Dem. Rep. Demands ‘Credible, Substantial
Evidence’ Of Bachmann’s Muslim Brotherhood Conspiracies

post from ThinkProgress on 12 July 2012 06:00:05 PM. © ThinkProgress

Reps. Keith Ellison (L) and Michele Bachmann (R)

When Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) recently escalated her paranoid quest to root out the Muslim Brotherhood from the U.S. government, she named names. There’s a problem, however, when conspiracy theorists get into specifics, people will start demanding facts to back up their wild-eyed assertions.

That’s exactly what her colleague form the Minnesota Congressional delegation Rep. Keith Ellison (D) did when he responded to her letter to the State Department insinuating that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s aide Huma Abedin (the wife of former Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner) was at the heart of the Brotherhood’s infiltration of the State Department. “If she has sources for this type of information,” Ellison said in a statement, “she owes it to the country to reveal them to the proper authorities, but definitely not this way.”

Now, Ellison has taken his request for specifics directly to Bachmann and the co-signers of her letters to State and other government departments — Reps. Trent Franks (R-AZ), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Thomas Rooney (R-FL), and Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) also signed. Ellison also calls out the source of their information, arch-Islamophobe Frank Gaffney. Ellison wrote:

I request that you provide my office a full accounting of the sources you used to make the serious allegations against the individuals and organizations in your letters. If there is not credible, substantial evidence for your allegations, I sincerely hope that you will publically clear their names.

(Read the whole letter here.)

After listing a host of ludicrous allegations made by Gaffney, Ellison wrote, “Mr. Gaffney?s views have been widely discredited, including by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and conservative organizations.” Gaffney was repudiated by the American Conservative Union, and barred from the powerhouse’s annual conservative CPAC confab.

Gaffney’s clearly pleased with Bachmann’s witch-hunt, soliciting support from other Members of Congress, like Republican House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Rogers (MI), on his radio show. That he would serve as a source of information for what Ellison calls “serious allegations” is indeed troubling.

It seems now that Bachmann and her coterie of Republican Congressional conspiracy theorists will either have to put up, or shut up.

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/security/2012/07/12/515907/ellison-bachmann-muslim-broth
erhood-evidence/

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Are Employees Abusing Sick Days For Summer Fun Or
Are Employers The Real Culprit

post from ThinkProgress on 12 July 2012 06:00:05 PM. © ThinkProgress

Our guest blogger is Joanna Venator, an Economic Policy Intern at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

A recent MSNBC article cited a poll from Monster.com that claims 8 percent of Americans frequently call in sick to enjoy the summer weather, 11 percent do so occasionally, and 30 percent have done so once or twice in their whole careers. The article builds these unrepresentative statistics into the claim that summer hooky is a widespread phenomenon affecting the productivity of businesses. But is that really the case?

The MSNBC article paints a picture of employees sloughing off work to instead work on their tans, but most employees who have access to sick days do not actually use them. Worker with access to five paid sick days on average use only 2.4 of those days. Half of workers with access to paid sick days do not even use any of them. So MSNBC?s portrayal of workers abusing the system is a gross exaggeration at best.

In fact, data from the National Partnership for Women and Families show that employees are more likely to be the victims of unfair sick leave policies than to abuse the sick days they do receive. Some 40 million workers do not have the ability to call out of work even while sick, never mind for a day at the beach. Four in ten private sector workers do not have access a single paid sick day, and the ratio reaches 80 percent for low-wage workers. One in five workers report losing their job or being threatened with losing their job for taking time off while sick.

By perpetuating this myth of rampant misuse of sick days, the article misleads readers and pulls attention away from the very real problems facing American workers. Workers without access to paid sick days are forced to choose between their livelihood and their health. Often, they choose to go into work sick, which is a loss for the employee, the productivity of the firm, and the health of the sick person?s coworkers and/or customers. The media?s focus should be on the millions of people who can?t take leave when they really need it, not on the non-existent ?problem? of summertime sick day abuse.

