The CEA report on unemployment today (PDF) puts obstinate Republicans on notice: Blocking extensions could cost as much as 600,000 jobs. It also points out the impact on children of the unemployed: Importantly, approximately 42 percent of all EUC and EB recipients have, or live with, children. As of October 2010, 10.5 million children had benefited from EUC or EB through a household member. Further, 3 million of these children were in households where the UI recipient was the sole wage-earner. In total, about 40 million people had benefited from EUC or EB through at least one household member. With regard to job loss, the report reiterates what we already know: If people have no money, they can’t spend, buy, or pay their mortgage. UI can mitigate this cycle by helping unemployed workers avoid precipitous drops in spending. Economic research has found that without UI, a typical family whose head of household becomes unemployed would spend 22 percent less on food – as compared to the 7 percent drop that is actually observed because of the UI system. 7 In addition, unemployment is a leading cause of mortgage defaults, and the income provided by UI helps avert foreclosures. All of this goes without saying. I’m sure we wouldn’t have trouble finding a Republican who would agree with this on the short term. They know the stakes, which is why they’re serving their donor-masters so faithfully.
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Before he was vice president, Dick Cheney ran oil giant Halliburton, a subsidiary of which once dropped $180 million in bribes on Nigerian officials. Now Nigeria’s anti-corruption agency plans to charge Cheney over the affair. BBC: Nigeria’s anti-corruption agency is to charge former US Vice-President Dick Cheney over a bribery scandal that involves a former subsidiary of energy firm Halliburton. The case centres on engineering firm KBR, which admitted bribing officials. A lawyer for Mr Cheney said allegations he was involved in the scandal were “entirely baseless”. Read more Related Entries November 30, 2010 Wendell Potter on ‘Deadly Spin’ November 30, 2010 Wendell Potter on ‘Deadly Spin’
Continue reading …Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has a robust agenda for the lame duck session but all of it will be stalled if the Republicans are successful with what Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart calls the “audacity of nope” strategy. Reid has said that he would like to take up the DREAM Act immigration bill , “don’t ask, don’t tell” repeal , the 9/11 workers health bill , and the new START nuclear treaty with Russia. But Senate Republicans sent Reid a letter Tuesday promising to block all legislation until the expiring Bush-era tax cuts are extended even for the richest Americans. In the past, some politicians have viewed the lame duck session as an opportunity to pass important legislation because elected officials are free to work without worrying about elections. “If we look at it as an opportunity to, you know, after the electrics, after the partisanship to move forward then there’s real opportunities,” Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) said on Oct. 29. “After the elections, the lame duck session is the legislative sweet spot, if you will, the three weeks out of every two years when people can actually do what is best for the country because they are not preoccupied with getting re-elected,” Stewart explained Wednesday. “It’s kind of like that five minute window after you have an orgasm when you’re finally not thinking about sex and can get some actual work done,” he joked. But the Republicans are determined to not give the Democrats any legislative victories. “We can’t compromise on spending,” Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said in mid-November. “I don’t think you’re going to see compromise,” Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) predicted in early November. “Oh right. [The bills] won’t pass because the Republicans are not a legislative block. They’re a legislative c*ckblock,” Stewart observed. “Hope is lost. These three weeks will pass, as have the last two years, with the audacity of nope.”
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According to a clearly disapproving Rep. John Boehner, the House of Representatives’ vote Thursday in favor of keeping tax cuts for people earning less than $250,000 a year was tantamount to “chicken crap.” However, that didn’t affect the outcome, with most House Democrats joining forces to make the most of their majority while it lasts.
