THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

We've been told for a year that we need to pay for every dollar that it's going to cost us to reform our health care system. That's about $900 billion over 10 years. If we wind up being committed in Afghanistan for eight to 10 years, that's also going to approach $800 billion to $900 billion. And if we're going to do that, it seems to me that if we're being told we have to pay for health care, we certainly ought to pay for this effort as well.

// posted by montag @ 6:17 PM 0 Comments

The police also said Mr. Clemmons had recently been arrested in Pierce County and charged with assaulting a police officer and raping a child.

Nine years ago in Arkansas, The Seattle Times reported, Mr. Clemmons was released from prison after Gov. Mike Huckabee commuted his lengthy prison sentence, over the protests of prosecutors.

Late Sunday night, Mr. Huckabee’s political action committee released a statement saying that “a series of failures in the criminal justice system in both Arkansas and Washington State” would be to blame if Mr. Clemmons were found responsible for the shootings.

// posted by montag @ 5:37 PM 0 Comments

You might think, then, that doing something about the employment situation would be a top policy priority. But now that total financial collapse has been averted, all the urgency seems to have vanished from policy discussion, replaced by a strange passivity. There’s a pervasive sense in Washington that nothing more can or should be done, that we should just wait for the economic recovery to trickle down to workers.

This is wrong and unacceptable.

Yes, the recession is probably over in a technical sense, but that doesn’t mean that full employment is just around the corner. Historically, financial crises have typically been followed not just by severe recessions but by anemic recoveries; it’s usually years before unemployment declines to anything like normal levels. And all indications are that the aftermath of the latest financial crisis is following the usual script. The Federal Reserve, for example, expects unemployment, currently 10.2 percent, to stay above 8 percent — a number that would have been considered disastrous not long ago — until sometime in 2012.

And the damage from sustained high unemployment will last much longer. The long-term unemployed can lose their skills, and even when the economy recovers they tend to have difficulty finding a job, because they’re regarded as poor risks by potential employers. Meanwhile, students who graduate into a poor labor market start their careers at a huge disadvantage — and pay a price in lower earnings for their whole working lives. Failure to act on unemployment isn’t just cruel, it’s short-sighted.

So it’s time for an emergency jobs program.

// posted by montag @ 5:22 PM 0 Comments

Til death do us part? The vow would really hold true in California if a Sacramento Web designer gets his way.

In a movement that seems ripped from the pages of Comedy Channel writers, John Marcotte wants to put a measure on the ballot next year to ban divorce in California...

...Marcotte needs 694,354 valid signatures by March 22

// posted by montag @ 5:03 PM 0 Comments

President Hamid Karzai's pledge to root out political corruption in his second term faces a quick test from government attorneys, who've asked for new powers to pursue some of the country's top leaders.

Officials in the attorney general's office said Monday that they wanted Karzai to take decisive steps so that they could pursue corruption cases against as many as 15 current and former government officials, including at least two in the president's Cabinet.

It wasn't clear whether Karzai, whose government is internationally rated as one of the most corrupt in the world, would approve of an investigation into political allies, some of whom may have helped him win re-election through massive vote rigging.

government officials said four U.S. troops, three Afghan soldiers and five Afghan civilians, including three children, had been killed in the last 24 hours.

So far this month, 15 American fighters have been killed in Afghanistan. Nearly 60 Americans were killed in October, making it the most deadly month of the war.

// posted by montag @ 11:52 PM 0 Comments

President Barack Obama met Monday evening with his national security team to finalize a plan to dispatch some 34,000 additional U.S. troops over the next year to what he's called "a war of necessity" in Afghanistan, U.S. officials told McClatchy.

Obama is expected to announce his long-awaited decision on Dec. 1, followed by meetings on Capitol Hill aimed at winning congressional support amid opposition by some Democrats who are worried about the strain on the U.S. Treasury and whether Afghanistan has become a quagmire, the officials said.

The U.S. officials all spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the issue publicly and because, one official said, the White House is incensed by leaks on its Afghanistan policy that didn't originate in the White House.

They said the commander of the U.S.-led international force in Afghanistan, Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, could arrive in Washington as early as Sunday to participate in the rollout of the new plan, including testifying before Congress toward the end of next week. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry also are expected to appear before congressional committees.

As it now stands, the plan calls for the deployment over a nine-month period beginning in March of three Army brigades from the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky., and the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, N.Y., and a Marine brigade from Camp Lejeune, N.C., for as many as 23,000 additional combat and support troops.

In addition, a 7,000-strong division headquarters would be sent to take command of U.S.-led NATO forces in southern Afghanistan — to which the U.S. has long been committed — and 4,000 U.S. military trainers would be dispatched to help accelerate an expansion of the Afghan army and police.

// posted by montag @ 11:36 PM 0 Comments

That old saw “you can’t judge a book by its cover” is taking on new meaning: Two Sarah Palin books that look alike on the outside but are very different inside have some of the public — and the media — seeing red. Or should that be rouge?

