60 Minutes Benghazi Report Takes A Huge Credibility Hit

Blog ››› November 1, 2013 10:22 AM EDT ››› MATT GERTZ

The Benghazi "witness" featured in a CBS 60 Minutes report that galvanized new discussion of the administration's response to the attack previously said he never got near the diplomatic compound on the night of the attack, according to a report from The Washington Post.

The revelation comes just days after Fox News reported that they had previously been using the same man as a source, but broke contact after he asked the network for money. Two days after the CBS report aired, Threshold Editions, an imprint of Simon and Schuster that "specializes in conservative non-fiction," published the supposed witness' book, The Embassy House: The Explosive Eyewitness Account of the Libyan Embassy Siege by the Soldier Who Was There. According to the Post, the book "largely comports with the 60 Minutes account."

Paul Krugman: A War on the Poor

John Kasich, the Republican governor of Ohio, has done some surprising things lately. First, he did
an end run around his state’s Legislature — controlled by his own party — to proceed with the
federally funded expansion of Medicaid that is an important piece of Obamacare. Then, defending
his action, he let loose on his political allies, declaring, “I’m concerned about the fact there seems
to be a war on the poor. That, if you’re poor, somehow you’re shiftless and lazy.”

Obviously Mr. Kasich isn’t the first to make this observation. But the fact that it’s coming from a
Republican in good standing (although maybe not anymore), indeed someone who used to be
known as a conservative firebrand, is telling. Republican hostility toward the poor and unfortunate
has now reached such a fever pitch that the party doesn’t really stand for anything else — and only
willfully blind observers can fail to see that reality.

Glenn Greenwald and the Future of Leaks

By David Cay Johnston / October 23 2013 4:17 PM

Glenn Greenwald, the lawyer-turned-journalist-turned-global headline for his reporting on leaked NSA documents, says there is about to be a revolution that will radically change how news organizations cover governments and other big institutions.

The change, he insists, is inevitable because of the pervasiveness of digital content, which has already remade the global economy by allowing instant access to vast troves of information. “Government and businesses cannot function without enormous amounts of data, and many people have to have access to that data,” Greenwald says, adding that it only takes one person with access and an assaulted conscience to leak, no matter what controls are in place.

Can ‘dramatically different cognitive styles’ explain tea partiers’ rage?

By Joshua Holland, Moyers & Company
Thursday, October 31, 2013 8:16 EST

A growing body of research suggests that we are a nation divided not only by partisanship or how we view various issues, but also by dramatically different cognitive styles. Sociologists and psychologists are getting a better understanding about the ways that deep seated emotional responses effect our ideological viewpoints.

Last week, Moyers & Company caught up with Mother Jones science writer Chris Mooney, host of the Inquiring Minds podcast and author of The Republican Brain: the Science of Why They Deny Science – and Reality, to talk about what this research may tell us about the attitudes of those involved in the tea party movement. Below is a lightly-edited transcript of our discussion.

Report Exposes 'Unprecedented, Corporate-Backed Attack on Workers'

Examination shows sinister state-level assault on collective bargaining, other labor protections in recent years

- Jon Queally, staff writer

A new report by the Economic Policy Institute released Thursday, examining the "unprecedented" attack on the rights of both unionized and nonunionized workers in states across the country, reveals how the right-wing machine in recent years has crippled the gains of a once prosperous middle class.

“At a time when our focus should be reversing income inequality and making sure more Americans can find good-paying jobs, it turns out that governors and state legislators, working at the behest of corporate lobbies are working to pass laws that will cut the wages, benefits and bargaining power of both union and nonunion workers," says EPI researcher and author of the report Gordon Lafe.

The Texas Abortion Law Is a Trial Run for the Right Wing's Strategy Across America

Common sense prevailed in a court ruling striking down one provision of the Texas law. But three other provisions remain

by Amanda Marcotte

 

Mention Texas and most people immediately think of right-wing politicians in cowboy boots and hats. But there's a new image coming from Texas in recent weeks: women standing up against oppressive conservative policies. Despite the best efforts of pro-choicers (remember Wendy Davis) to filibuster and kill a bill designed to shut down most abortion clinics in the state, dogged anti-choice Republicans passed it anyway in a second special legislative session designed solely to pass the law. Most conservatives thought the story would end there, but it didn't.

