Fox Pushes Dishonest Claims To Defend GOP's Food Stamp Cuts

September 20, 2013 9:19 PM EDT ››› MIKE BURNS & OLIVIA MARSHALL 

Fox News rushed to defend a GOP plan to cut $39 million from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), misportraying the program as riddled with fraud and abuse and downplaying the effects those cuts would have on families with children. In reality, fraud amounts to less than 1 percent of the total program, and the cuts would take benefits away from 3.8 million people*.

CLAIM: GOP's Food Stamp Cuts Won't Affect Children

Fox Regular Stephen Moore Falsely Claims That Cuts Wouldn't Hurt Children. On the September 20 edition of America's Newsroom, Wall Street Journal editorial board member and Fox regular Stephen Moore downplayed the proposed cuts, claiming that "families with children would not be affected by any of this." [Fox News, America's Newsroom, 9/20/13, via Media Matters]

Why Arne Duncan is threatening to withhold funds for poor kids

By Valerie Strauss, Published: September 21 at 10:58 am

It’s hard to decide  which of the following aspects of the U.S. Education Department’s fight with the state of California over standardized testing is worse:

* Education Secretary Arne Duncan is threatening to withhold some of the approximately $1.5 billion that California receives annually from the federal Title 1 program — funds intended to help poor children receive an education — if state officials don’t agree to implement a standardized-testing regime that he likes.

It's the Austerity, Stupid: How We Were Sold an Economy-Killing Lie

Once again, the Beltway fell for cherry-picked data—and you paid the price.

—By Kevin Drum | September/October 2013 Issue

It was the Excel error heard round the world.

In January 2010, as the global economy was slowly beginning to claw its way out of the depths of the Great Recession, the Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff published a short paper with a grim message: Too much debt kills economic growth. They had compiled a comprehensive database of debt episodes throughout the 20th century, and their data told an unmistakable story: Time and again, countries that rack up high debt levels have gone on to suffer years—sometimes decades—of stagnation.

As economics studies go, it was nothing short of a bombshell. As its conclusions were invoked from Washington to Brussels, tackling the recession suddenly became less important than tackling deficits. For the next three years, stimulus was out, austerity was in, and the protests of critics were all but buried amid the headlong rush to slash spending.

Buy a House, Make Your Payments, Then Discover You've Been Foreclosed On Without Your Knowledge

By David Dayen

September 20, 2013  |  A few months ago, Ceith and Louise Sinclair of Altadena, California, were told that their home had been sold. It was the first time they’d heard that it was for sale.

 

Their mortgage servicer, Nationstar, foreclosed on them without their knowledge, and sold the house to an investment company. If it wasn’t for the Sinclairs going to a local ABC affiliate [3] and describing their horror story, they would have been thrown out on the street, despite never missing a mortgage payment. It’s impossible to know how many homeowners who didn’t get the media to pick up their tale have dealt with a similar catastrophe, and eventually lost their home.

As finance writer Barry Ritholtz has explained [4], home purchases involve a series of precise safeguards, designed to protect property rights and prevent situations where borrowers who are perfect on their payments get evicted. “In a nation of laws, contract and property rights, there is no room for errors,” Ritholtz writes. “The only way these errors could have occurred is if several people involved in the process committed criminal fraud.”

Nowhere to Hide: The Government's Massive Intrusion Into Our Lives

Tom Dispatch / By Christopher Calabrese, Matthew Harwood

September 22, 2013  |  For at least the last six years, government agents have been exploiting an AT&T database [5] filled with the records of billions of American phone calls from as far back as 1987. The rationale behind this dragnet intrusion, codenamed Hemisphere, is to find suspicious links between people with “burner” phones (prepaid mobile phones easy to buy, use, and quickly dispose of), which are popular with drug dealers. The secret information gleaned from this relationship with the telecommunications giant has been used to convict Americans of various crimes, all without the defendants or the courts having any idea how the feds stumbled upon them in the first place. The program is so secret, so powerful, and so alarming that agents “are instructed to never refer to Hemisphere in any official document,” according to a recently released [6] government PowerPoint slide.

 

You’re probably assuming that we’re talking about another blanket National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance program focused on the communications of innocent Americans, as revealed by the whistleblower Edward Snowden. We could be, but we’re not. We’re talking about a program of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), a domestic law enforcement agency.

US nearly detonated atomic bomb over North Carolina – secret document

Exclusive: Journalist uses Freedom of Information Act to disclose 1961 accident in which one switch averted catastrophe

Ed Pilkington in New York
The Guardian, Friday 20 September 2013 12.03 EDT

A secret document, published in declassified form for the first time by the Guardian today, reveals that the US Air Force came dramatically close to detonating an atom bomb over North Carolina that would have been 260 times more powerful than the device that devastated Hiroshima.

