Paul Krugman: After Making a Mess of Iraq, Bush Advisers Join Team Romney

I have to admit that I haven't been paying much attention to Mitt Romney's foreign policy; the domestic side already offers a target-rich environment. But my eyebrows shot up when Dan Senor popped up speaking for Mr. Romney in the aftermath of the protests in Libya and Egypt. Dan Senor?

I mean, Mr. Senor is one of the key figures in Rajiv Chandrasekharan's book "Imperial Life in the Emerald City," an account of the United States' disastrous occupation of Iraq. As the head of public relations for the Coalition Provisional Authority, Mr. Senor exemplified the core problem with that occupation: officials were chosen for political loyalty to President George W. Bush, not experience or competence, and were evidently much more interested in getting Mr. Bush re-elected than in running the country they were supposed to be fixing.

 

Leftists Explain Things to Me

Posted on Sep 28, 2012
By Rebecca Solnit, TomDispatch

Dear Allies,

Forgive me if I briefly take my eyes off the prize to brush away some flies, but the buzzing has gone on for some time. I have a grand goal,  and that is to counter the Republican right with its deep desire to annihilate everything I love and to move toward far more radical goals than the Democrats ever truly support. In the course of pursuing that,  however, I’ve come up against the habits of my presumed allies again and again.

O rancid sector of the far left, please stop your grousing! Compared to you, Eeyore sounds like a Teletubby. If I gave you a pony, you would not only be furious that not everyone has a pony, but you would pick on the pony for not being radical enough until it wept big, sad, hot pony tears. Because what we’re talking about here is not an analysis, a strategy, or a cosmology, but an attitude, and one that is poisoning us.  Not just me, but you, us, and our possibilities.
 

Why the American Raj is Under Seige

America can no longer afford its global imperium

by Eric Margolis

 

The killing of the US ambassador to Libya and angry demonstrations across the Muslim world over a tacky anti-Islamic hate video have produced the usual flood of wrong-headed commentary from our media and politicians.

Across the land comes the familiar cry, “why do they hate us?” That any Americans can in this day and age still be surprised that their nation is hated by many people from Morocco to Indonesia to Nigeria is by far the biggest surprise. We have learned little from 9/11.

America, this is how you’re using your energy

By Philip Bump

The U.S. Energy Information Administration, an arm of the Department of Energy, is tasked with determining how much energy the United States uses and what it is used for. Wondering how much energy people use in their houses to stay warm? The EIA has that answer. Curious about fuel efficiency trends over time? Ask the EIA. Wondering how much oil America uses compared to how much it imports? Et cetera, et cetera.

Each year the agency puts together a massive report answering that question. Yesterday, it released the report for 2011. Here are some of the most interesting findings.

U.S. Military Still Using "Jesus rifles" in Afghanistan

Posted by Bruce Wilson

It's not official policy, but with Internet access a 12-year old child anywhere in the Islamic world could construct, with relative ease, a plausible conspiracy theory claiming that the United States had invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, and was wielding its military, diplomatic, and soft-power in the Middle East and elsewhere, to combat Islam and advance a global Christian empire.

The continued use, per a breaking NBC story, of the infamous "jesus rifles" by U.S. troops in Afghanistan matters not only because it endangers U.S. troops by needlessly inflaming religious hatreds; for Muslims who suspect a Western war on Islam, it's yet another data point to plug in. As NBC's Kari Huus reports [2],

When the so-called "Jesus rifle" came to light in Jan. 2010, it sparked constitutional and security concerns, and a maelstrom of media coverage. The Pentagon ordered the removal of the secret code referring to Bible passages that the manufacturer had inscribed on the scopes of the standard issue rifles carried by U.S. soldiers into battle in Iraq and Afghanistan... ...The code stamped into the metal of the soldier’s ACOG (Advanced Combat Optical Gunsight) ends with the model number with "JN8:12." which refers to the New Testament passage, John 8:12, which reads: "Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life."

