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What Has Caused Record Inequality (and Greater
Recessions)
post from Kmareka.com on 30 April 2012 10:00:21 PM. © Kmareka.com
Popular Economics Weekly
Economists Lawrence Mishel and Heidi Shierholz of the labor think tank Economic Policy Institute (EPI) have been asking a question in their latest work that is at the root of our various economic crises, ?Why did the richest 1 percent of Americans receive 56 percent of all the income growth between 1989 and 2007, before the recession began (compared with 16 percent going to the bottom 90 percent of households)?
Read The Full Article:
http://kmareka.com/2012/04/30/what-has-caused-record-inequality-and-greater-reces
sions/
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Add to myYahoo!May Day protests: banks feel victimized,
"like elk defending themselves from attacking wolves"
post from Kmareka.com on 30 April 2012 10:00:21 PM. © Kmareka.com
Just pathetic:
Organizers and protesters around the world will come together to commemorate International Workers Day tomorrow, and they are taking on familiar targets. Large protest actions are planned in more than 115 American cities, where activists will continue the anti-Wall Street message started by the 99 Percent Movement last fall. The action will again center in New York, where protesters have identified 99 targets in Manhattan, including…
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http://kmareka.com/2012/04/30/may-day-protests-banks-feel-victimized-like-elk-def
ending-themselves-from-attacking-wolves/
Add to del.icio.us Digg this Post to Furl Add to reddit Add to myYahoo!Jared Bernstein examines the economic impact of
raising taxes on high-income households
post from Kmareka.com on 30 April 2012 10:00:21 PM. © Kmareka.com
Summary: Three of the most significant changes in America’s social and economic structure since the Reagan Revolution in 1980 are slowing GDP growth, the rising federal deficits and the great increase of inequality in wealth and income. Increasing taxes on the wealth might help reverse two or even all three of these trends. Today’s post examines the costs of rising taxes on the rich.
Read The Full Article:
http://kmareka.com/2012/04/30/50145/
Add to del.icio.us Digg this Post to Furl Add to reddit Add to myYahoo!The American Prospect's Ringside Seat asks, "Will
the MSM ever call Republicans out on their extremism" -- and two intrepid op-ed writers do
post from DownWithTyranny! on 30 April 2012 10:00:16 PM. © DownWithTyranny!
The bipartisanship scam: Would you buy a leaky, vermin-infested ship from self-proclaimed bipartisans like this?
"The elder statesmen of nonpartisan political analysis, Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann, took to The Washington Post op-ed pages over the weekend to lay down a challenge for every political reporter: Quit this evenhandedness malarkey and start calling out Republicans as the extremists wrecking American government."
-- in "Call Them Out," from The Americn Prospect's Ringside Seat
by Ken
Around these parts "bipartisanship" is a dirty word, regrettably but inevitably. Regrettably, because surely there ought to be a range of issues on which sincere, reasonable people of widely diverse philosophical bent can come together to forge compromises that benefit the general welfare. Inevitably, in the here and now that's mere theory, because of the absence of sincere, reasonable people at the right and center extremes of the political spectrum.
(And yes, I do mean to target the "center extreme," because what passes as "centrism" nowadays is usually a form of corporate dictatorship almost as extreme in its way as, and usually far more corrup than, the wackadoodle out-beyond-Pluto extremism of the latter-day Right.)
The American Prospect's Ringside Seat has done a swell takeoff from the much-talked-about WaPo op-ed, "Let's just say it: The Republicans are the problem," by a pair of actually credible nonopartisans, Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein. The Mann-Ornstein piece begins with a shrewd take on a nutty episode that Howie chronicled here:
Rep. Allen West, a Florida Republican, was recently captured on video asserting that there are ?78 to 81? Democrats in Congress who are members of the Communist Party. Of course, it?s not unusual for some renegade lawmaker from either side of the aisle to say something outrageous. What made West?s comment ? right out of the McCarthyite playbook of the 1950s ? so striking was the almost complete lack of condemnation from Republican congressional leaders or other major party figures, including the remaining presidential candidates.
It?s not that the GOP leadership agrees with West; it is that such extreme remarks and views are now taken for granted.
We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.
In their takeoff from the Mann-Ornstein op-ed, the TAP writers manage to hit two of my favorite subjects: (1) the infotainment noozemedia's deadly practice of "evenhandedness" between two sides where one is lost in space out on the far reaches of the galaxy, and (2) the implacable obstructionism of the Republicans -- carried, as a matter of daily practice, to the extreme of not only accepting but welcoming further devastation of an already beleaguered American people as long as it furthers the power play of the extremists.
Take it away, Ringside Seat!
