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Thursday, September 30, 2010
Fox News vs. Glenn Beck @foxnews @glennbeck
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
University of Chicago Law Prof's Blog About Struggling on $400Gs Draws Fire
By Ed Barnes - FOX News
A prominent college law professor's posting of his family's finances on the Web to make the case that they're struggling to make ends meet -- despite their estimated $400,000-plus income -- has lit the fuse of an online debate that he claims has made him the target of an "online lynch mob."
Todd Henderson, a corporate law professor at the University of Chicago -- and a neighbor of President Obama -- says that since he posted his finances online he's been barraged with comments such as "die yuppie scum," forcing him to shut down his blog out of fear for his family.
"The consequences are devastating for me personally," Henderson wrote, "but my family has to come first, and my blogging has caused them incalculable damage." Contacted by FoxNews.com, he said he no longer wants to comment on his post.
Henderson usually kept his blog posts to matters of corporate law and the markets. But last week he made it personal. He posted a portrait of his family finances to make his case that those who make more than $250,000 a year are struggling, like everyone else, to make ends meet -- and people in that income bracket will see their taxes go up if Obama succeeds in his plan to extend the Bush tax cuts only for low- and middle-income Americans.
"A quick look at our family budget, which I will gladly share with the White House, will show him that, like many Americans, we are just getting by despite seeming to be rich. We aren't," Henderson wrote.
He said he and his wife, a doctor, paid $100,000 in federal and state taxes last year and $15,000 in property taxes. He wrote that they have a mortgage on a house they own a short distance from President Obama's home, and they are paying off $250,000 in student loans. With an annual income of more than $250,000, he wrote, he and his wife are far from super-rich.
But almost as soon as he hit the send button, a firestorm erupted.. Henderson says he was inundated with e-mails that divided along the lines of "die yuppie scum" and "thank you for saying what we couldn't say." He says the vehement tone of the responses -- he called it "an electronic lynch mob" -- and fears for his family forced him to delete the post and quit blogging altogether.A business web site estimated his income at more than $400,000.
But though his blog was short-lived, it opened up a fiery online debate over the continuation of the Bush tax cuts and Obama's plan to raise taxes on the "super-rich," said Robert Bluey of the Heritage Foundation. Among the questions being asked: Just what is rich? Do the rich feel rich? Does America have a class system?
"Often these debates are conducted by the same faces. [Henderson] brought a new perspective to it," Bluey said.
"Any time you want to take away a sizable chunk of people's money, it has a big impact. You just have to look at Bell, Calif., to see how sensitive people are to wages," he said, referring to the outrage there when it was revealed that public officials in the city had voted to give themselves salaries that reached as high as $800,000.
Bluey said Henderson's post showed not only that there are different perspectives on wealth, "but that the additional taxes will impact everyone."
But others disagree -- and none more bitingly than Prof. Bradford DeLong of the University of California at Berkeley, who dismissed Henderson's posting as whining.
"By any standard they are rich," DeLong said. "But they don't feel rich."
He said the things Henderson takes for granted — retirement savings, private schools, new cars — are out of reach for most Americans, and he dismissed his complaint as a simple "cash flow problem."
But Michelle Newton-Francis, a sociology professor at American University, said Henderson's blog had an impact because it showed "the country is redefining what it means to be rich and powerful."
"We used to have a class hierarchy and most people wanted to be middle class," she said. "Being labeled rich or poor carried a stigma. Now it appears we are either rich or poor. His blog opened up a debate about where he stands."
And, by implication, where everyone stands. "But the bottom line," she said, "is that no one wants to pay more taxes."