“Going Rogue” is Palin’s memoir, which had a huge initial print run of 1.5 million copies. “Going Rouge,” on the other hand, is a collection of essays critical of Palin, compiled by the editors of The Nation magazine.

Both books were released Nov. 17, and before they were, some wags predicted they would befuddle readers. After all, both covers show a smiling Palin dressed in red. But “Going Rouge,” subtitled “An American Nightmare,” shows dark, imposing storm clouds in the background, while Palin’s shows a bright blue sky.

// posted by montag @ 7:24 PM 0 Comments

Iraq’s tortuous effort to hold parliamentary elections on schedule in January collapsed Monday, raising the prospect of a political and constitutional crisis next year as the United States begins withdrawing the majority of its combat troops.

After two days of divisive sessions and failed talks, Parliament disregarded a veto by one of the country’s vice presidents and approved new amendments that the vice president promptly indicated he would veto as well...

...The Parliament, or Council of Representatives, does not appear to have the necessary three-fifths majority to override a new veto, making it impossible, several senior lawmakers said, to hold the vote in January as required under the country’s Constitution.

The Obama administration and the American commander in Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno, have long planned the withdrawal of American forces around the expectation that the election would take place in January.

There are now roughly 120,000 troops in the country, and a significant withdrawal, known at the Pentagon as “the waterfall,” is scheduled to begin in the spring. Under President Obama’s policy, fewer than 50,000 troops are to remain after August 2010

// posted by montag @ 7:13 PM 0 Comments

Most economists I talk to believe that the big risk to recovery comes from the inadequacy of government efforts: the stimulus was too small, and it will fade out next year, while high unemployment is undermining both consumer and business confidence.

Now, it’s politically difficult for the Obama administration to enact a full-scale second stimulus. Still, he should be trying to push through as much aid to the economy as possible. And remember, Mr. Obama has the bully pulpit; it’s his job to persuade America to do what needs to be done.

Instead, however, Mr. Obama is lending his voice to those who say that we can’t create more jobs. And a report on Politico.com suggests that deficit reduction, not job creation, will be the centerpiece of his first State of the Union address. What happened?

// posted by montag @ 5:22 PM 0 Comments

Rep. David Obey (D-Wisc.), the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, warned that if President Barack Obama decides to send additional troops to Afghanistan, it should be funded with the new tax.

“If we have to pay for the healthcare bill, we should pay for the war as well,” Obey told ABC News in an interview, “by having a war surtax.”

// posted by montag @ 5:12 PM 0 Comments

(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama's "stimulus" bill;

(2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare;

(3) We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;

(4) We support workers' right to secret ballot by opposing card check;

(5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;

(6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;

(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat;

(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;

(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and

(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership;

// posted by montag @ 4:31 PM 0 Comments

On the day of Mr. Blankfein’s non-apology, Goldman pledged $500 million over five years — crumbs from its table — to help 10,000 small businesses. It is hard to take seriously Goldman’s claim that the program was not motivated by its public relations problems. The money will be welcomed by the recipients, but if Goldman wants to make a meaningful contribution, it would have to be in the billions and aimed more directly at taxpayers.

So, here’s a thought: A multibillion-dollar gift to the federal Bureau of the Public Debt, which accepts tax-deductible donations to reduce the national debt. The donation can come from the bonuses; that way, it would not harm shareholders, because they only get their cut after the bonuses are paid. Goldman’s tax savings from the donation could help finance the small-business initiative.

And a contribution might help Goldman ward off the alternative: serious calls for a windfall tax on bonuses, which would be justified since the profits they are based on are in large part the result of government efforts. One way or another, the taxpayers will demand their due, and one way or another, they just might get it.

// posted by montag @ 1:28 PM 0 Comments

The Roman Catholic bishop of Rhode Island said Sunday that he asked Rep. Patrick Kennedy in a 2007 letter to stop receiving Communion, the central sacrament of the church, because of the congressman's public stance on moral issues.

Bishop Thomas Tobin divulged details of his confidential exchange with Kennedy after the Democratic lawmaker told The Providence Journal in a story published Sunday that Tobin had instructed him not to receive Communion. The two men have clashed repeatedly in the past few weeks over abortion.

// posted by montag @ 1:07 PM 1 Comments

Lieberman is offering a deeply cynical reading of the legislation. The restrictions on who can access the public plan, for instance, were put into the bill as a way to placate members of Congress like himself, who were worried about legislation sapping the private market. And the reason the public plan may charge higher premiums is due, in part, to the fact that it will have to pay negotiated rates to providers instead of a fee tied to Medicare rates. This too was added to placate conservative Democratic lawmakers. If Lieberman finds these provisions objectionable, he should be directing his opposition at his fellow centrists. Instead, he's targeting the bill itself.

"[O]nce the bill is on the floor, amendments will be offered," he said on Sunday. "But essentially every amendment is subject to a filibuster and will take 60 votes to pass. My only resort, and every other senator -- and there will be others who feel exactly the way I do about the public option, if the public option is still in there -- the only resort we have is to say no at the end to reporting the bill off the floor."

