The stock market may be up more than 75% since President Obama moved into the White House, but Wall Street is looking for a change come November. Stocks have historically performed better during a Democratic administration, yet a whopping 70% of investment strategists and money managers say a Republican president will be better for the…
Author: TRP
Mark Zandi is feeling even sunnier about jobs in 2012 – The Washington Post
Add Mark Zandi to the growing chorus of economists who believe that the U.S. is finally headed for a real turnaround. The chief economist for Moody’s Analytics just revised his outlook for 2012, and the biggest change to his forecast involves the unemployment rate. Back in January, Zandi predicted that the rate, which is currently…
Boycotts Hitting ALEC, Group Behind ‘Stand Your Ground’ Gun Laws
Two of America’s best-known companies, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, have dropped their memberships in the American Legislative Exchange Council, a low-profile conservative organization behind the national proliferation of “stand your ground” gun laws. ALEC promotes business-friendly legislation in state capitols and drafts model bills for state legislatures to adopt. They range from little-noticed pro-business bills to…
Credo PAC Targets Two More House Republicans
Add Reps. Mike Fitzpatrick (Pa.) and Dan Lungren (Calif.) to the list of Republican lawmakers in the sights of Credo Mobile, the progressive San Francisco phone company-turned-political action committee. The PAC said today that it will set up offices in the lawmakers’ districts as part of efforts to purge the House of tea party-influenced lawmakers….
Arizona’s ‘Show Me Your Papers’ Law in the U.S. Supreme Court
If the Court gives its blessing to this coordinated “attrition through enforcement” strategy and allows S.B. 1070 and its progeny to be implemented, the nation will return to a time of deep division, likely cleaved once again along regional lines, with some states passing welcoming laws, and others passing restrictive ones. Yet the ultimate objective…
Conservatives Wince At 5th Circuit’s Retaliatory Move
The legal battle over the constitutionality of the health care law was always going to be hard-fought. But in the aftermath of Supreme Court arguments, Republican-appointed appellate judges have taken the unusual step of publicly confronting President Obama after he bristled at the notion that the high court would overturn the law. That wouldn’t be…
By 2025, three of the world’s richest cities will be in China
The McKinsey Global Institute explains what the new world order will look like in 2025: Just 600 cities will be responsible for about 60 percent of global GDP growth. And while urban centers in the United States, Europe*, and Japan are still dominant, cities in China and India, in particular, will have an outsized role…
Republican Fifth Circuit Mad at Obama, Gives Attorney Homework Punishment
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit may be the most ideological court in the country. When the oil industry’s allies in Congress wanted to protect the industry from drilling lawsuits, they passed a bill trying to force those lawsuits into the reliably industry-friendly Fifth Circuit. When a high school cheerleader sued…
White Plains, NY Police Called On Medical Alert Shoot And Kill Black Veteran, 68
As the Trayvon Martin case draws national attention, we look at another fatal shooting of an African-American male that has received far less scrutiny. Kenneth Chamberlain, Sr., a 68-year-old African-American Marine veteran, was fatally shot in November by White Plains, NY, police who responded to a false alarm from his medical alert pendant. The officers…
State Attorney Accuses Trayvon Martin Family of “Outright Lies”
State Attorney Norm Wolfinger released a statement Monday in response to a letter delivered to the Justice Department by the Martin family that asserted the widely held belief that the decision not to arrest Zimmerman was a result of consultation between Wolfinger and Sanford police chief Bill Lee. State Attorney Norm Wolfinger Statement on…
A Business Bet on the G.O.P. May Be Backfiring
Business groups that worked hard to install a Republican majority in the House equated Republican control with a business-friendly environment. But the majority is first and foremost a conservative political force, and on key issues, its ideology is not always aligned with commercial interests that helped finance election victories. “Free market is not always the…
Supreme Court Upholds Invasive Strip Searches
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that jailers may subject people arrested for minor offenses to invasive strip searches, siding with security needs over privacy rights. By a 5-4 vote, the court ruled against a New Jersey man who complained that strip searches in two county jails violated his civil rights. Justice Anthony Kennedy said in…
Poll: Majority For Recalling Walker In Wisconsin
The new Rasmussen poll of Wisconsin shows bad news for Gov. Scott Walker, with a majority of likely voters wanting to kick him out of office in the state’s recently triggered recall election. The poll asked: “A special election will be held to see if voters want to recall Governor Scott Walker and remove him…
A New Energy Third World in North America?
The “curse” of oil wealth is a well-known phenomenon in Third World petro-states where millions of lives are wasted in poverty and the environment is ravaged, while tiny elites rake in the energy dollars and corruption rules the land. Recently, North America has been repeatedly hailed as the planet’s twenty-first-century “new Saudi Arabia” for “tough energy” — deep-sea oil, Canadian tar…
French film, music industries shrink despite harsh anti-piracy law
A report published by the French High Authority for the Dissemination of Creative Works and Protection of Rights on the Internet HADOPI is being touted by file sharing opponents the world over as proof that so-called “graduated response” policies are very effective at stopping copyright infringement. Problem is, it neglects to mention something very important:…
Illinois Traffic Stop Of Star Trek Fans Raises Concerns About Drug Searches, Police Dogs, Bad Cops
Asset forfeiture is the process by which law enforcement agencies can take possession of property suspected of being tied to illegal activity. Under these laws, the property itself is presumed to be guilty of criminal activity. Once the property has been seized, it’s up to the owner to prove he obtained the property legitimately. In…
Great Lakes Ice Cover Down 71% Since 1973
Ice cover on North America’s Great Lakes has declined 71% since 1973, says a new study published in the Journal of Climate by researchers at NOAA’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory. The biggest loser of ice during the 1973 – 2010 time period was Lake Ontario, which saw an 88% decline in ice cover. During…
More states privatizing their infrastructure. Are they making a mistake?
But before getting too excited about the magical powers of private firms, experts warn that there are potential pitfalls to these arrangements. For one, as Robert Puentes of Brookings noted in a recent paper (pdf), these are complicated multi-decade financial arrangements. And “many states,” he notes, “lack the technical capacity and expertise to consider such…
It’s Not Your Imagination: Republicans Really Don’t Like Science | Mother Jones
The reason for this, according to Mooney and others, is that the “political neutrality of science began to unravel in the 1970s with the emergence of the new right”—a growing body of conservatives who were distrustful of science and the intellectual establishment, who were often religious and concerned about defending “traditional values” in the face…
Tim DeChristopher: Sentenced to Federal Prison for Disrupting Illegal Federal Auction
November, 2008. Barack Obama has defeated John McCain, and George W. Bush’s last, lame-duck weeks in office begin. Without the legally-required environmental reviews, Bush’s Bureau of Land Management rushes out 116 leases on public land. This last-minute fire-sale of our shared natural resources is an obvious giveaway to the oil and natural gas industries, strong…