The gunsight, produced by the Michigan company Trijicon, can also feature code referring to scripture from the Biblical books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, Corinthians, and Revelations.

Everything You’ve Ever Wanted to Know About Voter ID Laws

by Suevon Lee
ProPublica, Sept. 27, 2012, 12:35 p.m.

Editor's note, Sept. 27, 2012 This post, which was first published July 23, 2012, has been updated and clarified with new developments.

Voter IDs laws have become a political flashpoint in what's gearing up to be another close election year. Supporters say the laws — which 30 states have now enacted in some form — are needed to combat voter fraud, while critics see them as a tactic to disenfranchise voters.

We've taken a step back to look at the facts behind the laws and break down the issues at the heart of the debate.
 

Don't Let Them Push Social Security Off The Fiscal Cliff

By Roger Hickey

September 27, 2012 - 3:44pm ET 

They call it the "fiscal cliff," but it's Social Security that's going to be pushed over it, unless we speak out now.

The forces of austerity in Washington are using the prospect of automatic spending cuts and tax increases at the end of the year to pressure Congress into a "grand bargain," slashing Social Security benefits in the name of deficit reduction.

News reports, including from The Huffington Post, report leaders of both parties are planning to put Social Security on the chopping block.

 

Paul Krugman: Europe's Austerity Madness

So much for complacency. Just a few days ago, the conventional wisdom was that Europe finally had things under control. The European Central Bank, by promising to buy the bonds of troubled governments if necessary, had soothed markets. All that debtor nations had to do, the story went, was agree to more and deeper austerity — the condition for central bank loans — and all would be well.

But the purveyors of conventional wisdom forgot that people were involved. Suddenly, Spain and Greece are being racked by strikes and huge demonstrations. The public in these countries is, in effect, saying that it has reached its limit: With unemployment at Great Depression levels and with erstwhile middle-class workers reduced to picking through garbage in search of food, austerity has already gone too far. And this means that there may not be a deal after all.

Hedge Fund Hype, Wall Street Horoscopes, and Drop-Top Jets: The Magical Minds of the "Radical Rich"

By Richard (RJ) Eskow

September 26, 2012 - 2:38pm ET 

Strange stories from the newswires: Thousands of Wall Street traders subscribe to "financial astrology" newsletters. A series of wealthy Americans erupt into rage-filled public outbursts. Mitt Romney wonders why you can't open a jet's windows in mid-flight.

This isn't an episode of the X-Files. These seemingly unrelated stories are part of a larger pattern. What appears to be a sudden epidemic of magical thinking actually reflects something else: the rise of a financial sector whose economic incentives have tilted away from core business competencies - and toward something like that looks a little more like madness.

 

The Lie Factory

How politics became a business.

by Jill Lepore
September 24, 2012

“I, Governor of California, and How I Ended Poverty,” by Upton Sinclair, is probably the most thrilling piece of campaign literature ever written. Instead of the usual flummery, Sinclair, the author of forty-seven books, including, most famously, “The Jungle,” wrote a work of fiction. “I, Governor of California,” published in 1933, announced Sinclair’s gubernatorial bid in the form of a history of the future, in which Sinclair is elected governor in 1934, and by 1938 has eradicated poverty. “So far as I know,” the author remarked, “this is the first time an historian has set out to make his history true.” 

It was only sixty-four pages, but it sold a hundred and fifty thousand copies in four months. Chapter 1: “On an evening in August, 1933, there took place a conference attended by five members of the County Central Committee of the Democratic party, Sixtieth Assembly District of the State of California.” That might not sound like a page-turner, unless you remember that at the time California was a one-party state: in 1931, almost all of the hundred and twenty seats in the state legislature were held by Republicans; not a single Democrat held a statewide office. Also useful to recall: the unemployment rate in the state was twenty-nine per cent. Back to that meeting in August, 1933: “The purpose was to consider with Upton Sinclair the possibility of his registering as a Democrat and becoming the candidate of the party for Governor of California.” What if Sinclair, a lifelong socialist, ran as a Democrat? That’s one nifty plot twist.
 