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/07/12/515894/sick-day-abuse-myth/

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Just Like Old Times: NYPD Brutally Attack
Peaceful Protesters at Zuccotti Park

post from Crooks and Liars on 12 July 2012 06:00:00 PM. © Crooks and Liars

A group of Occupy protesters -- the Guitarmy -- who marched from Philadelphia to NYC converged with local demonstrators at Zuccotti Park this afternoon, where two activists were arrested and a woman collapsed during a chaotic confrontation with the NYPD.

According to emails this evening, the woman on the ground is Mary, (No last name given, sorry.) she's an activist from Washington State who sometimes marches dressed as the Statue of Liberty. Mary participated in the week-long 99-mile Guitarmy march from Philadelphia, which reached NYC today. Conflicting reports on how she wound up on the ground, some say she was knocked down by police, but others say suffered heat stroke and passed out. Word now is that she was treated at the scene, released and is doing fine.

This next video is the arrest of one of the drummers who was one of many musicians at Zuccotti Park:

Apparently, all the chaos started as the protesters were about to enjoy a pasta dinner and security started carrying off the food, and I imagine all those marchers were pretty hungry about then, too.

Here's a photo of livestreamer Jeff's arrest (Jeff sometimes assists Tim Pool, @Timcast)

Tim Pool finished livestreaming for the night with one last update, here, where the tensions seem to have diminished with around 100 protesters still in Zuccotti Park and a huge police presence remaining. No word on the reason for the arrests earlier. Hopefully everyone will remain calm through the night. I'll check on updates in the a.m.

Read The Full Article:
http://crooksandliars.com/diane-sweet/nypd-attacks-peaceful-protesters-zucco

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Was There An Eyewitness To The Trayvon Martin
Killing

post from TPMMuckraker on 12 July 2012 05:44:00 PM. © TPMMuckraker

If credible, one woman's could shed some light on whether George Zimmerman really killed Trayvon Martin in self defense as he claims.

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TPMmuckraker/~3/CF5nXY8MyVg/story01.htm

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Wells Fargo Gets Off for $175 Million for Racial
Discrimination in Housing

post from Firedoglake on 12 July 2012 05:40:44 PM. © Firedoglake

Wells Fargo has agreed to a $175 million settlement with the Justice Department on housing discrimination charges. The settlement reflects an effort on the part of the DoJ's Civil Rights Division to seek some measure of accountability for the pervasive[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/firedoglake/fdl/~3/0aZ4dVHVJYc/

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Pew economic mobility study paints glass 'half
full, half empty' picture

post from Daily Kos on 12 July 2012 05:26:11 PM. © Daily Kos

chart showing income mobility If there's anything startling in the Pew Charitable Trusts' new report about U.S. families' economic mobility, I haven't found it. Which is not to say the study has no merit. The details of well-purposed longitudinal surveys like these always deserve our attention.

On the surface, the study, Pursuing the American Dream: Economic Mobility Across Generations, indicates that the "American Dream" is very much alive for percentages of the U.S. population. Dig a bit, as Catherine Rampell has done, and the picture loses some of its sheen. The study examined mobility determined by both income and wealth.

[...] Pew researchers also examined mobility trends within individual families: That is, regardless of what the generations as a whole look like, are today?s Americans better off than their own parents?
The answer depends on how you define ?better off.?
Pew uses two different metrics for intergenerational economic mobility: absolute mobility, and relative mobility.
For incomes, ?absolute? mobility refers to whether an individual earns more money than his parents did, in inflation-adjusted terms. For example, your parents earned $30,000, and you now earn $50,000. ?Relative? mobility refers to whether an individual has been able to move into a different socioeconomic class from the one he was born into; for example, a child born into the bottom income quintile manages to make it to the very top of the income distribution as an adult.

What Pew found was that in the bottom and top quintiles, mobility is "sticky." That is, if you were born into a family in the bottom 20 percent of the population, your chances of moving a rung or two higher was much less than if you were born into the next three quintiles. And if you were born into the top 20 percent, your chances of dropping by a rung or more was much less than if you were born into next lower quintiles.

The report states:

At all levels, Americans are likely to exceed their parents? family incomes, but the extent of their income growth varies by quintile. Americans raised in the bottom who surpass their parents? incomes do so by the smallest absolute amounts, while Americans raised in the top who surpass their parents? incomes do so by the largest absolute amounts.

