The volume of Koch Industries' toxic output is staggering. According to the University of Massachusetts Amherst's Political Economy Research Institute, only three companies rank among the top 30 polluters of America's air, water and climate: ExxonMobil, American Electric Power and Koch Industries. Thanks in part to its 2005 purchase of paper-mill giant Georgia-Pacific, Koch Industries dumps more pollutants into the nation's waterways than General Electric and International Paper combined. The company ranks 13th in the nation for toxic air pollution. Koch's climate pollution, meanwhile, outpaces oil giants including Valero, Chevron and Shell. Across its businesses, Koch generates 24 million metric tons of greenhouse gases a year.Aiming to make American democracy a wholly-owned subsidiary of Koch Industries (much as they have done in the State of Wisconsin with their office boy, Gov. Scott Walker), the Kochs have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the Republican/ New Confederate/ Stupid Party in direct candidate support as well as voter suppression activities. If you want to get a full sense of the evil these two Birchite sociopaths are visiting on this country (and you should), read the full article.
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
Protests in Jefferson County, the state's second-largest school district, began a week ago Friday. By this Thursday, there were nearly 1,000 students marching in protest of the county school board's call for an Advanced Placement curriculum on U.S. history that promotes "respect for authority" and discourages "civil disorder, social strife or disregard for the law." [snip]
Julie Williams, one of three conservative members who control the county school board and who helped design the proposal, said on Friday that she's "not saying let's not teach history accurately," but what she is saying is "let's not encourage our children to disobey the law." When Denver's KUSA-TV asked Williams for examples of moments in history that might be misrepresented in the AP course and could lead to the negative outcomes she fears, Williams couldn't cite a single example.
"I'm not familiar enough with everything that is in AP history to make that judgment," she said. (our emphasis)Or Maggie Ramseur... High. School. Senior (!):
"The point of civil disobedience is to break an unjust law with the intention of bringing attention to it so that it may be rectified and made just," Ramseur said. "Teaching students about that does not encourage them to become anarchists. It encourages them to speak up about policy and make the government serve the people, which is what our democratic republic was designed for."
"And that is something that I learned in Advanced Placement United States History," she added. "The uncensored version."Meanwhile, George Santayana is rotating briskly in his grave.
"You reload with truth which I know is an endangered species at 1400 Pennsylvania Avenue anyway."In fact, 1400 Pennsylvania Avenue is the site of the historic Willard Hotel, so the only truth that may have been endangered there would have been the number of phony Mr. and Mrs. Joneses registered for weekend trysts.
... In an era when Republicans at the state level seem unembarrassed to try almost any strategem to deprive minorities and young people — read: Democrats — of the franchise, Mr. Holder has been a fierce champion of the opposite principle: Democracy depends on everyone having unencumbered access to the voting booth. After decades of rising incarceration rates and racial disparity in sentencing, Mr. Holder has been at the forefront of a movement to restore sanity and equity to punishment. He resisted state laws that targeted immigrants or people who police might think look like immigrants. And in refusing to defend the Defense of Marriage Act, and then, after the Supreme Court vindicated that call, in scouring and rewriting the federal rulebook to promote equal treatment of same-sex marriages, he played a key and honorable part in the unfolding movement toward recognition of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans as full citizens.Fred Hiatt must be on vacation.
The U.S. economy grew at a rate of 4.6 percent in the second quarter, according to gross domestic product numbers released Friday morning by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
It represents the fastest rate of growth since the last three months of 2011 as companies increased investments and households spent more, Bloomberg reported.
The figure, up from 2.5 percent growth in the same period last year, was revised up from a previous estimate of 4.2 percent in August.We also expect this to be the lead news story on tonight's news (riiiight! again).
"The disputed episodes involve mostly trivial issues and minor matters of fact."Now we understand why they're so upset: after all, trivial issues and errors in fact are their bread-and-butter. Mega hack and Karl Rove pen pal Ron Fournier clutched his pearls and headed to the fainting couch, saying, "It's time to stop allowing WH to read and distribute pool reports." Well, at least not this White House. (Perhaps Fournier is still upset over John McNasty's defeat in 2008, when he was considering a job with McNasty).
New regulations from the Treasury Department will make these co-called corporate inversions less lucrative by barring creative techniques that companies use to lower their tax bill. Additionally, the U.S. will make it harder for companies to move overseas in the first place by tightening the ownership requirements they must meet.