Continue reading …Showdown: Massachusetts Official To Pursue Mortgage Reassignment Fees From MERS
December 2, 2010 No CommentThis certainly cheered me up. Because no matter how much the politicians may try to cover up all the legal problems with MERS, this guy’s right — and he’s going to get that money: The gigantic mortgage database owned by the nations largest banks may have run afoul of Massachusetts strict property recordation filing laws, according to the elected Recorder of Deeds for the South Essex district of the state. In an exclusive interview with CNBC, John O’Brien explained why he sent a letter to Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley requesting an investigation into Mortgage Electronic Registrations Systems, Inc. “It’s a basic issue of fairness. MERS says that if you are a member of their club, you can avoid fees on assignments of mortgages forever. Those are fees that everyone else pays,” O’Brien said. “I’ve never before heard of a private company that has attempted to unilaterally take over such a public function as property recordation. Imagine if someone tried to do this with drivers licenses.” O’Brien has asked Coakley to investigate whether MERS may owe fees for recordation it has avoided. He is taking this very seriously. “I intend to pursue this as vigorously as the banks pursue a consumer who doesn’t pay a fee. If you don’t pay them, they’ll pursue you to the gates of Hell,” he said. O’Brien, who was named “Public Official of the Year in 2000 by the National Association of County Recorders Election Officials and Clerks, is unimpressed by MERS’s official response to his request for an investigation. “Massachusetts has very clear cut rules. Recordation is not optional. It’s mandatory. It cannot be avoided ,” he said. MERS argues that it is saving recordation offices and homebuyers money by reducing paperwork and fees. It says that homeowners would be “directly or indirectly” responsible for paying the assignment fees if not for MERS.
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In a Wednesday interview on BBC World News America, liberal FCC Commissioner Michael Copps told correspondent Katty Kay: “I think American media has a bad case of substance abuse right now ….we are going to be pretty close to denying our citizens the essential news and information that they need to have in order to make intelligent decisions about the future direction of their country.” As TVNewser reported on Thursday, after Kay asked about instituting a “Public Value Test” of media outlets, Copps replied: “What we've had in recent years is an aberration where we have had no oversight of the media. For years and years we had some public interest guidelines…they agreed to serve the public interest and that public interest to me right now is crying 'news and information, news and information, news and information.'” read more
Continue reading …Rich guy Glenn Beck lectures the rest of us on the virtues of Depression-era poverty
December 2, 2010 No Comment
Click here to view this media One of the real wonders of modern conservatism — as Thomas Frank explored in some depth in What’s the Matter With Kansas — is the way it manages to convince working- and middle-class people that looking out for the interests of America’s wealthy, in lieu of their own, is really their most important political undertaking. Their chief method for doing this is propaganda that convinces large numbers of people, mostly through culture-war-type appeals, to vote against their own interests. Glenn Beck put on a really perfect display of this Tuesday on his Fox News show, when he spent the first half telling his audience that the poor in America don’t have it so bad because they have TVs and microwaves, compared to what folks looked like back during the Depression. Then he came back with a segment extolling the virtues of Depression-era poverty, when people canned their own food and made their own clothes. Then he said: Beck: We think of poverty now as not having enough money for cable or high-speed Internet. So saith one of the country’s richest men — a guy who has never canned his own food or raised his own garden or even worked an honest day in his life. A guy who knows NOTHING about the conditions of Americans living in poverty today, let alone yesterday or any other day. But he sure can stand back and admire the character of people living in poverty from afar. FWIW, here’s a site, Poverty in America, dedicated to standing up for people living in poverty today. Their main concern today isn’t getting cable TV — it is, indeed, making sure there’s food on the table for their children. Just like in the old days. But Glenn Beck wants us to think there’s some nobility in all this — as in: “Get used to it, suckers! This is how you’re gonna live now!” Sounds about right for a rich guy.