Quadrillion Dollar Derivatives Market 20 Times Global GDP

Markus Stanley: Derivative bets not a zero sum game, have far reaching real world consequences

Bio

Marcus Stanley is the Policy Director of Americans for Financial Reform. Americans for Financial Reform is a coalition of more than 250 national, state, and local groups who have come together to advocate for reform of the financial sector. Members of AFR include consumer, labor, civil rights, investor, retiree, community faith based and business groups along with prominent independent experts. Dr. Stanley has a Phd in public policy from Harvard University, and previously worked as an economic and policy advisor to Senator Barbara Boxer, as a Senior Economist at the U.S. Joint Economic Committee, and as an Assistant Professor of Economics at Case Western Reserve University.

Transcript

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Baltimore.
After the crisis in 2008, many of us became aware of some language, a vocabulary we hadn't heard before—derivatives, credit default swaps, synthetic bets, this whole dark market that now involves, according to one academic, perhaps as much as $1 quadrillion. So what's $1 quadrillion look like? Well, take a look at these graphics. These are done by kokogiak.com. Here's what $1 trillion looks like if you put it into a queue next to the Empire State building or the Sears Tower. Okay, that's $1 trillion. Well, here's what $1 quadrillion would look like. Yeah. Enormous. So $1 quadrillion dollars—it boggles the mind. This means that it's—the size of the derivatives market is something like 20 times the value of all products produced on the planet.Well, people say, well, if this is so big and have such enormous implications to the global economy, it should be regulated. And that's a subject of our interview today, 'cause there's a big battle going on about whether or not this market will be regulated, and if so, how.Now joining us to talk about all of this is Markus Stanley. Markus is the policy director of Americans for Financial Reform, which is the main public interest coalition working for stronger financial reform. He previously worked as a senior economist at the U.S. Joint Economic Committee and as an assistant professor of economics at Case Western Reserve University. Thanks very much for joining us, Markus.

Breakthrough in kitchen furniture production: Biocomposites challenge chipboard

Biocomposites challenge chipboard as furniture material. Researchers at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland have developed a kitchen furniture framework material from plastic polymers reinforced with natural fibre. The new material reduces raw materials consumption by 25 per cent and the carbon footprint of production by 35 per cent.

"The frames are lighter by nearly a third because they contain more air," says VTT's Research Professor Ali Harlin. "Wastage during production is also reduced. This is a generational shift that revolutionizes both manufacturing techniques and design."
 

Social Security: Solidarity, Not Investment

The most fundamental misunderstanding about an essential program

by Jeff Nygaard

Recently the Associated Press (AP) published a four-part series of stories examining “the state of Social Security and its long-term health.”  The AP said that “Few things affect more Americans than the future of Social Security, and yet it’s an issue mostly invisible during the current campaign.”  True, it’s not talked about much, but perhaps more important is the fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the program that is revealed when people do talk about it.

This misunderstanding was revealed in the very first installment of the AP series, which appeared on August 5th.  The headline on this kick-off piece read, “Social Security Not Deal it Once Was for Workers.”  Asked the AP, “How can you get a better return on your Social Security taxes?”

Sheila Bair Gives Her Account of the Crisis, and (Quelle Surprise!) the Bailouts and Geithner Do Not Look Pretty

Sheila Bair’s new book Bull by the Horns is out and based on early reports, it looks like it skewers the bailouts in general and Tim Geithner in particular. But it also gets a lot into the weeds in what still needs to be fixed in bank-land, which is a part of these crisis post-mortems and retrospectives that too often get short shrift.

Rolfe Winkler at the Wall Street Journal has an informative chat with her about the book and her experience during the crisis.
 

