Brad Delong writes:

Thus I do not understand why officials from the Fed and the Treasury keep telling me that the U.S. couldn't or shouldn't have profited immensely from its TARP and other loans to banks

Delong is writing about Fed loans to Morgan-Stanley in 2008. In 2008, George W. Bush was President and Henry Paulson was Secretary of the Treasury and both of them were incompetent and in favor of massive public subsidy of the rich. President Obama took the oath of office in January 2009. So the officials from the Fed and Treasury now are speaking of what was done then. Please recall Paulson's original TARP plan had no restrictions, no requirement for payback and well into the first year of the Obama Administration, "liberal" pundits like Duncan Black were confidently explaining that the public would never recover TARP loans (and they were flat wrong). Please recall that the largest investment of TARP funds under President Obama did not go to Wall Street Banks, but went to the auto industry. So the number one reason why the crisis occurred, why it was so devastating, and why the initial response was to throw money at banks is that the Republicans controlled the White House. Obviously, Delong knows this, but if you didn't know it, and read his post, what would you think?

On Nov. 16, a European businessman paying a visit to his company’s manufacturing plant near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, was pulled over for driving a rental car without a tag. The police officer asked the man for his license, but the only paperwork he had with him was a German I.D. card. Anywhere else in the nation, the cop might have issued the man a citation. Not in Alabama, where a strict new law requires police to look into the immigration status of people detained for routine traffic violations. Because the man couldn’t prove he had the right to be in the U.S., he was arrested and hauled off to the police station. The businessman turned out to be an executive with Mercedes-Benz, one of Alabama’s prized manufacturers [ Bloomberg]

Needless to say, but fun to say, the GOP politicians in Alabama who decided that Americans in America should be forced to show their papers on every encounter with the Government just like the people of the Soviet Union had to and that the state government should micro-manage the police because they might otherwise worry about real crimes - those GOP politicians are trying desperately to find a way of blaming someone else for what they did.

I hope everyone has had a great thanksgiving weekend. Now that the weekend is over, get ready for some politics! Speaking of which, the DNC has just launched MittvMitt.com, and released this video:



As it becomes clearer and clearer that Romney is the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination that is doomed to go down in an epic failure next November, the DNC is making clear how they are going to take on Mittens. Simply put, his own words of being foragainst everything. Popcorn, please!

Criminal InJustice^† is a weekly series devoted to taking action against inequities in the U.S. criminal justice system. Nancy A. Heitzeg, Professor of Sociology and Race/Ethnicity, is the Editor of CI. Criminal InJustice is published every Wednesday at 6 pm CST.

Criminal Injustice: Giving Thanks By Kay Whitlock

Tonight, Criminal Injustice offers profound thanks for all those who work to name, challenge, resist, and dismantle the racial, gender, sexual, and economic violence embedded in the U.S. criminal legal system – violence that often touches both those who suffer the harms of violent attack in homes and communities, and those who suffer it behind bars at the hands of prison authorities as well as other prisoners.

We also want to give thanks for those who refuse to demonize prisoners and who work in light of the recognition that incarcerated people – and their families – are also part of our communities. And we give thanks for all who would rather see more public investment in education, health care, social services, community-based drug treatment programs, jobs programs and the like - investments that reduce and help prevent crime and recidivism - than in more policing, more prisons.

The individuals and groups acknowledged here are among those who courageously insist that real safety can never be created outside an unshakable framework of racial, gender, and economic justice. They are among those and who not only document the racial, gender, sexual, and economic violence historically and currently embedded in current policing, prosecutorial and prison practices, but seek to expand our justice visions in new ways that lead toward healing, wholeness, and well being – not only for individuals, but also entire communities.

Before I say my word of thanks, don't miss this note:



I am thankful for Michelle Obama and Jill Biden who have taken on the cause of the families of those who serve. I am thankful for a President who has never once stopped thinking about the struggles of ordinary people. I'm thankful for the people in my life who make it worth living - friends, family, and you. The TPV family has been such a blessing for me - so thank you to all of you for an amazing year. :-)

Will the party whose solution to everything is a mind-numbing mantra of "cut taxes" raise taxes on the poor and the middle class? That's the question President Obama is asking:



John Boehner complained about how the Republicans really agree with the payroll tax cut and how the president is so mean for campaigning on its behalf. Oh, the irony. The Republican Speaker of the House is accusing President Obama of choosing to campaign rather than govern. Ha. Ha. Ha.

