Republicans initially overreacted, as if Karl Marx had risen from the grave. Mitt Romney was so flustered that he almost mussed his hair. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, surveying the small protest encampments in New York and other cities, called them “growing mobs” that threatened public order. Within a week, however, Cantor was backing away…
Author: TRP
8,000 Foot high dust storm roils through Texas South Plains
Dust kicked up by westerly breezes ahead of a strong cold front restricted visibility in Lubbock to about 5 miles all afternoon, said National Weather Service Lubbock meteorologist Matt Ziebell. That was nothing compared to the 8,000-foot-high rolling dust cloud that moved through the city just before 6 p.m., dropping visibility to between zero and…
No GOP Senator Supports Bill to Protect Cloud E-Mail Privacy
Leahy’s bill would amend the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. Adopted when CompuServe was king, ECPA allows the government to acquire a suspect’s e-mail or other stored content from an internet service provider without showing probable cause that a crime was committed, as long as the content had been stored on a third-party server…
Billionaire Investor Warren Buffett Would Pay No Income Tax Under Cain’s 999 Plan
Republicans have met the Buffett rule with universal derision, calling it “class warfare.” “If it’s not class warfare, it’s highway robbery,” said 2012 GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain. “Pick my pockets, because that’s what he’s doing!” As it turns out, Cain’s much-touted 999 tax plan would basically do the opposite of the Buffett…
Blacks reject Cain for good reason
Cain evinces no recognition of the Founding Fathers’ role in erecting a cruel pigmentocracy that continues to poison virtually every aspect of American political, social and cultural life. This is not an abstruse or academic matter. The president nominates federal judges. An important theory of constitutional interpretation vying for ascendancy is originalism: the…
Poll: Americans Overwhelmingly Support First Piece Of Obama Jobs Plan To Prevent Teacher, Firefighter Layoffs
Last week, two Senate Democrats joined Senate Republicans to filubuster President Obama’s jobs plan, even though analysts have found that it could add 1.9 million jobs next year. Now, Democratic lawmakers have decided to introduce Obama’s plan piece-by-piece, beginning with Obama’s $35 billion aid package “to help state and local governments provide funding…
Record Rains Don’t Ease Texas Drought, State Braces for Multi-Year Dust Bowl
Texas finally received rain over the first weekend in October. But as the Drought Monitor shows, while the portion of the state under exceptional drought has dropped a little, 99% of the state is still under severe drought, just as it was last week. The L.A. Times reported: Texas has finally received…
Worry about young businesses, not small businesses
Of course there are more small firms than big ones, and of course the big firms employ more people than the small ones. Bernstein calls this “the most commonly misunderstood fact about the job market,” and he may be right. You often hear that small businesses are the only businesses that really add news jobs….
President Obama: “There doesn’t seem to be much listening going on in Washington these days.”
Railing against Republicans, President Barack Obama on Monday pushed for a jobs package that Congress is splintering into pieces, with Senate Democrats planning to start with a plan to help states hire teachers, police and firefighters. In campaign mode on the road, Obama accused Republicans senators of saying no to helping Americans. via…
The 99 Percent Rise Up
This has been a year of agitation, from Wisconsin to Ohio to Washington. It has seen some of the largest demonstrations in recent American history in defense of labor rights, public education, public services. But all those uprisings attacked symptoms of the disease. Occupy Wall Street named it. By aiming activism not at the government…
After Zuccotti Park: Seven Privately Owned Public Spaces to Occupy Next
Privately owned public spaces have proliferated in the past several decades—there are almost 550 in New York City—as a result of zoning concessions the city grants to real estate developers: in exchange for setting aside a nominally public space, property owners such as Brookfield are allowed to bypass height or setback restrictions on…
Financiers for Occupying Wall Street [interview]
A few days ago, the Huffington Post sent me a press alert saying that Mohammed el-Erian had written a blog post warning readers to “listen to Occupy Wall Street.” That caught my eye. For those who don’t know el-Erian, he’s a co-CEO of PIMCO, one of the world’s largest — and wealthiest — bond trading…
The jobs debate on Earth 2
“Republicans,” McCain said on Earth 2, “have a better idea than more tax cuts and government spending. The economy isn’t growing because households are buried under mortgage debt. So we propose to attack the problem at the source. On the advice of Harvard’s Martin Feldstein, we are introducing legislation that would empower the…
Republican field for 2012 is pathetic
Thus far the Republican field of 2012 is a Democratic dream come true. This crop of candidates is not just weak, it is a joke. Now you are saying, “There goes that crazy Cajun again calling the opposition a joke.” I can hear the men in wool sport coats with suede elbow patches…
Disturbing Video: Police Abduct Bank Customer off the Street
In what may be one of the most disturbing videos yet to come from the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, a Citibank customer is seen snatched off the street by police, and forced into the bank, presumably to be held and then arrested. In the video, the woman, wearing business attire, is confronted by a man…
“Occupy” Movement Spreads Around the World
Apparently inspired by the so-called Arab Spring movements in the Middle East and North Africa, the Occupy Wall Street movement began almost as a curiosity, largely ignored by the media, political leaders, and even NYC law enforcement. However, the movement began to grow. As conservative elements began to denigrate OWS and distance themselves, and liberal elements…
OWS: Cop Punches Demonstrator to the Ground
Yesterday, there were several reports of clashes with the police during the Occupy Wall Street march celebrating the reprieve from the cleaning of Zuccotti park, and the possible dismantling of the protest infrastructure. There were fourteen reported arrests, and major news outlets reported that police drove police scooters at and over protesters in order to…
Obama Sends U.S. Troops To Central Africa To Aid Campaign Against Rebel Group
President Obama is sending about 100 U.S. troops to central Africa to help local forces battle the Lord’s Resistance Army, a rebel group that the administration says has waged a campaign of murder, rape and kidnapping for more than two decades. Obama said Friday the troops will act as advisers in efforts to hunt down…
NYPD Drives Over Protesters
The demonstrators in New York began to move toward Wall Street after it was revealed the owners of Zuccotti Park — home to the protest camp — had ditched a plan to clean the park that some claimed was a pretext to evict them. NBC News reported that police used the scooters…
The 53% Myth: Working Poor Pay More Of Their Income In State And Local Taxes Than The Rich In 49 States
But the founding principles of the tumblr and the “53 percent” meme itself is flawed. It is true that 47 percent of Americans did not pay net federal income taxes in 2009 — the number is unusually high because of the depression in incomes following the recession — but it is completely false that only…