News Consumption of Political Stories Not Enough to Retain Political Knowledge

Teens Must Think About and Discuss Politics to Learn, MU Study Finds

Sept. 25, 2012

Story Contact(s):
Nathan Hurst, hurstn@missouri.edu, 573-882-6217 

COLUMBIA, Mo. ­—A strong democracy depends on smart voters who choose their leaders based on their knowledge of important political issues. One of the ways that Americans learn about politics is by following the news. Now, researchers from the University of Missouri School of Journalism have found that simply following the news is not enough.

A panel survey involving more than 1,200 teenagers from 12 to 17 years of age found that adolescents learn more about politics when they think and talk about what they read or watch on the news. Edson Tandoc, a doctoral student at MU, found that adolescents who spend more time thinking and talking about the news with their peers and relatives tend to know more about political developments in the country.
 

The TPP: A Quiet Coup for the Investor Class

The Obama administration's trade negotiators are quietly selling out workers and the environment in a massive Bush-style trade agreement.

by Hilary Matfess

It would be a relief to report with any certainty that the negotiations over the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)—a massive proposed free-trade zone spanning the Pacific Ocean and all four hemispheres—are definitely empowering corporations to the detriment of workers, the environment, and sovereignty throughout the region. Unfortunately, the secretive and opaque character of the negotiations has made it difficult to report much of anything about them.

What can be confidently reported about the TPP is that, in terms of trade flows, it would be the largest free-trade agreement yet entered into by the United States—and, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service, that the ministers negotiating the agreement “have expressed an intent to comprehensively reduce barriers in goods, services, and agricultural trade as well as rules and disciplines on a wide range of topics” to unprecedented levels. Yet despite these grandiose ambitions, details of the negotiations and drafts of the text have been purposefully withheld from Congress and American citizens.

Matt Taibbi: This Presidential Race Should Never Have Been This Close

The press everywhere is buzzing this week with premature obituaries of the Romney campaign. New polls are out suggesting that Mitt Romney's electoral path to the presidency is all but blocked. Unless someone snags an iPhone video of Obama taking a leak on Ohio State mascot Brutus Buckeye, or stealing pain meds from a Tampa retiree and sharing them with a bunch of Japanese carmakers, the game looks pretty much up – Obama's widening leads in three battleground states, Virginia, Ohio and Florida, seem to have sealed the deal.

That's left the media to speculate, with a palpable air of sadness, over where the system went wrong. Whatever you believe, many of these articles say, wherever you rest on the ideological spectrum, you should be disappointed that Obama ultimately had to run against such an incompetent challenger. Weirdly, there seems to be an expectation that presidential races should be closer, and that if one doesn't come down to the wire in an exciting photo finish, we've all missed out somehow.

Only a Revolution in Our Thinking Can Save Us From a Water Crisis

By Tara Lohan

September 26, 2012  |  We like to flush our toilets. A lot. Our flush figure for the U.S. is at 5.7 billion gallons [4] a day in our homes alone. It's one of the great examples of American excess -- people across the world don't have enough clean drinking water, and yet we're happy to send it down the drain.

Of course, the last laugh may be on us. As we head into the fall nearly half of U.S. states are experiencing extreme or exceptional drought [5]. Lack of rainfall is the easy culprit, but the truth is we don't manage our water resources well enough to deal with times of shortage. Just ask Atlanta, which went nearly bone-dry in 2007 or Las Vegas, which is working on an engineering a pricy $15 billion [6] water pipeline to supplement its dwindling stocks. We can't blame it all on our flushing frenzy though; power plants and agriculture suck up the vast majority of our water. Not to mention the fact that industry often gets a free pass to pollute, our city managers fail to account for water when green-lighting new development, and we turn the other way when asked to consider the impacts of climate change.

Paul Krugman: In Britain and the US, Economic Mysticism Endures

Friday, 21 September 2012

In a lot of ways George Osborne, the chancellor of the Exchequer (or finance minister) is Britain's answer to Paul Ryan, the Republican nominee for vice president. True, he's a toned-down version — no Ayn Rand, please, we're British — but other aspects of the package are there in full force: Mr. Osborne is articulate, has a vision that's completely at odds with everything we actually know about macroeconomics, and he was for a while the darling not just of the right but of self-proclaimed centrists on both sides of the Atlantic.

