Ehrenreich: "On Turning Poverty into an American Crime"

Barbara Ehrenreich updates Nickled and Dimed for 2011. It's horrifying.

You want to know what America really is? It's stuffing poor people into small apartments like sardines because they can't afford their own space. It's suicide help lines swamped with calls, and suicide rates spiking with those who couldn't be helped. It's people selling raccoon carcasses on the side of the road because it's the only source of food for people in the area. (The guy selling them recommends "marinating them in vinegar and spices") It's people killing squirrels for meat in places where they can't even afford the raccoons.

America is injured workers that can't go on disability because disability insists on an MRI they can't afford. It's people on food stamps only because welfare is now impossible to get, post-Clinton. It's TANF recipients being fingerprinted and interrogated as to the parentage of their children by hostile social workers.

As Ehrenreich said, though, America is mostly about criminalizing the destitute and impoverished, hating and blaming them for their own misery. That hatred motivates the constant suspicions of drug use in low-wage employment. That hatred motivates a legal system that drags ordained ministers out of shelters for the crime of being homeless. That hatred gets homeless activists arrested for feeding "indigents", and pushes places like Phoenix, Arizona to try to use zoning laws to stop churches from serving breakfasts to the desperate.

America is, yes, also about debtor's prisons. It's not called that, of course. But if you can't pay a fine, or if your creditor leans on a judge to get you declared "in contempt of court"? Off you go to jail. If you're a minority, you might not even have to wait until you're in debt, either; your communities have their public funding cut at the same time as law enforcement is redoubled:

In what has become a familiar pattern, the government defunds services that might help the poor while ramping up law enforcement. Shut down public housing, then make it a crime to be homeless. Generate no public-sector jobs, then penalize people for falling into debt. The experience of the poor, and especially poor people of color, comes to resemble that of a rat in a cage scrambling to avoid erratically administered electric shocks. And if you should try to escape this nightmare reality into a brief, drug-induced high, it’s “gotcha” all over again, because that of course is illegal too.

One result is our staggering level of incarceration, the highest in the world. Today, exactly the same number of Americans -- 2.3 million -- reside in prison as in public housing. And what public housing remains has become ever more prison-like, with random police sweeps and, in a growing number of cities, proposed drug tests for residents. The safety net, or what remains of it, has been transformed into a dragnet.

Worst of all, as Ehrenreich points out, is that many states are making prisoners pay for their own incarceration, shifting the burden of a broken justice system onto its desperate victims.

Meanwhile, America's richest 1% are wealthier and more powerful than they've ever been in the history of the Republic, and thanks to Citizen's United, they're going to make damned sure that the only voice that voters hear is theirs.

That's your America. Unless you damned well DO something about it.

Most American's Can't Afford a $1000 Emergency (Plus Bonus Buffet)

From CNNMoney:

When the unexpected strikes, most Americans aren't prepared to pay for it.

A majority, or 64%, of Americans don't have enough cash on hand to handle a $1,000 emergency expense, according to a survey by the National Foundation for Credit Counseling, or NFCC, released on Wednesday.

Only 36% said they would tap their rainy day funds for an emergency. The rest of the 2,700 people polled said that they would have to go to other extremes to cover an unexpected expense, such as borrowing money or taking out a cash advance on a credit card.

"It's alarming," said Gail Cunningham, a spokeswoman for the Washington, DC-based non-profit. "For consumers who live paycheck to paycheck -- having spent tomorrow's money -- an unplanned expense can truly put them in financial distress," she noted.

That's the case for Allyson Curtis, 35. "I think about it every day," she said.

Curtis was unemployed for only three months last year, but in that time she accumulated $5,000 in credit card debt that she's now struggling to pay down. In the case of an emergency, Curtis said she would likely postpone other payments and pile on additional debt.

She is already putting off $450 in dental work and a car inspection due to a crack in her windshield, which will cost $300 to replace, she said.
Budgeting for an emergency fund

Many respondents, 17%, said they would borrow money from friends or family. Another 17% said they would neglect other financial obligations -- like a credit card bill or mortgage payment -- in order to free up some funds.

