Texas chops nearly $14 billion from budget

Only $13 billion more to cut until they reach the $27 billion mark. What's going to be left of the education system by the time the Republicans are finished their chopping?

About $13.7 billion would be cut from the next Texas budget, affecting schools, health care and almost every state agency, according to a draft sent late Tuesday to lawmakers and leaders.

Public schools would have their funding cut by $5 billion under the budget draft, while Texas colleges and universities would see a $771.6 million reduction.

The draft also calls for cutting $2.3 billion in state general revenue funds from Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program and other health and human services. The Texas Historical Commission would see its funding drop by almost 80 percent.

Read the rest of this post...

'Burn the Koran' pastor denied entry to Britain

Good. You seriously need to check out the picture of the guy. Wonder what TV channel he watches. Read the rest of this post...

Wal-Mart to launch healthy food program

Whether you like Wal-Mart or not, this is good news. Any time you have a retailer with as much influence as Wal-Mart doing something, it's bound to have an impact. Despite what people like Sarah Palin believe, there's obviously a problem in the US with poor eating and even if it's just a small step, this will help. Good job.

Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest retailer, will announce a five-year plan on Thursday to make thousands of its packaged foods lower in unhealthy salts, fats and sugars, and to drop prices on fruits and vegetables.

The initiative came out of discussions the company has been having with Michelle Obama, the first lady, who will attend the announcement in Washington and has made healthy eating and reducing childhood obesity the centerpiece of her agenda. Aides say it is the first time Mrs. Obama has thrown her support behind the work of a single company.

The plan, similar to efforts by other companies and to public health initiatives by New York City, sets specific targets for lowering sodium, trans fats and added sugars in a broad array of foods — including rice, soups, canned beans, salad dressings and snacks like potato chips — packaged under the company’s house brand, Great Value.

Read the rest of this post...

Increasing concerns GOP will shut down entire fed govt to stop health care reform

The President better have some big cojones, because that's exactly what the Republicans will do. They'll take hostages. And as we know, the President's track record on negotiating with hostage-takers is not good. First Sam Stein at HuffPost, then I'll explain what Sam is talking about:

Congressional Democrats expressed a rare touch of nonchalance Wednesday as House Republicans voted to repeal last year's health care overhaul, since the repeal has little chance of passing the Senate. Behind the scenes, however, fears are mounting over what appears to be a more serious threat.

Democratic lawmakers tell The Huffington Post that they increasingly expect Republicans to try and freeze funding for the health care law. Such an attempt would face the same institutional hurdles as a straight repeal vote: a non-compliant Senate and a president wielding a veto pen. But whereas the repeal bill's death would mean -- in practical political terms -- absolutely nothing, the inability to pass an appropriations bill could have far-reaching effects.

"They are potentially setting up a situation where they will bring government, all of government, to a screeching halt," Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said Wednesday. "Not because of the debt ceiling. This is beyond the debt ceiling ... If they think they are going to have the end game of their appropriations bills be that they drive health care reform into an early grave ... they are literally setting up a full stop for almost everything we will possibly do this year."

The government is funded via a series of 12 (or so, it's been changing every few years) appropriations bills. One appropriations bill is for the Defense department. Another is for is for the State Department and foreign aid. Another funds the Labor Department, the Dept of HHS, and the Dept of Education. You get the idea. If the appropriations bills don't pass, those agencies don't get their money for the year (unless congress passes a continuing resolution continuing that basically continues funding the govt on a temporary basis at last year's levels).

Now, what could/would the GOP do? They House Republicans could add language to every appropriations bill repealing health care reform. If the Senate Democrats strip the legislation from the Senate version of the bill, the House Republicans could refuse to vote for the final joint House-Senate bill unless and until the health care repeal is included back in. In the meantime, the government won't be funded, and will run out of money next October 1st, when the current fiscal year runs out.

And it's actually worse than that. Because the appropriations bills didn't get passed last year, the federal government is currently operating under a continuing resolution. But rather than pass a continuing resolution that takes us until the end of this fiscal year, the end of September, the current continuing resolution only takes us until March 4. The Republicans could demand that the continuing resolution contain a health care reform repeal.