Conservatives respond to alleged O'Keefe seduction "prank"
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The Lies of James O'Keefe
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Sunday, September 26, 2010
Hume falsely claims that the stimulus failed #p2
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Friday, September 24, 2010
.@gop The Scam On America - the Pledge to America - directed by a lobbyist #p2
The Scam On America
With great fanfare, House Republicans unveiled their "Pledge to America" yesterday, a document comprised primarily of attacks on legislation passed under President Obama. "The 45-page booklet explaining the Pledge contains archaic fonts reminiscent of the founding texts," writes the Washington Post's Dana Milbank. "Yet for all the grandiosity, the document they released is small in its ambition." Further investigation of the final release -- once the attacks on an "arrogant and out-of-touch government of self-appointed elites" and the full-color photographs of the House Republican elite are overlooked -- reveals that the "2010 Republican Agenda" is little more than a re-affirmation of the "Party of No." Yesterday's Progress Report noted that the entire economic platform of the pledge is a return to Bush's tax cuts and spending levels, the failed policies that brought us the worst recession since the Great Depression. The promised combination of regressive tax cuts, deficit reduction, and new spending in the Pledge is "fuzzy Washington math," charges Newsweek's Ben Adler. Energy policy is dispatched in one sentence. The Republican plan on health care is to replace the Affordable Care Act with provisions from the Affordable Care Act. "The Pledge to America should have been called the Scam on America because it does nothing to help Americans," writes the Examiner's Maryann Tobin, "unless of course they are CEOs of big oil companies, drug companies, or Wall Street bankers." Conservatives found the document risible as well. "It is a series of compromises and milquetoast rhetorical flourishes in search of unanimity among House Republicans because the House GOP does not have the fortitude to lead boldly in opposition to Barack Obama," charged right-wing blogger and CNN contributor Erick Erickson. "We're not going to be any different than what we've been," House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) said at the Pledge's revealing. "It's not even a sequel!" the Daily Show's Jon Stewart responded. "It's like a shot-by-shot remake."
GOP PLEDGE TO LOBBYISTS: As the Huffington Post's Sam Stein revealed yesterday, the GOP's new "Pledge to America" was directed by a staffer named Brian Wild who, until early this year, was a lobbyist at a prominent D.C. firm that lobbied on behalf of corporate giants like Exxon. Moreover, the insurance industry is the leading contributor to Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), the Republican who led the effort. "Instead of a pledge to the American people, Congressional Republicans made a pledge to the big special interests to restore the same economic ideas that benefited them at the expense of middle-class families," White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer argues. Consistent with its desire to placate lobbyists, the pledge omits any mention of a key Republican mantra: a ban on earmarks. When it comes to energy policy, the GOP leaders ignore public opinion and science, instead promoting the same old ideas flogged by Big Oil lobbyists and other energy interests: more oil drilling ("increase access to domestic energy sources") while disregarding pollution ("oppose attempts to impose a national 'cap and trade' energy tax"). The GOP pledge would also halt clean energy investments made under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and block new safety, health and environmental rules. "Rather than listening to the American people, the pledge listens to polluter lobbyists," describes Center for American Progress Action Fund senior fellow Daniel J. Weiss.
RETURN TO RADICALISM: After Obama took office, a number of GOP officials and candidates embraced "tentherism," the radical belief that everything from Medicare to Social Security to unemployment insurance to belonging to the United Nations violates the Constitution's Tenth Amendment. Until the "Pledge to America," however, it's been an open question whether the GOP as a whole would embrace this absurd viewpoint, or whether they would leave tenther rhetoric to fringe figures such as Michele Bachmann, Joe Miller or Sharron Angle. The first passage is a pledge to read the Constitution as a tenther document, putting essential programs like Social Security or Medicare on the chopping block. "The constitutional lunatics are now in charge of the GOP's asylum," writes CAP policy analyst Ian Millhiser. Ignoring immigration reform, the Pledge proposes an enforcement-only approach to immigration and appears to endorse and promote Arizona-like immigration policies. Given that 54 percent of all Americans regard the immigration issue as "very important" and that a majority of voters -- across party lines -- support immigration reform, "it's surprising the GOP didn't provide more details," the Wonk Room's Andrea Nill responds.
IGNORING AMERICA: Stripped of pablum, giveaways to lobbyists, and Bush-era ideas, little is left in the "Pledge to America." In fact, the "Republican Agenda" ignores some of the most essential challenges facing the United States. Global warming is nowhere to be found, even though this is the hottest year in recorded history. Even more remarkably, there is no plan for Iraq or Afghanistan. There is no mention of how Republicans plan to deal with either war and no acknowledgment that this year was the deadliest year in Afghanistan. Of the eight points in the plan devoted to national security, over half are devoted to keeping people out of America, indicating that the Republican House leadership simply doesn't know how it wants to engage the world. The agenda is supposedly the culmination of a project GOP lawmakers launched -- America Speaking Out -- which was designed to give the public a virtual platform to submit ideas and then vote on them. It may not be surprising that the Republicans ignored the highly popular ideas to decriminalize marijuana use, a ballot issue in five states this November. But they also deliberately ignored the most popular "job creation" idea, to "stop the outsourcing of jobs" by eliminating tax breaks for outsourcing companies.