Continue reading …How many times during the Bush administration did we hear John McCain and other members of the GOP tell the American people that military leaders should never be questioned when it comes to military matters? Bush turned the entire Iraq War over to Gen. Petraeus so that he could deflect all criticism away from the White House as much as possible. How many times have I ever used video of Joe Lieberman to defend a morally just position? That’s how disturbing the fight against the repeal of DADT has become. What we found out at today’s hearing is that when a Democratic President is in office, the GOP has no respect for the decisions made by our military leaders. Greg Sargent: It’s important that we be 100 percent clear on what happened at this morning’s Senate hearings on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Military leaders essentially pleaded with GOP Senators to support repealing DADT, arguing that the failure to do so would put the state of our military at serious risk . Remarkably, despite this clear plea, many Republican Senators still appear unwilling to allow the military leadership’s request to do what they believe is right by our military to be a serious factor in their thinking. In his testimony this morning, Defense Secretary Robert Gates put this as clearly as you could ask for. He noted that the courts are getting more involved in DADT, and said he worried that if the courts abruptly overturn the policy, it could leave the military leadership utterly incapable of responding without harming the armed forces. “We would have zero time to prepare,” Gates said. “No time to train. No time to prepare. That is the worst imaginable outcome as far as I’m concerned, and has very high risk to the force.” By contrast, Gates said, if Congress repeals DADT, it would afford him more control over the timetable, allowing him to monitor the impact of repealing the policy and to adjust accordingly. {} The bottom line message from these military leaders to GOP Senators couldn’t be clearer: Please repeal this policy, so we can carry out repeal in a judicious, careful way, before the courts force us to do it in a rushed and haphazard manner, potentially harming our military. Obviously, the civilian leadership is 100 percent responsible for making policy decisions such as these. Senators are right to subject the claims of military leaders to serious skepticism and scrutiny, and they should be regarded as purely advisory. But what’s striking is that their views on the matter don’t seem to be much of a factor in the thinking of many GOP Senators. Indeed, none of them at the hearing even contested what these military leaders said about courts and the various timetables at play. Yet these Senators still appear adamantly opposed to repeal. I do believe Congress should question the military leadership at all times, especially during a time of war, but the hypocrisy coming out of the mouths of McCain and other GOP politicians is as revolting as ever. If Gates asked for 100,000 more troops to go into Afghanistan, McCain would be out there begging for the President to listen to his military leaders, but when it comes to basic human rights and decency there’s an emptiness that occupies his entire being.
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How is it that Senator John McCain can look at the same Pentagon study about repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell” that Defense Secretary Robert Gates and other military colleagues did and reach such a strikingly different conclusion about how to proceed? Well, for starters, it would appear that McCain prioritized certain aspects of the report over others, according to The New York Times, while supporters of lifting the ban on GLBT troops serving openly looked at the bigger picture. MSNBC’s coverage of the discussion between McCain and military leaders is posted below the NYT excerpt.
Continue reading …In today’s Washington Post, the senior Republican statesmen appeal (again) for their colleagues in the Senate to ratify New START . Republican presidents have long led the crucial fight to protect the United States against nuclear dangers. That is why Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush negotiated the SALT I, START I and START II agreements. It is why President George W. Bush negotiated the Moscow Treaty. All four recognized that reducing the number of nuclear arms in an open, verifiable manner would reduce the risk of nuclear catastrophe and increase the stability of America’s relationship with the Soviet Union and, later, the Russian Federation. The world is safer today because of the decades-long effort to reduce its supply of nuclear weapons. As a result, we urge the Senate to ratify the New START treaty signed by President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev . It is a modest and appropriate continuation of the START I treaty that expired almost a year ago. It reduces the number of nuclear weapons that each side deploys while enabling the United States to maintain a strong nuclear deterrent and preserving the flexibility to deploy those forces as we see fit. Along with our obligation to protect the homeland, the United States has responsibilities to allies around the world. The commander of our nuclear forces has testified that the 1,550 warheads allowed under this treaty are sufficient for all our missions – and seven former nuclear commanders agree. The defense secretary, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the head of the Missile Defense Agency – all originally appointed by a Republican president – argue that New START is essential for our national defense. Yeah. Even though three-quarters of the American public and more than 40 newspaper editorial shops agree, good luck with that argument, gentlemen. All the moderate Republicans have left the Congress. But I’m sure Godot is coming any minute now.
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