Tag: TMC Politics

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

During Monday’s Inauguration coverage, MSNBC commentator and host Chris Matthews remarked about the slipping popularity of the Republican Party and how in order to win they will have to rig the elections in order to win in the future.

“If states like Pennsylvania ever get controlled by Republican legislators, that is frightening,” [..]

“There’s so much willingness to rig the elections by the Republicans,” Matthews continued. “They know they’re heading into demographic trouble. They know they’re going to be a minority in this country. It’s almost like Lebanon – we’ve got to fake the census now, y’know?”

He concluded: “And what I see them doing is saying, ‘Okay, we know we’re never going to be popular again, so we’re going to have to rig it.”

Apparently, Mr. Matthews was unaware of what the Republicans in the Virginia legislature were up to.

Virginia Senate Sneaks Through Gerrymandering Bill While Country Watches Inauguration

by Annie-Rose Strasser, Think Progress

While the eyes of the nation were turned toward President Barack Obama’s second inauguration on Monday, the Virginia State Senate managed to hurriedly pass a bill that would redistrict the state’s senate seats.

The vote, 20-19, would have been a tie had Democratic Senator Henry Marsh been present. Marsh, a civil rights leader, was in Washington, D.C., attending the inauguration.

Had Marsh been present, however, the state’s Lieutenant Governor, Bill Bolling, would likely have broken the tie. The bill was reportedly pushed through in a matter of hours. [..]

The gerrymandering bill now goes to the heavily Republican House of Delegates for a vote, where it will likely face little opposition.

Victim Of VA State Sen. GOP ‘Dirty Trick’ Calls Move ‘Shameful’

by Evan McMorris-Santoro, Talking Points Memo

“I wanted to attend the historic second inauguration of President Obama in person,” Marsh said in a statement. “For Senate Republicans to use my absence to push through a partisan redistricting plan that hurts voters across the state is shameful.” [..]

Marsh said he was “outraged” and “saddened” by the state Senate GOP move. He said the bill was “unconstitutional,” a line being used by many Democrats in Virginia these days that could signal future legal action.

Gov. McDonnell Condemns Virginia Senate GOP Move As Bad Way To Do Business

by Evan McMorris-Santoro, Talking Points Memo

After first distancing himself from the new legislative lines the Virginia Senate GOP forced through Monday, Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) condemned his party’s political gamesmanship Tuesday.

“I certainly don’t think that’s a good way to do business,” McDonnell told reporters in Richmond, according to the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star. [..]

McDonnell has so far not said if he would veto the redistricting plan, which still must pass the state House. It is not clear if McDonnell has taken or will take other steps to undo the Senate GOP’s surprise move.

I wouldn’t put any money on Gov. McDonnell vetoing that bill, as Laura Conaway at The Maddow Blog  notes, the governor would like everyone to just stop talking about the  sneak redistricting now

When I asked McDonnell’s office just now whether he would sign or veto the bill, which still needs approval from the House, they sent over a recording (mp3) of the governor fielding that question today with local reporters. The verbate:

   REPORTER: Is it time yet to tell these guys, “If it comes to me, I’m going to veto it”?

   MCDONNELL: Well, listen, my focus this year is on education, transportation, and budget and government reform. That’s what I had asked this session to be about. Obviously, the tactics that were used yesterday was a surprise, and I don’t think that’s the way that business should be done. But I haven’t looked at the bill. I’m not happy about the things that have happened. Look, some people said they were against my transportation bill long before yesterday, so this has got a long way to go. I don’t know whether I’m going to get a bill or not. But I’m going to wait and see at this point what happens. I have not looked at the bill. At this point, though, I want people to focus on the things that are important. What I said the session should be about is education, transportation — not redistricting and other things. That’s my focus.

The short answer, so far, is no answer yet. McDonnell could try to keep the House from passing the bill and sending it to him. A year ago, he found himself in much the same position, trying to get the legislature off the ledge — and off the front pages — with that forced ultrasound bill. He ended up signing that one.

The bill would create a Republican super majority in both houses, so that even if a Democrat is elected governor, s/he’ll be unable to pass an agenda. Gov. McDonnell will sign this it.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Back in July, 2012 while returning from  Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Midsummer Night’s Swing, Caroline Stern, 55, and her boyfriend George Hess, 54, were arrested, handcuffed and held by the New york City Police for dancing  the “Charleston” on the subway platform.

“We were doing the Charleston,” Stern said. That’s when two police officers approached and pulled a “Footloose.”

“They said, ‘What are you doing?’ and we said, ‘We’re dancing,’ ” she recalled. “And they said, ‘You can’t do that on the platform.’ ”

The cops asked for ID, but when Stern could only produce a credit card, the officers ordered the couple to go with them – even though the credit card had the dentist’s picture and signature.