But John Boehner has a willing accomplice in his attempt to raise the tax burden of the working poor and the middle class the middle of economic distress. And that accomplice, a group ostensibly named "Strengthen Social Security," led by Nancy Altman, is going around claiming the Left flank of American politics. They have come out swinging against the president's proposal to deepen and extend the payroll tax cut.

I don't know if "Strengthen Social Security" will ever get it, but they are defending a flat tax! Actually, a tax that is worse than a flat tax. It's a regressive tax. Up to about $110,000 in income, you pay the same percentage of your income in payroll (social security in this case) taxes, as does your employer. That is by definition a flat tax. And beyond that amount? Anyone who makes more than that amount pays nothing above that amount. Again, by definition a regressive tax. When will these self-announced progressives learn that defending a flat tax is not progressive?

You know, I have always known that Glenn Greenwald is a opportunistic, dishonest, fact-ignorning blowhard. But today we get to add ironic to that. See, Greenwald recently wrote a column accusing the SEIU, a union that has endorsed President Obama for re-election, of attempting to "co-opt" the Occupy Wall Street movement. Why? Well because apparently, an admittedly leaderless, specific-policy-goal-less, decentralized movement is actually so centralized that they have trademarked and copyrighted the phrase "99 percent."

SEIU officials have long been among Obama’s closest and most loyal allies in Washington — but what was notable here was how brazenly [SEIU National President] Henry exploited the language of the Occupy movement to justify her endorsement of the Democratic Party leader: “We need a leader willing to fight for the needs of the 99 percent . . . .Our economy and democracy have been taken over by the wealthiest one percent.” [emphasis his.]

Right, because, you know, no one had ever used those phrases before OWS, and Glenn Greenwald has now appointed himself the spokesperson of a movement that has, well, that has no spokespersons! Also, Glenn is very mad and pouty that SEIU and a few other unions are organizing Occupy Congress on Dec. 5-9, targeting Republican members of Congress for their obstructionism against raising taxes on the wealthy and the president's jobs bill. Yeah, yeah. I know what you're thinking. Doesn't targeting members of Congress who will not let taxes on the wealthy go up at any price and are stopping job creation line up with the expressed grievances of OWS? Not if it's done by someone that supports President Obama, damnit! Uh, what? Shut up. Glenn Greenwald said so!

May I suggest a change in tactic?  I understand people are considering this new movement an analogue and continuation of the civil rights movement, and so be it.  However if you’re going to do that at least take a lesson from the movement.  Engage your enemy and provoke an ugly response from them that the vast moral universe of the American middle will empathize with and support.

Camping in the park is not it.  Fighting police over the right to camp in the park under the guise of “free speech” is not it. 

Unless the cities and municipalities who have to expend extra funds in extremely tight times are the enemy and I thought the bankers were this tactic is going to earn you the enmity not the support of that middle I was talking about.

Criminal InJustice^† is a weekly series devoted to taking action against inequities in the U.S. criminal justice system. Nancy A. Heitzeg, Professor of Sociology and Race/Ethnicity, is the Editor of CI. Criminal InJustice is published every Wednesday at 6 pm CST.

Pelican Bay is not Enough!! Continuing the Struggle Against Extreme Isolation and Sensory Deprivation by Victoria Law

Last month, prisoners across California ended a nearly three-week hunger strike. The strikers, who numbered 12,000 at the strike's peak, had five core demands:

1) Eliminate group punishments for individual rules violations; 2) Abolish the debriefing policy and modify active/inactive gang status criteria; 3) Comply with the recommendations of the US Commission on Safety and Abuse in Prisons (2006) regarding an end to long term solitary confinement; 4) Provide adequate food; 5) Expand and provide constructive programs and privileges for indefinite SHU inmates.

The strike, the second three-week hunger strike to rock California’s prison system this year alone, was called by men in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) of California's Pelican Bay State Prison. The SHU is explicitly designed to keep prisoners in long-term solitary confinement under conditions of extreme sensory deprivation. Men are locked into their cells for at least 22 hours a day. Food is delivered twice a day through a slot in the cell door.

Nearly three weeks after the strike began, the CDCR promised both the hunger strikers and members of the outside mediation team to review every single SHU placement under new criteria. In response, the hunger strikers at Pelican Bay ended their strike on October 13th. Two days later, hunger strikers at Calipatria State Prison halted their strike, stating that they were enabling prisoners to regain their strength.

But the struggle over the SHU is only the beginning.