 Women and pro-choicers got a measure of hope on Monday when a federal court judge in Texas shot down one of the most onerous provisions of the law that would require doctors at clinics to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. As the judge rightly said, this provision constitutes "a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion". Common sense is finally prevailing in Texas. If this ruling hadn't happened, 13 clinics would have to shut down immediately.
 

Matt Taibbi: Nobody Should Shed a Tear for JP Morgan Chase

OCTOBER 25, 2013

 

A lot of people all over the world are having opinions now about the ostensibly gigantic $13 billion settlement Jamie Dimon and JP Morgan Chase have entered into with the government.

The general consensus from most observers in the finance sector is that this superficially high-dollar settlement – worth about half a year's profits for Chase – is an unconscionable Marxist appropriation. It's been called a "robbery" and a "shakedown," in which red Obama and his evil henchman Eric Holder confiscated cash from a successful bank, as The Wall Street Journal wrote, "for no other reason than because they can and because they want to appease their left-wing populist allies."

Look, there's no denying that this is a lot of money. It's the biggest settlement in the history of government settlements, and it's just one company to boot. But this has been in the works for a long time, and it's been in the works for a reason. This whole thing, lest anyone forget, has its genesis in a couple of state Attorneys General (including New York's Eric Schneiderman and Delaware's Beau Biden) not wanting to sign off on any deal with the banks that didn't also address the root causes of the crisis, in particular the mass fraud surrounding the sale and production of subprime mortgage securities.

Billionaires: Decline of the West, Rise of the Rest

by Robin Broad and John Cavanagh

With the help of Forbes magazine, we and colleagues at the Institute for Policy Studies have been tracking the world’s billionaires and rising inequality the world over for several decades. Just as a drop of water gives us a clue into the chemical composition of the sea, these billionaires offer fascinating clues into the changing face of global power and inequality.

After our initial gawking at the extravagance of this year’s list of 1,426, we looked closer. This list reveals the major power shift in the world today: the decline of the West and the rise of the rest. Gone are the days when U.S. billionaires accounted for over 40 percent of the list, with Western Europe and Japan making up most of the rest. Today, the Asia-Pacific region hosts 386 billionaires, 20 more than all of Europe and Russia combined.

TPP/Fast Track Trade Fight Is On

Dave Johnson

You’ve probably been hearing warnings about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) “trade” agreement that is being negotiated. And you might have heard that the big corporations are going to push to use something called “fast track” trade promotion authority (TPA) to push it through.

It’s time to learn about TPP and fast track, and then call your member of Congress to let them know if you want them to hand the giant multinationals an end-run around democracy and national sovereignty.

The Fast Track Push Is Coming

“Fast track” trade promotion authority, if passed, means Congress yields its constitutional authority and obligation to review and amend trade agreements. A “fast track” treaty has to be voted on quickly, cannot be amended, and Congress has to give it an up-or-down vote.

Watchdog: ‘Toxic’ corporate culture remains unchanged five years after U.S. financial meltdown

By Agence France-Presse
Tuesday, October 29, 2013 7:14 EST

Five years after the U.S. financial crisis forced the massive government TARP bailout, the U.S. corporate culture remains toxic and breeding crime, the watchdog for the bailout program said Tuesday.

More than 300 people in the banking, housing and securities industries are in the hands of the criminal system, whether it is a charge, a conviction or a sentencing, the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) said in a quarterly report to Congress.

Paul Krugman: The Big Kludge

The good news about HealthCare.gov, the portal to Obamacare’s health exchange, is that the
administration is no longer minimizing its problems. That’s the first step toward fixing the mess —
and it will get fixed, although it’s anyone’s guess whether the new promise of a smoothly
functioning system by the end of November will be met. We know, after all, that Obamacare is
workable, since many states that chose to run their own exchanges are doing quite well.

But while we wait for the geeks to do their stuff, let’s ask a related question: Why did this thing
have to be so complicated in the first place?

