Wednesday Mashup (8/3/11)

Today is the 30th anniversary of the day that The Sainted Ronnie R fired the striking PATCO air traffic controllers; this column by Joseph A. McCartin tells us, in part, the following…

Although he opposed government strikes, Reagan supported government workers’ efforts to unionize and bargain collectively. As governor, he extended such rights in California. As president he was prepared to do the same. Not only did he court and win Patco’s endorsement during his 1980 campaign, he directed his negotiators to go beyond his legal authority to offer controllers a pay raise before their strike — the first time a president had ever offered so much to a federal employees’ union.

But the impact of the Patco strike on Reagan’s fellow Republicans has long since overshadowed his own professed beliefs regarding public sector unions. Over time the rightward-shifting Republican Party has come to view Reagan’s mass firings not as a focused effort to stop one union from breaking the law — as Reagan portrayed it — but rather as a blow against public sector unionism itself.

In the spring, Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin invoked Reagan’s handling of Patco as he prepared to “change history” by stripping public employees of collective bargaining rights in a party-line vote. “I’m not negotiating,” Mr. Walker said. By then the world had seemingly forgotten that unlike Mr. Walker, Reagan had not challenged public employees’ right to bargain — only their right to strike.

With Mr. Walker’s militant anti-union views now ascendant within the party of a onetime union leader, with workers less able to defend their interests in the workplace than at any time since the Depression, the long-term consequences continue to unfold in ways Reagan himself could not have predicted — producing outcomes for which he never advocated.

I don’t think this column absolves Reagan under any stretch of the imagination, but it’s interesting reading anyway (and from the “past is prologue” department, I give you this).

Next, I give you last week’s Area Votes in Congress (here)…

House

Speaker Boehner's debt plan. Voting 218-210, the House on Friday passed a bill (S 627) written by Speaker John A. Boehner (R., Ohio) to immediately raise the $14.3 trillion national debt ceiling by $917 billion and require both houses of Congress to soon pass a balanced-budget constitutional amendment.

A yes vote was to send the bill to the Senate.

Voting yes: Charles W. Dent (R., Pa.), Michael Fitzpatrick (R., Pa.), Jim Gerlach (R., Pa.), Frank A. LoBiondo (R., N.J.), Pat Meehan (R., Pa.), Joseph R. Pitts (R., Pa.), Jon Runyan (R., N.J.), and Christopher H. Smith (R., N.J.).

Voting no: Robert E. Andrews (D., N.J.), Robert A. Brady (D., Pa.), John Carney (D., Del.), Chaka Fattah (D., Pa.), Tim Holden (D., Pa.), and Allyson Y. Schwartz (D., Pa.).

Cut, “crap” and balance Mikey strikes again, as noted here (so bad a deal that even Tim Holden voted against it).

Oh, and by the way, it recently occurred to me that I’ve gone all of this time since the thoroughly wretched 112th Congress convened and I haven’t had a word to say about Jon “How Much Tax Can I Get Away With Paying On My Farm” Runyan. And that’s because he’s pretty much voted like the total Repug shill I knew he would be.

U.S.-Canada oil pipeline. Voting 279-147, the House on Tuesday set a deadline of Nov. 1 for President Obama to act on a Canadian firm's application to build a 2,000-mile pipeline for shipping crude oil extracted from tar sands in the province of Alberta to U.S. refineries in Texas. The bill (H.R. 1938) is nonbinding because this is solely an executive-branch decision. The administration says it could decide by year's end whether to allow TransCanada Corp. to build the Keystone XL pipeline, which would be in addition to its existing oil pipeline between Alberta and Cushing, Okla.

A yes vote was to pass the bill.

Voting yes: Brady, Dent, Fattah, Fitzpatrick, Gerlach, Holden, LoBiondo, Meehan, Pitts, Runyan, and Smith.

Voting no: Andrews, Carney, and Schwartz.

Another utterly wasteful, non-job producing exercise sponsored by the ruling gaggle of idiots…

Endangered Species Act. The House on Wednesday upheld, 224-202, existing procedures for listing plants, animals, and their habitats as candidates for protection under the Endangered Species Act. This killed language that sought to use a funding cutoff to prevent the Fish and Wildlife Service in 2012 from taking this first step toward potentially protecting certain declining species. About 260 species are listed as potential candidates for protection under the law. The vote was taken during consideration of a GOP-drafted Interior Department budget (H.R. 2584) that remained in debate.

A yes vote backed the amendment.

Voting yes: Andrews, Brady, Carney, Dent, Fattah, Fitzpatrick, Gerlach, Holden, LoBiondo, Meehan, Runyan, Schwartz, and Smith.

Voting no: Pitts.

In my perfect world, Pancake Joe would be the only “endangered species” in PA-16 for a whole mountain of ridiculous votes like this one.

Greenhouse-gas regulation. Voting 235-191, the House on Wednesday cut in half the fiscal 2012 budget for the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, under which power plants, refineries, and other major polluters must disclose emissions data to the Environmental Protection Agency. The amendment to H.R. 2584 (above) shifted $6.2 million of the program's approximately $13 million budget to deficit reduction.

A yes vote backed the amendment.

Voting yes: Dent, Holden, LoBiondo, Meehan, Pitts, Runyan, and Smith.

Voting no: Andrews, Brady, Carney, Fattah, Gerlach, Fitzpatrick, and Schwartz.

Hmmm, I smell another “safe” vote for Gerlach and Mikey the Beloved to hone some pro-environmental bona fides while this awful pro-Greenhouse gases bill passed anyway (this tells you how Hal Rogers of Kentucky is partly to blame, though he has plenty of company).

Senate

FBI Director. By a vote of 100-0, the Senate on Wednesday confirmed Robert S. Mueller 3d to lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation for two more years. Mueller began a 10-year term as FBI director on Sept. 4, 2001, as a George W. Bush appointee. President Obama retained Mueller for a shortened term to add continuity in his national-security team after the recent additions of Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and CIA Director David Petraeus.

A yes vote was to confirm Mueller.

Voting yes: Thomas Carper (D., Del.), Bob Casey (D., Pa.), Chris Coons (D., Del.), Frank Lautenberg (D., N.J.), Robert Menendez (D., N.J.), and Pat Toomey (R., Pa.).

This week, both chambers took up fiscal 2012 appropriations bills and measures to raise the national-debt ceiling (uh, yep).

And speaking of that circus, I give you an opinion column from former Clinton and Obama econ guru (supposedly) Larry Summers, of all people, on the whole debt ceiling fiasco (here)…

There will be no first default in U.S. history; no economy-damaging short-run austerity; no attack on the nation’s core social protection programs or on universal health care; and no repeat of the last month’s shabby spectacle for at least 15 months. All of this was in doubt even a week ago as Congressional intransigence threatened to make the problem of acceptably raising the debt limit insoluble. The Hippocratic Oath applies in economics as well as medicine and so it is no small thing for the Administration to have reached an agreement that does no immediate harm. It may well be that no better agreement was achievable given the political dynamics in Congress.

In response to the "austerity" remark, this post from Think Progress tells us that 1.8 million jobs could be sacrificed as part of the debt deal (sounds pretty “austere” to me).

