Author Archive

"Republicans in Congress have a new tactic for shrinking government: making sure that nobody’s there to run it. Well into the president’s second term, an alarming and unprecedented number of vital positions in every branch of government remain vacant. As Republicans use and abuse processes that helped government run smoothly once upon a time not so very long ago, government grinds to a halt, and the consequences trickle down to Main Street America. And apparently that’s just fine with Republicans." [editor's note: Helping to stagnate the State is about the only thing the GOPers have inadvertently gotten right - SAT] (05/14/13)

"Since the housing bubble burst in 2007, some 4.8 million Americans have lost their homes to foreclosure. According to data released in April, more than one-third of those subject to foreclosure proceedings at the height of the crisis were the victims of possible bank errors or illegal practices. But the Treasury’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency decided in January to simply settle with the banks for $3.6 billion. Most foreclosed-upon borrowers will receive less than $1,000 in the settlement -- even if they lost their homes. It’s this kind of indifference to the plight of underwater homeowners that Occupy-aligned anti-foreclosure groups are trying to combat." (05/14/13)

"It has been a bad couple of weeks for conservative social scientists. First a doctoral student ran the numbers on the study by Harvard’s Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff that underpins austerity and deep public spending cuts as a cure for the Great Recession and found it full of errors. Then a policy analyst, Jason Richwine ... was obliged to clear his desk at the Heritage Foundation when it became known his Harvard dissertation suggested Hispanics had lower intelligence than 'the white native population.' It makes you wonder what Friedrich Hayek would have to say about such aberrant research." (05/14/13)

"On September 16, 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died. The empire was seventy-one years old and had been in ill health since 1968. Like most modern empires, ours rested not so much on military prowess as on economic power. ... [I]n 1914, New York replaced London as the world’s financial capital. Before 1914, the United States had been a developing country, dependent on outside investment. But with the shift of the money power from Old World to New, what had been a debtor nation became a creditor nation and central motor to the world’s economy. All in all, the English were well pleased to have us take their place. They were too few in number for so big a task." (originally published 1985; posted 05/14/13)

"Within hours after the news broke that the Internal Revenue Service singled out Tea Party and other conservative groups that had applied for tax-exempt 501(c)(4) status for extra scrutiny, conservatives were already complaining that the story wasn't getting enough play in the media. 'Imagine if this had happened under President Bush!' they cried. (For starters, it actually did. In that case, it was the FBI, not the IRS, that went after liberal groups under the pretense that they might be harboring al Qaeda terrorists.) Now that there are finally a couple of Obama administration 'scandals' for conservatives and the media to chew on, we're going to be hearing a lot of comparisons to what went on in prior administrations, so it will be useful to get our history straight." (05/13/13)

"One aspect that defines our current economy is that things are happening that shouldn’t be happening. I don’t mean that things are happening that are illegal or immoral. (Well, some of them are immoral, but that’s not what I mean.) Rather, things are happening that defy economic logic—a slippery term that really means, the economic patterns of roughly the past half-century. The first such logic-defying thing is that corporate profits are soaring even as corporate revenues limp along." (05/13/13)

"Five days a week, between 40 and 80 men and women in handcuffs and shackles are brought into Tucson’s DeConcini Courthouse, a high-rise that houses the U.S. District Court. The prisoners are dirty, hungry and sometimes injured from days spent walking across the desert before Border Patrol agents caught them entering the United States along the southern Arizona border without the proper documentation. Led into a second-floor courtroom, they sit quietly in neat rows on spectator benches and in the jury box. Across the courtroom sit two men in dark green shirts with 'Border Patrol' across their backs." (05/13/13)

"Looking for a quick fix to the deep inequality that so afflicts us? Stop your searching. We need to strategize instead for the long-term. A riveting new work from a leading historian helps us see how. The 79-year-old corporate gadfly Robert Monks, the former top federal regulator over America’s pension system, earlier this year opined that Corporate America operates 'for the personal enrichment and glorification of its manager-kings.' Too harsh a judgment? Hardly. Current standard corporate operating procedures only make sense if we acknowledge that America’s biggest private enterprises have essentially become the private preserve of an elite executive class." [editor's note: Although it's nice to see 'progressive' pundits figuring this out at last; now if they'd only realize that "more government" will not solve it! - SAT] (05/13/13)

"At the end of April, the San Francisco LGBT Pride Committee announced that Bradley Manning, a Nobel Peace Prize–nominated gay veteran and whistleblower currently languishing inside a military prison for releasing classified military documents to Wikileaks, would be a grand marshal at this year’s pride parade. But mere hours after the news broke, San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration Committee President Lisa Williams released a statement rescinding the honor and calling the decision 'a mistake that never should have been allowed to happen.' The controversy has divided the LGBT military community and drawn significant attention to what some critics have seen as Pride’s backing away from contentious issues and embracing of corporate sponsors." (05/13/13)

"A test case between Cody Wilson and the US government could have implications for regulation of the internet. By now, everyone’s heard about the 3D printed gun that Defense Distributed demonstrated last week. The Texas-based group has been steadily working its way up the 3D printed firearms evolutionary ladder, making parts for guns, then guns themselves, then firing a gun, then making the plans for running up your own pistols on a nearby 3D printer. If Defense Distributed had set out to create a moral panic over 3D printing, they could have picked no better project." (05/13/13)

"Over the years when I’ve written about nanny-state laws like measures to ban grocery stores from giving away free plastic bags, scolds have sent e-mails in which they scolded me for not sharing the refined sensibilities and energy policies of 'Our Betters in Europe.' That’s been a stock phrase in my lexicon. It’s not a hit on Europeans. Some of my best friends are Europeans. It’s a hit on those -- American or European -- who seem to think that if Europeans do something, that action must be superior. Because Europeans do it." (05/13/13)

"I hope you all have been following the entire kerfuffle over the Heritage Foundation’s 'researchers,' a man named Jason Richwine, who has been outed as a proponent of the idea that Hispanics are genetically inferior people born with a hardwired low IQ. The Heritage Foundation is playing the 'how could we have ever known?' card, but no one of any IQ is buying it, since he’s been on about this belief for a long time. Zack Beauchamp of Think Progress has a post up analyzing why conservatives keep circling back to this IQ horseshit, even though it’s unscientific and racist as all get-out." (05/10/13)