusions. The newspaper’s obvious objective is goosing the so-called supercommittee whose Congressional members seem to be reluctant about whacking Social Security benefits. The formerly liberal Washington Post has long urged that as a solution to federal debt and deficits. Its ideological posture influences its reporting and also what “informed observers” think. Last night, I heard a TV anchor remark in passing, “We just read that Social Security is in the red.”

Polling the 'Sabotage' Question


By Steve Benen


To one degree or another, the “sabotage” question has been generating some debate for about a year now. It is, admittedly, a provocative subject: are Republicans trying to hurt the nation’s economy on purpose, simply to undermine the Obama presidency?

Over the last few months, the charge has become more common and more mainstream, with the question being raised by leading officials in President Obama’s re-election team, Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill, and a growing number of pundits and political observers.

Romney Campaign Memo: The Koch Brothers Are The ‘Financial Engine Of The Tea Party’

By Lee Fang on Nov 3, 2011 at 3:10 pm

Tomorrow, billionaire David Koch and presidential candidate Mitt Romney are set to speak at the a Tea Party conference financed by the same Koch brother’s fortune. The Defending the Dream Summit, a conference funded by Koch and sponsored by his Americans for Prosperity group, is a yearly event where Republican politicians come to praise the Koch brothers and their political network. For instance, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), as he was seeking the Republican nomination, paid tribute to the Koch’s political network at the same event in 2007.

The GOP's Deregulatory Christmas List

—By Adam Serwer  | Thu Nov. 3, 2011 11:50 AM PDT

The Senate is set to take up votes on the Republican and Democratic infrastructure proposals this afternoon, but the GOP has already stuffed their proposal with regulatory rollbacks they know the Democrats will never agree to.

The GOP proposal contains the REINS Act, which would require a separate vote on economic regulations "with an expected annual economic impact of $100 million or more," which would, as Ezra Klein noted back in February, "destroy the government's capacity to pass major regulations," by adding a major procedural hurdle that sounds like a minor change.

Mike Bloomberg's Marie Antoinette Moment

Last year I had a chance to see New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg up close at the Huffington Post’s "Game Changers" event. I was standing right behind the guy when he was introduced by Nora Ephron, and watched as the would-be third party powerhouse wowed the liberal crowd with one zinger after another.

What Happened When Overzealous Terrorist Hunters Took Off With My Money

By Ann Jones, Tomdispatch.com
Posted on November 3, 2011, Printed on November 4, 201

Where did I go wrong? Was it playing percussion with an Occupy Wall Street band in Times Square when I was in New York recently? Or was it when I returned to my peaceful new home in Oslo and deleted an email invitation to hear Newt Gingrich lecture Norwegians on the American election? (Yes, even here.)

I don’t know how it happened. Or even, really, what happened. Or what it means.  So I’ve got no point -- only a lot of anxiety. I usually write about the problems of the world, but now I’ve got one of my own. They evidently think I’m a terrorist.

That is, someone in the U.S. government who specializes in finding terrorists seems to have found me and laid a heavy hand on my bank account. I think this is wrong, of course, but try to tell that to a faceless, acronymic government agency.

Super Committee Cuts to Social Security Divert from Real Issues

Tuesday, 11/1/2011 - 2:45 pm by Jeff Madrick

What would cutting a mostly solvent program doling out already meager benefits get us? Very little.

The Congressional Super Committee to cut the budget deficit, due to report soon, has let it be known that it will cut Social Security benefits. Let me be short and sour about this. It is a public relations stunt. They basically say so. All this is about is showing the world America is serious about cutting its long-term deficit. The nation has the guts to do what it takes. It is no bleeding heart country. It is willing to beat up on the elderly.

Other allegedly serious Democratic economists from fancy institutions have made the same argument. The reason is simple. You seemingly can make modest adjustments to Social Security to dent or even eliminate the projected longer-run shortfall. You can’t do that with Medicare.

'Our politicians are little more than money launderers in the trafficking of power and policy'

COMMENTARY | November 01, 2011
 
Bill Moyers traces the history of the 40-year crusade by the rich against the institutions, ideas, and laws that helped create America’s iconic middle class – and delivers a powerful broadside against the corrupt political system that has allowed itself to be bought off. Why protesters are occupying Wall Street is no mystery, he says. They are occupying Wall Street because Wall Street has occupied the country.


