Job cuts at Bank of America could hit a number much higher than earlier reported —four times higher: Executives are now discussing cutbacks to the tune of 40,000 positions, the Wall Street Journal reports. A final decision isn’t expected until later today. The bank is aiming to trim its…
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Three days after 9/11, Elaine Greene held an American flag on a busy street corner of a small Maine town. Since then, she and her two housemates have waved the flag at the same corner every Tuesday in honor of America’s service personnel. (Sept. 9)
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President Obama delivers a speech on jobs and the US economy to Congress – follow the action and reaction here live 7.35pm: Now here’s the politics: Obama goes on a riff “I reject the idea” that Americans are forced to choose between jobs and regulations. And he doesn’t want America to be in a race for the bottom, he wants it to be in a race for the top, unsurprisingly. 7.32pm: RedState’s Erick Erickson isn’t happy, via Twitter : “Instead of yelling ‘you lie’ at him, I wish they’d loudly laugh at this farce. This speech is a rehashed joke.” 7.29pm: By Obama’s standards, this is a very direct, straight-forward speech by Obama. No fancy turns of phrase so far. For example: This isn’t political grandstanding. This isn’t class warfare. This is simple math. These are real choices that we have to make. 7.26pm: I think there’s a subtle message in this speech, and that is that passing this jobs bill is a high priority for the White House. 7.24pm: Since then we’ve had several more “pass this jobs bills”. Yep, Chuck’s right. If you had “pass this jobs bill” in the Presidential Speech drinking game, you’re already passed out by now. 7.22pm: MSNBC’s Chuck Todd tweets : “I’ve already lost count of the number of times POTUS has said “pass this jobs bill.” 7.17pm: “Fifty House Republicans” have proposed similar payroll tax cuts, says Obama. “You should pass this bill now,” he repeats, and then gets tougher: Building a world class transportation system was part of what made us a economic superpower. And now you’re going to sit back and watch China build newer airports and faster railroads, at a time when millions of unemployed construction workers could build them right here in America? 7.15pm: Now Obama is explaining his American Jobs Act, stressing that every proposal in it has been supported by politicians on both sides: It will provide a jolt to the American economy … you should pass this jobs plan right away. At that moment a huge crash of thunder and lightning is heard over NW Washington. Maybe a good sign? 7.10pm: Here’s Obama, saying that Americans “know that Washington has not always put their interests first”: The people of this country work hard to meet their responsibilities. The question tonight is, whether we will meet ours. The question is whether in the face of an on-going national crisis, we can stop the circus and actually do something to save the economy. 7.09pm: Strangely, the mood actually seems more pleasant in atmosphere than in the last State of the Union, back in January. It’s going to be 43 minutes long, according to Shep. 7.05pm: Here we go: “Mr Speaker, the President of the United States,” is the call by Sergeant-at-Arms Bill Livingood, and here Obama is, shaking hands and looking jolly. “This looks exactly like a State of the Union address,” sniffs Shepherd Smith, the only Fox News presenter worth a pitcher of spit. Or just a pitcher. 7.02pm: We’ve just added a live video of this event to this blog, so refresh the page and you’ll see it. 6.58pm: Not long to go. There’s Michelle Obama being applauded. She’s in magenta. Or possible fuschia. The dress I mean. 6.50pm: There’s some pro forma stuff that has to be got through, and that’s being done right now. Oh look, it’s the dean of the diplomatic corps! That sort of thing. 6.43pm: On Fox News, the cynics are out in force. “This is the first election kick-off speech given by a president in the houses of Congress,” says Charles Krauthammer. Like Charles, I’m shocked – shocked! – to hear that politics is going on in the halls of Congress. 6.35pm: If you want to follow the White House’s live video of tonight’s event, then I have the feed for you right here . 