When Hess began trying to film the encounter, things got ugly, Stern said.

“We brought out the camera, and that’s when they called backup,” she said. “That’s when eight ninja cops came from out of nowhere.”

Hess was allegedly tackled to the platform floor, and cuffs were slapped on both of them. The initial charge, according to Stern, was disorderly conduct for “impeding the flow of traffic.”

They sued. They won. While NYC Councilman Peter Valone complains that “At $75,000 a dance, the city’s going to go bankrupt sooner than we thought,” he said. “Here, it looks like it was the taxpayers who got served.”

But whose fault is that, Mr. Valone? It’s not illegal to dance in the subway. Maybe the problem is an out of control police department:

For fiscal year 2011, New York City gave out $185.6 million to settle suits against the NYPD. That number rounds out to about $70 per resident, according to the New York Post. Though the New York City Law Department insists there is no blanket policy on settlements, City Councilman Peter Vallone Jr., who also heads the City Council’s Public Safety Committee, said such settlements have only increased since he took office in 2002. [..]

New York Civil Liberties Union head Donna Lieberman insists the city should start learning from suits, rather than just paying to get rid of them.

The city is still facing million in lawsuits by groups and individuals, including two city council members, resulting from brutal, unlawful tactics and false arrests from the Occupy Wall Street protests.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly are to blame for this. Perhaps Mr. Vallone needs to stop blaming the lawyers for settling these suits, which would cost even more to litigate, and look at the real cause, an out of control mayor and police department.

Up host Chris Hayes has what we know now since the week began. Joining him to discuss what they know are Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD)(@repdonnaedwards); Bill Fletcher (@BillFletcherJr), racial justice, labor and international activist; Ben Jealous (@BenJealous), president and CEO of the NAACP; and economist Dr. Julianne Malveaux (@drjlastword), president emeritus of Bennett College for Women.

Aaron Swartz Prosecutor Defends Charges, Days After Activist’s Suicide

by Ryan J. Reilly, Huffington Post

WASHINGTON — U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz on Wednesday defended her office’s prosecution of Aaron Swartz as “appropriate,” days after the 26-year-old Internet activist took his own life.

Ortiz, the top federal prosecutor in Massachusetts, broke her silence for the first time since Swartz killed himself on Friday. His family and supporters have blamed the government for playing a role in his death, while members of Congress have questioned the Justice Department’s aggressive prosecution of Swartz on computer fraud charges.

But Ortiz maintained it was appropriate for prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts to bring the case. She said her office was prepared to offer a deal that would have put Swartz behind bars in a low-security prison for six months. Ortiz said prosecutors never said they intended to seek the maximum punishment.

Introducing ‘Aaron’s Law’

by Diane Sweet, Crooks and Liars

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) introduced “Aaron’s Law” on Tuesday night, announcing it via the user-generated site Reddit. The piece of legislation would modify the the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to exclude terms of service violations. “There’s no way to reverse the tragedy of Aaron’s death, but we can work to prevent a repeat of the abuses of power he experienced,” Lofgren wrote. “The government was able to bring such disproportionate charges against Aaron because of the broad scope of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and the wire fraud statute.” Read the full bill here (pdf).

Residential Segregation Contributes to Health Disparities for People of Color

by Kenneth J. Cooper, America’s Wire

Segregated black neighborhoods tend to be poor-poorer, in fact, than impoverished white neighborhoods. Recent research, however, has begun to show that race, not class, adversely affects the health of African-Americans in racially isolated communities.

Hope Landrine, a researcher for the American Cancer Society, reviewed the latest studies on residential segregation and black health, and compiled the findings last year in the journal “Ethnicity & Health.” Among them:

 

• Two to three times as many fast food outlets are located in segregated black neighborhoods than in white neighborhoods of comparable socioeconomic status, contributing to higher black consumption of fatty, salty meals and in turn widening racial disparities in obesity and diabetes.
• Black neighborhoods contain two to three times fewer supermarkets than comparable white neighborhoods, creating the kind of “food deserts” that make it difficult for residents who depend on public transportation to purchase the fresh fruits and vegetables that make for a healthy diet.
• Fewer African-Americans have ready access to places to work off excess weight that can gradually cause death. A study limited to New York, Maryland and North Carolina found that black neighborhoods were three times more likely to lack recreational facilities where residents could exercise and relieve stress.
• Because of “the deliberate placement of polluting factories and toxic waste dumps in minority neighborhoods,” exposure to air pollutants and toxins is five to 20 times higher than in white neighborhoods with the same income levels.
• Regardless of their socioeconomic status, African-Americans who live in segregated communities receive unequal medical care because hospitals serving them have less technology, such as imaging equipment, and fewer specialists, like those in heart surgery and cancer. The predominantly white doctors in those communities are also less likely to have certification from the American Board of Medical Specialties, an accepted standard of professional competence.

