Big Coal getting together to influence elections

It's all a result of the recent Supreme Court decision. From ABC:

Top officials at the country's major coal companies, including Massey Energy, owner of the West Virginia mine where 29 died earlier this year, apparently want to take advantage of looser campaign finance laws and use corporate money to defeat political candidates they believe to be "anti-coal."

According to an email from Roger Nicholson, senior vice president of the International Coal Group, "a number of coal industry representatives recently have been considering developing a 527 entity with the purpose of attempting to defeat anti-coal incumbents."

Nicholson's email notes that a recent Supreme Court decision will allow the "voices" of the coal firms "to be heard." The Court ruled earlier this January in Citizens United v. FEC that corporations and labor unions can spend unlimited funds on elections.

Mind you, note that we still haven't even gotten climate change signed into law, and they're still organizing to throw the Dems out. It doesn't matter what we do, big business is not our friend. They will take us on, regardless. Read More......

10 English words with foreign origins

A few are quite interesting, others quite obvious (poltergeist is German, duh). But who knew that "berserk" came from the Vikings? Read More......

Geithner: We want to expire tax cuts on the highest 2–3%

Back to taxes for a minute. Here's Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner on Meet the Press, July 25 (my emphasis):

I'll say what the president believes, and I believe this, is the right thing for the country, the fair thing, the responsible thing for the country now is to make sure we leave in place and preserve tax cuts that go to more than 95 percent of working Americans and complement those with a set of incentives for businesses to expand and hire. To make that possible, and to do that responsibly, I think it is fair and good policy to allow those tax cuts that only go to 2 to 3 percent of the highest earners in the country to expire as scheduled. The country can withstand that. The economy can withstand that. I think it's good policy.

So the Treasury Secretary is using high-profile MTP to push expiring the top end of the deadly Bush tax cuts. Three points:

• This is a very promising first step, since Geithner says explicitly he speaks for the president.
  
  
• The Bush tax cuts expire on December 31, 2010.
  
  
• There's an election in November, prior to the expiration, and Dems are already promising not to be "bad" (read, "effective") during the lame-duck Congress.

If you want to keep your party in power through 2016, Mr. President — keep your word. Please. Your credibility is already razor-thin, and Occam's Switchblade is watching.

GP

(A note to commenters on the earlier version of this post — thanks!) Read More......

Graham wants to amend constitution to stop children born in US from automatically becoming citizens

It's about immigration.

Asked how intent Graham is on introducing the amendment, the South Carolina Republican responded: “I got to.”

“People come here to have babies,” he said. “They come here to drop a child. It's called "drop and leave." To have a child in America, they cross the border, they go to the emergency room, have a child, and that child's automatically an American citizen. That shouldn't be the case. That attracts people here for all the wrong reasons.”

I got to? I really am sick and tired of this cute Republican redneck regular guy thing that everyone from Sarah Palin to now Lindsey Graham is doing. The old "using incorrect English to come off as a man of the people" trick.

If Lindsey Graham is going to bash immigrants, he can at least speak proper English when doing so. After all, he'd expect nothing less of the immigrants he's bashing. Read More......

Gays now apparently pose a threat to 'spooning' in the military

Anyone else think that the Family Research Concil's Tony Perkins, who brings new meaning to the phrase "straight-acting," spends just a bit too much time thinking about gay sex? Now he's afraid that gays threaten "spooning" in the military. I don't know whether Tony has ever served in the military, but I've got news for him, if soldiers refused to "spoon" with guys they had questions about, the ever-fey Tony would be at the top of the no-spooning list.

Read More......

Polls show opposition to health care reform falling

Wash Post:

Opposition to the landmark health care overhaul declined over the past month, to 35 percent from 41 percent, according to the latest results of a tracking poll, reported Thursday.

Fifty percent of the public held a favorable view of the law, up slightly from 48 percent a month ago, while 14 percent expressed no opinion about the measure, according to the poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The approval level was the highest for the legislation since it was enacted in March, after a divisive year-long debate. In April, the poll found 46 percent in favor and 40 percent opposed.

Read More......

We soon should know whether we're double-dipping into recession or not

Wash Post:

The recovery faces a crucial test over the next couple of months: Either it will pick up vital momentum from increased consumer spending and investment or stall out, dipping into a period of anemic growth -- or perhaps even another recession.

Forecasters knew this inflection point would arrive, a moment when consumers and businesses must take over for government stimulus spending and the rebuilding of inventories.

On Friday, the government will offer crucial evidence when it reports on second-quarter economic growth. This will be the first in a series of indicators in the coming weeks that could help answer whether the economy has achieved cruising speed, in particular whether the private sector is growing fast enough to put unemployed Americans back to work. Forecasters are expecting that gross domestic product rose at a rate of 2 to 2.5 percent rate in the April-through-June quarter, which would be too slow to drive down the jobless rate.

Just Wednesday, the government announced a surprising 1 percent drop in June orders for durable goods and a compilation of anecdotal reports from around the country by the Federal Reserve showed a recovery that is increasingly uneven. This fit into the pattern of recent economic indicators showing that the transition to a self-sustaining recovery has been rocky.

Read More......

Reich: 'American companies may never rehire large numbers of workers'

If Robert Reich is to be believed, it's the end of an era that started when your great-grandfather was just a thought:

The Great Decoupling of Corporate Profits from Jobs

Second-quarter earnings reports are coming in, and they’re making Wall Street smile. Corporate profits are up. . . . Big businesses have recovered almost 90 percent of what they lost. . . . So with all this money and profit, they’ll start hiring again, right? Wrong – for three reasons.