Alternatively, 12% of the respondents said they would have to sell or pawn some assets to come up with $1,000 and 9% said they would need to take out a loan. Another 9% said they would get a cash advance from a credit card, according to the NFCC.

Cunningham finds that particularly troubling. Neglecting other debt obligations -- or worse piling on more debt -- "really exacerbates the problem," she said.

An earlier study by the same organization found that 30% of Americans have zero dollars in non-retirement savings. A separate study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that 50% of Americans would struggle to come up with $2,000 in a pinch.

So people are a minor emergency away from financial doom. Good to know.

But, hey, at least the richest people are happy, right? Well, no. Warren Buffett wrote a big ol' piece in the Times talking about how he thinks the current situation is nonsense as well.

While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as “carried interest,” thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate. Others own stock index futures for 10 minutes and have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent, as if they’d been long-term investors.

These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It’s nice to have friends in high places.

Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent...

...I know well many of the mega-rich and, by and large, they are very decent people. They love America and appreciate the opportunity this country has given them. Many have joined the Giving Pledge, promising to give most of their wealth to philanthropy. Most wouldn’t mind being told to pay more in taxes as well, particularly when so many of their fellow citizens are truly suffering.

Many, yes. The problem is that the ones who aren't decent—like, say, the arch-conservative Koch brothers, the Coors family, and Scaife—are expending a ton of time, effort, and money into supporting a whole system of bullshit "free market" think tanks, institutes, media outlets, and other organizations that exist solely to screw the middle class and apologize for their billionaire backers.

Warren, if you want things to change, stop writing Op-Eds and start underwriting groups that counter the destructive influence of your far-right counterparts. Start making sure that progressives have the same sort of influence and reach that conservatives do. Start ensuring that Grover freakin' Norquist isn't the only voice that matters in Washington.

Talk is cheap. You have loads of money, and this is all ABOUT money. You can afford more. So do something about it.

Super-Committee

So the Republicans have made their picks, and not surprisingly, they're all nutbar right-wingers:

For the House, it's Jeb Hensarling, Dave Camp, and Fred Upton. For the Senate, it's Jon Kyl, Rob Portman, and Pat Toomey.

So how nutty are they? Well, Toomey wants to privatize social security, Henserling called Social Security "a cruel ponzi scheme", Camp wants higher taxes on the poor, and Portman wants to get rid of the Department of Education.

Yep. Jon Kyl is the "not intended to be a factual statement" guy, too.

Meanwhile, Reid's sent in John Kerry, Patty Murray, and Max "DINO" Baucus. All of whom are more than willing to carve up "entitlements" that they have no personal need for or familiarity with.

So, yeah, America's fucked. I just wish it had a President. That'd be nice, wouldn't it?

Niall Ferguson Blames Global Uprising On....Wait For It...

...GREEDY POORS! That's right, it's all the fault of those damned poors and their "entitlements".

What all the Indignant have in common is the refusal to address squarely the problem that nearly all Western countries face. That problem is that the welfare systems that evolved in the mid-20th century are unaffordable under the demographic and economic circumstances of the 21st century. The financial crisis has merely exacerbated what was already a severe structural crisis of public finance, boosting deficits while slowing growth.

No, asshat, that's not the problem.

The problem is that a miniscule minority of nouveau-robber-barons control such a gigantic portion of the world's wealth that it's destabilizing the entire system. It's what's screwing up the economy—since you can't have a functional economy without people who actually spend money instead of hoarding it—and it's those screwed-up economies that are responsible for the deficits that you're whinging about.

But, then again, whose interests do you think he's advocating? Money is speech, after all.

Perry for President

So, that's what's happening. A low-rent Dubya imitator that can't even get abstinence-only education right is going to make a grab for the big-boy chair.

Well, here he is, in all his glory, explaining his "mommy problem":


Watch live video from texastribune on Justin.tv

London's on Fire

Guardian has the liveblog about the riots here.

Edit: Here's a good quote from MSNBC about why this is happening.

LONDON -- As political and social protests grip the Middle East, are growing in Europe and a riot exploded in north London this weekend, here's a sad truth, expressed by a Londoner when asked by a television reporter: Is rioting the correct way to express your discontent?

"Yes," said the young man. "You wouldn't be talking to me now if we didn't riot, would you?"

