enlarge

Open thread below...

A new report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, "Out of Balance: Cuts in Services Have Been States’ Primary Response to Budget Gaps, Harming the Nation’s Economy," places a spotlight on the right-wing assault on state budgets and the harmful effects of the growing trend of budget cuts.

The state budget gaps of the last five years led to $290 billion in cuts to public services and $100 billion in tax and fee increases. Those actions lengthened the recession and delayed the recovery. Because spending reductions were dominant, hundreds of thousands of jobs were lost; undermining education, health care and other state priorities, which likely will cause future economic harm to states. Federal aid mitigated the harmful effects of the spending cuts in the early years of the budget crunch, but its expiration last year had a catastrophic effect, making 2012 the worst year since the downturn began for cuts in funding for services.

The study looked at budget data for the last five years and found that more than 640,000 jobs have been cut by the states since 2008, undercutting the economic recovery and helping sustain a high unemployment rate nationally. Because 2012 has been the worst year for cuts since the recession began, further job losses are almost guaranteed.

The cuts have also led states to cancel contracts with vendors, reduce payments to businesses and nonprofits that provide services, and cut benefit payments to individuals — all steps that remove demand from the economy. There are long-term effects as well: By diminishing the quality of elementary and high schools, making college less affordable, and reducing residents’ access to health care, the cuts threaten to make the U.S. economy less competitive in coming decades.

While there has been a recent rebound in the growth of revenue at the state level, if the current rate of growth continues, it will take seven years to get back to where things were before the recession.

Overall, the methods used to balance state budgets — often a legal requirement — were very focused on methods that harm the economy:

Democracy Now did a follow up this Friday on their previous segment I posted here -- James Bamford: NSA is Building the World's Largest Spy Center. This story of course is being ignored again by our corporate media and is terrifying quite frankly as to the amount of data they're collecting and the abuses and potential abuses that are inevitable when you allow anyone access to this much personal information about their fellow citizens.

Exclusive: National Security Agency Whistleblower William Binney on Growing State Surveillance:

In his first television interview since he resigned from the National Security Agency over its domestic surveillance program, William Binney discusses the NSA’s massive power to spy on Americans and why the FBI raided his home after he became a whistleblower. Binney was a key source for investigative journalist James Bamford’s recent exposé in Wired Magazine about how the NSA is quietly building the largest spy center in the country in Bluffdale, Utah. The Utah spy center will contain near-bottomless databases to store all forms of communication collected by the agency, including private emails, cell phone calls, Google searches and other personal data.

Binney served in the NSA for over 30 years, including a time as technical director of the NSA’s World Geopolitical and Military Analysis Reporting Group. Since retiring from the NSA in 2001, he has warned that the NSA’s data-mining program has become so vast that it could "create an Orwellian state." Today marks the first time Binney has spoken on national television about NSA surveillance. This interview is part of a 4-part special. Click here to see segment 2, 3, and 4.

You can read the full transcript which is way too long to post here at the link above along with links to and descriptions of the three other segments that followed this one, from Friday's show on the same topic.

More FOIA records requested via the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund that indicate that Occupy evictions were coordinated with federal agencies. This isn't exactly shocking news to me (I'd be more surprised if they didn't coordinate at the federal level), but the feds are playing keep-away with the specific information that could be the smoking gun by refusing to search where those documents are likely to be:

Two days before the NYPD’s eviction of the Occupy Wall Street encampment from Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, Brookfield Properties' security was in direct communications and sharing information with the US Park Police in Washington DC, and communicating with other cities around the country, according to newly released internal documents from the National Park Service.

The PCJF is making the documents immediately available as we continue to receive them. To view NPS documents and sign up for alerts visit:www.JusticeOnline.org/nps.

The documents were released late Friday to thePartnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) in response to the civil rights legal group's FOIA demands to the NPS, FBI, CIA, DHS and other federal law enforcement agencies seeking information about the role of Federal agencies in the coordinated nationwide crackdown that led to the eviction of Occupy encampments in cities throughout the United States. The request was made also on behalf of author and filmmaker Michael Moore and the National Lawyers Guild Mass Defense Committee The PCJF is making the documents immediately available for review, and highlighting key initial findings .

"When the PCJF issued this FOIA request we wanted to uncover and expose whether local government and local law enforcement agencies were working in a coordinated way with the federal government to suppress and shut down the Occupy Movement which had inspired the country starting in September, 2011," stated Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Executive Director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund. "What these documents are beginning to reveal is also the coordination between law enforcement agencies and private corporate entities representing the 1 percent that wanted to see the Occupy movement removed from public view and shut out of America's parks."

Continue reading »

When compared to other similar countries, retirement benefits in the United States are relatively modest. A report from CNBC took a closer look at retirement systems in numerous countries and found the U.S. to be performing lower than the average. Retirees in the U.S. generally receive about 47 percent of their pre-retirement income on Social Security. Similar programs in Europe and elsewhere generally pay about 68 percent of pre-retirement income.