// posted by montag @ 12:48 PM 0 Comments

They have done incredibly well, and I think that it’s important that we pay for it if we possibly can” instead of increasing the federal debt load.

// posted by montag @ 12:30 PM 0 Comments

Investment funds are buying billions of dollars’ worth of home loans, discounted from the loans’ original value. Then, in what might seem an act of charity, the funds are helping homeowners by reducing the size of the loans.

But as part of these deals, the mortgages are being refinanced through lenders that work with government agencies like the Federal Housing Administration. This enables the funds to pocket sizable profits by reselling new, government-insured loans to other federal agencies, which then bundle the mortgages into securities for sale to investors.

While homeowners save money, the arrangement shifts nearly all the risk for the loans to the federal government — and, ultimately, taxpayers — at a time when Americans are falling behind on their mortgage payments in record numbers.

// posted by montag @ 7:51 PM 1 Comments

Glenn Beck, the popular and outspoken Fox News host, says he wants to go beyond broadcasting his opinions and start rallying his political base — formerly known as his audience — to take action.

To do so, Mr. Beck is styling himself as a political organizer. In an interview, he said he would promote voter registration drives and sponsor a series of seven conventions across the country featuring what he described as libertarian speakers.

On Saturday he held a festive campaign-style rally in The Villages in Florida, north of Orlando, in which he promoted his recently released book, “Arguing With Idiots,” and announced another book to come next August filled with right-leaning policy proposals gathered from the conventions.

// posted by montag @ 7:35 PM 0 Comments

The turkey dinner will be prepared by Great Performances, a catering company that stages banquets for the grand ballroom of The Plaza. Leading the culinary team is star chef Marc Spooner, a winner of the Food Network's "Chopped" TV contest and the caterer's chef de cuisine.

Three hundred employees of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Wall Street's richest firm, have volunteered for the holiday feast and will be tasked with taking out the garbage.

"Goldman wants their volunteers to sweat,"

// posted by montag @ 4:57 PM 0 Comments

"I am absolutely convinced and totally confident that with sufficient resources we can turn the situation around," McCain told reporters at an international defense summit in easternmost Canada.

"I even am bold enough to predict that in a year to 18 months you will see success if the effort is sufficiently resourced and there is a commitment to get the job done before setting a date to leave the region," he said.

// posted by montag @ 4:41 PM 0 Comments

What you’ll see are endless acres of urban ruin, block after block and mile after mile of empty and rotting office buildings, storefronts, hotels, apartment buildings and private homes. It’s a scene of devastation and disintegration that stuns the mind, a major American city that still is home to 900,0000 people but which looks at times like a cross between postwar Berlin and the ruin of an ancient civilization.

Detroit was the arsenal of democracy in World War II and the incubator of the American middle class. It was the city that taught mass production to the rest of the world. It was a place that made cars, trucks and other tangible products, not derivatives. And it was the architect of the quintessentially American idea of putting people to work and paying them a decent wage. It’s frightening to think seriously about what we’ve allowed to happen to this city and what is now happening to the middle class and the American economy as a whole.

Detroit and its environs are suffering the agonies of the economic damned because of policies, crafted at the highest national and corporate levels, that resulted in the implosion of crucially important components of America’s manufacturing base. Those decisions have had a profound effect on the fortunes not just of Detroit, or even Michigan, but the entire U.S. economy.

“We’ve been living with the illusion that manufacturing — making things — is so 20th century,” said Mr. Shaiken, “and that we could succeed by concentrating, for example, on complex financial instruments while abandoning the industrial base that sustained so many American families.”

The idea that the fallout from the wrongheaded economic concepts of the past 30 or 40 years could be contained, with the damage limited to the increasingly troubled urban areas while sparing prosperous suburbia, has now proved as phony as Bernie Madoff’s fortune. Americans, whether they live in big cities, suburban towns or rural areas, need jobs, and when those jobs are eliminated (for whatever reasons — technological advances, globalization) without being replaced, the national economy is guaranteed at some point to hit a wall.

// posted by montag @ 1:36 PM 0 Comments

In its largest reconstruction effort since the Marshall Plan, the United States government has spent $53 billion for relief and reconstruction in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, building tens of thousands of hospitals, water treatment plants, electricity substations, schools and bridges.

But there are growing concerns among American officials that Iraq will not be able to adequately maintain the facilities once the Americans have left, potentially wasting hundreds of millions of dollars and jeopardizing Iraq’s ability to provide basic services to its people.

The projects run the gamut — from a cutting-edge, $270 million water treatment plant in Nasiriya that works at a fraction of its intended capacity because it is too sophisticated for Iraqi workers to operate, to a farmers’ market that farmers cannot decide how to share, to a large American hospital closed immediately after it was handed over to Iraq because the government was unable to supply it with equipment, a medical staff or electricity.

And whether or not the American-built health centers and power plants are ever used as intended, the American companies that won the lion’s share of rebuilding contracts from the federal government have been paid.