Summers also tells us that “The United States’s current problem is much more a jobs and growth deficit than an excessive budget deficit.”

As noted here, though, Summers has favored reduction of capital gains taxes as opposed to infrastructure investment as a financial stimulus, with the latter being a much more effective job creator. Also, Summers told former Dem CT Sen. Chris Dodd to remove caps on executive pay for firms receiving TARP funds, including Bank of America and Citigroup.

Summers had the opportunity to advocate for policies that would have created more good jobs for those seeking work (and in the process, advocate also debt reduction for real). And we know what happened, as Stirling Newberry reminded us in the October 2009 post…

Anyone who believes (Summers) when he pats himself on his back should remember that Summers' record of being wrong about everything of significance is awe inspiring in its completeness. This is the man who helped create the necessary preconditions for the financial crisis through radical deregulation of financial markets, then didn’t see the crisis coming till it was already well underway.

…

Welcome to endless war, money for rich people, and trickle down for you. The future looks an awful lot like the past, doesn’t it?

It did then, just as it does now (sigh).

Tuesday Stuff

A truly memorable Special Comment from K.O. on that stinking debt "deal," which codified, among other things, Repug hostage-taking as apparently acceptable negotiation (lots to do in response, and deciding to primary our "hopey changey" POTUS who went along with this instead of acting on some supposed 14th amendment option is a start, along with getting as royally pissed as Keith is, and rightly so)...



Update 8/3/11: Still think it's nuts to primary Number 44 after reading this?

...and here's another "fathers and sons" tune.

Tuesday Mashup (8/2/11)

I know I’m a little late with this, but The Old Gray Lady was guilty of some genuine journalistic malpractice over the weekend in this New York Times Sunday Magazine report on, of all people, James O’Keefe (here, currently sentenced to three years’ probation and 100 hours of community service for that stunt of illegally entering the office of Sen. Mary Landrieu)…

O’Keefe wasn’t happy about spending his Memorial Day turning rocks into pebbles to pay his debt to society, but what really bothered him were the terms of his probation. He couldn’t leave New Jersey, his home state, without court approval, and the court in New Orleans, where he was sentenced, had turned down a travel request. At first O’Keefe feared revealing this bit of information — “my enemies will use it against me,” he said darkly — but indignation overcame caution. “I have to get government permission to accept speaking dates, which is how I make my living. I can’t travel to work on new projects. And I can’t leave to train others.”

WAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!

“I’m not comparing my situation to the gulag,” he said. “But I speak truth to power. You’d think liberal baby boomers would support me. Isn’t that what the ’60s were all about? Do we really want political prisoners in America?”

Oh, that’s hilarious (with O’Keefe actually comparing himself to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn for good measure).

There’s all kinds of ridiculous attempts here to whitewash O’Keefe’s garbage, working in concert with Hannah Giles, Andrew Breitbart and the rest of that foul ilk. That includes quotes from Brooke Kroeger, director of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University, calling what O’Keefe does “undercover journalism.” It also includes someone named Dean Mills, dean of the University of Missouri’s school of journalism, who actually equates O’Keefe with Michael Moore.

Oh, and speaking of the director of “Roger and Me” and “Fahrenheit 9/11” (mentioned at the end here)…

O’Keefe grew up in Westwood, N.J., and still lives with his parents. His father is an engineer, his mother a physical therapist. In high school he was a theater guy, but Rutgers radicalized him. He was incensed by what he considered the political correctness on campus. Soon he began writing biting columns in the college newspaper, The Daily Targum, which caught the eye of Morton Blackwell, the head of the Leadership Institute in Arlington, Va., which he founded 32 years ago. The institute trains young conservative activists and budding journalists (including Ainsley Earhardt and Adam Housley of Fox News). In all, Blackwell says that there are some 90 institute graduates working in local and network news around the country. The institute has also helped establish more than 100 conservative alternative campus newspapers and magazines, and it gave O’Keefe seed money for The Centurion. O’Keefe’s last editorial, “I Have a Dream,” set forth a vision of a college where, among other things, conservative views were respected, Christian tradition was honored and people realized that “guns are no more responsible for Columbine than spoons are responsible for Michael Moore’s obesity.”

Note to O’Keefe – nine-year-old Christina Taylor Green and Federal Judge John Roll were killed by a nut with an assault rifle containing a 30-round clip; Jared Loughner didn’t carry out these crimes with a gallon container of Haagen-Dazs (to say nothing of critically wounding Gabby Giffords also).

There’s all kinds of ripe stuff in this mess from Zev Chafets, who apparently is angling for a book deal with another right-wing icon, but I’ll focus on this item for now (as noted here)…

…Chafets leads the reader to conclude that the core controversy is whether it's ever okay for a journalist to mislead his subject. But the mortal sin that O'Keefe commits in the ACORN videos is misleading the audience. His videos are presented to the public in less than honest ways that go far beyond normal "selectivity." Instead of quoting a former Times public editor (who wrote two columns about the ACORN controversy) as his expert source, Chafets should've consulted the report from the California Attorney General's Office. The staffers who wrote it interviewed everyone involved, saw all the raw video footage, and issued a lengthy accounting with detailed descriptions of the misleading edits O'Keefe made.

Readers are never alerted to that report, or its most damning section: the story of Juan Carlos Vera. He was an employee at ACORN's San Diego office. O'Keefe and Giles came in, pretended to be a pimp and prostitute, and asked for help smuggling underage girls across the Mexican border.

In the ACORN videos, it appears that Vera is willing to be an accomplice in the made up smuggling plot. O'Keefe may well have thought so at the time. According to the California Attorney General's investigation, however, Vera didn't know what to make of the pair at first, tried to elicit as much information as possible from them so that he could contact law enforcement, and called his cousin, a police officer, as soon as they left. Phone records confirm the call to his cousin, and Vera was soon directed to a San Diego police officer who specializes in human smuggling. He spoke to that police officer too. As Vera was cooperating with police, the ACORN sting videos began to appear, portraying him as a willing child smuggler. He was fired from ACORN during the PR fallout, and has since filed a lawsuit against O'Keefe and Giles.

Chafets mentions none of this, but it's relevant for three reasons. First, it highlights one of the reasons that it is ethically questionable to take hidden video and air it without ever confronting the subject with its contents first. Second, you'd think that after phone records confirming that Vera called the police were made public -- and after an investigation by a state attorney general suggested his probable innocence -- O'Keefe would apologize, or at least correct his original story. But he didn't. Finally, if a magazine story is setting forth a controversy about a journalistic story, isn't it relevant to include the fact that one of the subjects filed a lawsuit against the reporter?

Here is more on this from Eric Boehlert of Media Matters.

I’ve been holding back on saying this for a little while, but no longer – though it still provides interesting content on occasion, the Sunday New York Times has fallen off a cliff since Frank Rich has left (and Joe Nocera has tried ably to fill in for Bob Herbert, including today, but Nocera’s niche is more business than political commentary). Basically, the “common-sense-reality” point of view is disappearing. And it’s being replaced by more and more fawning cult-of-personality “coverage” such as the type Chafets provided here.

And that is truly sad.