Longtime journalist and commentator Bill Moyers was the keynote speaker on October 20 at the 40th anniversary celebration of Public Citizen, the "countervailing force to corporate power" founded by Ralph Nader in 1971. Here are his prepared remarks, and the video of his speech.

I am honored to share this occasion with you. No one beyond your collegial inner circle appreciates more than I do what you have stood for over these 40 years, or is more aware of the battles you have fought, the victories you have won, and the passion for democracy that still courses through your veins. The great progressive of a century ago, Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin – a Republican, by the way – believed that “Democracy is a life; and involves constant struggle.” Democracy has been your life for four decades now, and would have been even more imperiled today if you had not stayed the course.

I began my public journalism the same year you began your public advocacy, in 1971. Our paths often paralleled and sometimes crossed. Over these 40 years journalism for me has been a continuing course in adult education, and I came early on to consider the work you do as part of the curriculum – an open seminar on how government works – and for whom. Your muckraking investigations – into money and politics, corporate behavior, lobbying, regulatory oversight, public health and safety, openness in government, and consumer protection, among others – are models of accuracy and integrity. They drive home to journalists that while it is important to cover the news, it is more important to uncover the news. As one of my mentors said, “News is what people want to keep hidden; everything else is publicity.” And when a student asked the journalist and historian Richard Reeves for his definition of “real news”, he answered: “The news you and I need to keep our freedoms.” You keep reminding us how crucial that news is to democracy. And when the watchdogs of the press have fallen silent, your vigilant growls have told us something’s up.

Climate change causing massive movement of tree species across the West

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A huge "migration" of trees has begun across much of the West due to global warming, insect attack, diseases and fire, and many tree species are projected to decline or die out in regions where they have been present for centuries, while others move in and replace them.

In an enormous display of survival of the fittest, the forests of the future are taking a new shape.

In a new report, scientists outline the impact that a changing climate will have on which tree species can survive, and where. The study suggests that many species that were once able to survive and thrive are losing their competitive footholds, and opportunistic newcomers will eventually push them out.

18 Arrested in Wisconsin Assembly for Using Cameras; Guns Still Allowed

by Brendan Fischer

 

Eighteen people were arrested Tuesday for using cameras in the Wisconsin Assembly gallery, including the editor of The Progressive magazine, Matt Rothschild.

Rothschild and others had gone to the capitol to protest a series of arrests in recent weeks of individuals who carried signs or took photos or video in defiance of an Assembly ban.

"We ought to have a right to take a picture," Rothschild said.

A Woman with a Plan: The Real Story of Margaret Sanger

Wednesday, 11/2/2011 - 10:19 am by Ellen Chesler

Her opponents have smeared her as a racist and classist, but she devoted her life to fighting for equal access to reproductive choice.

Birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger is back in the news this week thanks to GOP presidential candidate and abortion rights opponent Herman Cain, who claimed on national television that Planned Parenthood, the visionary global movement she founded nearly a century ago, is really about one thing only: “preventing black babies from being born.” Cain’s outrageous and false accusation is actually an all too familiar canard — a willful repetition of scurrilous claims that have circulated for years despite detailed refutation by scholars who have examined the evidence and unveiled the distortions and misrepresentations on which they are based (for a recent example, see this rebuttal from The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler).

Hubris Watch: US Bank CEO Sniffs About Breaking Rules When His Bank Has Huge Trustee Liability

One of the benefits of the Occupy movement is that it is flushing out some particularly egregious behavior among the top 1%.

A writer for the Minneapolis CityPages managed to worm his way into a presentation to the annual meeting of the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce by US Bank’s CEO, Richard Davis. Even though Occupy Minnesota was protesting outside, Davis chose to ignore them. His speech made clear that the business community does not care about long-term self interest, let alone social responsibility. Housing and the foreclosure crisis were absent from the 2012 legislative priorities. But tax reform, which is code for shifting even more of the cost of government on to the small fry? Yeah, that’s a big deal.