The TV reporter from Britain's ITV had no response. So the young man pressed his advantage. "Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you."

Eavesdropping from among the onlookers, I looked around. A dozen TV crews and newspaper reporters interviewing the young men everywhere.

The truth is that discontent has been simmering among Britain's urban poor for years, and few have paid attention. Social activists say one out of two children in Tottenham live in poverty. It's one of the poorest areas of Britain. Britain's worst riots in decades took place here in 1985. A policeman was hacked to death. After these riots, the same young man pointed out, "They built us a swimming pool."

Hello? America?

THIS IS WHAT AUSTERITY LOOKS LIKE.

No Such Thing As "Independents"

I'm no great fan of TNR. I always try to give credit where it's due, though and TNR hosted a very good piece by Ruy Teixeira, worth quoting in full.

The debt ceiling deal has been struck and the score looks to be in the neighborhood of Republicans: a zillion, Democrats: zero. It is perhaps the inevitable outcome of a process in which Obama treated GOP default-threatening tactics as legitimate and accepted the GOP framework that cutting debt, not creating jobs, was the country’s central problem. As a result, we have a deal that severely undercuts Democratic policy priorities and cuts government spending just as the economic recovery is showing signs of tanking. Just how, exactly, did it come to this? The most plausible explanation is that Obama and his political advisors are convinced that striking a bipartisan compromise on debt reduction is the way to the hearts of America’s political independents, who famously abandoned the Democrats in 2010.

Following this logic, Obama’s actions—treating the Republicans’ extraordinary threat not as an illegitimate bargaining tactic but as an opportunity—begin to make a measure of sense. Since independents are supposedly fixated on a bipartisan compromise to reduce spending and cut the debt, Obama would use the leverage provided by the Republicans’ threat, in a judo-like fashion, to enlist both parties in a grand bargain to restore long-run fiscal health. As a result, independents would reward Obama for being, in that tired phrase, “the adult in the room” who stood up for their fiscal priorities.

But it hasn’t worked out that way. As Obama has talked endlessly about a “balanced” approach to getting the country’s fiscal house in order, the economy has continued to stagger and that support from independents is nowhere in sight. Pew data show his approval rating among independents down 16 points in the last few months to an abysmal 36 percent. As for Obama’s re-elect numbers, they have also tumbled, with just 31 percent of independents now saying they would vote to re-elect him, compared to 39 percent for a generic Republican.

To understand how very unlikely it is that Obama’s long sought-after deal is going to magically turn around his numbers, we must visit one of the most robust but amazingly underappreciated findings in American political science: independents are not independent. That is, the overwhelming majority of Americans who say there are “independent” lean toward one party or the other. Call them IINOs (Independents In Name Only). IINOs who say they lean toward the Republicans think and vote just like regular Republicans. IINOs who say they lean toward the Democrats think and vote just like regular Democrats.

Right now, according to Pew data, IINOs are 68 percent of independents, split 36/32 between Republican-leaners and Democratic–leaners, respectively. That leaves less than a third of independents who might really qualify as independent. This figure, in turn, translates into just 13 to 14 percent of adults, and inevitably a lower percentage of actual voters, since pure independents have notoriously low turnout. In 2008, according to the University of Michigan National Election Study, pure independents were only 7 percent of voters.

Only SEVEN PERCENT. That's what the Dems are obsessing over. Kee-rist.

So how’s the debt deal going to go over with these different flavors of independents? Well, Democratic IINOs and pure independents both are concerned about the job situation over the deficit by a margin of two to one, according to Pew data. In fact, the only part of the “independent” pool that actually thinks the deficit is more important than the job situation are Republican IINOs, who right now give Obama a 15 percent approval rating, the same as regular Republicans. Good luck winning that group over.

But maybe pure independents only say they’re concerned with the economy when their real passion is bipartisan compromises on the debt, and so they’ll ignore the bad jobs situation and turn out in droves for Obama. That’s not likely to happen either. As John Sides has pointed out, voting preferences among pure independents are more influenced, not less, by the state of the economy.

