Krugman: The Depression Is A ‘Political'—Not Economic—Problem
Obama To GOP: Fight Me On Medicare
Planned Parenthood Prez Unloads On Romney
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The Week That Was: Wisconsin
Did I Say ‘Fine’?
Obama clarifies remark about the private sector “doing fine”:
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‘Stand Your Ground’ Gets A Close Look
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights on Friday voted to look into whether ‘stand your ground’ laws across the country are racially biased.
Is ‘The Private Sector Doing Fine’? (CHART)
President Obama covered a lot of ground in his press conference today, but what’s sure to get the most attention is a claim he made about the health of the private economy. This is regarded as newsworthy because reporters recognize (correctly) that Republicans will use it out of context in attack ads.
Here’s the full quote: “The truth of the matter is that, as i said, we’ve created 4.3 million jobs over the last 27 months, over 800,000 just this year alone. The private sector is doing fine. Where we’re seeing weaknesses in our economy have to do with state and local government”
And, via Matt Yglesias, the data:
Read More →“Zero Tolerance”
President Obama, earlier:
We have mechanisms in place where if we can root out folks who have leaked they will suffer consequences
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President Goes Before The Press
President Obama will make a statement on the economy from the White House briefing room at 10:15AM. He is expected to take questions.
Watch live here.
Off The Cliff
Jonathan Cohn: “Conservatives never liked left-wing, government-run solutions to problems like unaffordable health care and climate change. These days they don’t seem to like right-wing, market solutions, either.”
The End Of The Electric Car (Again)?
Sales of a new generation of electric cars have been slow, thanks in part to little public infrastructure yet supporting them, but there’s still been a sense that American auto companies’ second dance with EVs is something more permanent.
But could America’s booming natural gas business change all that?
Pulling Out The Bully Pulpit
President Obama to make appearance in White House briefing room at 10:15 ET this morning.
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How the Bad Economy Changes Everything
No one seems to realize it yet. But a bad economy turns the budget debate in Congress totally upside down.
We’ll See
NY’s Attorney General Eric Schneiderman tells TPM that prosecutions of big banks, stemming from the financial crisis, remain possible.
The Moon Always Wins
The Large Hadron Collider – otherwise known as The Big Bang Machine – is apparently no match for the gravitational pull of the Moon.
Schilling’s State-Backed Biz Bankrupt
Curt Schilling, famed former pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, and champion of conservative causes hasn’t proved to be a particularly talented businessman.
Rhode Island lured his video game venture 38 Studios to the state with the promise of $75 million in guaranteed loans.
Today the company filed for bankruptcy.
But perhaps of more concern for Schilling, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies “are working together to investigate activities that have recently come to light at 38 Studios.”
Everything You Think You Know Is Wrong
The depressing upshot of this winter’s recovery-that-wasn’t is that the economy will probably limp along through the rest of the year, unless it actually gets knocked down by a collapsing Euro or some other outside force.
Beneath the obvious political and human costs of that volatility, though, lies the potential that everything we think we know about the chaotic post-election legislative landscape is totally wrong.
Read More →Very Important, Very Sobering
Late last year there was a minority view among economists that said the economy was about to perk up in a big way. And then it actually happened. And then it stopped happening. Our Brian Beutler spoke to one of the main proponents of this view to find out what went wrong.
PollTracker.com
The pace of campaign polling is heating up. And we have a series of new releases tied to PollTracker coming this month. First up a completely redesigned PollTracker at TPM and more. Stay tuned.
A Tie in Michigan?
Other polls have shown a solid Obama lead. But EPIC-MRA, the big in-state pollster, says Romney is up over Obama by only 1 point.
Good Luck With That
UN Agency tries to create legal frameworks for cyberwarfare.
Ooops
Romney’s new campaign attack against President Obama is sourced to a new book called The Escape Artists. But the author of the book says the claim is false.
Megabucks
Mitt Romney and the RNC took in a much bigger cash haul in May than President Obama and the DNC.
ACLU Sues Over Florida Voter Purge
The American Civil Liberties Union has sued Florida over Gov. Rick Scott's voter-list purge.
Will Natural Gas Kill The Electric Car?
Can the slow-growing electric car market survive the coming push from supporters of natural gas technology?
