Clipmarks | dmegivern's USA Politics collection

White House Smears Nobel Economist

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 23:36:20 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern

White House Smears Nobel Economist: ‘Lacks Courage’ For Ignoring ‘Cost Of Failure’ In Iraq

In a new book titled The Three Trillion Dollar War, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes argue that President Bush massively understated the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Combined with interest on debt, future borrowing, cost of continued military presence, and veterans health care, they estimate a potential cost of up to $5 to $7 trillion.

Unwilling to accept what Stiglitz calls a “very conservative” $3 trillion projection, the White House is smearing Stiglitz — President Clinton’s top economic adviser — saying he “lacks courage“:

In recent interviews, Stiglitz said Bush’s war accounting practices “are so shoddy that they would land any public firm before the Securities and Exchange Commission for engaging in deceptive practices.” “We had to use the Freedom of Information Act to uncover things that we never would have known,” he said.

Tags: war, cost, estimate

A Force Behind Hate

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 17:42:36 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern
clipper's remarks: Good to know who the hate mongers are

Clip Source: www.rightwingwatch.org

Think Locally, Act Hatefully

Ken Hutcherson has had a busy winter. The football star-turned-megachurch preacher started off January by taking on one of the largest corporations in the world but ended up embroiled in a fight with his daughter’s high school.

Hutcherson has made rabidly anti-gay activism his defining cause, especially as an advocate for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. In 2004 he joined James Dobson and other Religious Right leaders for an anti-gay rally on the National Mall, asserting that he represented “God’s people” and that he knew exactly what was on God’s mind: “There are absolutes and I’m absolutely right on this issue. God does not want marriage to be redefined.”

Hutcherson launched a program to convince activists to buy Microsoft shares and donate them to his new AGN Financial Network. Then, according to the plan, Hutcherson could overturn gay-friendly policies at shareholders’ meetings.

Trying to Go Private Fails Mentally Ill

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:18:44 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern

Clip Source: www.newsobserver.com

Reform wastes millions, fails mentally ill

North Carolina's mental-health reform was supposed to improve treatment for the mentally ill and provide good value for taxpayers. It has done neither.

The state has wasted at least $400 million in an ill-conceived and poorly executed plan to treat more mentally ill people in their own communities and fewer in the state's four psychiatric hospitals, a News & Observer investigation shows.

Local governments, forced to stop offering treatment, were replaced by providers out to make a profit. Most of their workers were high school graduates, not licensed professionals, but the bill was stunning. In a few months, the cost of the community support program was $50 million a month, more than 10 times what the state had expected.

Meanwhile, some seriously ill people had to do without treatment. Services that were more likely to help them avoid hospitalization were in short supply.

Feds Help Predatory Lenders

Sun, 17 Feb 2008 16:42:52 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern

Clip Source: www.washingtonpost.com

Predatory Lenders' Partner in Crime

How the Bush Administration Stopped the States From Stepping In to Help Consumers

By Eliot Spitzer

Several years ago, state attorneys general and others involved in consumer protection began to notice a marked increase in a range of predatory lending practices by mortgage lenders. Some were misrepresenting the terms of loans, making loans without regard to consumers' ability to repay, making loans with deceptive "teaser" rates that later ballooned astronomically, packing loans with undisclosed charges and fees, or even paying illegal kickbacks. These and other practices, we noticed, were having a devastating effect on home buyers. In addition, the widespread nature of these practices, if left unchecked, threatened our financial markets.

Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents

Hunger in the U.S.A.

Sun, 17 Feb 2008 16:36:45 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern

Clip Source: www.thehungersite.com

Hunger in the U.S.

Families in Crisis

It is a tragic reality that the United States, one of the richest nations in the world, is also plagued with a poverty-driven hunger crisis. The statistics tell the troubling story. In 2005:

Every day, millions of children in America go to bed hungry.