And I just googled it, and what do you know, that's exactly what some Republicans are demanding:

A caucus of conservative Republicans unveiled a proposal on Thursday that would trim federal spending by $2.5 trillion over 10 years.

Republican Study Committee (RSC) Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said Thursday that the RSC will be using the plan as a “marker” in the fight over the continuing resolution that will fund the government after March 4.

Continuing the conservative attack on the Obama healthcare law, the plan prohibits any fiscal 2011 funding from being used to carry out any of the law’s provisions. The proposal also bars the administration from defending the healthcare law in court. A federal judge in Virginia has ruled that the law's requirement that everyone buy insurance is unconstitutional, and the administration is expected to defend the law on appeal.

And if the Dems don't agree, the Republicans could simply refuse to pass a continuing resolution, thus shutting down the government March 4.

Which is fine, unless you receive social security benefits, unemployment benefits, veterans benefits, fight in any wars, are a state that uses federal aid to repair your highways, and on and on and on - in that case, your benefits/aid will be shut off. So would our embassies abroad, and military bases, and lots of other things. It wouldn't be a good thing.

But it's exactly the kind of thing the Republicans would demand a pound of flesh out of President Obama, knowing that in the past he's preferred to give important things away rather than stand up to bullies.

At some point, you have to stand up to bullies or their demands get larger and larger and larger. Read the rest of this post...

Hate group supports President Obama's appeal of the anti-gay DOMA

Seriously the wrong side of history. Read the rest of this post...

European inflation targets: 'This is going to be ugly'

The quote in the title is Paul Krugman's, and I think he's right. Jean-Claude Trichet, ECB President, has put fighting inflation back on the European economic agenda. (Do click through; Goldman Sachs loves the idea). And it's not going to be good for anyone but the Bigs, Eurozone-speaking.

In a fairly brief blog post, Krugman analyzes that decision by presenting two alternative scenarios relative to strong countries (his example is Germany, for obvious reasons) and weak ones (in his example, Spain).

So let's say wages and prices are way out of line in the two countries — Spain's are way too high relative to Germany's. To fix this, you need an inflation differential that holds true over time (five years in the example), with Germany's inflation being higher than Spain's. If Germany has higher inflation relative to Spain, their wages and prices will ultimately re-align.

But an inflation differential of the proper size can work in either of two ways: (a) modest or near-zero inflation in Germany and crushing deflation in Spain, or (b) high-ish inflation in Germany and modest inflation in Spain. Either way, you can get the same differential, and the same restorative result. But one of these choices clobbers Spain, and the other gives it some breathing room.

Guess which option Mr. Trichet is strongly considering? The Professor:

In a frictionless world, it wouldn’t matter which scenario gets chosen. But in reality, scenario A, the low-inflation scenario, is vastly worse for Spain — for two reasons. First, it’s much, much harder to get actual deflation than simply to have stable prices, so scenario A means much higher unemployment. Second, because Spanish debt is in euros, scenario A implies a significantly worse debt burden.

So what we’re seeing is an ECB catering to German desires for low inflation, very much at the expense of making the problems of peripheral economies much less tractable.

This is going to be ugly.

For background, Krugman's long Europe piece is here, and our shorter summary of it is here.

Ugly in Europe has echoes that none of us want to hear. But it looks like wealthy nations (or at least their elites) have dug in their heels.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Florida Republican introduces bill to allow guns on Florida university campuses

Um, no. Is this the type of person who would qualify as a "Floridiot" or is this a case of simply being an all-purpose idiot who blends in seamlessly in the GOP?

The proposal comes in the wake of a mass shooting in Arizona and the accidental shooting death of a Florida State University student. The police chiefs of Florida's state universities, including UF Police Chief Linda Stump, have come out in unanimous opposition to the measure.

"I don't think you're going to find anybody in higher education in law enforcement who is going to want guns on their campus," Stump said.