The Wall Street Journal printed an opinion piece from a couple of conservative blowhards manufacturing a new controversy against the Affordable Care Act, and naturally, it has gone viral in the conservative world. That's not a surprise. The surprise was seeing Ezra Klein promoting the piece as though it is legitimate. The central claim in the WSJ piece is this: that the language of the ACA only authorizes premium assistance subsidies for exchanges established by states (Sec. 1311), but not to exchanges established by the federal government (sec. 1321) should a state fail to do so. Since only 17 states so far have enacted legislation establishing the exchanges, ObamaCare is going to die a death by 33 states or some such thing. And to make up for that gap, the Obama administration is "rewriting" the law to apply the premium subsidies to both types of exchanges (by the means of an IRS rule).

Only this is not true (see bill text). Neither Sec. 1311 nor Sec. 1321 has an explicit mention of the premium assistance subsidies, which are actually defined in Sections 1401 and 1402. The conservative blowhards are likely referring to this part of 1401 that does refer to Sec. 1311:

‘(2) PREMIUM ASSISTANCE AMOUNT.—The premium assistance amount determined under this subsection with respect to any coverage month is the amount equal to the lesser of—
‘‘(A) the monthly premiums for such month for 1 or more qualified health plans offered in the individual market within a State which cover the taxpayer, the taxpayer’s spouse, or any dependent (as defined in section 152) of the taxpayer and which were enrolled in through an Exchange established by the State under 1311 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act...

One of the things that President Obama's detractors on the sanctimonious Left have always failed to understand is the concept of leverage. Or rather, they have always misconstrued that concept. It's been equated with podium pounding, "pushing hard", and totally, absolutely, and completely an abhorrence against compromise. As if leverage meant that the president was an elected dictator and he could do anything he wanted simply by wishing hard enough.

But leverage in politics and legislating is not about what you can do to convince your own side. It's about what you can do convince the other side or if not convince them, put them in a bind so they have to acquiesce to your demands. That kind of leverage was not available to the president - Republicans (and some Democrats) had no incentive to cooperate with the President on health reform, financial reform, student loan reform, credit card reform, and so on. Actually, as the professional, sanctimonious Left joined the chaos of the radical Right to try to stop these reforms on the excuse of not-good-enough-ism, they helped reduce any leverage the president did have.

So what is leverage? This is leverage:

Hensarling looked for help from President Obama, who is traveling in Australia. He noted that he told the president in a phone call last Friday that he wanted Obama to clarify or rescind a veto threat he issued to Congress back in September, when he said he would reject any plan to overhaul entitlement programs without asking the wealthy to pay more in taxes.

You might have noticed that lately, the Supercommittee in Congress, charged with reducing the deficit by $1.2 trillion or face the country with huge automatic cuts to defense and entitlement provider payments, has been a subject of buzz. That's because the deadline for the supercommittee to reach a deal and vote on it is exactly one week away. Something interesting is happening: Republicans are still by and large opposed to tax revenue increases in any significant way, but they offered, as the opening offer, a $300 billion increase in tax revenue by closing some loopholes for the top income earners. Sen. Pat Toomey, the super anti-tax, anti-government Republican even suggested a similar plan while lowering the overall top rate from 35 to 28 percent.

Yes, it's not much. And there is no way Congressional Democrats or President Obama will accept this without more revenue increases. But this is already opening a rift among Republicans - those who understand that the debt limit deal was a sure loss for the Republicans and compromise to avoid those painful, automatic defense (and medical industry) cuts is a must, and those who are running for president in their own party. Don't take it from me; take it from them:

House Speaker John Boehner publicly blessed a Republican deficit-reduction plan Tuesday that would raise $300 billion in additional tax revenue while overhauling the IRS code, bucking opposition by some GOP presidential hopefuls and colleagues wary of violating a longstanding point of party orthodoxy.

Despite Boehner's comments — and Toomey's credentials as an opponent of tax increases — GOP presidential contenders Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry said they were prepared to oppose a plan along the lines of the one under consideration. Another candidate, Mitt Romney, brushed aside a question on the subject.

