Go, Canucks! (and a typical book club)

Canada Geese - have you checked outside your window when the game's on? You might want to turn up the volume, just to be kind.

The Book Club

Robert Reich is an eminent economist. He was Secretary of Labor under President Clinton from 1993 to 1997. In 2008, Time Magazine named him one of the Ten Best Cabinet Members of the century, and The Wall Street Journal in 2008 placed him sixth on its list of the "Most Influential Business Thinkers".

He has a great piece at Huffington Post entitled The Truth About The American Economy. It's excerpted from testimony he gave a Senate Committee on May 12 and includes material from his latest book. It's sensible and well-reasoned, a long way from being a lefty screed. Reich examines what he calls The Great Prosperity, from 1944-1977, and The Middle-Class Squeeze, from 1977-2007. He asks:

How did we go from the Great Depression to 30 years of Great Prosperity? And from there, to 30 years of stagnant incomes and widening inequality, culminating in the Great Recession? And from the Great Recession into such an anemic recovery?

The Great Prosperity was the result of a successful social contract between labor, capital, and government. Increasing production led to increasing consumption; workers were paid well enough to purchase the products they were making. "Labor productivity -- average output per hour worked -- doubled. So did median incomes."

The middle class had the means to buy, and their buying created new jobs. As the economy grew, the national debt shrank as a percentage of it.

In an expanding economy, laws were passed concerning overtime pay. That encouraged employers to hire workers rather than increase hours. The minimum wage law meant that those of the bottom of the economic ladder were doing better than they otherwise would.

The union movement was strong. "By the mid-1950s, more than a third of all America workers in the private sector were unionized."

Government played an active and positive role. Social Security and Medicare provided a secure safety net that gave people a feeling of confidence and well-being. The government provided low-cost mortgages and interest deductions on mortgage payments and provided the robust infrastructure -- provision of water, electricity, the interstate highway system -- necessary to support a vibrant economy. The G.I. Bill paid for veterans' education, and government support allowed public universities to provide affordable higher education.

This government contribution was paid for by taxes. "But contrary to what conservative commentators had predicted, the high tax rates did not reduce economic growth. To the contrary, they enabled the nation to expand middle-class prosperity and fuel growth."

Globalization and technical advances have resulted in Reich's "Middle Class Squeeze," from approximately 1977-2007. As automation reduced the number of workers required, the broad work force quietly accepted less and less pay rather than be unemployed. Wages stagnated.

Starting more than three decades ago, trade and technology began driving a wedge between the earnings of people at the top and everyone else. The pay of well-connected graduates of prestigious colleges and MBA programs has soared. But the pay and benefits of most other workers has either flattened or dropped. And the ensuing division has also made most middle-class American families less economically secure.

As the economy faltered, government turned away from providing the support that it had in the good years. Over a period of decades, it has slashed public investment in education, for example, and has allowed public transportation to crumble and corrode.

It shredded safety nets -- reducing aid to jobless families with children, tightening eligibility for food stamps, and cutting unemployment insurance so much that by 2007 only 40 percent of the unemployed were covered. It halved the top income tax rate from the range of 70 to 90 percent that prevailed during the Great Prosperity to 28 to 35 percent; allowed many of the nation's rich to treat their income as capital gains subject to no more than 15 percent tax; and shrunk inheritance taxes that affected only the top-most 1.5 percent of earners. Yet at the same time, America boosted sales and payroll taxes, both of which took a bigger chunk out of the pay the middle class and the poor than of the well off.

Reich suggests that the American people developed three methods to cope with the economic squeeze:

1. Far more women entering the workforce:
   

   In 1966, 20 percent of mothers with young children worked outside the home. By the late 1990s, the proportion had risen to 60 percent. For married women with children under the age of 6, the transformation has been even more dramatic -- from 12 percent in the 1960s to 55 percent by the late 1990s.

2. Working longer hours:
   

   All told, by the 2000s, the typical American worker worked more than 2,200 hours a year -- 350 hours more than the average European worked, more hours even than the typically industrious Japanese put in. It was many more hours than the typical American middle-class family had worked in 1979 -- 500 hours longer, a full 12 weeks more.

3. Drawing down savings and going into debt:
   

   Individual savings dropped from an average of 9% in the period of The Great Prosperity to 0% by 2008. By 2007, the typical American owed 138 percent of their after-tax income.

It would be nice if Reich had ended optimistically with sensible, concrete plans for improvement. But he's a little more downbeat than that:

All three coping mechanisms have been exhausted. The fundamental economic challenge ahead is to restore the vast American middle class.

That requires resurrecting the basic bargain linking wages to overall gains, and providing the middle class a share of economic gains sufficient to allow them to purchase more of what the economy can produce. As we should have learned from the Great Prosperity -- the 30 years after World War II when America grew because most Americans shared in the nation's prosperity -- we cannot have a growing and vibrant economy without a growing and vibrant middle class.

Click the link. It's an interesting read.

Don Blankenship Must Go To Jail.

Remember Massey Energy, 5 April 2010? The West Virginia mine explosion that killed 29 miners?

Behind that tragedy is a transparent case of judicial corruption in West Virginia. Caperton v. A. T. Massey Coal Co. was a 2009 decision by United States Supreme Court dealing with the circumstances under which a judge has a duty to recuse himself from a case. One of the judges in the West Virginia Supreme Court was a close friend of Blankenship's; with the case pending, Blankenship spent $3 million successfully campaigning to replace another judge he felt would be hostile to him in the $50 million Caperton case. As a result of these two cozy little situations, the State court held in favor of Massey, 3-2.

Here's a link to a Daily Kos article by Mark Sumner entitled The Most Dangerous Man To America, Is In America.

He's successfully bribed a state Supreme Court justice.

Adam Liptak reported in the New York Times on January 15, 2008:

A justice of the West Virginia Supreme Court and a powerful coal-company executive met in Monte Carlo in the summer of 2006, sharing several meals even as the executive’s companies were appealing a $50 million jury verdict against them to the court.

A little more than a year later, the justice, Elliott E. Maynard, voted with the majority in a 3-to-2 decision in favor of the coal companies.

He's also subverted an election of another justice to protect his profits. According to an article in USA Today:

In 2002, Caperton won a $50 million verdict against Massey after a jury agreed with Caperton's claim that Massey had fraudulently run him out of business. Massey appealed to the state's Supreme Court, but not before Blankenship used $3 million of his own money for ads to unseat a judge he considered anti-business and replace him with a judge he liked. Once on the bench, the new justice, Brent Benjamin, provided a crucial vote to overturn the $50 million verdict against Massey. Benjamin refused to recuse himself from the case — as Caperton had asked — saying he could be impartial.

Sumner says:

He's crushed smaller companies using illegal tactics, used his political connections to skate around massive violations of environmental rules, and not just repeatedly voiced the claim that global warming is hoax, but funded mock-science studies and attacks on climate scientists. Forget trying to clean up our energy system. According to Blankenship, even trying to conserve energy is communism.

And of course, there's the little matter of murder. Actually multiple murders. Enough murders to make Charles Manson or Jeffrey Dahmer look like pikers.

But behavior like this pays pretty well:

In the same year leading up to the deaths of 29 people in Upper Big Branch, Don Blankenship took home over $17 million, including an $11 million "performance bonus." Since the explosion, Blankenship has retired. But don't worry, his golden parachute should keep him in hookers and caviar along the Riviera.

Sumner's article goes into some detail about the explosion, and into the ongoing Massey policy of sacrificing safety for profit. According to a report by the West Virginia Governor’s Independent Investigation Panel on the Upper Big Branch/Massey Energy Explosion  that came out this month:

Ultimately, the responsibility for the explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine lies with the management of Massey Energy. The company broke faith with its workers by frequently and knowingly violating the law and blatantly disregarding known safety practices while creating a public perception that its operations exceeded industry safety standards.

The story of Upper Big Branch is a cautionary tale of hubris. A company that was a towering presence in the Appalachian coalfields operated its mines in a profoundly reckless manner, and 29 coal miners paid with their lives for the corporate risk-taking.

The April 5, 2010, explosion was not something that happened out of the blue, an event that could not have been anticipated or prevented. It was, to the contrary, a completely predictable result for a company that ignored basic safety.

Here's more on that report from a piece by William Galston in The New Republic entitled Public Good:

Many systems created to safeguard miners had to break down in order for an explosion of this magnitude to occur. … Such total and catastrophic systemic failures can only be explained in the context of a culture in which wrongdoing became acceptable, where deviation became the norm. In such a culture it was acceptable to mine coal with insufficient air; with buildups of coal dust; with inadequate rock dust. The same culture allowed Massey Energy to use its resources to create a false public image …. And it became acceptable to cast agencies designed to protect miners as enemies and to make life difficult for miners who tried to address safety.

In an appendix, the report lists 18 individuals who responded to a state subpoena by invoking the Fifth Amendment and refusing to testify. They include Massey Energy’s former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, as well as its Chief Operating Officer, Vice President of Safety, and President of the Upper Big Branch mine. I don’t know how these people live with themselves. Keep this episode firmly in mind whenever you hear conservatives’ ritual denunciation of “burdensome, job-killing regulations.” Life-saving would be more like it.