The U.S. delegation walked out of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's U.N. speech yesterday after he said "most people believe the U.S. government was behind the Sept. 11 terror attacks" in order to "reverse the declining American economy" and "assure Israel's survival." The U.S. delegation said his "vile conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic slurs" are as "abhorrent and delusional as they are predictable."
Dick Armey's FreedomWorks -- the right-wing group that has coordinated the tea party movement -- yesterday endorsed GOP U.S. Senate candidate in Alaska Joe Miller. And in another boost, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) "lashed out" at Sen. Lisa Murkowski's (R-AK) write-in bid against Miller and Democrat Scott McAdams, asking his supporters to donate money to Miller's campaign.
Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) announced yesterday that she will be blocking the nomination of Jack Lew to direct the Office of Management and Budget until the Obama administration lifts its moratorium on offshore drilling. "I find it stunning that the administration was aware that their actions might eliminate nearly 23,000 jobs in an already faltering economy, and proceeded anyway," she said.
Yesterday, California's Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman said she would vote against Proposition 23, a ballot measure that would roll back California's landmark greenhouse-gas emissions law, AB 32. But Whitman also "reiterated her call for a one-year moratorium" of AB 32, attacking it as a "job-killer" and implying green jobs come at the expense of "the other 97% of jobs."
A new report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says that the U.S. "is the fattest nation among 33 countries with advanced economies." Two-thirds of all Americans are overweight or obese while 72 million adults are obese — roughly 30 pounds overweight. "Obesity is a growing threat to public health in all the advanced countries throughout the world," an OECD spokesman said.
And finally: Rapper Kanye West has "finally broken his silence" over President Obama calling him a "jack--s" last year. "[I]f he said that to relate to the room or lighten the room up and the whole mood, then I'd be more than happy to be the butt of all of his jokes if it in the some way helps his overall mission," he said in a magazine interview.
ThinkProgress is hiring! Details here.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
absolute douchebag: @Limbaugh: "If you voted for Obama, you deserve to be unemployed" and "in misery" #p2
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.@gop Pledging Allegiance To Failed Policies from thinkprogress.org #p2
Pledging Allegiance To Failed Policies
Today, House Republicans are unveiling the "Pledge to America" -- a pre-election document styled after 1994's Contract with America -- at a hardware store in Sterling, VA. The plan sorts policy items into "five broad categories" -- jobs, government reform, federal spending, national security, and health care -- and is part of "an effort to respond to the allegation that the GOP is the 'party of no.'" "It's important to show what Republicans are for," said one House Republican involved in the drafting. The document only includes two items regarding social issues -- defending "traditional marriage" and preventing taxpayer funding of abortion in line with the current Hyde amendment -- and Republican aides have "cautioned against comparing the new proposal with the party's original Contract With America." In fact, only incumbent lawmakers were involved in its drafting, and they won't even be signing it. "The new agenda is not a political platform, aides said, but rather an outline of the party's targets in the final weeks of the legislative session," the New York Times reported. If that's the case, then, the document makes it abundantly clear that House Republicans are ready to double down on the failed policies of the Bush administration, on everything from taxes and federal spending to national security, and want to undo some of the strong progressive policies enacted by the current Congress.
REVIVING BUSH'S DEFICITS AND TAX CUTS: First and foremost, the Pledge calls for retaining the entirety of the Bush tax cuts -- rejecting President Obama's plan to save $830 billion by letting the tax cuts for the richest two percent of Americans expire on schedule -- and cutting overall government spending back to the 2008 level next year, thus literally embracing Bush's tax and spending policies. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has pointed out, cutting the budget back to 2008 levels across-the-board means 21 percent reductions in discretionary programs, including more than $8 billion in cuts to K-12 education. But the cuts don't come close to eliminating the deficit, particularly considering the GOP plans to pass $4 trillion more in tax cuts, plus an additional small business tax cut. Of course, endorsing an across-the-board cut, instead of laying out specific areas of the budget that can be pared back alongside responsible revenue increases, epitomizes the Republican approach to budgeting. In fact, when directly asked, many House Republicans, including House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (VA), can't name a single program they'd like to cut. And already, some Republicans are saying that the Pledge isn't even radical enough when it comes to cutting spending. "It's not taking us where we ultimately have to go as a country, dealing with entitlements and permanent tax changes," said Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) who has reportedly "advocated for a plan that dealt specifically with Social Security." Notably, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) -- the Republican budget chief who has released a full plan for privatizing Social Security and Medicare -- was not scheduled to appear at the Pledge unveiling, confirming that many in the Republican leadership are hesitant to publicly tie themselves to his proposals.