Mr. Osborne's big idea in 2010 was that Britain should turn to fiscal austerity now now now, even though the economy remained deeply depressed; it would all work out, he insisted, because the confidence fairy would come to the rescue.
 

Ryan's 'Secret' Tape Is Even More Extreme Than Romney's

By Richard (RJ) Eskow
September 24, 2012 - 1:08pm ET

When they booed Paul Ryan at the American Association of Retired Persons last week, most people didn't even know he called Medicare and Social Security "third party or socialist-based systems." Or that he said he wants to privatize them in order to "break the back" of a "collectivist philosophy."

On recently transcribed remarks from an audio recording, Ryan said his ideas and values were shaped by an extremist author who thought humanity must "reject the morality of altruism," and that his opinions on monetary policy are guided by a fictional speech which says "the words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality."

Ralph Reed's Group Compares Obama Policies to Nazi Germany

In a "voter registration" mailer, the outfit founded by the ex-Christian Coalition leader also refers to Obama's "Communist beliefs."

—By Andy Kroll  | Tue Sep. 25, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

A mailer blasted out by the Faith and Freedom Coalition, a nonprofit group spending millions of dollars to mobilize evangelical voters this November to help Mitt Romney's campaign, compares President Barack Obama's policies to the threat posed by Nazi Germany and Japan during World War II. It also says that Obama has "Communist beliefs." A copy of this so-called "Voter Registration Confirmation Survey" was obtained by Mother Jones after it was sent to the home of a registered Republican voter.

The Faith and Freedom Coalition is the brainchild of Ralph Reed, the former head of the Christian Coalition who was once hailed as "the right hand of God" and who is now tasked with getting out the evangelical vote for Romney. In the mid-2000s, Reed was ensnared in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. Reed was a longtime friend of Abramoff's, and he took payments from Abramoff to lobby against certain American Indian casinos. Reed once ran a religious-themed anti-gambling campaign at the behest of an Abramoff-connected Native American tribe to try to prevent another tribe from opening a competitor casino. His current efforts for Romney are something of a political rehabilitation for Reed.

Obama and the Second Term's Ticking Timebomb

Sept 24 -  By Charles P. Pierce at 4:03PM

Oh, Andrew. The willingness to believe in snow-white unicorns is so charming in a person of your brains and abilities.

Not that I don't take your speculations about a second Obama term seriously. I do. I take many of them so seriously that I positively dread the fact that you may be right. To wit:

Obama's previous position had been to favor a roughly 2.5 to 1 spending-cut to tax-hike formula, along with a return to Clinton-era rates on the very wealthy. He's also open to tax reform as a way to raise revenue while minimizing rate increases, as his own Simpson-Bowles commission recommended (after being torpedoed by Paul Ryan). So far, the GOP has refused even a 10 to 1 deal with no revenue increases at all.

Why Are the Right-Wing Media Obsessed with an Imaginary Woman's Success Story?

September 21, 2012  |  Conservatives talk a lot about "dependency," but it's not clear that they know what the word means. Consider, for example, the right's bizarre reaction to a rather benign online campaign the White House pushed briefly earlier this year called “The Life of Julia [3],” a slide-show featuring a fictional Everywoman that was meant to highlight how Obama's policies might improve the lives of average Americans.

It follows the Julia character from age 3 through her retirement. She's self-sufficient, hard-working and entrepreneurial; the embodiment of what conservatives are supposed to applaud. Although she isn't born into a wealthy family, her perserverence is ultimately rewarded with success.

If you're not a consumer of the conservative media, you may not have even heard about Julia, but the right is obsessed with her to an extent that's kind of creepy.

Paul Krugman: The Optimism Cure

Mitt Romney is optimistic about optimism. In fact, it’s pretty much all he’s got. And that fact should make you very pessimistic about his chances of leading an economic recovery. 