Foreclosure Review In New Settlement Leaves Homeowners In Banks’ Hands

by Ben Hallman and Eleazar David Melendez, Huffington Post

For more than a year, housing advocates and their allies worried that a review of foreclosed loans managed by banking regulators was vulnerable to mortgage industry interference.

On Monday, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve Board — the two regulatory bodies that had taken the lead in making the nation’s largest banks accountable for rampant foreclosure fraud — announced that homeowners no longer need worry about the independence of the reviews. The regulators, essentially admitting that the reviews were too difficult to conduct, and that assigning appropriate compensation to those most harmed by the banks was no longer a priority, said the mortgage companies themselves will determine how to distribute $3.3 billion to more than 4 million homeowners forced into foreclosure in 2009 or 2010.

Housing advocates, while acknowledging that the foreclosure reviews were flawed, said they don’t understand how turning the process over to mortgage companies improves a system already insufficiently independent.

Foreclosure Review Insiders Portray Massive Failure, Doomed From The Start

by Ben Hallman and Eleazar David Melendez, Huffington Post

Last January, dozens of independent contractors showed up for their first day of work at a large, single-story Bank of America building in Tampa to right the wrongs of a foreclosure crisis that many had witnessed firsthand. Or so they thought.

They were lawyers, paralegals and other mortgage industry veterans. Along with thousands of other contractors working at banks and auditing firms like Deloitte and PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the Tampa crew was to comb through the mortgages of people whose homes were in foreclosure at the height of that crisis, in 2009 and 2010. They were looking for lost paperwork, overcharges, botched loan modifications — evidence of the kinds of errors and misconduct widely alleged by foreclosed borrowers.

It was called the Independent Foreclosure Review, and it was one of the most ambitious and costly auditing projects in U.S. history.

It was also, some of the contractors soon came to believe, a fiasco in the making. At Bank of America, contract employees were to answer more than 2,000 questions written by Promontory Financial, the consulting firm the bank hired to audit its mortgage loan files. Those questions, the contractors said, were confusing and open to interpretation. Training was spotty and mistakes were frequent, they said. Sometimes, when they noted bank-caused mistakes, they were told by Bank of America managers not to believe their own eyes.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

On Jan 12, 2010, a devastating 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck the island nation of Haiti. The quake alone killed an over 300,000 people and left 1.5 million homeless. Ten months later a cholera epidemic broke out that has taken nearly 8,000 more lives. More than $9 billion has been donated from the public and private sectors to help rebuild. Yet three years later, there are still nearly 300,000 Haitians living in tents, the cholera epidemic is barely under control and the infrastructure is still a shambles.

‘Lack of national plan’ heightens struggle to rebuild unstable Haiti

by Mike Tran, The Guardian

Political instability, natural disasters and a cholera epidemic, plus a confused aid effort, mean there is still work for Haiti to do

For Father Kawas, who co-ordinated emergency response efforts in 2010 (video), several reasons lie behind the continued existence of tent cities where people swelter during the day and are soaked by evening rains.

But the main one is the government’s inability to acquire land from powerful families around the capital. “I think it’s difficult to rehouse these people because most of the land surrounding Port-au-Prince belongs to very powerful families and those families don’t want to give the land to the state to rehouse people. It’s a very big problem because those families are very powerful and they have many political resources so they can influence the decisions of the state.” [..]

Poverty was cited by Father Kawas as another reason why so many people remain homeless. “They don’t have enough money to rent a house, or to rebuild a house,” he says. “It is difficult for them because most of them don’t work, they have no jobs. NGOs cannot do everything. They cannot rehouse all the people in Haiti.” [..]

Haiti’s state institutions were fragile even before the earthquake and were weakened by the disaster. The Haitian government has received little in reconstruction funds as foreign governments have had little faith in its ability to handle the relief effort. That the government has yet to draw up a national reconstruction plan speaks volumes.

“The big problem for NGOs and for many actors in Haiti is the lack of a national plan for construction,” says Father Kawas. “The government speaks about that but right now, we don’t see this plan and we know that this plan is very important for the country, for the development of the country. For example, the NGOs are working separately, in isolation, and there is no co-ordination, there is no plan [from] the government, so for me it’s a real problem for the development of the country. And the international organisations do the same.”

Father Kawas acknowledges the difficulties in trying to strengthen his government, but urged aid agencies to provide training for public employees, as well as to help parliament and political parties.

“In Haiti, the public administration does not function, it’s a real problem. The government cannot put in practice its policies if the public administration does not function so it’s a real necessity for foreign governments to help the Haitian government find solutions.”

