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Have some last-minute pre-travel business to take care of, so checking out a bit early. Can’t wait for Tuesday’s Wanker of the Decade from Atrios!
• Mark Schmitt calls the campaign against ALEC “surprisingly effective, but agrees that it will probably not lead to a complete dissolution of ALEC itself. In case you missed it, I wrote about the search for a progressive counterweight to ALEC this weekend.
• Lobbyists find their way to the White House, regardless of any bans on their conduct.
• The Big Five banks are twice as large today as they were a decade ago. Too Big to Fail remains operative.
• Foreclosure fraud settlement enforcement monitor Joseph Smith does not inspire confidence in this interview. He’s in a no-win situation, because the enforcement terms are nearly impossible to lead to a positive outcome.
• “If the NRA is going to pretend that (Obama’s) aggressively pursuing gun control anyway, then why not actually do it?” A timeless question that can be applied pretty broadly.
• Juan Cole on Egypt’s “Saturday Night Massacre”, which made several Presidential candidates ineligible.
• In addition to the Spanish crisis, I’ll be in Europe (and France, briefly) for the endgame of the French elections. I did not plan this, and don’t expect updates. :)
• Jeff Neely, the main planner for the now-infamous GSA conference in Las Vegas, took the fifth in his first Congressional hearing on the scandal.
• I thought Congressional retirements were always high in a reapportionment year, but apparently this year is bigger than most. Damn it feels no good to be a Congressman.
• I like how Rich Trumka, in blasting the President for allowing the Colombia free trade agreement to move forward, focuses on how much harder it’s going to make it for him to rally support for Obama’s re-election. As if that support no longer has to be earned.
• The very first Gallup poll shows Mitt Romney ahead of Obama by 2 among registered voters. Likely voters are a much better screen, but it’s perhaps too soon for that. The state polls have shown a clearer edge for Obama; their campaign even thinks they can compete in Arizona.
• Romney answers questions on whether he’s relatable to voters from a skybox at Fenway Park.
• Sheldon Adelson begins his post-Gingrich giving this election cycle with a $5 million gift to a House GOP SuperPAC.
• The Tea Party and the Minutemen join forces to form a past-their-prime right-wing activist supergroup. Kind of like Asia.
• Speaking of Jim Yong Kim and the World Bank, here’s something he can start work on right away: ending work on this horrible coal plant in Kosovo.
• If only Saez and Piketty can become household names.
• Corey Robin connects the Cory Booker exploits to the general loss of decent public services in an age of neoliberalism.
• Allen West always raises gobs of money, because he uses an expensive and scammy direct mail service to fundraise.
• Newsweek didn’t get themselves a Pulitzer this year, and with cover stories as derogatory as this I’m guessing they won’t get themselves one next year, either.
• Copy editing for Hustler magazine.
• And the latest in my Silvio Berlusconi obsession. Say it with me: “nun strippers.”
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Trumka is a disgrace to the union movement.
They’re gonna do it!
Argentina to expropriate Repsol oil subsidiary YPF
The Argentine government will seize a controlling interest in oil company YPF owned by Spanish firm Repsol.
“Announcing the move, President Fernandez said energy was a “vital resource”. Of the seized shares, the state will hold 51% and the country’s oil-producing provinces will get 49%.
. . .
“The Argentina authorities have accused YPF of not investing enough to increase its output and so lessen the need for imports, an accusation it rejects.”
LINK.
Nice article. Too bad the people who should read it probably won’t.
Don’t Leave All the PR Work To Colombian Prostitutes
Latin America Has More Good Reasons Than Ever to Be Noticed—And Taken Seriously
“President Obama, while personally popular throughout the Americas, found himself on the defensive at the summit meeting. It’s no wonder. Another sign of how little respect Latin America gets in Washington is that everyone knows that the three pillars of U.S. foreign policy towards the region—immigration policy, the war on drugs and the anti-Cuba embargo—are intellectually bankrupt. But hey, who cares, it’s only Latin America. People don’t give a damn. Consciously.
. . .
“After all that preaching to spendthrift Latin Americans by the likes of Robert Rubin and Alan Greenspan, the scope of Wall Street and Washington’s hypocrisy this past decade proved breathtaking for policymakers from Buenos Aires to Mexico City. But the main Latin American economies had internalized the lessons from past crises and proved resilient this time around, enabled by healthy balance sheets to protect their currencies and spend on countervailing stimulus programs.
“Obama left Cartagena on Sunday without getting other hemispheric leaders to agree to any joint communiqué. It’s simply harder for a U.S. president to do regional arm-twisting. Beyond our eroded credibility, the rise of China is another factor lessening Washington’s leverage. That nation is now the top trading partner of South American commodities powerhouses like Brazil, Chile and Peru.”
MORE.
Ga. to require drug tests for welfare benefits
“Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal has signed legislation that would require thousands of people applying for welfare to pass a drug test before they could receive benefits.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center will file a lawsuit once the program is put into effect, which is July 1. FL’s similar law has been blocked since October.
LINK.
Meet ALEC’s Equally Despicable Anti-Choice Cousin — AUL
Think the anti-choicers in statehouses around the country are coming up with abortion bans all by themselves? Think again.