Most Recent Latest news stories from TPM reporters
Keith Ellison: Minnesota Anti-Gay Marriage Amendment Will Fail
PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) told TPM on Saturday that he expects a constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage in Minnesota will fail when voters head to the polls in November. “I believe that the right to marry someone who you please is so fundamental it should not be subject to popular approval anymore than we should vote on whether blacks should be allowed to sit in the front of the bus,” Ellison said after a panel on voting rights at the Netroots…
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Paul Krugman: If You Don’t Know Someone Suffering Financially, You Must Be A Romney
PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman on Saturday morning called the current state of the U.S. economy “incredibly awful.”
“If you don’t know multiple people who are suffering, then you must be living in a very rarefied environment,” he said in a brief address to the Netroots Nation conference. “You must be maybe a member of the Romney clan, or something.”
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Planned Parenthood President: Romney ‘Off The Reservation’ On Women’s Health Issues
PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards on Friday unloaded on Mitt Romney, painting the GOP presidential nominee as an extremist on women’s reproductive rights. “In the next five months, the offensive you should go on is Mitt Romney’s own statements about what he would do to women’s health care if he was elected president,” Richards told a small group of progressive bloggers and activists at Netroots Nation. “There’s just no way to overstate how little people…
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Elizabeth Warren On Why Corporations Are Not People: ‘People Have Hearts’
PROVIDENCE, R.I. – The intense is-she-or-isn’t-she debate over Elizabeth Warren’s Cherokee heritage that has dogged her campaign shows that Scott Brown wants to “talk about anything except how he votes,” the Democratic Senate candidate told TPM on Friday. “Scott Brown knows that if that’s what we talk about, he’s in big trouble in Massachusetts.” Brown has tried to capitalize on the controversy surrounding Warren’s claims that she is 1/32 Cherokee, and received minority status fromnot…
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The Week In 100 Seconds: June 4-8
The beginning of the week was all about Wisconsin and Governor Scott Walker’s win in the recall election. Things didn’t get any better for democrats on Thursday when Mitt Romney and the RNC managed to exceed President Obama and the DNC’s fundraising by millions of dollars and on Friday Obama, faced with a still struggling economy, went back to a familiar campaign strategy: blaming congress.
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Eric Holder Assigns Two Top Prosecutors To Probe Leaks
Attorney General Eric Holder announced late Friday that he had assigned U.S. attorneys Ronald Machen and Rod Rosenstein to investigate possible disclosures of classified information. Holder called Machen, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, and Rosenstein, the U.S. attorney for Maryland, “highly respected” and said he was confident they would “doggedly follow the facts and the evidence in the pursuit of justice wherever it leads.” Lawmakers have called on the…
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ACLU Sues Over Florida Voter Purge
The American Civil Liberties Union has sued Florida over Gov. Rick Scott’s voter-list purge. The purge, being run by Secretary of State Ken Detzner, is intended to keep non-citizens off the voter rolls but has improperly snagged many legitimate voters. The Justice Department says that the purge violates both the Voting Rights Act and the National Voter Registration Act, but Florida officials haven’t backed down. The ACLU suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of…
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Dean Heller a Democrat? NRSC’s Senate Map Riddled With Small Errors
Republican Sen. Dean Heller might be surprised to learn that the committee tasked with helping him win re-election believes he is a Democrat. At least, that’s how he’s listed on the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s online map detailing this year’s Senate match-ups. The NRSC’s election map, intended to inform visitors about the different races across the country, is riddled with small errors, from name misspellings to improper party designations, some of them carrying…
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Google Hits Back At Claims Its Search Dominance Is Anti-Competitive
Google is by far the most popular search engine in the world, and its recent changes to push its social network, Google Plus, front-and-center in its search results have been met with some derision from users, but is it anti-competitive?
That’s the assertion made by Jeffrey Katz, the CEO of online shopping website Nextag and former CEO of travel website Orbitz, in a Wall Street Journal editorial that ran in print and online on Friday.