// posted by montag @ 11:55 PM 0 Comments

Sarah Palin is on an endless crusade against assholes. It’s all she thinks about. She doesn’t really have any political ideas, in the classic sense of the word — in fact the only thing resembling real political convictions in Going Rogue revolve around the Trans-Alaska pipeline and how awesome she thinks it is.

Most of the rest of the book just catalogs her Gump-esque rise to national stardom (not having enough self-awareness to detect the monstrous narcissistic ambition that in reality was impelling her forward all along, she labors in the book to describe her various career leaps as lucky accidents or mystical acts of Providence) and the seemingly endless parade of meanies bent on tripping her up along the way. The book is really about her battles with these people, how much they did and do suck, and how difficult and inherently unfair life is for a decent hardworking American gal who just wants to live life, serve God, and try to be president without being bothered all the time.

Viewed through the prism of this particular brand of insanity (Palinsanity? does that work?), Katie Couric’s notorious Palin interview last year really was a cheap shot. After all, Katie was trying to nail Palin — which is mean! Who among us can’t sympathize with the experience of being sandbagged by some slick professional rival who catches you in a moment of weakness and, instead of lending a helping hand, drives a fireplace poker through your eye?

// posted by montag @ 10:30 PM 0 Comments

Officials in a small Michigan town featured in a new video about Guantanamo by Liz Cheney’s national security group want her to know that they’re not falling for her “fearmongering” — and tell us they want Gitmo detainees in their town.

Cheney’s group, Keep America Safe, has released a short documentary starring several residents of little Standish, Michigan, slamming the Obama administration over a proposal to transfer some Guantanamo detainees to the town’s maximum security facility, one of several facilities being discussed.

The vid, which is below, ominously warns that unnamed “politicians” want Gitmo detainees placed in their “small farm town,” without saying who the politicians are or whether they’re Federal or local. A resident says those politicans “aren’t listening to us little people in Standish.”

But Standish’s City Manager tells us that local leaders and residents want the facility, and dismissed Cheney’s efforts as “fearmongering.”

// posted by montag @ 7:10 PM 0 Comments

Bill Moyers is leaving weekly television.

The New York Times' Elizabeth Jensen reports that the PBS newscaster is retiring from his Friday night program, "Bill Moyers Journal," on April 30, 2010...

..."I am 75 years old," Moyers told Jensen. "I feel it's time."

// posted by montag @ 7:04 PM 0 Comments

On one side of the cavernous room sat Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who's warned that the international community is losing patience with Karzai.

On the other side was Abdul Rashid Dostum, the Afghan warlord who's become a symbol of cronyism and government corruption. Dostum was stripped of his top military post after he was accused of war crimes and investigated for enacting vigilante justice on the streets of Kabul.

Although foreign leaders have demanded that Karzai sideline Dostum and other discredited political allies, the Afghan president is also under pressure to reward those, such as Dostum, who helped him win re-election.

// posted by montag @ 1:28 PM 1 Comments

For the A.I.G. rescue was part of a pattern: Throughout the financial crisis key officials — most notably Timothy Geithner, who was president of the New York Fed in 2008 and is now Treasury secretary — have shied away from doing anything that might rattle Wall Street. And the bitter paradox is that this play-it-safe approach has ended up undermining prospects for economic recovery. For the job of fixing the broken economy is far from done — yet finishing the job has become nearly impossible now that the public has lost faith in the government’s efforts, viewing them as little more than handouts to the people who got us into this mess.

// posted by montag @ 12:59 PM 0 Comments

Influential US lawmakers on Thursday called for levying a new income tax to pay for the war in Afghanistan, warning its costs pose a mortal threat to efforts like a sweeping health care overhaul.

"Regardless of whether one favors the war or not, if it is to be fought, it ought to be paid for," the lawmakers, all prominent Democratic allies of Obama, said in a joint statement on the "Share The Sacrifice Act of 2010."

The proposal came with US President Barack Obama set to announce within weeks his decision on whether to send more US troops to fight the war, now in its ninth year.

The group included House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey; Representative John Murtha, who chair that panel's defense subcommittee; and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank.

// posted by montag @ 12:32 PM 1 Comments

During a relatively unnoticed speech in early November, former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said he found it "deplorable" and "shameful" that his fellow Republicans were attacking the president for even the most trivial or well-intentioned matters...

...The underlying point, Huckabee concluded, was that knee-jerk criticism to the president was counter-productive to civil debate. "I hated it when people did that to George Bush," he said. "They couldn't even laugh at the man's jokes they found something wrong with everything and if we do that to Barack Obama, then shame on us, shame on us. No wonder our country is so divided when that happens."

// posted by montag @ 7:05 PM 0 Comments

Whether they’re attending ‘tea party’ rallies featuring Holocaust imagery, comparing health insurance reform to terrorism, or staying silent about plans to burn public officials in effigy, the tenor from House Republicans grows more alarming by the day.

It’s long past time for the House Republican Leadership to speak out against this disturbing pattern of increasingly extreme rhetoric from their ranks and engage in the constructive search for solutions that America’s many challenges demand.