Ezra Klein writes in the Washington Post that the usual terrible negotiating, weak, caving and so on by the Democrats has resulted in devastating cuts to the programs that are the highest priorities for Democrats like - um, well like none of them. Yes, despite the Republican/Tea Party taking total control of the US House of Representatives and tiny Democratic majority in the Senate that depends on some quite conservative Senators, the Democratic Party has successfully defended its budget priorities - the safety net for the poor and helpless, education, and new energy programs. Furthermore the Democrats have fought off GOP attempts to defund the EPA and to kill Planned Parenthood. This despite an unprecedentedly disciplined - cult like - Republican Party that votes unanimously on all issues and that openly is attempting to destroy the economy in order to defeat the President. And the President has often had to beat back defectors in his own party - even some of the most liberal members who should be his core supporters. And yet, Klein writes paragraph after paragraph about the weakness of the Democratic negotiations! Why? Because it is axiomatic in DC, among Republicans and among the professional left/liberal media that the Democrats are weak. This must be true in the narrative, no matter what the facts - so that Klein has to write openly ridiculous stuff like this

the fact remains: Their [Republicans] strategy of saying no has, thus far, paid great dividends, though not ones Republicans have decided to collect.

There you go: the Republican strategy of "saying no" is so tough and the Democratic response so weak that the Republicans have not even bothered to collect any wins. In other words, the actual situation is that the GOP has not won anything despite taking control of the House, but this is such a violation of narrative that Klein has to insist that they just left their winnings on the table - um, because.

Politicians always talk about "trimming waste" in government. The Obama administration shows 'em how it's done. Almost $18 billion-with-a-"B" in savings this year alone (and 2011 ain't over yet.) Over $20 billion since 2010.

And more to come, thanks to a new Executive Order, part of the President's ongoing "We Can't Wait" initiative where he's taking action Congress just can't seem to get around to.

We Can’t Wait: Agencies Cut Nearly $18 Billion in Improper Payments, Announce New Steps for Stopping Government Waste
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) today announced that the Administration cut wasteful improper payments by $17.6 billion dollars in 2011 as part of the Obama Administration’s Campaign to Cut Waste, fueled by decreases in payment errors in Medicare, Medicaid, Pell Grants, and Food Stamps. Combined with the improper payment cuts in 2010, agencies have avoided making over $20 billion in improper payments in the two years since President Obama issued an Executive Order initiating an aggressive campaign against wasteful payment errors.

“When the President and I launched the Campaign to Cut Waste we knew success would be measured by results, not rhetoric,” said Vice President Biden. “The sharp reduction in payment errors announced today demonstrates this Administration is serious about cutting waste,” he added.

“Because of the sustained commitment from the President, the Vice President, and leaders across the Administration – and the effective use of technology – we are seeing real progress cracking down on this waste of taxpayer dollars that has persisted for far too long,” said OMB Director Jack Lew. “Through aggressive and innovative solutions being deployed by Federal agencies, we are on track to meet the President’s bold directive to prevent $50 billion in payment errors by the end of 2012. This is a good step, but not the end. We will continue to work day and night to prevent taxpayer dollars from being wasted in payments to the wrong people or in the wrong amount.”

Cross-posted from Eclectablog.

Anyone who spends any time at all paying attention to Liberal politics knows who Karl Rove and the Koch Brothers are. We all pretty much are familiar with the unconscionable Supreme Court Citizens United decision that allows unlimited funds to be used for political campaigns of every sort. And most of us have made the association between Karl Rove and American Crossroads, and the Koch Brothers with Americans for Prosperity. Guess who does NOT know this? The average voter. This is where we are presented with an opportunity to influence how people perceive the advertisement they see, hear and get in their mailboxes.

Branding a product or an idea is a powerful tool that can attach a specific set of desired responses to a product. In politics, that desired response is emotional in context. For decades the Republican Party has been branding itself as ‘Strong on Defense’, ‘Fiscally Responsible’ and ‘Pro Limited Government’. Then they proceeded to abuse the military to the point of breaking it, ruin the economy and grow government by leaps and bounds. Once their brand was tarnished by the out-going President Bush, they created a new brand: The Tea Party. Before that brand lost its luster, they succeeded in getting their Party back into position to extend their reach for the next decade with redistricting to protect those gains.

Contrary to Republican idolatry, corporations are not human beings endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights but legal structures designed to let people pool their labor and investments. That is, corporations are things created by law supposedly for the benefit of society. Under US/UK law, the assets and liabilities of the corporation are kept separate from the assets and liabilities of the managers and owners (shareholders). For example, when Lehman collapsed Lehman's debts were owed by the corporation not the people who either owned the corporation (the shareholders) or those who managed it. We are so accustomed to this way of doing things that we don't even notice it, but companies didn't always work like this and even now, in many parts of the world the directors of a company are personally responsible for its debts. There is a case to be made that people who bought Lehman shares hoping to profit from how it did business should have had to share in the losses. And I can't think of any reason that the managers and directors who took the company into collapse should have been able to walk away with millions or hundreds of millions.