Next, this recent story tells us that it’s time for another “Friedman Unit”…

ASPEN, Colo. — President Obama’s top adviser on Pakistan said Friday that the United States had six months to deliver “a knockout blow” to Al Qaeda’s senior leadership in Pakistan while the group was still in turmoil after the killing of Osama bin Laden.

The adviser, Douglas E. Lute, a deputy national security adviser, said the United States needed to increase covert action in Pakistan to take advantage of the disarray within Al Qaeda’s senior ranks.

As noted here, Lute said in August 2005 that "Everything in a counterinsurgency has to do with the political outcome, not the military outcome." He also said we need an “information war” to fight “bin Ladenism” and the enemy was “Islamic extremism.” And he was right.

Lute also said, however, that the Iraqi “leadership” would “step up,” there was no "hard factual evidence" of a "clear link" between Afghanistan's drug profits and "extremists," and the Iraqi insurgency was “90 percent home grown.” And he was wrong.

Wonder if Lute will return after another “F.U.” for a progress report?

Finally, this story tells us the following…

LOS ANGELES — In a major victory for Marvel Entertainment and its parent, the Walt Disney Company, a federal judge in New York granted them summary judgment in their legal dispute with the heirs to the comic book artist Jack Kirby, while denying the Kirbys request for judgment against Disney and Marvel.

The ruling, by Judge Colleen McMahon of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, declares comics and characters created by Mr. Kirby — who helped give birth to the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk and the X-Men, all of which now underlie valuable movie series — were works for hire under the Copyright Act of 1909, and cannot be reclaimed by the Kirby family.

In 2009, Mr. Kirby’s heirs sent Marvel and Disney 45 notices of a plan to reclaim copyrights in a series of Marvel comics that were published from 1958 to 1963. The comics included issues of “The Amazing Spider-Man,” “The Avengers,” “Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos,” and others. In her ruling on Thursday, however, Judge McMahon said the notices “did not operate to convey any federally protected copyrights.”

Marc Toberoff, the Los Angeles lawyer who represents the Kirbys, said, “We knew when we took this on that it would not be an easy fight given the arcane and contradictory state of ‘work for hire’ ” case law under the 1909 Copyright Act. “We respectfully disagree with the court’s ruling and intend to appeal this matter to the Second Circuit. Sometimes you have to lose to win.”

And as noted here…

“My favorite thing about Kirby’s artwork was his storytelling,” Lee said. “He was really a film director doing comics.”

In that, Kirby was certainly ahead of his time. Comics are a huge part of Hollywood now, thanks to the modern era of computer-generated special effects that, finally, can match the galactic visions and super-powered mayhem that Kirby put to paper in the 1960s. Kirby’s influence is nothing less than massive on several generations of artists and filmmakers.

“There was power in the work of Jack Kirby that changed the way I looked at things,” said Guillermo del Toro, writer-director of “Pan’s Labyrinth.” “There was no one else like him and there never will be.”

Nevertheless, Kirby remains a distant second to Lee in name recognition, which Lisa Kirby said rankles. “A lot more people know the name Stan Lee than the name Jack Kirby,” she said. “I’m not putting down Stan Lee’s talents but it’s difficult for us to see that he does dominate the credit. That doesn’t reflect the work or the reality. To see Jack Kirby in small letters and Stan Lee in big letters, that’s hard for us.”

As someone who was weaned on Marvel Comics from an early age, I think it’s sad that the estate of Jack Kirby has to scrape for crumbs by comparison to what Stan Lee has earned through the movies, TV shows and other promotion and merchandizing of Marvel’s characters and stories. Yes, Lee deserves his reward also, but he’s a member of perhaps the most successful duo in comic book history, not a solo act (and the over-hundred-year-old copyright law be damned – Lee should find a way to make good with the Kirby heirs without getting the “suits” involved).

What a shame that the spirit of heroism and self-sacrifice exemplified by Marvel’s most iconic characters is apparently nowhere to be found from one of its founding fathers.

Monday Stuff

(Posting is very questionable for this week, by the way.)

God bless Gabby Giffords - as shown in this clip, she returned to D.C. to cast her vote in this debt ceiling nonsense...

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

...and MTV debuted with this tune on this day in 1981.

Sunday Stuff

Robert Greenwald and Sen. Bernie Sanders bring us more on the Kochs and how they fund our corporate media punditocracy to speak against our best interests (here)...



Update 8/1/11: More garbage from the Kochs here...

...and when it comes to Chuck and Dave, I think this song fits; happily, those guys will be worm food one day - of course, they could still do a lot of damage until we get to that point.

More Saturday Stuff

I know we know this and the inbred "please pass the sweet and sour shrimp" Beltway crowd refuses to accept it, but it bears repeating anyway from Thom Hartmann (and by the way, let's not forget that all that offshoring adds to the deficit that the Repugs and their pals claim to hate)...



...and I'm a week or two behind on this one from Bill Maher, but I think it's timely considering that tomorrow is Sunday.

Mikey Strikes Again On The Debt

He helped his Repug congressional playmates defeat the bill by Harry Reid to raise the debt ceiling by $2.4 trillion along with $2.4 trillion in cuts (here).

If you are predisposed to contact him to tell him what you think of his childish antics, click here.

In the meantime, this video goes out to him also.



...and oh yeah, this is a joke - ha, ha (yes, I know Bill Maher gets it, based on this).



Update: And one more thing - tell me why anyone should take John Thune seriously again after he said this.

Update 8/4/11: Appropriate indeed (here)...

Saturday Stuff

Yep, this is how the House Repugs acted under Dubya, but now that a Dem is in the White House (here, and oh yeah, this too)...



...and yeah, I think this tune fits.



Update: And by the way, I haven't said anything about this story, but kudos to Jon Stewart again for doing so.

Friday Stuff

Yep, your Republican Party on display here - threats of violence when all else fails...

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

...and this tune is appropriate on a couple of different levels for yours truly, I guess.

Bringing The Pain, Part 2

Note 1: This links to last week’s Area Votes in Congress writeup. Basically, Mikey the Beloved and his Repug playmates voted for Cut, Cap and Balance, which has no shot in the Senate (though “No Corporate Tax” Pat Toomey voted for it of course), and the House also voted on a bill to try and gut the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as part of their non-jobs agenda (that crap piece of legislation isn’t going anywhere either). Aside from that, I don’t have anything else to say on that subject.

Note 2: Part 1 with the setup for what I’m trying to do in this series of posts is here.

Connecticut

This tells us that The Land of Holy Joe Lieberman added 7,900 jobs last April, though “as (unemployed) benefits lapse, Connecticut’s unemployed face tough decisions” here (duuuh!).

When it comes to employer discrimination against the jobless, though, Dem U.S. House Reps Rose DeLauro of the My Left Nutmeg state along with Hank Johnson of Georgia introduced a bill in response here, and it looks like the WWE of one-time Repug U.S. Senate candidate Linda McMahon from that state was notified here that it owed about 7 grand in unemployment compensation (wow, that’s what I call a shot to the solar plexus! And more on Johnson a little later, by the way.)