These are the facts, but politicians, and Obama especially, seem to have a hard time grasping them. Perhaps that’s because independents are the Rorschach test of U.S. politics—you see in them what your beliefs and preferences incline you to see. Obama and his team want to see teeming hordes of voters who are above the partisan allure of party, untroubled by the bad economy (or, at least, not planning to vote on that basis), and pining for a Washington where the parties, darn it, just work together. So that’s what they see.

The administration’s chimerical search for the independents of their dreams has not served the country, nor the president, well. Obama has stumbled ever further into a political heart of darkness, hemmed in on all sides by radical GOP views on government and governance. And he can’t expect independents to bail him out.

No, he can't. It's amazing that someone as sharp as Plouffe would think that, but I suspect it might be because Obama did a damned good job of scooping up progressives during the primaries, and didn't yet have to match his rhetoric with action. Now America's got two and a half years of his Administration behind it, and progressives are pissed, as they have every right to be. Plouffe's assuming that he has them on-side, and I don't think he necessarily does, even if you have a crazy like Bachmann on the Republican side.

I'm still a bit baffled by all this. There's no goddamned way that you're going to see a lot of people who are both highly informed and completely without opinion or ideology. That doesn't happen. You might get IINOs, but highly-informed swing voters are only marginally less rare (and mythical) than unicorns. Teixeira's right: low-info voters are going to vote based on the economy, considering how crappy the economy is, and aren't going to give a shit about who's being more "reasonable".

I still believe Obama will win, if only because the Republican candidate is likely to be an absolute disaster that even turns off IINOs. It's still going to be closer than it has any right to be—and they'll still take the wrong lesson from it.

Neither New Taxes Nor Pentagon Cuts

So says Kos, and I buy it.

So Reid says the super committee must have new revenues.

Reid says the tea party's influence on the process has been "unfair to the American people." "The American people are not impressed by the no new revenue...because the richest of the rich have contributed nothing...the burden [in the deal] is on the middle-class." Says the Bush tax cuts did not help the economy. But says we do need to cut spending, and says the Super Congress will force action, and that the Super Congress must include revenue. "We need a fair approach to this committee." "The only way we can arrive at a fair arrangement for the American people is to have equal sharing." He says revenue must match spending cuts (which I think is an absolute minimum standard). "It has to be equal. There has to be spending cuts...and revenue that matches that."

Boehner and McConnell say it won't. Limbaugh and Norquist won't let them.

So then what? Automatic cuts to discretionary spending and the defense budget.

But the GOP won't fret over those defense cuts. Because all they have to do is pass separate legislation refunding the Pentagon and Senate Dems (either too scared or too compromised) will cave on that and what will Obama do? Veto spending "for the troops"?

Not much to add to that. This arrangement would work if Dems had the stones to follow through on their threats. They don't. They NEVER do. So Republicans need not fear.

It's Over

Yep, it's over. And by "over", I mean the likelihood of any sort of real American recovery.

Remember, kids: extortion works wonders against Democrats. They fold like a cheap shirt. They might babble about how it makes them stronger in future fights...but it's horseshit and always has been. They said the same thing about John Roberts, for God's sake, and look at what happened: America ended up with a 5-4 majority in the Supreme Court where Antonin Scalia calls the shots.

In any case, I'd suggest looking up butler schools. The only people that are going to see prosperity are the wealthiest families. Might as well try to make a living off of them, since it's going to be damned near impossible to make a living doing anything else.

Congressional Progressive Caucus Might Scuttle Deal

If you don't like the idea of government spending getting cut to the bone, just so that rich people can continue to have the lowest taxes in generations, these are the people you need to contact. They're the House's Congressional Progressive Caucus, and they're saying that they aren't going to accept this gigantic hillock of bullshit lying down.

These are the people you talk to if you want to prevent the Republicans from getting away with threatening to murder an economy to protect the richest people in the world.

"A nearly complete capitulation to the hostage-taking demands of Republican extremists."

So says The Times about the new deal. Krugman's more straightforward, saying "the President Surrenders". Which he did...like a scared coward, huddling in a pool of slow-cooling urine.

Well, looks like Al Qaeda had the right of it after all. The United States does negotiation with those threatening its destruction. Not only does it negotiate, it fucking surrenders without a shot.

The Republicans are emboldened, progressives are betrayed, the economy is fucked, and the people are too. What a pathetic, ridiculous spectacle.