“From the pushback against healthcare reform to the efforts to delegitimize Planned Parenthood to the late-term abortion battles of the late aughts, AUL’s imprimatur is almost always there. Each year, the group puts out a publication, Defending Life, which in the group’s own words, “combines our model legislation, expert analysis, and 50 state report cards into a single nonpartisan guide for legislators, policy makers, the media, and interested Americans.”
LINK.
Apparently, greenhouse gas emissions and a recovering economy go hand-in-hand, given the model under which we operate.
U.S. greenhouse gases back up after decline
“US greenhouse gas emissions hit 6.82 billion metric tons in 2010, up from 6.61 billion in 2009, it said. The total was still below the 7.25 billion recorded in 2007 before the onset of the global recession.
. . .
“But some environmentalists have criticized Obama’s goal as deceptive as the European Union and Japan calculate targets from the base year of 1990. Compared with 1990, US emissions are up 10.5 percent, according to the latest data.”
LINK.
Meanwhile, in Europe:
EU’s ‘Recession-Busting’ Wind Industry Set to Triple in Value
“The contribution of the wind industry to the economy of the 27-nation EU will rise to 94.5 billion euros ($123 billion) in 2020 from 32.4 billion euros in 2010, the lobby group, known as EWEA, said today in a report published in Copenhagen at the start of its annual conference. Jobs supported by the industry will jump to 520,000 from 238,154, it said.
‘“Wind energy is a recession-busting industry,” EWEA President Arthouros Zervos said in a statement.”
LINK.
This is staggering, folks…
Russia Stunned After Japanese Plan To Evacuate 40 Million Revealed…
Buffett Rule failed, 51 – 45.
Sloooooooooow dooooooooown. The Buffet Rule didn’t fail. Cloture failed.
We are, after all, talking about the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body™.
Oppsie. Now how long do I have to stand in this corner?
I’ll try to atone.
Newt Gingrich Bitten By Penguin At St. Louis Zoo LINK.
I do hope the penguin’s ok.
Why should you do that?
I’d much rather have you digging up interesting links.
Things have changed haven’t they?
Today’s Latin American leaders are not the American puppets of the past.
they quoted Prison Planet news.
Why is this being done to the American people? From McClatchy news article on fracking in PA.
‘“We have fumes that are in our yard almost constantly,” she said. “There are times when it smells like diesel or a kerosene smell. It’s very difficult to pinpoint the exact smell. Then there are times we get a smell like chlorine. When we get that chlorine smell it literally will scorch your eyes and your throat.”
“Air tests found 16 chemicals in her yard, including benzene, a chemical the EPA classifies as a carcinogen. She said test of her blood also showed exposure to benzene and other chemicals. Benzene can cause dizziness and headaches, symptoms she’s had. Her adult children have had runny noses, headaches and sore throats that go away when they aren’t at their parents’ home.”
The EPA is expected to issue rules to reduce pollution–which will “reduce smog-forming, cancer-causing and climate-altering pollutants from the natural gas industry by about one-fourth.” [emphasis added] And that’s assuming current industry efforts to loosen the rules are not successful.
LINK.
From Reuters:
Despite Obama charm, Americas summit boosts U.S. isolation LINK.
Who seem at least in part to be quoting minutes of public meetings.
Mind, don’t see much for the moment beyond watching, waiting, and hoping while doing something else —but no automatic dismissing.
Btw, who’s The Mainichi Daily News ?
Thinking people know or should know that Women have lost jobs due to Republican Governors slashing thousands of teachers, nurses, and librarian jobs all accross the USA! Thank you GOP! Thinking people know or should know that Job creation has been stifiled, put on hold due to the strangulation of GOP policies. The Democratic Senate has passed a jobs bill and a transportation bill which would produce thousands of new josb, but the GOP Congress refuse to take up the bills and pass them so they can continue to lie & say ‘ how Pres. Obama is not creating any new jobs! It is Hypocrisy at its finest and it is evil.
I hope Fernandez has plenty of body guards, food tasters & doesn’t fly on small planes (or large ones for that matter).
O has charm? Coulda fooled me.
Bunga bunga. Seriously, more world leaders should spend their time leading young girls astray. The rest of us at least would be better off.
That statement is good only until the CIA overthrows them all.
Piketty-Saez are wrong about one thing: Inequality today is actually much greater than it was before the Great Depression. Piketty-Saez are looking only at monetary inequallities. They are not considering the grossly unequal unequal access to the opportunities which modern technology has made possible–opportunities of medical care, education, networking, and careers.
Because of the great technological advances since the 1920s and 1930s, the very wealthy have opportunities in all of these areas of which the wealthy of an earlier era could not have dreamed. The poor, and increasingly, the disappearing middle class are increasingly shut out of most of these opportunities (for example, by the ongoing destruction of public education and soaring health costs covered by inadequate insurance). In many ways, the plight of the poor has become worse, because lack of access to these high-technology, non-monetary aspects of life now threatens their very survival. In an earlier, lower technology era, the poorer among us could exist more readily with a simpler lifestyle.
Does anyone, like for instance Fatster, know what the Pentagon spends a year on advertising?
eCHAN @ 23: Honduras
I couldn’t find the Pentagon pr expenses on my first search, mafr, but I did find this fascinating collection of info.