"This action will significantly diminish the ability of inverted companies to escape U.S. taxation," Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said. He added that for some companies considering inversions, the new measures would mean inverting would "no longer make economic sense." [snip]
Three new measures will seek to stop companies from finding ways to access earnings from a foreign subsidiary without paying U.S. taxes, including "hopscotch" loans, in which companies shift earnings by lending money to the new foreign parent company while skipping over the U.S.-based company.
Another rule change would make it harder for merged or acquired companies to benefit from lower foreign taxes by tightening the application of a law that says the American company's shareholders must own less than 80 percent of the new, combined company. The administration would like to reduce that percentage to 50 percent, but that will require legislation. In the absence of legislation, the administration says its new rules will make it harder for companies to get around the 80 percent requirement by prohibiting certain arrangements, such as a firm making large dividend payments ahead of the acquisition to reduce its size on paper.The rules, being drafted now, will be effective retroactively to today. As one might have expected, the Chamber of
Alaska. "A bastion of hard-right politics, Alaska is the state where Sarah Palin was elected governor in 2006. But when it comes to 'small government,' Alaska Republicans don’t practice what they preach: according to WalletHub, Alaska receives $1.42 from the federal government for every dollar it contributes."
South Carolina. "Republican Gov. Nikki Haley once boasted, 'I love that we are one of the least unionized states in the country.' But that is nothing to be proud of, especially in light of the fact that non-union workers tend to have lower wages and therefore, contribute less tax revenue. The Tax Foundation found that South Carolina was receiving $1.92 from the federal government for every federal tax dollar it was contributing."The delusional hypocrisy of the red staters is stunning when it comes to their greed vs. others' contribution. In other words, "spend on me, but not on thee."
Last week, for example, WJLA viewers woke up to a new face on the morning news: Mark Hyman, a veteran conservative pundit, who offered some criticism of President Obama.
In his video commentary, Hyman railed against the inconsistent enforcement of a ban on travel to Cuba by Americans. Noting that the music stars Jay Z and Beyoncé had “partied up” in Havana last year without penalty, Hyman insinuated that Obama had protected the couple from prosecution. “It occurs to me that Beyoncé and Jay Z are close friends of the president and first lady,” said Hyman, adding sarcastically, “You don’t suppose . . . oh, never mind. He’d never do that.”
Hyman’s critiques — which range from warning about the cost of Obamacare to advocating the abolition of the Transportation Security Administration — will be a regular feature on WJLA, just as they are on dozens of stations owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Group, the new owner of ABC 7.Sinclair (owned by the Smith family) has a track record of shilling for the Republican Party and right-wing views, as well as contributing heavily to Republican candidates. As the article points out,
On the eve of the 2012 election between Obama and Republican Mitt Romney, for example, Sinclair stations in several battlegrounds states aired a corporate-produced half-hour news “special” that criticized Obama’s handling of the economy, his signature health-care law and the administration’s management of the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Romney’s record received less scrutiny. [snip]
In 2004, Sinclair generated controversy when it considered airing a documentary attacking Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry’s military record just before the election. After complaints from Democrats and calls for an advertiser boycott, Sinclair backed down and ran a program that analysts said was more balanced. The company nevertheless fired its Washington bureau chief after he publicly said that plans to air the anti-Kerry film were “indefensible.”The folks in the newsroom aren't happy that Sinclair is not only pushing a Republican agenda, but that they want to newsroom to "work for" the advertising-sales department (e.g., doing news tie-ins with corporate sponsors). The article concludes with a quote from Charles Lewis of the Center for Public Integrity:
“I’d be nervous if I were working at WJLA right now,” said Charles Lewis , the founder of the investigative Center for Public Integrity in Washington and a communications professor at American University. “They are stuck with an idiosyncratic owner with its own political views and agenda. It’s a nightmarish scenario for journalists.”Apparently, too, the Smiths hope to build a networked "local-national channel" that will give them an even greater megaphone to spread
This morning the Kansas Supreme Court heard arguments from attorneys representing Democrat Chad Taylor and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach about whether the Democratic challenger's name should be removed from the ballot this November. [snip]
The ruling could be critical for the Senate race in Kansas. New polling from PPP shows Greg Orman (KS-I) now has a growing lead against Pat Roberts (VA-R), but there are still Kansas voters who intend to vote for Chad Taylor if he remains on the ballot...Several court-watchers seem to believe that Kobach's representative had a hard time explaining to the State court how Taylor had not met a "substantial compliance" standard that was otherwise used in other situations where a name was removed from a ballot in Kansas.