CALL THEM OUT
The elder statesmen of nonpartisan political analysis, Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann, took to The Washington Post op-ed pages over the weekend to lay down a challenge for every political reporter: Quit this evenhandedness malarkey and start calling out Republicans as the extremists wrecking American government. It's a message that tickled our hearts at The Prospect; we've tried to hammer the point home over the past few years as the GOP becomes increasingly dominated by its loony fringe, a sect of anarchists dressed in politicians? clothing who have no interest in serving as governing partners but would rather watch the whole institution (save the Pentagon) burn to the ground. But the mainstream media has hesitated to point out the unprecedented abuse of the filibuster, anonymous holds on appointments, and general hostage-taking in Congress that Ornstein and Mann highlight.
Unfortunately, their message didn't inspire journalists to recalibrate their framing overnight. Today Roll Call published a piece trumpeting a revival of bipartisan lawmaking in the Senate. "Don?t call it a comeback, or even a detente, but a strange thing is happening in the Senate: Democrats and Republicans are working together to pass legislation," the article opened. The evidence? A transportation bill, the Violence Against Women Act, and postal reform. Left unsaid is why Senate Republicans have the freedom to occasionally cooperate with their Democratic colleagues. They no longer need to oppose every single initiative favored by the president; they can shift that responsibility to the reliably intransigent Republican House majority.
If Senate Republicans had any true interest in crossing the aisles, they would have cooperated during the first two years of President Obama's administration, when they didn't have the safety net of a House populated by rightwing ideologues. Instead, just three voted for the stimulus, another three for financial reform, and not one for health care reform. Even during this current burst of newfound friendship, the Senate GOPers are as resistant as ever when it comes to the confirming Obama's appointees, the one area where they can't fall back on the obstructionist House. The truth is, Republicans on both sides of Congress are still operating from their plan from day one, as articulated by Representative Kevin McCarthy: "We've gotta challenge them on every single bill and challenge them on every single campaign." Let's hope a few reporters will listen to Ornstein and Mann and begin to take note.
I should perhaps add that "the Republicans" aren't "the problem" in the sense that they're the only problem. We can all cite voluminous chapter and verse of issues and initiatives where gutless and/or corrupt Dems have happily provided the margin of disaster. It seems to me, nevertheless, that Ringside Seat's banner question remains absolutely fair:
"Will the MSM ever call Republicans out on their extremism?"
#
Read The Full Article:
http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2011/04/bipartisanship-scam-would-you-buy-lea
ky.html
Add to del.icio.us Digg this Post to Furl Add to reddit Add to myYahoo!Teabagging GOP sucking on teat of Big Government
post from US Politics | AMERICAblog News on 30 April 2012 10:00:16 PM. © US Politics | AMERICAblog News
Surprise, surprise. The Teabaggers really do love Big Government bailouts. If they didn't, they would not be accepting this money and they would have already forced legislation to break up the too-big-too-fail. More on the fraudulent Teabaggers from Bloomberg:
Republican freshmen have made clear their disdain for expanding government, and openly opposed a financial regulatory overhaul enacted by Democrats in 2010 before the newcomers arrived in Washington. Their ranks include 10 Tea Party-backed freshmen on the House Financial Services Committee, part of a force that won election in a populist backlash to government spending that included emergency lending to major banks and bailout of firms including U.S. automakers.Still, the lawmakers haven?t passed, considered or even introduced legislation to address concerns about ?too-big-to- fail? banks voiced by members of both parties and such Federal Reserve bank presidents as Richard Fisher of Dallas and Jeffrey Lacker of Richmond, Virginia.?I haven?t seen any of them putting forth legislation on breaking up the big banks or on other things that would genuinely prevent a bailout next time,? said Marcus Stanley, policy director of Americans for Financial Reform, a Washington- based umbrella group of organizations that supported the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act and other financial regulations.
Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Americablog/~3/uBZwLmcJ0e4/teabagging-gop-sucking-
on-teat-of-big.html
Add to del.icio.us Digg this Post to Furl Add to reddit Add to myYahoo!Gun Stores Can’t Get Guns Fast Enough To
Keep Up With Demand From Anti-Obama Paranoia
post from ThinkProgress on 30 April 2012 10:00:03 PM. © ThinkProgress
Last year, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre made the odd claim that President Obama intentionally avoided gun regulation during his entire first term as part of a “massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and hide his true intentions to destroy the Second Amendment in our country.” While LaPierre’s claim that Obama is simply waiting for a second term so that he can “get busy dismantling and destroying our firearms? freedom” is more than a little implausible, it’s also proved to be a bonanza for the gun industry. Thanks to gun owners who share LaPierre’s paranoia, gun manufacturers literally cannot produce guns fast enough to keep up with demand:
Royal Oak-based Target Sports normally sells about 10 guns a day, but that has increased to 30 a day this year, owner Ray Jihad said.
He’d be selling even more, if he could get them.