Haiti’s earthquake generated a $9bn response – where did the money go?

by Vijaya Ramachandran, The Guardian

Uncertainty about the scale and outcome of spending following Haiti tragedy highlights need for greater transparency

Saturday (Jan 12, 2010) marked the third anniversary of the tragic earthquake in Haiti that claimed between 230,000 and 300,000 lives. The grim landmark has prompted much discussion about the struggles surrounding reconstruction and also some hope about what may come next.

Most observers agree that the international response to the quake was overwhelming. Haiti received an unprecedented amount of support: more than $9bn (£5.6bn) in public and private donations. Official bilateral and multilateral donors pledged $13bn and, according to the UN Office of the Special Envoy for Haiti, almost 50% of these pledges ($6bn) have been disbursed. Private donations are estimated at $3bn.

Where has all the money gone? Three years after the quake, we do not really know how the money was spent, how many Haitians were reached, or whether the desired outcomes were achieved. In a policy paper published in May, and in a more recent blogpost, we unpacked the numbers, many of which came from the UN Office of the Special Envoy.

Three years after the devastating earthquake in Haiti, we’re joined by Jonathan Katz, author of “The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster.” The earthquake on January 12, 2010, ultimately resulted in the deaths of roughly 300,000 people and left more than 1.5 million homeless in what was already the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. A cholera epidemic, widely blamed on international U.N. troops, killed almost 8,000 people, making more than half a million sick. Today, despite pledges of billions of dollars in international aid, rebuilding has barely begun, and almost 400,000 people are still living in crowded camps. After four years of reporting in Haiti, Katz joins us to discuss where the reconstruction effort went wrong

There is hope for Haiti, despite what the critics say

There is still a long way to go.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

If you can’t win the White House unless you have 270 electoral votes, then you need to fix it so you do, legally, by gerrymander and voter supression. That is the GOP strategy to win the White House in 2016. Since gerymandering was the way that they succeeded in holding their majority in the House, they may well succeed.

The GOP’s Electoral College Scheme

by Reid Wilson, National Journal

Republicans alarmed at the apparent challenges they face in winning the White House are preparing an all-out assault on the Electoral College system in critical states, an initiative that would significantly ease the party’s path to the Oval Office.

Senior Republicans say they will try to leverage their party’s majorities in Democratic-leaning states in an effort to end the winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes. Instead, bills that will be introduced in several Democratic states would award electoral votes on a proportional basis.

Already, two states — Maine and Nebraska — award an electoral vote to the winner of each congressional district. The candidate who wins the most votes statewide takes the final two at-large electoral votes. Only once, when President Obama won a congressional district based in Omaha in 2008, has either of those states actually split their vote.

But if more reliably blue states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin were to award their electoral votes proportionally, Republicans would be able to eat into what has become a deep Democratic advantage.

All three states have given the Democratic nominee their electoral votes in each of the last six presidential elections. Now, senior Republicans in Washington are overseeing legislation in all three states to end the winner-take-all system.

Rachel Maddow reports on a new initiative by state level Republicans to rig the Electoral College in the states they control to better advantage Republican presidential candidates and subvert popular political will.

RNC’s Priebus Endorses Plan To Rig Electoral College

by Henry Decker, The National Memo

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.

That appears to be Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus’ philosophy when it comes to rigging elections in the GOP’s favor. In 2012, the strategy was suppressing votes through voter ID laws, ending same-day voter registration, and clamping down on early voting, among other restrictive legislation. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, 25 laws and two executive actions were passed in 19 states over the past two years with the aim of making it harder to vote.

In 2013, the plan appears to be changing the way that votes are counted. Priebus has stepped forward as the latest Republican to support a proposal that would split Wisconsin’s electoral votes by congressional district.

Pennsylvania House Republicans Introduce Bill To Rig The 2016 Presidential Election

On Monday, seven Pennsylvania Republican state representatives introduced a bill to make this vote-rigging scheme a reality in their state. Under their bill, the winner of Pennsylvania as a whole will receive only 2 of the state’s 20 electoral votes, while “[e]ach of the remaining presidential electors shall be elected in the presidential elector’s congressional district.”

Pennsylvania is a blue state that voted for the Democratic presidential candidate in every single presidential race for the last two decades, so implementing the GOP election-rigging plan in Pennsylvania would make it much harder for a Democrat to be elected to the White House. Moreover, because of gerrymandering, it is overwhelmingly likely that the Republican candidate will win a majority of Pennsylvania’s electoral votes even if the Democrat wins the state by a very comfortable margin. Despite the fact that President Obama won Pennsylvania by more than 5 points last November, Democrats carried only 5 of the state’s 18 congressional seats. Accordingly, Obama would have likely won only 7 of the state’s 20 electoral votes if the GOP vote rigging plan had been in effect last year.