EARTH: Return of the dust bowl: Geoscientists predict a dry, dusty future for the American West

Aexandria, VA – Haboobs, giant dust storms, walloped Arizona last summer — some close to 2 kilometers high and 160 kilometers wide — knocking out electricity, creating traffic jams and grounding airplanes. Even old-timers say they can't remember anything quite like this year's aerial assaults. Meanwhile Texas is experiencing one of the most extreme droughts in recent history, with almost 90 percent of the state in the most extreme level of drought. Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah and other states are also experiencing drought conditions. The worry is that this might just be the start of a trend, as EARTH reports in the November issue: Over the next couple of decades, researchers say, the American West will transition to an environment that may make the 1930s Dust Bowl seem mild and brief.

End of the Reagan Narrative?

November 2, 2011

 

Exclusive: Election 2012 may turn on whether Ronald Reagan’s narrative of evil government and beneficent tax cuts for the rich has finally run its course – and has been replaced by a new narrative demanding government intervention to save the American middle-class, writes Robert Parry.


By Robert Parry

As yet another statue of Ronald Reagan is unveiled – a $1 million one at Washington’s National Airport which was renamed in his honor in the mid-1990s – the key question about the 40^th president is whether his long and destructive era is finally coming to an end.

More than any other political figure, it was Ronald Reagan who put America on its present course toward stunning income inequality and into a brave new world of deregulated industries, which were then able to exploit lax government controls to devastate the economy.

Secret of the Flat Tax: Middle Class Pays More So Rich Pay Less

By Dean Baker

With Herman Cain soaring to the top of the Republican pack on the basis of his 9-9-9 plan, a flat tax is once again at the center of public debate. Texas Gov. Rick Perry, and some days Mitt Romney, are always spouting the virtues of a tax system that is "simpler, flatter, and fairer."

While simplicity is generally desirable in a tax code, it has nothing to do with the tax code being flat. And being flat would be the opposite of being fair, unless people think it is unfair that they don't pay more taxes.


Confusing a simple tax code with a flat tax is a cheap political stunt. The number of tax brackets doesn't affect simplicity at all. Regardless of the number of brackets, there is only one calculation needed. The instruction is simple. It looks like this: "pay $1,000, plus 15 percent of income above $50,000." You can have a flat tax or 100 tax brackets, it is the same formula. Even a Republican presidential candidate can figure it out.

The People Versus the Police

Naomi Wolf


America’s politicians, it seems, have had their fill of democracy. Across the country, police, acting under orders from local officials, are breaking up protest encampments set up by supporters of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement – sometimes with shocking and utterly gratuitous violence.

In the worst incident so far, hundreds of police, dressed in riot gear, surrounded Occupy Oakland’s encampment and fired rubber bullets (which can be fatal), flash grenades, and tear-gas canisters – with some officers taking aim directly at demonstrators. The Occupy Oakland Twitter feed read like a report from Cairo’s Tahrir Square: “they are surrounding us”; “hundreds and hundreds of police”; “there are armored vehicles and Hummers.” There were 170 arrests.

Feds: Four Members Of Georgia ‘Fringe Militia Group’ Plotted Biological Attack On Citizens, Government Officials

Ryan J. Reilly November 2, 2011, 6:30 AM 

  Four Georgia men who belonged to a “fringe militia group” were arrested by FBI agents on Tuesday and charged with plotting an attack against U.S. citizens and federal employees using the biological toxin ricin.

Authorities say 73-year-old Frederick Thomas of Cleveland; 67-year-old Dan Roberts; 65-year-old Ray H. Adams; and 68-year-old Samuel J. Crump, all of Toccoa, Ga. began meeting in March 2011 as part of a covert group that called itself, well, the “covert group.”

Who's Paying for the GOP's Plan to Hijack the 2012 Election?

Someone is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to rig the rules of the presidential election against Obama. But the source of the money is a mystery.

—By Nick Baumann

Wed Nov. 2, 2011 7:20 AM PDT

 

Over the past six months, someone—or a group of someones—has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund an effort to change the rules of the 2012 presidential election to make it very difficult for President Barack Obama to win reelection. But the shadowy lobbying group mounting this campaign hasn't disclosed its donors—and under current law, it doesn't have to.

In two states, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, GOP legislators have introduced bills that would change how electoral votes—a candidate needs 270 of the 538 to win the presidency—are awarded in a presidential election. Under the current system, the winner of the statewide popular vote receives all of the electoral votes from that state.