Delaware

This tells us that that state’s “troubled” trust fund for paying benefits was solvent for the next six months as of last February, and I don’t have any further word on that. The state’s unemployment rate was 8.4 percent as of last April (here).

This also tells us that, along with Connecticut, Delaware is one of the worst states to collect unemployment (don’t know how our beloved commonwealth of PA managed to escape the list…I’ll refer back to this list again). Also, this tells us of free colon screenings offered for the jobless in Newark a year ago last March (don’t laugh, that’s a good idea – prevention makes better sense than an urgent trip to the ER).

District of Columbia

The unemployment rate was 10.4 percent as noted here in June (ugh). However, as noted here, the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, D.C.-Va.-Md.-W.Va., area averages about 5.7 percent (probably explains why there’s no talk of jobs on the Sunday morning Beltway media gab fests, also noted here).

If there was ever a politician who you could consider an advocate for the unemployed, though, it would be Dem U.S. House Rep Eleanor Holmes Norton, as noted here (a stinking disgrace that, after all this time, D.C. still doesn’t have actual voting congressional representation).

Florida

Talk about the land that time forgot…

As noted here, that state’s lawmakers approved deep cuts in jobless bennies (listed as one of the worst states on the Daily Finance list with Delaware and Connecticut). It gets better, though – this tells us the state considered forcing the jobless to volunteer to receive unemployment (how many ways is that a stupid/cruel/counterproductive idea?). And on top of that, for something truly surreal, they were actually considering handing out shiny red superhero capes to unemployed people to wear as part of some PR campaign (no, this isn’t Halloween, and yes, I’m serious - here).

Good news? Well, the Metro Orlando area is apparently leading the state in hiring, as noted here (Wonder if The Mouse has anything to do with that? Maybe so).

Update 8/2/11: Maybe Lex Luthor should get recalled before Hosni Mubarak Walker and Snyder because of this (yeah I know, fat chance with the "sheeple" voters of this state).

Update 8/18/11: Add this to the pile also.

Update 8/26/11: And why am I not surprised that the state is engaged in this odious practice (defending it, of course)?

Update 9/14/11: Leave it to the "U.S." Chamber to pick Florida as a state for this.

Update 9/23/11: Florida, you deserve him (here).

Georgia

As noted here…

Paula S., from Acworth (who) said she was “sixty-something,” described “two eye-opening experiences of blatant age discrimination . . . . One twenty-something supervisor asked me if I had ever thought about coloring my hair . . . . Another manager told his assistant with the door open when I showed up to complete an application and interview: ‘We can’t hire any more old people’.”

Nice.

This tells us that the unemployment rate hit 10.4 percent in that state in January, and the state has to borrow $635 million from the Feds to cover hundreds of thousands of jobless Georgians (So what happened? Well, as noted here)…

In 1999, the state’s Unemployment Trust Fund — fueled by record growth — had squirreled away an astounding $2 billion for hard times. Far more than any recession required, thought the new governor, Democrat Roy Barnes.

He proposed and passed what he called the largest business tax cut in state history — a four-year payroll tax holiday that spared businesses $1 billion. (The tax hike applied only to state payroll taxes. Businesses also pay federal payroll taxes that roll into a separate fund.)

All was good until 9/11 and a 2001 shutdown of the American sky. Unemployment zoomed in airline-friendly metro Atlanta. The payroll tax holiday continued, which meant money gushed out of the trust fund — and none flowed in.

By the time the holiday and Barnes’ tenure expired in 2003, the trust fund was down by nearly two-thirds, to $703 million, according to a report released this week by the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute.

And of course, the second a Dem tries to end a payroll tax holiday, a Repug automatically starts screaming “Tax Hike! Tax Hike!,” so nobody does anything and we end up sinking further into debt (yes, blame the politicians, but gullible voters sop up this stuff every time).

Also, this tells us that Dem U.S. House Rep Hank Johnson, along with Rose DeLauro, has looked into bias against the jobless (more on Johnson in a minute).

Update 10/11/11: And people actually wonder why we have a federal government to tell some of these idiots what to do, or not do in this case (here).

Guam

Not much to say here, except that unemployment was 13.4 percent there last month (yikes!). And speaking of Johnson, this tells us about his quote at a Congressional hearing concerning the possibility of Guam tipping into the ocean, or whatever (yes, it was a dumb thing to say, but he was trying to make a point about a huge influx of military personnel on the island).

Hawaii

This tells us that the state’s unemployment dipped in June, but this tells us that it rose again in July (and this tells us that Gov. Neil Abercrombie vowed to cut Kauai’s unemployment by half).

And returning to the Daily Finance list, this tells us why Hawaii was rated as the best state for unemployment compensation…

Hawaii is the only state to provide the unemployed with an average of more than 50% of weekly wages, and its average weekly benefit is also the nation's highest…In Hawaii, the unemployment insurance program is entirely funded by employers.

Great tourism and UC too…must be a bunch of socialist heathens (and you-know-who came from there, after all, too busy to show that birth certificate while he was making sure bin Laden was killed – snark mode off).

I’ll plan to pick this up next week.

Update: And by the way, speaking of Number 44, as you read about this, think about this also (yes, he caves way too easily, but consider the alternative...and I wonder when Yahoo decided that The Daily Tucker was a "news" site?).

Update 8/1/11: Once more, another reason for these posts (here)...

Update 8/3/11: I think this is something else that's important to consider about job creation.

Thursday Stuff

Hey, corporate media, try paying as much attention to these folks as you did to the racist-sign-and-funny-hat crowd last year (and yes I know, Boehner vote debt blah blah, delayed not enough votes blah blah, Mikey Austerity Forever Oooga Booga Debt! blah blah - and by the way, about that, read this, and this)...



...and yeah, I suppose this fits considering all of the above.

Wednesday PM Stuff

Probably only able to do videos today that hopefully aren't crappy...

First, Former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich helps us to keep our eye on the ball (I know we already know this, but we can't repeat it enough)...



...and RIP Dan Peek of America (this clip showcases Dewey Bunnell and I believe Gerry Beckley, but Peek was a collaborator on these songs also).

Wednesday AM Stuff

I'm a little late with this I know, but J.D. Mullane concocted the following idiocy here last Sunday...

If we believe the Washington wise men, Aug. 2 will be a day of economic apocalypse for America.

“Lights out” for the economy and a “new Depression,” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told Democrats.

President Obama, too, predicts catastrophe on Aug. 2 for Americans relying on government-issued checks for Social Security and others.

“I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on Aug. 3 if we haven’t resolved this issue,” he said.

The reason for the predicted apocalypse is that Obama wants to raise the U.S. government’s debt ceiling — the nation’s credit card limit. If not, the federal government (allegedly) will default on its financial obligations.

I doubt it. This is at least the third deadline Obama has given for this. Each deadline has passed and the Republic stands.

It’s why most of us yawn at such dire predictions. For more than 40 years we have been subjected to doomsday prophecies. None have come to pass.

The fact that this column ever saw print is pathetic for something that purports to be an almost-daily newspaper.

For the reality point of view, I give you the following here...