Edit: Just for some laffs:

Q Mr. President, thank you. How do these negotiations affect negotiations or talks with Republicans about raising the debt limit? Because it would seem that they have a significant amount of leverage over the White House now, going in. Was there ever any attempt by the White House to include raising the debt limit as a part of this package?

THE PRESIDENT: When you say it would seem they’ll have a significant amount of leverage over the White House, what do you mean?

Q Just in the sense that they’ll say essentially we’re not going to raise the — we’re not going to agree to it unless the White House is able to or willing to agree to significant spending cuts across the board that probably go deeper and further than what you’re willing to do. I mean, what leverage would you have –

THE PRESIDENT: Look, here’s my expectation — and I’ll take John Boehner at his word — that nobody, Democrat or Republican, is willing to see the full faith and credit of the United States government collapse, that that would not be a good thing to happen. And so I think that there will be significant discussions about the debt limit vote. That’s something that nobody ever likes to vote on. But once John Boehner is sworn in as Speaker, then he’s going to have responsibilities to govern. You can’t just stand on the sidelines and be a bomb thrower.

Mr. President, sir?

You're a credulous idiot.

Silver Lining on the Small Screen

He isn't going to get listened to...but it's nice to see Paul Krugman basically take command this morning on This Week and lay out exactly what's going on. When I saw the panel included Will, Norquist, and Stephanopolous, I expected a right-wing pile-on, but Krugman ran that table like a boss. He used to be a bit shy and intimidated by these things, but he kicked ass.

No wonder he got hate mail.

Krugman, Chait, and "Centrist" Idiots

Well, this is a surprise. First, Chait:

The failure to understand the crisis we were entering was widely shared among centrist types...

...The political assumptions here turned out to be badly wrong. The main problem is that the Republican Party does not actually care very much about the deficit. It cares about, in order: Low taxes for high-income earners; reducing social spending, especially for the poor; protecting the defense budget; and low deficits. The Obama administration and many Democrats actually do care about the deficit and are willing to sacrifice their priorities in order to achieve it, a desire that was on full display during the health care reform debate. Republicans care about deficit reduction only to the extent that it can be undertaken without impeding upon other, higher priorities. Primarily "deficit reduction" is a framing device for their opposition to social spending, as opposed to a genuine belief that revenue and outlays ought to bear some relationship to each other.

Yeah, no shit. The rest of us, especially the "left" that your mag loves taking cheap shots at, have been yelling this from the rooftops for the past decade and a half, and definitely since the Crisis.

Willing to admit that the "shrill" set have a point yet?

Meanwhile, here's Krugman:

Jonathan Chait has an excellent piece documenting the way in which what he calls the establishment, and I call Very Serious People, misjudged the way the debt ceiling thing would play out...

...it also showed awesome political naivete. As Chait says, the first thing you need to understand is that modern Republicans don’t care about deficits. They only pretend to care when they believe that deficit hawkery can be used to dismantle social programs; as soon as the conversation turns to taxes, or anything else that would require them and their friends to make even the smallest sacrifice, deficits don’t matter at all.

I can’t help but notice that Chait’s list of chumps is basically the same as the list of people who puffed up Paul Ryan and gave him an award for fiscal responsibility. Enough said.

What’s really awesome here is the blindness. Anyone reading the newspapers with an open mind had a pretty good idea of what would happen in the debt fight; only Washington insiders managed to fool themselves.

But they’re Very Serious.

Yep. Krugman's been calling this one for ages, and he's being borne out. (As is usually the case on these things.)

The best (worst) part is that I suspect that the "centrists" will remember this right up until the moment when the opportunity once again arises to punch a hippy and get some "centrist" cred.

(Well, no. The best part is that Chait wrote a piece last year that showed that there are absolutely no negative electoral consequences to progressive voting.)

Chronic Child Hunger in America

Yep! America has now hit the point where there are children in Boston who can't get enough to eat! First world country? Look at this:

Doctors at a major Boston hospital report they are seeing more hungry and dangerously thin young children in the emergency room than at any time in more than a decade of surveying families.

Many families are unable to afford enough healthy food to feed their children, say the Boston Medical Center doctors. The resulting chronic hunger threatens to leave scores of infants and toddlers with lasting learning and developmental problems.