Naomi Klein: How science is telling us all to revolt

Is our relentless quest for economic growth killing the planet? Climate scientists have seen the data – and they are coming to some incendiary conclusions. 

By Naomi Klein [1] Published 29 October 2013 10:00
 

Is our relentless quest for economic growth killing the planet? Climate scientists have seen the data – and they are coming to some incendiary conclusions.

In December 2012, a pink-haired complex systems researcher named Brad Werner made his way through the throng of 24,000 earth and space scientists at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union, held annually in San Francisco. This year’s conference had some big-name participants, from Ed Stone of Nasa’s Voyager project, explaining a new milestone on the path to interstellar space, to the film-maker James Cameron, discussing his adventures in deep-sea submersibles.

But it was Werner’s own session that was attracting much of the buzz. It was titled “Is Earth F**ked?” (full title: “Is Earth F**ked? Dynamical Futility of Global Environmental Management and Possibilities for Sustainability via Direct Action Activism”).

Standing at the front of the conference room, the geophysicist from the University of California, San Diego walked the crowd through the advanced computer model he was using to answer that question. He talked about system boundaries, perturbations, dissipation, attractors, bifurcations and a whole bunch of other stuff largely incomprehensible to those of us uninitiated in complex systems theory. But the bottom line was clear enough: global capitalism has made the depletion of resources so rapid, convenient and barrier-free that “earth-human systems” are becoming dangerously unstable in response. When pressed by a journalist for a clear answer on the “are we f**ked” question, Werner set the jargon aside and replied, “More or less.”

Paul Krugman: GOP Still Worried About "Those People"

Lots of commentators have been referencing a report from Democracy Corps about focus-group meetings with Republicans, and with good reason: Stanley Greenberg, the organization's co-founder, has basically provided a unified theory of the craziness that has enveloped American politics in the last few years.

What the report makes clear is that the current Republican obsession with attacking programs that benefit Americans in need, ranging from food stamps to health care reform, isn't about some philosophical commitment to small government. It's about anxiety over a changing America - the multiracial, multicultural society we're becoming - and anger that Democrats are taking Their Money and giving it to Those People. In other words, it's still race after all these years.

A Four-Point “Scorecard” for the Budget Talks

Richard Eskow

The House-Senate budget negotiations, scheduled to begin on Wednesday, are an opportunity for our leaders to finally have a meaningful discussion about healing our damaged economy. That’s the discussion Washington should have been having all along, but which it hasn’t had yet. How will we know whether that’s finally changed, or which politicians are genuinely looking out for the public’s interests?

This four-point document, “Principles for Debate on the Budget in the Economy,” is an excellent place to start. It provides a baseline for reasonable negotiations, and represents the interests of the millions of Americans who belong to the organizations which signed it. We’ve adapted its four points to serve as a scorecard for grading your representatives during these budget talks.

Leaked Documents Reveal the Secret Finances of a Pro-Industry Science Group

The American Council on Science and Health defends fracking, BPA, and pesticides. Guess who their funders are.

—By Andy Kroll and Jeremy Schulman | Mon Oct. 28, 2013 2:00 AM PDT

The American Council on Science and Health bills itself as an independent research and advocacy organization devoted to debunking "junk science." It's a controversial outfit—a "group of scientists…concerned that many important public policies related to health and the environment did not have a sound scientific basis," it says—that often does battle with environmentalists and consumer safety advocates, wading into public health debates to defend fracking, to fight New York City's attempt to ban big sugary sodas, and to dismiss concerns about the potential harms of the chemical bisphenol-A (better known at BPA) and the pesticide atrazine. The group insists that its conclusions are driven purely by science. It acknowledges that it receives some financial support from corporations and industry groups, but ACSH, which reportedly stopped disclosing its corporate donors two decades ago, maintains that these contributions don't influence its work and agenda.

Yet internal financial documents (read them here) provided to Mother Jones show that ACSH depends heavily on funding from corporations that have a financial stake in the scientific debates it aims to shape. The group also directly solicits donations from these industry sources around specific issues.