I don’t think this is what the founders planned when they created the Electoral College. I know some will argue that the Electoral College insures that even small states with small populations have a say in the selection of the president but this ploy by the GOP would end that voice, too. Has the electoral College outlived its purpose? It amy well be time to consider a direct election of the President based on the popular vote.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

The United States may be withdrawing troops from Afghanistan but what is being ignored by the US traditional MSM is increases US military presence in Africa. The latest action involved the use of drone strikes  assistance to the French against Islamist groups in Northern Mali. While the focus in the news are these armed militant groups, they fail to mention that the area is rich oil and uranium. The Guardian has a a guide to the conflict.

U.S. weighs military support for France’s campaign against Mali militants

by  Anne Gearan, Karen DeYoung and Craig Whitlock, The Washington Post

The Obama administration is considering significant military backing for France’s drive against al-Qaeda-linked militants in Mali, but its support for a major ally could test U.S. legal boundaries and stretch counterterrorism resources in a murky new conflict.

The United States is already providing surveillance and other intelligence help to France and may soon offer military support such as transport or refueling planes, according to U.S. officials, who stressed that any assistance would stop short of sending American combat forces to the volatile West African nation.

At the same time, the administration is navigating a thicket of questions about military support and how far it could go in aiding the French without violating U.S. law or undermining policy objectives.

Direct military aid to Mali is forbidden under U.S. law because the weak rump government there seized power in a coup. U.S. moves are further complicated by uncertainty about which militants would be targeted in an assault.

The loosely affiliated web of Malian militants in the country’s north includes members of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). But other fighters are longtime foes of the Malian government and pose no direct threat to U.S. interests.

From Democracy Now!: Admin Aids French Bombing of Mali After U.S.-Trained Forces Join Rebels in Uranium-Rich Region

France is in its fifth day of an offensive to oust rebels that have held much of Mali’s northern region since March, an area larger than Afghanistan. The strikes have reportedly killed 11 civilians, including three children fleeing the bombardment of a camp near the central town of Konna. The United Nations estimates as many as 30,000 may have been displaced since fighting began last week. The United States has backed the offensive by helping transport French troops and making plans to send drones or other surveillance aircraft. It is aiding a fight against Malian forces that it once helped train, only to see them defect and join the Islamist rebellion. We discuss the latest in Mali with Al Jazeera correspondent May Ying Welsh, who has reported from Mali’s north, and with freelance journalist Hannah Armstrong, a fellow of the Institute of Current World Affairs, who joins us from the Malian capital of Bamako.

Who said Pres. Barack Obama wasn’t a war hawk?

h/t TPM for the map. Click on image ot enlarge

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

After Pres. Barack Obama’s pick for Treasury Secretary confessed to a lack of financial expertise, you would have thought that the president’s choice for the number two spot would have been someone to fill that gap. Silly you. President Obama’s choice for Deputy Treasury Secretary is rumored to be Ruth Porat, who lobbied for Wall St. against regulation. This is her profile from Business Week:

Ms. Ruth Porat has been Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President of Morgan Stanley since January 2010. Ms. Porat served as the Global Head of the Financial Institutions Group at Morgan Stanley from September 2006 to December 2009 and also served as its Vice Chairman of Investment Banking from September 2003 to December 2009 and Chairman of the Financial Sponsors Group from July 2004 to September 2006. Throughout the recent financial crisis, she has been responsible for the Financial Sponsors Group ‘s coverage of financial institutions and governments globally, and she led the team advising the U.S. Treasury with respect to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Ms. Porat began her career with Morgan Stanley in 1987 in the Mergers and Acquisition Department.

According to Forbes, Ms Porat is the most influential woman on Wall St.

The Sunlight Foundation reports that Ms Porat lobbied on behalf of Wall St., meeting with regulators about Dodd-Frank rules nine times:

* 2012-03-27: Met with the Federal Reserve to express concerns on bank capital rules

* 2012-04-30: Met with the Federal Reserve to claim surcharges for Too Big To Fail banks were not necessary. Later also said regulating derivatives would hurt liquidity.

* 2011-12-14: Met with the Federal Reserve to ask for more lenient disclosure requirements for Morgan Stanley

* 2010-10-28: Met with the Federal Reserve to push back on Volker Rule and for more flexibility on Proprietary Trading

* 2010-11-02: Met with Treasury on the CFPB (no disclosures on meeting’s purpose)

*  2011-02-01: Met with Treasury on Capital and Liquidity (no disclosures on meeting’s purpose)

* 2011-05-03: Met with Treasury on the Volker Rule (no disclosures on meeting’s purpose)

* 2011-07-07: Met with Treasury on Derivatives (no disclosures on meeting’s purpose)

* 2011-01-05: Met with FDIC on Volker Rule (no disclosures on meeting’s purpose)

h/t DSWright at FDL News Desk

Ms Porat is not what Obama’s critics meant when they complained about a lack of woman in influential positions in the cabinet. Really, Mr. President, a Wall St. lobbyist? Jamie Dimon must be so pleased.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Sen. Bernie Sanders has already decided that he will not vote to approve President Barack Obama’s replacement for Timothy Geithner, Jack  Lew, AS Treasury Secretary, with good reason. It seems that Mr. Lew, who currently is the president Chief of Staff, does not think that deregulation had a role in the housing crash. This is Sen. Sanders’ statement:

Jack Lew is clearly an extremely intelligent person and I applaud his many years of public service to our country. I believe that he will be confirmed by the Senate. Unfortunately, he will be confirmed without my vote. At a time when the middle class is collapsing and millions of workers are unemployed, I do not believe he is the right person at the right time to serve in this important position.