The document, obtained by the investigative journalist Eric Schlosser under the Freedom of Information Act, gives the first conclusive evidence that the US was narrowly spared a disaster of monumental proportions when two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs were accidentally dropped over Goldsboro, North Carolina on 23 January 1961. The bombs fell to earth after a B-52 bomber broke up in mid-air, and one of the devices behaved precisely as a nuclear weapon was designed to behave in warfare: its parachute opened, its trigger mechanisms engaged, and only one low-voltage switch prevented untold carnage.

NPR's New Boss: Financial Industry Lobbyist, GOP Donor, Right-Wing Think Tank Booster

By Peter Hart

Last month NPR CEO Gary Knell left to take a job at National Geographic, making him the latest in a string of CEOs who left after a short stint running the public radio outlet. On September 13, NPR named a new acting president and CEO: board member Paul G. Haaga.

The NPR press release  (9/13/13) states that Haaga's "accomplished career" included a stint as "chairman of the Investment Company Institute"–the powerful lobbying group of the mutual fund industry. As the Los Angeles Times  (11/29/03) once reported, "Mutual funds have been mostly shielded from the reforms forced on the financial world–thanks in large part to the efforts of the Investment Company Institute."

The GOP’s “Hunger Games” vision of America

Cutting food stamps and sabotaging Obamacare aren't irrational – they're part of the 1 percent's all-out class war

By Andrew O'Hehir

American conservatives love to attack anyone who raises the issue of worsening economic inequality for waging “class war.” Their compulsion to keep repeating that phrase is revealing in itself; it’s like the serial killer in a movie who can’t help returning to the scene of the crime. Because the only class war being waged in 21st-century America is the relentless, all-fronts struggle conducted by the rich against the poor.

Within the last week, we have learned that poverty remains at near-record levels in our supposedly affluent nation. Even amid a so-called economic recovery, nearly 22 percent of the nation’s children live in poverty, and the overall number of poor people reached an all-time high, at 46.5 million. Income inequality, meanwhile, is roughly twice as bad as it was in the 1970s, reaching a level never seen before in this country or any other industrialized nation.

Richard Eskow: JPMorgan Chase: “Incredibly Guilty”

An outside observer might be forgiven for thinking JPMorgan Chase isn’t so much a bank as it is a criminal enterprise with a bank attached to it. Even before the London Whale scandal, Chase’s documented list of crimes included repeated fraud, perjury, forgery, bribery, and violations of laws against trading with Iran and Syria.

It also shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.

Okay, that last statement isn’t true. But the rest of the crimes on that list, and a number of others, are well-documented. And yet, remarkably, not a single senior executive at the bank has been indicted – or, to our knowledge, even been the subject of a criminal investigation.

Case for climate change is overwhelming, say scientists

Eleven days before the IPCC publishes its latest report, a group of eminent scientists says there is massive evidence of human responsibility

By Alex Kirby for Climate News Network, part of the Guardian Environment Network
theguardian.com, Monday 16 September 2013 11.25 EDT
With the IPCC report not yet published, there is already heated debate about what it will say, and about the implications of its findings for human development.

The scientists' statement is unequivocal, and is not based on whatever the IPCC may publish. They say: "The body of evidence indicating that our civilisation has already caused significant global warming is overwhelming."

The statement comes from 12 members of the recently established Earth League, which describes itself as "a voluntary alliance of leading scientists and institutions dealing with planetary processes and sustainability issues".

The 10 Farm Subsidy Recipients Who Voted To Cut Food Stamps

Derek Pugh

The House GOP believes in welfare – just not the kind that goes to help the poor, sick, students, elderly or working class. Thursday’s vote to cut food stamps embodies what House conservatives are all about: giving billions away in corporate welfare to the richest with taxpayer dollars.

They are also about helping themselves. Before they rushed off to summer recess House Republicans voted in favor of a farm subsidy bill that was condemned by sensible conservatives as well as progressives for continuing to give wasteful subsidies to Big Agra.

Public Education in the Crosshairs: - ALEC's Private Scholarship Tax Credits

Thursday, 19 September 2013 00:00 
By Ellen Dannin, Truthout | Report 

A commitment to high-quality, free public education for all children has long been the foundation of our democracy and prosperity. Although never fully honored, our commitment to an educated citizenry has created a society that is generally literate and able to participate in democratic governance. That commitment is now under multiple attacks by ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council), and many ALEC-created bills target public schools, teachers and teacher unions. One ALEC bill in particular, the "Resolution Supporting Private Scholarship Tax Credits," has mostly flown under the radar - but could have grave, far-reaching consequences.

Gaius Publius: Is privatization driven by corruption? The Chicago parking meter debacle

I’ve been writing about privatization lately, a movement that’s picking up steam all over the country, and indeed all over the world. The Mubarak regime, for example, was widely considered a  ”neoliberal” and privatizing one, famous for looting the Egyptian state and economy of its wealth.