REPEALING HEALTH CARE REFORM: The Republican pledge also dedicates an entire section to repealing the Affordable Care Act and replacing it with some of the same solutions that the GOP promoted during the health care reform debate, such as medical malpractice reform (which won't do much to bring down health care costs) and allowing insurance to be sold across state lines (which would lead to a regulatory race to the bottom). However, repealing the ACA will add $143 billion to the deficit over ten years, according to the Congressional Budget Office, as the cost containment measures and revenue increases in the bill also disappear. Interestingly, the Pledge also says that Republican health care reform will prevent health insurance companies from discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions, but without including an individual mandate that everyone purchase health insurance. Of course, as Newsweek's Ben Adler explains, "Such a prohibition is economically infeasible without the individual mandate that health-care reform included," as people wouldn't buy health insurance until after they get sick. Forcing insurance companies to cover those with pre-existing conditions also puts House Republicans at odds with conservatives like former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AR), who has likened the prohibition to automobile insurers being forced to insure already wrecked cars.
BRING ON THE SHUTDOWN: One of the most notorious episodes of the Congress that was sworn in after the original Contract with America was the government shutdown of 1995. For three weeks, then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) shuttered the government after Congress was unable to approve a budget. And House Republicans are already saying that they're game for a repeat performance. "If government shuts down, we want you with us," said Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA). "It's going to take some pain for us to do the things that we need to do to right the ship." Rep. Steve King (R-IA) has demanded a "blood oath" from House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) to include a repeal of health care reform in every appropriations bill next year, even if a government shutdown results. "We must not blink," he said. "If the House says no, it's no." Boehner, for his part, has disavowed the notion, saying, "Our goal is not to shut down the government." "It's absurd," added Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH). "That's not our goal at all." But Gingrich himself seems to think that another government shutdown would be productive, even though it means, among other things, that Social Security payments and veterans' benefits are not disbursed. "When we win control of the House and Senate this fall, Stage One of the end of Obamaism will be a new Republican Congress in January that simply refuses to fund any of the radical efforts," Gingrich said. Such talk has earned the GOP a scolding from President Clinton. "You see what happened last time: It didn't work out very well for them," Clinton said.
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) introduced a political gimmick yesterday called the "Reins Act," which stands for Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny. His bill is designed to restrict the ability of federal agencies to issue new regulations.
Right-wing blogger and CNN contributor Erick Erickson panned the GOP's new "Pledge to America," calling it "dreck." He describes the 21-page document as "a serious of compromises and milquetoast rhetorical flourishes" that is "full of mom tested, kid approved pablum."
The "Pledge to America" was written with oversight from Brian Wild, a House staffer who "served as a lobbyist for some of the nation's most powerful oil, pharmaceutical, and insurance companies." Wild, who is on House Minority Leader John Boehner's (R-OH) payroll, lobbied for AIG, Exxon Mobil, Pfizer Inc., and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce until April of this year.
Senate Democrats are considering abandoning plans "for a preelection showdown with Republicans over expiring tax breaks for the wealthy, saying a lack of consensus within the party and a desire to focus on job creation may delay a vote until after the November elections." Some Democrats say they want the caucus to focus on companies that ship jobs overseas.
In addressing the United Nations General Assembly today, President Obama "will ask for international and regional help in securing peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians." While insisting that "efforts to chip away at Israel's legitimacy will only be met by unshakeable opposition" from the U.S., Obama says "the true security for the Jewish state requires an independent Palestine."
Senior Obama administration officials said yesterday that al-Qaeda and its allies are more likely to launch small-scale attacks in the U.S. because it is more difficult to thwart such plans in advance. At the same time, terrorism experts "have puzzled over" al-Qaeda's apparent unwillingness to conduct small-scale attacks in the U.S. since 9/11.
Florida's Third District Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that the state's "law that prohibits adoption by gay men and lesbians is unconstitutional." The state has 30 days to appeal the decision.
The Log Cabin Republicans honored Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) at a "a dinner banquet at the National Republican Club on Capitol Hill" last night, despite his vote this week against repealing the military's discriminatory Don't Ask Don't Tell policy. The group also honored five House Republicans.
And finally: Comedy Central comedian Stephen Colbert will be testifying before Congress tomorrow. Colbert will be appearing alongside UFW president "Arturo S. Rodriguez before the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law." The Daily Caller reports that he will, indeed, be appearing "in character."
Fox & Friends' "Pledge to America" reporting: A great pledge or the greatest pledge?
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