Before the economy soured in 2007, 12 percent of youngsters age 3 and under whose families were randomly surveyed in the hospital’s emergency department were significantly underweight. In 2010, that percentage jumped to 18 percent, and the tide does not appear to be abating, said Dr. Megan Sandel, an associate professor of pediatrics and public health at BMC.

“Food is costing more, and dollars don’t stretch as far,’’ Sandel said. “It’s hard to maintain a diet that is healthy.’’

The emergency room survey found a similarly striking increase in the percentage of families with children who reported they did not have enough food each month, from 18 percent in 2007 to 28 percent in 2010.

Pediatricians at hospitals in four other cities - Baltimore; Little Rock, Ark.; Minneapolis; and Philadelphia - also reported increases in the ranks of malnourished, hungry youngsters in their emergency rooms since 2008. But Boston’s increases were more dramatic, said Sandel, a lead investigator with Children’s HealthWatch, a network of researchers who track children’s health. Researchers said higher housing and heating costs in Massachusetts probably exacerbated the state’s surge.

BMC has also seen a 58 percent increase, from 24 in 2005 to 38 in 2010, in the number of severely underweight babies under the age of 1 who were referred by family physicians to its Grow Clinic, where doctors provide intensive nutritional, medical, and other services to boost babies’ growth. Such malnourishment is similar to what is more typically seen in developing countries, Sandel said.

Among the children treated at the clinic last year was Jordan Turner-Goode, who at age 1 weighed just 19 pounds, while the average child that age is more than 24 pounds.

That's right! A 58% increase in the number of severely underweight babies! BABIES!

Meanwhile, at this very moment, someone on Wall St. is buying a new iPad for his kids. Not that the kids really need it. They just don't want the kids to look bad when they go back to their private school in the fall.

Hey, gotta spend that last big bonus check on something. They've already bought Washington—so why not splurge on some Appleware?

Dean Baker Endorses Ron Paul's "Surprising Lucid Solution" for Debt Crisis

I'll have to admit that the whole thing is bizarrely elegant. Here's Baker.

Representative Ron Paul has hit upon a remarkably creative way to deal with the impasse over the debt ceiling: have the Federal Reserve Board destroy the $1.6 trillion in government bonds it now holds. While at first blush this idea may seem crazy, on more careful thought it is actually a very reasonable way to deal with the crisis. Furthermore, it provides a way to have lasting savings to the budget.

The basic story is that the Fed has bought roughly $1.6 trillion in government bonds through its various quantitative easing programs over the last two and a half years. This money is part of the $14.3 trillion debt that is subject to the debt ceiling. However, the Fed is an agency of the government. Its assets are in fact assets of the government. Each year, the Fed refunds the interest earned on its assets in excess of the money needed to cover its operating expenses. Last year the Fed refunded almost $80 billion to the Treasury. In this sense, the bonds held by the Fed are literally money that the government owes to itself.

Unlike the debt held by Social Security, the debt held by the Fed is not tied to any specific obligations. The bonds held by the Fed are assets of the Fed. It has no obligations that it must use these assets to meet. There is no one who loses their retirement income if the Fed doesn’t have its bonds. In fact, there is no direct loss of income to anyone associated with the Fed’s destruction of its bonds. This means that if Congress told the Fed to burn the bonds, it would in effect just be destroying a liability that the government had to itself, but it would still reduce the debt subject to the debt ceiling by $1.6 trillion. This would buy the country considerable breathing room before the debt ceiling had to be raised again. President Obama and the Republican congressional leadership could have close to two years to talk about potential spending cuts or tax increases. Maybe they could even talk a little about jobs.

In addition, there’s a second reason why Representative Paul’s plan is such a good idea. As it stands now, the Fed plans to sell off its bond holdings over the next few years. This means that the interest paid on these bonds would go to banks, corporations, pension funds, and individual investors who purchase them from the Fed. In this case, the interest payments would be a burden to the Treasury since the Fed would no longer be collecting (and refunding) the interest...