// posted by montag @ 4:44 PM 0 Comments

Barbara Ann Radnofsky, a Houston lawyer and Democratic candidate for attorney general, says that a 22-word clause in a 2005 constitutional amendment designed to ban gay marriages erroneously endangers the legal status of all marriages in the state.

The amendment, approved by the state legislature and overwhelmingly ratified by voters, declares that "marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman." But the troublemaking phrase, as Radnofsky sees it, is Subsection B, which declares:

"This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage."

// posted by montag @ 2:08 PM 0 Comments

Police in Michigan are investigating after an irate reader of the Port Huron Times-Herald reportedly called in a threat to the newspaper after it criticized a local House representative's participation in the anti-health reform Tea Party protest two weeks ago.

"A 60-year-old Port Huron woman threatened to take a gun to the newspaper and 'do what they did at Fort Hood,' according to police," the Times-Herald reported on Tuesday.

// posted by montag @ 12:49 PM 0 Comments

The navigator was listening to his iPod during a critical evolution.

Watchstanders were known to sleep on the job.

Stereo speakers were rigged for music in the radio room.

An informal atmosphere — along with crew complacency, a “weak” command and inferior submariner skills — are named as contributors to the March 20 collision between the attack submarine Hartford and the amphibious transport dock New Orleans in the Strait of Hormuz.

// posted by montag @ 12:37 PM 0 Comments

With his prospect of winning the 23rd Congressional District race now almost zero, Conservative Party candidate Douglas L. Hoffman suggested Wednesday in a letter that “ACORN, the unions and the Democratic Party” “tampered” with results to deny him victory.

Mr. Hoffman provided no evidence to support his claims, but asked fellow conservatives to send donations his way to “ensure every vote is counted.”

Jerry O. Eaton, Jefferson County Republican elections commissioner, called Mr. Hoffman's assertion “absolutely false.”

“No one has touched those ballots or has access to those ballots except board of elections staff - and in a bipartisan manner,” he said.

// posted by montag @ 12:09 PM 0 Comments

The international security company formerly called Blackwater Worldwide is facing large government fines for unlicensed arms shipments to Iraq, as a key Congressional committee is asking for a separate investigation into whether the company bribed Iraqi officials.

In talks likely to result in millions of dollars in penalties, executives from the company, now known as Xe Services, are negotiating with government regulators over years of violations of export laws. According to government officials and former company employees, many of the violations involve arms shipments to Iraq, to outfit company security guards operating inside the country.

In addition, former company officials say that other penalties could result from violations of licensing requirements for the transfer of other forms of military technology and training expertise to foreign countries.

// posted by montag @ 10:58 PM 0 Comments

Rep. Louie Gohmert appeared on Fox News earlier today to discuss the House bill he's proposed that aims to prevent Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other detainees from being tried in New York City.

Gohmert first claimed that "millions of New Yorkers who will be put at risk" by such a trial, where "you've got weak links all along the way. From the jailers, the bailiffs, the clerks, the jurors, the judge, everybody in the courtroom, their families. You've got subways, tunnels, bridges, all subject to terrorism."

Gohmert continued: "Unless they're trying to create a new jobs bill by allowing terrorism back in New York, then this is insane." He added, "and even that would be insane."

// posted by montag @ 4:39 PM 0 Comments

Suicides in the Army are expected to reach a new high this year, with 140 suspected cases among active-duty soldiers so far, Army officials said Tuesday.

This will be the fifth year in a row that grim statistic rose despite an aggressive military campaign to tackle the mental health stigma in the Army. This year's number already matches that for all of 2008. There were 115 suicides in 2007 and 102 in 2006.

These new statistics come as the military is investigating what may have driven Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, who allegedly shot 55 people Nov. 5 at Fort Hood, Texas. The military has charged Hasan, who was set to deploy to Afghanistan, with 13 counts of premeditated murder.

Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the Army's vice chief of staff, said that the military wasn't seeing any trends that explained the rise. Forty suicides occurred in the first two months of the year. About a third were by soldiers who'd never deployed to war zones, and 40 percent of those who committed suicide had seen mental health specialists.

"We are almost certainly going to end the year higher than last year," Chiarelli said. "This is horrible, and I do not want to downplay the significance of these numbers in any way."

// posted by montag @ 1:56 PM 0 Comments

Children’s toys carrying the Barbie and Disney logos have turned up with high levels of lead in them, according to a California- based advocacy group—a finding that may give consumers pause as they shop for the holiday season.

The Center for Environmental Health tested about 250 children’s products bought at major retailers and found lead levels that exceeded federal limits in seven of them. Lead can cause irreversible brain damage.

// posted by montag @ 12:10 PM 0 Comments

The nation’s doors are open to Mr. Obiang, the forest and agriculture minister of Equatorial Guinea and the son of its president, even though federal law enforcement officials believe that “most if not all” of his wealth comes from corruption related to the extensive oil and gas reserves discovered more than a decade and a half ago off the coast of his tiny West African country, according to internal Justice Department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement documents.

And they are open despite a federal law and a presidential proclamation that prohibit corrupt foreign officials and their families from receiving American visas. The measures require only credible evidence of corruption, not a conviction of it.