I believe Blankenship bears personal, and not just corporate, responsibility for Massey's appalling safety record and in particular the 29 deaths at the Upper Big Branch Mine. In 2005, Blankenship wrote and circulated a memo to employees stating:

If any of you have been asked by your group presidents, your supervisors, engineers or anyone else to do anything other than run coal (i.e., build overcasts, do construction jobs, or whatever) you need to ignore them and run coal.

Don Blankenship is corporate greed personified: Nothing, not even the lives of workers, can be allowed to prevent a rapacious and amoral corporation from squeezing out one more dollar of profit for its obscenely rich owners.

The Fire In Sarah's Belly (Praise The Lord And Pass The Ammunition)

From a piece by Susie Madrak at Crooks & Liars. What's often missed in discussions of Palin is the fact that she's a religious crank whose goal is to institute a theocratic government in the U.S. She is often ridiculed, but her truly dangerous "Dominionist" beliefs are not well known. This woman is not just a joke, and she should be taken seriously. Don't forget, she is revered by millions who would follow her anywhere.

Leah Burton, of “God’s Own Party” made the following Fire in the Belly video:

And it’s not just Sarah Palin. As Leah explains, “She is joined by many who share her biblical “call to service in the name of Jesus Christ” such as Tim Pawlenty, Mitch Daniels, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, Michelle Bachmann, and a whole host of frightening – albeit not as recognizable – theocratic politicians who are aggressively working to re-write our Constitution and anchor it in Old Testament Mosaic Law.”

Follow the "Leah Burton" and "God's Own Party" links above if you like a good horror story.

Tidbits

Angela Merkel's administration in Germany is phasing out that country's use of nuclear power over the next ten years.
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General Martin Dempsey, currently U.S. Army Chief of Staff, will replace Admiral Mike Mullen when he steps down as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on October 1.
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Mark Zuckerberg has adopted a practice of eating vegetarian except for animals he has personally killed. So far he's killed lobsters, goats, pigs, and chickens. I don't know whether he butchers the animals himself.

I like the idea: Meat doesn't come from supermarkets. It comes from animals we have killed, and a terrifying proportion of those animals are raised in brutal, torturous conditions in factory farms. "How many times must a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn't see?" If you're going to eat meat, it seems right that you should get your hands bloody to do it.

My father was a hunter: Every year, he shot a deer or a moose, butchered it, carried it out of the bush, and put it in the freezer. (I recognize my own hypocrisy here; supermarket meat will be part of my next meal.)
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Apparently Sarah Palin's staff are calling her bus trip through the Northeast a "learning tour." Good luck with that one, Sarah.
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Rudy Giuliani led Republican hopefuls in the latest Gallup poll. Do you think name recognition might be a factor?
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I'm getting really sick of hearing Paul Ryan's proposal to savage Medicare described as "courageous." Republicans' constant drive to slash benefits to the poor, sick, and elderly while cutting taxes on their plutocrat base isn't "courageous": It's cowardly and evil.
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Refusal to raise the debt ceiling is the latest policy to have reached prominence in public debate, along with justification for torture, child labor, and elimination of collective bargaining. Quo vadis, America?
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Tim Pawlenty: "... any doofus can go to Washington and maintain the status quo." I respectfully disagree, Tim. You're a big fish in Minnesota, but you ain't going to Washington. So at least some doofuses can't make it.

More from Pawlenty, in the same interview on CNN: "I'm not running for comedian-in-chief or entertainer-in-chief. I am not going to light my hair on fire and shoot sparks up my ears or whatever." Well, unless the Tea Party tells him he has to.
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"If you live in New York, it is so funny, you just don't expect two lanes. You expect one lane and double parking."
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"I love that smell of the emissions!" Sarah Palin at the Rolling Thunder event in D.C. Yeah, it's the smell of money, Sarah, and oil company profits. What's not to like?
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More on the Palin tour (accidental juxtaposition there of the words "more on"): the New York Times reports that Sarah denies any political aspect to her tour: "Ms. Palin is acting as though her family is just like any other taking a sight-seeing vacation to see the country." Ah, yes, just like the PAC-funded tours most Americans remember from their childhood, in the $500,000 family bus plastered with images of the Constitution.
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Inquiring minds want to know: How sleazy can Andrew Breitbart get? Re the underwear shot purportedly tweeted by Anthony Weiner: "At best, Breitbart's site shot first and asked questions later; at worst, it helped fabricate an attack on Weiner." Actually, I retract my question; I don't want to know how far Breitbart is willing to go. The idea is repellant.
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Robert Reich, in an article in the San Francisco Chronicle: "Who's more influential in the Republican Party -- the so-called Tea Party or Wall Street and big business?" That's the battle for the soul of the Republican party, and it's uncertain which will win out: corruption or wingnuttery.

Tea Partiers hate government more than they hate the national debt.... But the Street and big business dislike the national debt more than they dislike government.

Reich believes that at the moment, the Tea Party bozos have the upper hand:

Why is the Tea Party winning? Wall Street and big business hold the purse strings in the GOP, but the Tea Partiers are now the ground troops. House Republicans need those ground troops to get out the vote in 2012. And they figure Wall Street and big business will stake them regardless of what happens.

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How did the national debt come to dominate public discourse? Around the time of elections last November, the concern was jobs, jobs, jobs. I read an article back around then that said that a tiny, insignificant 56% of the people thought unemployment was the critical problem while a huge, massive 4% thought the biggest concern was the national debt.
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I love Paul Krugman. He and I are political soulmates. If I were a Nobel-winning economist with excellent writing skills, I would write the same things he does:

Yet a strange thing has happened to policy discussion: on both sides of the Atlantic, a consensus has emerged among movers and shakers that nothing can or should be done about jobs. Instead of a determination to do something about the ongoing suffering and economic waste, one sees a proliferation of excuses for inaction, garbed in the language of wisdom and responsibility.

Krugman goes on to suggest job-creating options, but says:

In the United States, in particular, any effort to tackle unemployment will run into a stone wall of Republican opposition.

Memorial Day's Black Roots - Charleston, South Carolina

Here's a link to Forgetting Why We Remember, a powerful op-ed in the New York Times about the origin of Memorial Day, and how it is more than just "a holiday devoted to department store sales, half-marathons, picnics, baseball and auto racing":

Formerly known as Decoration Day, which was first recorded to have been observed by Freedmen (freed enslaved southern blacks) in Charleston, South Carolina in 1865, at the Washington Race Course, to remember the fallen Union soldiers of the Civil War.

Digby at Hullabaloo discusses, in The First Memorial Day, the extent to which American history and black history are intertwined.

Republican Candidates Roundup: To Be Updated

Jon Huntsman:
Huntsman is staffing up in South Carolina and hitting the stump in New Hampshire. He's going after the endorsement of the Bush family. But Huntsman is far too reasonable. Conservative bloggers at Verum Serum produced a video that depicted Huntsman as a RINO. Huntsman is against the idea of a border fence, saying the notion "repulses" him. He's also pro-stimulus and the 2012 field's Afghanistan war critic. All of that will only bolster the critics on Huntsman's right flank.

He's four-square behind Paul Ryan's plan to gut Medicare. And Matt Yglesias notes that he's seemingly willing to embrace crackpot monetary theories as a way of closing the "wingnut gap."

Michele Bachmann:
Slow week.  It seems she'll hold off until June. She plans to make her announcement in Waterloo, Iowa, where she was born.

Herman Cain:
Last weekend Cain announced his candidacy at a rally in Atlanta, Georgia. He takes command in a public appearance, dominating milquetoasts like Romney and Pawlenty. in a Gallup poll released this week, Cain led all comers in the category of "positive intensity," the difference between strongly favorable and strongly unfavorable ratings. Cain gets a score of 27. More importantly, he's suddenly polling at 8 percent in the GOP field. He's behind frontrunners Romney and Palin, and is in the thick of the next tier with Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich. For a guy who was virtually unknown a month ago, this is great news.

He had an awkward moment on Fox News Sunday when he didn't seem to know what Chris Wallace meant by "right of return." Once Wallace helped him out, Cain said, "I don't think they have a big problem with people returning." Later, after someone told him what he was supposed to think about the matter, he said the opposite.

He is also maybe the only figure in the GOP that will just admit that Ryan's Medicare plan is a voucher system.

In his announcement speech, Cain also participated in the grand tradition of not knowing the difference between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, while simultaneously participating in the grand tradition of sanctimoniously lecturing Americans about how important those documents are.

More insignificant Republican trivia after the jump.

How Strong Is The Tea, Michele?

UPDATE

I wrote the original post a few weeks ago; Bachmann had not declared, Gingrich had not self-immolated. My first tier -- Pawlenty, Gingrich, Romney, Huntsman -- has pretty much collapsed, leaving only Romney, with his deadly baggage of RomneyCare and the fuming hatred of the Tea Party.

I predicted, though, that Bachmann would rocket to the top if she declared and Palin didn't. I gave Palin the upper hand over Bachmann back then, but that's changed; Michele has become the star, while Palin is fading as her supporters are finally realizing that while Michele is a politician, Sarah is just a celebrity. (Actually Michele didn't make it quite to the top; she's trailing Romney.) Michele is my pick to crush the field in the Ames, Iowa, straw poll coming up in a couple of weeks.