The financial website Zero Hedge reports that the cost of the U.S. debt being downgraded from our current AAA rating (in the event of a failure to extend the debt limit) would be a whopping $100 billion a year. That’s according to JP Morgan Chase expert Terry Belton who spoke to reporters on a conference call this morning. In short, even if the U.S. does not default, a downgrade alone “will offset any beneficial impact from any deficit reduction that will have to happen for the debt ceiling to be increased.” Belton predicted that a downgrade would cause “a permanent increase in borrowing costs,” which will make it more costly for consumers and businesses to borrow money, risking another recession.

At this point, Obama should just find a way to unilaterally raise the debt limit under the 14th amendment to the Constitution. No, I don’t know how he’s going to do that either, but I assume Geithner knew something about that or else he wouldn’t have opened his mouth on the subject awhile back.

Also, this tells us that PA-31 State House Rep Steve Santarsiero will hold a public hearing about Marcellus Shale drilling tonight in the Chancellor Center, Board Room, 30 N. Chancellor St., Newtown, PA.

In addition, check out this ad against Wisconsin State Sen. Luther Olsen (to help out, click here)...



...and here is a neat new tune by the Red Hot Chili Peppers (sorry, no video - gotta have that cowbell)

Tuesday Mashup (7/26/11)

I give you the following from David Brooks (here, and yes, we’re still stuck on the debt ceiling)…

…the White House negotiating process was inadequate. Neither the president nor the House speaker ever wrote down and released their negotiating positions. Everything was mysterious, shifting and slippery.

It’s truly hilarious that BoBo apparently doesn’t even read his own newspaper; click here to view an interactive graphic in the left-hand column of the story by Jackie Calmes to see a breakdown of the numbers between Obama and Orange Man.

Basically, what the numbers tell you is that the House Repugs are willing to ensure a downgrade of the credit of the United States of America over a $400 billion budget squabble.

And how exactly is the Boehner bunch an improvement over the 111th Congress that the voters, in their eternal, dunderheaded stupidity, removed from power last year?

Further, this post at The Hill tells us the following…

This week Congress is likely to take up a spending bill that would limit the EPA’s ability to enforce clean air standards that protect us from air pollution. At the same time, I’ll be joining the League of Women Voters in launching the Clean Air Promise campaign – an effort to bring the coordinated assault on the clean air act to the attention to parents, families, communities and our leaders and ask them to promise to protect clean air.

Author Alexandra Allred tells us the story of her son Tommy, who became very sick when Allred moved with the boy and her husband to rural Midlothian, Texas, where…

…the steam coming out of the cement plants near our house wasn’t just steam – it was filled with hundreds of thousands of pounds of mercury, lead, and other toxic chemicals. Suddenly, I understood why Tommy was always sick. The cement plants were poisoning the air. These companies were poisoning our kids.

And no one was doing anything to stop them.

Here is more on the Clean Air Promise Campaign that Allred started with the League of Women Voters, and speaking of the EPA, this tells us about the latest Repug games on the budget concerning that agency…

"The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is reduced by $1.6 billion, a 16% decrease from last year’s level. The cuts to the EPA alone represent 61% of the bill’s reduction compared to last year’s level. Funding levels for Land and Water Conservation Fund (land acquisition) programs are reduced $149 million (-33%), climate change funding bill-wide is cut by $49 million (-13%), and funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities is reduced by a combined $25 million from last year’s levels."

To (maybe?) contact Fred Upton of the House Energy and Commerce Oversight Subcommittee to tell him to properly fund the EPA and leave it alone (I can dream, can’t I?), click here (good luck - I couldn't do it).

And speaking of DREAM (here), I give you the following from Alex Nowrasteh of Fix Noise (figures)…

The (National Council of La Raza) audience (in attendance for an Obama speech) seemed upset by the President’s praise for the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, not because they oppose it, but because Obama has been so tepid in his support. The DREAM Act would allow some undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children to gain conditional legal status. That would then be extended to permanent legal residency if they complete at least two years of college or join the military within six years.

The problem was that the DREAM Act directs federal education aid to these students. It failed last December for that very reason. Poll after poll show that American apprehension about immigration mostly concerns taxes to support immigrants, and rightly so.

In response, I give you the following from Obama Education Secretary Arne Duncan…

The second myth about the DREAM Act is that it would restrict the availability of federal student aid for U.S. citizens. Simply put, that will not happen. By statute, student loans are available to all students who are eligible to receive them. And because DREAM Act students would be ineligible for Pell Grants, passing this bill will not have costs associated with the program. All told, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the DREAM Act would generate $1.4 billion more in revenue than it would add in costs over the next decade. As we strive to reduce the deficit, we can't afford to leave that type of money on the table.

DREAM didn’t fail because voters were afraid illegal immigrants would benefit improperly from federal dollars. It failed because of typically fictitious wingnut garbage claiming it was another “big gumint” handout for those who, as far as I’m concerned if they had acquired a degree or served in our military, would have earned it.

Next, I give you the following letter that appeared in the Bucks County Courier Times today…

Recently my wife and I attended a meeting to hear about the possible effects of cuts to the Medicaid and Medicare programs. The presentation wasn't so much about cuts, since the specifics are largely yet unknown, but rather about how critically important these programs are to the populace, and even more so to the least fortunate among us.

The structure of the meeting was a presentation of relevant facts, followed by an open Q & A session. I'm not certain about the sponsorship behind this meeting, but one of the organizers was PennAction, a progressive-oriented action group. The ultimate goal was to educate attendees, and to present our views and concerns to Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick. That sounds like democracy in action to me.

However, as soon as the session opened up to Q & A, something very disturbing happened. Several tea party members had attended, and took over the entire meeting with rude shouting. When told to present a question, the arrogant shouter just continued his bullying rant, accompanied by shouts from others like him. During all of this, the shouter presented nothing in the way of real facts, just attempts to bad-mouth the Affordable Care Act, et cetera. His presentation was roughly at the intelligence level of a hyena doing lots of vicious snarling, but nothing coming from what could be recognized as human brain matter. This went on to the point of usurping most of the remaining time, thereby ruining the session for the other guests who conducted themselves in a civil manner.

I have to confess that as an Independent, I used to lean toward Republican candidates. I, like many Democrats that I know, share many of the same values as my Republican friends; the areas of disagreement are usually about HOW to get where we all want to be.

As I survey the damage that Republican policies are doing to our democracy, and the wanton hypocrisies of their positions, I am forced to take sides with the progressives. The meeting was an example of such hypocrisy: The tea party loves to cite the Constitution as their righteousness in their cause. Yet by infiltrating this meeting and taking complete control, thereby throwing the meeting into chaos, they deprived the mild-mannered, concerned citizens of their right to freedom of speech.

Tea partyers may think that this is the way to get their way, but in reality, they expose themselves as citizens unworthy of American citizenship, and they galvanize their opposition even further. Ironically, one of them stated that this nation is divided more than it ever has been since the Civil War. I agree, and their tirade last night is a primary reason why.

Bruce Cosaboom
Lower Makefield, PA

Yep, your typical “teabagger” mentality on display here for sure…

Oh, and speaking of “cut, cap and balance” Mikey, he should read this.

Finally, I give you more comedy from former Laura Bush employee Andrew Malcolm (here)…

"More than a third of Americans now believe that President Obama’s policies are hurting the economy, and confidence in his ability to create jobs is sharply eroding among his base"...

