METHODS, MAN.

post from Ezra Klein on 11 March 2009 12:08:00 PM. © Ezra Klein

By Dylan MatthewsJohn Sides has a good, long rant at the expense of Matt Bai and his somewhat off-handed condemnation of political science. The whole thing's worth reading, but this point in particular deserves emphasizing:Political journalism would be[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=03&year=2009&base_name
=methods_man

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

The Coming Obama Judiciary

post from MyDD on 11 March 2009 12:06:06 PM. © MyDD

During the tenures George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, the White House went to great lengths to stock the federal judiciary with strong conservatives. To this end, the Bush, Bush and Reagan administrations not only sought ideologues, but[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/mydd/~3/6kOiHxFQhY4/01677

Digg this

NEW POLL: America Is Evenly Divided Between
Progressives/Liberals And Conservatives/Libertarians

post from Think Progress on 11 March 2009 12:04:00 PM. © Think Progress

Our guest bloggers are John Halpin and Ruy Teixeira, fellows at the Center for American Progress.

For years, traditional public opinion polling has broken down Americans? political ideology into three distinct groupings: liberal, moderate, and conservative. Based on this simplified categorization, there has been remarkable stability in ideological orientation with roughly one-fifth of Americans identifying themselves as ?liberal? and about 4 in 10 classifying themselves as ?moderate? or ?conservative?, respectively, according to Gallup polling from 1992 to 2008.

Two new studies (here and here) conducted by the Progressive Studies Program at the Center for American Progress breaks down the electorate on a new 5-point scale of political ideology that reflects the primary approaches people ascribe to today. Under this schematic, 34 percent of the country self-identifies as ?conservative?, 29 percent as ?moderate?, 15 percent as ?liberal?, 16 percent as ?progressive?, and 2 percent as ?libertarian?.

After moderates are asked which approach they lean towards, the overall ideological breakdown of the country divides into fairly neat left and right groupings with 47 percent of Americans identifying as progressive or liberal and 48 percent as conservative or libertarian and the rest unsure.

A nation is evenly split in its political identity is decidedly center-left in its policy orientation:

? By a margin of almost nine to one, Americans agree that ?government investments in education, infrastructure, and science are necessary to ensure America?s long-term economic growth,? (79 percent agree, 12 percent neutral, 9 percent disagree).
? More than three in four Americans (76 percent) also agree with the president?s argument that ?America’s economic future requires a transformation away from oil, gas, and coal to renewable energy sources such as wind and solar.?
? Nearly three in four Americans believe that ?government regulations are necessary to keep businesses in check and protect workers and consumers,? (73 percent agree, 15 percent neutral, 12 percent disagree).
? Nearly two in three Americans (65 percent) agree that ?the federal government should guarantee affordable health coverage for every American.?

Complementing this agenda are significant demographic shifts that favor progressives. Between 1988 and 2008, the share of minority voters in presidential elections has risen by 11 points, while the share of increasingly progressive white college graduate voters has risen by four points. But the share of white-working class voters, who have remained conservative in their orientation, has plummeted by 15 points.

How progressive are you? Take our interactive quiz.

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/03/11/halpin-teixeria-progressive-study/

Digg this

Feds Suspect Wide Circle of Co-Conspirators in
Madoff Case

post from Crooks and Liars on 11 March 2009 12:00:57 PM. © Crooks and Liars

I'm glad to hear this investigation is widening, because you just don't steal that much money without someone else knowing about it:

Two days before Bernard Madoff enters an 11-count guilty plea in Manhattan federal court, the investigation into his giant Ponzi scheme has broadened to include a number of suspected co-conspirators, according to federal officials involved in the case. Madoff?s lawyer told a judge today that there was no ?deal? connected to Madoff?s confessing to money laundering, mail fraud, and other counts that will likely result in a life sentence.
Ruth Madoff, who was considered ?innocent at first,? is believed to have received at least $70 million from her husband and is now therefore an object of the investigation.
That tallies with the revelation, from another source involved in the probe, that Madoff has not been cooperating in good faith with investigators. ?He is not reliable. He?s jerking everyone around,? said the source. ?Every day he changes his tune about where the money went and where it is. He?s trying to protect his family.?
A source close to the Madoff defense team agreed that Madoff?s main concern was to preserve as much assets as possible for his wife and children and to keep them from legal entanglements. ?The US attorney?s office is still trying to resolve what is tainted or clean money, what real property in the US is appropriate for the Madofffs to keep,? the source said.
That may prove difficult. Sources say new information has surfaced that suggests several members of Madoff?s inner circle transferred assets to their wives, transactions thought to be laundered through an English bank.
Ruth Madoff, who was considered ?innocent at first,? according to this source, is believed to have received at least $70 million from her husband and is now therefore an object of the investigation. That is one reason why she recently decided to retain her own lawyer, leaving Ira Sorkin, who has represented both of the Madoffs since December, when the Ponzi scheme was revealed.
Investigators are focusing their attention on three groups of possible co-conspirators. ?There should be at least 20 indictments, between the three groups, if the feds are doing their jobs,? said one highly placed lawyer involved in the case. ?Some will be conspiracy, the ones who were deep into it with Madoff, and others will be civil cases sent to the SEC for prosecution.?
(Lawyers and prosecutors who spoke to The Daily Beast for this article declined to go on the record, citing their legal involvement in the case.)