In theory limiting the risks of of managers and shareholders encourages enterprise and innovation but over the last 40 years or so US law has been changed by Congress and activist right wing judges to encourage abuse while at the same time destroying the original purpose. In fact, Mitt Romney as well as Pete Peterson (the Nixon Cabinet member who hates Social Security) and his partner Steve Schwarzman (the guy who said Obama's tax proposal was like Hitler invading Poland) became fabulously wealthy through exploiting the loopholes that the right has made in corporate law.

In a pretty much standard conservative article on the budget from the Times we get this

In an article in the current issue of the journal The National Interest, Mr. Friedman named this problem the “no-growth trap.” In the short term, this trap takes the form of resistance to emergency measures, like Germany’s distaste at bailing out more profligate countries, which may increase deficits. “The central paradox of financial crises,” Timothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary, said before leaving for the Group of 20 meetings in Europe last week, : “is that what feels just and fair is the opposite of what’s required for a just and fair outcome.”

And then Felix Salman cites the exact same article:

“The central paradox of financial crises,” Timothy Geithner, the Treasury secretary, said before leaving for the Group of 20 meetings in Europe last week, “is that what feels just and fair is the opposite of what’s required for a just and fair outcome.”

This is textbook Geithner. For one thing, it’s pure Technocrat. Geithner, here, is the worldly policy wonk, explaining why it’s silly to simply do what feels right. In fact, you should do what feels wrong!

The quote is also extremely defensive — as it probably should be, coming from the one member of Obama’s economic team who played a central part in orchestrating the Bush bailouts.

And I can’t help but see the influence of Occupy Wall Street here, too. They’re demanding justice; and Geithner is, essentially, dismissing them as unsophisticated rubes. If only they understood what he understands — then they’d see that the bailouts were in their own best interes

Note how the sentence I put in bold from the original article has vanished. So Geithner says that Germany may not want to bail out Greece but it needs to, and Salman explains that he means that the OWS protestors are "rubes". If they are, it's partly due to people like Salman lying to them.

Karl Smith looks back on the first two years of the Obama administration's economics policy and provides a perfect example of the superficial, timid, and bureaucratic nature of the modern American "left":

1. Tim Geithner is trotted out as the bad guy who single handed prevents "empowerment" of leftists and populist reforms from Congress! This is the heart of the "progressive" fantasy: someone with poor judgment has failed to seek their brilliant advice.
2. The automobile rescue, a massive government industrial intervention in which manufacturing and unions were saved with Federal money and at the expense of bondholders and hedge funds disappears! So the populist wave, for which there is no evidence stars in the account while the populist social policy which actually happened is invisible. But that's not the only fact that is disappeared:
   • The health care reform, a fundamental change in US economic organization that Congresswoman Barbara Lee called as significant as the adoption of the voting rights act, is presented as the foolish obsession of the naive President.
   • Dodd-Frank? CFPB? Student Loan reform? DOE investment in solar/battery?...
3. An elaborate and ridiculously far fetched scenario is proposed as a serious description of public policy and the only evidence introduced is the assumption by the author that the President is stupid, his advisers are both Machiavellian and naive/corrupt, and the lite Keynsianism of the timid professional left is not only intellectually sound but wildly popular.
4. None of the underlying structural problems of a US economy such as 60 years of military spending, public investment in (mostly white) suburbs, weak unions, racism, collapse of manufacturing employment, wealth inequality, dependence on middle east oil etc. appear at all. It's just WAAH TIMMEY DIDN'T TAKE OUR ADVICE".

† Criminal InJustice^† is a weekly series devoted to taking action against inequities in the U.S. criminal justice system. Nancy A. Heitzeg, Professor of Sociology and Race/Ethnicity, is the Editor of CI. The Criminal Injustice Series is originally Published at Critical Mass Progress every Wednesday at 6 pm CST.