“I don’t have any Rugers. There are a few models we sell a lot of, but I can’t even get them,” he said. Southport, Conn.-based Sturm, Ruger & Co. Inc., which makes rifles and handguns, has been so swamped with orders that it has stopped taking new requests until the end of May. . . .
Worries about stricter gun laws after the upcoming presidential election are the driving force behind the firearms sales surge, said Lawrence Keane, senior vice president and general counsel at the nonprofit Newtown, Conn-based National Shooting Sports Foundation, the gun industry’s trade association.
“There is significant concern among the consumers that in a second term by the administration they will pivot on the gun issue and pursue policies that will restrict their Second Amendment rights,” Keane said.
Of course, many of the gun companies that benefit from LaPierre driving up anti-Obama paranoia are also many of the biggest funders of the NRA and its lobbying arm.
Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/04/30/473733/guns-stores-cant-get-guns-fast
-enough-to-keep-up-with-demand-from-anti-obama-paranoia/
Add to del.icio.us Digg this Post to Furl Add to reddit Add to myYahoo!Progressive Information Project: Online
Progressive Radio and Video
post from Crooks and Liars on 30 April 2012 10:00:00 PM. © Crooks and Liars
The purpose of the Progressive Information Project is to more widely share resources and information created to advance progressive causes. A lot of good work is being done, but the average progressive often doesn't learn about it or know what is available. This series is designed to help alleviate that problem.
This week's post is very simple?it's an attempt to round up all of the online progressive radio shows, podcasts, and video shows that are regularly produced. I'm sure the list below is incomplete, so let me know what is missing and I'll update the list regularly to make sure everyone can find the progressive media voices available to us online ...
Keep in mind that nothing was intentionally left off the list, as it was meant to be comprehensive. Any ommissions are based on my lack of knowledge or something slipping my mind.
For more entries, go to the series index. If you have tips, e-mail me at quinnelk@gmail.com
Read The Full Article:
http://crooksandliars.com/kenneth-quinnell/progressive-information-project-o
Add to del.icio.us Digg this Post to Furl Add to reddit Add to myYahoo!Its All Fun and Games Until Jesus Loses an Eye
post from Firedoglake on 30 April 2012 09:30:04 PM. © Firedoglake
Hey kids! Remember this? "Americans United has protested a Virginia county official?s announcement that citizens who are offended by Christian invocations at board of supervisors meetings can 'leave the room.'?[...]
Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/firedoglake/fdl/~3/DouDcAdvH54/
Add to del.icio.us Digg this Post to Furl Add to reddit Add to myYahoo!Hypocrisy accomplished.
post from field negro on 30 April 2012 09:00:20 PM. © field negro
It has been a year since O and his band of Navy Seals took down the tall Arab guy with the long beard. Of course, as is to be expected, Flipper and company do not like to be reminded about it. "Even Jimmy Carter would have given that order". Oh stop it! Flipper is so classless. Just days after the guy (Carter) gives him a compliment, he makes fun of the former President for making a courageous call (albeit a failed one) to save American citizens who were being held hostage in a foreign country.
Republicans are claiming that O is politicizing the killing of OBL and are outraged that an American president would politicize the war on terror. ---That sound you hear is me throwing up. I would like to take you back to the year 2003, and I want you to picture a certain president standing on an aircraft carrier and declaring that our mission in Iraq has been "accomplished".
How about a certain Mayor of a city that was attacked on September 11, 2001? He is a man who actually ran for president and based his entire campaign on his actions during that tragic time in the nation's history? And yet, republicans cry a river over O taking credit for killing OBL. Unbelievable!
But that's republicans for ya. I loved the oped in the Washington Post that I read about them:
"Rep. Allen West, a Florida Republican, was recently captured on video asserting that there are ?78 to 81? Democrats in Congress who are members of the Communist Party. Of course, it?s not unusual for some renegade lawmaker from either side of the aisle to say something outrageous. What made West?s comment ? right out of the McCarthyite playbook of the 1950s ? so striking was the almost complete lack of condemnation from Republican congressional leaders or other major party figures, including the remaining presidential candidates.
It?s not that the GOP leadership agrees with West; it is that such extreme remarks and views are now taken for granted.
We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.
The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.
When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country?s challenges." [More]
Yes, even something as simple as acknowledging the killing of the most wanted terrorist in the world becomes a problem.
This is not "dysfunctional", this is delusional.
Read The Full Article:
http://field-negro.blogspot.com/2012/04/hypocrisy-accomplished.html
Add to del.icio.us Digg this Post to Furl Add to reddit Add to myYahoo!The American Prospect's Ringside Seat asks, "Will
the MSM ever call Republicans out on their extremism" -- and
post from DownWithTyranny! on 30 April 2012 09:00:16 PM. © DownWithTyranny!