As many people have noticed, Mr. Romney’s five-point “economic plan” is very nearly substance-free. It vaguely suggests that he will pursue the same goals Republicans always pursue — weaker environmental protection, lower taxes on the wealthy. But it offers neither specifics nor any indication why returning to George W. Bush’s policies would cure a slump that began on Mr. Bush’s watch. 

In his Boca Raton meeting with donors, however, Mr. Romney revealed his real plan, which is to rely on magic. “My own view is,” he declared, “if we win on November 6, there will be a great deal of optimism about the future of this country. We’ll see capital come back, and we’ll see — without actually doing anything — we’ll actually get a boost in the economy.” 

Are you feeling reassured? 

 

Four Histories of the Right's 47 Percent Theory
Sep 20, 2012 
Mike Konczal

As you've likely heard, Mitt Romney was recorded at a fundraiser saying that "there are 47 percent who are with [President Obama], who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it [...] These are people who pay no income tax."

The right is splitting over whether or not the 47 percent argument is worth defending. It's important to understand that, while it is true that 47 percent of households don't pay a federal income tax, the distribution of the tax burden isn't what the 47 percent theory is about. The 47 percent theory is all about grand political battles. My colleague Mark Schmitt has one examination of where this theory comes from here, Brian Beutler also investigates the background of the 47 percent meme, and Kevin Drum does a history of the EITC here.
 

Diminishing Returns

Our efforts in Afghanistan were probably doomed from the start. But now it’s over.

By Fred Kaplan | Posted Friday, Sept. 21, 2012, at 4:44 PM ET

The latest news from Afghanistan only underscores what’s been clear for quite some time: that there is no light at the end of the tunnel in this war, no noble way out, not much point to staying in.

In the 11 years we’ve been fighting there, our official war aims have been ratcheted down to adjust for what’s possible, and now it seems even the minimal goals may have slipped out of reach.

 

Stratosphere targets deep sea to shape climate

North Atlantic 'Achilles heel' lets upper atmosphere affect the abyss

SALT LAKE CITY, Sept. 23, 2012 – A University of Utah study suggests something amazing: Periodic changes in winds 15 to 30 miles high in the stratosphere influence the seas by striking a vulnerable "Achilles heel" in the North Atlantic and changing mile-deep ocean circulation patterns, which in turn affect Earth's climate.

"We found evidence that what happens in the stratosphere matters for the ocean circulation and therefore for climate," says Thomas Reichler, senior author of the study published online Sunday, Sept. 23 in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Scientists already knew that events in the stratosphere, 6 miles to 30 miles above Earth, affect what happens below in the troposphere, the part of the atmosphere from Earth's surface up to 6 miles or about 32,800 feet. Weather occurs in the troposphere.

 

'The World According to Monsanto': Fighting a Global Agribusiness Through the Power of Film

A giant, multinational agribusiness is using its market share and patent system to spread genetically modified crops throughout the world

by Marie-Monique Robin

 

I have been working as a journalist for the past 25 years or so, focusing mainly on human rights and the environment.

What struck me was the number of people I encountered who kept uttering a single name: Monsanto, the giant U.S.-based multinational biotechnology company.

I grew up on a farm in France, hence my keen interest in agricultural issues.

Myths About Industrial Agriculture

Organic farming is the "only way to produce food" without harming the planet and people's health

 

by Vandana Shiva

 

Reports trying to create doubts about organic agriculture are suddenly flooding the media. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, people are fed up of the corporate assault of toxics and GMOs. Secondly, people are turning to organic agriculture and organic food as a way to end the toxic war against the earth and our bodies.

At a time when industry has set its eyes on the super profits to be harvested from seed monopolies through patented seeds and seeds engineered with toxic genes and genes for making crops resistant to herbicides, people are seeking food freedom through organic, non-industrial food.