As a supporter of the president, I remain extremely concerned that virtually all of his key economic advisers have come from Wall Street. In my view, we need a treasury secretary who is prepared to stand up to corporate America and their powerful lobbyists and fight for policies that protect the working families in our country. I do not believe Mr. Lew is that person.

We don’t need a treasury secretary who thinks that Wall Street deregulation was not responsible for the financial crisis. We need a treasury secretary who will work hard to break up too-big-to-fail financial institutions so that Wall Street cannot cause another massive financial crisis.

We don’t need another treasury secretary who believes in ‘deficit neutral’ corporate tax reform. We need a treasury secretary willing to fight to make sure that large, profitable corporations pay their fair share in taxes to reduce the deficit and create jobs.

We don’t need a treasury secretary who will advise the president that he should negotiate with the Republicans to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits. We need someone who is going to strengthen these programs.

We don’t need another treasury secretary who believes that NAFTA and Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China have been good for the American economy. We need someone in the White House who works to fundamentally re-write our trade policy to make sure that we are exporting American goods, not American jobs.

Matt Taibbi, contributing editor for Rolling Stone magazine, and William Black, associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, a white-collar criminologist and former senior financial regulator, joined Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez at Democracy Now! to discuss why Jack Lew is a “failure of epic proportions”

At Huffington Post, Prof. Black also described Mr. Lew’s role as OMB Chief during the Clinton administration, that set the stage for our current economic and financial problems, his path to Wall St. and back through the “revolving door” to the Obama administration. He calls Mr. Lew “another brick in the Wall Street on the Potomac,”

From CBS News:

   Obama is clearly comfortable bringing another ex-Wall Streeter into an administration that, beyond a recent ratcheting up of populist rhetoric, has done relatively little to rein in the financial industry.

   That, in turn, reflects the ease with which Washington hands like Lew shuttle between the Street and the Hill. Case in point: Lew’s predecessor as budget chief, Peter Orszag, left the agency and joined Citi as vice chairman of global banking. A job in politics is no longer a back-door to a lucrative job in banking — it’s a red carpet. The revolving door keeps spinning.

   The Citi alternative investments] division ultimately lost billions. As for Lew, he naturally made big bucks during his three-year stint at Citi, including a [roughly $950,000 bonus in 2009 — after the company’s federal bailout.

Lew helped establish finance policy under President Clinton. [..]

Lew’s predecessor as chief of staff was William Daley. Daley is a lawyer. Daley was on the executive board of J.P. Morgan-Chase during the crisis and before that he was on Fannie Mae’s board of directors. Daley is a member of “Third Way’s” controlling board. Third Way is a Pete Peterson ally that lobbies in favor of austerity and cuts to the safety net. It pushes Wall Street’s, and Pete Peterson’s, greatest dream — privatizing Social Security. Privatization would allow Wall Street to increase its profits by hundreds of billions of dollars in fees for managing our retirement savings. [..]

The obvious aspects of this pattern include: (1) Obama prefers to have Wall Street guys run finance (despite coming to power because Wall Street blew up the world), (2) the revolving door under Obama that connects Wall Street and the White House has been super-charged, and (3) even very short stints in Wall Street have made Obama’s finance advisers wealthy. The obvious is vitally important, and it is largely ignored by the most prominent media. The obvious aspects help explain why Obama’s economic policies have been incoherent, ineptly explained, inequitable, and often slavishly pro-Wall Street at the expense of our integrity and citizens. [..]

Prof. Black gives examples of the less obvious aspects of the pattern that compound problem of Pres. Obama appointing people who have failed, not just professionally, but ethically and morally. It is an eye opening, scathing critique of an administration that is trying to force a destructive policy of austerity and why Jack Lew is a terrible choice for Treasury Secretary.  

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman argues that saving money is not the path to economic recovery. Instead, he tells Bill, we should put aside our excessive focus on the deficit, try to overcome political recalcitrance, and spend money to put America back to work. Krugman offers specific solutions to not only end what he calls a “vast, unnecessary catastrophe,” but to do it more quickly than some imagine possible. His latest book, End This Depression Now!, is both a warning of the fiscal perils ahead and a prescription to safely avoid them.