On State Violence, White Male Privilege, and "Occupy" by Nancy A. Heitzeg

"I ain't about to go get arrested with some muhfuhkuhs who just figured out yesterday that this shit ain't right." quoted by Greg Tate in The Village Voice

Much has been written of late as to the "white maleness" of the "Occupy" Movement. The demographics of the participants, which varies from city to city, but which is consistently seen as predominately young white and male, not fully reflective of the "99%". The language of "occupy" itself - this is the rhetoric of colonialism, conquest, imperialism, militarism, and well, "white" males. The class-based framing and the lack of intersectional analysis - it is difficult to undo "the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy" by over-looking the centrality of white supremacy and patriarchy. The amorphous lack of specific demands, save that of attention - trust me, if my multi-race, multi-gendered, multi-sexuality crew and I are camping out in protest, in a public space at that, we know exactly what we are gonna ask for.

While the Occupy Movement may evolve and expand in new directions, form new coalitions, as of now, it is a movement dominated by "white" male privilege. And no where is this more telling than in the response to State violence against protesters, and in the absence of a critique of the political economy of the prison industrial complex.

In the aftermath of police actions in NYC, Oakland and elsewhere, some justifiable outrage and even more hyperbole abounded. Scott Olsen, the injured Iraq War veteran who galvanized Occupy Oakland critiques of police action, was described in various blog posts as "the Crispus Attucks of the movement". Never mind that he is white. Or alive. A recent NYPD action that moved protesters off a public side - walk and resulted in 20 arrests was described by an observer as "the most egregious violation of Constitutional rights I have ever seen."

Really??

Rodney King?? Oscar Grant?? Amadou Diallo?? Sean Bell?? Abner Louima?? Troy Davis??

How many millions more??

And where you been?? .

I have been asked why I haven't written praiseworthy articles about the Occupy Wall Street movement in this country. It's certainly a phenomenon that seems to have captured a lot of minds and attention, and focused their grievances on the financial sector that brought our country to the verge of calamity. So in that sense, protesting them is a good thing, and that's what the OWS people are doing, right? Yes, and that's a good thing. I, however, am someone more interested in solutions - to be specific, public policy solutions. I'm all for making the lives of bankers difficult, but I am more for making the tricks they used to ruin our economy impossible in the future.

OWS' website sports the "We Are the 99 Percent" blog, where people participating in this movement are telling their stories. So I decided to take a look and see how their grievances have been addressed (or not addressed) by President Obama, given OWS' aversion to the president and his party in general too. Usually, I wouldn't give away the conclusion before presenting the case, but in this case it is pretty clear: people seem to be unaware of the things that a Democratic administration has done to address their specific issues, and equally ambivalent about what the Republican party has done to make their lives worse.

Last night's elections, a mere one year after the Republican tidal wave of 2010, proved that while people are ticked off at the condition of the economy, they are in no mood to take right wing wholesale attacks on the quintessential American values like rights of workers, voters and their general dickishness.

Ohio voters used a citizens veto, by a 2-1 margin to roll back the attack on the right of Ohio public employee unions by Republicans in the governor's office and state legislature, Maine voters soundly rejected their Republican governor and legislature's attempt to make it harder to vote and brought back same-day voter registration, and voters in blood red Mississippi whacked the religious Right by defeating their "personhood" amendment by a wide margin. Not to be outdone, Arizonans recalled the author of the state's "Papers Please" racial profiling immigration law.

And here's the kicker: the Republican candidates for president - including their likely nominee Mitt(ens) Romney - are on the record being for almost all of these things now rejected widely by voters: Ohio's union stripping law, Mississippi's "personhood" garbage, and of course, Arizona's papers please act.

Health Reform including the individual responsibility provision is constitutional and will be upheld as such. The more health reform opponents challenge its validity, the more courts keep striking down their petulence. The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia today released its ruling upholding the constitutionality of the individual mandate, in an opinion written by Judge Laurence Silberman, a conservative Reagan appointee.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia dismissed a claim from a Christian legal group that a provision in the law requiring almost all Americans to get health insurance--known as the individual mandate--violates the Constitution.

The opinion was written by Judge Laurence Silberman, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan and is known as a conservative.

Not only is Judge Silberman a Reagan appointee, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by none other than George W. Bush.

 

Photo by: Patrick Emmerson

I have not written anything for past couple weeks because my family just literally fell off a financial cliff and we were in crisis. My husband suddenly lost his Consultant job of 18 months and we were officially out in the wilderness. Normally, I love to write but I had to put all of my energy into fighting to save our financial life. They let him go without any severance and we were already struggling. We have always been in the 99%. My husband is a cancer survivor, I am a survivor of Domestic Violence and my brother died of AIDS. A couple of years ago my ex-sister-in-law lost her life to cancer. There have been many moments of despair in our lives but yet we hung on and kept going. We pulled ourselves up by the "bootstraps" and got back into the game kicking and fighting.