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Romney Still Struggling With Latinos Despite New Outreach
Mitt Romney is still stuck in a deep hole with Latino voters, according to a new poll, even as his campaign begins a new effort to reach out to the community for the general election. President Obama leads Romney 66 percent to 23 percent among registered Latino voters, according to a new poll by Latino Decisions, in line with his 67 percent to 31 percent margin over John McCain in 2008. Romney tacked hard to the right on immigration during the Republican primary, allying himself…
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Civil Rights Commission To Examine ‘Stand Your Ground’ Laws For Racial Bias
In the wake of the shooting of Trayvon Martin, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights voted 5-3 on Friday to examine whether “stand your ground” laws across the country have a racial bias. Commissioner Michael Yaki, a former aide to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, proposed the special investigation, saying it could answer timely questions about stand your ground legislation, which allows individuals to use force without retreating when there is a reasonable belief they are…
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Obama To GOP: Fight Me On Medicare, Not On The Unemployed
President Obama addressed the media Friday to renew his push for his jobs bill. His remarks came largely in light of the fact that, amid private-sector job growth, states and municipalities are still laying off government workers, dampening the overall economy. But in making his case, Obama gave a subtle nod to a crucial but little-discussed consequence of the ideological differences between the parties: The fight Republicans and Democrats have waged over the broader role of…
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President Obama Urges Congress To Pass Jobs Bill: ‘There’s Work To Be Done. There Are Workers To Do It’
Citing new challenges to the U.S. economy from abroad, President Obama urged Republicans in Congress to help pass more components of the $447 billion American Jobs Act he proposed last year in order to slow ongoing public-sector layoffs. “Given the signs of weakness in the world economy, not just in Europe but also some softening in Asia, it’s critical we take the actions we can to strengthen the American economy right now,” Obama said in a Friday press conference at the White…
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NC Senate Committee Approves Sea-Level Rise Bill
The North Carolina Senate’s Agriculture, Environment and Natural Resources Committee has approved a bill that restricts state agencies’ ability to take global warming into account when making sea-level rise projections. The language in the bill was toned down from the version that had been circulating – the original version of the bill stated starkly that rates of sea-level rise could use only historical data, extrapolated linearly, despite the fact that most scientists expect…
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Why The U.N. Cares So Much About Flame Malware
What we have here may be a failure to communicate. The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) is a United Nations telecommunications agency that’s been accused by several U.S. lawmakers and advocacy groups of attempting a takeover of the Internet. The critics are concerned that the ITU will give too much sway to centralized Internet governance proposals floated by Russia and China for an upcoming renegotiation of a 1988 treaty, set for December in Dubai. The ITU has…
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Tammy Baldwin: A ‘Huge Spirit Of Disappointment In Wisconsin Right Now’
PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), the presumptive Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, came to Netroots Nation on Thursday with a “heavy heart” after Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker survived a historic recall election. “I come here to remind all of us that our fight for the middle class in America didn’t end with the recall election in Wisconsin,” Baldwin told the cheering crowd. But let’s face it: Walker’s win delivered a harsh blow to Democrats. “There is a huge spirit of…
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Disgraced Lawyer Attempts Return To World Of Nazi Art Theft
Ed Fagan, the lawyer who once won big settlements for Holocaust survivors and South African apartheid victims and was later disbarred in New York and New Jersey, is attempting a comeback. Kind of. In April, Fagan filed a lawsuit in a U.S. District Court in Florida on behalf of the Victims of Holocaust Art Theft against the Czech Republic, the National Gallery in Prague, and the Museum of Decorative Arts of Prague. The suit seeks the recovery of valuable artwork owned by Richard and…
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Prosecute The Big Banks? ‘Nothing’s Off The Table,’ NY Attorney General Says
PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Americans can expect to see tangible results this fall from the task force President Obama created to investigate the financial crisis, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman told TPM Thursday.
Asked after his keynote speech to the progressive Netroots Nation conference here whether prosecutions from the task force are possible, Schneiderman said: “Nothing’s off the table now. Nothing’s off the table.”
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Will Natural Gas Kill The Electric Car?
A government-funded laboratory that helped pioneer the battery technology behind many electric vehicles, including the Chevy Volt, has recently begun to focus on developing technologies to improve natural gas-powered vehicles, in anticipation of government and industry soon seeking to bring consumer-friendly natural gas cars to market. “Our conclusion is that natural gas as a transportation fuel has both adequate abundance and cost advantages that make a strong case to focusEditor’s …
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A Bad Economy Turns The Budget Debate In Congress Completely Upside Down
For several months now, leaders of both parties have been attempting to outmaneuver each other so that come November they’ll be positioned as strongly as possible to prevail in the coming fight over the expiring Bush tax cuts and automatic across-the-board spending cuts. Complicating the parties’ strategy-making is the obvious X-Factor of the election. A Democratic sweep, a GOP sweep, and everything in between each portend different legislative outcomes, and so each party needs to…
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