On Pres. Obama’s choice of Jack Lew for Treasury Secretary

(W)hat the president needs right now is he needs a hardnosed negotiator. And rumor has it that’s what he’s got, so.

The president can’t pass major new legislation. He can’t formulate major new programs right now. What he has to do now is bargain down or ride over these crazy people in the Republican Party. And we what we need now is not deep thinking from the treasury secretary. If the president wants deep thinkers, he can call Joe Stiglitz, he can call other people. What he needs from the Treasury secretary is somebody who’s going to be very effective at dealing with these wild men and making sure that nothing terrible happens.

Damning praise, indeed.

Up host Chris Hayes discusses what we now know since last week began, including how NFL linebacker Junior Seau committed suicide by shooting himself in the chest preserving his brain for scientific study. His panel guests are George Saunders, author of “Tenth of December;” Michael Chabon, author of “Telegraph Avenue” and Pulitzer Prize-winner; Victor LaValle, author of “The Devil in Silver” and Assistant Professor and Acting Fiction Director at Columbia University School of the Arts; and Ayana Mathis, author of “The Twelve Tribes of Hattie.”

Seau Suffered From Brain Disease

by Mary Pilon, New York Times

The former N.F.L. linebacker Junior Seau had a degenerative brain disease linked to repeated head trauma when he committed suicide in the spring, the National Institutes of Health said Thursday.

The findings were consistent with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease widely connected to athletes who have absorbed frequent blows to the head, the N.I.H. said in a statement. Seau is the latest and most prominent player to be associated with the disease, which has bedeviled football in recent years as a proliferation of studies has exposed the possible long-term cognitive impact of head injuries sustained on the field. [..]

Since C.T.E. was diagnosed in the brain of the former Eagles defensive back Andre Waters after his suicide in 2006, the disease has been found in nearly every former player whose brain was examined posthumously. (C.T.E. can be diagnosed only posthumously.)

NFL concussions lawsuit: 2,000 former players to file class action suit

PHILADELPHIA (AP) – A concussion-related lawsuit bringing together scores of cases has been filed in federal court, accusing the NFL of hiding information that linked football-related head trauma to permanent brain injuries.

Lawyers for former players say more than 80 pending lawsuits are consolidated in the “master complaint” filed Thursday in Philadelphia.

Plaintiffs hope to hold the NFL responsible for the care of players suffering from dementia, Alzheimer’s disease and other neurological conditions. Other former players remain asymptomatic, but worry about the future and want medical monitoring.

Australia Adds New Weather Map Colors for Extreme Heat

by Brooke Jarvis, Rolling Stone

Climate change is causing ‘catastrophic’ danger in much of the country

Australia is facing record-breaking temperatures in next week’s forecast – a heat wave so intense that the Australian Bureau of Meteorology has been forced to make new charts.

For the first time, the century-old agency’s forecast map now includes a gauge for temperatures up to 54° Celsius (129.2° Fahrenheit), complete with new colors – deep purple and hot pink – to indicate areas experiencing heat above 50°C (122°F).

Though Australia’s existing heat record, set in 1960, still stands for the moment, officials believe it may soon be surpassed. The nation’s Bureau of Meteorology has been open about the impact that rising greenhouse gases are already having there: The agency’s website declares that Australia is “experiencing rapid climate change,” including more frequent heat waves and changing rainfall patterns.

The current heat wave has produced above-average temperatures for 80 percent of the country – the nationwide average on Monday was 104 degrees Fahrenheit – and scores of wildfires. The state of New South Wales, home to Australia’s most populous city, Sydney, is facing its greatest fire danger ever, officials say. In some areas of the state, the official fire danger rating is “catastrophic.”

2012 Hottest Year On Record For Lower 48 States, NOAA Confirms

It’s official: 2012 was the warmest year on record in the lower 48 states, as the country experienced blistering spring and summer heat, tinderbox fire weather conditions amid a widespread drought, and one of the worst storms to ever strike the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 2012 had an average temperature of 55.3°F, which eclipsed 1998, the previous record holder, by 1°F. That was just off Climate Central’s calculation in mid-December, which projected an expected value of 55.34°F, based on historical data.

The 1°F difference from 1998 is an unusually large margin, considering that annual temperature records are typically broken by just tenths of a degree Fahrenheit. In fact, the entire range between the coldest year on record, which occurred in 1917, and the previous record warm year of 1998 was just 4.2°F.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

New York Times economics columnist, Prof. Paul Krugman posted a graph from Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in a post to his blog indicating the deficit problem has mostly been solved:

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has a graph:

Click on image to enlarge

The vertical axis measures the projected ratio of federal debt to GDP. The blue line at the top represents the projected path of that ratio as of early 2011 – that is, before recent agreements on spending cuts and tax increases. This projection showed a rising path for debt as far as the eye could see.