Supercommittee of the One Percent Won't Even Think of Taxing Wall Street

Posted: 10/31/11 03:11 PM ET

If anyone still questioned who owns Washington, the Congressional supercommittee charged with reducing projected deficits by $1.2 trillion seems determined to end any doubts. According to press accounts, both the Republicans and Democrats on the committee support a plan to reduce average Social Security benefits by 3 percent.

While whacking our parents and grandparents with a big cut in Social Security benefits apparently draws bipartisan support, the supercommittee will not even score a plan to tax Wall Street financial speculation. No committee member from either party is prepared to make a simple request to the Joint Tax Committee of Congress that would allow a speculation tax to be one of the items considered in the mix.

Paul Krugman: Bombs, Bridges and Jobs

A few years back Representative Barney Frank coined an apt phrase for many of his colleagues: weaponized Keynesians, defined as those who believe “that the government does not create jobs when it funds the building of bridges or important research or retrains workers, but when it builds airplanes that are never going to be used in combat, that is of course economic salvation.”

Right now the weaponized Keynesians are out in full force — which makes this a good time to see what’s really going on in debates over economic policy.


What’s bringing out the military big spenders is the approaching deadline for the so-called supercommittee to agree on a plan for deficit reduction. If no agreement is reached, this failure is supposed to trigger cuts in the defense budget.

Occupy Wall Street protesters' own security detail sets standards for conduct in Zuccotti Park

Demonstrators set to eject rulebreakers

BY Edgar Sandoval & Joe Kemp
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Tuesday, November 1 2011, 12:01 AM

Protesters in Zuccotti Park may be free spirits, but they’ve decided they need some rules all the same.

And if you dare break them - you’re out.

The group has formed its own security detail to enforce a code of ethics mapped out during their general assembly meeting Monday.

Why the supercommittee should disband

By Katrina vanden Heuvel, Tuesday, November 1, 11:16 AM

Congress has now achieved the remarkable feat of making itself less popular than Wall Street bankers.

And the way it is heading, it hasn’t hit bottom yet — there’s still 9 percent of the public that approves of the job the legislators are doing.

Occupy the Future

Tuesday 01 November 2011

by: Noam Chomsky, Truthout | Speech 

(This article is adapted from Noam Chomsky's talk at the Occupy Boston encampment on Dewey Square on Oct. 22. He spoke as part of the Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture Series held by Occupy Boston's on-site Free University. Zinn was a historian, activist and author of "A People's History of the United States.")

Delivering a Howard Zinn lecture is a bittersweet experience for me. I regret that he's not here to take part in and invigorate a movement that would have been the dream of his life. Indeed, he laid a lot of the groundwork for it.

If the bonds and associations being established in these remarkable events can be sustained through a long, hard period ahead, victories don't come quickly, the Occupy protests could mark a significant moment in American history.

Tomgram: Lawrence Weschler, The Great American Shakedown

Posted by Lawrence Weschler at 7:53am, November 1, 2011.

In the U.S., corruption is seldom “corruption.”  Take as an example our president, who has been utterly clear: he will not take money for his electoral campaign from lobbyists.  Only problem: according to the New York Times, 15 of his top “bundlers,” who give their own money and solicit that of others -- none registered as federal lobbyists -- are “involved in lobbying for Washington consulting shops or private companies,” and they are raising millions for him.  They also have access to the White House on policy matters.  According to a June report from the Center for Public Integrity, “President Obama granted plum jobs and appointments to almost 200 people who raised large sums for his [2008] presidential campaign, and his top fundraisers have won millions of dollars in federal contracts.”

The president’s spokespeople insist, of course, that he’s kept to his promise, as defined by the labyrinthine lobbying legislation written by a Congress filled with future lobbyists.  And keep in mind that Obama looks like Little Mary Sunshine compared to the field of Republican presidential candidates who seem determined to campaign cheek to jowl with as many lobbyists as they can corral.  More than 100 federal lobbyists have already contributed to Mitt Romney’s campaign, while Rick Perry has evidently risen to candidate status on the shoulders of Mike Toomey, a former gubernatorial chief of staff, friend, and money-raising lobbyist whose clients “have won $2 billion in [Texas] state government contracts since 2008.”  And that’s just the tip of the top of the iceberg.