Pension Theft Crime Wave

Monday, 28 October 2013 14:08
By Mark Brenner, Labor Notes | Report

The nation’s union-haters have a juicy new target, Detroit’s public employees, ever since the city became the largest in history to file for bankruptcy. Detroit unions will wrangle with a bankruptcy judge this fall over how to handle $3.5 billion in pension obligations for 12,000 retirees.

City retirees receive a princely sum of $19,213 per year on average. Pension obligations to these workers account for less than 20 percent of Detroit’s debt. But the facts haven’t kept retirees from bearing the brunt of the bankruptcy fallout.

Dean Baker: How Alan Greenspan Destroyed America

October 28, 2013  |  Alan Greenspan [3] will go down in history as the person most responsible for the enormous economic damage caused by the housing bubble and the subsequent collapse of the market. The United States [4] is still down almost 9m jobs from its trend path. We are losing close to $1tn a year in potential output, with cumulative losses to date approaching $5tn [5].

 

These numbers correspond to millions of dreams ruined. Families who struggled to save enough to buy a home lost it when house prices plunged or they lost their jobs. Many older workers lose their job with little hope of ever finding another one, even though they are ill-prepared for retirement; young people getting out of school are facing the worst job market since the Great Depression [6], while buried in student loan debt.

Dean Baker: The Trans-Pacific Partnership: A Trade Agreement for Protectionists

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) stands at the top of the Obama administration’s trade agenda. The argument from its supporters is that this agreement is part of the never ending quest for freer trade. The evidence from what we know of this still secret pact is that the TPP has little to do with free trade. It can more accurately be described as a pact designed to increase the wealth and power of crony capitalists.

At this point, with few exceptions formal trade barriers, such as tariffs and quotas, are not very large. If lowering or eliminating the formal barriers that remain were the main agenda of this pact, there would be relatively little interest. Rather, the purpose of the pact is to use an international trade agreement to create a regulatory structure that is much more favorable to corporate interests than they would be able to get through the domestic political process in the United States and in the other countries in the pact.

The Fallacy of the Republican 'Moderate'

By Corey Robin

October 26, 2013  |  

In the New York Times [3] this week, John G. Taft, who is the grandson of Robert Taft [4], makes his contribution to the growing “Oh, conservatives used to be so moderate, now they’re just radicals and crazies” [5] literature.

Having written about and against this thesis of conservatism’s Golden Age so many times, I don’t think it’s useful for me to rehearse my critique here. Instead, I’ll focus on one important tidbit of Taft’s argument, in the hope that a little micro-history about his grandfather might serve to correct our macro-history of conservatism.

Meet 3 Master Manipulators of America’s Oligarchy

By Lynn Stuart Parramore

October 24, 2013  |  Ideas are costly, especially bogus ones. And a growing class of billionaires is more than willing to pay.

 

Whether they’re ginning up deficit hysteria to cut Social Security or blaming teachers and firefighters for state budget crises, these 1 percenters pose as defenders of your interests while arranging things so that they can plunder America and leave hard-working people with scraps. They fully understand mechanisms of manipulating public opinion, and they can pay off pundits and politicians to subscribe to whatever ideas best justify their greed and abuse.

It’s not enough that we now have the widest divide between rich and poor in living memory. These men are determined to crack open that gulf even wider.

Climate Deniers’ Strategy of Confusion

October 27, 2013

 

The fossil-fuel industry has invested billions of dollars in propaganda – funding phony “scientists” and bankrolling politicians – to confuse the public about the threat from global warming. The deception is aided and abetted by the mainstream media’s misguided “balance,” as Dan Becker and James Gerstenzang explain.


By Dan Becker and James Gerstenzang

Half a century ago, the tobacco industry tried to preserve its market by misleading Americans about the scientific validity of research demonstrating that smoking causes cancer. To weaken efforts to fight global warming, the “climate change denial machine,” in the words of the Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society, has been using that same strategy. For more than 20 years it has sought to cast doubt on the science that demonstrates that the climate is changing and pollution is to blame.

The Los Angeles Times has announced that it will no longer print letters to the editor that state “there’s no sign humans have caused climate change,” because they are factually inaccurate. Now, it is time for reporters and editors across the country to follow suit. To avoid misleading readers with a false “balance,” they should also stop paying attention to the deniers.