So Tier 1 at the moment is Romney and Bachmann -- with Rick Perry waiting in the wings, undeclared as of yet. I liked James Carville's assessment of Perry: "He likes to talk, and he's not too bright; I like that combination in a Republican."

Of my former first tier, Gingrich is gone. Pawlenty and Huntsman, while fairly solid and earnest, and while Pawlenty has pandered shamelessly to the Tea Party, are both too colorless to have made any impact; unless one of them catches fire, they're second-tier longshots.

My former second tier -- Santorum, Paul, Johnson, and Cain -- are relegated to the hope-for-a-miracle third tier. Santorum, evangelical darling, probably stands the best chance, and that chance isn't good; he should be bolstered by a strong finish in the Ames straw poll. Paul won't pander for votes, so he can't win. Johnson has dropped off everybody's radar. Cain is planning to plan to come up with a plan, but he's got no substance, and while he's "colorful" enough, there's no way in the world a black man can win the Republican nomination in 2012.

Of my erstwhile third tier, Palin, Bolton, and Giuliani are writeoffs. (I had Bachmann at this level because she hadn't yet declared.)

I'm surprised. I had thought that it would boil down to three: (1) Romney, (2) reasonably sane and sensible not-Romney, and (3) Tea Party wingnut. It's turned out to be Romney and two wingnuts. At the moment, Bachmann is the Tea Party frontrunner, but the No. 2 spot is Perry's if he runs -- at least for a while. If he doesn't run, it's Romney v. Bachmann. Neither is beloved by the party establishment, but Bachmann has the Tea Party/evangelical crowd. Romney, however, would be a far stronger opponent for Obama in the general, and Bachmann's tendency to stick her foot in her mouth -- and then, when called on it, to push it in past the ankle -- could eliminate her overnight. If that should happen, with Perry the wild card, Pawlenty stands a better chance than Huntsman to pull himself up from his second-tier status.

I have a lot of respect for Lawrence O'Donnell's opinion, and he is still stoutly predicting Pawlenty -- not because TPaw is good, but because the others each have a fatal flaw that will be their eventual undoing, whereas Pawlenty is milquetoast and bland. If Romney finds himself locked in mortal combat with Bachmann/Perry, Pawlenty could slide in as both sides' second choice.

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Factoring in Tea Party influence:

FIRST TIER

• Tim Pawlenty
• Tea Party support may be strong unless Palin or Bachmann declare
• Newt Gingrich
• Has to dig himself out of the hole and pander like crazy to the Tea Party, something Newt is good at
• Mitt Romney
• Tea Party hostility may doom him
• Jon Huntsman
• Could be doomed, like Romney, by the Tea Party

SECOND TIER

• Rick Santorum
• Wingnut religious right support, could rival Pawlenty for Tea Party support, fades if Palin or Bachmann run
• Ron Paul
• Has a strong following, but not really big with the Tea Party; won't pander to them for political advantage, as the others will
• Gary Johnson
• Not really
• Herman Cain
• Even less

THIRD TIER:

• Sarah Palin
• Frontrunner if the Tea Party knocks off Romney and Huntsman
• Michele Bachmann
• Frontrunner if the Tea Party knocks off Romney and Huntsman, and Palin doesn't run
• John Bolton
• No.
• Rudy Giuliani
• Also no.

If the forces of reason prevail, then it should come down to Pawlenty/Huntsman v. Romney, with all three of them running hard to their right -- in the primaries. The winner will backtrack as far as possible for the general. On the other hand, if the Tea Party are truly a kingmaking force, and if they can knock out the moderates Romney and Huntsman, then it's Pawlenty and Gingrich pandering to the extreme right, with Ron Paul and Rick Santorum from Tier 2 -- unless Palin and/or Bachmann run.

In a Tea-Party-Ascendant situation, it's
(first tier) Tim Pawlenty, Newt Gingrich
(second tier) Rick Santorum, Ron Paul
UNLESS
Sarah Palin and/or Michele Bachmann declare
IN WHICH CASE
Sarah Palin/Michele Bachmann rocket to the top. Their campaigns are likely coordinating so that both don't enter, but Sarah holds the top position. So if Sarah declares, Michele won't; if Sarah decides to pass, Michele will declare.

If the Tea Party overpowers the Republican Establishment, then Sarah/Michele become frontrunner -- Sarah if she runs, Michele if she doesn't -- with Pawlenty, Gingrich, and Santorum shamefully trying to outpander each other, lying and grovelling while slithering to the right and hoping Sarah/Michele commit some stupid and fatal error (a distinct possibility).

Monty Python: French Knights (Holy Grail) - Some Serious Taunting!

Scene 8

[clop clop]
ARTHUR: Halt! Hallo! Hallo!
GUARD: 'Allo! Who is zis?
ARTHUR: It is King Arthur, and these are the Knights of the Round Table. Whose castle is this?
GUARD: This is the castle of Our Master, Ruiz de lu la Ramper (sp?)
ARTHUR: Go and tell your master that we have been charged by God with a sacred quest. If he will give us food and shelter for the night, he can join us in our quest for the Holy Grail.
GUARD: Well, I'll ask him, but I don't think he'll be very keen...
Uh, he's already got one, you see.
ARTHUR: What?
GALAHAD: He says they've already got one!
ARTHUR: Are you sure he's got one?
GUARD: Oh, yes, it's very nice-a [To Other Guards] I told him we already got one.
OTHER GUARDS: [Laughing]
ARTHUR: Well, um, can we come up and have a look?
GUARD: Of course not! You are English types-a!
ARTHUR: Well, what are you, then?
GUARD: I'm French! Why do think I have this outrageous accent, you silly king!
GALAHAD: What are you doing in England?
GUARD: Mind your own business!
ARTHUR: If you will not show us the Grail, we shall take your castle by force!
GUARD: You don't frighten us, English pig-dogs! Go and boil your bottoms, sons of a silly person. I blow my nose at you, so-called Arthur-king, you and all your silly English kaniggets. Thppppt!
GALAHAD: What a strange person.
[More taunting after the jump.]

Once Elected, GOP Are No Longer The Party Of No - They're Worse

Mitchell Bard, Huffington Post: The GOP Has Gone From the Party of No to the Party of F You

For Obama's first two years, the Republicans were The Party Of No: Their strategy was simply to oppose whatever the Democrats proposed, particularly the health care bill. Rather than negotiate to try to modify the bill and introduce provisions more to their liking, the strategy was to oppose it in every possible way:

But after winning control of the House in the 2010 midterm elections (as well as state governor's mansions and legislatures across the country), the Party of No morphed into something else, fully embracing a far-right, Tea Party-driven, wealth-and-business-obsessed, social and fiscal conservatism that sits to the right of even Ronald Reagan.

But after winning the House in the 2010 elections, their strategy changed.

But, as Jacob Weisberg astutely pointed out in Slate on Friday, to be a national Republican figure today, you have to embrace a litany of lies, distortions and flat-out factually incorrect positions. The GOP lives now, he says, in "a mental Shangri-La, where unwanted problems... can be wished away, prejudice trumps fact... expertise is evidence of error, and reality itself comes to be regarded as some kind of elitist plot."

 The GOP campaigned in 2011 as being concerned about jobs, jobs, jobs, and the provision of  Obama's health care act that would cut $500 million from Medicare spending (that's right; they campaigned as the saviors of Medicare).

Simply put, if you are wealthy or a large corporation, the Republicans have nothing but hugs and kisses for you. But for the rest of us? The GOP only offers a stern "F you."

Outrageous Limbaugh

Limbaugh: I Have "Way Too Much Class" To Tell Caller I Pay More In Taxes "Than He Will Earn In His Entire Worthless Life"

Stuxnet Articles And Info

Stuxnet, a tremendously sophisticated internet worm allegedly cooked up by the U.S. and Israeli governments working in tandem to sabotage Iramnian nuclear development, has been described as the first act of cyber warfate.

Mocha Brain Freeze

How Stuxnet Spreads – A Study of Infection Paths in Best Practice Systems

PLC Security Risk: Controller Operating Systems

Gingrichism: Malignant Trends In The Republican Party

May 20th, 2011: Why Gingrich Matters, by Jonathan Zasloff at The Reality-Based Community.

The modern Republican Party is to a great extent, Gingrich’s party. Not because of the man himself, but rather because of “Gingrichism” — his philosophy of how to conduct politics.