12.9 million (17.8%) children under the age of 18 were in poverty

20.5 million (11.3%) of people aged 18-64 were in poverty

Poverty is forcing millions of Americans into a hunger crisis. Their hunger emergency is defined by food insecurity, which is the lack of access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs for an active and healthy life.² Families find themselves buying cheaper and less nutritious food, or cutting entire meals out of their diet, just to make ends meet. Increasing over time, this pattern leads to chronic malnutrition, affecting children and families in profoundly destructive ways.

The Hidden Poor

Working Poor

Children

Rural Poor

Solving Hunger

Bush is a Liar and a Fascist

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 17:34:23 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern
clipper's remarks: Best Countdown special comment I've seen. Olbermann takes it to the mat.

Clip Source: vicezilla.com

Countdown Special Comment on FISA: President Bush Is A Liar And A Fascist

Keith once again opens up another can of truth for Bush to mull over!

You are a liar, Mr. Bush, and after showing some skill at it, you have ceased to even be a very good liar.

And your minions like John Boehner — your Republican congressional crash dummies who just happen to decide to walk out of Congress when a podium-full of microphones await them — they should just keep walking, out of Congress and if possible, out of the country.

For they — and you, sir — have no place in a government of the people, by the people, for the people.

The lot of you, are the symbolic descendants of the despotic middle managers of some banana republic, to whom “Freedom” is an ironic brand name, a word you reach for, when you want to get away with its opposite.

Thus, Mr. Bush, your panoramic invasion of privacy is dressed up as “protecting America.”

Taxes as Taking Responsibility

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 21:07:51 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern
clipper's remarks: Are you are tax shirker? Are you always trying to avoid paying your fair share? Are there children who are languishing so you can have the latest technological toy? Then, hi, Mr. or Ms. Conservative. Just keep putting the bills on the federal credit card. We won't invest in the kids and then they can pay the taxes we all should have been paying.

Clip Source: www.rockridgeinstitute.org

Progressive Taxation: Some Hidden Truths

Progressive taxation—taxing the wealthy at higher rates than the poor—is a moral issue. Like many moral issues, it sparks heated debate. The debate is borne of conflicting worldviews, values, and understandings of values. But as we at the Rockridge Institute have written, when progressives understand the values and ideas that underlie their positions on issues, they can articulate arguments authentically and with greater persuasive force. These arguments will appeal to those whom we call biconceptuals—the great majority of Americans whose worldviews borrow in various ways from both progressive and conservative values.

Taxes are part of our common wealth, what we all share. Protection and empowerment serve the common good. Because of our common wealth, we are all protected and America's empowering infrastructure is available to all. That is a fundamental America value: the common wealth should serve the common good. It benefits everyone.

Clip Source: www.demos.org

Tags: taxes

Higher tax rates on top 1% don't slow economy

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 23:29:39 GMT

clipped by: masbury
clipper's remarks: Compares top rates since WWII, amount of revenue generate by them, and GDP during each period. No trickle-down appears.

Clip Source: lanekenworthy.net

The following chart shows the top marginal rate and the average effective rate on the top 1% of taxpayers since World War II

The following chart shows federal government tax revenues as a share of GDP by the effective tax rate on the top 1%.

tax rates on the richest are positively associated with the portion of GDP collected in taxes.

The next chart shows the growth rate of per capita GDP by the effective tax rate on the top 1%. The effective tax rate on the richest appears to have had no impact on economic growth.

a somewhat higher rate of taxation on the richest Americans would not only be fairer but also enhance the government’s ability to provide valuable services and benefits.

Tags: economy, taxes

Behind the Anti-Immigration Scenes

Sun, 13 Jan 2008 15:58:11 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern

Clip Source: www.splcenter.org

The Teflon Nativists

FAIR Marked by Ties to White Supremacy

In Their Own Words
Read More

The forces seeking to sharply reduce the number of immigrants coming to America won a stunning victory last June, when nativist anger at an "amnesty" for the undocumented scuttled a major bipartisan immigration reform package backed by President Bush. Many members of Congress were completely unprepared for the flood of angry E-mails, phone calls and faxes they received — an inundation so massive that the phone system collapsed under the weight of more than 400,000 faxes.