...In short, Representative Paul has produced a very creative plan that has two enormously helpful outcomes. The first one is that the destruction of the Fed’s $1.6 trillion in bond holdings immediately gives us plenty of borrowing capacity under the current debt ceiling. The second benefit is that it will substantially reduce the government’s interest burden over the coming decades. This is a proposal that deserves serious consideration, even from people who may not like its source.

He's not wrong. Neither of them are wrong. It makes perfect sense and I can't fault the reasoning. Sure, the Fed would take a bit of a bath on this. So what? They're still the best equipped organization in America to do so. It wipes out a lot of debt in one go, and it means that there won't be the Mega Catfood Commission wiping out old people's Medicare and Social Security, at least not anytime soon.

In fact, it's such a logical solution that I'm really, really wondering why the hell nobody else has advocated it.

Edit: Noah Smith thinks that it could lead to "hyperinflation", as it would signify the end of Fed independence. Maybe. But I'm a bit skeptical about that. Inflation, yes, but "hyperinflation"? 

Norway Attacker's "Manifesto Against Muslims"

From Huffpo. (The Canadian one this time; the piece was in the Canadian Press. You can find it by going through the Oslo page on Huffpo.)

The man blamed for attacks on Norway's government headquarters and a youth retreat that left at least 93 dead said he was motivated by a desire to bring about a revolution in Norwegian society, his lawyer said Sunday.

A manifesto published online — which police are poring over and said was posted the day of the attack — ranted against Muslim immigration to Europe and vowed revenge on "indigenous Europeans," whom he accused of betraying their heritage. It added that they would be punished for their "treasonous acts."

Police have not confirmed that their 32-year-old Norwegian suspect, Anders Behring Breivik, wrote the document, but his lawyer referred to it and said Breivik had been working on it for years.

The treatise detailed plans to acquire firearms and explosives, and even appeared to describe a test explosion: "BOOM! The detonation was successful!!!" It ends with a note dated 12:51 p.m. on July 22: "I believe this will be my last entry."

 Everybody and his dog was presuming that this was an Islamist thing. Then, when that was ruled out, everybody was presuming that this was just a random crazy. It wasn't that, either. The man is responsible for his own actions, but we cannot ignore the elephant in the room: he's motivated by the same sort of reactionary xenophobic fervor that so much of the American right is.

Here's some elaboration from the Statesman:

A 1,500-page manifesto, posted on the Web hours before the attacks, included a day-by-day diary of months of planning for the attacks, and the author claimed to be part of a small group that intends to "seize political and military control of Western European countries and implement a cultural conservative political agenda."

He predicted a conflagration that would kill or injure more than 1 million "Marxists/multiculturalists" and added: "The time for dialogue is over. We gave peace a chance. The time for armed resistance has come."

The manifesto was signed Andrew Berwick, an Anglicized version of his name. A former U.S. government official briefed on the case said investigators believed the manifesto was Breivik's work.

The manifesto, titled "2083: A European Declaration of Independence," claims to explain "what your government, the academia and the media are hiding from you" and warns against "appeasement and anti-European thinking."

Breivik also was thought to have posted a video Friday calling for Christian conservatives in Europe to rise up violently as a modern-day version of the Crusades-era Knights Templar to save Europe from Islamic totalitarianism. In its closing moments, the video depicts Breivik in a military uniform, holding assault weapons.

What bothers me—other than the fact that ninety innocent people are dead, mind—is that I doubt the wingnuts will stop to reconsider. They'll probably just point to the guy having played that "Modern Warfare" shooting game and say that this is all video games' fault.

I do hope that everybody else remembers, though. I hope that people remember that the xenophobic hate infesting places like the Murdoch Press and the right-wing blogs can foment violence just as easily as theocratic Islam. I hope that people are at least skeptical when engaging those sources in the future.

Freedom of expression is the most important freedom of them all—but the consequences of expression are not limited to expression in Arabic.

Edit: Oh, and he had ties to the good ol' English Defence League.

Fox News: Big Phone Hackers?

Big "allegedly" there, of course, but just look at what "The Anomaly" wrote on DailyKos. It's a story about Dan Cooper, a former Fox executive who let out a bunch of confidential information about Fox News' head honcho, Roger Ailes. He did it off the record, but Ailes found out anyway.

Why?