Gingrichism is the philosophy that all means short of illegality are fair game in the struggle for political power. He came to the fore in the House minority by personal attacks on other members’ patriotism; he stirred up the Republican base with the argument that the Democrats were not merely wrong, but evil and a threat to the Republic. As Speaker, he destroyed the existing committee structure and bill mark-ups, did away with Congressional institutions to educate members (such as the Office of Technology Assessment or the Administrative Conference of the United States), and centralized power in the leadership. When he did not get his way with Clinton, he cavalierly shut down the government. Not cowed by the political disaster that ensued, he used the House’s impeachment power for political purposes and put the House Oversight Committee in the hands of Dan Burton with the express mandate to harass and cripple political opponents. Gingrich broke institutions not by accident, but on purpose.
[....]
And if we examine the most malignant trends of the Republican Party over the last 15 years, many (although not all) of them represent this pattern of destroying institutions — and, importantly, any sense of impartiality, good faith, or nonpartisanship — for the purpose of achieving political power. We are all arguing about who started the filibustering of judges, but it was when the Republicans took control of the Senate in 1995 that routine blocking of Presidential appointments began. Republicans sued to prevent the counting of votes in Florida and got 5 of their hand-picked justices to go along with them. Once ensconced in the executive branch, the Gingrichist GOP started issuing signing statements to tell its functionaries which parts of laws not to enforce; insisted that Presidential power was absolute, and ignored subpoenas. It got rid of professionals and installed unqualified but politically loyal hacks and cronies in key positions. Back on the Hill, Senate Republican majorities fired the Senate parliamentarian when he ruled in ways that they did not like and then shoved non-budget items into the budget to overcome filibusters. When it lost its majority in 2006, the Republican Caucus quickly obliterated records for filibustering, attempting with great success to destroy the institution by making it completely dysfunctional. When Barack Obama won the 2008 election, Mitch McConnell went into the complete Gingrich pose, planning to stop anything and everything offered up, refusing to negotiate in good faith, and even filibustering measures that were Republican ideas. As for Obama himself, the Gingrichist RNC made it very clear that he was not a political opponent: like Tom Foley and the House Democratic majority, he was an enemy of the country.

George Carlin: Who Really Controls America?

The Republicans' Great Black Hope?

Ross Kaminsky in The American Spectator:  Observations on Herman Cain.

1. Misstatements on his campaign declaration announcement confusing the Constitution -- held so holy by the Tea Party -- and the Declaration of Independence.

2. On Fox News on Sunday with Chris Wallace, apparently doesn't know what the phrase "right of return" means in relation to Israel and the Palestinians, and when it's explained to him, says: "I don't think they have a big problem with people returning." That would come as a big surprise to Netanyahu.

3. Again with Wallace on FNS, asked what he would do in Afghanistan, he replies: "The right approach is: the day I'm elected president, I will start on that plan such that the day I was sworn in, I will be able to implement the plan." for details, he responds: "I think it is disingenuous to tell the American people what I would do when I don't have the intelligence information. I don't have all of the factors that are affecting this particular situation."

4. The national debt. He has what media have dubbed "the Cain plan." but on FNS, Can admitted that "the Cain plan" can't work because Congress have dropped the ball and it's now too late. So, two minutes into the interview, he admits that his plan for the debt can't work.

Cain's a goner. Although he completely won over a Frank Luntz focus group at the South Carolina debates, he has no substance to go with that rich baritone voice.

On the campaign announcement, Ian Millhiser has an article at ThinkProgress which includes the following clip:



Unfortunately, our friend confuses the Constitution -- which the Tea Baggers revere so much and insist must be followed but isn't -- with the Declaration of Independence.

CAIN: We don’t need to rewrite the Constitution of the United States of America, we need to reread the Constitution and enforce the Constitution. … And I know that there are some people that are not going to do that, so for the benefit of those who are not going to read it because they don’t want us to go by the Constitution, there’s a little section in there that talks about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

You know, those ideals that we live by, we believe in, your parents believed in, they instilled in you. When you get to the part about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” don’t stop there, keep reading. Cause that’s when it says “when any form of government becomes destructive of those ideals, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.” We’ve got some altering and some abolishing to do!

Cain really should have taken his own advice, however, before he decided to lecture the entire country about the Constitution. The phrase “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” does not appear anywhere in the Constitution’s text. Nor does the Constitution include a phrase about the right of the people to alter or abolish a government that is destructive of their ideals. Both of those phrases appear in the Declaration of Independence, which, in case Mr. Cain is not aware, is actually an entirely different document than the Constitution — written over ten years earlier.

More on Cain's foolishness after the jump.

Daniels Is Out: How The Republican Race Stands Today

FIRST TIER
These people have a legitimate shot at winning the nomination. Their political fortunes may wax and wane, and two of them will eventually be relegated to the second tier before they withdraw. Right now Gingrich is flailing wildly at the bottom of the pack, trying to avoid that fate.

Mitt Romney (former governor of Massachusetts, 2003-2007; did not seek re-election)

Background: His father rose from humble beginnings to become CEO of American Motors, then governor of Michigan. Mitt spent several years in France as a Mormon missionary. On his return to the U.S., he got a law degree and did well as a management consultant for various firms. He co-founded a highly successful private equity investment firm, Bain Capital, which helped start Staples Inc. and then got into leveraged buyouts; Romney accumulated a fortune of several hundred million dollars. He took over as organizer of the 2002 Winter Olympics at Salt Lake City when they were plagued with scandal and looking shaky; they became a financial success. As governor, he instituted a near-universal health care plan which included a personal mandate. Fairly liberal in his early political career, Romney became increasingly conservative; some call it pandering, sacrificing principle for the sake of election. He took a lot of heat in his run for the presidency in 2008 for perceived flip-flops.

Prospects as Republican nominee: There are two categories in the first tier -- Mitt Romney, and not-Mitt-Romney. In the final round, there will be one contender remaining in each of these two categories. The Tea Party will never accept him because of Romneycare. While the nomination might be won by someone without strong, enthusiastic Tea Party support, it can't be won by anyone with stiff Tea Party opposition. Unless he diffuses Tea Party anger, he can't win the nomination.

Tim Pawlenty (former governor of Minnesota, 2003-2011)

Background: His father drove a milk truck. Raised as a Roman Catholic, he became an evangelical Christian. He earned a law degree and worked in law and business. Elected to the Minnesota House in 1992, he was re-elected five times. He was co-chairman of the McCain campaign in the 2008 election.

Prospects as Republican nominee: With the implosion of Newt Gingrich, Pawlenty and Huntsman are the two front-runners to be the not-Mitt-Romney candidate. Pawlenty has a head start, having declared his intention -- and consequently getting considerable media coverage -- several weeks before Huntsman. So far, he suffers from poor name recognition and lack of charisma.

Jon Huntsman (former governor of Utah, 2005 to 2008)

Background: Son of billionaire Jon Huntsman Sr., he earned a bachelor's degree in international politics. Like Romney, he was a Mormon missionary for a time, in Taiwan. He worked as an executive in his father's companies, serving in government positions in the Reagan and H.W. Bush administrations. Re-elected governor by a 58-point margin and 77% of the popular vote, he resigned to accept appointment as ambassador to China. He left office with over 80% approval.

Prospects as Republican nominee: Along with Pawlenty, Huntsman is considered to be in the "adult" class, to be taken seriously. His name recognition is low outside Utah and Washington, D.C. As a late entry in the race, he may have trouble recruiting a strong campaign team and raising enough money. Having served as an ambassador in the Obama administration is problematic; Obama's praise for him hasn't helped him with Republicans. He has been lukewarm in support for the Ryan budget proposal, though he said he would have voted for it. He is a strong supporter of marriage equality for gays and lesbians. His views on climate change are also suspicious to the conservative base. "I think we can probe beyond these tags of Democrat, moderate, conservative and really take a look at what people have done and are willing to do going forward," he said last weekend. Oh, really? Whether the Tea Party will give him tepid support is unclear.

Newt Gingrich (former Speaker of the House of Representatives, 1995-1998)

Background: Newt was a military brat whose family moved around a lot. He has a PhD in history and was a history professor and author before entering politics. Elected to Congress in 1978, he was re-elected ten times. He was co-author of the Contract With America in 1994, and remained a prominent thorn in Clinton's side until he resigned his seat following Republican losses in 1998. He led the Republican forces in the government shutdown in 1995/96, which harmed his public image. He was always an inflammatory and polarizing "loose cannon," narrowly survived a political coup led by Tom Delay and Dick Armey, and had various ethical problems both in government and in his personal life.

Prospects as Republican nominee: He was severely damaged by controversial conduct in the first week of his campaign. Sunday on Meet The Press, he expressed opposition to Ryan's plan as “right-wing social engineering." Praised by the Democrats and attacked by Republicans from all sides, he struggled with various tactics to try to explain his apostasy. He called Paul Ryan to apologize. He went on Limbaugh's radio show to try to backtrack, and made the astonishing and preposterous statement that he hadn't been referring to Ryan's plan at all. He declared to Greta Van Susteren on Fox News that anyone who quotes his Meet The Press statements is lying. And his press secretary wrote a defense in the most florid, purple prose imaginable, which became universally mocked: "A lesser person could not have survived the first few minutes of the onslaught. But out of the billowing smoke and dust of tweets and trivia emerged Gingrich ..." Paul Ryan said, "With friends like that, who needs the left?" Charles Krauthammer was succinct: "He's done." The second tier looms.

Second and third tiers descend into hopelessness after the jump.

Read My Lips ...

Grover Norquist, Americans for Tax Reform:

What is the Taxpayer Protection Pledge?

"It has transformed American politics." -- Jonathan Alter, Newsweek

"Signing it has become de riguer for GOP candidates running for federal or statewide offices across the country." -- The Hill

"Americans for Tax Reform's Taxpayer Protection Pledge has solidified opposition to tax increases in Congress and state legislatures over the years." -- Michael Barone

“The Pledge has become something of a rallying cry in conservative circles." -- National Journal

Politicians often run for office saying they won't raise taxes, but then quickly turn their backs on the taxpayer. The idea of the Pledge is simple enough: Make them put their no-new-taxes rhetoric in writing.