Here is the context Malcolm fails to provide…

Americans’ discontent does not stop there. The survey also found that Americans harbor negative feelings toward congressional Republicans. Roughly as many people blame Republican policies for the poor economy as they do Obama. But 65 percent disapprove of the GOP’s handling of jobs, compared to 52 percent for the president.

The dissatisfaction is fueled by the fact that many Americans continue to see little relief from the pain of a recession that technically ended two years ago. Ninety percent of those surveyed said the economy is not doing well, and four out of five report that jobs are difficult to find. In interviews, several people said that they feel abandoned by both parties, particularly as debates over the debt ceiling gridlock Washington.

It’s about jobs, jobs, jobs, and jobs. And blame is getting spread around among both parties (though I distinctly remember Mikey The Beloved crowing constantly last year when he ran against Patrick Murphy that unemployment doubled on Murphy’s watch, though Mikey and his pals haven’t done a damn thing to keep it from continuing to rise).

I’ll tell you what – instead of all of these hypotheticals about how Obama would supposedly do against a generic GOP presidential candidate, let’s look and see how he would do against that supposed darling on the right who is being courted to run for the big chair because of his alleged popularity. And that would be Governor Bully.

As noted here (comparing registered and likely voters)...

Barack Obama (D): 56 (55)
Chris Christie (R): 39 (38)

And that’s in New Jersey.

Monday Stuff

A little late in the news cycle for this I know, but when it comes to Allen West, it's never too late (heckuva job, all you Floridians who voted for this numbnuts)...

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

...and here's something a bit upbeat to cope with the summer heat and overall doldrums (God, just raise the damn debt ceiling already!).

Monday Mashup (7/25/11)

Remember all of those stories/posts/whatever that have appeared proclaiming Flush Limbore as the head of the Republican Party, as noted here (though I thought that mantle was worn by Roger Ailes of Fix Noise)? And remember how our “serious” corporate media scoffed at them?

Well, this tells us the following…

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) outlined the GOP's debt ceiling plan to conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh on Monday before showing it to his conference.

Limbaugh talked about the call he received from Boehner during his radio program Monday. Limbaugh's support of the plan would be advantageous to Republicans because it might help rally the conservative base.

The conservative radio host said Boehner outlined his two-step plan that includes $1.2 trillion in spending cuts and a $1 trillion hike to the debt ceiling. In the second step, a commission would be appointed to come back with additional deficit-reduction proposals, which the Congress could then vote on.

For the purposes of comparison, try imagining the reaction if Harry Reid or Charles Schumer had announced their debt reduction plans to Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow before their own party membership.

Further, this story tells us the following…

WASHINGTON - Strong second-quarter earnings from McDonald's, General Electric and Caterpillar on Friday are just the latest proof that booming profits have allowed corporate America to leave the Great Recession far behind.

But millions of ordinary Americans are stranded in a labor market that looks like it's still in recession. Unemployment is stuck at 9.2 percent, two years into what economists call a recovery. Job growth has been slow and wages stagnant.

"I've never seen labor markets this weak in 35 years of research," says Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University.

Wages and salaries accounted for just 1 percent of economic growth in the first 18 months after economists declared that the recession had ended in June 2009, according to Sum and other Northeastern researchers.

In the same period after the 2001 recession, wages and salaries accounted for 15 percent. They were 50 percent after the 1991-92 recession and 25 percent after the 1981-82 recession.

Corporate profits, by contrast, accounted for an unprecedented 88 percent of economic growth during those first 18 months. That's compared with 53 percent after the 2001 recession, nothing after the 1991-92 recession and 28 percent after the 1981-82 recession.

So what do our corporate masters have to say about this?

"Lack of clarity on a U.S. deficit-reduction plan, trade policy, regulation, much needed tax reform and the absence of a long-term plan to improve the country's deteriorating infrastructure do not create an environment that provides our customers with the confidence to invest," Caterpillar CEO Doug Oberhelman said.

Tisk, tisk, the poor dears...

As noted here, Caterpillar threatened to move 23,000 jobs out of Illinois, even though the company is doing just fine. And it was accused here of demoting an executive who found a $2 billion tax dodge.

So no, I don’t believe corporate extortion and threatening a whistleblower who uncovered some financial malfeasance “provides our customers with the confidence to invest" either.

Next, Nick Kristof wrote a “Nail. Hammer. Head.” column in the New York Times yesterday…

IF China or Iran threatened our national credit rating and tried to drive up our interest rates, or if they sought to damage our education system, we would erupt in outrage.

Well, wake up to the national security threat. Only it’s not coming from abroad, but from our own domestic extremists.

We tend to think of national security narrowly as the risk of a military or terrorist attack. But national security is about protecting our people and our national strength — and the blunt truth is that the biggest threat to America’s national security this summer doesn’t come from China, Iran or any other foreign power. It comes from budget machinations, and budget maniacs, at home.

…

While one danger to national security comes from the risk of default, another comes from overzealous budget cuts — especially in education, at the local, state and national levels. When we cut to the education bone, we’re not preserving our future but undermining it.

It should be a national disgrace that the United States government has eliminated spending for major literacy programs in the last few months, with scarcely a murmur of dissent.

Consider Reading Is Fundamental, a 45-year-old nonprofit program that has cost the federal government only $25 million annually. It’s a public-private partnership with 400,000 volunteers, and it puts books in the hands of low-income children. The program helped four million American children improve their reading skills last year. Now it has lost all federal support.

“They have made a real difference for millions of kids,” Kyle Zimmer, founder of First Book, another literacy program that I’ve admired, said of Reading Is Fundamental. “It is a tremendous loss that their federal support has been cut. We are going to pay for these cuts in education for generations.”

And as Dr. Jim Taylor told us here in April 2010…

In 2009 alone, RIF gave out 15 million books at 17,000 sites nationwide. Since its birth in 1966, RIF has distributed more than 365 million free books to over 29 million children. All this on an annual budget of around $25 million a year (for those of you who are counting, that amounts to .0005 of the total 2011 discretionary budget for the Department of Education).

…

Why is RIF so important? As the program's name suggests, reading is fundamental to future academic success, upward mobility, and economic security. Yet, if you've seen any of the research on reading proficiency in the U.S., you would be appalled. Thirty-six percent of American 4th graders read below the "basic" level on reading tests and that percentage increases to 54 percent for economically disadvantaged children. And reading proficiency among high-school students in the U.S. has been on the decline for years. Moreover, fewer than half of families read to their young children every day and, by 8th grade, only 19 percent of children read on their own daily. Oh, by the way, an estimated 40 million adults can't read a story to a child. For many young children, RIF gives them the opportunity to learn to read and prepare for future success in school. And, for our country, RIF helps prepare these children to be vital and contributing members of our society.

Thus far, I haven’t been able to track down whether or not Mikey the Beloved voted to cut RIF funding or not. If and when I do, I’ll update this post accordingly.

Continuing, I came across the following sports-related tidbit here…

BALTIMORE -- Baltimore Orioles left fielder Luke Scott is probably done for the season, or at best headed for an extended stay on the disabled list with a troublesome shoulder injury.