Mayor Bloomberg: ‘It Was Not The Banks That Created The Mortgage Crisis’

By Pat Garofalo on Nov 1, 2011 at 2:55 pm

A favorite conservative pastime since the financial crisis of 2008 struck is to try and deflect blame away from Wall Street and its excesses and onto Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and government housing policy. No matter how many times the theory that the government mortgage giants caused the crisis gets debunked, it keeps on coming back to life.

The latest political figure to join this parade was New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I), who responded to a question about the ongoing Occupy Wall Street protests by saying that the protesters’ grievances are “unfounded,” since “it was not the banks that created the mortgage crisis

Judges Are for Sale -- and Special Interests Are Buying

By ADAM COHEN | Time.com – 15 hrs ago
The Occupy Wall Street movement is shining a spotlight on how much influence big-money interests have with the White House and Congress. But people are not talking about how big money is also increasingly getting its way with the courts, which is too bad. It's a scandal that needs more attention. A blistering new report details how big business and corporate lobbyists are pouring money into state judicial elections across the country and packing the courts with judges who put special interests ahead of the public interest.

A case in point: West Virginia. In 2007, the West Virginia Supreme Court, on a 3-2 vote, threw out a $50 million damage award against the owner of a coal company. Funny thing: the man who would have had to pay the $50 million had spent $3 million to help elect the justice who cast the deciding vote. The West Virginia ruling was so outrageous that in 2009 the United States Supreme Court overturned it. But that was unusual. In most cases, judges are free to decide cases involving individuals and groups that have paid big money to get them elected. (MORE: Justice on Display: Should Judges Deliberate in Public?)

Student Loans: The Debt You Carry for Life

Wednesday, 10/26/2011 - 12:48 pm by Mike Konczal

Garnishing Social Security to pay off student debt ensures that the economic crisis will haunt today’s graduates well into their retirement.
 
Put on your monocle and top hat and pretend you are part of the 1% for a minute. Your first task is to write a set of legal codes about the collection of debt in this country, specifically student debt. And you want to be kind of a jerk about it. What’s the one thing you could do for student debt that you don’t do for any other type of debt, one that would radically shift the relationship between student loan creditors and debtors both practically and symbolically?

The mayor's millionaire club

Who has access to Rahm Emanuel’s inner sanctum

By Ben Joravsky and Mick Dumke

The third week of July was a busy time for Mayor Rahm Emanuel—he was working with police brass to reassign cops, announcing a competition between city workers and private firms to provide recycling pickup, and, of course, battling teachers over implementing a longer school day. 

But he still found an hour to slip away for breakfast at the exclusive Chicago Club with a couple of millionaire bankers—Bill Downe, the CEO of the Bank of Montreal, and Mark Furlong, the CEO of Harris Bank.

That might not seem like much time. But it amounted to one of the longest meetings of the week in the dusk-to-dawn schedule of the mayor who can't sit still.

Why now?

ASK THIS | October 25, 2011

Glenn Greenwald writes that protests are sweeping America because it has become obvious that the wealth of the top 1% is the byproduct not of risk-taking entrepreneurship, but of corrupted control of our legal and political systems.

By Glenn Greenwald
GGreenwald@salon.com

As intense protests spawned by Occupy Wall Street continue to grow, it is worth asking: Why now? The answer is not obvious. After all, severe income and wealth inequality have long plagued the United States. In fact, it could reasonably be claimed that this form of inequality is part of the design of the American founding -- indeed, an integral part of it.

Income inequality has worsened over the past several years and is at its highest level since the Great Depression. This is not, however, a new trend. Income inequality has been growing at rapid rates for three decades.

Dorian Warren: Politics to Blame for Income Inequality
Friday, 10/28/2011 - 1:10 pm by Bryce Covert
 
In case Occupy Wall Street hasn’t focused you on income inequality, a new report from the CBO documented just how bad things have gotten. Roosevelt Institute Fellow Dorian Warren joined Lawrence O’Donnell on The Last Word to discuss how this could happen. “Most explanations of this are that it’s the economy, it’s the labor market, but in fact this is due to politics and policy,” he says.

America's Tilt to the Top: The Deepest Stats Yet

By Sam Pizzigati

October 29, 2011 - 7:35pm ET 

All sorts of federal agencies publish income inequality data. But only the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office directly takes on America's income inequality deniers.