In the Taxpayer Protection Pledge, candidates and incumbents solemnly bind themselves to oppose any and all tax increases. While ATR has the role of promoting and monitoring the Pledge, the Taxpayer Protection Pledge is actually made to a candidate's constituents, who are entitled to know where candidates stand before sending them to the capitol. Since the Pledge is a prerequisite for many voters, it is considered binding as long as an individual holds the office for which he or she signed the Pledge.

Since its rollout with the endorsement of President Reagan in 1986, the pledge has become de rigeur for Republicans seeking office, and is a necessity for Democrats running in Republican districts.

Today the Taxpayer Protection Pledge is offered to every candidate for state office and to all incumbents. More than 1,100 state officeholders, from state representative to governor, have signed the Pledge. Statehouse tax-and-spend interests have to contend with Pledge signers in every state.

Read more here.

Academic Freedom In The War On Terror

This is a piece by Tarak Barkawi on Al Jazeera entitled Academic freedom and 'dangerous ideas' -- As much of the West becomes increasingly Islamophobic, universities are assumed "breeding grounds" for radicalisation.

There is this absurd idea that universitiesf are somehow "ivory towers", that they are separate from the real world, from the influence of politics and power. Nothing could be further from the truth, as the exponential growth of "terrorism studies" demonstrates.

Academics and universities are profoundly shaped by power. And they, in turn, shape politics and society. Anthropology developed alongside empire. Physics looks the way it does because of funding for nuclear weapons and nuclear energy research. Area studies was more or less a creation of the US department of defence, which sought knowledge of all the places threatened by communism.

Naturally, entrepreneurial academics and university administrators are on the lookout for whatever new knowledge power and money think they need - mostly science, technology, and medicine but also law schools, business schools, and public policy programs. Their efforts attract funding, which provides resources, which further develops these areas, shaping the very nature of the contemporary university.

The illusion that knowledge can be free from power is the supreme marketing advantage of universities. Free inquiry produces the best ideas, which then can be put to work in the real world for profit, comfort, health, and security. The great universities of the developed world grew under this illusion, and society and economy benefitted enormously from their research and teaching.

Tidbits

1929 Stock Market Crash: What, Me Worry?

Irving Fisher was a noted 20th century economist. No less an authority than Milton Friedman called him "the greatest economist the United States has ever produced," and many of his contributions to economics, such as the Fisher equation, the Fisher hypothesis and the Fisher separation theorem are cited by economists to this day.

Yet despite his intellect, he made one statement in 1929 that destroyed his credibility for the rest of his life.

Three days before the Wall Street Crash of that year, he claimed that "stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau." When he was disproved 72 hours later, he tried to get out from under the statement, but months of putting a positive spin on developments only further eroded his reputation. He died in 1947, but a renewed interest in neoclassical economics in the 1950s caused a re-evaluation of his work and a rehabilitation of his name.
******************** 
The Arctic Council and the Law of the Sea; the new Cold War

The Arctic Council, composed of eight Arctic nations, is the main discussion forum for issues related to the far north and the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which the US has not signed, is supposed to govern resource claims in the region.

During a meeting of the Arctic Council held on May 12 in Greenland, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton said that US ratification of the Law of the Sea Convention was "way overdue".

Clinton's desire to change US policy to sign the convention may have more to do with resource battles than respect for international institutions. "If you stay out [of the convention]" then-Danish foreign minister Moller is quoted as saying in 2009 cables, "then the rest of us will have more to carve up in the Arctic".

The US position of not ratifying the convention means it cannot put forward a formal claim to the seabed directly north of Alaska, says Oran Young, a professor of environmental science at the University of California.

"If I knew why the US hasn't signed, I'd be happy," Young says, speculating that lobbyists for the mining industry and some senators who display "knee-jerk negativism to the UN in general" were driving the decision.
 
"The very best case scenario [for peace in the arctic] is that we move beyond fossil fuels," says American University's Paul Wapner. "The best case scenario is that we have cooperative institutions - with representatives of indigenous people - who use peaceful and cooperative means to ensure fair access to these resources.

"The doomsday would be competitive resource wars. As climate change gets worse, people will be pushed to get more resources to run their air conditioners and so forth. My prediction is that we are still going to be addicted to oil [when the main icecaps melt] and these resources are going to be extracted by the most powerful lot - which would include Russia, the US and China."
******************* 
Who is Dennis Ross? --

May 17, 2011
RAMALLAH: A political adviser to the late president Yasser Arafat issued a statement Tuesday, alleging that US Mideast peace envoy George Mitchell resigned because of the "extreme bias" of his deputy Dennis Ross.

Bassam Abu Shareef said Ross obstructed all US initiatives aiming to achieve progress in the peace process, and blamed the deputy's bias for Mitchell's resignation Saturday.

Abu Shareef said senior American officials informed him that Mitchell viewed the appointment of Ross a step to obstruct the peace process. He added that Mitchell believed Ross was working against US interests.

The official paraphrased comments he said were made by Mitchell during a meeting, where he asked: "How can Dennis Ross assist in the peace process when he refuses to meet with the Palestinians, when he despises their leadership and hates their president?"

Abu Shareef also said Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "rejects peace," and would have no part of a Palestinian state with Hamas in its leadership.

"This means they are opening war on Palestinians and their nation," he added.
********************
-- And why is he pushing Obama around?

An Al-Jazeera piece entitled The Rasputin of the White House says:

Is time running out for Israel's best friend in the White House?

Dennis Ross has been described as Israel's advocate, more extreme than Binyamin Netanyahu, and "the éminence grise, a sort of Rasputin who casts a spell over secretaries of state and presidents”.

Now, The New York Times says Ross single-handedly made president Obama water down his criticism of Israel in his Thursday address.

The reality is that the course Mr. Obama outlined Thursday was much more modest than what some of his advisers initially advocated. [...] “Starting with Mitchell and Jones, there was a preponderance of advisers who were more in tune with the Palestinian narrative than the Israeli narrative,” said Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League and a friend of Mr. Ross. “Dennis balanced that.”

That Ross is single-handedly able to "balance" the opinions of  "a preponderance of advisers" in this way is not a surprise to Washington insiders. What is unusual is to learn, from a mainstream publication like the Times, that the White House inner circle may be getting exceedingly uncomfortable about the grip Ross is exerting on Obama and his Middle East policies.

Al Franken Draws The U.S.

Bork Revisited - Goodwin Liu Filibustered

• Geoffrey R. Stone, HuffPo: Judicial Filibusters: Partisanship Run Amok
• Robert Bork, Wikipedia entry

The nomination of liberal judge Goodwin Liu for the U.S. Court of Appeals was defeated by filibuster yesterday in the Senate. 40 senators are needed to defeat a proposed statute or nomination unless 60 senators vote to invoke "cloture," which ends the filibuster and restores majority rule. According to Stone's HuffPo article:

Yesterday, 42 Senate Republicans (joined by one conservative Democrat) used the filibuster to block the Senate's consideration of Goodwin Liu. Although 53 senators voted to invoke cloture, the minority succeeded in preventing the Senate from even voting on the nomination. 

So Liu's nomination didn't even get a vote. Stone says:

To justify their behavior, some Republicans invoke the Bork nomination battle as a relevant precedent, but their thinking on that score is completely wrong-headed. Bork was not the target of a filibuster. He was defeated in a straight up-or-down vote of 58 against and 42 in favor. If Liu were given such a vote, he would clearly be confirmed. The distance we have travelled over the past twenty-five years is a good measure of the extent to which we now live in a world of partisanship run amuck.

 Ah, yes: Robert Bork.

Bork was known for his belief in the judicial principle of "originalism": that judges should be guided by the framers' original understanding of the Constitution. His stated belief that the Constitution contains no general "right to privacy" provoked fears that he would vote to reverse the Court's 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade. A fierce critic of the Warren and Burger courts for what he considered to be "judicial activism," and who stated a desire to roll back those courts' civil rights decisions, Bork shot into the public notice for his role as Nixon's Solicitor General in the Watergate drama known as the Saturday Night Massacre.

When Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox requested tapes of his Oval Office conversations. Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Cox; instead, Richardson resigned. Next in line was Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus, who also resigned, making Bork the Acting Attorney General. Bork complied with Nixon's order and fired Cox.

President Reagan nominated Bork to the Supreme Court in 1987, igniting a firestorm of protest from Democrats. Bork is one of only three Supreme Court nominees ever to be opposed by the leftist American Civil Liberties Union, along with William Rehnquist and Samuel Alito. Ted Kennedy attacked him on the floor of the Senate in the following terms:

Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is—and is often the only—protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy... President Reagan is still our president. But he should not be able to reach out from the muck of Irangate, reach into the muck of Watergate and impose his reactionary vision of the Constitution on the Supreme Court and the next generation of Americans. No justice would be better than this injustice.

 Wow. Pretty strong stuff.

In the end, the Senate rejected Bork's confirmation, with 42 Senators voting in favor and 58 voting against -- but at least he got a straight up-or-down vote on the Senate floor; Goodwin Liu didn't make it that far.

This is only the fourth time in U.S. history that an appointment to the Court of Appeals has been blocked by filibuster. The first three were Lyndon Johnson's nomination of Abe Fortas in 1968; Carter's nomination of Stephen Breyer in 1980 (though that filibuster was unsuccessful); and George W. Bush's nomination of Miguel Estrada in 2001.