Cooper says that Ailes discovered he was the source by gaining access to his phone records through Fox's “brain room”.

Cooper claims that his talent agent, Richard Leibner, told him he had received a call from Ailes, who identified Cooper as a source, and insisted that Leibner drop him as a client--or any client reels Leibner sent Fox would pile up in a corner and gather dust. Cooper continued:  “I made the connections. Ailes knew I had given Brock the interview. Certainly Brock didn’t tell him. Of course. Fox News had gotten Brock’s telephone records from the phone company, and my phone number was on the list. Deep in the bowels of 1211 Avenue of the Americas, News Corporation’s New York headquarters, was what Roger called the Brain Room. Most people thought it was simply the research department of Fox News. But unlike virtually everybody else, because I had to design and build the Brain Room, I knew it also housed a counterintelligence and black ops office. So accessing phone records was easy pie.”

In a Rolling Stone piece, Tim Dickenson corroborates Cooper's account of a “black-ops” room deep within Fox HQ:

Befitting his siege mentality, Ailes also housed his newsroom in a bunker. Reporters and producers at Fox News work in a vast, windowless expanse below street level, a gloomy space lined with video-editing suites along one wall and an endless cube farm along the other. In a separate facility on the same  subterranean floor, Ailes created an in-house research unit – known at Fox News as the “brain room” – that requires special security clearance to gain access. “The brain room is where Willie Horton comes from,” says Cooper, who  helped design its specs. “It’s where the evil resides.”

If that sounds paranoid, consider the man Ailes brought in to run the brain room: Scott Ehrlich, a top lieutenant from his political-­consulting firm.  Ehrlich – referred to by some as “Baby Rush” – had taken over the lead on Big Tobacco’s campaign to crush health care reform when Ailes signed on with CNBC. According to documents obtained by Rolling Stone, Ehrlich gravitated to the dark side: In a strategy labeled “Underground Attack,” he advised the tobacco giants to “hit hard” at key lawmakers “through their soft  underbelly” by quietly influencing local media – a tactic that would help the firms “stay under the radar of the national news media.”

I don't know if this will get any traction. This isn't the Guardian, it's Kos. But this "bunker" is definitely worth investigating. It may well be that News Corps' tactics were only a UK thing...

...but I sure as hell wouldn't bet money on it.

So Warren Won't Be Leading the Consumer Protection Agency

So sez the Post, quoting a source in the White House.

Well, of course she won't be. She might be effective. And Lord knows we can't have that. The little people are cattle. You don't protect them. What are you, some sort of commie?

Dow Jones CEO Bails Thanks to Murdoch Hacking Scandal

Well, I wasn't expecting this. Sure, it seems like everybody in the UK is resigning in disgrace in light of the hacking scandal, but I'd expected that it would stay on that side of the Atlantic.

Apparently not.

Dow Jones & Co. Chief Executive Les Hinton resigned late Friday, as the top executive at News Corp.'s financial publishing unit sought to contain the damage from the company's British tabloid scandal, which began while he oversaw the company's U.K. newspaper operations.

Mr. Hinton said that he was "ignorant of what apparently happened" at the company's tabloid newspapers earlier in the decade. He characterized his lack of knowledge as "irrelevant" and said it was "proper" for him to step down.

Mr. Hinton's announcement came hours after Rebekah Brooks, the embattled chief executive of News International, News Corp.'s U.K. newspaper unit, resigned. She acknowledged the reputation of the company was "at risk."

The resignations were part of an aggressive new damage-control campaign by the media company, which also publishes The Wall Street Journal.

It's not enough. It's not remotely close to enough. Murdoch and his underlings knew damned well what was going on. They're under investigation for hacking 9-11 victims, for God's sake. This isn't the sort of thing that gets blown off with a full-page apology in a newspaper and a few strategic resignations. This is serious. The truth must out.

South Sudan Gains Their Freedom and Independence

I know I've been a bit negative here over the last while. There's good reason for that.But South Sudan finally getting their independence? After all this time, all the bloodshed, all the tears, and all the trials? There's nothing bad to say about that.

The country is going to need investment, aid, and support, and it is going to face immense trials. That doesn't matter.  It was necessary, it was a long time coming, and it'll help things in the long run.

It's a glorious day.