State Sen. Greg Evers, R-Crestview, is proposing the change in a bill that would allow residents who have concealed weapons permits to openly carry those guns. The measure would also lift the state's prohibition on having the weapons at colleges and universities, while leaving it in place for K-12 schools.

"I think it's just a good idea that people be allowed to carry firearms wherever they feel the necessity to protect themselves," Evers said.

Notice how the police are against such stupidity. Read the rest of this post...

The Hill: Defense industry says Sen. Lieberman will be ‘hard to replace’

Some days the stories just write themselves. The Hill (h/t Glenn Greenwald via Twitter):

The retirement of Independent Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman will remove from Capitol Hill a powerful proponent for robust Pentagon spending and weapons programs.

Lieberman, a hawk on foreign policy, has long been considered a friend of defense contractors, both in Connecticut and across the country. With his retirement still two years away, the senator will still have a chance to shape a number of critical foreign-policy debates, including over withdrawal from Afghanistan, analysts say.

“He is a giant of the Senate, to me just as important on national security as [Sen. Edward] Kennedy [D-Mass.] was on health or [Sen. Bill] Bradley [D-N.J.] on finance or [Sen. Pete] Domenici [R-N.M.] on the deficit,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a national security analyst at the Brookings Institution. “In that regard he is very, very hard to replace. With luck we will be through the worst of the Afghanistan experience before he leaves, but other challenges where his wise counsel would help the nation surely loom ahead.”

The Democrat-turned-Independent’s retirement announcement comes about one year after another powerful Connecticut senator, Chris Dodd (D), announced he would leave the chamber. Those departures will leave some defense firms looking for new champions in the Senate.

I'll stop the blurb here, but there's much more. It's euphemism city in those quotes — "robust Pentagon spending", "friend of Defense contractors", "looking for champions in the Senate". That's cash money he's talking about. Later in the article, for example, we learn how Lieberman "cemented his favorable reputation with defense firms" — presumably by piling truckloads of wet tax dollars around the base of it and letting the mess cure for 12 hours.

By the way, notice all those quotes from Michael O'Hanlon? He's this guy.

Consider this article the first salvo in the Lieberman retirement party, and I don't mean the public one. The piece makes it clear that the industry knows it needs to leverage Lieberman's remaining Senate time to "shape a number of critical foreign-policy debates." And it's also clear in the article that Joe is offering that leverage and then some. In other words, "my agent will have lunch with your agent." Joe plans a sprint, and the industry plans to cheer, heartily.

And afterward? My guess is he'll open up a national security branch of the family business.

Retainers, the both of them.

GP Read the rest of this post...

The Catholic Church would rather let women die

I'm watching The Tudors on BBC America. I know it's not entirely historically accurate, but let's just say that the overall message of the Catholic Church's arrogance and heavy-handedness are not lost on me. They'd rather let women die than perform an abortion, they'd rather let people starve than provide benefits to someone who his gay. Not very Christian. Read the rest of this post...

Taibbi mailbag: Tea Party types & the Muni debt crisis

In his Monday mailbag, Matt Taibbi got a number of great questions. Two are of note — a continuation of our own ongoing Tea Party discussion, and a window into the coming state and local government default crisis.

About those teabags:

You have a somewhat positive spin on the sincerity of the Tea Party, yet the movement has been funded/controlled by the Kochs and their ilk. Do you reckon they've created a "monster" they can't possibly control in the long run?

Taibbi's reply (my emphasis):

I have to admit to being a little confused about the whole Tea Party phenomenon. In the year-plus I've been covering Tea Partiers, 99% of them are completely disingenuous goons -- Rush/Hannity fans and Bush Republicans who've crudely reinvented themselves as "constitutionalists" and appropriated Ron Paul's small-government rhetoric in order to disguise their basically unchanging political belief system, which almost exclusively involves hating liberals and leftists and Democrats, and immigrants and nonwhite "water drinkers," no matter what they do. I see the Tea Party mainly as a vehicle for the Republican Party to corral public anger and turn it against Democrats, and also to aid the campaign contributors of both parties in continuing to deregulate the economy and keep certain subsidies in place, and most Tea Partiers are I think willing participants in this scheme.