Susan Pittman, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement in the State Department, said she was prohibited from discussing specific visa decisions. But other former and current State Department officials said Equatorial Guinea’s close ties to the American oil industry were the reason for the lax enforcement of the law. Production of the country’s nearly 400,000 barrels of oil a day is dominated by American companies like ExxonMobil, Hess and Marathon.

“Of course it’s because of oil,” said John Bennett, the United States ambassador to Equatorial Guinea from 1991 to 1994, adding that Washington has turned a blind eye to the Obiangs’ corruption and repression because of its dependence on the country for natural resources. He noted that officials of Zimbabwe are barred from the United States.

// posted by montag @ 5:36 PM 0 Comments

“It’s the terrorist-type thing that gets me,” said Donald L. Pauley, 64, who said he felt queasy at the notion of such prisoners being kept here, 150 miles west of Chicago, a place where everyone acknowledges that signs describing the population as 600 are overestimates by now.

Not even talk of added security measures, of a second fence around the prison, of increased law enforcement along the Mississippi River, which is less than a mile away, was enough to assure him, Mr. Pauley said.

But, in one example of the split that is playing out all over this village, even within houses, Mr. Pauley’s wife, Merrie Jo, said she was firmly behind the idea of turning over the Thomson Correctional Facility, a barely used state prison, to federal authorities, in part for those from Guantánamo.

“We need the jobs,” Ms. Pauley, who was the village president here for 27 years, said as she and Mr. Pauley dined at the Sunrise Restaurant, one of the few restaurants still open in an area where unemployment was 10.5 percent in September. “This place has been changing, and we’ve been going in the wrong direction.”

The notion that a terrorism suspect could slip away into Thomson without notice was unimaginable to Ms. Pauley, who added, “If a stranger comes around here, everyone knows within 20 minutes, believe me.”

// posted by montag @ 5:24 PM 0 Comments

This came to mind as I was reading about yet another closure of the problem-plagued San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, which is more than 70 years old. In 20 years, will today’s toddlers be traveling on bridges and roads that are in even worse shape than today’s? Will they endure mammoth traffic jams that start earlier and end later? Will their water supplies be clean and safe? Will the promise of clean energy visionaries be realized, or will we still be fouling the environment with carbon filth to the benefit of traditional energy conglomerates and foreign regimes that in many cases wish us anything but good?

The answers to these and many other related questions will depend to a great extent on decisions we make now (even in the midst of very tough economic times) about the American infrastructure. We’re trundling along in the infrastructure equivalent of a jalopy, with bridges rotting and falling down, while other nations, our competitors in the global economy, are building efficient, high-speed, high-performance infrastructure platforms to power their 21st-century economies.

We used to be so much smarter about this stuff.

// posted by montag @ 5:18 PM 0 Comments

"This demonstrates conclusively that we are going back to a pre-9/11 mentality," she said.

// posted by montag @ 4:35 PM 0 Comments

Residents of the C Street Christian fellowship house will no longer benefit from a loophole that had allowed the house's owners to avoid paying property taxes.

Previously, the house -- despite being home to numerous lawmakers -- had been tax exempt, because it was classified as a church. That arrangement had allowed the building's owner, the secretive international Christian organization The Family, to charge significantly below market rents to its residents. In recent year, Senators John Ensign (R-NV), Tom Coburn (R-OK), Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Jim DeMint (R-SC), and Reps. Zach Wamp (R-TN), Bart Stupak (D-MI) and Mike Doyle (D-PA) have all reportedly called C Street home.

Natalie Wilson, a spokeswoman for the Office of Tax and Revenue for Washington D.C., told TPMmuckraker that her office inspected the house this summer. "It was determined that portions of it were being rented out for private residential purposes," she said. As a result, the tax exempt status was partially revoked. Sixty-six percent of the value of the property is now subject to taxation.

// posted by montag @ 4:22 PM 0 Comments

"The moral imperative for our time is clear. Anyone whose guide in public policy is conscience, anyone who argues that faith and religious traditions should direct our actions, such a person must stand for universal health care in America," Fish concluded. "It happens we are all also citizens of Connecticut. That fact leads us to ask you Senator Lieberman, what is it that you stand for?"

// posted by montag @ 5:08 PM 0 Comments

The Bureau of Prisons is not looking at the empty jail in Hardin, Montana -- which was recently at the center of the American Police Force con -- as a potential site for Guantanamo inmates, contrary to an AP report today, a spokesperson for the bureau tells TPMmuckraker.

"We do not have any information that a facility in Montana is being considered for a BOP facility," spokesman Edmund Ross told us. "We're looking at the Thomson facility in Illinois."

// posted by montag @ 4:33 PM 0 Comments

Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) says his "Veterans 2nd Amendment Protection Act" will protect veterans' gun rights. But the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence calls it a "dangerous" proposal that could allow "over 100,000 mentally incapacitated or incompetent persons" to buy guns—people who would previously have been barred from doing so by the Veterans Administration (VA).