Yet another example of present-day Republican obstructionism.

Mitch Daniels, Fiscal Conservative And GOP Savior? Maybe Not.

Read Robert Parry's Mitch Daniels, Darling of "Fiscal Conservatives," Was Architect of the US Debt Crisis, at AlterNet (16 May 2011).

Mitch Daniels is billed as the "serious" GOP Presidential contender. Rarely mentioned is a key fact that should disqualify him from office: he was Bush's original budget director.

Daniels was in charge until he left in June of 2003, while Clinton's $236 billion surplus became a $400 billion defecit. During his time in office, he oversaw the catastrophic tax cuts for the wealthy, the unfunded drugs program for Medicare -- he had been an executive for drug giant Eli Lily -- and the invasion of Iraq.

In 2002, Daniels famously low-balled the war's cost at $50 billion to $60 billion and joined in the repudiation of Bush's economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey, who had ventured an estimate as high as $200 billion. Daniels called Lindsey's price tag "very, very high."

But it turned out that even Lindsey's estimate, which led to his firing later that year, was very, very low.

Brendan Nyhan at Salon reported in a Feb. 12, 2002, article,
that as OMB director, Daniels was not a budget expert, but rather "an operative chosen for his political skills, particularly his ability to sell the administration's economic proposals in the media."

"In August [2001], Daniels admitted as much, telling the Wall Street Journal that '[t]o the extent I bring anything ... to this job, maybe it's an ability to think about how a product, whether it's Prozac or a president's proposal, is marketed.' Predictably, he has displayed a disturbing tendency to make dishonest claims for political advantage on federal budget issues."

Furthermore, according to Nyhan, Daniels fudged his accounting to mask the administration's profligacy and made "deceptive claims, often without challenge."

"It is a matter of serious public concern that the federal budget director has become just another spinner dragging down public debate. Though he is a political appointee heading an executive agency, Daniels is also a public official with a larger responsibility to promote honesty in federal budget debates. Daniels may not recognize the difference from his previous job [as a pharmaceutical executive], but we must. It is unacceptable to market our nation's economic policies like Prozac."

Although he has not yet declared his candidacy for president, with the prominence of tea party nutjobs, most conservative pundits are enthusiastic about the possibility, and would welcome his "serious" or "adult" presence in the race. Little mention has been made of his economic depredations when he was in charge of the budget; that will change if and when he declares.

Detainee "Suicide" At Guantanamo Bay - May 18, 2011

"According to the NCIS documents, each prisoner had fashioned a noose from torn sheets and T-shirts and tied it to the top of his cell’s eight-foot-high steel-mesh wall. Each prisoner was able somehow to bind his own hands, and, in at least one case, his own feet, then stuff more rags deep down into his own throat. We are then asked to believe that each prisoner, even as he was choking on those rags, climbed up on his washbasin, slipped his head through the noose, tightened it, and leapt from the washbasin to hang until he asphyxiated. The NCIS report also proposes that the three prisoners, who were held in non-adjoining cells, carried out each of these actions almost simultaneously."

That's according to an article entitled “The Guantanamo 'Suicides.'" by Scott Horton, a professor at Columbia Law School known for his work in human rights law and the law of armed conflict, in Harper's Magazine on January 18, 2010.

Those events took place late in the day on June 9, 2006. The NCIS report was two years later. But Horton reports that a group of students and faculty at the law school of Seton Hall University in New Jersey carefully examined the 1,700 pages of documents, heavily redacted, released in response to a Freedom of Information Act demand. The group concluded that the official story was "full of unacknowledged contradictions," and the military's reconstruction of the events was simply unbelievable.

At approximately 12:15 a.m. on the morning of June 10, "Camp Delta suddenly 'lit up' -- stadium-style flood lights were, turned on, and the camp became the scene of frenzied activity, filling with personnel in and out of uniform." There was confusion and consternation as rumors spread throught the remainder of the night in Camp Delta, the largest of five individual prison compounds contained within Camp America.

The next morning, the commander of Camp America, Army Colonel Michael Bumgarner, called a meeting of the guards at 7 a.m. and addressed the crowd of about 50 in the open air.

According to independent interviews with soldiers who witnessed the speech, Bumgarner told his audience that “you all know” three prisoners in the Alpha Block at Camp 1 committed suicide during the night by swallowing rags, causing them to choke to death. This was a surprise to no one—even servicemen who had not worked the night before had heard about the rags. But then Bumgarner told those assembled that the media would report something different. It would report that the three prisoners had committed suicide by hanging themselves in their cells. It was important, he said, that servicemen make no comments or suggestions that in any way undermined the official report. He reminded the soldiers and sailors that their phone and email communications were being monitored. The meeting lasted no more than twenty minutes. (Bumgarner has not responded to requests for comment.)

Democrats' Letter To President Obama: Appoint Elizabeth Warren

An article by Joan McCarter at Daily Kos entitled House Democrats push for Warren recess appointment to consumer agency tells of a letter being circulated by House Democrats:

Regretfully, Republicans in the Senate have now made it clear that they oppose reform. They have vowed that they will not allow consideration of any nominee to head the CFPB until the bureau is weakened. They would rather hold your appointment hostage and obstruct the process than make sure consumers have a strong advocate on their side.

Since Republican Senators have said that no one is acceptable unless the law is weakened, we would urge you to nominate Professor Warren as the CFPB's first Director anyway. If Republicans in the Senate indeed refuse to consider her, we request that you use your constitutional authority to make her a recess appointment.

I would have preferred to see Warren nominated and confirmed as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. However, if that cannot be accomplished -- since 44 of the 47 Senate Republicans vowed to filibuster any nominee to the CFPB unless and until the agency is made powerless -- then I support a recess appointment, for sure. The House is out this week; when's recess, anyway? The sooner the better for Elizabeth Warren.

We're Broke! (Well, No, Not Really)

Digby at Hullabaloo has an article entitled Umm, don't tell anyone, but we're not broke.

Not so, she says.  In fact:

While the recession has led to job loss and shrinking incomes in recent years, the economy has produced substantial gains in average incomes and wealth over the last three decades, and economists agree that we can expect comparable growth over the next three decades as well. Between 1980 and 2010, income per capita grew 66.4%, and wealth per capita grew 73.2%. Over the next 30 years, per capita income is projected to grow by a comparable 60.6%. In other words, “we” are much richer as a nation than we used to be and can expect those riches to rise substantially in the future.

The problem is one of perception. The great majority of the money generated since the election of Reagan has gone to the few at the top; the average wage has hardly increased at all.

When most of the wealth is going directly to the very top while everyone else is stagnating or falling backwards, it's easy to get that impression. But the fact is that the US will be able to deal with its financial obligations in the future. Our real problem is income inequality.

Digby links to another article on the subject, Lawrence Mishel's
We’re not broke nor will we be, a PDF from the Economic Policy Institute dated May 19, 2011:

For instance, the top 10% of the income distribution has claimed almost two-thirds of the gains in income since 1979, with the top 1% alone claiming 38.7% of those overall gains. Moreover, the wealth of the median (or ‘typical’) household was lower in 2009 than in 1983, in spite of the 40.3% growth in the average household’s wealth. When the median is substantially lower than the average, it indicates very lopsided growth, which has been the case for the past 30 years: there was no growth in wealth for the bottom 80% of households, while those in the top fifth enjoyed a 50% increase.

Mishel's conclusion:

There is an old joke about the Lone Ranger, who turned to Tonto and said, “We’re surrounded by Indians,” and Tonto responds, “What do you mean ‘we,’ kemo sabe?’”

That same logic applies to policymakers who claim that “we’re broke.” It matters who is included in “we.” We, collectively, have been gaining income and wealth and will continue to do so. “We,” the broad middle class, have not been gaining wealth and have not received much of the income gains of the past 30 years. Whether the broad middle class prospers in the next 30 years does not hinge on whether there will be substantial income growth; there most definitely will be. The future prosperity of the broad middle class hinges on the economic policies and structures that determine how that income is generated and shared.

Are our federal and state governments “broke”? They certainly face deficits. Whether those governments provide the services we need will totally depend upon the political decisions made regarding taxing and spending. Taxation and revenues have diminished, both due to policy choices and the impact of the Great Recession.

So, are we broke? Only if we choose to be.

A Time To Kill: The Thinking Of Samuel Alito

This is a link to an article by Emily Bazelon at Slate entitled Shoot To Kill: Alito's blank check for cops.

Late on an October night in 1974, Memphis, Tenn., police officer Elton Hymon responded to a call about a breakin. At the scene, a neighbor said she'd heard glass shattering and pointed to the house next door. Hymon went behind it. He heard a door slam. Someone ran into the yard and stopped at a 6-foot-high chain-link fence at the yard's edge. Hymon shined his flashlight at the person and saw a teenager who he could tell was unarmed. Hymon called, "Police, halt." The teen started climbing the fence. Hymon shot him in the back of the head, fatally. Edward Garner was a 15-year-old black eighth grader. He was 5 feet 4 inches tall and weighed about 110 pounds. A purse and $10 were found on his body.

Garner's father sued. The case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, where it was argued on behalf of the police officer by Samuel Alito, now himself a member of the Supreme Court.