But I have met a few, like this Chris Littleton fellow in Ohio, who seemed deadly focused on the spending issue, and on some legitimate concerns about expanded government power even when it's the result of Republican legislation (i.e. No Child Left Behind depriving local public schools of autonomy with regard to curricula), and they seemed sincere in that at least. I did not have the same experience with Tea Party leaders in Kentucky, in Nevada, in New York, or other states, where I mostly heard a lot of preposterous Beck-fueled hysteria about how Obama is converting America into a Soviet territory and the health-care program is the first step on the road to government re-education camps (I really heard that one in Nevada). But some key Tea Partiers in John Boehner's home state are insisting that they will not become tools of the Republican Party, and the deadline for them to show their sincerity there is sometime around this spring. If Boehner raises the debt ceiling and the Tea Party doesn't call for his ouster, we'll know something's up. The Republicans meanwhile are going to have to continue to fight to keep the Tea Partiers steamed in the right direction -- and though they may fail in a few places, my guess is that over the long haul they'll be successful in rousing most of the mob against Death Panels and Black Panthers and the like, and keeping them away from the issues of Republican spending habits and/or crappy governance.

He also fields a question about JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon regretting the coming epidemic of municipal bankruptcies:

I can't believe what I just read. Jamie Dimon talking about how serious the looming epidemic of municipal bankruptcies is.

Ummm... JP Morgan is directly responsible for two very notable ones, JAMIE. The Jefferson County sewer fiasco and the Chicago parking meter swindle.

Where did he find the balls that big to come out and nonchalantly issue advisories about a "terrible" crisis for which his bank is heavily responsible?

Matt's partial reply:

Don't forget Denver and a host of school districts in Pennsylvania and Los Angeles County, among many, many others.

I bet that we're going to find out that the corruption in the municipal debt sector has been greater than is currently believed. The whole auction-rate bond world is set up in a way that makes corruption on the part of the banks almost an inevitability -- it's a paradise for churning and fee-gouging, with a setup not to unlike the option-ARM mortgage deals. Just like option-ARMs, municipalities take more upfront cash in exchange for the variable risk of higher potential future rates; municipalities who sign up pay relatively low interest rates to borrow money through bond auctions, but the catch is that they have to hold auctions for that same bond repeatedly, and if any of those auctions fail, the borrower suddenly has to pay fantastic penalty rates. To give just one of hundreds/thousands of examples, the auction for a bond for Lynchburg, Virginia failed a few years back and in just a week the interest rate jumped from just above 4% to 15%. On that same day three years ago, 29 other auctions failed, leaving the bonds with penalty rates of 12%-18%. Imagine dozens of cities suddenly looking at paying three and four times their usual bill for debt service, and you can imagine how these budget crises develop.

Remember, the crisis is the plan. All that public property doesn't privatize itself, you know.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Daley sells his 189,190 shares in JP Morgan/Chase, which just got busted for screwing the troops

The new White House Chief of Staff, William Daley, served on the Board of Directors of JP Morgan Chase. He just had to sell his shares for approximately $8.3 million, according to Bloomberg:

William Daley, President Barack Obama’s new chief of staff, filed a notice with the Securities and Exchange Commission today to sell 186,190 shares of JPMorgan Chase & Co. that he valued at almost $8.3 million.

The approximate date of sale was listed in the filing as today and comes as Daley, a former JPMorgan executive, divests his holdings to work at the White House.

Daley’s last day as a vice chairman at JPMorgan was Jan. 7. He resigned from the boards of Boeing Co. and Abbott Laboratories the same day.

Yesterday, there was another article about JP Morgan/Chase, which Chris posted, on how that bank overcharged and wrongly foreclosed on military families. Yeah, the mega-bank screwed over 4,000 troops.

[O]ne military family's five-year battle with the mortgage giant, who overcharged them by as much as $900 a month. While Marine Captain Jonathan Rowles was away on active duty, his wife Julia got calls demanding $15,000 they didn't owe. "It's been a nightmare, it's been my living nightmare," Julia Rowles told NBC News.