6.28pm ET: The White House has just released a set of advance quotes from Obama’s speech: The people of this country work hard to meet their responsibilities. The question tonight is whether we’ll meet ours. The question is whether, in the face of an ongoing national crisis, we can stop the political circus and actually do something to help the economy; whether we can restore some of the fairness and security that has defined this nation since our beginning. Those of us here tonight cannot solve all of our nation’s woes. Ultimately, our recovery will be driven not by Washington, but by our businesses and our workers. But we can help. We can make a difference. There are steps we can take right now to improve people’s lives. I am sending this Congress a plan that you should pass right away. It’s called the American Jobs Act. There should be nothing controversial about this piece of legislation. Everything in here is the kind of proposal that’s been supported by both Democrats and Republicans – including many who sit here tonight. And everything in this bill will be paid for. Everything. The purpose of the American Jobs Act is simple: to put more people back to work and more money in the pockets of those who are working. It will create more jobs for construction workers, more jobs for teachers, more jobs for veterans, and more jobs for the long-term unemployed. It will provide a tax break for companies who hire new workers, and it will cut payroll taxes in half for every working American and every small business. It will provide a jolt to an economy that has stalled, and give companies confidence that if they invest and hire, there will be customers for their products and services. You should pass this jobs plan right away. 6.02pm ET: Guess who’s coming to the big speech tonight? There are duelling parties of guests invited by the White House and Republicans to sit in the visitors gallery: The guests who will be seated with First Lady Michelle Obama all point to elements of the president’s plan he will discuss tonight, a set of proposals he’s calling the “American Jobs Act.” Some of them also just so happen to hail from swing states that the White House wouldn’t mind garnering some favorable coverage in. They include an Iowa business executive who took part in Obama’s recent Rural Economic Forum, a small business owner in Charlotte, North Carolina, a Navy veteran from Minnesota looking to re-enter the private sector workforce, and a Cleveland school teacher who could be laid off because of local budget cuts. Preamble: Tonight President Obama delivers a crucial speech on his plans for the US economy and joblessness to a special joint session of Congress, to be televisied live at 7pm ET (midnight BST). In the past Obama has relied on his ability to give a big, high profile speech to gain political momentum and assauge his critics. This time – with the American economy in the doldrums, unemployment stubbornly high at 9%, increased public discontent and intransigent opposition from the Republican opposition – Obama’s rhetorical skills may have met their match. What can we expect from Obama’s speech? The emphasis will be solidly on jobs and job creation, the key political fact of the last 12 months as hopes for a recovery has first faded and then disappeared. More specifically, according to the heavily trailed contents, Obama plans to offer some specific spending increases and tax cuts designed to restart job creation. How or if he can pay for them depends on how much he can win over the Republicans who control the House of Representatives. With a presidential election looming next year, Republicans have little incentive to save Obama’s own job. But opinion polls show rising dissatisfaction with the response of the Republican party in Congress. While Obama’s popularity has slipped to new lows, he is still better liked that Congressional Republicans. So what will we learn tonight? According to the Washington Post, not much blue sky as opposed to more of the same, with perhaps $300bn in new spending: The president’s plan, in large part, will call for continuing current measures to stimulate the economy, including a 2 percentage-point payroll-tax cut and extended unemployment benefits, administration officials say. Obama is also likely to call for an additional tax cut for companies that hire workers. Those measures together could cost about $200 billion next year. Obama is planning to propose $100 billion or more in spending on infrastructure, state and local aid, and programs that target people who have been unemployed for more than six months, according to officials and other people familiar with the deliberations. Not only will he pledge new spending to spur hiring, he is also likely to call for overhauling the way the government spends money. This could include an infrastructure bank that would pool tens of billions of federal dollars with state or private money to build roads and commercial buildings and to rehabilitate schools. Obama has suggested that the initiatives could lead to the hiring of one million unemployed construction workers. Will Republicans go for it? According to the New York Times , possibly some GOP members might like tax cuts: This week, Senator Scott P Brown, a Republican from Massachusetts, became one of the first in his party to call the tax cut “a policy that we should all support.” Jon M Huntsman Jr, the former Utah governor who is running for president, has said he thinks the cut is a good idea. On Wednesday, Representative Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, said