In a 15-page memo, he [Alito] argued in favor of letting states give police the power to shoot to kill at their discretion whenever a suspect flees, whether or not he poses a threat.
[,,,]
To Alito, the case came down to this: If Officer Hymon shot, "there was the chance that he would kill a person guilty only of a simple breaking and entering; that is essentially what occurred. If he didn't shoot, there was a chance that a murderer or rapist would escape and possibly strike again." Hymon had no reason to think that Garner had done anything violent.
[...]
By a vote of 6 to 3, the court ruled in favor of Edward Garner's father. "It is not better that all felony suspects die than that they escape," Justice Byron White wrote for the majority.
[...]
Between 1969 and 1976, the Memphis police shot and killed eight white suspects and 16 black ones. Only one of the white suspects was neither armed nor assaulting a police officer. Thirteen of the black suspects were. The statistics were part of the evidence presented by Garner's father. Alito may well not have read that brief. And if he had, it probably wouldn't have mattered. His concern isn't the world of Edward Garner.

Jacksonville, FL, Elects A Democratic African American Mayor!

David Nir at Daily Kos reports on the mayoral election in Jacksonville, Florida: Democrat and former Bill Clinton aide Alvin Brown, an African American, has been elected mayor in one of the most conservative major cities in America.

Indeed, the last time a Dem won the job was twenty years ago. Brown won by 1,536 votes after absentees and provisionals had been counted, which means there won't be a recount. Republicans had expected to win "handily" and even sent Marco Rubio in to take a premature victory lap with Hogan. Oops.

Republicans Less Than Enthusiastic On Ryan's Medicare Plan

Jed Lewison at Daily Kos has an article entitled Senate Republicans not whipping support for Ryan's Medicare repeal plan. It's a pretty clear indication that McConnell, who is not going to whip Republican senators to force them to vote the party line, recognizes the toxicity of the Ryan plan.

One GOP senator who spoke on the condition of anonymity expressed his belief that Ryan made a serious tactical mistake by spelling out Medicare reforms in his budget plan. “All Ryan had to do was set an overall number and leave it up to the policymaking committees how to come up with the savings."

According to Lewison:

The real political problem Republicans have is that they think that the best way to reduce Medicare costs is to shift the burden from government to individuals. That may solve a budgetary problem for the government, but it simply creates a new problem for individuals. In contrast, Democrats have focused on reducing the cost of health care overall by looking at systemic reforms.

Obviously, there is a ton more work that needs to be done to reduce overall costs—we still need to keep things like the public option on the table—but the Democratic approach of reducing overall costs is superior on both policy and political grounds to the Republican approach of burden shifting. For the GOP, the only path out of the wilderness is to recognize this reality, but their reaction to Newt Gingrich's criticism of RyanCare shows they are nowhere near understanding the box they've put themselves in.

Republican Senate Hypocrisy On Filibustering Judicial Appointments

Joan McCarter at Daily Kos points out Republican hypocrisy in an article entitled Senate votes on cloture for Goodwin Liu nomination. Liu is a liberal law professor from Berkley. These are past statements from Republicans expressing their views on filibustering judicial nominees:

Senator Saxby Chambliss (GA): “I believe  [filibustering judicial nominees] is in violation of the Constitution”  (4/13/05).
Senator John Cornyn (TX): Judicial  filibusters are “offensive to our nation’s constitutional  design…. [S]eparation of powers principles strongly suggest that the Senate  may not—and especially not by mere Senate rule—enhance its own  power in such a manner without offending the Constitution” (2004).
Senator Mike Crapo (ID):  “[T]he Constitution requires the Senate to hold up-or-down votes on all  nominees” (5/25/05).
Senator Jim Demint (SC):  “[D]enials of simple votes on judicial nominees” are  “unconstitutional” (5/22/05).
Senator Lindsey Graham (SC): “I  think filibustering judges will destroy the judiciary over time. I think  it’s unconstitutional” (5/23/05).
Senator Orrin Hatch (UT):  Filibustering judicial nominees is “unfair, dangerous, partisan, and  unconstitutional” (1/12/05).
Senator Kay Bailey  Hutchison (TX): “[T]he Constitution envisions a 51-vote  majority for judgeships…. [Filibustering judges] amend[s] the  Constitution without going through the proper processes…. We have a  majority rule that is the tradition of the Senate with judges. It is the  constitutional requirement” (4/28/05).
Senator Johnny Isakson (GA):  “[T]he Constitution require[s] an up-or-down vote” on judicial  nominees. “I will vote to support a vote, up or down, on every nominee.  Understanding that, were I in the minority party and the issues reversed, I  would take exactly the same position because this document, our Constitution,  does not equivocate” (5/19/05).
Senator Jon Kyl (AZ): “The  President was elected fair and square. He has the right to submit judicial  nominees and it is the Senate’s obligation under the Constitution to act  on those nominees” (4/10/08).
Senator Jeff Sessions (AL): “[The  Constitution] says the Senate shall advise and consent on treaties by a  two-thirds vote, and simply ‘shall advise and consent’ on  nominations…. I think there is no doubt the Founders understood that to  mean … confirmation of a judicial nomination requires only a simple  majority vote” (7/27/03).
Senator Richard Shelby (AL): “Why not  allow the President to do his job of selecting judicial nominees and let us do  our job in confirming or denying them? Principles of fairness call for it and  the Constitution requires it” (11/12/03).
Senator John Thune (SD):  Filibustering judicial nominees “is contrary to our Constitution ….  It was the Founders’ intention that the Senate dispose of them with a simple majority vote” (4/21/05).

 Needless to say, they all voted to filibuster Liu's confirmation -- except, to his credit, Hatch (who has never filibustered a judicial appointment) -- he voted "Present."

Click for McCarter's follow-up article entitled Grassley: Nominee Liu Has "Communist" China Worldview.

And another Daily Kos article by Adam B, entitled Confirming Goodwin Liu.

Transcript, link to video of Obama's Middle East speech, 19 May 2011

Click here for a HuffPo article with a link to a segment of the video.

Click here for an opinion of the speech from Al Jazeera.

Click here for Obama's follow-up speech to AIPAC a couple of days later, from Karoli at Crooks & Liars

Obama's full remarks, as prepared for delivery:

I want to thank Hillary Clinton, who has traveled so much these last six months that she is approaching a new landmark – one million frequent flyer miles. I count on Hillary every day, and I believe that she will go down as of the finest Secretaries of State in our nation’s history.

The State Department is a fitting venue to mark a new chapter in American diplomacy. For six months, we have witnessed an extraordinary change take place in the Middle East and North Africa. Square by square, town by town, country by country, the people have risen up to demand their basic human rights. Two leaders have stepped aside. More may follow. And though these countries may be a great distance from our shores, we know that our own future is bound to this region by the forces of economics and security. history and faith.

The Republican Race, And The Implosion Of Newt Gingrich

Huckabee and Trump dropped out within the last few days. So here are the ones that are left, and I'll start with the five that were at the South Carolina debate: Ron Paul, Herman Cain, Tim Pawlenty, Gary Johnson (former governor of New Mexico), and Rick Santorum. People are taking Pawlenty seriously; Cain and Santorum, semi-seriously. If Cain, who is black, does well, he has a long-shot chance to be picked as a VP running mate. The Republicans would love to run a black guy to counteract charges that they're racist. But president? Not a chance in hell.

Newt Gingrich has declared.  Mitt Romney hasn't yet, but he will.

There are a couple of perennial wingnuts who have officially declared whose names I can't remember and I'll fill in later. I think one of them is Jimmy McMillan, from The Rent Is Too Damn High Party. Another is a gay activist.

That leaves John Bolton, Rudy Giuliani, Buddy Roemer (former governor of Louisiana), Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Jon Huntsman, and Mitch Daniels. None of them has yet declared -- and I don't think Palin will, or she'd have cut her ties with Fox. Daniels and Huntsman are widely perceived as being among the "adults", with a genuine shot, if they choose to run. Roemer has no chance. Bolton, Giuliani, and Bachmann are idiots -- as, of course, is Palin.

Fun with Gingrich, after the jump.

UMKC Stands Behind Its Professors

Click for an article entitled KC University Backs Labor Professor In Video Controversy by Alan Scher Zagier, Associated Press, on Newser.

This is an update of one of my previous posts, "Oh! what a tangled web we weave" (Sir Walter Scott), about the latest of Andrew Breitbart's dishonestly edited video clips. A couple of video clips on Breitbart's Big Government site showed two professors apparently explaining and recommending the use of violence in labor disputes. But as with all things Breitbart, it's best to assume the video has been dishonestly edited, and to look into it further.

I did that, and I found that -- sure enough! The videos had been cut and rearranged to portray the professors as saying things they hadn't said. The corresponding unedited  clips were posted on Crooks & Liars, and they presented an entirely different view.

The university investigated the situation; as a result, the professors were exonerated.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- University of Missouri-Kansas City officials say they're standing behind a labor studies professor whose lecture comments about union agitation tactics have created an Internet stir among conservative commentators.

Video clips on conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart's Big Government website show professor Judy Ancel seemingly endorsing violence as a union tactic during a recent class. UMKC Provost Gail Hackett pledged support for the academic freedom of the school's professors and said videos posted on Breitbart's site rely on "selective editing" and are presented in "an inaccurate and distorted manner."