For African Americans, mobility remains problematic, which should come as no surprise to anyone. Among other things, blacks find it more difficult exceed the family income and wealth of their parents than do whites. Pew found that "63 percent of blacks raised
in the second quintile surpass their parents? family income compared with 89 percent of whites." And just 23 percent raised in the middle quintile surpass their parents? family wealth compared with over half 56 percent of whites. Additionally, blacks are more likely to stay in the bottom quintile if that is where they are raised and also to fall from the middle quintile than are whites.

While the wealth numbers seem to indicate considerable mobility for most Americans, with three-fourths born in the bottom quintile ending up richer than their parents, that probably makes the situation look better than it actually is, Rampell points out:

"If you grew up with parents who were broke, for example, having even a dollar to your name technically makes you richer than your folks. But you still don?t have any semblance of financial security. Likewise, given the growth at the very top of the wealth distribution, the rich children who are worth more than their rich parents are probably orders of magnitude richer than their parents."

Among the other findings:

? The bottom three rungs of the wealth ladder have compressed during the past
generation.

Wealth has decreased at the bottom and middle and has increased at the top two rungs of the ladder. The wealth compression is especially notable at the bottom: Median wealth for those in the lowest wealth quintile decreased from just under $7,500 in the parents? generation to less than $2,800 in the children?s generation. Conversely, at the top of the wealth distribution, median wealth increased from just under $500,000 in the parents? generation to almost $630,000 in the children?s generation.

Pew only explains the what, not the why. As we know all too well, stagnating wages combined with tax policies that make life even poshier for the already rich have contributed a great deal to both the compression and the divergence. Somebody who cannot be named called it the "two Americas."

? Earning a four-year college degree promotes upward mobility from the bottom
and prevents downward mobility from the middle and top of the family income
and wealth ladders.

A college degree makes individuals much less likely to become stuck at the bottom of the family income and wealth ladders. For those raised at the bottom of the family income ladder, almost one half (47 percent for family income) without a college degree are stuck there as adults, compared with 10 percent with a college degree. Similarly, 45 percent without a degree are stuck at the bottom of the family wealth ladder, compared with 20 percent with a degree.

???

Pew's work derives from Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), a longitudinal data set that has followed families since 1968 to the present. It is "unique among data sets because it continues to follow family members even after they split off from their original households to form separate households."

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/fpg_m0hcr-0/-Pew-economic-mobility
-study-paints-glass-half-full-half-empty-picture

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Public Defender For Infamous Charity Scammer
Quits Case

post from TPMMuckraker on 12 July 2012 05:19:00 PM. © TPMMuckraker

The public defender assigned to 'Bobby Thompson,' the mystery man accused of stealing millions from a sham veterans' charity, has given up on the case.

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TPMmuckraker/~3/-uC-ru4wzAc/story01.htm

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Cutting Through The Bain Bamboozlement

Technical questions are, for the moment, dominating the dispute over when Mitt Romney really left Bain Capital. But from my point of view, on the sidelines of this particular story, it all seems much, much simpler. The reason this issue...[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Talking-Points-Memo/~3/4Wy32o144CQ/story01.htm

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Adventures in Romney spin

CNN reporter tweets this ...

CNN has obtained from a Democratic official a Bain Capital doc filed with Mass Sec of Commonwealth in 01 that shows Romney as pres.
? @jimacostacnn via web... and one minute later says that Romneyland has responded with this:

The Romney campaign just told me the document is simply more confirmation his name was still attached to government ecords but nothing more.
? @jimacostacnn via webYeah, it's nothing except confirmation that Mitt Romney was still the head of Bain Capital in 2001. Just like he was in 2002. And just like he was in 1999 and 2000.

Yes, Romney's primary focus was on the Olympics. But Bain was still his company. It was his name on the documents. And he was ultimately responsible for it because he owned it.

Unless, of course, Romneyland wants to argue that the buck doesn't stop with Mitt. Come to think of it, that's pretty much exactly what they are doing.

And while they are at it, could they please explain how Mitt Romney "earned" $20 million last year from Bain Capital if he has nothing to do with it?