They should not have been surprised. The furious nativist tide was largely driven by an array of immigration restriction organizations that has been built up over the course of more than 20 years into fixtures in the nation's capital.

At the center of the Tanton web is the nonprofit Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the most important organization fueling the backlash against immigration.

Tags: immigration

The era of easy money is over

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 22:04:54 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie

Clip Source: www.ft.com

middle-class families have exhausted the coping mechanisms they have used for more than three decades to get by on median wages that are barely higher than they were in 1970, adjusted for inflation. Male wages today are in fact lower than they were then; the income of a young man in his 30s is now 12 per cent below that of a man his age three decades ago. Yet for years America’s middle class has lived beyond its pay cheque. Middle-class lifestyles have flourished even though median wages have barely budged.

second coping mechanism. The typical American now works two weeks more each year than he or she did 30 years ago.

the third coping mechanism. We began to borrow, big time.

But this can no longer keep us going, either. The era of easy money is over

The anxiety gripping the American middle class is not simply a product of the current economic slowdown. The underlying problem began around 1970.

Tags: economy, consumers, i-income, i-decrease, i-debt, i-increase, i-forecast

Is this scary, sad or funny?

Sun, 23 Dec 2007 21:52:36 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman
clipper's remarks: All three, I reckon.

Clip Source: scienceblogs.com

There are demented fuckwits running for the office of president in the most militarily powerful nation in the world. They think they can have conversations with an all-powerful cosmic being who instructs them in the right things to do, and that they have the approval of that being, no matter what they do: they can initiate an unjust and futile war that kills and maims our soldiers and slaughters the civilians of another country; they can endorse torture; they can deprive people of their civil rights; they can treat loving couples as pariahs if they don't meet their abstract notions of who is allowed to fall in love; they can poison the planet; they can oppress the poor; they can enrich their corrupt cronies; they can pretty much run roughshod over any notion of justice, liberty, and equality. And what does their imaginary god do? He gives them a phantasmal thumbs-up and an ethereal "Good job!" and assures them that he is on their side.

[Video]

Tags: politics, religion, usa, president, election

60 ft Long List of Bush Scandals

Sun, 23 Dec 2007 00:17:56 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern

Clip Source: firedoglake.com

The List of Bush Scandals — 60 Ft. Long and Growing

By: looseheadprop Thursday December 20, 2007 12:30 pm

Edward Teller put a great post up over at Progressive Alaska about printing out and displaying the then 60 foot long scroll of Hugh's List. It has great photos and is just a terrific idea for getting people to pay attention. One very cool bit of political demonstration. It could be replicated anywhere---and maybe should be?

Secular Progressives Meet Right Wing Toyota Dealership

Sat, 22 Dec 2007 22:10:11 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern
clipper's remarks: We both ended up with headaches.

Clip Source: thewisdomgoldenmean.blogspot.com

My husband and I needed service maintenance, so we scheduled two appointments with Denny Hecker. We have used their services for the past couple years. We wait for the vehicles, so we were slated to be sitting there for over 1 1/2 hours.

Every television in the place is tuned to Fox Noise, far right facist "news." After 35 minutes, we asked to have the channel changed to something neutral and less offensive. Two women who came in *after* us

--and who already had watched unions bashed and people like ourselves insulted --

were allowed to say, "I'm watching this," and "This is a democracy" as excuses for continuing to rudely insist *in a public business* that we all listen to right-wing propoganda instead of something neutral like, oh, any other cable channel. There was no vote taken to see if the customers wanted to hear morning propoganda. This business values politics over customers, and feels free to offend any customer who isn't giving the Seig Heil to the president.

Tags: fascism, toyota

Bush Presidential Library..empty shell..

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 17:48:10 GMT

clipped by: TJColatrella

Clip Source: www.gocomics.com

Tags: bush, secrecy, criminality, records, documents, cheney, addington, fire, shredder, cia

Romney and Religion

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 05:28:38 GMT

clipped by: TJColatrella

Clip Source: www.edkrebs.com

Tags: fundamentalists, evangelists, freedom from religion, huckabee, bush