One of the professors, Judy Ancel, director of the university's Institute for Labor Studies, called the Breitbart video "part of a broad agenda to weaken unions."

Breitbart, when reached by the AP, declined comment but referred a reporter to a posting on his website. The posting attributed to someone writing under the name "Insurgent Visuals" accuses Ancel of distorting a quote from the film. The posting also features a video clip from the documentary apparently shown in Ancel's class in which a former Memphis sanitation worker discusses "nonviolence as a tactic," not violence.

Downside Of The Cloud

Click for Josh Fruhlinger's article at HuffPo entitled The Cloud: No Sir, I Don't Like It.

On my first day as a freshman at UC San Diego, I was handed a login and password to use for email, file storage, and general Internet access on the university's UNIX systems. Every day I would log in, browse Usenet, troll about on IRC, save files to my personal directory, and access them from elsewhere. I thought it was great, and I loved being able to save an in-progress paper to the account from a lab and then log in later to finish it from my dorm room.

Then one night as I was set to finish a Political Science paper, I couldn't log in. "We're sorry, the servers are down for maintenance. Please try later."

"But... you have my paper!" I whisper-screamed.

I spent that night waiting for the paper-hostage-holding servers to come back online. Thankfully, around 4:00am, they popped back up, and I quickly moved the file to a 3.5-inch floppy where it was safe.

I didn't know it at the time, but I was using the cloud, and I didn't like it. Heck, it ate my paper.

This was 1990, by the way. Yes, the cloud was around then.

More after the jump.

Froomkin: Oil Price Economics

Click for Dan Froomkin's article at huffingtonpost.com,
Your Pain, Their Gain: How High Gas Prices Impoverish The Many While Enriching The Few

The next time you're gritting your teeth as you fill your tank with $4 gas, here's something to consider: Your pain is their gain.

The last of the Big Five oil companies announced first-quarter earnings Friday, so the totals are in. Between the five of them, ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips made $34 billion in profits in the first three months of 2011 -- up 42 percent from a year ago. Exxon alone cleared a cool $10.7 billion profit from January through March, up 69 percent from 2010. That's $82,175 a minute.

Why the staggering increase in earnings? Precisely because you're paying $4 a gallon for gas. Gas prices shoot up when oil prices shoot up, and when oil prices shoot up for reasons that have nothing to do with how much it costs to bring it out of the ground, it's a windfall for the folks who produce it.

A barrel of oil costs an average of $30 to produce; its market price today is around $100.

Why is the price so high? Part of it is increased demand and geopolitical worries. But no less an authority on the matter than Goldman Sachs acknowledged earlier this month that speculation is at least partially responsible, driving oil prices up faster and higher than supply and demand could possibly explain. That means the people who are betting on oil prices are actually making the price of oil go up.

The American Petroleum Institute claims that the staggering earnings reflect oil and gas companies' tremendous contributions to the economy, and that their stock prices are shoring up the nation's pension funds. But it's part of the ongoing huge transfer of money from the many to the super-rich.

By and large, the oil companies' profits are not finding their way back into the communities from which they came; are not being used to create more jobs; and are not being invested in new equipment and exploration.

In the case of Exxon and ConocoPhillips, more than half of their total profits are being used to buy back their own stock.

Buying back stock usually sends stock prices up, by boosting earnings per outstanding share and increasing the demand for the stock, signaling that the company thinks its stock is undervalued.

But top executives often get significant stock options. The higher the stock price goes, the more valuable the option. Dividends, however, are not nearly as good a deal for company executives. They are taxed as income, at a top marginal rate for wealthy investors of 35%, while an  increase in the stock price is not taxed at all until the stock is sold -- and then at the capital gains tax rate, 15 percent.

“Buying back shares benefits existing shareholders, no one else. And more than anyone else, it benefits existing management,” says Henry Banta, an energy industry analyst and partner in the Washington D.C. law firm of Lobel, Novins & Lamont.

“They're basically enriching themselves,” says Daniel J. Weiss, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. “With this windfall, they enrich the board of directors, senior managers, and shareholders.”

And in 2007, when Exxon was using $30 billion a year from the previous oil-price bubble to buy back its shares, Bloomberg columnist David Pauly wrote: “In most cases, stock buybacks are suspect…. Managements should ignore investors' call to repurchase their shares and invest money in ways that will increase profit, not just earnings per share.”

As for dividends, a lot of shares are held by pension funds and mutual funds, but the vast majority of shares are held by a very small elite -- the super-rich. In 2007, the 35% of households owned $5,000 or more of stock. Only 22% owned $25,000 or more. The wealthiest 1 percent of households has 38% of stock; the wealthiest 5 percent has 69%; the wealthiest 10% has 81 percent. The bottom 60 percent of households owns 2.5 percent of the total stock.

There's another thing the big oil companies are doing with their profits: they're hoarding them. If precedent holds, as soon as oil prices started shooting up again, a lot of that money started going into the bank for safekeeping -- and adding yet more to the $1 trillion or so in corporate cash lying fallow and slowing the recovery.

And as it happens, a not insubstantial chunk of last quarter's profits were a direct gift -- from the taxpayers. Somewhere between $4 billion and $9 billion of the industry's annual profits comes from federal subsidies.

Democrats today are seeking to repeal subsidies of $4 billion a year. Republicans and the API are strongly resisting.

A significant amount of the money that isn't simply hoarded is used by the Big Oil lobby to buy influence in Washington. In a recent quarter where Exxon's profits were $11 billion, it spent $3 million on lobbying.

Pundits Checked For Accuracy: Krugman Best

This from Jim Romenesko at Poynter.org, May 2, 2011:

Claim: Krugman is top prognosticator; Cal Thomas is the worst

A Hamilton College class and their public policy professor analyzed the predicts of 26 pundits — including Sunday morning TV talkers — and used a scale of 1 to 5 to rate their accuracy. After Paul Krugman, the most accurate pundits were Maureen Dowd, former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “The Bad” list includes Thomas Friedman, Clarence Page, and Bob Herbert.

Well, Krugman is a particular favorite of mine, so I'm pleased to see he is rated hightly. I was also pleased to see that George Will, Lindsey Graham, and Joe Lieberman were among the worst. But the students conducting the test picked their subjects at random, and I sure would have liked to see how such luminaries as Dick Morris and Bill Kristol would have ranked.

CLINTON, N.Y. – Op-ed columnists and TV’s talking heads build followings by making bold, confident predictions about politics and the economy. But rarely are their predictions analyzed for accuracy.

Now, a class at Hamilton College led by public policy professor P. Gary Wyckoff has analyzed the predictions of 26 prognosticators between September 2007 and December 2008. Their findings? Anyone can make as accurate a prediction as most of them if just by flipping a coin.

Their research paper, “Are Talking Heads Blowing Hot Air? An Analysis of the Accuracy of Forecasts in the Political Media” will be presented via webcast on Monday, May 2, at 4:15 p.m., at www.hamilton.edu/pundit. The paper will also be available at that address at that time.

The Hamilton students sampled the predictions of 26 individuals who wrote columns in major print media and who appeared on the three major Sunday news shows – Face the Nation, Meet the Press, and This Week – and evaluated the accuracy of 472 predictions made during the 16-month period. They used a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being “will not happen, 5 being “will absolutely happen”) to rate the accuracy of each, and then divided them into three categories: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

The students found that only nine of the prognosticators they studied could predict more accurately than a coin flip. Two were significantly less accurate, and the remaining 14 were not statistically any better or worse than a coin flip.

The top prognosticators – led by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman – scored above five points and were labeled “Good,” while those scoring between zero and five were “Bad.” Anyone scoring less than zero (which was possible because prognosticators lost points for inaccurate predictions) were put into “The Ugly” category. Syndicated columnist Cal Thomas came up short and scored the lowest of the 26.

Even when the students eliminated political predictions and looked only at predictions for the economy and social issues, they found that liberals still do better than conservatives at prediction. After Krugman, the most accurate pundits were Maureen Dowd of The New York Times, former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – all Democrats and/or liberals. Also landing in the “Good” category, however, were conservative columnists Kathleen Parker and David Brooks, along with Bush Administration Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. Left-leaning columnist Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post rounded out the “good” list.

Those scoring lowest – “The Ugly” – with negative tallies were conservative columnist Cal Thomas; U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC); U.S. Senator Carl Levin (D-MI); U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman, a McCain supporter and Democrat-turned-Independent from Connecticut; Sam Donaldson of ABC; and conservative columnist George Will.

Landing between the two extremes – “The Bad” – were Howard Wolfson, communications director for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign; former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, a hopeful in the 2008 Republican primary; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Republican; Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic nominee for president in 2004; liberal columnist Bob Herbert of The New York Times; Andrea Mitchell of NBC; New York Times columnist Tom Friedman; the late David Broder, former columnist for The Washington Post; Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page; New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof; and Hillary Clinton.

The group also found a link between conditional predictions and accuracy, that is, a prediction that was conditional (“If A, then B”) was less likely to be accurate. Finally, those prognosticators with a law degree were more likely to be wrong.

One of the comments:

Anonymous: The guy with a PhD in economics, and a Nobel prize in economics, who writes mostly about economics, is the most accurate? There’s a shocker.

Link here to the video presentation of the study by the students who did it.