In a stunningly fast decision, a federal appeals court in Chicago reinstated Wisconsin's voter photo identification law on Friday — just hours after three Republican-appointed judges heard arguments on reactivating the hotly debated law in time for the November election.
In a brief order, a three-judge panel of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago said, "The State of Wisconsin may, if it wishes ... enforce the photo ID requirement in this November's elections." (our emphasis)We haven't seen whether this ruling can be appealed to the full 7th Circuit, or whether if it were reviewed by the full court it would make a difference. The court is one of the most Republican-loaded in the nation with 4 Democratic justices and 10 Republican justices. That math doesn't bode well for "justice."
As expected, Senate Republicans filibustered legislation on Monday aimed at helping women fight for equal pay in the workplace, a vote held by Democrats to attack the GOP ahead of the 2014 midterm elections.
The vote was 52 for, 40 against, falling short of the 60 needed to defeat a filibuster. [snip]
The Paycheck Fairness Act was introduced by Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), and would prohibit employers from retaliating against employees who talk to coworkers about their salaries. It would also require more data collection of employee salaries from businesses.Senate Democrats can be expected to set up more of these pre-election "symbolic" votes to demonstrate just how far right the Republican/ New Confederate/ Stupid Party has careened. Whether the message from this and other contrasting votes will sink in with enough voters over time to make a difference remains to be seen. Certainly, in the Republican-gerrymandered House of Representatives, it may take up to a generation to restore a Democratic majority. But, as they say, the truth bears repeating.
"... I think TV crews would compete with each other to see who could get the footage that showed him at his most helpless. He had to be carried in and out of buildings. He had to be helped to remove his braces and so on. And I think Fox News would have loved that." (emphasis added)Indeed they would have, and probably would have accused him of being a "secret Muslim," "a Marxist," or "weak." FDR stood for everything Fux is trying to tear down: the social compact and safety net, fair labor practices, and a progressive, tolerant America where "we all do well when we all do well."
“With all the gridlock, it is forgotten that one of the most profound changes this Congress made was filling the bench. This will affect America for a generation, long after the internecine battles on legislative issues are forgotten.”Along with affordable health insurance available to all, the appointments of these judges to appellate court vacancies is one of the President's major, long-lasting accomplishments.
"...Democrats are working hard, and all these stories about them, you know, registering all these minority voters that are out there and others that are sitting on the sidelines, if they can do that, they can win these elections in November." (emphasis added)Exactly. That's why it's so important to register as many of the estimated 700,000 African-American voters in Georgia, as civic groups are doing now. If just half of that number gets registered and turn out to vote, Mr. Kemp and his ilk can pack their bags.
"But wouldn’t it be productive if this collective outrage, as my colleagues have said, could be channelled to truly hear and address the long-suffering cries for help by so many women? And as they said, do something about it? Like an on-going education of men about what healthy, respectful manhood is all about."
"For nearly seven decades, the United States has been the anchor of global security.... The burdens of leadership are often heavy, but the world is a better place because we have borne them." -- President Obama, in his ISIS/ISIL speech September 10, 2014. (emphasis added)Less than a day later, Johnson digs deep in his bag of bull and pulls out a demonstrably false statement. So, who are you going to believe, Ron Johnson or your lying eyes?
"He doesn't believe that America is a force for good in the world. He thinks our involvement in the world actually makes matters worse." -- Teabagger Rethuglican Sen. Ron Johnson, in an interview on September 11, 2014.
[Last Saturday] There’s some sort of unofficial birthday/Iron Dog-type/snowmachine party in Anchorage. A nice, mellow party, until the Palin’s show up. There’s beer, of course, and maybe other things. Which is all fine, but just about the time when some people might have had one too many, a Track Palin stumbles out of a stretch Hummer, and immediately spots an ex-boyfriend of Willow’s. Track isn’t happy with this guy, the story goes. There’s words, and more. The owner of the house gets involved, and he probably wished he hadn’t. At this point, he’s up against nearly the whole Palin tribe: Palin women screaming. Palin men thumping their chests. Word is that Bristol has a particularly strong right hook, which she employed repeatedly, and it’s something to hear when Sarah screams, “Don’t you know who I am!” And it was particularly wonderful when someone in the crowd screamed back, “This isn’t some damned Hillbilly reality show!” No, it’s what happens when the former First Family of Alaska comes knocking. As people were leaving in a cab, Track was seen on the street, shirtless, flipping people off, with Sarah right behind him, and Todd somewhere in the foreground, tending to his bloody nose.Once again, thank you, Sen. "Walnuts" McCain for introducing this "hillbilly reality show" to American politics!