Chase admitted that 14 military families lost their homes thanks to the mistake, and 4,000 active service members have been wrongly overcharged.

Can someone in the White House press corps ask Daley about this article? Ask if he knows that during his tenure on the Board of JP Morgan/Chase, the bank was screwing over U.S. servicemembers, harassing some while foreclosing on others. Daley was, after all, the Vice Chair of JP Morgan/Chase. And if he didn't know, why not?

There are no repercussions for the bad behavior of our financial institutions, only rich rewards. Read the rest of this post...

Froomkin: Obama's willingness to cut Social Security is 'killing him with voters'

Dan Froomkin got a presentation from pollsters yesterday on Obama and Social Security. The President could be going down a dangerous path on this critical issue. If Obama thinks cutting Social Security benefits is a good idea, he's getting very, very bad advice:

President Barack Obama's apparent willingness to consider cuts in Social Security benefits may be winning him points with Washington elites, but it's killing him with voters, who see the program as inviolate and may start to wonder what the Democratic Party stands for, if not for Social Security.

That's the conclusion of three top progressive pollsters who spoke to reporters Wednesday at a briefing sponsored by the Economic Policy Institute, the Century Foundation and Demos.

"For the public, cutting benefits is the problem, not the solution," said Guy Molyneux, a partner at Hart Research Associates.

As a result, the pollsters said that any Democrat seeking elected office in 2012 should be begging Obama not to say anything about Social Security cuts in his State of the Union address later this month.

It's stunning that we're even having to worry about Obama and Social Security. But, the concerns are real. And, I don't know how Team Obama will sell this to the base. Read the rest of this post...

Corporate America continues the push for lower taxes

It's all part of the narrative that they're building with the administration. A reality check shows that corporate America is enjoying record high profits, though actual new jobs are lacking. Sure, they keep talking about jobs but none of them are doing much about jobs in the US. If Washington wants to play this game, then at least add a firm commitment linking tax cuts to new jobs in the US. But being that this is the political class negotiating, don't be surprised when we see yet another giveaway without strings attached as we saw during the banking meltdown.

Republicans and Democrats alike are all about appeasing corporate interests and could care less if the voting schmucks ever get a break. Regular voters can't finance an election but the corporate world can do it with ease. Guess who is going to win this debate?

The top executive of Procter & Gamble will take corporate America's case for a lower tax rate to U.S. lawmakers on Thursday, and also call for an end to taxation of foreign-earned profits.

Multinational companies say the top 35 percent corporate tax rate hamstrings them competitively against foreign-based rivals, most of whom are subject to far lower rates.

The House Ways and Means Committee hearing, the first in a series expected in Congress this year on simplifying the U.S. tax code, gives them a chance to press their case.

Read the rest of this post...

Extended family of former Tunisian dictator arrested

There's little doubt the alleged corruption extended beyond just the president. At the same time as the extended family was held, the government announced that all political prisoners were now released. Protests against the government appear to be settling.

Some 33 members of ousted Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali's family have been held, state TV says.

It said that they were arrested as they tried to leave the country.

In a televised speech, interim leader Fouad Mebazaa vowed a "total break" with the past, an independent justice system and media freedoms.

In a separate development, the new government said it had freed all political prisoners. The reported move comes after weeks of mass protests.

Read the rest of this post...

Swiss WikiLeaks banker fined, but not jailed

Earlier this week, Rudolf Elmer handed new data to WikiLeaks in the UK before heading back to Switzerland for his sentencing. Elmer was found guilty of breaking Swiss banking laws, but was only fined. BBC:

A judge in Zurich did so even though the leaked documents referred to accounts in the Cayman Islands.

Judge Sebastian Aeppli fined Rudolf Elmer, 55, more than 6,000 Swiss francs ($6,250; £4,000).

But he rejected prosecution demands to give Elmer an eight-month prison sentence.

Elmer also said that he had handed confidential Julius Baer banking files to tax authorities, and later the Wikileaks website run by Julian Assange, because he had wanted to expose tax evasion by businessmen and politicians.

Read the rest of this post...