Scott has a torn labrum in his right shoulder. He was activated from the 15-day DL before Friday night's game against the Los Angeles Angels, but after going 0 for 3 he was poised to be replaced by a pinch hitter for his final at-bat as the designated hitter. The game ended with Nolan Reimold in the on-deck circle in Scott's place.

"He was not going to take that last at-bat," manager Buck Showalter said of Scott.

…

Scott hit a team-high 27 home runs in 2010, but this year he's batting .220 with nine homers and 22 RBIs in 64 games.

Aww, poor Luke Scott. You remember him, don’t you? He was the guy who said here that “Obama does not represent America – he was not born here.”

Bye bye for 2011, wingnut.

Finally, on another sports-related note (shocking, I know), I wanted to comment on the following article…

The hard-partying ways of Flyers captain Mike Richards and center Jeff Carter played a major role in the organization's decision to trade both players in June, say two Flyers who played with the pair last season.

Carter was sent to the Columbus Blue Jackets for free agent forward Jakub Voracek and first- and third-round picks in the draft, and Richards was traded to the Los Angeles Kings for Wayne Simmonds and Brayden Schenn.

The two unnamed players said that the Flyers front office was disappointed in Carter and Richards' longstanding party lifestyle and that teammates were concerned about the pair's drinking.

Shortly after his arrival in December 2009, coach Peter Laviolette instituted what players came to call the "Dry Island." Laviolette asked team members to commit to not drinking for a month, and each player was asked to write his number on a locker room board as a pledge. No. 17 (Carter) and No. 18 (Richards) were absent from the board on the first Dry Island, as well as the estimated five more times the policy was instituted.

In a phone interview Thursday, Flyers General Manager Paul Holmgren confirmed that Richards and Carter hadn't put their numbers on the board, but said there had been others who declined. "We carry 23 players and there wasn't 23 numbers up there."

Holmgren was "really upset that this is out there. That's our locker room. Our inner sanctum. Our board. Someone's crossing a line here," in discussing the Dry Island.

First, I should point out that this appeared in a “gossip” column for The Daily News, which is exactly where it belongs (and it should be noted that Carter’s agent Rick Curran said the “story” was “bullshit” and criticized the last-year-Flyers who didn’t come forward with their names to back the accusations, which I think is a very good point).

However, I think this ties into the coverage of how the Flyers are supposed to be so much more able to compete for the Stanley Cup now that they’ve traded two marquee players for some rookies and young guys who haven’t established themselves yet, which I think is total fiction.

Yes, it’s possible that all of the team’s moves could pan out perfectly. But I see no coverage or commentary anywhere from our lapdog Philadelphia sports media (no doubt wetting themselves over the possibility of taking issue with The Almighty Ed Snider) in the event that it doesn’t.

And I don’t know what Mike Richards and Jeff Carter did in their time off ice, and I don’t care (it’s also nobody’s business, really). What I do know is that they developed into elite players and led the team to a level of accomplishment that hadn’t been seen around here in awhile (since the ill-fated Eric Lindros era, I guess). Their level of play and the statistics they compiled speak for themselves.

And when Jeff Carter is among one of the league leaders in scoring for Columbus next year and Mike Richards is helping the Los Angeles Kings to become a dominant Western Conference team once more, that will speak a hell of a lot louder to me than how much time they spent on “the Dry Island.”

All Paul Holmgren had to do after the 2010 finals was sign free agent Antti Niemi of the Stanley Cup Champion Chicago Blackhawks, and all of this could have been avoided. But we are where we are.

Saturday Stuff

John Nichols of The Nation talks to K.O. about the American Legislative Exchange Council (Wonder who's behind all of the nutty antics of the Republican Party? Here's your answer)...



...and here's some music to check out while we continue to broil.

Saturday Mashup (7/23/11)

The Repugs non-jobs agenda staggers on (here)…

A House committee has voted to reinstate a ban on US funding to organizations that offer or even refer women for abortions around the world. Often called the "global gag rule" or the "Mexico City Policy," the measure goes so far as to prevent health and aid organizations from even presenting abortion as an option.

Republicans on the House Foreign Relations Committee included the prohibition in an authorization bill marked up this week. Here's the pertinent portion of the legislation:

None of the funds authorized to be appropriated by this Act or any amendment made by this Act may be made available to any foreign nongovernmental organization that promotes or performs abortion, except in cases of rape or incest or when the life of the mother would be endangered if the fetus were carried to term.

And as noted here…

Critics of the Mexico City Policy refer to it as the "global gag rule", arguing that, in addition to reducing the overall funding provided to particular NGOs, it closes off their access to USAID-supplied condoms and other forms of contraception.[13] This, they argue, negatively impacts the ability of these NGOs to distribute birth control, leading to a downturn in contraceptive use and from there to an increase in the rates of unintended pregnancies and abortion.[13] Critics also argue that the ban promotes restrictions on free speech as well as restrictions on accurate medical information.[14][15][16][17] The European Parliamentary Forum on Population and Development presented a petition to the United States Congress signed by 233 members condemning the policy. The forum has stated that the policy "undermines internationally agreed consensus and goals".[18]

And as noted here…

The Mexico City Policy undoubtedly violates the free speech guarantees of international human rights instruments to which the United States is a party.ll3 The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted without dissent by the UN General Assembly in 1948. The principles expressed in the UDHR include that all men and women are entitled to the right to freedom of opinion and expression.1I5 These principles are legally binding on the U.S. through the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which states: "Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference . . . . Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas of all kinds , regardless of frontiers , either orally, in writing or in print . . . . " The global gag rule expressly violates the spirit of this agreement, as well as the explicit rights it seeks to protect. As such, the rule not only impairs the freedom of expression of U.S. - funded foreign NGOs that wish to pursue expressive communications with their own, separate funds, it also violates the rights of patients and citizens seeking medical advice to be fully informed.

Gosh, the notion of universal human rights applicable to everyone regardless of your gender, ethnicity or political affiliation. How “pre-9/11” can you get (snark)?

Next, it looks like Turd Blossom is smiling (here)…

The Internal Revenue Service has abruptly stopped its investigation of whether gift taxes are due from fat-cat donors to nonprofit advocacy groups, which are emerging as increasingly powerful, and stealthy, players in American politics.

The tax is rarely levied, but the fact that regulators had finally questioned the donations raised hope that the I.R.S. might address an even more glaring problem: How partisan attack machines are allowed to pose as nonprofit social welfare organizations to avoid disclosing contributors. The agency’s timidity will invite even greater abuse of tax and election law by moneyed parties.

I.R.S. officials, besieged by Republican complaints, backed off the gift-tax issue this month, lamely claiming that greater study was needed for a clearer policy. This decision compounds the enormous damage done by the Supreme Court’s decision last year allowing unlimited corporate and union money in campaigns.

Dan Froomkin of HuffPo (remember him?) wrote a great piece here on this in which he notes the following…

In Crossroads GPS's solicitations for money, the group describes itself as a tax-exempt 501(c)(4) organization, and due to a controversial loophole in federal campaign finance rules, the names of donors to those organizations do not have to be disclosed publicly.