The bipartisanship scam: Would you buy a leaky, vermin-infested ship from self-proclaimed bipartisans like this?
"The elder statesmen of nonpartisan political analysis, Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann, took to The Washington Post op-ed pages over the weekend to lay down a challenge for every political reporter: Quit this evenhandedness malarkey and start calling out Republicans as the extremists wrecking American government."
-- in "Call Them Out," from The Americn Prospect's Ringside Seat
by Ken
Around these parts "bipartisanship" is a dirty word, regrettably but inevitably. Regrettably, because surely there ought to be a range of issues on which sincere, reasonable people of widely diverse philosophical bent can come together to forge compromises that benefit the general welfare. Inevitably, in the here and now that's mere theory, because of the absence of sincere, reasonable people at the right and center extremes of the political spectrum.
(And yes, I do mean to target the "center extreme," because what passes as "centrism" nowadays is usually a form of corporate dictatorship almost as extreme in its way as, and usually far more corrup than, the wackadoodle out-beyond-Pluto extremism of the latter-day Right.)
The American Prospect's Ringside Seat has done a swell takeoff from the much-talked-about WaPo op-ed, "Let's just say it: The Republicans are the problem," by a pair of actually credible nonopartisans, Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein. The Mann-Ornstein piece begins with a shrewd take on a nutty episode that Howie chronicled here:
Rep. Allen West, a Florida Republican, was recently captured on video asserting that there are ?78 to 81? Democrats in Congress who are members of the Communist Party. Of course, it?s not unusual for some renegade lawmaker from either side of the aisle to say something outrageous. What made West?s comment ? right out of the McCarthyite playbook of the 1950s ? so striking was the almost complete lack of condemnation from Republican congressional leaders or other major party figures, including the remaining presidential candidates.
It?s not that the GOP leadership agrees with West; it is that such extreme remarks and views are now taken for granted.
We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.
In their takeoff from the Mann-Ornstein op-ed, the TAP writers manage to hit two of my favorite subjects: (1) the infotainment noozemedia's deadly practice of "evenhandedness" between two sides where one is lost in space out on the far reaches of the galaxy, and (2) the implacable obstructionism of the Republicans -- carried, as a matter of daily practice, to the extreme of not only accepting but welcoming further devastation of an already beleaguered American people as long as it furthers the power play of the extremists.
Take it away, Ringside Seat!
CALL THEM OUT
The elder statesmen of nonpartisan political analysis, Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann, took to The Washington Post op-ed pages over the weekend to lay down a challenge for every political reporter: Quit this evenhandedness malarkey and start calling out Republicans as the extremists wrecking American government. It's a message that tickled our hearts at The Prospect; we've tried to hammer the point home over the past few years as the GOP becomes increasingly dominated by its loony fringe, a sect of anarchists dressed in politicians? clothing who have no interest in serving as governing partners but would rather watch the whole institution (save the Pentagon) burn to the ground. But the mainstream media has hesitated to point out the unprecedented abuse of the filibuster, anonymous holds on appointments, and general hostage-taking in Congress that Ornstein and Mann highlight.
Unfortunately, their message didn't inspire journalists to recalibrate their framing overnight. Today Roll Call published a piece trumpeting a revival of bipartisan lawmaking in the Senate. "Don?t call it a comeback, or even a detente, but a strange thing is happening in the Senate: Democrats and Republicans are working together to pass legislation," the article opened. The evidence? A transportation bill, the Violence Against Women Act, and postal reform. Left unsaid is why Senate Republicans have the freedom to occasionally cooperate with their Democratic colleagues. They no longer need to oppose every single initiative favored by the president; they can shift that responsibility to the reliably intransigent Republican House majority.
If Senate Republicans had any true interest in crossing the aisles, they would have cooperated during the first two years of President Obama's administration, when they didn't have the safety net of a House populated by rightwing ideologues. Instead, just three voted for the stimulus, another three for financial reform, and not one for health care reform. Even during this current burst of newfound friendship, the Senate GOPers are as resistant as ever when it comes to the confirming Obama's appointees, the one area where they can't fall back on the obstructionist House. The truth is, Republicans on both sides of Congress are still operating from their plan from day one, as articulated by Representative Kevin McCarthy: "We've gotta challenge them on every single bill and challenge them on every single campaign." Let's hope a few reporters will listen to Ornstein and Mann and begin to take note.
I should perhaps add that "the Republicans" aren't "the problem" in the sense that they're the only problem. We can all cite voluminous chapter and verse of issues and initiatives where gutless and/or corrupt Dems have happily provided the margin of disaster. It seems to me, nevertheless, that Ringside Seat's banner question remains absolutely fair:
"Will the MSM ever call Republicans out on their extremism?"
#
Read The Full Article:
http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2011/04/bipartisanship-scam-would-you-buy-lea
ky.html
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