And just about all budget discussion in Washington and the news media is laid out as if that were still the case. But a lot has happened since then. The orange line shows the effects of those spending cuts and tax hikes: As long as the economy recovers, which is an assumption built into all these projections, the debt ratio will more or less stabilize soon.

Prof. Krugman noted that the CBPP advocates for another $1.4 trillion in revenue or spending cuts over the next decade. While there are still problems the debt/deficit is not as bad as is being presented by politicians and the traditional media. So while we everyone was loosing sleep about falling off cliffs, the cliff was a bad dream. Now the government and the media need to wake up and start talking about jobs.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has reported that 2012 was the warmest year on record since it started keeping records in 1895, eclipsing 1998 by 1ºF.

The 1°F difference from 1998 is an unusually large margin, considering that annual temperature records are typically broken by just tenths of a degree Fahrenheit. In fact, the entire range between the coldest year on record, which occurred in 1917, and the previous record warm year of 1998 was just 4.2°F.

The year consisted of the fourth-warmest winter, the warmest spring, second-warmest summer, and a warmer-than-average fall. With an average temperature that was 3.6°F above average, July became the hottest month ever recorded in the contiguous U.S. The average springtime temperature in the lower 48 was so far above the 1901-2000 average – 5.2°F, to be exact – that the country set a record for the largest temperature departure for any season on record. [..]

With 34,008 daily high temperature records set or tied the year compared to just 6,664 daily record lows – a ratio of about five high temperature records for every one low temperature record – 2012 was no ordinary weather year in the U.S. It wasn’t just the high temperatures that set records, though. Overnight low temperatures were also extremely warm, and in a few cases the overnight low was so warm that it set a high temperature record, a rare feat. [..]

Not alarmed yet? Australia is not only experiencing its hottest Summer but its also on fire.

Australia Climate Change? New Colors Added To Forecast Maps To Track Potential Record Heat

Click on image to enlarge

Right now, things are pretty hot in Australia. So hot, in fact, that meteorologists Down Under have added new, never-before-used colors to temperature maps in anticipation of record-breaking heat.

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology amended its interactive weather chart Tuesday, adding the colors deep purple and pink to indicate a temperature range of up to 54 degrees Celsius, or 129.2 degrees Fahrenheit. The previous range had capped at 50 Celsius, or 122 degrees Fahrenheit.

The change was based on one weather prediction model that forecasts temperatures to climb above 50 Celsius early next week.

The all-time hottest temperature recorded in Australia was 50.7 Celsius on Jan. 2, 1960 at Oodnadatta Airport in South Australia, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.

According to the current model, the forecast for next Monday will bring a “Tasmania-sized” area of heat in excess of 50 degrees to South Australia.

50ºC is 122ºF. That’s hot. Too hot.

Australian heatwave puts south-east on alert as wildfires burn out of control

by Alison Rourke, The Gusardian

Fire service issues ‘catastrophic’ warnings in New South Wales with temperatures expected to breach 45C in coming days

A record-breaking heatwave and high winds across south-eastern Australia have produced some of the worst fire conditions seen in the country, with blazes destroying thousands of hectares of land (video) and threatening properties, but – so far – sparing lives.

Emergency teams fought more than 130 fires across New South Wales, the country’s most populous state, on Tuesday, with at least 40 burning out of control. Fires also continued to burn in Tasmania, after blazes at the weekend destroyed more than 20,000 hectares of land and dozens of properties. [..]

The NSW rural fire service issued “catastrophic” fire warnings for four areas in the state – the most severe fire warning level.

“The word catastrophic is being used for good reason,” the Australian prime minister, Julia Gillard, said on morning television. “So it is very important that people keep themselves safe, that they listen to local authorities and local warnings. This is a very dangerous day.”

Alarmed after the NOAA report, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) introduced a new climate bill.

Sanders announced the bill a day after federal officials reported that 2012 was the hottest year on record in the lower 48 states, smashing the record set in 1998 by a full degree Fahrenheit.

The bill from Sanders would create a “transparent fee on greenhouse gas emissions from the biggest polluters,” his office said in a brief summary.

“After the hottest year on record and extreme weather disturbances such as Hurricane Sandy, we must take strong action to transform our energy system away from fossil fuels and move toward energy efficiency and sustainable energy,” said Sanders, a member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. “I intend to introduce legislation in the Senate to do just that.” [..]

Environmentalists are pressing President Obama to take tougher steps using his administrative powers, including establishment of first-time carbon emissions standards for existing power plants.

Sanders’ plan also aims to boost green energy development and nix tax incentives for oil companies.

Not just the US but countries around the world need to take action to curb carbon emissions. The Unites States should be taking the lead and setting the example.