 
 

The ‘Self-Made’ Myth and Our Hallucinating Rich

By Sam Pizzigati

September 23, 2012 - 11:04am ET 

In real life, working hard only takes you so far. Those who go all the way — to grand fortune — typically get a substantial head start. So documents an entertaining, baseball-themed new analysis of the Forbes 400.

Let’s cut Mitt Romney some slack. Not every off-the-cuff comment the GOP White House hopeful made at that now infamous, secretly taped $50,000-a-plate fundraiser last May in Boca Raton reveals an utterly shocking personal failing. Take, for instance, Mitt’s remark that he has “inherited nothing.”

A variety of commentators have jumped on Romney for that line. They’ve pointed out that Mitt, the son of a wealthy corporate CEO, has enjoyed plenty of privilege, everything from an elite private school education to a rolodex full of rich family friends he could tap to start up his business career.

 

Why is rooftop solar cheaper in Germany than in the U.S.?

By David Roberts

The installed cost for residential solar power systems in Germany — that is, installations of up to 10 kW — is considerably less than in the U.S. Why? That’s the subject of a fascinating analysis [PDF] from sharp minds at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

The researchers conducted a survey of German solar installers and reviewed public and private consultant data to get a handle on the German market. The answers they found aren’t as obvious as you might think.

Matt Taibbi: Wall Street Rolling Back Another Key Piece of Financial Reform

POSTED: September 20, 9:33 AM ET

Wall Street lobbyists are awesome. I’m beginning to develop a begrudging respect not just for their body of work as a whole, but also for their sense of humor. They always go right to the edge of outrageous, and then wittily take one baby-step beyond it. And they did so again last night, with the passage of a new House bill (HR 2827), which rolls back a portion of Dodd-Frank designed to protect cities and towns from the next Jefferson County disaster.

Jefferson County, Alabama was the most famous case – the city of Birmingham went bankrupt after being bribed and goaded into taking on billions of dollars of toxic swap deals – but in fact it was just one of hundreds of similar examples of localities being duped into suicidal financial deals by rapacious banks and financial companies. The Denver school system, for instance, got clobbered when it opted for an exotic swap deal pushed by J.P. Morgan Chase (the same villain in Jefferson County, incidentally) and then-school superintendent/future U.S. Senator Michael Bennet, that ended up costing the school system tens of millions of dollars. As was the case in Jefferson County, the only way out of the deal involved a massive termination fee that might have been even more destructive than the deal itself.

"Won't Back Down" Film Pushes ALEC Parent Trigger Proposal

Friday, 21 September 2012 09:18

By Mary Bottari and Sara Jerving, PRWatch | News Analysis

Well-funded advocates of privatizing the nation's education system are employing a new strategy this fall to enlist support for the cause. The emotionally engaging Hollywood film "Won't Back Down" -- set for release September 28 -- portrays so-called "Parent Trigger" laws as an effective mechanism for transforming underperforming public schools. But the film's distortion of the facts prompts a closer examination of its funders and backers and a closer look at those promoting Parent Trigger as a cure for what ails the American education system.

While Parent Trigger was first promoted by a small charter school operator in California, it was taken up and launched into hyperdrive by two controversial right-wing organizations: the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the Heartland Institute.

New Trans-Pacific trade deal ignites fears of job losses

By Rob Hotakainen McClatchy Newspapers

LEESBURG, Va. — With 1,350 employees in its five U.S. factories, New Balance is proud that it still produces 7 million pairs of shoes each year at its plants in Maine and Massachusetts, the last major athletic footwear company that still has manufacturing jobs in the United States.

But the company says those jobs could very well disappear if the U.S. scraps its tariff on athletic footwear coming in from Vietnam.

It’s part of the mounting anxiety caused by the new Trans-Pacific Partnership, the largest trade pact proposed in U.S. history. And as 400 negotiators from nine countries met privately at a golf resort in northern Virginia last week in an attempt to finalize details, New Balance officials weren’t the only ones fretting.