Criminal InJustice^† is a weekly series devoted to taking action against inequities in the U.S. criminal justice system. Nancy A. Heitzeg, Professor of Sociology and Race/Ethnicity, is the Editor of CI. Criminal InJustice is published every Wednesday at 6 pm CST.

A Prisoner Writes from Pelican Bay to Victoria Law Editors note: Victoria Law is a writer, photographer and mother. She is the author of "Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women" (PM Press 2009), the editor of the zine Tenacious: Art and Writings from Women in Prison and a co-founder of Books Through Bars - NYC. She is currently working on transforming "Don't Leave Your Friends Behind," a zine series on how radical movements can support the families in their midst, into a book. In a recent piece, California Prison Hunger Strike Ends, Conditions of "Immense Torture" Continue, Victoria outlined the history of Pelican Bay, Secure Housing Unit (SHU) abuses and the series of inmate hunger strikes that recently end once again, In the following letter, a Pelican Bay inmate chronicles the on-going abuses and retaliation. (This inmate did not participate in the hunger strike due to medical reasons and hence, was not placed in Administrative Segregation or denied mail privileges.) We hope this first-hand account will inspire you to continue to pressure Governor Brown and the CDRC to meet inmate demands.

Senate Republicans today blocked a vote on yet another one of the components of President Obama's jobs plan today. This one would have invested $60 billon in building and repairing our nation's crumbling infrastructure and was fully paid for by a 0.7% (!!!) surcharge on income over $1 million. A bridge too far for Republicans, apparently.

Republicans in the Senate Thursday dealt President Barack Obama the third in a string of defeats on his stimulus-style jobs agenda, blocking a $60 billion measure for building and repairing infrastructure like roads and rail lines.

Supporters of the failed measure said it would have created tens of thousands of construction jobs and lifted the still-struggling economy. But Republicans unanimously opposed it for its tax surcharge on the wealthy and spending totals they said were too high.

The 51-49 vote fell well short of the 60 votes required under Senate procedures to start work on the bill. Every Republican opposed the president, as did Democrat Ben Nelson of Nebraska and former Democrat Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., who still aligns with the party.

These votes are the first in a string of votes that President Obama is lining up like bowling pins for the Republicans to knock down. His timing is exquisite. By the time they pick a candidate, the Republicans will have firmly established themselves as the not just the party of "HELL NO, YOU CAN'T!!!, they will be on the record for vote after vote after vote on bills to help struggling Americans and get our economy going again.

It's been a busy week for President Obama. On top of news that his administration (via the FBI) has busted up yet another domestic terrorist plot (sorry, no Muslims this time, Mr. Conservative), we got this:

Obama general counsel Bob Bauer emails lawyers and law students that the campaign is setting up an "unprecedented" new "voter protection" program -- a standard feature of Democratic campaigns, but given the general enthusiasm for Obama, and the specific enthusiasm (according to my anecdotal sense) among legal types, probably on a very large scale.

Click through to read Bauer's email.

Then there's this:

President Obama ripped into House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Wednesday, ridiculing the Republican leader for holding a vote to affirm the national motto — but failing to vote on proposed jobs legislation.

“If Congress tells you they don’t have time -- they’ve got time to do it,” Obama said at an event at the Georgetown Waterfront. “In the House of Representatives, what have you guys been debating? John, you’ve been debating a commemorative coin for baseball? You had legislation reaffirming that ‘In God We Trust’ is our motto? That’s not putting people back to work.”

Obama continued: “I trust in God, but God wants to see us help ourselves by putting people back to work.”

Yeeouch. That'll leave a mark. I'm loving the new "naming names" Obama, aren't you?

But, wait! There's more!

I’m not a policy wonk. I’m more likely to fit the description of a ‘hack’. A hack, in this vernacular, is someone who specializes in electoral politics. I’m not a career hack by any means; I’m just a volunteer. Rather than get riled up about any particular ‘issue’ I strive to help people win elections so they can govern and create good policy. Perhaps the only ‘issue’ I can get riled up about in any sustained fashion is voting.

Needless to say I’ve been reading about the national trend toward voter suppression with growing concern. Clearly I don’t want to see this happen anywhere. I believe making voting as easy as possible is the way to go. I’m very fortunate to live in a State where that is the case. Voting by mail is as close to ideal a way to vote as any I can imagine. It’s cheaper, safer and easier than poll voting.