that the tax cut “is something I supported in the past,” and that the matter “will be part of the discussions ongoing.” (Two weeks ago his spokesman, Brad Dayspring, said that Mr Cantor “has long believed that there are better ways to grow the economy and create jobs than temporary tax relief.”) House Speaker John A Boehner also said Thursday morning, in response to a question concerning the tax relief, that he was open to what the president had to say. For more background, my colleagues at the Guardian have put together two excellent guides to the economic data: • How US unemployment has changed over time • US unemployment mapped state by state Before Obama starts speaking at 7pm ET we’ll be covering the build-up, the speech itself and the reaction, including a threatened response by Republican presidential contender Michele Bachmann. And of course you can leave your comments below. United States US economy Barack Obama Obama administration US Congress Live video US economic growth and recession US politics Republicans Economics Richard Adams guardian.co.uk
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David Lammy says the family of the man whose death sparked rioting in Tottenham were not told what was happening The Independent Police complaints commission has been criticised by the MP David Lammy for leaving the family of Mark Duggan “floundering” and for failing to robustly communicate its independence after his death. Lammy, the MP for Tottenham, was speaking on the eve of the funeral of the 29-year-old, who was fatally shot by police on 4 August and whose death is the subject of an investigation by the police watchdog. Giving evidence on Thursday to MPs on the home affairs select committee, Lammy said confidence in the police from members of his community, who had seen their area devastated by looting and disorder, had taken a huge knock. “For any community to have suffered two riots in a generation – I can think of cities in America that have been here and it’s pretty bleak – 99% of people in Tottenham are horrified at the violence, horrified at knife crime and gang members, and (they are people) who need policing and there has been a real confidence kick.” He told MPs that the fatal shooting of Duggan was an event that could have led to disorder but that neither the police nor the IPCC, he suggested, appeared to have taken that into account in their handling of events. Addressing the actions of the IPCC in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, he criticised its failure to demonstrate its independence clearly. “This was a sort of perfect storm of a catalogue of errors, that could have avoided riots on the scale that we saw,” said Lammy. “A death of this kind we know from experience in London can trigger unrest. Now, in the old days, the police would immediately start investigating themselves and there would be a lot of suspicion about where that would end. “The good news is that now we have the IPCC and the IPCC stepped in very early. The bad news is the family was then left floundering. “I am not sure the communication of the IPCC worked. The need for an active, visible press conference where they say they will get to the bottom of this quickly – that did not happen.” He said securing community confidence was essential in the immediate aftermath of the shooting and that had not happened. Speaking to the Guardian after the committee, Lammy said: “The central challenge to the IPCC in relation to a community like Tottenham is to establish their independence and that is still a work in progress – they still have a job to do.” A spokesman for the IPCC said: “We have acknowledged to Mr Duggan’s family, in public and by way of the home affairs select committee, that there are lessons to be learned from the communications in the early hours after the death of Mark Duggan. We are engaging directly with community representatives to understand their concerns, and we are actively looking at what could have been done better, not just on the part of the IPCC but the system as a whole.” “The IPCC has to understand that communication to a community like mine, with 200 different languages, is really critical. They needed to be on Sky TV, they needed to be on News 24, they needed to be on pirate radio stations showing their face, and they weren’t.” The funeral, which is expected to be attended by up to 3,000 people, is taking place this morning. The cortege will pass slowly through the Broadwater Farm estate, where Duggan grew up, and come to a halt at the New Testament Church of God in Wood Green for a private service. Duggan’s family have requested privacy and have told the police that they want the funeral to be “local, peaceful and dignified”. Earlier this week they met the new police commander for the area, Mak Chishty, to discuss the funeral plans. While the number of police in London is still at a record high, with around 10,000 officers