With debate over Fort Hood still raging on cable news, one might think that Burr might try to quietly shelve the measure, whose co-sponsors include Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.). Instead, Burr fired back at the Brady Campaign in an interview with Fox News, accusing its president, Paul Helmke, of using the tragedy to "exploit the senseless murder of American soldiers in the quest to secure personal triumph."

Responding to Burr Thursday in an open letter, Helmke wrote, "it is hardly 'exploitative' to have an honest debate" about the proposal, which would cancel out key provisions of the Gun Control Act of 1968 and override standards used by the VA for nearly four decades.

// posted by montag @ 1:40 PM 0 Comments

The number of Americans who lack dependable access to adequate food shot up last year to 49 million, the largest number since the government has been keeping track, according to a government report released Monday that shows particularly steep increases in food scarcity among families with children.

In 2008, the report found, nearly 17 million children -- more than one in five across the United States -- were living in households in which food at times ran short, up from slightly more than 12 million children the year before. And the number of children who sometimes were outright hungry rose from nearly 700,000 to almost 1.1 million.

Among people of of all ages, nearly 15 percent last year did not consistently have adequate food, compared with about 11 percent in 2007, the greatest deterioration in access to food during a single year in the history of the report...

...Last year, people in 4.8 million households used private food pantries, compared to 3.9 million in 2007, while people in about 625,000 households resorted to soup kitchens, nearly 90,000 more than the year before.

// posted by montag @ 1:02 PM 0 Comments

During the best of the times, Miguel Salcedo’s son, an illegal immigrant in San Diego, would be sending home hundreds of dollars a month to support his struggling family in Mexico. But at times like these, with the American economy out of whack and his son out of work, Mr. Salcedo finds himself doing what he never imagined he would have to do: wiring pesos north.

Unemployment has hit migrant communities in the United States so hard that a startling new phenomenon has been detected: instead of receiving remittances from relatives in the richest country on earth, some down-and-out Mexican families are scraping together what they can to support their unemployed loved ones in the United States.

“We send something whenever we have a little extra, at least enough so he can eat,” said Mr. Salcedo, who is from a small village here in the rural state of Oaxaca and works odd jobs to support his wife, his two younger sons and, now, his jobless eldest boy in California.

// posted by montag @ 12:42 PM 0 Comments

China is the great exception. Despite huge trade surpluses and the desire of many investors to buy into this fast-growing economy — forces that should have strengthened the renminbi, China’s currency — Chinese authorities have kept that currency persistently weak. They’ve done this mainly by trading renminbi for dollars, which they have accumulated in vast quantities.

And in recent months China has carried out what amounts to a beggar-thy-neighbor devaluation, keeping the yuan-dollar exchange rate fixed even as the dollar has fallen sharply against other major currencies. This has given Chinese exporters a growing competitive advantage over their rivals, especially producers in other developing countries.

What makes China’s currency policy especially problematic is the depressed state of the world economy. Cheap money and fiscal stimulus seem to have averted a second Great Depression. But policy makers haven’t been able to generate enough spending, public or private, to make progress against mass unemployment. And China’s weak-currency policy exacerbates the problem, in effect siphoning much-needed demand away from the rest of the world into the pockets of artificially competitive Chinese exporters.

// posted by montag @ 12:38 PM 0 Comments

Carrie Prejean, Porn Star? Vivid Has the Sex Tapes and Wants to Distribute Them.
If only the biggest mistake (or eight) of your life was worth "millions of dollars." Porn distributor Vivid Entertainment is making a play to distribute the former Miss California's sex tapes—which it allegedly has in its possession, already.

// posted by montag @ 12:29 PM 0 Comments

Since starting its slide in 2000, the world-wide production of gold has finally hit "terminal decline," according to reports citing Barrick Gold, the largest gold miner in the world.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph during a London gold conference, Barrick President Aaron Regent said that one could argue that Earth has reached "peak gold," as new supplies of the ore are increasingly difficult to find.

// posted by montag @ 12:11 PM 0 Comments

Even as drug makers promise to support Washington’s health care overhaul by shaving $8 billion a year off the nation’s drug costs after the legislation takes effect, the industry has been raising its prices at the fastest rate in years.

In the last year, the industry has raised the wholesale prices of brand-name prescription drugs by about 9 percent, according to industry analysts. That will add more than $10 billion to the nation’s drug bill, which is on track to exceed $300 billion this year. By at least one analysis, it is the highest annual rate of inflation for drug prices since 1992.

The drug trend is distinctly at odds with the direction of the Consumer Price Index, which has fallen by 1.3 percent in the last year.

Drug makers say they have valid business reasons for the price increases.

A Harvard health economist, Joseph P. Newhouse, said he found a similar pattern of unusual price increases after Congress added drug benefits to Medicare a few years ago, giving tens of millions of older Americans federally subsidized drug insurance. Just as the program was taking effect in 2006, the drug industry raised prices by the widest margin in a half-dozen years.

// posted by montag @ 11:05 PM 0 Comments

Gamboa, who entered the U.S. in 1992 and overstayed a visitor's visa, says he may decide early next year to give up and return home.