In the 2011 Melbourne Mercer Global Pensions Index, the U.S. was given a middling grade of "C," along with France, Singapore, Brazil, Poland and Germany.

A country given a C has “a system that has some good features, but also has major risks and/or shortcomings that should be addressed,” the report states. “Without these improvements, its efficacy and/or long-term sustainability can be questioned.”

The United States ranked close to average among 16 countries in adequacy of benefits provided and above average in sustainability, the likelihood that the system can maintain the benefits in the future. It fell short, however, on a sub-index focused on the private sector pension system.

The U.S. could take steps for a better score, the report said, including raising the minimum benefit for low-income retirees, improving benefits vesting, and further limiting access to funds before retirement.

The Service Employees International Union, among other organizations, is calling upon Washington to improve the U.S. retirement system:

The fastest, most efficient and fairest way to improve retirement security in the United States is to strengthen Social Security. Social Security is often the sole source of retirement income for low wage workers who are less likely to have access to an employer-sponsored retirement plan. The problem with Social Security is that its retirement benefits are less than $1,200 per month for millions of low wage workers.

Continue reading »

If there's one thing we can all agree on, it's that Mitt Romney's hatred of cookies is the single most important issue this election.

Words of Power: Richard Power talks to C&L's own Nicole Belle about the latest from the digital front line.

News Corpse: Rachel Maddow asks federal judge to dismiss defamation lawsuit filed by Bradlee Dean, a former Christian rocker turned homophobic preacher.

Bob Cesca: Janet Jackson’s nipple will drive Heather Wilson to tears, but bullying gay teens to suicide is something that needs to be protected.

Eclectablog: Michigan Republicans are trying to transfer more money from cities to businesses.

Round-up by William K. Wolfrum; send tips to mbru [at] crooksandliars [dot] com.

enlarge

Please note: Our sister site Newstalgia needs your help urgently. Please visit and contribute. We deeply appreciate the help.

Happy Friday! Got a favorite Willie song for 4/20?

Shotgun Willie (LP Version)
	Price: $0.99 (As of 04/21/12 06:34 am details)

Here is the latest installment of tea party reporter Susie Sampson asking regular folks on the street about how they feel about Mitt Romney and POTUS.

Enjoy!

DOWNLOADS: (122)

PLAYS: (1417)

Embed

Ann Coulter says that gun control laws are inherently racist and that the solution to incidents like the shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin is more "negroes with guns."

On Tuesday, Coulter used Martin's shooting to argue against gun control laws and said that every African American should arm themselves against the "Democratic Ku Klux Klan."

"We don't know the facts yet, but let's assume the conclusion MSNBC is leaping to is accurate: George Zimmerman stalked a small black child and murdered him in cold blood, just because he was black," Coulter wrote in a column titled "Negroes with Guns."

"If that were true, every black person in America should get a gun and join the National Rifle Association, America's oldest and most august civil rights organization."

Coulter later told Fox News host Bill O'Reilly that "gun control laws have been used historically to keep guns out of the hands of blacks."

"It was the Republican Party and the NRA that has always supported arming blacks in order to protect themselves from the Democratic Ku Klux Klan," she explained.

O'Reilly summed up Coulter's argument: "So what you're saying is if MSNBC's and NBC News' hypothesis is true that this was a racially-biased driven murder, that all African Americans should take that as a warning sign and arm themselves against that happening to them. Therefore, they should support the NRA, they should support he the law that allows you to fight back if threatened and they should arm themselves."

"Yes," Coulter agreed. "And the reason I thought of it is because liberals are leaping to exactly the opposite conclusion that, 'Oh, we have to get rid of these Stand Your Ground laws.' They're against easy issuing of concealed carry permits. As well as I point out in my column, Martin Luther King Jr., a Christian minister under constant death threats, applied for a gun permit after his house was fire bombed and the Alabama authorities, under the discretionary gun permit law, said, 'No. No, this Christian minister is not suitable for a gun permit.' That's how discretionary permits work."

"The history books will often try and twist the history by referring to the KKK and the racist as Southerners. Oh, no, no, no. The Republicans in the South weren't discriminatory. ... The one thing all of the discriminators and the KKK sympathizers -- or KKK themselves -- had in common was they were all Democrats."

"I think you've go a very good point here," O'Reilly observed. "Is the left really that concerned about Trayvon Martin or are they concerned, once again, ramming their agenda no matter what it is under the throats of the American people under the guise of being sympathetic towards this poor teenager and his family?"

Earlier this month, Harvard Professor Charles Ogletree pointed out that measures like Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law were racist in practice.

"Just think about changing the race," Ogletree said. “I want to see the first black man who uses the ‘Stand Your Ground’ defense and see if it works. I want to see the first white victim of the 'Stand Your Ground' by a black defendant and see if it works.”

(h/t: Mediaite)