Read The Full Article:
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/feds-suspect-wide-circle-co-conspirat

Digg this

Show Us the Money

post from Talking Points Memo on 11 March 2009 12:00:00 PM. © Talking Points Memo

Stephen Labaton has another article in the Times about banks that are fed up with federal meddling and deciding to give the Feds their money back. He makes the decent point that forcing weak banks to ease the terms of the outstanding loans may have the[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Talking-Points-Memo/~3/74Z9cvyvICg/show_us_the_mon
ey.php

Digg this

GRITtv Live: Is This the End of Capitalism

post from Firedoglake on 11 March 2009 11:59:50 AM. © Firedoglake

The neo-liberal order has undoubtedly failed. But what will replace it? Today on GRITtv DAVID HARVEY, a Distinguished Professor at CUNY and the author of The Limits to Capital and ALEXANDER COCKBURN, co-editor of Counterpunch, on the end (or future) of[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://lauraflanders.firedoglake.com/2009/03/11/grittv-live-at-noon-is-this-the-e
nd-of-capitalism/

Digg this

Senator Vitter Freaks Out at Dulles

post from Taylor Marsh on 11 March 2009 11:58:41 AM. © Taylor Marsh

We already know the former ?D.C. Madam” Senator has sloppy control issues, otherwise why would he have a diaper fetish? Never mind, don’t answer that, just couldn’t resist. But at a time when laughs are scarce, we do appreciate the[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://www.taylormarsh.com/2009/03/11/senator-vitter-freaks-out-at-dulles/

Digg this

Move over Joe Lieberman...

post from Daily Kos on 11 March 2009 11:55:03 AM. © Daily Kos

...presenting Fox's favorite Democrat, 2009 edition.

Thankfully he's still Senator Bayh, and not the Vice President.

Here's a transcript of his remarks attacking Democrats for supporting the spending bill:

For some, it’s the projects, and not all of them are bad. They are not all bridges to nowhere, but at this moment in time, I think it’s just something we can’t afford.

Some of them like the just higher levels of spending for all the programs, the 8 percent across the board increase. They resented some of the lines that were drawn during the Bush years, and they want to make up for that in their minds, and I think some others would prefer maybe to not buck the leadership, that kind of thing, so you put all of that together, and that generates support for the bill, but again, Greta, the day of reckoning is coming. We can’t run deficits like this forever. The markets will react and punish us if we don’t...

...I am talking about something truly cataclysmic, our currency collapsing, interest rates skyrocketing because of our unsustainable deficits.

It is now at an unprecedented level, well except during the second World War perhaps, or the civil war of 12% of GDP, and this is just not sustainable.

Obviously, Bayh is one of those old school conservative Democrats who thinks the only way to win is to distance himself from the party. Unfortunately, he's just not thinking that clearly about things: Barack Obama didn't win Indiana by attacking Democrats, he won Indiana by attacking problems and offering solutions.

More importantly, the substance of Bayh's point is stupid. He suggests Dems are seeking some sort of revenge for the Bush years with this bill, but he fails to note it was drafted while Bush was still President.

The real problem is his dramatic pronouncement about the perils of "unprecedented" deficits.

For whatever reason, Bayh doesn't understand the real lesson of the large deficits we ran during WWII. Leaving aside the fact that our current debt level is currently nowhere near what it was during WWII as a share of the economy, the large WWII-era deficits actually worked, helping usher in a full recovery from the Great Depression.

What we need now is a dose of the same medicine that worked so well in past -- not the warmed over blue dog conservatism being offered up by Evan Bayh.

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/qeCvF-h6Sbs/706967

Digg this

Manufacturing Update for the week of 3.11.09

Well hello everyone, and welcome to a new edition of the Manufacturing series! For those new to the Manufacturing series, I try to cover anything related to the topic at hand regarding new developments like green manufacturing. Our industrial base has[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Docudharma/~3/ir8PFDGvW40/showDiary.do

Digg this

TPMTV: Meanwhile, Back in Afghanistan

You've probably seen Paul Rieckhoff's shaved dome on the cable nets at one time or another. He's an articulate and engaging spokesman for U.S. veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts in his role as founder and executive director of IAVA.I wanted[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Talking-Points-Memo/~3/-AjJAbZLZP4/tpmtv_meanwhile
_back_in_afghanistan.php

Digg this