I want to just add this. Given the immensely favorable deals that governments — federal, state and local — give to their private “partners,” how can crony corruption and kickbacks not be a part of it.

Paul Krugman: The Crazy Party

Early this year, Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, made headlines by telling his fellow Republicans that they needed to stop being the “stupid party.” Unfortunately, Mr. Jindal failed to offer any constructive suggestions about how they might do that. And, in the months that followed, he himself proceeded to say and do a number of things that were, shall we say, not especially smart.

Nonetheless, Republicans did follow his advice. In recent months, the G.O.P. seems to have transitioned from being the stupid party to being the crazy party.

Walker’s Wrecking Crew Goes After Judiciary

By Rebecca Kemble, September 18, 2013

Control over the executive and legislative branches of Wisconsin state government apparently isn’t enough for Republicans and their corporate backers. Now they want to curtail the powers of the judicial branch by effectively eliminating circuit court judges’ ability to block unconstitutional state laws.

Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce and their Republican allies in the legislature pushed a bill through the Wisconsin State Assembly last June that would automatically nullify an injunction against a state law ordered by a circuit court judge immediately upon appeal. Furthermore, the appeals process is automatically triggered by the filing of any such injunction or restraining order by a circuit court judge.

Algae Biofuel Can Cut CO2 Emissions by up to 68 Percent Compared to Petroleum Fuels Finds New Peer Reviewed Study

Algae fuel will have a significant energy return on investment, consume waste CO₂ and can be grown in saltwater on marginal lands

MINNEAPOLIS (September 19, 2013) –Algae-derived biofuel can reduce life cycle CO₂ emissions by 50 to 70 percent compared to petroleum fuels, and is approaching a similar Energy Return on Investment (EROI) as conventional petroleum according to a new peer-reviewed paper published in Bioresource Technology. The study, which is the first to analyze real-world data from an existing algae-to-energy demonstration scale farm, shows that the environmental and energy benefits of algae biofuel are at least on par, and likely better, than first generation biofuels.

“This study affirms that algae-based fuels provide results without compromise,” said Mary Rosenthal, ABO’s executive director. “With significant emissions reductions, a positive energy balance, nutrient recycling and CO₂ reuse, algae-based fuels will be a long-term, sustainable source of fuels for our nation.”

'Winning the Race to the Bottom'

Critics slam highly secretive deal as a tool for U.S. and corporate power

 

- Sarah Lazare, staff writer 

 

As Obama moves to fast-track the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), critics are blasting the highly-secretive trade deal as "NAFTA on steroids" and a tool for advancing U.S. and corporate power.

 

"If impoverishing working people around the world is the goal, then the trade policies like this are working quite effectively," Chris Townsend, political director for United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE), told Common Dreams. "This is the grand-daddy of trade deals, a very destructive project, and it is happening completely under the radar."
 

Rick Perlstein: On Privatization's Cutting Edge

Last week, for the opening of the school year, I wrote about my interview with Tom Geoghegan about his (so-far) failed suit to stop Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s morally and educationally disastrous crusade to close fifty schools in Chicago. But that’s not all I talked about with Tom. “I don’t want this just to be a Mayor Emanuel–bashing session,” I said. “Because we have to bash Mayor Daley.”

Everyone, I suppose, dislikes parking meters. Chicagoans hate them even more. That’s because Mayor Richard M. Daley in 2008 struck a deal with the investment consortium Chicago Parking Meters LLC, or CPM, that included Morgan Stanley, Allianz Capital Partners and, yes, the Sovereign Wealth Fund of Abu Dhabi, to privatize our meters. The price of parking—and the intensity of enforcement—skyrocketed. The terms were negotiated in secret. City Council members got two days to study the billion-dollar, seventy-five-year contract before signing off on it. An early estimate from the Chicago inspector general was that the city had sold off its property for about half of what it was worth. Then an alderman said it was worth about four times what the city had been paid. Finally, in 2010, Forbes reported that in fact the city had been underpaid by a factor of ten.

Gaius Publius: This week in privatization — they really do have a bridge to sell you

The privatization of public property is something that both Democratic and Republican public officials love to promote.

Republicans love it because they’re vultures, always feeding the poor (you, me and the rest of the “99%”) to the rich. Neoliberal Democrats — that is, the whole of the party leadership — love it because somehow “free markets” unfettered by government regulation means “freedom”.

Blocking the Public’s Right to Know About ALEC

John Nichols on September 18, 2013 - 4:28 PM ET

In the two years since the ALEC Exposed project revealed the role that the secretive American Legislative Exchange Council plays in shaping the laws of states across the nation, the group has had a much harder time hiding its meddling.

In fact, so much national attention has been paid to ALEC’s role in promoting restrictive voter ID laws and controversial Stand Your Ground initiatives that ALEC officials announced last year that they would shut down the task force that was responsible for promoting those measures.