available on the streets, the presence at the funeral will be low-key and will involve local officers. Inquest, the organisation that helps families of those who are killed after contact with the police, said the family had requested that the media stay outside the church, where facilities have been set up. After the service, family members will travel to Wood Green cemetery, and then to a reception at the Broadwater Farm community centre. Speaking on behalf of the Duggan family, Inquest said: “The family will not be speaking to the media and ask that they are respectfully left in peace.” Mark Duggan UK riots Independent Police Complaints Commission David Lammy Crime London Police Metropolitan police Sandra Laville guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Dear Paul Ryan, I’d Like To Ask You A Question But I Don’t Want To Be Arrested
September 8, 2011 No CommentFrom MoveOn.org — Dear Paul Ryan, I’d Like To Ask You A Question But I Don’t Want To Be Arrested . From their You Tube channel: Rep. Paul Ryan’s only August appearance is at this $15 a ticket “townhall”, where he refuses to speak directly with his constituents–who are demanding real answers. Instead? He has them arrested. Call Rep. Ryan and tell him: That’s not how we do things in America. Apparently daring to ask Paul Ryan why he wants to destroy our social safety nets is a reason to get arrested in America these days. Here’s his contact page and if you do call, be polite please but let him know how you feel about this. Contact Paul
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Click here to view this media This is great! Just keep this dude talking. We don’t even need Katie Couric – just put a mike in front of Texas Governor Rick Perry, and let him speak. If he were smarter he’d know how dumb he is – but he’s not. So he says things like he did at his first ever national debate, Wednesday night at the Reagan Library. This was after Jon Huntsman said, “Listen, when you make comments that fly in the face of what 98 out of 100 climate scientists have said, when you call into question the science of evolution, all I’m saying is that, in order for the Republican Party to win, we can’t run from science. We can’t run from mainstream conservative philosophy. We’ve got to win voters.” Yes. No applause from the L.L. Bean catalog audience. Silence on pro-science. A brave moment for Huntsman, fell flat (like the shape of the Earth). Then the question went to ” Crotch :” PERRY: Well, I do agree that there is — the science is — is not settled on this. The idea that we would put Americans’ economy at — at — at jeopardy based on scientific theory that’s not settled yet, to me, is just — is nonsense. I mean, it — I mean — and I tell somebody, I said, just because you have a group of scientists that have stood up and said here is the fact, Galileo got outvoted for a spell. Yes. Because zealot extremists doubted Galileo, the father of modern science (who, turns out, was right…and brilliant) – we should act like those zealot extremists?! What? Remember Perry’s Texas A&M transcripts are on the Internet . He got an AVERAGE D in science classes and C in history. But, like I said – if he were smarter – he’d be quieter. But he kept on digging: PERRY: But the fact is, to put America’s economic future in jeopardy, asking us to cut back in areas that would have monstrous economic impact on this country is not good economics and I will suggest to you is not necessarily good science. Find out what the science truly is before you start putting the American economy in jeopardy. HARRIS: Just to follow up quickly. Tell us how you’ve done that. Are there specific — specific scientists or specific theories that you’ve found especially compelling, as you… PERRY: Let me tell you what I find compelling, is what we’ve done in the state of Texas, using our ability to regulate our clean air. We cleaned up our air in the state of Texas, more than any other state in the nation during the decade. Nitrous oxide levels, down by 57 percent. Ozone levels down by 27 percent. Bonk. Texas has the worst pollution in the country . “Texas Soup” is Houston’s air. This sums it up for me. I tweeted this during the second half of the debate : BTW: I love Perry. He’s awesome. He’s like Palin without the charm, facts or brains. Love love love him. #reagandebate I mean it. Let’s give him the nomination already. But speaking of science and math (classes Perry should have dropped before getting a grade in them) – just to cleanse your pallet – I’d like to share what a reader sent me this morning. It’s his letter that was published in NYT : To the Editor: You do not study mathematics because it helps you build a bridge. You study mathematics because it is the poetry of the universe. Its beauty transcends mere things. JONATHAN DAVID FARLEY Orono, Me., Aug. 25, 2011 The writer is an associate professor of computer science at the University of Maine. Commie.