Under the supervision of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Gamboa began working as an informant with local law-enforcement agencies in the mid-1990s.

His work on major national and international drug investigations helped to win more than 90 federal convictions and led to seizure of money, weapons, vehicles and drugs, including more than 282 pounds of cocaine.

He parted ways with ICE near the end of a major drug investigation in May, when he said he was threatened with deportation after telling an agent he was broke and wanted to take a regular paying job on top of his informant work.

ICE soon arrested and detained Gamboa and moved ahead with plans to deport him. But under mounting pressure from other agencies, it released him after six weeks.

Now, Gamboa's status is not unlike that of millions of illegal immigrants nationwide — unable to find legitimate work or to travel — and with no obviously viable way to make it right. "I'm out and everybody's turned their backs," he said.

"It's really frustrating that after all these years they close the door and say, 'Forget about him.' "

// posted by montag @ 10:13 PM 0 Comments

The only way [Republicans] will read the Health Care Bill is to rest it on the back of the hooker they're boning down at C Street House!

// posted by montag @ 6:18 PM 0 Comments

In Bird's book and in a more recent one--Lessons in Disaster by Gordon Goldstein, who helped McGeorge Bundy to prepare a book reconsidering the war--another factor moves into the foreground. Bundy's death prevented completion of that book, but Goldstein makes use of Bundy's notes in his own book. Seeking to understand the origins of the war, Bundy was impressed with the salience of domestic politics. In 1949 the Communist Party had come to power in China, and ever since, Republicans and other right-wingers had been accusing Democrats of "losing" China. The belief that the United States could have prevented the communist victory was a fantasy; yet the charge became one of the principal themes of Senator Joe McCarthy's attacks on Democrats, which sent currents of fear far beyond the government and into society at large, intimidating and paralyzing a generation. The dread of being accused of lacking patriotic toughness--and above all of being accused of losing a military venture--cast a long shadow. Even Kennedy, who according to Goldstein showed remarkable independence in refusing the nearly unanimous advice from his advisers to send large numbers of combat troops to Vietnam, expressed his fear of being called a "communist appeaser." As he said to his aide Kenny O'Donnell in early 1963, "If I tried to pull out completely now from Vietnam, we would have another Joe McCarthy red scare on our hands, but I can do it after I'm re-elected." That re-election, of course, never came.

Johnson was more deeply frightened by the right. Urged by Senator Mike Mansfield to withdraw from Vietnam, he answered that he didn't want another "China in Vietnam." Bundy fueled Johnson's fears. In a 1964 memo he wrote that "the political damage to Truman and Acheson from the fall of China arose because most Americans came to believe that we could and should have done more than we did to prevent it. This is exactly what would happen now if we should seem to be the first to quit in Saigon." In another memo, Bundy outlined a moderated version of the domino theory and went on to argue that neutrality would be viewed by "all anti-communist Vietnamese" as a "betrayal," thus angering a domestic constituency powerful enough "to lose us an election."

In short, in strictly political terms, the Vietnam dilemma has been handed down to Obama virtually intact. Now as then, the issue politically is whether the United States is able to fail in a war without coming unhinged. Does the American body politic have a reverse gear? Does it know how to cut losses? Is it capable of learning from experience? Or must it plunge unchecked over every cliff it approaches? And at the heart of these questions is another: must liberals and moderates always bow down before the crazy right when it comes to war and peace? Must presidents behave like Johnson, of whom his attorney general, Nicholas Katzenbach, later said, "It would not have made any difference what anybody advised him--he would have done what he did [in Vietnam].... It was fear of the right wing." What is the source of this raw power, this right-wing veto over presidents, Congresses and public opinion? The person who can answer these questions will have discovered one of the keys to a half-century of American history--and the forces that, even now, bear down on Obama as he considers what to do in Afghanistan.

// posted by montag @ 5:37 PM 0 Comments

In the official record of the historic House debate on overhauling health care, the speeches of many lawmakers echo with similarities. Often, that was no accident.

Statements by more than a dozen lawmakers were ghostwritten, in whole or in part, by Washington lobbyists working for Genentech, one of the world’s largest biotechnology companies.

E-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that the lobbyists drafted one statement for Democrats and another for Republicans.

The lobbyists, employed by Genentech and by two Washington law firms, were remarkably successful in getting the statements printed in the Congressional Record under the names of different members of Congress.

Genentech, a subsidiary of the Swiss drug giant Roche, estimates that 42 House members picked up some of its talking points — 22 Republicans and 20 Democrats, an unusual bipartisan coup for lobbyists.

// posted by montag @ 4:43 PM 0 Comments

I’d be a little more forgiving of the nonsense if all the people screaming about the deficit were sincere. And some are. But many, if not most, are perfectly happy to incur huge unfunded liabilities for the wars they want to fight, and/or to eliminate inheritance taxes for the heirs of multimillionaires. It’s only deficits incurred to help working Americans that get them all moralistic.

// posted by montag @ 1:51 PM 0 Comments