Back in 1979, America’s most affluent 1 percent took home — after federal taxes — about the same share of the nation’s income as all the Americans in the bottom 20 percent. In 2007, Americans learned last week, the nation’s top 1 percent took home more income than America’s entire bottom 40 percent.
 

These new stats didn’t come from some scruffy Occupy Wall Street encampment. They came — in a blockbuster new report — from the buttoned-down number crunchers at the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. And the portrait they paint essentially gives the Occupy movement’s most basic insight, that our top 1 percent has hijacked the nation, an official government imprimatur.

How the Bitter Elitists at Fox News Keep Trying -- And Failing -- to Dampen Support for Occupy Wall Street


Another day, another Fox News attempt to smear the Occupy Wall Street movement. This time they've resurrected their favorite bogeyman, ACORN.

October 27, 2011  |   Fox News has been feverishly trying to dampen the viral growth of OWS ever since the movement sprouted in a park in Lower Manhattan about a month ago. Fox's overt hostility is in sharp contrast to the love affair they had with the Tea Party. Now Fox is slandering decent and passionate protesters as communists, whining about class war, comparing them to hippies, accusing them of violence, and associating them with Nazis. All of these attacks have collapsed from the weight of their own dishonesty, and support continues to grow for the movement. But does that stop Fox News?

Obama Administration Escalates Confrontation With Iran: Why?

by Mark Weisbrot

The Obama administration announced two weeks ago that a bumbling Iranian-American used car salesman had conspired with a U.S. government agent posing as a representative of Mexican drug cartels, to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington. This brought highly skeptical reactionsfrom experts here across the political spectrum.

But even if some of this tale turns out to be true, the handling of such accusations is inherently political. For example, the U.S. government’s 9/11 commission investigated the links between the attackers and the Saudi ruling family, but refused to make public the results of that investigation. The reason is obvious: there is dirt there and Washington doesn’t want to create friction with a key ally. And keep in mind that this is about complicity with an attack on American soil that killed 3000 people.

The E-Mails The Feds Say Show Texas Lawmakers Trying To Limit Voting Power Of Hispanics

Ryan J. Reilly, October 28, 2011, 12:00 PM
The feds say there’s “ample circumstantial evidence” that the redistricting maps signed by Texas Gov. Rick Perry had the effect and intent of limiting the voting power of Hispanic voters. But what’s the evidence exactly? Let’s take a look.

The most telling evidence Justice Department lawyers cite in terms of the state redistricting maps is a comment from state Rep. Beverly Woolley, who led the redistricting process in Harris County (an effort which excluded any minority members of the Harris County delegation). “[Y]ou all are protected by the Voting Rights Act and we are not,” Woolley told a number of minority representatives. “We don’t want to lose these people due to population growth in the county, or we won’t have any districts left.”

The Great Depression Right Outside Our Doors


By Bill Boyarsky

While Occupy Wall Street and similar movements around the country take aim at financial institutions and their political cronies for taking the country into recession, let’s not forget those at the very bottom who were victims of economic depression long before the current collapse.

Connie Rice, a Los Angeles civil rights attorney, writes about their plight in a powerful new book, “Power Concedes Nothing: One Woman’s Quest for Social Justice in America, From the Courtroom to the Kill Zones.” She tells the story of how she and her colleagues have worked to free poor neighborhoods of the evils of gang killings, police brutality, poorly run schools and bad health. They are doing it in a civil rights organization with a hands-on approach called the Advancement Project.

Republicans Cry Uncle On Spending … When Cuts Hit Home

Brian Beutler, October 28, 2011, 6:00 AM

 

It took months of fighting — the threat of a government shutdown, the graver threat of a default on the national debt, and now a new threat of major, automatic cuts to Medicare and defense programs — but Congress’ deficit obsession has finally exposed the rarest of all species: Republican Keynesians.

With just a under a month until the deficit Super Committee must recommend policies that cut the 10 year deficit by $1.2 trillion, members of the Republican party — the same party that’s been on the war path for deep spending cuts, and that decries President Obama’s “failed stimulus” — are making uncharacteristic arguments against slashing spending. Trim too much, too quickly, they warn, and people will lose their jobs!