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enlarge In the grand scheme of history, the fall of Muammar al-Gaddafi is a very big deal—and not just because one of the world’s most awful tyrants has fallen, as glorious as that may be. It’s a big deal because once upon a time, Libya was a big deal—the epicenter of a new vision about how the entire postwar world might work differently, with a newly ascendent, resource rich “Third World” calling the tune. The rise and fall of that idea is one of the major forces shaping the world we live in now. The idea began in a place called Bandung, in Indonesia, in 1955 when a bloc of mostly African and Asian nations, often former colonies freed in the tumult that followed World War II met and announced to the world that they would be a force to be reckoned with. As late as 1969, that was a laughable notion. The five fingers of the world economy, Richard Nixon liked to say, were “a strong Europe, a strong U.S., Russia, China, and for the future, Japan….The rest do not matter.” And they didn’t, more unless, until Colonel Gaddafi’s coup that September. That spring, Gaddafi cut the allowable production of the largest oil company operating in the country, Occidental Petroleum, from 800,000 to 500,000 barrels a day. This wasn’t supposed to be imaginable. It seemed like McDonald’s one day deciding unilaterally to sell 40 percent fewer hamburgers—a deliberate act of self-immiseration. What it was, though, was a strike—an assertion of power against the forces of capital. “People who have lived without oil for 5,000 years can live without it again for a few years in order to attain their legitimate rights.” It was one of the twentieth century’s great revolutionary acts. Nixon had never taken seriously the idea that Arab states could or would use their oil supplies as a weapon. In fact, Nixon had never much taken the oil problem seriously at all, nor Henry Kissinger: “Don’t talk to me about barrels of oil,” he told economic advisers. “They might as well have been bottles of Coca-Cola. I don’t understand!” He said that on the eve of the Arab oil embargo of 1973, when OPEC nations led by Saudi Arabia united to write Colonel Gaddafi’s strategy large. On October 16 of that year they unilaterally raised the price of crude oil from $3.00 to $5.11. On Christmas Eve they just about doubled that price. Henry Kissinger had once bellowed at North Vietnam’s intransigence in the face of America’s B-52s, “I can’t believe that a fourth-rate power like North Vietnam doesn’t have a breaking point.” This was the revenge of the Fourth-Rate Powers. It was to continue, and grow. “Between 1973 and 1977,” writes Judith Stein in Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the 1970s the earnings of oil-exporting nations grew 600 percent, to $140 billion.” Other nations imitated the oil weapon via their own indispensable commodities: bauxite, tin, copper. By the middle of the decade, about three quarters of the crucial raw materials American corporations needed from Third World Nations had been nationalized. And, Stein writes, “After Vietnam, military action was out of the question.” Henry Kissinger visited the UN in the spring of 1974, hat in hand, to beg the “Lesser Developed Nation” for more kind consideration; tiny Jamaica, to beg for bauxite; and, just in time for the Bicentennial, to Africa, for the very first time to propose an international, world-government version of American agricultural policy. David Rockefeller of Chase Manhattan Bank proposed “nothing less than serious economic planning on an international scale.” (Imagine what Glenn Beck would do with that!) Ford treasurer secretary William Simon cried “we are in danger of compromising our basic commitment to the free enterprise system.” And it all started because of a ballsy cat named Muumar. Something else started, too. If you are a student of conservative history, might recognize the name William Simon. He was one of the founders of the Heritage Foundation. Most of you are probably familiar with the ways the culture wars of the 1960s became seedbed for the rise of the conservative movement—the Nixonland stuff. Here was another seedbed. It is well-covered in several books you should think about reading if you’re interested in the subject: Judith Stein’s book, mentioned above; Kim Phillips-Fein’s Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from Roosevelt to Reagan ; Thomas Byrne Edsall’s 1989 classic The New Politics of Inequality —which all narrate the organizing corporate America did in the wake of the Third World resource strikes to see to it that their “free market” prerogatives were never tampered with again. The rest, yes, is history… Rick Pearlstein is the newest contributor to C&L. He’s the author of “Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus” and “Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America.” To complete the trilogy, he’s working on a book about Reagan.
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“If Rush Limbaugh or you on your radio show said we have to take out Obama, you know darn well that tomorrow morning every editorial in America would be accusing you of inciting violence,” NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell said to Fox News host Sean Hannity last night. Yet when
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After the massive violence and killings of the past decade — in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, but also in Somalia, Yemen and elsewhere — the tenth anniversary of 9/11 next Sunday might be a suitable moment to take stock. A good place to start might be to try to understand the motives of the men who flew the hijacked planes into the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Why did Muhammad Atta and his al-Qaida colleagues feel such intense hatred for America that they were prepared to sacrifice their lives in order to punish it? The American response to the devastating attacks on its heartland was, alas, wholly predictable. The trauma was so painful that the overwhelming instinct of most…
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Republican Presidential Debate pt 6 Republican Presidential Debate pt 5 Republican Presidential Debate pt 3 tanalee says: RT @ President : Bachmann struggled for spotlight in Republican presidential debate . http://t.co/O70LEsm
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