First, lots of their profits are coming from their overseas operations. So that’s where they’re investing and expanding production.

GM now sells more cars in China than it does in the US, but makes most of them there. The company now employs 32,000 hourly workers in China. But only 52,000 GM hourly workers remain in the United States – down from 468,000 in 1970. . . .

[Two more reasons worth clicking through to read]

The reality is this: Big American companies may never rehire large numbers of workers. And they won’t even begin to think about hiring until they know American consumers will buy their products. The problem is, American consumers won’t start buying against until they know they have reliable paychecks. (h/t Brilliant at Breakfast)

To which I'll add, American consumers won't start buying until they pay down the mountain of debt they spent enjoying the RBC (Reagan-Bush-Clinton) "prosperity." Be prepared, folks, just in case. Trim expenses hard, and if you can, hoard cash. Après Bush, le Déluge unless we're very lucky.

GP Read More......

Shirley Sherrod to sue Breitbart

It bugs me when reporters call this guy "a blogger." He's more a conservative activist than a blogger, no? Anyway, AP has a short story on this. Read More......

Economists say stimulus/TARP averted 2nd Depression

From the NYT:

Like a mantra, officials from both the Bush and Obama administrations have trumpeted how the government’s sweeping interventions to prop up the economy since 2008 helped avert a second Depression.

Now, two leading economists wielding complex quantitative models say that assertion can be empirically proved.

In a new paper, the economists argue that without the Wall Street bailout, the bank stress tests, the emergency lending and asset purchases by the Federal Reserve, and the Obama administration’s fiscal stimulus program, the nation’s gross domestic product would be about 6.5 percent lower this year.

In addition, there would be about 8.5 million fewer jobs, on top of the more than 8 million already lost; and the economy would be experiencing deflation, instead of low inflation.

The story goes on to cite an economist from the conservative Hoover Institute who, surprise, disagrees. The story doesn't identify the Hoover Institute as a conservative think tank. Again, surprise. Read More......

Prudential profiting from deaths of US soldiers

Um, fix this. ASAP. It's despicable:

[Cindy] Lohman, a public health nurse who helps special-needs children, says she had always believed that her son's life insurance funds were in a bank insured by the FDIC. That money -- like $28 billion in 1 million death-benefit accounts managed by insurers -- wasn't actually sitting in a bank.

It was being held in Prudential's general corporate account, earning investment income for the insurer. Prudential paid survivors like Lohman 1 percent interest in 2008 on their Alliance Accounts, while it earned a 4.8 percent return on its corporate funds, according to regulatory filings.

"I'm shocked," says Lohman, breaking into tears as she learns how the Alliance Account works. "It's a betrayal. It saddens me as an American that a company would stoop so low as to make a profit on the death of a soldier. Is there anything lower than that?"

Millions of bereaved Americans have unwittingly been placed in the same position by their insurance companies. The practice of issuing what they call "checkbooks" to survivors, instead of paying them lump sums, extends well beyond the military.

Prudential is literally making money off dead soldiers. That's sick. Seriously, have they no shame?

John Strangfeld is the Chairman and CEO of Prudential. The list of officers and directors is here. They're all benefiting financially from this practice. Bastards. Ms. Lohman is right: "Is there anything lower than that?" Read More......

Thursday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

The President's interview on "The View" airs this morning. ABC was teasing it out all night. "The View" was taped yesterday. In real life, this morning, Obama is speaking about education at National Urban League's 100th Anniversary Convention, which is being held in DC. Then, he's got a meeting with on Afghanistan and Pakistan with his whole national security team. That group, among others, includes Biden, Gates, Clinton, Panetta, Mullen, Petraeus (by videoconference.)

The House is wrapping up its work before the recess. But, there's a major event on today agenda: The start of the ethics trial for Rep. Charles Rangel. Yeah, I don't think this really helps with messaging, but that's me.

And, yesterday, a federal court judge in Arizona blocked implementation of SB 1070. At Netroots Nation, I talked to the very cool and the very smart Arizona State Representative, Kirsten Sinema, about Brewer. For anyone who hasn't seen it -- or wants to know more about Brewer, here it is:

Brewer is another of the GOP's shining stars...

Have at it... Read More......

The fight to save Social Security starts again

From Howie Klein:

Yesterday Blue America and the Americans For America PAC launched the first in a series of ads meant to emphasize what's real at stake if the GOP takes over again after the midterm elections. If you missed it yesterday, take a look at the video today. As you see, John Boehner addressed the long held Republican Party (and conservative) dream of dismantling Social Security. This morning a coalition of 60 groups representing over 30 million Americans launched a campaign specifically meant to strengthen Social Security, not weaken it as Boehner, the GOP (and some conservative Democrats) hope to do.

Richard Trumka (AFL-CIO), Gerald McEntee (AFSCME), Justin Ruben (MoveOn.org), Dennis Van Roekel (NEA), Eliseo Medina (SEIU), Terry O'Neill (NOW), Donna Meltzer (Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities), Hilary Shelton (NAACP), and Ed Coyle (Alliance for Retired Americans) held a press conference this morning at the National Press Club to announce the new campaign. With some serious indications-- like Obama's reactionary nominees to the panel-- that the his fiscal commission is considering recommending that Congress cut Social Security benefits, these groups are launching a major new campaign to push back and demand that Congress not make any benefit cuts. New polling shows massive public support for members of Congress who support strengthening, not cutting, Social Security.

Read More......