But contrary to popular belief, Rove's group has not formally attained 501(c)(4) status. The group's application, requesting the IRS to classify it as a "social welfare" group, is still pending.

And while the designation is typically not much more than a formality -- organizations routinely call themselves (c)(4) groups before they've been formally approved -- tax and campaign finance experts contacted by The Huffington Post said the IRS could well deny Crossroads GPS's application.

…

IRS guidelines for 501(c)(4) status state that social welfare groups "must operate primarily to further the common good and general welfare of the people of the community" -- which "does not include direct or indirect participation or intervention in political campaigns on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office."

Intervening in political campaigns isn't prohibited, it just can't be the primary activity.

Were Crossroads GPS denied its 501(c)(4) status, the organization could be on the hook for tens of millions of dollars in fines. And operating in secrecy would suddenly come with an enormous new price tag.

If anyone out there is disposed to contact the IRS and ask them why they utterly caved on this decision, feel free to do so by clicking here.

Continuing, I give you last week’s Area Votes in Congress (here – not a lot to add from yours truly)…

House

National flood insurance. Voting 406-22, the House passed a bill (HR 1309) to renew the taxpayer-subsidized National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) through 2016 and start key reforms. The bill authorizes the program to add $3 billion in new debt to the $17.8 billion it already owes the Treasury. The program insures about 5.6 million residential and commercial properties located in flood plains in 22,000 communities.

A yes vote was to pass the bill.

Voting yes: Robert E. Andrews (D., N.J.), Robert A. Brady (D., Pa.), John Carney (D., Del.), Charles W. Dent (R., Pa.), Chaka Fattah (D., Pa.), Michael Fitzpatrick (R., Pa.), Jim Gerlach (R., Pa.), Tim Holden (D., Pa.), Frank A. LoBiondo (R., N.J.), Pat Meehan (R., Pa.), Joseph R. Pitts (R., Pa.), Jon Runyan (R., N.J.), Allyson Y. Schwartz (D., Pa.), and Christopher H. Smith (R., N.J.).

Energy-efficient bulbs. Voting 233-193, the House failed to reach a two-thirds majority needed to repeal new standards designed to increase the energy efficiency of light bulbs by 30 percent. The standards are fostering bulbs such as compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) and light-emitting diodes (LEDs) that cost more than traditional bulbs but which are expected to save households $100 a year on average.

The standards will take effect next year under an energy law signed by President George W. Bush in 2007. Backers of this bill (HR 2417) denounced the efficiency rules as a federal overreach that will unfairly limit consumer freedoms, while defenders said they would cut nationwide energy costs by $12 billion annually.

A yes vote was to pass the bill.

Voting yes: Dent, Fitzpatrick, Gerlach, LoBiondo, Meehan, Pitts, Runyan, and Smith.

Voting no: Andrews, Brady, Carney, Fattah, Holden, and Schwartz.

Your Republican Party – gluttons on energy now as always.

Clean Water Act. Voting 239-184, the House passed a bill (HR 2018) shifting power to administer certain sections of the Clean Water Act to the states. In part, the bill would strip the federal Environmental Protection Agency of authority to veto Army Corps of Engineers wetlands policies without state concurrence; bar the EPA from issuing new water-quality standards in certain instances without the approval of the affected state; and give states more leeway to issue clean-water permits without federal interference.

Backers said the bill would set a proper balance between federal and state powers, while critics said it was written to help polluters such as mountaintop mining and factory farming.

A yes vote was to pass the bill.

Voting yes: Dent, Gerlach, Holden, Meehan, Pitts, and Runyan.

Voting no: Andrews, Brady, Carney, Fattah, Fitzpatrick, LoBiondo, Schwartz, and Smith.

The clip below from The Rachel Maddow Show explains once more why this was an incredibly wrong-headed piece of legislation (actual good votes by Mikey the Beloved, LoBiondo and Smith).

Advanced energy research. The House voted, 214-213, to increase funding for the Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency from $100 million to $179.6 million in fiscal 2012. This would restore the agency's budget to its 2011 level. Created in 2009, the agency, in concert with universities and corporations, fosters basic research and new technologies aimed at establishing U.S. superiority in the field of energy. The amendment was added to a $31 billion energy appropriations bill (HR 2354) for fiscal 2012, which was later passed.

A yes vote backed the amendment.

Voting yes: Andrews, Brady, Carney, Fattah, Fitzpatrick, Holden, Gerlach, LoBiondo, and Schwartz.

Voting no: Dent, Meehan, Pitts, Runyan, and Smith.

I hope Mikey is feeling all right – these are actually TWO good votes in a row; I’m shocked (and LoBiondo again and Gerlach? Wowsers!)

Update 10/3/11: By the way, here is more than a little bit of energy hypocrisy from Pancake Joe and Chris Smith, as well as Todd Platts, who rarely gets a mention around here.

Senate

Millionaires' taxes. Voting 51-49, the Senate failed to reach 60 votes for ending GOP blockage of a bill (S 1323) stating the sense of the Senate that any agreement to raise the national debt ceiling and curb deficit spending should include "a meaningful contribution" from millionaires and billionaires. The nonbinding Democratic bill was vague on what form the contribution should take but was widely seen as a call for higher taxes on the wealthy.

A yes vote was to advance the bill.

Voting yes: Thomas Carper (D., Del.), Bob Casey (D., Pa.), Chris Coons (D., Del.), Frank Lautenberg (D., N.J.), and Robert Menendez (D., N.J.).

Voting no: Pat Toomey (R., Pa.).

“No Corporate Tax” Pat hearts his base once more (he is every bit as loathsome as I knew he would be during the election last year).

This week, both chambers took up fiscal 2012 appropriations bills as well as proposed constitutional amendments requiring a balanced federal budget.

Update 7/24/11: A hat tip to one of my senior correspondents for this (looks like Mikey voted to fund energy development but then, for some reason, voted against the final appropriations bill...a real head-scratcher there).

Finally, this tells us that “Comic-Con” is taking place in San Diego, and U.S. senators were asked to pick their favorite comic book heroes. John Kerry chose Charlie Brown “because he’s always screwing up,” John Cornyn and Orrin Hatch more or less chose Superman, and Joe Manchin chose “Bazooka Joe” (huh?). Oh, and Marco Rubio wondered whether Batman was really a superhero after all.

No word on whether or not Sen. Mr. Elaine Chao or Orange Man Boehner chose Aquaman, which would be appropriate because, if their gamesmanship on the debt limit continues, the probability exists that our entire economy could end up under water (here).

Friday Stuff

Couldn't quite get off a post today...

...Meanwhile, there go Orange Man and Cantor, doing what they do best in spite of all evidence to the contrary (here)...



...and I don't know about you, but I'm the mood for a bit of escapism ("F" blast at end).

Thursday Stuff

What balls by Cenk Uygur (more here)...



...and you wanna know why we have a Clean Water Act? Check this out (something else the Feds can do better than the states)...



...and Rachel is back with the House Repug vendetta against rural airports, to say nothing of unions of course (here - heckuva job)...

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

...and this song works on a couple of different levels for yours truly at the moment, including Orange Man and his pals - long story.