Right now my biggest concern regarding voter suppression isn’t that it’s happening in places like South Carolina, or how it is being reported (or not reported) in the Main Stream Media. What is bothering me is how it is being reported in the blogosphere and non-traditional media. So far the way this topic is being handled amounts to a disproportionate amount of hand-wringing and, sorry to say, hyperbole. Nothing highlights this reaction more than losing sight of the difference between proposing a law and passing a law. Yes American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) provided ready-made laws to be introduced into the State Legislature in 38 states. I get that. Yes, and in some states those laws will pass in some form or another. I get that, too. We have ample evidence of what happens when a law gets introduced in one House in a Legislature and how difficult it is to be signed into law. Under Speaker Boehner, the Republicans have ‘introduced’ hundreds of Bills in the past 300 days. Only three major Bills have been enacted into Law during that time: The Continuing Resolution, Raising the Debt Ceiling and the America Invents Act (patent reform).

I don't mean to be brazen, but that's what happened yesterday on Hardball with Chris Matthews. Matthews wrote a book about President Kennedy, and he invited Howard Fineman of The AOL Huffington Post and Mike Barnicle on his show to ask him questions about it. Quickly, the content of the segment drifted away from the Kennedy's and moved onto three old white politicos' assessment on the political skills of the country's first black president, Barack Obama. More specifically, it delved into how Barack Obama does not measure up to President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy.

Here's the full interview of Chris Matthews on his own show:

When news came about Bank of America beginning to charge a $5 monthly fee for people to use their own money by the means of use of an ATM card, we at TPV, and people across the Interwebs and the offline world were outraged. But something happened this time. Being outraged doesn't solve any problems - but turning that outrage to action does. That's what people did. People took action and started to move their money.

And look what we have here. Bank of America and all its partners in sucking the American consumer dry are suddenly changing tune. Bank of America, Chase and Wells Fargo have all folded in the face of consumers voting with their feet and taking their money elsewhere (like to credit unions and community banks) and canceled their planned monthly fee on debit cards. How do I know consumer pressure is the reason for the big banks backing off? Other than the fact that banks are canceling a fee that was supposed to net them billions, you can also hear it from the horse's mouth:

Anne Pace, a spokeswoman for Bank of America, declined to say whether Bank of America's announcement of the new debit card fee had led to a spike in account closures. She said the decision to scrap the fee was based partly on a "changing competitive marketplace."

"Over the past couple of weeks, customer sentiment changed," she said.

Energy:

Here's a mind-bending thought: The United States can wean itself from oil and coal by 2050 — and without action by presidents or Congress.

"It's refreshing to think that we needn't wait for Washington," Amory Lovins told me recently. The founder and chairman of the Old Snowmass, Colo.-based Rocky Mountain Institute, Lovins has been a leader in the science of energy efficiency for decades

Football: The Green Bay Packers have an efficient corporate structure - without the waste and disruption caused by a billionaire owner.

The Packers nonprofit status may come as a surprise. Every other franchise in the National Football League (and every other major league sport) is owned by private individuals. [...]

Yet even with a metro area of small population, every single Packers home game has been sold out since the 1960’s. That’s nearly half a century of sold out games! Some for-profit teams around the nation, like the Oakland Raiders, struggle to even get one sold out game in a season.

Employee Owned Companies : The Employee Ownership 100: America's Largest Majority Employee-Owned Companies. Good example is SRC. As opposed to Private Equity looted companies: like this one.

Limits on Executive Pay: SEC moves towards exposing Corporate Executive Pay

If the new infrastructure proposal were enacted, the surtax on millionaires would impact a grand total of 345,532 taxpayers nationwide — or 0.2 percent of American taxpayers. * If the new infrastructure proposal were enacted, the 0.7 percent surtax would amount to all of $13,457 on average for the millionaires that would pay it. Given that their average income is $2,923,000, this means they would be paying on average an additional 1/217 of their overall income, or just over an additional 0.4 percent. That’s less than one half of one percent. [ Greg Sargent]

The Senate Republicans are not only unanimously opposed to this bill they are filibustering it. Filibusters are supposed to be used for issues where the minority feels a deep principle is at stake and here we can see two deep principles are at stake for the Republicans. First, they don't want the rich to pay a single penny of tax to support the commonwealth. Their idea is that the rich can donate to charity when they feel like it, but unlike the rest of us, don't have any civic duty at all. The second principle, of course, is that anything that can make the economy better might help Barack Obama get re-elected and getting Barack Obama out of the White House is their number one priority.